Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1770-1831

[Mentioned in No and Yes, p. 22]

Hegel, the noted German philosopher, was descended from a Protestant refugee family that fled Austria during the Counter Reformation and settled in Württemberg. After a preliminary classical education in Stuttgart, his birthplace, he entered the University of Tübingen as a theological student. Here he did not win any special distinction as a scholar, since he was slow in coming to intellectual maturity.

Upon obtaining his degree, Hegel was a tutor for several years. During this time he wrote a life of Jesus, eliminating from it all that to him savored of the miraculous. His philosophic interests were now developing rapidly, and in 1801 he went to Jena to pursue his studies in philosophy.

Soon he was teaching at the university. In a few years he finished the first of his speculative works, the "Phenomenology of Spirit," which he described as his "voyage of discovery." Except for a period of disruption caused by the Napoleonic Wars, he taught for the rest of his life. The recognition that came with the publication of his great "Logic" brought him in 1816 the professorship of philosophy first at Heidelberg and two years later in Berlin, where he occupied the chair formerly held by Fichte. Here, according to one writer, Hegel held a place in philosophy "almost analogous to that which Goethe held in the world of letters."

In many ways Hegel dominated nineteenth century philosophic thought. His philosophy included the fields of logic, ethics, politics, history, art, religion, and the history of philosophy itself. His admirers felt that he had embraced the whole of human experience within his system, but his critics held that his language was unintelligible and that what was regarded as profundity was really obscurity.

Hegel's chief contribution to thought was his dialectical method. According to this, every concept in time produces its opposite, and this, in turn, leads to a reconciliation of the two at a higher level. To describe this process he used the terms "thesis." "antithesis," and "synthesis."' Karl Marx borrowed this process of logic for his dialectical materialism. Hegel is classified as an idealist; his idealism is, however, the speculative sort. He seeks to explain the world rationally, not to better it spiritually. The twentieth century has repudiated Hegel's complicated rational system, and today his influence is slight.

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