GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL
(1770-1831)

Hegel: An Overview

His Life and Works

His Major Ideas

His Legacy

Hegel's Writings

While the English were pushing ahead an empirical doctrine of evolution through accidental natural causes, the Germans were developing, through the primary inspiration of Hegel, an "idealist" doctrine of evolution through the will of some great transcendent will (the world Spirit).  Hegel was clearly a Platonist--seeing all history, all human events as "guided" by this powerful spirit. This task of learning or of science was to Hegel (and the Hegelians after him) therefore not just to collect facts, but to discern the particular movement of this guiding hand in the midst of such facts.

Hegel was born and educated in Stuttgart in the classics and attended the University of Tübingen, studying philosophy and the classics in preparation for the ministry.  He graduated in 1790 and then took up the formal study of theology.  However he disliked strongly the doctrinal rigidity of his teachers. Hegel had a much freer spirit--and enjoyed the robust company of such friends as Schelling (5 years his junior) and Hölderlin.  He delighted in the reading of Greek tragedies and the exciting accounts of the French Revolution.  Thus in finishing his theological studies he decided against the ministry and opted instead for work that would allow him to continue his studies of history, the classics and philosophy.  Thus he found work tutoring, first in Switzerland then in Frankfurt. For a while he was strongly influenced by the philosophy of Kant--especially the notion that the real basis of Christianity was not in the legalistic religious doctrines evolved over the centuries by the Christian church--but in the inherent moral "Reason" contained in the teachings and example of Jesus.  But ultimately it was not the "moral reason" of Jesus that inspired Hegel--but instead the idea that, in and through Jesus as revelation of the divine, the Spirit of God had spoken to the human heart of eternal truths.  These were much loftier and idealistic concepts than Kant's moral principles. Hegel Begins to Stray from Kantianism Thus in the late 1790s Hegel wrote a treatise (not published until 1907) entitled Der Geist des Christentums und sein Schicksal" ("The Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate").  In this his interest in the Spirit of Christianity--rather than its inherent "reasonableness" (as per Kant) was the focus of study.  In this also his use of developmental history as the groundwork for the presentation of his ideas was also introduced. This work began with a study of ancient Judaism and its Law, proceeded through the development of Greek and Roman philosophy and religion (for which he had a deep fondness) and then arrived at the revolutionary ideas introduced by Jesus.  Hegel saw in Jesus principle which united man and God, a principle higher than all that had gone before him.  This principle was not that of religion with its laws and doctrines--but instead the principle of  love, a deep, a spiritual connection of man with the very essence of God.  This for Hegel constituted the Kingdom of God that Jesus had come to proclaim and open up to mankind. In 1801 he returned to his studies, this time at the University of Jena (in Prussia)--where he joined his friend Schelling in a philosophical assault on entrenched Kantian philosophy.  With a bit of an inheritance from his deceased father, he was able to function as a fee-based lecturer until he finally received a regular appointment to the faculty at the university. In that same year he published an essay, "Differenz des Fichte'schen und Schelling'schen Systems der Philosophie," which bears witness of his close philosophical association with Schelling's rather romantic philosophy of nature. Jena:  Phenomenology of the Mind But with Schelling's departure from Jena in 1803 Hegel moved more decidedly toward systematic philosophy.  In 1806 he completed a very serious systematic study of philosophy entitled Phenomenology of the Mind--just in time to flee Jena from the approaching French armies. This work focuses on the evolutionary development of human thought, through the stages of mere consciousness, then self- consciousness, then reason, then spirit and religion, and finally to absolute knowledge.  Knowledge of the sense-world (achieved through modern science) around man is only a starting point for Hegel in the development of human consciousness.  Higher than such knowledge is the kind of consciousness that connects the human spirit with the transcending Absolute Spirit.  Scientific or rational knowledge acts analytically--to separate the objects of knowledge into discreet categories.  It also separates, even isolates, the human Geist (mind or spirit) from the reality around it.  While such reason is useful to human life, it is not itself the highest or ultimate atainment of the human spirit.   That comes in a process of unification--not separation--of the human consciousness with the reality around it.  Along the way in the process the human mind passes through several stages of development:  from mere consciousness to a maturer self-consciousness, to the realm of reason, but then also to the stage of connection with the larger realm of reality through revealed religion and its formal declarations, to finally a virtually mystical bond with Absolute Reality.  Here the human mind comes to know itself as pure spirit--in its union with the pure spirit of the Absolute.  This is what Christianity, as presented by Jesus, is ultimately all about. The next couple of years were hard ones for Hegel.  He finally found employment with the Bamberger Zeitung as an editor (1807-08)--though this was hardly a stable source of employment. In 1808 he found more reliable work as a director of a gymnasium in Nürnberg--a position which he held until 1816. In 1812 he published Die objektive Logik, which was the first part of his Wissenschaft der Logik ("Science of Logic"); in 1816 a second part of this work was published as Die subjecktive Logik. Heidelberg:  Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences In 1816 he became a professor at the University of Heidelberg. Based on his lecture notes, he published in 1817 a new work, Encyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse ("Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline").  Undergirding this work was the motif of struggle--struggle of the human spirit or mind through various trials to reach or fulfill itself in a higher union with God.  God, also from his side of things, reaches out to the struggling human spirit by becoming himself human (and thus limited)--to struggle alongside man to overcome the finite human condition.  God, or Absolute Spirit, is also engaged with man in the process of working toward a final stage of complete self-consciousness--as part of the history of creation. Using the dialectical method (the step by step evolution of a thought or idea through the struggle of contradicting propositions in the quest of a higher level of truth), Hegel outlines how God began creation with pure thought about categories of being that he proposed to bring to life.  These were reflections of the Absolute's thoughts about himself.  This pure thought moves from the theoretical to the actual--by first approaching the very nothingness of physical reality that posed itself in the beginning.  Out of this nothingness is formed the first, earliest stage of the actual.  And into this early stage is introduced human consciousness, functioning at its most primitive original level of consciousness.  From this point God and man (the Absolute and the Finite) are joined in a dialectical process of reaching toward each other in a process of self-realization--a process that moves both sides through a dialectical process of raising each other to ever higher levels of realization.  In this God is as dependent on man as man is dependent on God for their mutual realization. Berlin:  Philosophy of Right In 1818 Hegel moved to Berlin to become a professor at the University of Berlin.  Here he remained until his death in 1831.  In 1821 he published his Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts (Philosophy of Right).  Here Hegel was trying to demonstrate, again through his dialectical method, the path to a just political/social order.  On the one hand  society consists of laws which are necessary for the good ordering of life.  But man also possesses a free conscience and the obligation to exercise this conscience as part of his dignity.  It is in the struggle to balance the need for a legal order and a realm of responsible personal freedom that the just society emerges.  The dangers are always the emergence of not a synthesis between these two tendencies, but the victory of one tendency over the other:  a legal tyranny or an anarchy of human wilfullness.  For Hegel the closest model for an ideal state was the family and the medieval guild--there being no such just realm known to him at that time within the larger political world.  His hope was that the urge to justice was producing the very birth of such a higher political state. His Fame Spreads By the time of his publication of the Philosophy of Right his reputation was well established in Germany--if not also in all of Europe.  A seat in his lectures was a prized possession for any student.   Careful notes were taken of his lectures--which was where his work now was wholly contained. His interest in the wider realm of philosophy, art, religion, science also broadened during this time. But overall his work remained the same:  to demonstrate that history was a working out of the will of God through an ever-heightening human consciousness.  Man was moving into an era of careful human thought--motivated by a deep devotion to God.  The end product for Hegel was indeed the outworking of the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth--as the fulfilment of the promise that Jesus had made so long ago. His Posthumous Publications After his death in 1831 during a cholera epidemic which swept through Germany,his lecture notes were compiled into a number of publications:  Philosophy of Fine Art (1835-38), History of Philosophy (1833-36), Philosophy of Religion (1832), and Philosophy of History (1837).

"What Is Real Is Rational, and What Is Rational Is Real." The human intellect is designed in such a way that it is able to grasp a vision of the underlying structure of reality simply through our observation and contemplation.  It is, in fact, only through such a cognitive approach to life that Reality reveals itself.  Without the conscious mind focusing on reality--for all practical purposes it has no real existence (an idea put forth strongly by Berkeley in his esse est percipi:  to be is to be perceived). What the human mind touches on when it undertakes such study of the world around us is the existence of the truly real--the structure of life that stands behind all (changing) appearances and gives things their particular characteristic shapes or physical appearances. The Realm of the World "Spirit" What such observation reveals to the disciplined mind is "structure."  This structure is the witness or testimony to the deeper or more transcendent existence of ideal reality.  This larger or more transcendent reality is called "God" by some.  Hegel preferred to call it "Spirit." The Essential Unity of All Reality Hegel felt that inquiry into the Ultimately Real would inevitably bring the student to the observation that ultimately all things are merely derivative of the one single underlying Absolute Spirit of the universe. The Evolutionary Role of the Collective Consciousness Hegel was deeply impressed with the fact that progress in bringing this ultimate reality to human understanding was through the study of this higher reality by many great minds over the centuries.  Each generation of thinkers had contributed to the gradual discovery of the nature or character of Ultimate Reality.  The process of bringing light to this Absolute realm of pure Idea was an evolutionary one.  Each generation built on the discoveries of the generations before it--adding to the collective human understanding of the Ultimately Real. The Cultural Order as a Reflection of the Evolved State of This Consciousness Hegel was particularly interested in the way in which the human vision of the Absolute came to be formulated or found representation in the particular cultural institutions of society--at various stages along the course of human history.

German scholarship (indeed much of all European scholarship) after Hegel was fairly single-minded in this quest of an all-determining transcendent world Spirit.  Things were studied in order to draw out the hidden pattern of this Spirit--so as to enable man to work in cooperation with such divine destiny.  This was a powerful idea, affecting the new sciences of anthropology (F.M. Müller, E.B. Taylor) and sociology (E. Durkheim, M. Weber). It also formed the underpinning of the revolutionary zeal of the young reformers of Germany, the "Young Hegelians," who interpreted Hegel's philosophy as a mandate to work with and for the World Spirit in bringing about a heightened or evolved cultural development. This revolutionary attitude even became part of the Scientific Socialism of Karl Marx.  Marx's philosophy, though its Materialist foundations were diametrically opposed to Hegel's Idealism, was strongly influenced by Hegel's idea of a transcending principle moving through history.   In the hands of Marx, this principle directed the revolutionary course of human life, especially in the stage by stage development of the economic class-base of society. Hegelianism also touched on group pride, as nations or classes came to see themselves as being under the special anointing of the world Spirit to take the lead to direct history into the next era.  This fed powerfully into German nationalism, with its sense of special German historical destiny.  This also fed powerfully into the working class movement which came to view the workers of the world as the true moral underpinning of the world to come.

Hegel's major works or writings: Der Geist des Christentums und sein Schicksal"      ("The Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate") (1798?) The Phenomenology of Mind (or Spirit) (1807) The Objective Logic (1812-13) The Subjective Logic (1816) Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciencies      (1817, republished and expanded many times thereafter)      Science of Logic      Philosophy of Spirit      Philosophy of Nature Philosophy of Right (1821) Philosophy of Religion (1832) History of Philosophy (1833-36) Philosophy of Fine Art (1835-38) Philosophy of History (1837)

Go to the history section: Political and Social Ferment  (Early to Mid-1800s)

  Miles H. Hodges