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Hegel


Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
(1770-1831)

Life and Works
. . Dialectic
. . Subjective
. . Objective
. . Absolute
Bibliography
Internet Sources

Born in Stuttgart and educated in Tübingen, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel devoted his life wholly to academic pursuits, teaching at Jena, Nuremberg, Heidelberg, and Berlin. His Wissenschaft der Logik (Science of Logic) (1812-1816) attributes the unfolding of concepts of reality in terms of the pattern of dialectical reasoning (thesis — antithesis — synthesis) that Hegel believed to be the only method of progress in human thought, and Die Encyclopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse (Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences) (1817) describes the application of this dialectic to all areas of human knowledge. Hegel Hegel's Naturrecht und Staatswissenschaft im Grundrisse and Gundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts (Philosophy of Right) (1820) provide an intellectual foundation for modern nationalism.

Hegel's absolute idealism is evident even in the early Phänomenologie des Geistes Hegel (Phenomenology of Mind) (1807). There Hegel criticized the traditional epistemological distinction of objective from subjective and offered his own dialectical account of the development of consciousness from individual sensation through social concern with ethics and politics to the pure consciousness of the World-Spirit in art, religion, and philosophy. The result is a comprehensive world-view that encompasses the historical development of civilization in all of its forms.



Recommended Reading:

Primary sources:

  • Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Gesammelte Werke (Meiner, 1968- )
  • The Hegel Reader, ed. by Stephen Houlgate (Blackwell, 1998)
  • Hegel's Science of Logic, tr. by A. V. Miller (Humanity, 1998)
  • Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, tr. by A. V. Miller and J. N. Findlay (Oxford, 1979)
  • Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Philosophy of History, tr. by J. Sibree (Dover, 1956)
  • Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, tr. by A. Wood and H. Nisbet (Cambridge, 1991)

Secondary sources:

  • The Cambridge Companion to Hegel, ed. by Frederick C. Beiser (Cambridge, 1993)
  • Walter Kaufmann, (Notre Dame, 1997)
  • Peter Singer, Hegel (Oxford, 1983)
  • Charles Taylor, Hegel and Modern Society (Cambridge, 1979)
  • Feminist Interpretations of G.W.F. Hegel, ed. by Patricia J. Mills (Penn. State, 1996)
  • Quentin Lauer, Hegel's Idea of Philosophy (Fordham, 1983)
  • Raymond Plant, Hegel (Routledge, 1999)
  • Justus Hartnack, An Introduction to Hegel's Logic (Hackett, 1998)
  • Judith Butler, Subjects of Desire (Columbia, 1999)
  • Jon Stewart, The Phenomenology of Spirit Reader: Critical and Interpretive Essays (SUNY, 1997)
  • William Maker, Philosophy Without Foundations: Rethinking Hegel (SUNY, 1994)
  • Allen W. Wood, Hegel's Ethical Thought (Cambridge, 1990)
  • Joseph McCarney, The Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Hegel on History (Routledge, 2000)
  • Will Dudley, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Philosophy: Thinking Freedom (Cambridge, 2002)
  • Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory (Humanity, 1999)
  • Elliot L. Jurist, Beyond Hegel And Nietzsche: Philosophy, Culture and Agency (MIT, 2002)

Additional on-line information about Hegel includes:


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