Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Life

Formative years

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.

Career years

In 1801, Hegel came to Jena at the encouragement of Schelling, who held the position of Extraordinary Professor at the University of Jena. Hegel secured a position at the University of Jena as a Privatdozent (unsalaried lecturer) after submitting the inaugural dissertation De Orbitis Planetarum, in which he briefly criticized mathematical arguments that assert that there must exist a planet between Mars and Jupiter. Later in the year, Hegel's essay The Difference Between Fichte's and Schelling's System of Philosophy was completed. He lectured on "Logic and Metaphysics" and gave lectures with Schelling on an "Introduction to the Idea and Limits of True Philosophy" and facilitated a "philosophical disputorium." In 1802, Schelling and Hegel founded the journal Kritische Journal der Philosophie (Critical Journal of Philosophy) to which they contributed until the collaboration ended when Schelling left for Würzburg in 1803. In 1805, the university promoted Hegel to the unsalaried position of extraordinary professor after he wrote a letter to the poet and minister of culture Johann Wolfgang von Goethe protesting the promotion of his philosophical adversary Jakob Friedrich Fries ahead of him. Hegel attempted to enlist the help of the poet and translator Johann Heinrich Voß to obtain a post at the renascent University of Heidelberg, but he failed. To his chagrin, Fries was, in the same year, made ordinary professor (salaried). The following February marked the birth of Hegel's illegitimate son, Georg Ludwig Friedrich Fischer (1807–1831), as the result of an affair with Hegel's landlady Christiana Burkhardt née Fischer. With his finances drying up quickly, Hegel was under great pressure to deliver his book, the long-promised introduction to his philosophical system. Hegel was putting the finishing touches to it, The Phenomenology of Spirit, as Napoleon engaged Prussian troops on 14 October 1806 in the Battle of Jena on a plateau outside the city. On the day before the battle, Napoleon entered the city of Jena. Hegel recounted his impressions in a letter to his friend Friedrich Immanuel Niethammer:

I saw the Emperor – this world-soul [Weltseele] – riding out of the city on reconnaissance. It is indeed a wonderful sensation to see such an individual, who, concentrated here at a single point, astride a horse, reaches out over the world and masters it.

Hegel biographer Terry Pinkard notes that Hegel's comment to Niethammer "is all the more striking since he had already composed the crucial section of the Phenomenology in which he remarked that the Revolution had now officially passed to another land (Germany) that would complete 'in thought' what the Revolution had only partially accomplished in practice." Although Napoleon had spared the University of Jena from much of the destruction of the surrounding city, few students returned after the battle and enrollment suffered, making Hegel's financial prospects even worse. Hegel traveled in the winter to Bamberg and stayed with Niethammer to oversee the proofs of the Phenomenology, which was being printed there. Although Hegel tried to obtain another professorship, even writing Goethe in an attempt to help secure a permanent position replacing a professor of botany, he was unable to find a permanent position. In 1807, he had to move to Bamberg since his savings and the payment from the Phenomenology were exhausted and he needed money to support his illegitimate son Ludwig. There, he became the editor of the local newspaper, Bamberger a position he obtained with the help of Niethammer. Ludwig Fischer and his mother stayed behind in Jena.

Influences

As H. S. Harris recounts, when Hegel entered the Tübingen seminary in 1788, "he was a typical product of the German Enlightenment – an enthusiastic reader of Rousseau and Lessing, acquainted with Kant (at least at second hand), but perhaps more deeply devoted to the classics than to any thing modern." During this early period of his life "the Greeks – especially Plato – came first." Although he later elevated Aristotle above Plato, Hegel never abandoned his love of ancient philosophy, the imprint of which is everywhere in his thought.

Hegel's concern with various forms of cultural unity (Judaic, Greek, medieval, and modern) during this early period would remain with him throughout his career. In this way, he was also a typical product of early German Romanticism. "Unity of life" was the phrase used by Hegel and his generation to express their concept of the highest good. It encompasses unity "with oneself, with others, and with nature. The main threat to such unity consists in division (Entzweiung) or alienation (Entfremdung)."

In this respect, Hegel was particularly taken with the phenomenon of love as a kind of "unity-in-difference," this both in the ancient articulation provided by Plato and in the Christian religion's doctrine of agape, which Hegel at this time viewed as "already 'grounded on universal Reason.'" This interest, as well as his theological training, would continue to mark his thought, even as it developed in a more theoretical or metaphysical direction.

According to Glenn Alexander Magee, Hegel's thought (in particular, the tripartite structure of his system) also owes much to the hermetic tradition, in particular, the work of Jakob Böhme. The conviction that philosophy must take the form of a system Hegel owed, most particularly, to his Tübingen roommates, Schelling and Hölderlin.

Hegel also read widely and was much influenced by Adam Smith and other theorists of the political economy.

It was Kant's critical philosophy that provided what Hegel took as the definitive modern articulation of the divisions that must be overcome. This led to his engagement with the philosophical programs of Fichte and Schelling, as well as his attention to Spinoza and the pantheism controversy. The influence of Johann Gottfried von Herder, however, would lead Hegel to a qualified rejection of the universality claimed by the Kantian program in favor of a more culturally, linguistically, and historically informed account of reason.

Phenomenology of Spirit

Phenomenology of Spirit was published in 1807. This is the first time that, at the age of thirty-six, Hegel lays out "his own distinctive approach" and adopts an "outlook that is recognizably 'Hegelian' to the philosophical problems of post-Kantian philosophy". Yet, the book was poorly understood even by Hegel's contemporaries and received mostly negative reviews. To this day, the Phenomenology is infamous for, among other things, its conceptual and allusive density, idiosyncratic terminology, and confusing transitions. Its most comprehensive commentary, scholar H. S. Harris's two-volume Hegel's Ladder (The Pilgrimage of Reason and The Odyssey of Spirit), runs more than three times the length of the text itself.

The fourth chapter of the Phenomenology includes Hegel's first presentation of the lord–bondsman dialectic, the section of the book that has been most influential in general culture. What is at stake in the conflict Hegel presents is the practical (not theoretical) recognition or acknowledgement [Anerkennung, anerkennen] of the universality – i.e., personhood, humanity – of each of two opposed self-consciousnesses. What the readers learn, but what the self-consciousnesses described do not yet realize, is that recognition can only be successful and actual as reciprocal or mutual. This is the case for the simple reason that the recognition of someone you do not recognize as properly human cannot count as genuine recognition. Hegel can also be seen here as criticizing the individualist worldview of people and society as a collection of atomized individuals, instead taking a holistic view of human self-consciousness as requiring the recognition of others, and people's view of themselves as being shaped by the views of others.

Hegel describes the Phenomenology as both the "introduction" to his philosophical system and also as the "first part" of that system as the "science of the experience of consciousness." Yet it has long been controversial in both respects; indeed, Hegel's own attitude changed throughout his life.

Nevertheless, however complicated the details, the basic strategy by which it attempts to make good on its introductory claim is not difficult to state. Beginning with only the most basic "certainties of consciousness itself," "the most immediate of which is the certainty that I am conscious of this object, here and now," Hegel aims to show that these "certainties of natural consciousness" have as their consequence the standpoint of speculative logic.

Philosophical system

Hegel's philosophical system is divided into three parts: the science of logic, the philosophy of nature, and the philosophy of spirit (the latter two of which together constitute the real philosophy). This structure is adopted from Proclus's Neoplatonic triad of "'remaining-procession-return' and from the Christian Trinity." Although evident in draft writings dating back as early as 1805, the system was not completed in published form until the 1817 Encyclopedia (1st ed.).

Historian of philosophy Frederick C. Beiser argues that the position of the logic with respect to the real philosophy is best understood in terms of Hegel's appropriation of Aristotle's distinction between "the order of explanation" and "the order of being." To Beiser, Hegel is neither a Platonist who believes in abstract logical entities, nor a nominalist according to whom the particular is first in the orders of explanation and being alike. Rather, Hegel is a holist. For Hegel, the universal is always first in the order of explanation even if what is naturally particular is first in the order of being. With respect to the system as a whole, that universal is supplied by the logic.

Scholar Michael J. Inwood states, "The logical idea is non-temporal and therefore does not exist at any time apart from its manifestations." To ask "when" it divides into nature and spirit is analogous to asking "when" 12 divides into 5 and 7. The question does not have an answer because it is predicated upon a fundamental misunderstanding of its terms. The task of the logic (at this high systemic level) is to articulate what Hegel calls "the identity of identity and non-identity" of nature and spirit. Put another way, it aims to overcome subject–object dualism. This is to say that, among other things, Hegel's philosophical project endeavors to provide the metaphysical basis for an account of spirit that is continuous with, yet distinct from, the "merely" natural world – without thereby reducing either term to the other.

Furthermore, the final sections of Hegel's Encyclopedia suggest that to give priority to any one of its three parts is to have an interpretation that is "one-sided," incomplete or otherwise inaccurate. As Hegel declares, "The true is the whole."

Science of Logic

Hegel's concept of logic differs greatly from that of the ordinary English sense of the term. This can be seen, for instance, in such metaphysical definitions of logic as "the science of things grasped in [the] thoughts that used to be taken to express the essentialities of the things." As Michael Wolff explains, Hegel's logic is a continuation of Kant's distinctive logical program. Its occasional engagement with the familiar Aristotelian conception of logic is only incidental to Hegel's project. Twentieth-century developments by such logicians as Frege and Russell likewise remain logics of formal validity and so are likewise irrelevant to Hegel's project, which aspires to provide a metaphysical logic of truth.

There are two texts of Hegel's Logic. The first, The Science of Logic (1812, 1813, 1816; Book I revised 1831), is sometimes also called the "Greater Logic." The second is the first volume of Hegel's Encyclopedia and is sometimes known as the "Lesser Logic." The Encyclopedia Logic is an abbreviated or condensed presentation of the same dialectic. Hegel composed it for use with students in the lecture hall, not as a substitute for its proper, book-length exposition.

Hegel presents logic as a presuppositionless science that investigates the most fundamental thought-determinations [Denkbestimmungen], or categories, and so constitutes the basis of philosophy. In putting something into question, one already presupposes logic; in this regard, it is the only field of inquiry that must constantly reflect upon its own mode of functioning. The Science of Logic is Hegel's attempt to meet this foundational demand. As he puts it, "logic coincides with metaphysics." In the words of scholar Glenn Alexander Magee, the logic provides "an account of pure categories or ideas which are timelessly true" and which make up "the formal structure of reality itself".

This is not, however, a return to the Leibnizian–Wolffian rationalism critiqued by Kant, which is a criticism Hegel accepts. Hegel rejects any form of metaphysics as speculation about the transcendent. His procedure, an appropriation of Aristotle's concept of form, is fully immanent. More generally, Hegel agrees with Kant's rejection of all forms of dogmatism and also agrees that any future metaphysics must pass the test of criticism.

Philosopher Béatrice Longuenesse holds that this project may be understood, on analogy to Kant, as "inseparably a metaphysical and a transcendental deduction of the categories of metaphysics." This approach insists, and claims to demonstrate, that the insights of logic cannot be judged by standards external to thought itself, that is, that "thought... is not the mirror of nature." Yet, she argues, this does not imply that these standards are arbitrary or subjective. Hegel's translator and scholar of German idealism George di Giovanni likewise interprets the Logic as (drawing upon, yet also in opposition to, Kant) immanently transcendental; its categories, according to Hegel, are built into life itself, and define what it is to be "an object in general."

Philosophy of the real

In contrast to the first, logical part of Hegel's system, the second, real-philosophical part – the philosophy of nature and of spirit – is an ongoing project with respect to its historical content, which continues to change and develop. For instance, although Hegel regards "the basic structure" of the philosophy of nature as complete, he was "aware that science is not 'finished' and will continue to make new discoveries". Philosophy is, as Hegel puts it, "its own time comprehended in thoughts."

He expands upon this definition:

A further word on the subject of issuing instructions on how the world ought to be: philosophy, at any rate, always comes too late to perform this function. As the thought of the world, it appears only at a time when actuality has gone through its formative process and attained its completed state [sich fertig gemacht]. This lesson of the concept is necessarily also apparent from history, namely that it is only when actuality [Wirklichkeit] has reached maturity that the ideal appears opposite the real and reconstructs this real world, which it has grasped in its substance, in the shape of an intellectual realm. When philosophy paints its gray in gray, a shape of life has grown old, and it cannot be rejuvenated, but only recognized, by the gray in gray of philosophy; the owl of Minerva begins its flight only with the onset of dusk.

This frequently has been read as an expression of the impotence of philosophy, political or otherwise, and a rationalization of the status quo. Scholar Allegra de Laurentiis, however, points out that the German expression "sich fertig machen", translated as "getting ready" or "to get ready", does not only imply completion, but also preparedness. This additional meaning is important because it better reflects Hegel's Aristotelian concept of actuality. He characterizes actuality as being-at-work-staying-itself that can never be once-and-for-all completed or finished.

Hegel describes the relationship between the logical and the real-philosophical parts of his system in this way: "If philosophy does not stand above its time in content, it does so in form, because, as the thought and knowledge of that which is the substantial spirit of its time, it makes that spirit its object."

This is to say that what makes the philosophy of the real scientific in Hegel's technical sense is the systematically coherent logical form it uncovers in its natural-historical material – and so also displays in its presentation.

The Philosophy of Nature

The philosophy of nature organizes the contingent material of the natural sciences systematically. As part of the philosophy of the real, in no way does it presume to "tell nature what it must be like." Historically, various interpreters have questioned Hegel's understanding of the natural sciences of his time. However, this claim has been largely refuted by recent scholarship.

One of the very few ways in which the philosophy of nature might correct claims made by the natural sciences themselves is to combat reductive explanations; that is, to discredit accounts employing categories not adequate to the complexity of the phenomena they purport to explain, as for instance, attempting to explain life in strictly chemical terms.

Although Hegel and other Naturphilosophen aim to revive a teleological understanding of nature, they argue that their strictly internal or immanent concept of teleology is "limited to the ends observable within nature itself." Hence, they claim, it does not violate the Kantian critique. Even more strongly, Hegel and Schelling claim that Kant's restriction of teleology to regulative status effectively undermines his own critical project of explaining the possibility of knowledge. Their argument is that "only under the assumption that there is an organism is it possible to explain the actual interaction between the subjective and the objective, the ideal and the real." Hence, the organism must be acknowledged to have constitutive status.

Introducing Hegel's philosophy of nature for a 21st-century audience, Dieter Wandschneider observes that "contemporary philosophy of science" has lost sight of "the ontological issue at stake, namely, the question of an intrinsically lawful nature": "Consider, for example, the problem of what constitutes a law of nature. This problem is central to our understanding of nature. Yet philosophy of science has not provided a definitive response to it up to now. Nor can we expect to have such an answer from that quarter in future." It is back to Hegel that Wandschneider would direct philosophers of science for guidance in the philosophy of nature.

Recent scholars have also argued that Hegel's approach to the philosophy of nature provides valuable resources for theorizing and confronting recent environmental challenges entirely unforeseen by Hegel. These philosophers point to such aspects of his philosophy as its distinctive metaphysical grounding and the continuity of its conception of the nature-spirit relationship.

The Philosophy of Spirit

The German Geist has a wide range of meanings. In its most general Hegelian sense, however, "Geist denotes the human mind and its products, in contrast to nature and also the logical idea." (Some older translations render it as "mind," rather than "spirit.")

As is especially evident in the Anthropology, Hegel's concept of spirit is an appropriation and transformation of the self-referential Aristotelian concept of energeia. Spirit is not something above or otherwise external to nature. It is "the highest organization and development" of nature's powers.

According to Hegel, "the essence of spirit is freedom." The Encyclopedia Philosophy of Spirit charts the progressively determinate stages of this freedom until spirit fulfills the Delphic imperative with which Hegel begins: "Know thyself."

As becomes clear, Hegel's concept of freedom is not (or not merely) the capacity for arbitrary choice, but has as its "core notion" that "something, especially a person, is free if and only if, it is independent and self-determining, not determined by or dependent upon something other than itself." It is, in other words, (at least predominantly, dialectically) an account of what Isaiah Berlin would later term positive liberty.

Standing at the transition from nature to spirit, the role of the Philosophy of Subjective Spirit is to analyze "the elements necessary for or presupposed by such relations [of objective spirit], namely, the structures characteristic of and necessary to the individual rational agent." It does this by elaborating "the fundamental nature of the biological/spiritual human individual along with the cognitive and the practical prerequisites of human social interaction."

This section, particularly its first part, contains various comments that were commonplace in Hegel's day and can now be recognized as openly racist, such as unfounded claims about the "naturally" lower intellectual and emotional development of Black people. In his perspective, these racial differences are related to climate: according to Hegel, it is not racial characteristics, but the climatic conditions in which a people lives that variously limit or enable its capacity for free self-determination. He believes that race is not destiny: any group could, in principle, improve and transform its condition by migrating to friendlier climes.

Philosophy of art

In the Phenomenology, and even in the 1817 edition of the Encyclopedia, Hegel discusses art only as it figures in what he terms the "Art-Religion" of the ancient Greeks. In 1818, however, Hegel begins lecturing on the philosophy of art as an explicitly autonomous domain.

Although H. G. Hotho titled his edition of the Lectures Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik [Lectures on Aesthetics], Hegel directly states that his topic is not "the spacious realm of the beautiful," but "art, or, rather, fine art." He doubles down on this in the next paragraph by explicitly distinguishing his project from the broader philosophical projects pursued under the heading of "aesthetics" by Christian Wolff and Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten.

Some critics – most canonically, Benedetto Croce, in 1907 – have attributed to Hegel some form of the thesis that art is "dead." Hegel, however, never said any such thing, nor can such a view be plausibly attributed to him. Indeed, one commentator places that debate in perspective with the observation that Hegel's claim that "art no longer serves our highest aims" is "radical not for the suggestion that art now fails to do so but for the suggestion that it ever did."

Hegel's detailed and systematic treatment of the various arts over such a great span has even led art historian Ernst Gombrich to present Hegel as "the father of art history." For most of their history, Hegel's Lectures were largely ignored by philosophers and received most of their attention from literary critics and art historians.

The more narrowly conceptual project of the philosophy of art, however, is to articulate and defend "the autonomy of art, making possible an account of the special individuality distinguishing works of aesthetic worth."

According to Hegel, "'artistic beauty reveals absolute truth through perception.' He holds that the best art conveys metaphysical knowledge by revealing, through sense perception, what is unconditionally true,'" that is, "what his metaphysical theory affirms to be unconditional or absolute." So, while Hegel "ennobles art insofar as it conveys metaphysical knowledge," "he tempers his assessment in view of his belief that art's sensory media can never adequately convey what completely transcends the contingency of sensation." This is why, according to Hegel, art can only be one of three mutually complementary modes of absolute spirit.

Christianity

Although his understanding of Christianity evolved over time, Hegel identified as a Lutheran his entire life. One constant was his profound appreciation for the Christian insight into the intrinsic worth and freedom of every individual.

Early Romantic writings

Hegel's earliest writings on Christianity date between 1783 and 1800. He was still working out his ideas at this time, and everything from this period was abandoned as fragments or unfinished drafts. Hegel was very much dissatisfied with the dogmatism and positivity of the Christian religion, to which he opposed the spontaneous religion of the Greeks. In The Spirit of Christianity, he proposes a sort of resolution by aligning the universality of Kantian moral philosophy with the universality of the teachings of Jesus; in paraphrase: "The moral principle of the Gospel is charity, or love, and love is the beauty of the heart, a spiritual beauty which combines the Greek Soul and Kant's Moral Reason." Although he did not return to this Romantic formulation, the unification of Greek and Christian thought would remain a preoccupation throughout his life.

The Phenomenology of Spirit

Religion is a major theme throughout the 1807 Phenomenology of Spirit well before it emerges as the explicit topic of the penultimate Religion chapter. This is seen most directly in the metaphysical "unhappiness" of the Augustinian consciousness in chapter IV and in Hegel's depiction of the struggle of the Church of the Faithful with Enlightenment philosophes in chapter VI.

Hegel's proper account of Christianity, however, is to be found in the final section of the Phenomenology just prior to the closing chapter, Absolute Knowing. It is presented under the heading The Revelatory Religion [die offenbare Religion]. By means of philosophical exposition of Christian doctrines such as Incarnation and Resurrection, Hegel claims to demonstrate or to make "manifest" the conceptual truth of Christianity, and so to overcome what has only been positively revealed [geoffenbarte] by explication of its underlying, revelatory truth.

The heart of Hegel's interpretation of Christianity can be seen in his interpretation of the Trinity. God the Father must give Himself existence as finitely human Son, the death of whom discloses His essential being as Spirit – and, crucially, according to Hegel, his [Hegel's] own philosophical concept of spirit makes transparent what is only obscurely represented in the Christian concept of the Trinity. And so it makes manifest the philosophical truth of religion, which now is known.

In an essay on the Phenomenology, George di Giovanni contrasts Kant's rational faith with Hegel's rational religion. On his view, the modern role of religion consists in "expressing and nurturing spirit in its most individual forms" rather than in explaining reality. There is no longer any place for faith in opposition to knowledge. Instead, faith assumes such forms as the trust placed "in individuals close to us, or in the time and place in which we happen to live."

In other words, according to Hegel's philosophical interpretation, Christianity does not require faith in any doctrine that is not fully justified by reason. What is left, then, is the religious community, free to minister to individual needs and to celebrate the absolute freedom of spirit.

Berlin lectures

Hegel's Encyclopedia includes a section on the Revealed Religion, but it is quite short. It is his Berlin Lectures that contain his next presentation of Christianity, which he variously refers to as the "consummate", "absolute", or "revelatory" religion (all equivalent terms in this context). Transcripts of three of Hegel's four courses have been preserved, and they show him to be continually adjusting his emphases and exposition. The interpretation of Christianity that he advances, however, is still very much that which he presented in the Phenomenology – only now he is able to expound at greater length and with greater clarity upon what he had covered earlier in such a condensed fashion.

Issues of interpretation

Walter Jaeschke questions whether Luther would have recognized Hegel's claim to Protestantism. Hegel embraces the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers with his concept of spirit, but rejects the core Lutheran doctrines of sola gratia and sola scriptura. Instead, he affirms as the "fundamental principle" of Protestantism "the obstinacy that does honor to mankind, to refuse to recognize in conviction anything not ratified by thought." On similar grounds, Frederick Beiser, while acknowledging Hegel's apparently sincere profession of Lutheranism, describes Hegel's theology as effectively "the very opposite of Luther's."

Discussing the "Hegel Renaissance" in late 20th-century Anglo-American philosophy, Beiser expresses surprise – given today's highly secular academic culture – at such a surge of interest in Hegel. For, according to Hegel, the divine is the centerpoint of philosophy. Hegel's concept of God differs from theistic conceptions found in orthodox Christianity and from deistic conceptions suggested by eighteenth-century philosophers. Nonetheless, Hegel conceptualizes God as the infinite or absolute, in agreement with the classical definition given by St. Anselm as "that of which nothing greater can be conceived."

Just how to most properly characterize Hegel's distinctive articulation of Christianity was a matter of intense debate even in his own life and, among his students, after his death. Neither theistic, nor deistic, Hegel's god can only be articulated in the philosophical terms of the concept of spirit or his own distinctive logical vocabulary. Nevertheless, Hegel everywhere insists that his is the Christian God.

Philosophy of history

"History", Frederick Beiser writes, "is central to Hegel's conception of philosophy". Philosophy is only possible "if it is historical, only if the philosopher is aware of the origins, context, and development of his doctrines." In this 1993 essay "Hegel's Historicism", Beiser declares this to be "nothing less than a revolution in the history of philosophy." In a 2011 monograph, however, Beiser excludes Hegel from his treatment of the German historicist tradition for the reason that Hegel is more interested in the philosophy of history than in the epistemological project of justifying its status as a science. Moreover, against the relativistic implications of historicism narrowly construed, Hegel's metaphysics of spirit supplies a telos, internal to history itself, in terms of which progress can be measured and assessed. This is the self-consciousness of freedom. The more that awareness of this essential freedom of spirit permeates a culture, the more advanced Hegel claims it to be.

Because freedom, according to Hegel, is the essence of spirit, the developing self-awareness of this is just as much a development in truth as it is in political life. Thinking presupposes an "instinctive belief" in truth, and the history of philosophy, as recounted by Hegel, is a progressive sequence of "system-identifying" concepts of truth.

Whether or not Hegel is a historicist simply depends upon how one defines the term. The importance of history in Hegel's philosophy, however, cannot be denied.

German has two words for "history", Historie and Geschichte. The first refers to "the narrative organization of empirical material". The second "includes an account of the underlying developmental logic (the 'intrinsic ground') of deeds and events". Only the latter procedure can supply a properly universal or philosophical history, and this is the procedure Hegel adopts in all of his historical writings. According to Hegel, humans are distinctly historical creatures because, not only do they exist in time, they also internalize temporal events so that they become, in a profound sense, part of what and who people are, "integral to humanity's self-understanding and self-knowledge." This is why the history of philosophy, for instance, is integral to philosophy itself, it being literally impossible for early philosophers to think what later philosophers, afforded all the riches of their predecessors, could think – and perhaps, with this distance, work through more thoroughly or consistently. From a later perspective, for instance, it becomes apparent that the concept of personhood includes the implication of universality of such a kind as to render contradictory any interpretation or implementation that extends it to some people, but not to others.

Dialectics, speculation, idealism

Hegel is often credited with proceeding according to a "dialectical method"; in point of fact, however, Hegel characterizes his philosophy as "speculative" (spekulativ), rather than dialectical, and uses the term "dialectical" only "quite rarely". This is because, although "Dialektik sometimes stands for the entire movement of the self-articulation of meaning or thought, this term refers more specifically to the self-negation of the determinations of the understanding (Verstand), when they are thought through in their fixedness and opposition."

By contrast, "Hegel describes correct thinking as the methodical interplay of three moments[:]

(a) abstract and intellectual (verständig),

(b) dialectical or negatively rational (negativvernünftig), and

(c) speculative or positively rational (positivvernünftig)."

For example, self-consciousness is "the concept that consciousness has of itself. Thus in this case concept and referent coincide:... 'self-consciousness' refers to mind's taking on the self-contradictory (and thus also self-negating) role of being subject and object of one and the same act of cognition – simultaneously and in the same respect." Hence it is a speculative concept.

According to Beiser, "if Hegel has any methodology at all, it appears to be an anti-methodology, a method to suspend all methods." Hegel's term "dialectic" must be understood with reference to the concept of the object of investigation. What must be grasped is "the 'self-organization' of the subject matter, its 'inner necessity' and 'inherent movement.'" Hegel renounces all external methods such as could be "applied" to some subject matter.

The dialectical character of Hegel's speculative procedure often makes his position on any given issue quite difficult to characterize. Instead of seeking to answer a question or solve a problem directly, he frequently recasts it by showing, for instance, "how the dichotomy underlying the dispute is false, and that it is therefore possible to integrate elements from both positions." Speculative thought preserves what is true from apparently opposing theories in a process that Hegel terms "sublation".

Thesis–antithesis–synthesis

This terminology, largely developed earlier by Fichte, was spread by Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus in accounts of Hegel's philosophy that have since been broadly discredited. Walter Kaufmann, for instance, reports:

Fichte introduced into German philosophy the three-step of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, using these three terms. Schelling took up this terminology. Hegel did not. He never once used these three terms together to designate three stages in an argument or account in any of his books. And they do not help us understand his Phenomenology, his Logic, or his philosophy of history; they impede any open-minded comprehension of what he does by forcing it into a scheme which was available to him and which he deliberately spurned.

More modestly, it has been said that this account is "only a partial comprehension that requires correction". What it gets right is that, according to Hegel, "truth emerges from error" in the course of historical development in a way that implies a "holism in which partial truths are progressively corrected so that their one-sidedness is overcome." What it distorts is that such a description is possible only after the process has unfolded. The "thesis" and "antithesis" are not "alien" to one another. Inasmuch as there can be said to be such a "dialectical method," it is not an external one such as could be "applied" to some subject matter.

Similarly, Stephen Houlgate argues that, in whatever limited sense Hegel might be said to have a "method", it is a strictly immanent method; that is, it emerges from thoughtful immersion in the subject-matter itself. If this leads to dialectics, that is only because there is a contradiction in the object itself, not because of any external methodological procedure.

Legacy

Hegel's influence on subsequent philosophical developments has been enormous. In late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century England, a school known as British idealism propounded a version of absolute idealism through direct engagement with Hegel's texts. Prominent members included J. M. E. McTaggart, R. G. Collingwood, and G. R. G. Mure. Separately, some philosophers such as Marx, Dewey, Derrida, Adorno, and Gadamer selectively developed Hegelian ideas into their own philosophical programs. Others developed or framed their positions in opposition to Hegel's system. These include, for instance, such diverse philosophers as Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Russell, G. E. Moore, and Foucault. In theology, Hegel's influence marks the work of Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. These names, however, constitute only a small sample of some of the more important figures who have developed their thought in engagement with the philosophy of Hegel.

Right and Left Hegelians and Marxism

Some historians present Hegel's early influence in Germanic philosophy as divided into two opposing camps, right and left. The Right Hegelians, the allegedly direct disciples of Hegel at the University of Berlin, advocated a Protestant orthodoxy and the political conservatism of the post-Napoleon Restoration period. The Left Hegelians, also known as the Young Hegelians, interpreted Hegel in a revolutionary sense, leading to an advocation of atheism in religion and liberal democracy in politics. Recent studies, however, have questioned this paradigm.

The Right Hegelians "were quickly forgotten" and "are today mainly known only to specialists"; the Left Hegelians, by contrast, "included some of the most important thinkers of the period," and "through their emphasis on practice, some of these thinkers have remained exceedingly influential," primarily through the Marxist tradition.

Among the first followers to take an expressly critical view of Hegel's system were those in the 19th-century German group known as the Young Hegelians, which included Feuerbach, Marx, Engels, and their followers. The primary thrust of their criticism is concisely expressed in the eleventh of Marx's "Theses on Feuerbach" from his 1845 German Ideology: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it."

György Lukács' History and Class Consciousness (1923) helped reintroduce Hegel into the Marxist canon. With the rediscovery and re-evaluation of Hegel as a possible philosophical progenitor of Marxism by philosophically oriented Marxists, there was more recognition of the importance of Hegel's dialectical method and a resurgence of his historical perspective. A Hegelian-inflected interpretation of Marx was further developed in the work of critical theorists of the Frankfurt School.

In France

It has become commonplace to identify "French Hegel" with the lectures of Alexandre Kojève, who emphasized the master–servant [Herrschaft und Knechtschaft] dialectic (which he mistranslated as master–slave [maître et l'esclave]) and Hegel's philosophy of history. This perspective, however, overlooks over sixty years of French writing on Hegel, according to which Hegelianism was identified with the "system" presented in the Encyclopedia. The later reading, drawing instead upon the Phenomenology of Spirit, was in many ways a reaction against the earlier. After 1945, "this 'dramatic' Hegelianism, which centered on the theme of historical becoming through conflict, [came] to be seen as compatible with existentialism and Marxism."

By confining the dialectic to history, the dominant French readings of Jean Wahl, Alexandre Kojève, and Jean Hyppolite effectively presented Hegel as providing "a philosophical anthropology instead of a general metaphysics." This reading took the topic of desire as its focal point of intervention. A major theme was that "a reason that seeks to be all-inclusive falsifies reality by suppressing or repressing its 'other.'" Although it cannot be attributed entirely to Kojève, this reading of Hegel shaped the thought and interpretations of thinkers such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Jacques Lacan, and Georges Bataille.

Kojève's interpretation of the "master–slave dialectic" as the basic model of historical development also influenced the feminism of Simone de Beauvoir and the anti-racist and anti-colonial work of Frantz Fanon.

American pragmatism

As documented by Richard J. Bernstein, the influence of Hegel on American pragmatism can be divided into three moments: the late nineteenth century, the mid-twentieth, and the present. The first is to be found in early issues of The Journal of Speculative Philosophy (founded 1867). The second is evident in the acknowledged influence upon major figures including John Dewey, Charles Peirce, and William James.

As Dewey himself describes the attraction, "There were, however, also 'subjective' reasons for the appeal that Hegel's thought made to me; it supplied a demand for unification that was doubtless an intense emotional craving, and yet was a hunger that only an intellectualized subject-matter could satisfy." Dewey accepted much of Hegel's account of history and society, but rejected his conception of Hegel's account of absolute knowing.

Two philosophers, John McDowell and Robert Brandom (sometimes referred to as the "Pittsburgh Hegelians"), constitute, per Bernstein, the third moment of Hegel's influence on pragmatism. However, while openly acknowledging the influence, neither claims to explicate Hegel's views according to his own self-understanding. In addition, each is avowedly influenced by Wilfrid Sellars. McDowell is particularly interested in dispelling the "myth of the given", the dichotomy between concept and intuition, whereas Brandom is concerned mostly to develop Hegel's social account of reason-giving and normative implication. These appropriations of Hegel's thought are two among several "non-metaphysical" readings.

Publications and other writings

Published articles are in quotes; book titles are italicized.

Bern, 1793–96

1793–94: 'Fragments on Folk Religion and Christianity'

1795: 'Life of Jesus'

1795–96: 'The Positivity of the Christian Religion'

1796–97: 'The Oldest Systematic Program of German Idealism' (authorship disputed)

Frankfurt am Main, 1797–1800

1797–98: 'Drafts on Religion and Love'

1798: Confidential Letters on the Prior Constitutional Relations of the Wadtlandes (Pays de Vaud) to the City of Bern. A Complete Disclosure of the Previous Oligarchy of the Bern Estates. Translated from the French of a Deceased Swiss [Jean Jacques Cart], with Commentary. Frankfurt am Main, Jäger. (Hegel's translation is published anonymously)

1798–1800: 'The Spirit of Christianity and its Fate'

1800–02: 'The Constitution of Germany' (draft)

Jena, 1801–07

1801: De Orbitis Planetarum; 'The Difference between Fichte's and Schelling's System of Philosophy'

1802: 'On the Essence of Philosophical Critique in General and its Relation to the Present State of Philosophy in Particular' (Introduction to the Critical Journal of Philosophy, edited by Schelling and Hegel)

1802: 'How Commonsense takes Philosophy, Illustrated by the Works of Mr. Krug'

Berlin lecture series

Logic 1818–31: annually

Philosophy of Nature: 1819–20, 1821–22, 1823–24, 1825–26, 1828, 1830

Philosophy of Subjective Spirit: 1820, 1822, 1825, 1827–28, 1829–30

Philosophy of Right: 1818–19, 1819–20, 1821–22, 1822–23, 1824–25, 1831

Philosophy of World History: 1822–23, 1824–25, 1826–27, 1828–29, 1830–31

Philosophy of Art: 1820–21, 1823, 1826, 1828–29

Philosophy of Religion: 1821, 1824, 1827, 1831

History of Philosophy: 1819, 1820–21, 1823–24, 1825–26, 1827–28, 1829–30, 1831