Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

INTRODUCTION
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel :-
Born :- August 27, 1770 Place :- Stuttgart, Duchy of Wurttemberg
Died :- November 14, 1831 (aged 61), Place :- Berlin, Kingdom of Prussia
Residence :- Germany
Nationality :- German
Education :- Gymnasium illustre zu Stuttgart tubinger Stift,
University of Tübingen in 1788.
University of jena (PhD, 1801)
Region :- Western philosophy
School :- German idealism
Objective idealism
Absolute idealism
Hegelianism
Historicism[2]
Naturphilosophie
Institutions University of Jena (1801–06)
University of Heidelberg (1816–18)
University of Berlin (1818–31)
Main interests:-Metaphysics
Naturphilosophie
Philosophy of history
Political philosophy
Logic
Aesthetics
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, (born Aug. 27, 1770, Stuttgart, Württemberg Germany died
Nov. 14, 1831, Berlin), German philosopher who developed a dialectical scheme that
emphasized the progress of history and of ideas from thesis to antithesis and thence to a
synthesis.
Hegel Biography

Hegel was a German philosopher who developed a dialectical scheme that emphasized the
progress of history and of ideas from thesis to antithesis and thence to a synthesis. Hegel was the
last of the great philosophical system builders of modern times. His work, following upon that
of Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and Friedrich Schelling, thus marks the pinnacle of
classical German philosophy. As an absoluteidealist inspired by Christian insights and grounded
in his mastery of a fantastic fund of concrete knowledge, Hegel found a place for everything—
logical, natural, human, and divine in a dialectical scheme that repeatedly swung from thesis to
antithesis and back again to a higher and richer synthesis. His influence has been as fertile in the
reactions that he precipitated in Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish existentialist; in the Marxists,
who turned to social action; in the logical positivists; and in G.E. Moore and Bertrand Russell,
both pioneering figures in British analytic philosophy as in his positive impact.
Early Life
Hegel was the son of a revenue officer. He had already learned the elements of Latin from his
mother by the time he entered the Stuttgart grammar school, where he remained for his education
until he was 18. As a schoolboy he made a collection of extracts, alphabetically arranged,
comprising annotations on classical authors, passages from newspapers .
and treatises on morals and mathematics from the standard works of the period In 1796, Hegel
wrote The First Programme for a System of German Idealism jointly with Schelling. This work
included the line: “... the state is something purely mechanical – and there is no [spiritual] idea of
a machine. Only what is an object of freedom may be called ‘Idea’. Therefore we must transcend
the state! For every state must treat free men as cogs in a machine. And this is precisely what
should not happen ; hence the state must perish”. In 1797, Hölderlin found Hegel a position in
Frankfurt, but two years later his father died, leaving him enough to free him from tutoring.
In 1801, Hegel went to the University of Jena. Fichte had left Jena in 1799, and Schiller had left
in 1793, but Schelling remained at Jena until 1803 and Schelling and Hegel collaborated during
that time.
Hegel studied, wrote and lectured, although he did not receive a salary until the end of 1806, just
before completing the first draft of The Phenomenology of Mind– the first work to present his
own unique philosophical contribution – part of which was taken through the French lines by a
courier to his friend Niethammer in Bamburg, Bavaria, before Jena was taken by Napoleon’s
army and Hegel was forced to flee – the remaining pages in his pocket.
During the Nuremberg years, Hegel met and married Marie von Tucher (1791-1855). They had
three children – a daughter who died soon after birth, and two sons, Karl (1813-1901) and
Immanuel (1814-91). Hegel had also fathered an illegitimate son, Ludwig, to the wife of his
former landlord in Jena. Ludwig was born soon after Hegel had left Jena but eventually came to
live with the Hegels, too.
Popular Hegel (Hegel Publication)

1. Phenomenology of Spirit This brilliant study of the stages in the mind's necessary
progress from immediate sense-consciousness to the position of a scientific philosophy
includes an introductory essay and a paragraph-by-paragraph analysis of the text to help the
reader understand this most difficult and most influential of Hegel's works.
2. The Philosophy of History Hegel wrote this classic as an introduction to a series of
lectures on the "philosophy of history" — a novel concept in the early nineteenth century.
With this work, he created the history of philosophy as a scientific study. He reveals
philosophical theory as neither an accident nor an artificial construct, but as an exemplar of
its age, fashioned by its antecedents ,
3. Elements of the Philosophy of Right This book is a translation of a classic work of
modern social and political thought, Elements of the Philosophy of Right. Hegel's last
major published work, is an attempt to systematize ethical theory, natural right, the
philosophy of law, political theory and the sociology of the modern state into the
framework of Hegel's philosophy of history.
4. Science of Logic Most of the major schools of contemporary philosophy, from Marxism to
Existentialism, are reactions to Hegelianism and all, if they are to be understood, require
some understanding of Hegel's Science of Logic.
5. Hegel Contra Sociology (Verso Radical Thinkers) Gillian Rose is among the twentieth
century’s most important social philosophers. In perhaps her most significant work, Hegel
Contra Sociology, Rose mounts a forceful defence of Hegelian speculative thought.
Demonstrating how, in his criticisms of Kant and Fichte, Hegel supplies a preemptive
critique of Weber, Durkheim,
6. Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism For the last two
centuries, Western philosophy has developed in the shadow of Hegel, an influence each new
thinker struggles to escape. As a consequence, Hegel’s absolute idealism has become the
bogeyman of philosophy, obscuring the fact that he is the defining philosopher of the historical
transition to modernity, a period with which our own times share startling similarities.
 conclusion

Hegel's theory of the state, a few words on a "theory and practice" problem of
themodern state. In the preface to the Philosophy of Right Hegel is quite clear that
his science of the state articulates the nature of the state, not as it ought to be, but as
it really is, as something inherently rational. Hegel's famous quote in this regard is
"What is rational is actual and what is actual is rational," where by the 'actual'
(Wirklich) Hegel means not the merely existent, i.e., a state that can be simply
identified empirically, but the actualized or realized state, i.e., one that corresponds
to its rational concept and thus in some sense must be perfected. Later in the
introduction of the Idea of the state in paragraph 258, Hegel is at pains to distinguish
the Idea of the state from a state understood in terms of its historical origins and says
that while the state is the way of God in the world we must not focus on particular
states or on particular institutions of the state, but only on the Idea itself.
Furthermore he says, "The state is no ideal work of art; it stands on earth and so in
the sphere of caprice, chance, and error, and bad behavior may disfigure it in many
respects. But the ugliest of men, or a criminal, or an invalid, or a cripple, is still
always a living man. The affirmative, life, subsists despite his defects, and it is this
affirmative factor which is our theme here" (1 258, addition). The issue, then, is
whether the actual state -- the subject of philosophical science -- is only a theoretical
possibility and whether from a practical point of view all existing states are in some
way disfigured or deficient. Our ability to rationally distill from existing states their
ideal characteristics does not entail that a fully actualized state does, or will, exist.
Hence, there is perhaps some ambiguity in Hegel's claim about the modern state as
an actualization of freedom.