Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (; ; 27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a German

philosopher

. He is considered one of the most important figures in German idealism and one of the founding figures of Western philosophy, with his influence extending to the entire range of contemporary philosophical issues, from

aesthetics

to

ontology

and

politics

, both in the analytic and continental tradition.

Hegel's principal achievement was his development of a distinctive articulation of

idealism

, sometimes termed ''absolute idealism'', in which the dualisms of, for instance, mind and nature and subject and object are overcome. In contrast to

Immanuel Kant

, who believes that the subject imposes rational a priori pure concepts of understanding upon the sense-data of intuitions, Hegel believes that the pure concepts are grounded in reality itself. Pure concepts are not applied subjectively to sense-impressions, but rather things exist for their concept. The unity of concept and reality is the Idea. The idea itself is dynamic, active, self-determining, self-moving, and purposive. The idea properly exists as life. In life, the parts of the body are unified for the final cause of actualizing the living organism. Non-organic nature is also grounded in the concept, but is only “latent” and not fully self-determining.

Geist

, or Spirit is the highest form of life and the idea. Geist is the collective purposive agency and genus of man. Geist is equally substance and subject, meaning that geist is not only a living organic substance, but also a subject involved in complex normative and social spaces. Hegel is also known for his dialectical logic, which is mostly contained within his Science of Logic. In this book, Hegel creates a presuppositionless logic of pure thought, which begins with pure

being

. In the logic, positions and ideas are examined and revealed to be immanently contradictory. The contradiction within the position and itself is sublated (In German, it is called ''Aufhebung''), in which a new position is posited which negates the previous position's contradiction. An example of sublation is the contradictory nature of pure indeterminate

being

. Pure

being

is revealed to be both equal to and different from nothing. This contradiction within

being

is resolved with its sublation into becoming, in which nothing passes into being and being passes into nothing. However, becoming also reveals its own contradictions and is sublated into determinate being. The logic progresses along through contradictions and sublations until there are no more contradictions that can be sublated. This is the absolute, which for Hegel is the idea.

Hegel influenced a wide variety of thinkers and writers. For example, theologian Paul Tillich wrote that the historical dialectical thought of Hegel "has influenced world history more profoundly than any other structural analysis." In his work ''Systematic Theology'', Tillich referred to Hegel's work as "perfect essentialism," later writing "essentialism was in Hegel's system fulfilled." Karl Barth described Hegel as a "Protestant

Aquinas

" while

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

wrote that "all the great philosophical ideas of the past century—the philosophies of

Marx

and

Nietzsche

, phenomenology, German existentialism, and

psychoanalysis

—had their beginnings in Hegel." Michael Hardt has highlighted that 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.

Hegel's work has been considered the "completion of philosophy" G.W.F. Hegel
''Hegel and the Greeks''
Martin Heidegger (trans. Joan Staumbaugh), ''Identity and Difference'', New York: Harper & Row, 1969, p. 54-57.Martin Heidegger (trans. Richard Rojcewicz), ''Ponderings XII-XV: Black Notebooks 1939–1941'', Indiana University Press, 2017, p. 27. by multiple of the most influential thinkers in existentialism, post-structuralism, and twentieth-century theology.Paul Tillich, ''Systematic Theology'', University of Chicago Press, 1963, p. 29. Jacques Derrida wrote of Hegel in his work ''Of Grammatology'' that "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." 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" 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 " 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." Heidegger in various places further stated Hegel's thinking to be "the most powerful thinking of modern times."

Life

Early years

Childhood

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. 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. 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.

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").

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

. Sharing a dislike for what they regarded as the restrictive environment of the Seminary, the three became close friends and mutually influenced each other's ideas. All greatly admired Hellenic civilization and Hegel additionally steeped himself in

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

and Lessing during this time. They watched the unfolding of the

French Revolution

with shared enthusiasm. Schelling and Hölderlin immersed themselves in theoretical debates on Kantian philosophy, from which Hegel remained aloof. Hegel, at this time, envisaged his future as that of a ''Popularphilosoph'', (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.

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. While in Frankfurt, Hegel composed the essay "Fragments on Religion and Love". In 1799, he wrote another essay entitled "The Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate", unpublished during his lifetime.

Also in 1797, the unpublished and unsigned manuscript of " The Oldest Systematic Program of German Idealism" was written. It was written in Hegel's hand, but may have been authored by Hegel, Schelling, Hölderlin, or an unknown fourth person.Kai Hammermeister, ''The German Aesthetic Tradition'', Cambridge University Press, 2002, p. 76.

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

.G.W.F. Hegel
''Philosophical Dissertation on the Orbits of the Planets''
Unbeknownst to Hegel,

Giuseppe Piazzi

had discovered the minor planet Ceres within that orbit on 1 January 1801. 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. 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).

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''.html"_;"title="Weltseele.html"_;"title="'Weltseele">'Weltseele''">Weltseele.html"_;"title="'Weltseele">'Weltseele''��riding_out_of_the_city_on_reconnaissance._It_is_indeed_a_wonderful_sensation_to_see_such_an_individual,_who,_concentrated_here_at_a_single_point,_astride_a_horse,_reaches_out_over_the_world_and_masters_it.

Pinkard_(2000)_notes_that_Hegel's_comment_to_Niethammer_"is_all_the_more_striking_since_he_had_already_composed_the_crucial_section_of_the_''Phenomenology''_in_which_he_remarked_that_the_French_Revolution.html" "title="Weltseele">'Weltseele''.html" ;"title="Weltseele.html" ;"title="'Weltseele">'Weltseele''">Weltseele.html" ;"title="'Weltseele">'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.

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