Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Georg Wilhelm
Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

(/ˈheɪɡəl/;[27][28] German: [ˈɡeːɔʁk ˈvɪlhɛlm
ˈfʁiːdʁɪç ˈheːɡl ̩];[28][29] 27 August 1770 –
14 November 1831) was a German
philosopher and an important figure in
German idealism. He is considered one
of the fundamental figures of modern
Western philosophy, with his influence
extending to the entire range of
contemporary philosophical issues, from
aesthetics to ontology to politics, both in
the analytic and continental
tradition.[30][31]
Portrait by Jakob Schlesinger, 1831
Born 27 August 1770

Stuttgart, Duchy of
Württemberg
Died 14 November 1831

(aged 61)
Berlin, Kingdom of
Prussia
Nationality German
Education Gymnasium illustre

zu Stuttgart
Tübinger Stift,
University of
Tübingen (MA,
1790)[1]
University of Jena
(PhD, 1801)
Era 19th-century
philosophy
Region Western philosophy
School Continental
philosophy
German idealism
Objective idealism
Absolute idealism
Hegelianism
Historicism[2]
Naturphilosophie
Epistemic
coherentism[3]
Conceptualism[4]
Empirical realism[5]
Coherence theory of
truth[6]
Institutions University of Jena

(1801–1806)
University of
Heidelberg
(1816–1818)
University of Berlin
(1818–1831)
Thesis Dissertatio
Philosophica de
Orbitis Planetarium
(Philosophical
Dissertation on the
Orbits of the
Planets) (1801)
Academic advisors Johann Friedrich
LeBret (MA
advisor)[7]
Notable students Johann Eduard

Erdmann
Main interests Metaphysics

Epistemology
Naturphilosophie
Philosophy of history
Political philosophy
Logic
Aesthetics
Notable ideas
Absolute idealism
Hegelian dialectic
Master–slave
dialectic
Aufheben
("sublation")
Geist
("mind/spirit")
Sittlichkeit ("ethical
order")
Alienation[8]
Dialectical
phenomenology
The three
moments of the
concept:
universality,
particularity, and
individuality[9]
Abstract
particularity[10]
The abstract–
concrete
distinction[11]
Judgement of
history
"The true is the
whole"[12]
"Rationality alone
is real"[13]
"The truth of being
is essence"[14]
Logical holism
Panlogism
Distinction
between critical
metaphysics of
Understanding[15]
and speculative
metaphysics of
Reason[16]
Inferentialism[17][18]
Notion
The
negative/positive
liberty distinction
The civil
society/state
distinction
Volksgeist
Schemes of
classification of
Influences arts
Aristotle • Böhme • Diderot[19] •
Ferguson[20] • Fichte • Goethe •
Heraclitus • Herder[21] • Kant • Plato •
Rousseau • Spinoza • Schelling •
Schiller • Adam Smith[22]
Influenced
Adorno • Bakunin • Barth • Bauer •
Bluntschli[23] • Bosanquet • Bradley •
Brandom • de Beauvoir • Bueno •
Butler[24] • Chalybäus • Chicherin •
Collingwood • Cousin[25] • Croce •
Derrida • Engels • Feuerbach •
Fischer • Fukuyama • Gentile • Green •
Hyppolite • Kaufmann • Kierkegaard •
Kojève • Küng • Lenin • Lukács •
Marcuse • Marx • McDowell •
Nietzsche • Pippin • Rose •
Rosenkranz • Russon • Sartre •
Singer • Stein[26] • Stirner •
David Strauss • Leo Strauss • Taylor •
Žižek
Signature
Hegel's principal achievement was his

development of a distinctive articulation
of idealism, sometimes termed absolute
idealism,[32] 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 master–slave
dialectic has been influential, especially
in 20th-century France.[33] 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 necessity and
freedom and between immanence and
transcendence. (Hegel has been seen in
the twentieth century as the originator of
the thesis, antithesis, synthesis triad,[34]
but as an explicit phrase it originated
with Johann Gottlieb Fichte.)[35][a]
Hegel has influenced many thinkers and

writers whose own positions vary
widely.[36] For example, "the roots of
post-structuralism and its unifying basis
lies, in large part, in a general opposition
not to the philosophical tradition tout
court but specifically to the Hegelian
tradition" dominating philosophy in the
twentieth century prior to post-
structuralism.[37] Paul Tillich wrote that
the historical dialectical thought of Hegel
"has influenced world history more
profoundly than any other structural
analysis."[38] Karl Barth described Hegel
as a "Protestant Aquinas"[39] 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."[40]
Hegel's work has been considered the

"completion of philosophy"[41][42][43] by
multiple of the most influential thinkers
in existentialism, post-structuralism, and
twentieth-century
theology.[44][45][46][47][48][49] Derrida wrote
of Hegel in his work Of Grammatology
that "he undoubtedly summed up the
entire philosophy of the logos. He
determined ontology as absolute logic;
he assembled all the delimitations of
philosophy as presence," later remarking
that Hegel is thus "the last philosopher of
the book and the first philosopher of
writing," indicating the relation of Hegel
to post-structural thought by stating "if
there were a definition of Différance, it
would be precisely the limit, the
interruption, the destruction of the
Hegelian dialectical synthesis wherever it
operates."[50] In his work Systematic
Theology, theologian Paul Tillich referred
to Hegel's work as "perfect essentialism,"
later writing "essentialism was in Hegel's
system fulfilled."[51] Martin Heidegger
observed in his 1969 work Identity and
Difference and in his personal Black
Notebooks that Hegel's system in an
important respect "consummates
western philosophy"[52][53][54] by
completing the idea of the logos, the self-
grounding ground, in thinking through the
identification of Being and beings, which
is "the theme of logic", writing "[I]t is...
incontestable that Hegel, faithful to
tradition, sees the matter of thinking in
beings as such and as a whole, in the
movement of Being from its emptiness
to its developed fullness."[55][56]
Heidegger in various places further
qualified Hegel's thinking "the most
powerful thinking of modern times."[57][58]
Life
Early years …
Childhood …
The birthplace of Hegel in Stuttgart, which now

houses the Hegel Museum
Hegel was born on 27 August 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.[59]:2–3, 745 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 bilious
fever (Gallenfieber) when Hegel was
thirteen. Hegel and his father also caught
the disease, but they narrowly
survived.[60] Hegel had a sister, Christiane
Luise (1773–1832); and a brother, Georg
Ludwig (1776–1812), who perished as an
officer during Napoleon's 1812 Russian
campaign.[59]:4
At the age of three, Hegel 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 concluded
with his Abiturrede ("graduation speech")
"Der verkümmerte Zustand der Künste
und Wissenschaften unter den Türken"
("The abortive state of art and
scholarship in Turkey").[59]:16[61]
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 future philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm
Joseph Schelling.[62] 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.[63] 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, (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.
Although the violence of the 1793 Reign

of Terror dampened Hegel's hopes, he
continued to identify with the moderate
Girondin faction and never lost his
commitment to the principles of 1789,
which he expressed by drinking a toast to
the storming of the Bastille every
fourteenth of July.[64]
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 in 1797.
There, Hölderlin exerted an important
influence on Hegel's thought.[59]:80 While
in Frankfurt, Hegel composed the essay
"Fragments on Religion and Love".[65] In
1799, he wrote another essay entitled
"The Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate",[66]
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 may have been authored by
Hegel, Schelling, Hölderlin, or an
unknown fourth person.[67]
Career years …
Jena, Bamberg and Nuremberg

(1801–1816) …
In 1801, Hegel came to Jena at the

encouragement of his old friend
Schelling, who held the position of
Extraordinary Professor at the University
of Jena. Hegel secured a position at the
University of Jena as a Privatdozent
(unsalaried lecturer) after submitting the
inaugural dissertation De Orbitis
Planetarum, in which he briefly criticized
arguments that assert—based on Bode's
Law or other arbitrary choice of
mathematical series—there must exist a
planet between Mars and
Jupiter.[68][69][70] Unbeknownst to Hegel,
Giuseppe Piazzi had discovered the
minor planet Ceres within that orbit on 1
January 1801.[69][70] 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
lectures with Schelling on an
"Introduction to the Idea and Limits of
True Philosophy" and facilitated a
"philosophical disputorium". In 1802,
Schelling and Hegel founded the journal
Kritische Journal der Philosophie (Critical
Journal of Philosophy) to which they
contributed until the collaboration 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 the
promotion of his philosophical adversary
Jakob Friedrich Fries ahead of him.[59]:223
Hegel attempted to enlist the help of the
poet and translator Johann Heinrich Voß
to obtain a post at the renascent
University of Heidelberg, but he failed. To
his chagrin, Fries was, in the same year,
made Ordinary Professor
(salaried).[59]:224–25
"Hegel and Napoleon in Jena" (illustration from

Harper's Magazine, 1895), whose meeting became
proverbial due to Hegel's notable use of Weltseele
("world-soul") in reference to Napoleon ("the world-
soul on horseback", die Weltseele zu Pferde)[71]
With his finances drying up quickly, Hegel

was under great pressure to deliver his
book, the long-promised introduction to
his philosophical system. Hegel was
putting the finishing touches to it, 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.[72]
Pinkard (2000) notes that Hegel's

comment to Niethammer "is all the more
striking since 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".[73]
Although Napoleon chose not to close
down Jena as he had other universities,
the city was devastated and students
deserted it in droves, making Hegel's
financial prospects even worse. The
following February marked the birth of
Hegel's illegitimate son, Georg Ludwig
Friedrich Fischer (1807–1831), as the
result of an affair with Hegel's landlady
Christiana Burkhardt née Fischer (who
had been abandoned by her
husband).[59]:192
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.[59]:238
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 was 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.[59]:337
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).[74]:773
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 spent time in an
orphanage[59]:354–55 after the death of his
mother Christiana Burkhardt.[59]:356
In 1817, Hegel published The

Encyclopedia of the Philosophical
Sciences in Outline as a summary of his
philosophy for students attending his
lectures at Heidelberg.
Hegel with his Berlin students
Sketch by Franz Kugler
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
lectures; his lectures on aesthetics, the
philosophy of religion, the philosophy of
history and the history of philosophy
were published posthumously from
students' notes. His fame spread and his
lectures attracted students from all over
Germany and beyond.[75]:207–208
In 1819–1827, he made two trips to

Weimar, where he met Goethe, and to
Brussels, the Northern Netherlands,
Leipzig, Vienna, Prague, and Paris.[76]
Hegel was appointed University Rector of

the University in October 1829, but his
term 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.[76] 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 in the mistaken
belief that the epidemic had largely
subsided. By 14 November, Hegel was
dead. The physicians pronounced the
cause of death as cholera, but it is likely
he died from another gastrointestinal
disease.[59][77] His last words are said to
have been, "There was only one man who
ever understood me, and even he didn't
understand me."[78] He was buried on 16
November. In accordance with his
wishes, Hegel was buried in the
Dorotheenstadt cemetery next to Fichte
and Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand Solger.
Hegel's illegitimate 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.[59]:548 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 manuscripts
and letters, and produced editions of his
works.
Philosophical work
Logic and metaphysics …
From the time of Leibniz to the

widespread adoption of Frege's logic in
the 1930s, every standard work on logic
consisted of three divisions: doctrines of
concept, judgment, and inference.
Doctrines of concept address the
systematic, hierarchical relations of the
most general classes of things.
Doctrines of judgment investigate
relations of subject and predicate; and
doctrines of inference lay out the forms
of syllogisms originally found in
Aristotelian term logic.
Indeed, "logic" in the field of
nineteenth-century continental
philosophy takes on a range of
meanings from "metaphysics"
to "theory of science," from
"critical epistemology" to "first
philosophy." And debates about
the nature of logic were
intertwined with competition
to inherit the mantle of Kant
and with it the future direction
of German philosophy. Each
new logic book staked a new
claim in a century-long
expansionist turf war among
philosophical trends.[79]
With the possible exception of the study

of inference, what was called "logic" in
nineteenth-century Europe (and so
Hegel's Logic) bears little resemblance to
what logicians study today. Logic,
particularly the doctrine of the concept,
was metaphysics; it was the search for a
fundamental ontological structure within
the relations of the most basic
predicates (quantity, time, place etc.), a
practice that goes back to Plato's Sophist
and Aristotle's Categories.
This research program took on new
meaning with the 1781 publication of
Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Kant
derived his own table of categories (the
twelve pure or "ancestral" concepts of
the understanding that structure all
experience irrespective of content) from
a standard term-logical table of
judgments, noting also that
...the true ancestral

concepts...also have their
equally pure derivative
concepts, which could by no
means be passed over in a
complete system of
transcendental philosophy, but
with the mere mention of
which I can be satisfied in a
merely critical essay.[80]
The Science of Logic (which the latter

Hegel considered central to his
philosophy) can be considered a notable
contribution to the research program of
category metaphysics in its post-Kantian
form, taking up the project that Kant
suggested is necessary but did not
himself pursue: "to take note of and, as
far as possible, completely catalog" the
derivative concepts of the pure
understanding and "completely illustrate
its family tree."[80]
The affinity between Hegel and Kant's

logics ("speculative" and "transcendental"
respectively) is apparent in their
vocabulary. Kant spoke of Entstehen
(coming-to-be) and Vergehen (ceasing-to-
be), the same two terms that Hegel used
to refer to the two compositional
elements of Werden (becoming). Kant
used the term Veränderung (change)
instead of Werden, however, and the
designation of ontological categories by
name is itself a complex topic. And
although the Logic's table of contents
minimally resembles Kant's table of
categories, the four headings of Kant's
table (quantity, quality, relation, and
modality) do not play, in Hegel's dialectic,
the organizational role that Kant had in
mind for them, and Hegel ultimately
faulted Kant for copying the table of
judgments from the "modern
compendiums of logic" whose subject
matter is, Hegel said, in need of "total
reconstruction."[81]
So how are the categories derived? Hegel

wrote that
...profounder insight into the

antinomial, or more truly into
the dialectical nature of reason
demonstrates any Concept
[Begriff] whatsoever to be a
unity of opposed elements
[Momente] to which, therefore,
the form of antinomial
assertions could be given.[82]
Because every concept is a composite of

contraries (value is black and white,
temperature is hot and cold, etc.), all the
pure concepts of the understanding are
immanently contained within the most
abstract concept; the entire tree of the
concepts of the pure understanding
unfolds from a single concept the way a
tree grows from a seed. For this reason,
Hegel's Logic begins with the summum
genus, "Being, pure Being," ("and God has
the absolutely undisputed right that the
beginning be made with him"[83]) from
which are derived more concrete
concepts such as becoming, determinate
being, something, and infinity.
The precise nature of the procedural self-

concretization that drives Hegel's Logic
is still the subject of controversy.
Scholars such as Clark Butler hold that a
good portion of the Logic is formalizable,
proceeding deductively via indirect
proof.[84] Others, such as Hans-Georg
Gadamer, believe that Hegel's course in
the Logic is determined primarily by the
associations of ordinary words in the
German language.[85] However,
regardless of its status as a formal logic,
Hegel clearly understood the course of
his logic to be reflected in the course of
history:
...different stages of the logical

Idea assume the shape of
successive systems, each based
on a particular definition of the
Absolute. As the logical Idea is
seen to unfold itself in a
process from the abstract to
the concrete, so in the history
of philosophy the earliest
systems are the most abstract,
and thus at the same time the
poorest...[86]
Hegel's categories are, in part, carried

over from his Lectures on the History of
Philosophy. For example: Parmenides
took pure being to be the absolute;
Gorgias replaced it with pure nothing;
Heraclitus replaced both being and
nothing with becoming (which is a unity
of two contraries: coming-to-be and
ceasing-to-be).[87] Hegel understood the
history of philosophy to be a trans-
historical socratic argument concerning
the identity of the Absolute. That history
should resemble this dialectic indicated
to Hegel that history is something
rational.
Things-in-themselves …
For both Hegel and Kant, "we arrive at the

concept of the thing in itself by removing,
or abstracting from, everything in our
experiences of objects of which we can
become conscious."[88]
If we abstract 'Ding' [thing]

from 'Ding an sich' [thing in
itself], we get one of Hegel's
standard phrases: 'an sich.' [in
itself]....A child, in Hegel's
example, is thus 'in itself' the
adult it will become: to know
what a 'child' is means to know
that it is, in some respects, a
vacancy which will only gain
content after it has grown out
of childhood.[89]
The "thing as it is in itself" is indeed

knowable: it is the indeterminate, "futural"
aspect of the thing we experience—it is
what we will come to know. In other
words, although the thing-in-itself is at
any given moment thoroughly unknown,
it nevertheless remains that part of the
thing about which it is possible to learn
more.
Life …
Karen Ng writes that "there is a central,

recurring rhetorical device that Hegel
returns to again and again throughout his
philosophical system: that of describing
the activity of reason and thought in
terms of the dynamic activity and
development of organic life."[90] Hegel
went so far as to include the concept of
life as a category in his Science of Logic,
likely inspired by Aristotle's emphasis on
teleology, as well as Kant's treatment of
Naturzweck (natural purposiveness) in
the Critique of Judgment. Within this
work, the category of life is conceived to
be the absolute idea in the form of the
subjective concept; an illustrative
contrast may be seen in contrasting this
with how the category of cognition is
thought as being the absolute idea in the
form of the judgement. The speculative
identity of mind and nature suggests that
reason and history progress in the
direction of the Absolute by traversing
various stages of relative immaturity, just
like a sapling or a child, overcoming
necessary setbacks and obstacles along
the way (see Progress below).
The structure of Hegel's Logic appears to
exhibit self-similarity, with sub-sections,
in their treatment of more specific
subject matter, resembling the treatment
of the whole. Hegel's concept of
Aufhebung, by which parts are preserved
and repurposed within the whole,
anticipates the concept of emergence in
contemporary systems theory and
evolutionary biology.
Hegel's system is often presented in the

form of a Sierpiński triangle due to his
tendency to group concepts by triads.
However, Hegel himself describes the
system as a "circle of circles:"
...the science presents itself as a
circle that winds around itself,
where the mediation winds the
end back to the beginning
which is the simple ground; the
circle is thus a circle of circles,
for each single member
ensouled by the method is
reflected into itself so that, in
returning to the beginning it is
at the same time the beginning
of a new member.[91]
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
distinguishes them from materialists like
Epicurus and Thomas Hobbes and from
empiricists like David Hume, is that they
regarded freedom or self-determination
as real and 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 that
possessed by inanimate objects. While
Aristotle criticized Plato's "Forms", he
preserved Plato's ontological
implications for self-determination:
ethical reasoning, the soul's pinnacle in
the hierarchy of nature, the order of the
cosmos and reasoned arguments for a
prime mover. Kant imported Plato's high
esteem of individual sovereignty into 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 universe, relative to
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".[92] 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 defended the truth in

Kantian dualism against reductive or
eliminative programs like materialism
and empiricism. Like Plato, with his
dualism of soul versus bodily appetites,
Kant pursued 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
preserved this essential Platonic and
Kantian concern in the form of infinity
going beyond the finite (a process that
Hegel in fact related to "freedom" and the
"ought"),[93]:133–136, 138 the universal
going beyond the particular (in the
Concept) and Spirit going beyond Nature.
Hegel rendered 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 suggeste by his
introduction of the concept of
"reality",[93]:111 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").[93]:145
The result of this argument is that finite

and infinite - particular and universal,
nature and freedom — do not face one
another as independent realities, but
instead the latter, in each case, is the
self-transcending of the former.[93]:146
Rather than stress the singularity of each
factor that complements and conflicts
with the others, 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.[94] Böhme
had written that the Fall of Man was a
necessary stage in the evolution of the
universe. This evolution was 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, this unity evolved

through and manifested itself in
contradiction and negation.
Contradiction and negation have the
dynamic quality that 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 mind
comprehends 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 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
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 in that it is a philosophy
of absolute negation—as long as
absolute negation is at the center,
systematization remains open, amakeing
it possible for human beings to become
subjects.[95]
"Mind" and "Spirit" are the common
English translations of Hegel's use of the
German "Geist". Some that 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 draft manuscripts
written during his time at the University
of Jena, his notion of "Geist" was tightly
bound to the notion of "Aether", from
which he 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".[96]
Central to Hegel's conception of
knowledge, mind, and reality was identity
in difference; mind externalizes itself in
various forms and objects and stands
outside or opposed to them and, 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 bound up
with his conception of contradiction and
negativity, is a principal feature
differentiating Hegel's thought from other
philosophers.
Civil society …
Hegel distinguished between civil society
and state in his Elements of the
Philosophy of Right.[97] 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
between Hegel's perceived opposites, the
macro-community of the state and the
micro-community of the family.[98]
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;[99] 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 used by Alexis de
Tocqueville.[99] In fact, Hegel's
distinctions as to what he meant by civil
society are often unclear. While it
appears that he felt that a civil society,
such as the one in which he lived, was an
inevitable step in the dialectic, he allowed
for the crushing of other "lesser," not fully
realized civil societies as they were not
fully conscious of their lack of progress.
It was perfectly legitimate in Hegel's eyes
for a conqueror, such as Napoleon, to
come 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 them. 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). Every
member loves the State with genuine
patriotism, but has transcended simple
"team spirit" by reflectively endorsing
their citizenship.
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".[100]
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 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".[101]
Hegel cites a number of fragments of

Heraclitus in his Lectures on the History
of Philosophy.[102] 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 dasselbe

Being and non-being are the
same.
Heraclitus did not form any abstract

nouns from his ordinary use of "to be"
and "to become" and seemed to oppose
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 an indeterminate or "pure"
being without particularity or
specificity.[103] Pure being and pure non-
being or nothingness are, for Hegel,
abstractions from the reality of becoming
and this is also how he interprets
Heraclitus.
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; Hegel
argued that, when fully understood,
reality is being thought by God as
manifested in a person's comprehension
of this process. Since human thought is
the image and fulfillment of God's
thought, God can be understood by an
analysis of thought and reality. Just as
humans continually correct their concept
of reality through a dialectical process,
God becomes more fully manifested
through the dialectical process of
becoming.
For his god, Hegel does not take the

logos of Heraclitus but refers 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 in the substrate of non-being,
which is identical to pure or unlimited
thought.
The universe as becoming is a
combination of being and non-being. The
particular is never complete in itself, but
in its quest to find completion continually
transforms into more comprehensive,
complex, self-relating particulars. The
essential nature of being-for-itself is that
it is free "in itself;" it does not depend on
anything else for its being. The
limitations represent fetters, which it
must constantly cast off as it becomes
freer and more self-determining.[104]
Although Hegel began his philosophizing

with commentary on the Christian
religion and often expresses the view
that he is a Christian, his ideas 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.[105] His 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
particularly interested in demonstrations
of God's existence and the ontological
proof.[106] 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
and against himself as other. Hegel sees
relational and metaphysical unities
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
argued that there was sharp criticism of
traditional Christianity in Hegel's early
theological writings. Kaufmann also
pointed out that Hegel's references to
God or to the divine and spirit drew on
classical Greek as well as Christian
connotations of the terms.[107] Kaufmann
wrote:
Aside 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.[108]
Hegel identified as an orthodox Lutheran

and believed his philosophy was
consistent with Christianity.[109] This led
Hegelian philosopher, jurist and politician
Carl Friedrich Göschel (1784–1861) to
write a treatise demonstrating the
consistency of Hegel's philosophy with
Christian doctrine on the soul's
immortality (Von den Beweisen für die
Unsterblichkeit der menschlichen Seele
im Lichte der spekulativen Philosophie:
eine Ostergabe - From the evidence of the
immortality of the human soul in the light
of speculative philosophy: an Easter gift)
(Berlin: Verlag von Duncker und Humblot,
1835).[110][111][112]
Hegel conceived of the immortality of the

soul in the following manner in reference
to Christianity:[113][114]
Thus the immortality of the
soul must not be represented
as first entering the sphere of
reality only at a later stage; it
is the actual present quality of
spirit; spirit is eternal, and for
this reason is already present.
Spirit, as possessed of freedom,
does not belong to the sphere
of things limited; it, as being
what thinks and knows in an
absolute way, has the universal
for its object; this is eternity,
which is not simply duration,
as duration can be predicated
of mountains, but knowledge.
The eternity of spirit is here
brought into consciousness,
and is found in this reasoned
knowledge, in this very
separation, which has reached
the infinitude of being-for-self,
and which is no longer
entangled in what is natural,
contingent, and external. This
eternity of Spirit in itself means
that Spirit is, to begin with,
potential; but the next
standpoint implies that Spirit
ought to be what it is in its
essential and complete nature,
in-and-for-itself. Spirit must
reflect upon itself, and in this
way disunion arises, it must
not remain at the point at
which it is seen not to be what
it is potentially, but must
become adequate to its
Concept, it must become
universal Spirit. Regarded from
the standpoint of division or
disunion, its potential Being is
for it an Other, and it itself is
natural will; it is divided within
itself, and this division is so far
its feeling or consciousness of a
contradiction, and there is thus
given along with it the
necessity for the abolition of
the contradiction.[115]
Spirit is immortal; it is eternal;

and it is immortal and eternal
in virtue of the fact that it is
infinite, that it has no such
spatial finitude as we associate
with the body; when we speak
of it being five feet in height,
two feet in breadth and
thickness, that it is not the
Now of time, that the content
of its knowledge does not
consist of these countless
midges, that its volition and
freedom have not to do with
the infinite mass of existing
obstacles, nor of the aims and
activities which such resisting
obstacles and hindrances have
to encounter. The infinitude of
spirit is its inwardness, in an
abstract sense its pure
inwardness, and this is its
thought, and this abstract
thought is a real present
infinitude, while its concrete
inwardness consists in the fact
that this thought is Spirit.[116]
Hegel seemed to have an ambivalent

relationship with magic, myth and
Paganism. He formulated 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.[117] 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 he therefore
called for a "new myth" to fill the cultural
vacuum.[118]
Hegel continued to develop his thoughts

on religion both in terms of how it was to
be given a 'wissenschaftlich', or
"theoretically rigorous," account in the
context of his own "system," and how a
fully modern religion could be
understood.[119]
Works
In addition to some articles published
early in his career and during his Berlin
period, Hegel published four major 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.
Posthumous works …
During the last ten years of his life, Hegel

did not publish another book, but
thoroughly revised the Encyclopedia
(second edition, 1827; third, 1830).[120] In
his political philosophy, he criticized Karl
Ludwig von Haller's reactionary work,
which claimed that laws were not
necessary. A number of other works on
the philosophy of history, religion,
aesthetics and the history of
philosophy[121] were compiled from the
lecture notes of his students and
published posthumously.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1996)

[1892 Kegan Paul]. Haldane, Elizabeth
Sanderson (ed.). Vorlesungen über die
Geschichte der Philosophie [Hegel's
Lectures on the history of philosophy].
Humanities Press International.
ISBN 978-0-391-03957-5. (full text at
Internet Archive) (see also Lectures on
the History of Philosophy)
Hegel's posthumous works have had

remarkable influence on subsequent
works on religion, aesthetics, and history
because of the comprehensive accounts
of the subject matters considered within
the lectures, with Heidegger for example
in Poetry, Language, Thought
characterizing Hegel's Lectures on
Aesthetics as the "most comprehensive
reflection on the nature of art that the
West possesses - comprehensive
because it stems from metaphysics."[122]
Legacy
This section needs additional citations for
verification. Learn more
Hegel's tombstone in Berlin
There are views of Hegel's thought as the

summit of early 19th-century German
philosophical idealism. It profoundly
impacted many future philosophical
schools, including those opposed to
Hegel's specific dialectical idealism, such
as existentialism, the historical
materialism of Marx, historism and
British Idealism.
Hegel's influence was immense in
philosophy and 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 deeply influenced by, but also
strongly opposed to many of Hegel's
central philosophical themes. Scholars
continue to point out Hegelian influences
in a range of theoretical and/or learned
works, such as Carl von Clausewitz's
book on strategic thought, On War
(1831).[123] After less than a generation,
Hegel's philosophy was 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 waned until the philosophy of
British Idealism and the 20th-century
Hegelian Western Marxism that began
with György Lukács. In the United States,
Hegel's influence is evident in
pragmatism. 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
assumed 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 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 argued, in his Science of
Logic, that German was particularly
conducive to philosophical thought.[124]
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".[125] 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".[126]
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. Today this
faction continues among conservative
Protestants, such as the Wisconsin
Evangelical Lutheran Synod, which was
founded by missionaries from Germany
when the Hegelian Right was active. 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.
Recent studies have questioned this

paradigm.[127] 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
by the Left Hegelians radically diverted
Hegel's thinking into new directions and
eventually came to form a large part of
the literature on and about Hegel.[128]
The Left Hegelians also influenced

Marxism, which has in turn inspired
global movements, from the Russian
Revolution, the Chinese Revolution and
myriad of practices up until the present
moment.[128]
Twentieth-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".[129]
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, a new
wave of Hegel scholarship has arisen 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 accounts of Hegelianism formed prior

to the Hegel renaissance, Hegel's
dialectic was often characterized as a
three-step process, "thesis, antithesis,
synthesis"; a "thesis" (e.g. the French
Revolution) would cause the creation of
its "antithesis" (e.g. the Reign of Terror
that followed) and would 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 for this type of
framework.
The "thesis–antithesis–synthesis"
approach erroneously 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. For Hegel, 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 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 "speculative" - not

"dialectical".[130] 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. According to their argument,
although Hegel referred 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 did not use
"synthesis", but instead spoke 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 now widely agreed that explaining

Hegel's philosophy in terms of thesis–
antithesis–synthesis is inaccurate.
Nevertheless, this interpretation survives
in a number of scholarly works.[131]
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 Hegel's
historical perspective; 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.[132] 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.[133]
American neoconservative political
theorist Francis Fukuyama's
controversial book The End of History
and the Last Man (1992) was heavily
influenced by Kojève.[134] The Swiss
theologian Hans Küng has also advanced
contemporary Hegelian scholarship.
Beginning in the 1960s, Anglo-American
Hegel scholarship has challenged 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 influenced
many major English-language studies of
Hegel.
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 with a marked Hegelian influence.
Each is avowedly influenced by the late
Wilfred Sellars, also of Pittsburgh, who
referred to his Empiricism and the
Philosophy of Mind (1956) as a series of
"incipient Méditations Hegeliennes" (in
homage to Edmund Husserl's 1931
Méditations cartésiennes). In a separate
Canadian context, James Doull's
philosophy is deeply Hegelian.
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. 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, Franz
Rosenzweig, 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.[135]
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".[136]
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".[137] Hegel was
described by Schopenhauer as a "clumsy
charlatan".[138] Kierkegaard criticized
Hegel's "absolute knowledge" unity.[139]
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".[140] In a
similar vein, Robert Pippin notes that
some view Hegel as having "the ugliest
prose style in the history of the German
language".[141] Russell wrote in A History
of Western Philosophy (1945) that Hegel
was "the hardest to understand of all the
great philosophers".[142] Karl Popper
quoted Schopenhauer as stating, "Should
you ever intend to dull the wits of a young
man and to incapacitate his brains for
any kind of thought whatever, then you
cannot do better than give Hegel to
read...A guardian fearing that his ward
might become too intelligent for his
schemes might prevent this misfortune
by innocently suggesting the reading of
Hegel."[143]
Karl Popper wrote that "there is so much

philosophical writing (especially in the
Hegelian school) which may justly be
criticised as meaningless verbiage".[144]
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.[145]
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.[146]
Voegelin argued that Hegel should be

understood not as a philosopher, but as a
"sorcerer", i.e. as a mystic and hermetic
thinker.[147] This concept of Hegel as a
hermetic thinker was elaborated by Glenn
Alexander Magee,[148] 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.[149]
Selected works
Published during Hegel's lifetime …
Differenz des Fichteschen und

Schellingschen Systems der
Philosophie, 1801
The Difference Between Fichte's and
Schelling's Systems of Philosophy, tr. H.
S. Harris and Walter Cerf, 1977
Phänomenologie des Geistes, 1807
Phenomenology 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, 2012
Wissenschaft der Logik, 1812, 1813,
1816, "Doctrine of Being" revised 1831
Science of Logic, tr. W. H. Johnston
and L. G. Struthers, 2 vols., 1929; tr. A.
V. Miller, 1969; tr. George di Giovanni,
2010
Enzyklopädie 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
Inwood
Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts,
1821
Elements 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
Dialectical idealism
"God is dead"
Hegel-Archiv
Political consciousness
Process theology
Pure thought
Rudy Rucker, the great-great-great-
grandson of Hegel
Notes
Explanatory notes …
a. "Rezension des Aenesidemus"

("Review of Aenesidemus"),
Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, 11–12
February 1794). Trans. Daniel
Breazeale. In Breazeale, Daniel;
Fichte, Johann (1993). Fichte: Early
Philosophical Writings. Cornell
University Press. p. 63.
Citations …
1. Luther 2009, pp. 65–66.

2. Etter 2006, p. 68.
3. Kreines 2015, p. 21.
4. Sarlemijn 1975, p. 21.
5. Rockmore 2003, p. 18.
6. Young, James (3 September 1996).
The Coherence Theory of Truth .
Stanford University.
7. Franz Wiedmann, Hegel: An
Illustrated Biography, Pegasus, 1968,
p. 23.
8. Routledge Encyclopedia of
Philosophy (1998): "Alienation" .
9. John Grier Hibben, Eric v. d. Luft,
Hegel's Shorter Logic: An
Introduction and Commentary,
Gegensatz Press, 2013, p. 143.
10. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: The
Science of Logic, Cambridge
University Press, 2010, p. 609. See
also: Richard Dien Winfield, Hegel's
Science of Logic: A Critical
Rethinking in Thirty Lectures,
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers,
2012, p. 265.
11. David Gray Carlson, A Commentary
to Hegel's Science of Logic, Palgrave
Macmillan, 2007, p. 38.
12. G. W. F. Hegel, Phänomenologie des
Geistes (1807), "Vorrede": "Das
Wahre ist das Ganze."
13. G. W. F. Hegel, Grundlinien der
Philosophie des Rechts (1821),
"Vorrede": "Was vernünftig ist, das ist
Wirklich; und was wirklich ist, das ist
vernünftig." ["What is rational is real;
And what is real is rational."]
14. G. W. F. Hegel, Wissenschaft der
Logik (1813), "Erster Teil: Zweites
Buch": "Die Wahrheit des Seyns ist
das Wesen" ["The truth of being is
essence."]
15. G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über de
Geschichte der Philosophie, Part 3,
Duncker und Humblot, 1844, pp. 502
and 514.
16. George Kline, On Hegel, Gegensatz
Press, 2015; Rugard Otto Gropp, Zu
Fragen der Geschichte der
Philosophie und des dialektischen
Materialismus, Deutscher Verlag der
Wissenschaften, 1958, p. 28.
17. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,
Wissenschaft der Logik Vol. II,
Meiner, 1975 [1932], pp. 466 and
474.
18. P. Stekeler-Weithofer (2016), "Hegel's
Analytic Pragmatism" , University of
Leipzig, pp. 122–24.
19. Lom 2001, pp. 65-66.
20. MacGregor 1998, p. 69.
21. Michael N. Forster, After Herder:
Philosophy of Language in the
German Tradition, Oxford University
Press, 2010, p. 9.
22. Henderson, James P.; Davis, John B.
(1991). "Adam Smith's Influence on
Hegel's Philosophical Writings" .
Journal of the History of Economic
Thought. 13 (2): 184–204.
doi:10.1017/S1053837200003564 .
23. Adcock 2014, pp. 53–57.
24. Butler, Judith (1987). Subjects of
desire: Hegelian reflections in
twentieth-century France. New York:
Columbia University Press.
25. Kelley, Donald R. (2017). The
Descent of Ideas: The History of
Intellectual History. Routledge. p. 29.
26. Hamburg 1992, p. 186.
27. "Hegel" . Random House Webster's
Unabridged Dictionary.
28. Wells, John C. (2008). Longman
Pronunciation Dictionary (3rd ed.).
Longman. ISBN 9781405881180.
29. "Duden | He-gel | Rechtschreibung,
Bedeutung, Definition" [Duden | He-
gel | Spelling, Meaning, Definition].
Duden (in German). Retrieved
18 October 2018. "Hegel"
30. Redding, Paul (13 February 1997).
"Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel" .
Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy.
31. "Heidegger's Hegel" .
Phenomenological Reviews. 4
January 2016. Retrieved
3 September 2020.
32. This term is actually quite rare in
Hegel's writings. It does not occur
anywhere in The Science of Logic
(though he comes close in a remark
on p. 124 of the [2010] di Giovanni
translation, GW 21.142). In the
Encyclopedia presentation of his
logic it can be found only at §45R.
Greraets, Suchting and Harris note in
the introduction to their translation
of this later text that the term is
more strongly associated with
English movement in that later part
of the 19th century (Hackett: 1991,
xiii).
33. Overwhelmingly due to Alexandre
Kojève's influential lectures
published as Introduction à la lecture
de Hegel (Paris, 1947), selections
translated into English by James
Nichols as Introduction to the
Reading of Hegel (New York, 1969).
See, for instance, Aimé Patri,
"Dialectique du Maître et de
l’Esclave", Le Contrat Social, V, No. a
(July–August 196r), 234, cited in
Editor's Introduction (vii) on the
extent of their influence.
34. Robert C. Solomon, In the Spirit of
Hegel, Oxford University Press, p. 23.
35. Petschko, Werner G. (17 February
2016). "Review of Aenesidemus" (in
German). Translated by Breazeale,
Daniel. Retrieved 17 April 2016.
36. "One of the few things on which the
analysts, pragmatists, and
existentialists agree with the
dialectical theologians is that Hegel
is to be repudiated: their attitude
toward Kant, Aristotle, Plato, and the
other great philosophers is not at all
unanimous even within each
movement; but opposition to Hegel
is part of the platform of all four, and
of the Marxists, too." Walter
Kaufmann, "The Hegel Myth and Its
Method" in From Shakespeare to
Existentialism: Studies in Poetry,
Religion, and Philosophy, Beacon
Press, Boston, 1959 (pp. 88–119).
37. Michael Hardt, Gilles Deleuze: an
Apprenticeship in Philosophy,
University of Minnesota Press, 1993,
p. x.
38. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology,
University of Chicago Press, 1963, p.
329.
39. "Why did Hegel not become for the
Protestant world something similar
to what Thomas Aquinas was for
Roman Catholicism?" (Karl Barth,
Protestant Thought from Rousseau
to Ritschl: Being the Translation Of
Eleven Chapters of Die
Protestantische Theologie im 19.
Jahrhundert, 268 Harper, 1959).
40. Maurice Merleau-Ponty (trans.
Herbert L. and Patricia Allen
Dreyfus), Sense and Nonsense,
Northwestern University Press, 1964,
p. 63.
41. (in Latin) G.W.F. Hegel, Hegel and the
Greeks .
42. Martin Heidegger (trans. Joan
Staumbaugh), Identity and
Difference, New York: Harper & Row,
1969, p. 54-57.
43. Martin Heidegger (trans. Richard
Rojcewicz), Ponderings XII-XV: Black
Notebooks 1939-1941, Indiana
University Press, 2017, p. 27.
44. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology,
London: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1976, p35.
45. Judith Butler, Subjects of Desire:
Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth
Century France, Columbia University
Press, 1987, p35.
1969, p. 54-57.
47. Martin Heidegger, Introduction to
metaphysics, Yale University Press,
1945, p. 202.
29.
50. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology,
London: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1976, p32-35.
29.
52. (in Latin) G.W.F. Hegel, Hegel and the
Greeks .
1969, p. 54-57.
1969, p. 54-57.
Staumbaugh), On Time and Being,
New York: Harper & Row, 1972, p. 6.
58. Martin Heidegger (trans. David Krell),
Nietzsche, New York: HarperCollins,
1991, p. 49.
59. Pinkard, Terry (2000). Hegel: A
Biography . Cambridge University
Press. ISBN 978-0-521-49679-7.
60. Pinkard, Hegel: A Biography, p. 3 ,
incorrectly gives the date as 20
September 1781, and describes
Hegel as aged eleven. Cf. the index
to Pinkard's book and his
"Chronology of Hegel's Life", which
correctly give the date as 1783 (pp.
773 , 745 ); see also German
Wikipedia.
61. Karl Rosenkranz, Hegels Leben,
Duncker und Humblot, 1844, p. 19.
62. Beiser, Frederick C., ed. (1993). The
Cambridge Companion to Hegel .
Cambridge University Press. p. 419 .
ISBN 978-1-13982495-8.
63. Harris, H.S. (1995). Phenomenology
and System. p. 7.
64. Good, James Allan (2006). A Search
for Unity in Diversity: The
"Permanent Hegelian Deposit" in the
Philosophy of John Dewey.
Lexington Books. p. 4.
65. "Love" (PDF). Archived from the
original (PDF) on 8 October 2013.
Retrieved 9 August 2013.
66. The Spirit of Christianity and Its
Fate"
67. Kai Hammermeister, The German
Aesthetic Tradition, Cambridge
68. (in Latin) G.W.F. Hegel, Dissertatio
philosophica de Orbitis Planetarum .
69. G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophical
Dissertation on the Orbits of the
Planets .
70. Edward Craig; Michael Hoskin
(August 1992). "Hegel and the Seven
Planets". Journal for the History of
Astronomy. 23 (3): 208–210.
Bibcode:1992JHA....23..208C .
doi:10.1177/002182869202300307 .
S2CID 117859392 .
71. Note that Weltseele zu Pferde is a
shortened paraphrase of Hegel's
words in the letter. The letter was not
published in Hegel's time, but the
expression was attributed to Hegel
anecdotally, appearing in print from
1859 (L. Noack, Schelling und die
Philosophie der Romantik, 1859, p.
153 ). It is used without attribution
by Meyer Kayserling in his
Sephardim (1859:103), and is
apparently not recognized as a
reference to Hegel by the reviewer in
Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen 2
(1861) p. 770 , who notes it
disapprovingly, as one of
Kayserling's "bad jokes" (schlechte
Witze). The phrase become widely
associated with Hegel later in the
19th century, e.g. G. Baur in Reden
gehalten in der Aula der Universität
Leipzig beim Rectoratswechsel am
31. October 1874 (1874), p. 36 .
72. den Kaiser—diese Weltseele—sah ich
durch die Stadt zum Rekognoszieren
hinausreiten; es ist in der Tat eine
wunderbare Empfindung, ein solches
Individuum zu sehen, das hier auf
einen Punkt kontentriert, auf einem
Pferde sitzend, über die Welt
übergreift und sie beherrscht.Hegel,
letter of 13 October 1806 to F. I.
Niethammer, no. 74 (p. 119) in Briefe
von und an Hegel ed. Hoffmeister,
vol. 1 (1970), cited after H.
Schnädelbach in Wolfgang Welsch,
Klaus Vieweg (eds.), Das Interesse
des Denkens: Hegel aus heutiger
Sicht, Wilhelm Fink Verlag (2003), p.
223 ; trans. Pinkard (2000:228).
73. Pinkard (2000:228f).
74. Pinkard, T., Hegel: A Biography
(Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2000), p. 773 .
75. Dorrien, G., Kantian Reason and
Hegelian Spirit: The Idealistic Logic
of Modern Theology (Hoboken:
Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), pp. 207–
208 .
76. Ludwig Siep, Hegel's
Phenomenology of Spirit, Cambridge
University Press, 2014, p. xxi.
77. Quinton 2011, p. 63.
78. Norman Davies, Europe: A History,
1996, p. 687.
79. Dreyfus, Hubert L. (2007). A
Companion to Heidegger. Wrathall,
Mark A. Chichester: John Wiley &
Sons. p. 143. ISBN 978-0-470-99724-
6. OCLC 437213915 .
80. Kant, Immanuel (1998). Critique of
Pure Reason. Cambridge University
Press. pp. A81/B107. ISBN 978-0-
521-35402-8.
81. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
(1998). Hegel's Science of Logic.
Miller, Arnold V. Amherst, N.Y.:
Humanity Books. p. 51. ISBN 1-
57392-280-3. OCLC 40500731 .
82. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich,
1770-1831. (1998). Hegel's science
of logic. Miller, Arnold V. Amherst,
N.Y.: Humanity Books. p. 191.
ISBN 1-57392-280-3.
OCLC 40500731 .
83. Hegel, G.W.F. (1969). Science of
Logic. Humanity Books. p. 78.
ISBN 1-57392-280-3.
84. Butler, Clark (2011). The Dialectical
Method: A Treatise Hegel Never
Wrote. Humanities Press. ISBN 978-
1616144890.
85. Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 1900-2002.
(1976). Hegel's dialectic : five
hermeneutical studies. Smith, P.
Christopher. New Haven: Yale
University Press. pp. 112–114.
ISBN 0-300-01909-2.
OCLC 2042356 .
86. "The Doctrine of Being, Hegel" .
www.marxists.org. Retrieved 23 April
2020.
87. Butler, Clark, 1944- (1996). Hegel's
logic : between dialectic and history.
Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern
University Press. p. 295. ISBN 0-
8101-1426-7. OCLC 35235059 .
88. McCumber, John (30 October 2013).
Understanding Hegel's Mature
Critique of Kant . Stanford,
California. p. 54. ISBN 978-0-8047-
8853-3. OCLC 864849733 .
89. McCumber, John (30 October 2013).
Understanding Hegel's Mature
Critique of Kant. Stanford, California.
p. 58. ISBN 978-0-8047-8853-3.
OCLC 864849733 .
90. Ng, Karen (Karen K.) (2 January
2020). Hegel's concept of life : self-
consciousness, freedom, logic. New
York, NY. p. 3. ISBN 978-0-19-
094763-7. OCLC 1121421652 .
1770-1831. (2010). The science of
logic. Di Giovanni, George, 1935-.
Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press. p. 751. ISBN 978-0-521-
83255-7. OCLC 580132164 .
92. par. 378
93. See Science of Logic, trans. Miller
[Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities,
1989]
94. Jon Mills, The Unconscious Abyss:
Hegel's Anticipation of
Psychoanalysis, SUNY Press, 2002,
p. 16.
95. Steven Schroeder (2000). Between
Freedom and Necessity: An Essay on
the Place of Value . Rodopi. p. 104.
ISBN 978-90-420-1302-5. Retrieved
17 December 2012.
96. Stefan Gruner: "Hegel's Aether
Doctrine", VDM Publ., 2010,
ISBN 978-3-639-28451-5
97. Hegel, G. W. F. "Hegel's Philosophy of
Right: Preface" . www.marxists.org.
98. Pelczynski, A.Z.; 1984; 'The
Significance of Hegel's separation of
the state and civil society' pp1-13 in
Pelczynski, A.Z. (ed.); 1984; The
State and Civil Society; Cambridge
University Press
99. Zaleski, Pawel (2008). "Tocqueville
on Civilian Society. A Romantic
Vision of the Dichotomic Structure of
Social Reality". Archiv für
Begriffsgeschichte. 50.
100. Hegel, G. W. F. (1979). "Vorlesungen
über die Geschichte der
Philosophie" . pp. 336–337.
Retrieved 1 July 2008.
101. Hartnack, Justus (1998). An
Introduction to Hegel's Logic. Lars
Aagaard-Mogensen (trans.). Hackett
Publishing. pp. 16–17. ISBN 978-0-
87220-424-9. Hartnack quotes
Hegel, Lectures on the History of
Philosophy, Volume I.
102. Hegel, G. W. F. (1979). "Vorlesungen
über die Geschichte der
Philosophie" . pp. 319–343.
Retrieved 1 July 2008.
103. Copleston, Frederick Charles (2003).
A History of Philosophy: Volume 7:
18th and 19th century German
philosophy. Continuum International
Publishing Group. Chapter X.
ISBN 978-0-8264-6901-4.
104. The notable Introduction to
Philosophy of History delineates
historical aspects of the dialectic.
105. "[T]he task that touches the interest
of philosophy most nearly at the
present moment: to put God back at
the peak of philosophy, absolutely
prior to all else as the one and only
ground of everything." (Hegel, "How
the Ordinary Human Understanding
Takes Philosophy as displayed in the
works of Mr. Krug", Kritisches
Journal der Philosophie, I, no. 1,
1802, pp. 91–115)
106. Jon Bartley Stewart. 2008. Johan
Ludvig Heiberg: Philosopher,
Littérateur, Dramaturge, and Political
Thinker. Museum Tusculanum Press.
p. 100
107. Walter Kaufmann, Hegel:
Reinterpretation, Texts, and
Commentary, Garden City, New York:
Doubleday & Company, 1965, pp.
276–77
108. Walter Kaufmann, Hegel:
Reinterpretation, Texts, and
Commentary, Garden City, New York:
Doubleday & Company, 1965, p. 277
Thinker. Museum Tusculanum Press.
p. 100
110. "MDZ-Reader – Band – Von den
Beweisen für die Unsterblichkeit der
menschlichen Seele im Lichte der
spekulativen Philosophie / Göschel,
Carl Friedrich" . reader.digitale-
sammlungen.de.
111. In the 1870s and 1880s, Rev. T. R.
Vickroy and Susan E. Blow—who
were both minor associates of the
St. Louis Hegelians—independently
of each other translated various
chapters from Göschel's book into
English, and had their translations
published in The Journal of
Speculative Philosophy. The Journal
of Speculative Philosophy (in print
from 1867–1893) was the official
journal of the St. Louis Philosophical
Society. The St. Louis Philosophical
Society—the organization which
served as the hub of the St. Louis
Hegelians—had been co-founded in
January 1866 by 2 disciples of Hegel
in America, William Torrey Harris
(1835–1909) and Henry Conrad
Brokmeyer (1826–1906). Rev.
Thomas Rhys Vickroy (1833–1904),
a minister of the Methodist
Episcopal Church, had been the first
president (1866–1871) of Lebanon
Valley College in Annville, Lebanon
County, Pennsylvania. While
President at Lebanon Valley College,
Vickroy also held various
professorships there. For example,
one year he was Professor of
Philosophy and the Greek Language
and Literature, and another year he
was Professor of Belles-Lettres and
Philosophy. Susan Elizabeth Blow
(1843–1916) was an educator who
in 1873 opened the first successful
public kindergarten in the U. S.—in
the Des Peres School, in the
Carondelet neighborhood of St.
Louis, Missouri.
Thinker. Museum Tusculanum
Press. p. 105
1895. Vorlesungen über die
Philosophie der Religion. London:
Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co.
Eng. tr. E.B. Speirs and J. Burdon
Sanderson as Lectures on the
Philosophy of Religion, New York:
Humanities Press, 1974. pp. 56-58
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Humanities Press, 1974. pp. 302
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Humanities Press, 1974. pp. 56-58
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Humanities Press, 1974. pp. 302
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117. Josephson-Storm, Jason (2017). The
Myth of Disenchantment: Magic,
Modernity, and the Birth of the
Human Sciences . Chicago:
University of Chicago Press. pp. 85–
86. ISBN 978-0-226-40336-6.
118. Josephson-Storm (2017), pp. 85–86.
119. Pinkard, Terry (2000). Hegel – A
Biography . United States:
Cambridge University Press. p. 576 .
ISBN 0521-49679-9.
120. W. Kaufmann (1980), Discovery of
the Mind 1: Goethe, Kant and Hegel,
p. 203
121. Hegel 1996.
122. Martin Heidegger (1971), Poetry,
Language, Thought, p. 77-78
123. Cormier, Youri. "Hegel and
Clausewitz: Convergence on Method,
Divergence on Ethics" , International
History Review, Volume 36, Issue 3,
2014.
124. Hegel, G.W.F. Science of Logic. trans.
George di Giovanni. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. 2010.
p.12
125. W. Kaufmann (1966), Hegel: A
Reinterpretation, Anchor, p. 115
126. W. Kaufmann, 1966, Hegel: A
Reinterpretation, p. 99
127. Karl Löwith, From Hegel to
Nietzsche: The Revolution in
Nineteenth-Century Thought,
translated by David E. Green, New
York: Columbia University Press,
1964.
128. The Universal Mind: The Evolution of
Machine Intelligence and Human
Psychology, by Xiphias Press
129. Benedetto Croce, Guide to
Aesthetics, Translated by Patrick
Romanell, "Translator's Introduction",
The Library of Liberal Arts, The
Bobbs–Merrill Co., Inc., 1965
130. Hegel and Language, edited by Jere
O'Neill Surber. p. 238 .
131. Gustav E. Mueller (1996). Jon
Stewart (ed.). The Hegel Myths and
Legends . Northwestern University
Press. p. 301 . ISBN 978-0-8101-
1301-5.
132. Robinson, Paul (1990). The Freudian
Left: Wilhelm Reich, Geza Roheim,
Herbert Marcuse . Cornell University
Press. p. 156 . ISBN 978-0-87220-
424-9.
133. French philosopher Vincent
Descombes introduced the term
"post-Kojèvian discourse" to
designate the period of French
philosophy after the 1930s (Vincent
Descombes, Modern French
Philosophy, Cambridge University
Press, 1980, pp. 158–159).
134. Williams, Howard; David Sullivan;
Gwynn Matthews (1997). Francis
Fukuyama and the End of History.
University of Wales Press. pp. 70–
71. ISBN 978-0-7083-1428-9.
135. B. Russell, History of Western
Philosophy, chapter 22, paragraph 1,
p. 701.
136. Russell, 735.
137. On the Basis of Morality.
138. Schopenhauer, Arthur. Author's
preface to "On The Fourfold Root of
the Principle of sufficient reason. p.
1. On the Fourfold Root of the
Principle of Sufficient Reason
139. Søren Kierkegaard Concluding
Unscientific Postscriptt
140. Ludwig Boltzmann, Theoretical
physics and philosophical problems:
Selected writings, p. 155, D. Reidel,
1974, ISBN 90-277-0250-0
141. Robert B. Pippin, Hegel's Idealism:
The Satisfaction of Self-
Consciousness (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1989), 5
142. Russell, Bertrand (1972). A History of
Western Philosophy . p. 730 .
143. Popper, Karl (12 November 2012).
The Open Society And Its Enemies .
Routledge. p. 287.
ISBN 9784624010522.
144. Karl Popper, Conjectures and
Refutations: The Growth of Scientific
Knowledge (New York: Routledge,
1963), 94.
145. See for instance Walter Kaufmann
(1959), The Hegel Myth and Its
Method
146. Berlin, Isaiah, Freedom and Betrayal:
Six Enemies of Human Liberty
(Princeton University Press, 2003)
147. Voegelin, Eric (1972). "On Hegel—A
Study in Sorcery", in J. T. Fraser, F.
Haber & G. Muller (eds.), The Study
of Time. Springer-Verlag. 418--451
(1972)
148. Magee, Glenn Alexander (2001),
Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition,
Ithaca: Cornell University Press
149. "I do not argue that merely that we
can understand Hegel as a Hermetic
thinker, just as we can understand
him as a German or a Swabian or an
idealist thinker. Instead, I argue that
we must understand Hegel as a
Hermetic thinker, if we are to truly
understand him at all." Magee 2001,
p. 2.
General sources
Adcock, Robert (2014). Liberalism and the
Emergence of American Political Science: A
Transatlantic Tale. Oxford University Press.
Beiser, Frederick C. (ed.), 1993. The
Cambridge Companion to Hegel.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Beiser, Frederick C., 2005. Hegel. New York:
Routledge.
Burbidge, John, 2006. The Logic of Hegel's
Logic: An Introduction. Broadview Press.
ISBN 1-55111-633-2
Findlay, J. N., 1958. Hegel: A Re-
examination. New York: Oxford University
Press. ISBN 0-19-519879-4
Etter, Brian K. (2006). Between
Transcendence and Historicism: The Ethical
Nature of the Arts in Hegelian Aesthetics.
SUNY Press. ISBN 0791482286.
Francke, Kuno, Howard, William Guild,
Schiller, Friedrich, 1913–1914 The German
classics of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries: masterpieces of German
literature translated into English Vol 7, Jay
Lowenberg, The Life of Georg Wilhelm
Freidrich Hegel . New York : German
Publication Society. Retrieved
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Hamburg, G. M. (1992). Boris Chicherin &
Early Russian Liberalism: 1828–1866.
Stanford University Press. ISBN 0-8047-
6625-8.
Harris, H. S., 1995. Hegel: Phenomenology
and System. Indianapolis: Hackett.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1895.
Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der
Religion. London: Kegan Paul, Trench,
Trübner & Co. Eng. tr. E.B. Speirs and J.
Burdon Sanderson as Lectures on the
Humanities Press, 1974. ISBN 1-8550-6806-
0.
Houlgate, Stephen, 2005. An Introduction to
Hegel. Freedom, Truth and History. Oxford:
Blackwell
Houlgate, Stephen, 2005. The Opening of
Hegel's Logic: From Being to Infinity. Purdue
University Press. ISBN 1-55753-257-5
Hyppolite, Jean, 1946. Genèse et structure
de la Phénoménologie de l'esprit. Paris:
Aubier. Eng. tr. Samuel Cherniak and John
Heckman as Genesis and Structure of
Hegel's "Phenomenology of Spirit",
Evanston: Northwestern University Press,
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Inwood, Michael, 1983. Hegel. London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul (Arguments of the
Philosophers)
Kainz, Howard P., 1996. G. W. F. Hegel.
Athens: Ohio University Press. ISBN 0-8214-
1231-0.
Kaufmann, Walter, 1965. Hegel: A
Reinterpretation. New York: Doubleday
(reissued Notre Dame IN: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1978).
Kojève, Alexandre, 1947. Introduction à la
lecture de Hegel. Paris: Gallimard. Eng. tr.
James H. Nichols, Jr., as Introduction to the
Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the
Phenomenology of Spirit, Basic Books,
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Kreines, James (2015). Reason in the World:
Hegel's Metaphysics and Its Philosophical
Appeal. Oxford University Press.
Lom, Petr (2001). The Limits of Doubt: The
Moral and Political Implications of
Skepticism. SUNY Press. pp. 65–66.
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Losurdo, Domenico, 2004. Hegel and the
Freedom of Moderns. Duke University Press
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Hegel, London: Merlin Press, 1975. ISBN 0-
262-12070-4.
Maker, William, 1994. Philosophy Without
Foundations: Rethinking Hegel. State
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2100-7.
Luther, Timothy C. (2009). Hegel's Critique
of Modernity: Reconciling Individual
Freedom and the Community. Lexington
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MacGregor, David (1998). Hegel and Marx:
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Theory.
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Self-Consciousness, Freedom, Logic . New
York: Oxford University Press.
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24 December 2019.
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Explanation of Possibility. Temple University
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the Satisfactions of Self-Consciousness.
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37923-7.
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Visible". In Kenny, Kenny (ed.). Of men and
manners : essays historical and
philosophical. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. p. 63. ISBN 9780199694556. "Most
reference books say that Hegel died of
cholera. There was an epidemic of it and
Hegel was worried about being infected.
But Hegel's most recent biographer Terry
Pinkard argues conclusively that it was not
cholera that killed Hegel. He had no
diarrhoea and no swelling. It was probably,
Pinkard says, 'some kind of upper gastro-
intestinal disease'. This detail is
characteristic of the immense
thoroughness and pertinacity of Pinkard's
'Hegel, a Biography' (C.U.P., 2001)."
Riedel, Manfred, 1984. Between Tradition
and Revolution: The Hegelian
Transformation of Political Philosophy,
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Rockmore, Tom (2003). Before and After
Hegel: A Historical Introduction to Hegel's
Thought. Hackett Publishing.
ISBN 0872206475. "Hegel follows Kant ... in
limiting claims to know to the empirically
real. In short, he adopts a view very similar
to Kant's empirical realism."
Rose, Gillian, 1981. Hegel Contra Sociology.
Athlone Press.
Rosen, Stanley, 2000. G.W.F Hegel:
Introduction To Science Of Wisdom,
(Carthage Reprint) St. Augustines Press; 1
edition ISBN 978-1-890318-48-2
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Phenomenology. Indiana University Press.
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Modern Arts, Cambridge: Cambridge
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Dialectic . D. Reidel Publishing Company.
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Introduction. New York: Oxford University
Press (previously issued in the OUP Past
Masters series, 1983)
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Hegel, Oxford: Oxford University Press
Stern, Robert (2013). The Routledge guide
book to Hegel's Phenomenology of spirit
(second ed.). Abingdon, Oxon New York:
Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-66445-5.
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and Legends. Northwestern University
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Hegel: Being the Hegelian System in Origin
Principle, Form and Matter, London: Oliver &
Boyd
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29199-2.
Williams, Robert R., 2000. Hegel's Ethics of
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External links
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related to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hegel.
Wikisource has original works

written by or about:
Andrew Chitty's (University of Sussex)

Hegel Bibliography
Redding, Paul. "Georg Wilhelm
Friedrich Hegel" . In Zalta, Edward N.
(ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy.
Houlgate, Stephen. "Hegel's
Aesthetics" . In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.).
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
Scans of all (original, German) books
from Hegel (all editions) between 1807
and 1850 as PDFs at hegel.net
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)
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Georg Wilhelm

Portrait by Jakob Schlesinger, 1831

Born 27 August 1770

Died 14 November 1831

Education Gymnasium illustre

Region Western philosophy

Institutions University of Jena

Notable students Johann Eduard

Main interests Metaphysics

Hegel's principal achievement was his

Hegel has inﬂuenced many thinkers and

Hegel's work has been considered the

The birthplace of Hegel in Stuttgart, which now

Hegel was born on 27 August 1770 in

At the age of eighteen, Hegel entered the

Although the violence of the 1793 Reign

Bern (1793–1796) and Frankfurt

Having received his theological

Also in 1797, the unpublished and

Jena, Bamberg and Nuremberg

In 1801, Hegel came to Jena at the

In 1805, the university promoted Hegel to

"Hegel and Napoleon in Jena" (illustration from

With his ﬁnances drying up quickly, Hegel

I saw the Emperor—this world-

Pinkard (2000) notes that Hegel's

In March 1807, Hegel moved to Bamberg,

In November 1808, Hegel was again

In 1811, Hegel married Marie Helena

Heidelberg and Berlin (1816–1831) …

In 1817, Hegel published The

In 1818, Hegel accepted the renewed

In 1819–1827, he made two trips to

Hegel was appointed University Rector of

Hegel's illegitimate son, Ludwig Fischer,

Logic and metaphysics …

From the time of Leibniz to the

With the possible exception of the study

...the true ancestral

The Science of Logic (which the latter

The afﬁnity between Hegel and Kant's

So how are the categories derived? Hegel

...profounder insight into the

Because every concept is a composite of

The precise nature of the procedural self-

...different stages of the logical

Hegel's categories are, in part, carried

For both Hegel and Kant, "we arrive at the

If we abstract 'Ding' [thing]

The "thing as it is in itself" is indeed

Karen Ng writes that "there is a central,

Hegel's system is often presented in the

In his discussion of "Spirit" in his

In this way, Hegel defended the truth in

The result of this argument is that ﬁnite

The mystical writings of Jakob Böhme

According to Hegel, this unity evolved

Hegel's State is the ﬁnal culmination of

According to Hegel, "Heraclitus is the one

Hegel cites a number of fragments of

Sein und Nichts sei dasselbe

Heraclitus did not form any abstract

For Hegel, the inner movement of reality