“Nothing great in the world was
accomplished without passion.”
― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
- was a German philosopher. He is considered
one of the most important figures in German
idealism and one of the founding figures of
modern Western philosophy. His influence
extends to the entire range of contemporary
philosophical issues, from epistemology and
metaphysics to aesthetics, philosophy of history,
philosophy of religion, political philosophy, and
the history of philosophy.
Born: August 27, 1770, Stuttgart, Germany
Died: November 14, 1831, Berlin, Germany
Spouse: Marie Helena Susanna von Tucher
(m. 1811–1831)
Children: Georg Ludwig Friedrich Fischer,
Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel, Immanuel
Thomas Christian Hegel
Biography
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born in
Stuttgart in 1770; his father was a civil
servant. He studied in Stuttgart, and after
graduating from the gymnasium there he
began to study philosophy and theology in
the seminary in Tübingen. Among his close
friends in the seminary were Friedrich
Schelling and Friedrich Hölderlin who
became, respectively, a significant
philosopher and poet. After graduating from
the seminary, Hegel became a family tutor,
and in 1800 joined Schelling at the
University of Jena, where Schelling had
been made a professor at the age of twenty-
three. Hegel became an associate professor
there in 1805: Jena was then a major
philosophic center in Germany.
Hegel had already engaged in much theological
and philosophical writing, and in 1806 wrote his
first major book, the Phenomenology of Spirit, in
which, among other matters, he showed how
various world views (e.g., those of medieval
Christianity and the Enlightenment) followed
each other with logical necessity.
Hegel left Jena when Napoleon captured the
city in October of 1806. He then edited a
newspaper in Bamberg and became
headmaster in the gymnasium in
Nuremberg. During this period, and
afterward, he wrote several articles on
current affairs. He married in Nuremberg in
1811, and in 1812 published the first, basic
work in his philosophical system, The
Science of Logic. In 1816, he became
professor of philosophy at the University of
Heidelberg and gave lectures there on art
and the history of philosophy (versions of
which were published by friends and
students after his death from cholera in
1831) and on logic and natural right.
He published his Encyclopedia of the
Philosophical Sciences in 1817, in which he
outlined his complete system. In 1818 he
was appointed professor of philosophy at the
University of Berlin, arguably then the chief
university in the German-speaking world,
and published the Philosophy of Right in
1821. At Berlin, his influence was great in all
areas, and he was generally considered to
be the leading thinker of his time. In addition
to the areas we have mentioned, he also
gave lectures on the philosophy of religion
and the philosophy of history, versions of
which were also published by friends and
students after his death.
For a generation after Hegel’s death, he
remained a dominant figure, as various
political reforms and academic movements
took their measure from his work even (as in
the case of Karl Marx) in opposition to him.
His work was central in British thought until
the end of the nineteenth century, and also
important among the teachers of American
political progressives. Although his
dominance inevitably faded, the breadth,
rigor, and power of his intelligence place him
in the first rank among philosophers.
— Excerpted from Leo Rauch’s introduction to his translation of Introduction to the Philosophy of
History, London: 1988.
Philosophical system
Hegel's philosophical system is divided into
three parts: the science of logic, the
philosophy of nature, and the philosophy of
spirit (the latter two of which together
constitute the real philosophy). This
structure is adopted from Proclus's
Neoplatonic triad of "'remaining-procession-
return' and from the Christian Trinity."
Although evident in draft writings dating
back as early as 1805, the system was not
completed in published form until the 1817
Encyclopedia (1st ed.).
The Phenomenology of Spirit
The Phenomenology of Spirit, published in
1807, is Hegel's first book. This is also the
first time that, at the age of thirty-six, he lays
out "his own distinctive approach" and
adopts an "outlook that is recognizably
'Hegelian' to the philosophical problems of
post-Kantian philosophy.
Hegel describes The Phenomenology as
both the "introduction" to his philosophical
system and also as the "first part" of that
system as the "science of the experience of
consciousness.
Science of Logic
There are two versions of his Logic. The
first, The Science of Logic (1812, 1813,
1816; bk.I revised 1831), is sometimes also
called the "Greater Logic." The second is the
first volume of Hegel's Encyclopedia and is
sometimes know as the "Lesser Logic."
Books one and two of the Logic are the
doctrines of "being" and "essence." Together
they comprise the Objective Logic, which is
largely occupied with overcoming the
assumptions of traditional metaphysics.
Book three is the final part of the Logic. It
discusses the doctrine of "the concept,"
which is concerned with reintegrating those
categories of objectivity into a thoroughly
idealistic account of reality.
Philosophy of the real
In contrast to the first, logical part of Hegel's
system, the second, real-philosophical part –
the Philosophy of Nature and of Spirit – is an
ongoing historical project. It is, as Hegel puts
it, "its own time comprehended in thoughts.”
Hegel describes the relationship between
the logical and the real-philosophical parts of
his system in this way: "If philosophy does
not stand above its time in content, it does
so in form, because, as the thought and
knowledge of that which is the substantial
spirit of its time, it makes that spirit its
object."
The Philosophy of Nature
The philosophy of nature organizes the
material of the natural sciences
systematically; as part of the philosophy of
the real, in no way does it presume to "tell
nature what it must be like."
The Philosophy of Spirit
According to Hegel, "the essence of spirit is
freedom. "The Encyclopedia Philosophy of
Spirit charts the progressively determinate
stages of this freedom until spirit fulfills the
Delphic imperative with which Hegel begins:
"Know thyself.”
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