Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel ( ; August 27, 1770 – November 14, 1831) was a German philosopher, and a major figure in German Idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality revolutionized European philosophy and was an important precursor to Continental philosophy and Marxism.
Hegel developed a comprehensive philosophical framework, or "system", of Absolute idealism to account in an integrated and developmental way for the relation of mind and nature, the subject and object of knowledge, psychology, the state, history, art, religion, and philosophy. In particular, he developed the concept that mind or spirit manifested itself in a set of contradictions and oppositions that it ultimately integrated and united, without eliminating either pole or reducing one to the other. Examples of such contradictions include those between nature and freedom, and between immanence and transcendence.
Hegel influenced writers of widely varying positions, including both his admirers (Strauss, Bauer, Feuerbach, T. H. Green, Baur, Marx, Engels, Vygotsky, F. H. Bradley, Dewey, Sartre, Croce, Dilthey, Gadamer, Küng, Kojève, Fukuyama, Žižek, Brandom, Iqbal) and his detractors (Schopenhauer, Herbart, Schelling, Kierkegaard, Stirner, Nietzsche, Peirce, James, Popper, Russell, Heidegger, Deleuze). His influential conceptions are of speculative logic or "dialectic", "absolute idealism", "Spirit", negativity, sublation (Aufhebung in German), the "Master/Slave" dialectic, "ethical life" and the importance of history.
Read more about Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Works, Legacy
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“The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“It is a matter of perfect indifference where a thing originated; the only question is: “Is it true in and for itself?””
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“It is a matter of perfect indifference where a thing originated; the only question is: “Is it true in and for itself?””
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“The East knew and to the present day knows only that One is Free; the Greek and the Roman world, that some are free; the German World knows that All are free. The first political form therefore which we observe in History, is Despotism, the second Democracy and Aristocracy, the third, Monarchy.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“Whatever does not spring from a man’s free choice, or is only the result of instruction and guidance, does not enter into his very being, but still remains alien to his true nature; he does not perform it with truly human energies, but merely with mechanical exactness.”
—Karl Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835)
“It is easier to discover a deficiency in individuals, in states, and in Providence, than to see their real import and value.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“We ought, says Kant, to become acquainted with the instrument, before we undertake the work for which it is to be employed; for if the instrument be insufficient, all our trouble will be spent in vain. The plausibility of this suggestion has won for it general assent and admiration.... But the examination can be only carried out by an act of knowledge. To examine this so-called instrument is the same as to know it.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)