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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel[a] (27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a German philosopher and one of the most influential figures of German idealism and 19th-century philosophy.
- Overview
- Early life
In Stuttgart, Hegel’s birthplace, he attended grammar schools from the age of three and the Gymnasium Illustre, an academic preparatory school, from the age of six or seven. From 1788 to 1793 he studied classics, philosophy, and theology at the University of Tübingen, earning an M.A. degree in 1790.
What were Hegel’s jobs?
Hegel worked as a private tutor (1793–1801), an unpaid lecturer (1801–05) and extraordinary professor (1805–07) at the University of Jena, a newspaper editor (1807–08), a rector of an academic preparatory school (1808–16), and a professor of philosophy at the Universities of Heidelberg (1816–18) and Berlin (1818–31).
What did Hegel write?
Hegel’s major works included the Phenomenology of Spirit (1807; also called the Phenomenology of Mind); the Science of Logic, in two parts (1812 and 1816); Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1817); the Philosophy of Right (1821); and posthumously published lectures on aesthetics, the philosophy of religion, and the history of philosophy, among other topics.
Why is Hegel significant?
Hegel was the son of a revenue officer. He had already learned the elements of Latin from his mother by the time he entered the Stuttgart grammar school, where he remained for his education until he was 18. As a schoolboy he made a collection of extracts, alphabetically arranged, comprising annotations on classical authors, passages from newspapers, and treatises on morals and mathematics from the standard works of the period.
Britannica Quiz
Philosophy 101
In 1788 Hegel went as a student to Tübingen with a view to taking orders, as his parents wished. Here he studied philosophy and classics for two years and graduated in 1790. Though he then took the theological course, he was impatient with the orthodoxy of his teachers; and the certificate given to him when he left in 1793 states that, whereas he had devoted himself vigorously to philosophy, his industry in theology was intermittent. He was also said to be poor in oral exposition, a deficiency that was to dog him throughout his life. Though his fellow students called him “the old man,” he liked cheerful company and a “sacrifice to Bacchus” and enjoyed the company of women as well. His chief friends during that period were a pantheistic poet, J.C.F. Hölderlin, his contemporary, and the nature philosopher Schelling, five years his junior. Together they read the Greek tragedians and celebrated the glories of the French Revolution.
On leaving college, Hegel did not enter the ministry; instead, wishing to have leisure for the study of philosophy and Greek literature, he became a private tutor. For the next three years he lived in Berne, with time on his hands and the run of a good library, where he read Edward Gibbon on the fall of the Roman Empire and De l’esprit des loix (1750; The Spirit of Laws), by Charles Louis, baron de Montesquieu, as well as the Greek and Roman classics. He also studied the critical philosopher Immanuel Kant and was stimulated by his essay on religion to write certain papers that became noteworthy only when, more than a century later, they were published as a part of Hegels theologische Jugendschriften (1907; Early Theological Writings). Kant had maintained that, whereas orthodoxy requires a faith in historical facts and in doctrines that reason alone cannot justify and imposes on the faithful a moral system of arbitrary commands alleged to be revealed, Jesus, on the contrary, had originally taught a rational morality, which was reconcilable with the teaching of Kant’s ethical works, and a religion that, unlike Judaism, was adapted to the reason of all people. Hegel accepted this teaching; but, being more of a historian than Kant was, he put it to the test of history by writing two essays. The first of these was a life of Jesus in which Hegel attempted to reinterpret the Gospel on Kantian lines. The second essay was an answer to the question of how Christianity had ever become the authoritarian religion that it was, if in fact the teaching of Jesus was not authoritarian but rationalistic.
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Hegel’s significant contributions to the understanding of history, human consciousness and the interconnectedness of ideas have left an enduring mark on intellectual history, ensuring that his legacy remains a crucial point of reference for future generations of thinkers and scholars alike.
Feb 13, 1997 · I have suggested that in the syllogism of necessity with which Hegel’s treatment of inference terminates we get a glimpse of a type of contentful and dynamic rational process unfolding in the midst of the recognitive and communicative interactions between finite living and intentional beings.
His work was central in British thought until the end of the nineteenth century, and also important among the teachers of American political progressives. Although his dominance inevitably faded, the breadth, rigor, and power of his intelligence place him in the first rank among philosophers.
He showed remarkable curiosity, a wide extent of interests and readings. At eight, Hegel obtained the complete works of Shakespeare (18 volumes, in a German translation) from his beloved teacher, Löffler. Among the Greek writers his favourites were Plato, Socrates, Homer and Aristotle.
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He was born in 1770, at the dawn of a profound revolutionary period in history. From a cultural point of view, Hegel lived in the golden age of German literature. Most significant of all for Hegel's development was the state of German philosophy in the period in which he worked.
