Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (; German: [ˈɡeːɔɐ̯k
ˈvɪlhɛlm ˈfʁiːdʁɪç ˈheːɡl̩];
August 27, 1770 – November 14, 1831) was
a German philosopher and an important figure
of German idealism. He achieved wide recognition
in his day and—while primarily influential
within the continental tradition of philosophy—has
become increasingly influential in the analytic
tradition as well. Although Hegel remains
a divisive figure, his canonical stature within
Western philosophy is universally recognized.
Hegel's principal achievement was his development
of a distinctive articulation of idealism,
sometimes termed absolute idealism, in which
the dualisms of, for instance, mind and nature
and subject and object are overcome. His philosophy
of spirit conceptually integrates psychology,
the state, history, art, religion and philosophy.
His account of the master–slave dialectic
has been highly influential, especially in
20th-century France. Of special importance
is his concept of spirit (Geist, sometimes
also translated as "mind") as the historical
manifestation of the logical concept and the
"sublation" (Aufhebung, integration without
elimination or reduction) of seemingly contradictory
or opposing factors: examples include the
apparent opposition between nature and freedom
and between immanence and transcendence. Hegel
has been seen in the 20th century as the originator
of the thesis, antithesis, synthesis triad,
but as an explicit phrase it originated with
Johann Gottlieb Fichte.Hegel has influenced
many thinkers and writers whose own positions
vary widely. Karl Barth described Hegel as
a "Protestant Aquinas" while Maurice Merleau-Ponty
wrote that "all the great philosophical ideas
of the past century—the philosophies of
Marx and Nietzsche, phenomenology, German
existentialism, and psychoanalysis—had their
beginnings in Hegel."
== 
Life ==
=== Early years ===
==== Childhood ====
He was born on August 27, 1770 in Stuttgart,
capital of the Duchy of Württemberg in southwestern
Germany. Christened Georg Wilhelm Friedrich,
he was known as Wilhelm to his close family.
His father, Georg Ludwig, was Rentkammersekretär
(secretary to the revenue office) at the court
of Karl Eugen, Duke of Württemberg. Hegel's
mother, Maria Magdalena Louisa (née Fromm),
was the daughter of a lawyer at the High Court
of Justice at the Württemberg court. She
died of a "bilious fever" (Gallenfieber) when
Hegel was thirteen. Hegel and his father also
caught the disease, but they narrowly survived.
Hegel had a sister, Christiane Luise (1773–1832);
and a brother, Georg Ludwig (1776–1812),
who was to perish as an officer in Napoleon's
Russian campaign of 1812.At the age of three,
he went to the German School. When he entered
the Latin School two years later, he already
knew the first declension, having been taught
it by his mother. In 1776, he entered Stuttgart's
gymnasium illustre and during his adolescence
read voraciously, copying lengthy extracts
in his diary. Authors he read include the
poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock and writers
associated with the Enlightenment, such as
Christian Garve and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing.
His studies at the Gymnasium were concluded
with his Abiturrede ("graduation speech")
entitled "The abortive state of art and scholarship
in Turkey" ("den verkümmerten Zustand der
Künste und Wissenschaften unter den Türken").
==== Tübingen (1788–1793) ====
At the age of eighteen, Hegel entered the
Tübinger Stift (a Protestant seminary attached
to the University of Tübingen), where he
had as roommates the poet and philosopher
Friedrich Hölderlin and the philosopher-to-be
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling. Sharing
a dislike for what they regarded as the restrictive
environment of the Seminary, the three became
close friends and mutually influenced each
other's ideas. All greatly admired Hellenic
civilization and Hegel additionally steeped
himself in Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Lessing
during this time. They watched the unfolding
of the French Revolution with shared enthusiasm.
Schelling and Hölderlin immersed themselves
in theoretical debates on Kantian philosophy,
from which Hegel remained aloof. Hegel at
this time envisaged his future as that of
a Popularphilosoph, i.e. a "man of letters"
who serves to make the abstruse ideas of philosophers
accessible to a wider public; his own felt
need to engage critically with the central
ideas of Kantianism did not come until 1800.
==== Bern (1793–1796) and Frankfurt (1797–1801)
====
Having received his theological certificate
(Konsistorialexamen) from the Tübingen Seminary,
Hegel became Hofmeister (house tutor) to an
aristocratic family in Bern (1793–1796).
During this period, he composed the text which
has become known as the Life of Jesus and
a book-length manuscript titled "The Positivity
of the Christian Religion". His relations
with his employers becoming strained. Hegel
accepted an offer mediated by Hölderlin to
take up a similar position with a wine merchant's
family in Frankfurt, where he moved in 1797.
Here, Hölderlin exerted an important influence
on Hegel's thought. While in Frankfurt, Hegel
composed the essay "Fragments on Religion
and Love". In 1799, he wrote another essay
entitled "The Spirit of Christianity and Its
Fate", unpublished during his lifetime.
Also in 1797, the unpublished and unsigned
manuscript of "The Oldest Systematic Program
of German Idealism" was written. It was written
in Hegel's hand, but thought to have been
authored by either Hegel, Schelling, Hölderlin,
or an unknown fourth person.
=== Career years ===
==== Jena, Bamberg and Nuremberg (1801–1816)
====
In 1801, Hegel came to Jena with the encouragement
of his old friend Schelling, who held the
position of Extraordinary Professor at the
University there. Hegel secured a position
at the University as a Privatdozent (unsalaried
lecturer) after submitting an inaugural dissertation
on the orbits of the planets. Later in the
year, Hegel's first book The Difference Between
Fichte's and Schelling's Systems of Philosophy
was completed. He lectured on "Logic and Metaphysics"
and gave joint lectures with Schelling on
an "Introduction to the Idea and Limits of
True Philosophy" and held a "Philosophical
Disputorium". In 1802, Schelling and Hegel
founded a journal, the Kritische Journal der
Philosophie (Critical Journal of Philosophy),
to which they each contributed pieces until
the collaboration was ended when Schelling
left for Würzburg in 1803.
In 1805, the University promoted Hegel to
the position of Extraordinary Professor (unsalaried)
after he wrote a letter to the poet and minister
of culture Johann Wolfgang Goethe protesting
at the promotion of his philosophical adversary
Jakob Friedrich Fries ahead of him. Hegel
attempted to enlist the help of the poet and
translator Johann Heinrich Voß to obtain
a post at the newly renascent University of
Heidelberg, but he failed; to his chagrin,
Fries was later in the same year made Ordinary
Professor (salaried) there.
With his finances drying up quickly, Hegel
was now under great pressure to deliver his
book, the long-promised introduction to his
System. Hegel was putting the finishing touches
to this book, The Phenomenology of Spirit,
as Napoleon engaged Prussian troops on 14
October 1806 in the Battle of Jena on a plateau
outside the city. On the day before the battle,
Napoleon entered the city of Jena. Hegel recounted
his impressions in a letter to his friend
Friedrich Immanuel Niethammer: I saw the Emperor
– this world-soul [Weltseele] – riding
out of the city on reconnaissance. It is indeed
a wonderful sensation to see such an individual,
who, concentrated here at a single point,
astride a horse, reaches out over the world
and masters it.
Pinkard (2000) notes that Hegel's comment
to Niethammer "is all the more striking since
at that point he had already composed the
crucial section of the Phenomenology in which
he remarked that the Revolution had now officially
passed to another land (Germany) that would
complete 'in thought' what the Revolution
had only partially accomplished in practice".
Although Napoleon chose not to close down
Jena as he had other universities, the city
was devastated and students deserted the university
in droves, making Hegel's financial prospects
even worse. The following February, Hegel's
landlady Christiana Burkhardt (who had been
abandoned by her husband) gave birth to their
son Georg Ludwig Friedrich Fischer (1807–1831).In
March 1807, Hegel moved to Bamberg, where
Niethammer had declined and passed on to Hegel
an offer to become editor of a newspaper,
the Bamberger Zeitung. Unable to find more
suitable employment, Hegel reluctantly accepted.
Ludwig Fischer and his mother (whom Hegel
may have offered to marry following the death
of her husband) stayed behind in Jena.In November
1808, Hegel was again through Niethammer,
appointed headmaster of a Gymnasium in Nuremberg,
a post he held until 1816. While in Nuremberg,
Hegel adapted his recently published Phenomenology
of Spirit for use in the classroom. Part of
his remit being to teach a class called "Introduction
to Knowledge of the Universal Coherence of
the Sciences", Hegel developed the idea of
an encyclopedia of the philosophical sciences,
falling into three parts (logic, philosophy
of nature and philosophy of spirit).In 1811,
Hegel married Marie Helena Susanna von Tucher
(1791–1855), the eldest daughter of a Senator.
This period saw the publication of his second
major work, the Science of Logic (Wissenschaft
der Logik; 3 vols., 1812, 1813 and 1816),
and the birth of his two legitimate sons,
Karl Friedrich Wilhelm (1813–1901) and Immanuel
Thomas Christian (1814–1891).
==== Heidelberg and Berlin (1816–1831) ====
Having received offers of a post from the
Universities of Erlangen, Berlin and Heidelberg,
Hegel chose Heidelberg, where he moved in
1816. Soon after, his illegitimate son Ludwig
Fischer (now ten years old) joined the Hegel
household in April 1817, having thus far spent
his childhood in an orphanage as his mother
had died in the meantime.Hegel published The
Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences
in Outline (1817) as a summary of his philosophy
for students attending his lectures at Heidelberg.
In 1818, Hegel accepted the renewed offer
of the chair of philosophy at the University
of Berlin, which had remained vacant since
Johann Gottlieb Fichte's death in 1814. Here,
Hegel published his Philosophy of Right (1821).
Hegel devoted himself primarily to delivering
his lectures; and his lecture courses on aesthetics,
the philosophy of religion, the philosophy
of history and the history of philosophy were
published posthumously from lecture notes
taken by his students. His fame spread and
his lectures attracted students from all over
Germany and beyond.
In 1819–1827, he made several trips to Weimar
(twice), where he met Goethe, Brussels, the
Northern Netherlands, Leipzig, Vienna through
Prague and Paris.Hegel was appointed Rector
of the University in October 1829, but his
term as Rector ended in September 1830. Hegel
was deeply disturbed by the riots for reform
in Berlin in that year. In 1831, Frederick
William III decorated him with the Order of
the Red Eagle, 3rd Class for his service to
the Prussian state. In August 1831, a cholera
epidemic reached Berlin and Hegel left the
city, taking up lodgings in Kreuzberg. Now
in a weak state of health, Hegel seldom went
out. As the new semester began in October,
Hegel returned to Berlin with the (mistaken)
impression that the epidemic had largely subsided.
By November 14, Hegel was dead. The physicians
pronounced the cause of death as cholera,
but it is likely he died from a different
gastrointestinal disease. He is said to have
uttered the last words "And he didn't understand
me" before expiring. In accordance with his
wishes, Hegel was buried on November 16 in
the Dorotheenstadt cemetery next to Fichte
and Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand Solger.
Hegel's son Ludwig Fischer had died shortly
before while serving with the Dutch army in
Batavia and the news of his death never reached
his father. Early the following year, Hegel's
sister Christiane committed suicide by drowning.
Hegel's remaining two sons—Karl, who became
a historian; and Immanuel, who followed a
theological path—lived long and safeguarded
their father's Nachlaß and produced editions
of his works.
== Philosophical work ==
=== Freedom ===
Hegel's thinking can be understood as a constructive
development within the broad tradition that
includes Plato and Immanuel Kant. To this
list, one could add Proclus, Meister Eckhart,
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Plotinus, Jakob
Böhme, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. What all
these thinkers share, which distinguishes
them from materialists like Epicurus and Thomas
Hobbes and from empiricists like David Hume,
is that they regard freedom or self-determination
both as real and as having important ontological
implications for soul or mind or divinity.
This focus on freedom is what generates Plato's
notion (in the Phaedo, Republic and Timaeus)
of the soul as having a higher or fuller kind
of reality than inanimate objects possess.
While Aristotle criticizes Plato's "Forms",
he preserves Plato's cornerstones of the ontological
implications for self-determination: ethical
reasoning, the soul's pinnacle in the hierarchy
of nature, the order of the cosmos and an
assumption with reasoned arguments for a prime
mover. Kant imports Plato's high esteem of
individual sovereignty to his considerations
of moral and noumenal freedom as well as to
God. All three find common ground on the unique
position of humans in the scheme of things,
known by the discussed categorical differences
from animals and inanimate objects.
In his discussion of "Spirit" in his Encyclopedia,
Hegel praises Aristotle's On the Soul as "by
far the most admirable, perhaps even the sole,
work of philosophical value on this topic".
In his Phenomenology of Spirit and his Science
of Logic, Hegel's concern with Kantian topics
such as freedom and morality and with their
ontological implications is pervasive. Rather
than simply rejecting Kant's dualism of freedom
versus nature, Hegel aims to subsume it within
"true infinity", the "Concept" (or "Notion":
Begriff), "Spirit" and "ethical life" in such
a way that the Kantian duality is rendered
intelligible, rather than remaining a brute
"given".
The reason why this subsumption takes place
in a series of concepts is that Hegel's method
in his Science of Logic and his Encyclopedia
is to begin with basic concepts like "Being"
and "Nothing" and to develop these through
a long sequence of elaborations, including
those already mentioned. In this manner, a
solution that is reached in principle in the
account of "true infinity" in the Science
of Logic's chapter on "Quality" is repeated
in new guises at later stages, all the way
to "Spirit" and "ethical life" in the third
volume of the Encyclopedia.
In this way, Hegel intends to defend the germ
of truth in Kantian dualism against reductive
or eliminative programs like those of materialism
and empiricism. Like Plato, with his dualism
of soul versus bodily appetites, Kant pursues
the mind's ability to question its felt inclinations
or appetites and to come up with a standard
of "duty" (or, in Plato's case, "good") which
transcends bodily restrictiveness. Hegel preserves
this essential Platonic and Kantian concern
in the form of infinity going beyond the finite
(a process that Hegel in fact relates to "freedom"
and the "ought"), the universal going beyond
the particular (in the Concept) and Spirit
going beyond Nature. Hegel renders these dualities
intelligible by (ultimately) his argument
in the "Quality" chapter of the "Science of
Logic". The finite has to become infinite
in order to achieve reality. The idea of the
absolute excludes multiplicity so the subjective
and objective must achieve synthesis to become
whole. This is because as Hegel suggests by
his introduction of the concept of "reality",
what determines itself—rather than depending
on its relations to other things for its essential
character—is more fully "real" (following
the Latin etymology of "real", more "thing-like")
than what does not. Finite things do not determine
themselves because as "finite" things their
essential character is determined by their
boundaries over against other finite things,
so in order to become "real" they must go
beyond their finitude ("finitude is only as
a transcending of itself").The result of this
argument is that finite and infinite—and
by extension, particular and universal, nature
and freedom—do not face one another as two
independent realities, but instead the latter
(in each case) is the self-transcending of
the former. Rather than stress the distinct
singularity of each factor that complements
and conflicts with others—without explanation—the
relationship between finite and infinite (and
particular and universal and nature and freedom)
becomes intelligible as a progressively developing
and self-perfecting whole.
=== Progress ===
The mystical writings of Jakob Böhme had
a strong effect on Hegel. Böhme had written
that the Fall of Man was a necessary stage
in the evolution of the universe. This evolution
was itself the result of God's desire for
complete self-awareness. Hegel was fascinated
by the works of Kant, Rousseau and Johann
Wolfgang Goethe and by the French Revolution.
Modern philosophy, culture and society seemed
to Hegel fraught with contradictions and tensions,
such as those between the subject and object
of knowledge, mind and nature, self and Other,
freedom and authority, knowledge and faith,
or the Enlightenment and Romanticism. Hegel's
main philosophical project was to take these
contradictions and tensions and interpret
them as part of a comprehensive, evolving,
rational unity that in different contexts
he called "the absolute Idea" (Science of
Logic, sections 1781–1783) or "absolute
knowledge" (Phenomenology of Spirit, "(DD)
Absolute Knowledge").
According to Hegel, the main characteristic
of this unity was that it evolved through
and manifested itself in contradiction and
negation. Contradiction and negation have
a dynamic quality that at every point in each
domain of reality—consciousness, history,
philosophy, art, nature and society—leads
to further development until a rational unity
is reached that preserves the contradictions
as phases and sub-parts by lifting them up
(Aufhebung) to a higher unity. This whole
is mental because it is mind that can comprehend
all of these phases and sub-parts as steps
in its own process of comprehension. It is
rational because the same, underlying, logical,
developmental order underlies every domain
of reality and is ultimately the order of
self-conscious rational thought, although
only in the later stages of development does
it come to full self-consciousness. The rational,
self-conscious whole is not a thing or being
that lies outside of other existing things
or minds. Rather, it comes to completion only
in the philosophical comprehension of individual
existing human minds who through their own
understanding bring this developmental process
to an understanding of itself. Hegel's thought
is revolutionary to the extent that it is
a philosophy of absolute negation—as long
as absolute negation is at the center, systematization
remains open, and makes it possible for human
beings to become subjects."Mind" and "Spirit"
are the common English translations of Hegel's
use of the German "Geist". Some have argued
that either of these terms overly "psychologize"
Hegel, implying a kind of disembodied, solipsistic
consciousness like ghost or "soul". Geist
combines the meaning of spirit—as in god,
ghost, or mind—with an intentional force.
In Hegel's early philosophy of nature (draft
manuscripts written during his time at the
University of Jena), Hegel's notion of "Geist"
was tightly bound to the notion of "Aether",
from which Hegel also derived the concepts
of space and time, but in his later works
(after Jena) he did not explicitly use his
old notion of "Aether" anymore.Central to
Hegel's conception of knowledge and mind (and
therefore also of reality) was the notion
of identity in difference—that is, that
mind externalizes itself in various forms
and objects that stand outside of it or opposed
to it; and that through recognizing itself
in them, is "with itself" in these external
manifestations so that they are at one and
the same time mind and other-than-mind. This
notion of identity in difference, which is
intimately bound up with his conception of
contradiction and negativity, is a principal
feature differentiating Hegel's thought from
that of other philosophers.
=== Civil society ===
Hegel made the distinction between civil society
and state in his Elements of the Philosophy
of Right. In this work, civil society (Hegel
used the term "bürgerliche Gesellschaft"
though it is now referred to as Zivilgesellschaft
in German to emphasize a more inclusive community)
was a stage in the dialectical relationship
that occurs between Hegel's perceived opposites,
the macro-community of the state and the micro-community
of the family. Broadly speaking, the term
was split, like Hegel's followers, to the
political left and right. On the left, it
became the foundation for Karl Marx's civil
society as an economic base; to the right,
it became a description for all non-state
(and the state is the peak of the objective
spirit) aspects of society, including culture,
society and politics. This liberal distinction
between political society and civil society
was followed by Alexis de Tocqueville. In
fact, Hegel's distinctions as to what he meant
by civil society are often unclear. For example,
while it seems to be the case that he felt
that a civil society such as the German society
in which he lived was an inevitable movement
of the dialectic, he made way for the crushing
of other types of "lesser" and not fully realized
types of civil society as these societies
were not fully conscious or aware—as it
were—as to the lack of progress in their
societies. Thus, it was perfectly legitimate
in the eyes of Hegel for a conqueror such
as Napoleon to come along and destroy that
which was not fully realized.
=== State ===
Hegel's State is the final culmination of
the embodiment of freedom or right (Rechte)
in the Elements of the Philosophy of Right.
The State subsumes family and civil society
and fulfills them. All three together are
called "ethical life" (Sittlichkeit). The
State involves three "moments". In a Hegelian
State, citizens both know their place and
choose their place. They both know their obligations
and choose to fulfill their obligations. An
individual's "supreme duty is to be a member
of the state" (Elements of the Philosophy
of Right, section 258). The individual has
"substantial freedom in the state". The State
is "objective spirit" so "it is only through
being a member of the state that the individual
himself has objectivity, truth, and ethical
life" (section 258). Furthermore, every member
both loves the State with genuine patriotism,
but has transcended mere "team spirit" by
reflectively endorsing their citizenship.
Members of a Hegelian State are happy even
to sacrifice their lives for the State.
=== Heraclitus ===
According to Hegel, "Heraclitus is the one
who first declared the nature of the infinite
and first grasped nature as in itself infinite,
that is, its essence as process. The origin
of philosophy is to be dated from Heraclitus.
His is the persistent Idea that is the same
in all philosophers up to the present day,
as it was the Idea of Plato and Aristotle".
For Hegel, Heraclitus's great achievements
were to have understood the nature of the
infinite, which for Hegel includes understanding
the inherent contradictoriness and negativity
of reality; and to have grasped that reality
is becoming or process and that "being" and
"nothingness" are mere empty abstractions.
According to Hegel, Heraclitus's "obscurity"
comes from his being a true (in Hegel's terms
"speculative") philosopher who grasped the
ultimate philosophical truth and therefore
expressed himself in a way that goes beyond
the abstract and limited nature of common
sense and is difficult to grasp by those who
operate within common sense. Hegel asserted
that in Heraclitus he had an antecedent for
his logic: "[...] there is no proposition
of Heraclitus which I have not adopted in
my logic".
Hegel cites a number of fragments of Heraclitus
in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy.
One to which he attributes great significance
is the fragment he translates as "Being is
not more than Non-being", which he interprets
to mean the following: Sein und Nichts sei
dasselbeBeing and non-being are the same.
Heraclitus does not form any abstract nouns
from his ordinary use of "to be" and "to become"
and in that fragment seems to be opposing
any identity A to any other identity B, C
and so on, which is not-A. However, Hegel
interprets not-A as not existing at all, not
nothing at all, which cannot be conceived,
but indeterminate or "pure" being without
particularity or specificity. Pure being and
pure non-being or nothingness are for Hegel
pure abstractions from the reality of becoming
and this is also how he interprets Heraclitus.
This interpretation of Heraclitus cannot be
ruled out, but even if present is not the
main gist of his thought.
For Hegel, the inner movement of reality is
the process of God thinking as manifested
in the evolution of the universe of nature
and thought; that is, Hegel argued that when
fully and properly understood, reality is
being thought by God as manifested in a person's
comprehension of this process in and through
philosophy. Since human thought is the image
and fulfillment of God's thought, God is not
ineffable (so incomprehensible as to be unutterable),
but can be understood by an analysis of thought
and reality. Just as humans continually correct
their concepts of reality through a dialectical
process, so God himself becomes more fully
manifested through the dialectical process
of becoming.
For his god, Hegel does not take the logos
of Heraclitus but refers rather to the nous
of Anaxagoras, although he may well have regarded
them the same as he continues to refer to
god's plan, which is identical to God. Whatever
the nous thinks at any time is actual substance
and is identical to limited being, but more
remains to be thought in the substrate of
non-being, which is identical to pure or unlimited
thought.
The universe as becoming is therefore a combination
of being and non-being. The particular is
never complete in itself, but to find completion
is continually transformed into more comprehensive,
complex, self-relating particulars. The essential
nature of being-for-itself is that it is free
"in itself;" that is, it does not depend on
anything else such as matter for its being.
The limitations represent fetters, which it
must constantly be casting off as it becomes
freer and more self-determining.Although Hegel
began his philosophizing with commentary on
the Christian religion and often expresses
the view that he is a Christian, his ideas
of God are not acceptable to some Christians
even though he has had a major influence on
19th- and 20th-century theology.
=== Religion ===
As a graduate of a Protestant seminary, Hegel's
theological concerns were reflected in many
of his writings and lectures. Hegel's thoughts
on the person of Jesus Christ stood out from
the theologies of the Enlightenment. In his
posthumously published Lectures on the Philosophy
of Religion, Part 3, Hegel is shown as being
particularly interested with the demonstrations
of God's existence and the ontological proof.
He espouses that "God is not an abstraction
but a concrete God [...] God, considered in
terms of his eternal Idea, has to generate
the Son, has to distinguish himself from himself;
he is the process of differentiating, namely,
love and Spirit". This means that Jesus as
the Son of God is posited by God over against
himself as other. Hegel sees both a relational
unity and a metaphysical unity between Jesus
and God the Father. To Hegel, Jesus is both
divine and human. Hegel further attests that
God (as Jesus) not only died, but "[...] rather,
a reversal takes place: God, that is to say,
maintains himself in the process, and the
latter is only the death of death. God rises
again to life, and thus things are reversed".
The philosopher Walter Kaufmann has argued
that there was great stress on the sharp criticisms
of traditional Christianity appearing in Hegel's
so-called early theological writings. Kaufmann
admits that Hegel treated many distinctively
Christian themes and "sometimes could not
resist equating" his conception of spirit
(Geist) "with God, instead of saying clearly:
in God I do not believe; spirit suffices me".
Kaufmann also points out that Hegel's references
to God or to the divine—and also to spirit—drew
on classical Greek as well as Christian connotations
of the terms. Kaufmann goes on:
In addition to his beloved Greeks, Hegel saw
before him the example of Spinoza and, in
his own time, the poetry of Goethe, Schiller,
and Hölderlin, who also liked to speak of
gods and the divine. So he, too, sometimes
spoke of God and, more often, of the divine;
and because he occasionally took pleasure
in insisting that he was really closer to
this or that Christian tradition than some
of the theologians of his time, he has sometimes
been understood to have been a Christian.
According to Hegel himself, his philosophy
was consistent with Christianity. This led
Hegelian philosopher, jurist and politician
Carl Friedrich Göschel (1784–1861) to write
a treatise demonstrating the consistency of
Hegel's philosophy with the Christian doctrine
of the immortality of the human soul. Göschel's
book on this subject was titled Von den Beweisen
für die Unsterblichkeit der menschlichen
Seele im Lichte der spekulativen Philosophie:
eine Ostergabe (Berlin: Verlag von Duncker
und Humblot, 1835).Hegel seemed to have an
ambivalent relationship with magic, myth and
Paganism. He formulates an early philosophical
example of a disenchantment narrative, arguing
that Judaism was responsible both for realizing
the existence of Geist and, by extension,
for separating nature from ideas of spiritual
and magical forces and challenging polytheism.
However, Hegel's manuscript "The Oldest Systematic
Program of German Idealism" suggests that
Hegel was concerned about the perceived decline
in myth and enchantment in his age, and that
he therefore called for a "new myth" to fill
the cultural vacuum.
== Works ==
Hegel published four works during his lifetime:
(1) The Phenomenology of Spirit (or The Phenomenology
of Mind), his account of the evolution of
consciousness from sense-perception to absolute
knowledge, published in 1807.
(2) Science of Logic, the logical and metaphysical
core of his philosophy, in three volumes (1812,
1813 and 1816, respectively), with a revised
first volume published in 1831.
(3) Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences,
a summary of his entire philosophical system,
which was originally published in 1816 and
revised in 1827 and 1830.
(4) Elements of the Philosophy of Right, his
political philosophy, published in 1820.
During the last ten years of his life, Hegel
did not publish another book, but thoroughly
revised the Encyclopedia (second edition,
1827; third, 1830). In his political philosophy,
he criticized Karl Ludwig von Haller's reactionary
work, which claimed that laws were not necessary.
He also published some articles early in his
career and during his Berlin period. A number
of other works on the philosophy of history,
religion, aesthetics and the history of philosophy
were compiled from the lecture notes of his
students and published posthumously.
== Legacy ==
There are views of Hegel's thought as a representation
of the summit of early 19th-century Germany's
movement of philosophical idealism. It would
come to have a profound impact on many future
philosophical schools, including schools that
opposed Hegel's specific dialectical idealism,
such as existentialism, the historical materialism
of Marx, historism and British Idealism.
Hegel's influence was immense both within
philosophy and in the other sciences. Throughout
the 19th century many chairs of philosophy
around Europe were held by Hegelians and Søren
Kierkegaard, Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels—among many others—were
all deeply influenced by, but also strongly
opposed to many of the central themes of Hegel's
philosophy. Scholars continue to find and
point out Hegelian influences and approaches
in a wide range of theoretical and/or learned
works, such as Carl von Clausewitz's magnum
opus on strategic thought, On War (1831).
After less than a generation, Hegel's philosophy
was suppressed and even banned by the Prussian
right-wing and was firmly rejected by the
left-wing in multiple official writings.
After the period of Bruno Bauer, Hegel's influence
did not make itself felt again until the philosophy
of British Idealism and the 20th-century Hegelian
Western Marxism that began with György Lukács.
The more recent movement of communitarianism
has a strong Hegelian influence.
=== Reading Hegel ===
Some of Hegel's writing was intended for those
with advanced knowledge of philosophy, although
his Encyclopedia was intended as a textbook
in a university course. Nevertheless, Hegel
assumes that his readers are well-versed in
Western philosophy. Especially crucial are
Aristotle, Immanuel Kant and Kant's immediate
successors, most prominently Johann Gottlieb
Fichte and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling.
Those without this background would be well-advised
to begin with one of the many general introductions
to his thought. As is always the case, difficulties
are magnified for those reading him in translation.
In fact, Hegel himself argues in his Science
of Logic that the German language was particularly
conducive to philosophical thought.According
to Walter Kaufmann, the basic idea of Hegel's
works, especially the Phenomenology of Spirit,
is that a philosopher should not "confine
him or herself to views that have been held
but penetrate these to the human reality they
reflect". In other words, it is not enough
to consider propositions, or even the content
of consciousness; "it is worthwhile to ask
in every instance what kind of spirit would
entertain such propositions, hold such views,
and have such a consciousness. Every outlook
in other words, is to be studied not merely
as an academic possibility but as an existential
reality". Kaufmann has argued that as unlikely
as it may sound, it is not the case that Hegel
was unable to write clearly, but that Hegel
felt that "he must and should not write in
the way in which he was gifted".
=== Left and right Hegelianism ===
Some historians have spoken of Hegel's influence
as represented by two opposing camps. The
Right Hegelians, the allegedly direct disciples
of Hegel at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität,
advocated a Protestant orthodoxy and the political
conservatism of the post-Napoleon Restoration
period. The Left Hegelians, also known as
the Young Hegelians, interpreted Hegel in
a revolutionary sense, leading to an advocation
of atheism in religion and liberal democracy
in politics.
In more recent studies, this paradigm has
been questioned. No Hegelians of the period
ever referred to themselves as "Right Hegelians",
which was a term of insult originated by David
Strauss, a self-styled Left Hegelian. Critiques
of Hegel offered from the Left Hegelians radically
diverted Hegel's thinking into new directions
and eventually came to form a disproportionately
large part of the literature on and about
Hegel.The Left Hegelians also influenced Marxism,
which inspired global movements, encompassing
the Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution
and myriad revolutionary practices up until
the present moment.20th-century interpretations
of Hegel were mostly shaped by British idealism,
logical positivism, Marxism and Fascism. According
to Benedetto Croce, the Italian Fascist Giovanni
Gentile "holds the honor of having been the
most rigorous neo-Hegelian in the entire history
of Western philosophy and the dishonor of
having been the official philosopher of Fascism
in Italy". However, since the fall of the
Soviet Union a new wave of Hegel scholarship
arose in the West without the preconceptions
of the prior schools of thought. Walter Jaeschke
and Otto Pöggeler in Germany as well as Peter
Hodgson and Howard Kainz in the United States
are notable for their recent contributions
to post-Soviet Union thinking about Hegel.
=== Triads ===
In previous modern accounts of Hegelianism
(to undergraduate classes, for example), especially
those formed prior to the Hegel renaissance,
Hegel's dialectic was most often characterized
as a three-step process, "thesis, antithesis,
synthesis"; namely, that a "thesis" (e.g.
the French Revolution) would cause the creation
of its "antithesis" (e.g. the Reign of Terror
that followed) and would eventually result
in a "synthesis" (e.g. the constitutional
state of free citizens). However, Hegel used
this classification only once and he attributed
the terminology to Kant. The terminology was
largely developed earlier by Fichte. It was
spread by Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus in accounts
of Hegelian philosophy and since then the
terms have been used as descriptive of this
type of framework.
The "thesis–antithesis–synthesis" approach
gives the sense that things or ideas are contradicted
or opposed by things that come from outside
them. To the contrary, the fundamental notion
of Hegel's dialectic is that things or ideas
have internal contradictions. From Hegel's
point of view, analysis or comprehension of
a thing or idea reveals that underneath its
apparently simple identity or unity is an
underlying inner contradiction. This contradiction
leads to the dissolution of the thing or idea
in the simple form in which it presented itself
and to a higher-level, more complex thing
or idea that more adequately incorporates
the contradiction. The triadic form that appears
in many places in Hegel (e.g. being–nothingness–becoming,
immediate–mediate–concrete and abstract–negative–concrete)
is about this movement from inner contradiction
to higher-level integration or unification.
For Hegel, reason is but "speculative", not
"dialectical". Believing that the traditional
description of Hegel's philosophy in terms
of thesis–antithesis–synthesis was mistaken,
a few scholars like Raya Dunayevskaya have
attempted to discard the triadic approach
altogether. According to their argument, although
Hegel refers to "the two elemental considerations:
first, the idea of freedom as the absolute
and final aim; secondly, the means for realising
it, i.e. the subjective side of knowledge
and will, with its life, movement, and activity"
(thesis and antithesis), he does not use "synthesis",
but instead speaks of the "Whole": "We then
recognised the State as the moral Whole and
the Reality of Freedom, and consequently as
the objective unity of these two elements".
Furthermore, in Hegel's language the "dialectical"
aspect or "moment" of thought and reality,
by which things or thoughts turn into their
opposites or have their inner contradictions
brought to the surface, what he called Aufhebung,
is only preliminary to the "speculative" (and
not "synthesizing") aspect or "moment", which
grasps the unity of these opposites or contradiction.
It is widely admitted today that the old-fashioned
description of Hegel's philosophy in terms
of thesis–antithesis–synthesis is inaccurate.
Nevertheless, such is the persistence of this
misnomer that the model and terminology survive
in a number of scholarly works.
=== Renaissance ===
In the last half of the 20th century, Hegel's
philosophy underwent a major renaissance.
This was due to (a) the rediscovery and re-evaluation
of Hegel as a possible philosophical progenitor
of Marxism by philosophically oriented Marxists;
(b) a resurgence of the historical perspective
that Hegel brought to everything; and (c)
an increasing recognition of the importance
of his dialectical method. György Lukács'
History and Class Consciousness (1923) helped
to reintroduce Hegel into the Marxist canon.
This sparked a renewed interest in Hegel reflected
in the work of Herbert Marcuse, Theodor W.
Adorno, Ernst Bloch, Raya Dunayevskaya, Alexandre
Kojève and Gotthard Günther among others.
In Reason and Revolution (1941), Herbert Marcuse
made the case for Hegel as a revolutionary
and criticized Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse's
thesis that Hegel was a totalitarian. The
Hegel renaissance also highlighted the significance
of Hegel's early works, i.e. those written
before The Phenomenology of Spirit. The direct
and indirect influence of Kojève's lectures
and writings (on The Phenomenology of Spirit
in particular) mean that it is not possible
to understand most French philosophers from
Jean-Paul Sartre to Jacques Derrida without
understanding Hegel. American neoconservative
political theorist Francis Fukuyama's controversial
book The End of History and the Last Man (1992)
was heavily influenced by Kojève. The Swiss
theologian Hans Küng has also advanced contemporary
scholarship in Hegel studies.Beginning in
the 1960s, Anglo-American Hegel scholarship
has attempted to challenge the traditional
interpretation of Hegel as offering a metaphysical
system: this has also been the approach of
Z. A. Pelczynski and Shlomo Avineri. This
view, sometimes referred to as the "non-metaphysical
option", has had a decided influence on many
major English language studies of Hegel in
the past forty years.
Late 20th-century literature in Western Theology
that is friendly to Hegel includes works by
such writers as Walter Kaufmann (1966), Dale
M. Schlitt (1984), Theodore Geraets (1985),
Philip M. Merklinger (1991), Stephen Rocker
(1995) and Cyril O'Regan (1995).
Two prominent American philosophers, John
McDowell and Robert Brandom (sometimes referred
to as the "Pittsburgh Hegelians"), have produced
philosophical works exhibiting a marked Hegelian
influence. Each is avowedly influenced by
the late Wilfred Sellars, also of Pittsburgh,
who referred to his seminal work Empiricism
and the Philosophy of Mind (1956) as a series
of "incipient Méditations Hegeliennes" (in
homage to Edmund Husserl's 1931 work, Méditations
cartésiennes).
Beginning in the 1990s after the fall of the
Soviet Union, a fresh reading of Hegel took
place in the West. For these scholars, fairly
well represented by the Hegel Society of America
and in cooperation with German scholars such
as Otto Pöggeler and Walter Jaeschke, Hegel's
works should be read without preconceptions.
Marx plays little-to-no role in these new
readings. Some American philosophers associated
with this movement include Lawrence Stepelevich,
Rudolf Siebert, Richard Dien Winfield and
Theodore Geraets.
=== Criticism ===
Criticism of Hegel has been widespread in
the 19th and the 20th centuries. A diverse
range of individuals including Arthur Schopenhauer,
Karl Marx, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche,
Bertrand Russell, G. E. Moore, Eric Voegelin
and A. J. Ayer have challenged Hegelian philosophy
from a variety of perspectives. Among the
first to take a critical view of Hegel's system
was the 19th-century German group known as
the Young Hegelians, which included Feuerbach,
Marx, Engels and their followers. In Britain,
the Hegelian British idealism school (members
of which included Francis Herbert Bradley,
Bernard Bosanquet and in the United States
Josiah Royce) was challenged and rejected
by analytic philosophers Moore and Russell.
In particular, Russell considered "almost
all" of Hegel's doctrines to be false. Regarding
Hegel's interpretation of history, Russell
commented: "Like other historical theories,
it required, if it was to be made plausible,
some distortion of facts and considerable
ignorance". Logical positivists such as Ayer
and the Vienna Circle criticized both Hegelian
philosophy and its supporters, such as Bradley.
Hegel's contemporary Schopenhauer was particularly
critical and wrote of Hegel's philosophy as
"a pseudo-philosophy paralyzing all mental
powers, stifling all real thinking". In 1820,
Schopenhauer became a lecturer at the University
of Berlin and he scheduled his lectures to
coincide with those of Hegel, whom Schopenhauer
had also described as a "clumsy charlatan".
However, only five students ended up attending
Schopenhauer's lectures so he dropped out
of academia. Kierkegaard criticized Hegel's
"absolute knowledge" unity. The physicist
and philosopher Ludwig Boltzmann also criticized
the obscure complexity of Hegel's works, referring
to Hegel's writing as an "unclear thoughtless
flow of words". In a similar vein, Robert
Pippin wrote that Hegel had "the ugliest prose
style in the history of the German language".
Russell wrote in A History of Western Philosophy
(1945) that Hegel was "the hardest to understand
of all the great philosophers".Karl Popper
wrote that "there is so much philosophical
writing (especially in the Hegelian school)
which may justly be criticized as meaningless
verbiage". Popper also makes the claim in
the second volume of The Open Society and
Its Enemies (1945) that Hegel's system formed
a thinly veiled justification for the absolute
rule of Frederick William III and that Hegel's
idea of the ultimate goal of history was to
reach a state approximating that of 1830s
Prussia. Popper further proposed that Hegel's
philosophy served not only as an inspiration
for communist and fascist totalitarian governments
of the 20th century, whose dialectics allow
for any belief to be construed as rational
simply if it could be said to exist. Kaufmann
and Shlomo Avineri have criticized Popper's
theories about Hegel.Isaiah Berlin listed
Hegel as one of the six architects of modern
authoritarianism who undermined liberal democracy,
along with Rousseau, Claude Adrien Helvétius,
Fichte, Saint-Simon and Joseph de Maistre.Voegelin
argued that Hegel should be understood not
as a philosopher, but as a "sorcerer", i.e.
as a mystic and hermetic thinker. This concept
of Hegel as a hermetic thinker was elaborated
by Glenn Alexander Magee, who argued that
interpreting Hegel's body of work as an expression
of mysticism and hermetic ideas leads to a
more accurate understanding of Hegel.
== Selected works ==
=== Published during Hegel's lifetime ===
Differenz des Fichteschen und Schellingschen
Systems der Philosophie, 1801The Difference
Between Fichte's and Schelling's Systems of
Philosophy, tr. H. S. Harris and Walter Cerf,
1977Phänomenologie des Geistes, 1807Phenomenology
of Mind, tr. J. B. Baillie, 1910; 2nd ed.
1931
Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, tr. A. V.
Miller, 1977
Phenomenology of Spirit, translated by Terry
Pinkard, 2012Wissenschaft der Logik, 1812,
1813, 1816, "Doctrine of Being" revised 1831Science
of Logic, tr. W. H. Johnston and L. G. Struthers,
2 vols., 1929; tr. A. V. Miller, 1969; tr.
George di Giovanni, 2010Enzyklopädie der
philosophischen Wissenschaften, 1817; 2nd
ed. 1827; 3rd ed. 1830 (Encyclopedia of the
Philosophical Sciences)(Pt. I:) The Logic
of Hegel, tr. William Wallace, 1874, 2nd ed.
1892; tr. T. F. Geraets, W. A. Suchting and
H. S. Harris, 1991; tr. Klaus Brinkmann and
Daniel O. Dahlstrom 2010
(Pt. II:) Hegel's Philosophy of Nature, tr.
A. V. Miller, 1970
(Pt. III:) Hegel's Philosophy of Mind, tr.
William Wallace, 1894; rev. by A. V. Miller,
1971; rev. 2007 by Michael InwoodGrundlinien
der Philosophie des Rechts, 1821Elements of
the Philosophy of Right, tr. T. M. Knox, 1942;
tr. H. B. Nisbet, ed. Allen W. Wood, 1991
=== Published posthumously ===
Lectures on Aesthetics
Lectures on the Philosophy of History (also
translated as Lectures on the Philosophy of
World History), 1837
Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion
Lectures on the History of Philosophy
== See also ==
== Notes ==
== Further reading ==
The secondary literature on Hegel is vast.
The following references provide only a small
selection of introductory English-language
texts. For a more complete listing, see the
external links section or the library resources
box to the right.
== External links ==
Andrew Chitty's (University of Sussex) Hegel
Bibliography
Redding, Paul. "Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel".
In Zalta, Edward N. Stanford Encyclopedia
of Philosophy.
Houlgate, Stephen. "Hegel's Aesthetics". In
Zalta, Edward N. Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy.
« Der Instinkt der Vernünftigkeit » and
other texts - Works on Hegel in Université
du Québec site (in French)
Hegel, as the National Philosopher of Germany
(1874) Karl Rosenkranz, Granville Stanley
Hall, William Torrey Harris, Gray, Baker & Co.
1874
Hegel page in 'The History Guide'
Hegel.net – freely available resources (under
the GNU FDL)
Lowenberg J., (1913) "The Life of Georg Wilhelm
Friedrich Hegel". in German classics of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. New York:
German Publication Society.
=== Audio ===
Works by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel at
LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
=== Video ===
Hegel: The First Cultural Psychologist 2007
from Vimeo Andy Blunden
Presentation by Terry Pinkard on Hegel: A
Biography, May 10, 2000
=== Societies ===
The Hegel Society of America
The Hegel Society of Great Britain
=== Hegel texts online ===
Works by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel at
Project Gutenberg
Works by or about Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hegel at Internet Archive
Philosophy of History Introduction
Hegel's The Philosophy of Right
Hegel's The Philosophy of History
Hegel by HyperText, reference archive on Marxists.org
Phenomenology of Spirit. translated by Terry
Pinkard (2012)
