Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a German philosopher and a major figure in the tradition of German idealism. His influence on Western philosophy extends across a wide range of topics—from metaphysical issues in epistemology and ontology, to political philosophy, to philosophy of art and philosophy of religion. Hegel was born in Stuttgart. His life spanned the transitional period between the Enlightenment and the Romantic movement. His thought was shaped by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, events which he interpreted from a philosophical perspective. His academic career culminated in his appointment to the chair of philosophy at the University of Berlin, where he remained a prominent intellectual figure until his death. Throughout his work, Hegel strove to correct what he argued were untenable dualisms common in modern philosophy. His principal achievement was the development of a comprehensive philosophical system, often termed absolute idealism, to account for reality as a unified whole. Central to this system is the concept of "spirit" (Geist), which Hegel presented as humankind coming to know itself through a historical process of rational development. Hegel's characteristic procedure, often termed dialectical or speculative, assesses concepts and forms of consciousness according to their own internal criteria, revealing their contradictions and one-sidedness. This leads to their resolution in a higher, more comprehensive unity which both cancels and preserves the initial stage. His major works, including the Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) and the Science of Logic (1812–1816), detail this systematic vision. In his political philosophy, he famously asserted that "world history is progress in the consciousness of freedom." Hegel's influence has been profound and divisive. After his death, his followers split into rival "Right" and "Left" Hegelian camps. The Left, including Ludwig Feuerbach and Karl Marx, adapted his dialectical method for their materialist critiques of religion and society. In the twentieth century, his thought was further developed in traditions such as French Hegelianism and critical theory, and became a major point of reference for existentialism.
Life
Formative years
Stuttgart, Tübingen, Berne, Frankfurt (1770–1800) Hegel was born on 27 August 1770 in Stuttgart, capital of the Duchy of Württemberg in the Holy Roman Empire (now southwestern Germany). Christened Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, he was known as Wilhelm to his close family. His father, Georg Ludwig Hegel (1733–1799), was secretary to the revenue office at the court of Karl Eugen, Duke of Württemberg. Hegel's mother, Maria Magdalena Louisa Hegel, née Fromm (1741–1783), was the daughter of a lawyer at the High Court of Justice at the Württemberg court Ludwig Albrecht Fromm (1696–1758). She died of bilious fever when Hegel was thirteen. Hegel and his father also caught the disease but narrowly survived. Hegel had a sister, Christiane Luise (1773–1832); and a brother, Georg Ludwig (1776–1812), who perished as an officer during Napoleon's 1812 Russian campaign. At the age of three, Hegel went to the German School. When he entered the Latin School two years later, he already knew the first declension, having been taught it by his mother. In 1776, he entered Stuttgart's Eberhard-Ludwigs-Gymnasium and during his adolescence read voraciously, copying lengthy extracts in his diary. Authors he read include the poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock and writers associated with the Enlightenment, such as Christian Garve and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. Hegel's first biographer, Karl Rosenkranz, described in 1844 the young Hegel's education there by saying that it "belonged entirely to the Enlightenment with respect to principle, and entirely to classical antiquity with respect to curriculum." His studies at the Gymnasium concluded with his graduation speech, "The abortive state of art and scholarship in Turkey."
At the age of eighteen, Hegel entered the Tübinger Stift, a Protestant seminary attached to the University of Tübingen, where he had as roommates the poet and philosopher Friedrich Hölderlin and the future philosopher Friedrich Schelling. Sharing a dislike for what they regarded as the restrictive environment of the Seminary, the three became close friends and mutually influenced each other's ideas. (It is mostly likely that Hegel attended the Stift because it was state-funded, for he had "a profound distaste for the study of orthodox theology" and never wanted to become a minister.) All three greatly admired Hellenic civilization, and Hegel additionally steeped himself in Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Lessing during this time. They watched the unfolding of the French Revolution with shared enthusiasm. Although the violence of the 1793 Reign of Terror dampened Hegel's hopes, he continued to identify with the moderate Girondin faction and never lost his commitment to the principles of 1789, which he expressed by drinking a toast to the storming of the Bastille every fourteenth of July. Schelling and Hölderlin immersed themselves in theoretical debates on Kantian philosophy, from which Hegel remained aloof. Hegel, at this time, envisaged his future as that of a Popularphilosoph (a "man of letters") who serves to make the abstruse ideas of philosophers accessible to a wider public; his own felt need to engage critically with the central ideas of Kantianism would not come until 1800.
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