Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Hegel (1770–1831) belongs to the period of German idealism in the decades following Kant.
Hegel attempted, throughout his published writings as well as in his lectures, to elaborate a
comprehensive and systematic philosophy from a purportedly logical starting point. He is
perhaps most well-known for his teleological account of history.
Born in 1770 in Stuttgart, Hegel spent the years 1788–1793 as a student studying first
philosophy, and then theology, and forming friendships with fellow students, the future great
romantic poet Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843) and Friedrich von Schelling (1775–1854), who,
like Hegel, would become one of the major figures of the German philosophical scene in the first
half of the nineteenth century. These friendships clearly had a major influence on Hegel’s
philosophical development, and for a while the intellectual lives of the three were closely
intertwined. Until around 1800, Hegel devoted himself to developing his ideas on religious and
social themes, and seemed to have envisaged a future for himself as a type of modernising and
reforming educator.
By late 1806 Hegel had completed his first major work, the Phenomenology of Spirit (published
1807). During the following ten years up to his death in 1831 Hegel enjoyed celebrity at Berlin,
and published subsequent versions of the Encyclopaedia. After his death versions of his lectures
on philosophy of history, philosophy of religion, aesthetics, and the history of philosophy were
published. His works include Philosophy Of, Theory Of State, Theory of History and Dialectic,
Philosophy of Right, Philosophy of Law, Philosophy of History and more.
Hegel’s theory has a sense of certainty and a range of interpretation which generates a power of
its own. Behind the metaphysics of his work there is represented a theoretical attitude of mind
which is often dominated in politics and which is one of the most difficult to understand.
Hegel right at the beginning of The Philosophy wishes to stress that things that he calls Reason
and Spirit are real and are forces that actually exist and play a vital role in politics. Hegel says
that the history of the world is not an accidental series of events over time instead it’s a rational
and comprehensible plan. Hegel names this pattern of purposeful historical development “Idea”.
It is a coherent and rational spirit that gives direction and purpose to the material world. Neither
can it be escaped nor can anyone be exempted from its imperatives. The idea is one big form
which encompasses all the ideal qualities of freedom, justice and whatever other political
abstractions may happen to be relevant to the society at a given time. Idea refers to the universal
reason, morality and principle. The plans made by individual men, by groups of men, bear no
casual. To experience a good life, an individual must seek to understand the history which they
are a part of. Freedom lies in human understanding rather than that human action. Freedom lies
in knowing rather than acting. To realize freedom individuals and institutions must understand
how they fit into the overall pattern of history. Free individual is characterized not by his
uninhibited behaviour but by his realization of his unique role in history. “History of the world is
none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom”
Dialectic
Hegel regards individuals to be like actors in a drama whose roles are decided and directed by
the creator which he considers to be the Idea. The world is the stage, God is the author and Idea
is the plot. Idea is everchanging and is in perpetual development. It is at constant war with itself.
Hegel’s history is not a straight-line progression but a never-ending battlefield of ideas. The
theory of dialectic is simple. The idea at any given point in time may be called the “thesis” which
is the established expression of the