Hegel

Posted for Dina Assad #6-

Hegel was born on 27 August 1770 in Stuttgart, Germany. He was the son of Georg Ludwig Hegel, who was secretary to the revenue office at the court of the Duke of Wurttemberg, and Maria Magdalena Louisa. From a young age, Hegel was a hardworking person and a successful student. Not also was he a smart kid, but Hegel spoke six different languages: German, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, and English. At the age of eighteen, Hegel entered the Tubinger Stiff, a Protestant seminar attached the University of Tubingen. He became close friends with Friedrich Holderlin and Friedrich Shelling.

In 1793, Hegel became house tutor to an aristocratic family in Switzerland, and took a similar position in Frankfurt-am-Main. During this time h was producing some works of Christianity. In 1801, Hegel took a position as an unsalaried lecturer at the University of Jena. He lectured on Login and Metaphysics, and with the help of Shelling, he joint lectures on an “Introduction to the Ideas and Limits of True Philosophy.” Hegel and Schelling published their first journal in 1802, “Kritische Journal der Philosophie.” He then produced his own book on Philosophy “Differenz des Fichteschen und Schellingschen Systems der Philosophie" ("The Difference between Fichte's and Schelling's Systems of Philosophy"). In 1805, the University promoted him to become the Extraordinary Posted for Professor but not later when Bonaparte closed the University and he was forced to move from Jena and accept a job as an editor of a newspaper in the “Bamberger Zeitung”, in Bamberg. Later in 1816, Hegel taught at the University of Heidelberg and then took offer of the chair of philosophy at the University of Berlin, where he remained there until his death in 1831. He published his "Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts" ("Elements of the Philosophy of Right") in 1821. During the Nuremberg years, Hegel met and married Marie von Tucher.

“Hegel’s aim was to set forth a philosophical system so comprehensive that it would encompass the ideas of his predecessors and create a conceptual framework in terms of which both the past and future could be philosophically understood. Such an aim would require nothing short of a full account of reality itself (MS Encarta Encyclopedia).”

Concerning the rational structure of the Absolute, Hegel followed Parmenides, a Greek philosopher, argued that “What is rational is real and what is real is rational.” “This must be understood in terms of Hegel’s further claim that the Absolute must ultimately be regarded as pure Thought, or Spirit, or Mind, in the process of self-development. The logic that governs this developmental process is dialectic. The dialectical method involves the notion that movement, or process, or progress, is the result of the conflict of opposites” (MS Encarta Encyclopedia).

Hegel’s philosophy was mostly about Politics and Ethics, History, Self- Knowledge of the Absolute, and Dialectic. At the time of his death, Hegel was the most prominent philosopher in Germany. His views were widely taught and his students were highly regarded. His studies are still being studied today and he is considered one of the most influential philosopher today.