Gwf hegel biography of martin

Dictionary of Liberal Thought G W F Hegel (1770-1831) Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was the major philosopher of German Idealism. The interpretation of his political thought has always been controversial, but many now see him as committed to liberal ideals and concerned with the social, cultural and historical conditions of their realisation. Key ideas     history as the development of free and rational institutions individuality and civil society as positive achievements of modernity individual freedom also depends upon family, civil associations and membership of a political community corporatism, bureaucracy and constitutional monarchy as key components of a rational state Biography Hegel was born in Stuttgart to a middle class family, the product of a Lutheran upbringing and a classical education. He studied at a seminary in Tübingen with FWJ Schelling and Friedrich Hölderlin, with whom he shared enthusiasms for Kant and the French Revolution. Hegel worked as a private tutor in Berne and Frankfurt, and in 1801 sought an academic career in Jena, where Schelling was already a professor. They co-edited a journal in which he published his first philosophical works. In time Hegel’s thought took its own course, culminating in the Phenomenology of Spirit, famously completed as his hero Napoleon rode through Jena’s streets in 1806. Hegel briefly edited a small town newspaper and in 1808 took a job as headmaster of a Gymnasium in Nuremburg. There he married, fathered two children, and continued to develop and publish his new Idealist system. He finally obtained a professorship at Heidelberg in 1816 and in 1818 was invited to take up the important chair in philosophy at Berlin. Now at the pinnacle of his profession, Hegel began to gather a school of committed followers around him. He maintained outward loyalty to Friedrich Willhelm III but sympathised with the goals of the Prussian Reform Movement, which hoped to place the state on a more c

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German philosopher (1770–1831)

"Hegel" redirects here. For other uses, see Hegel (disambiguation).

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a German philosopher and one of the most influential figures of German idealism and 19th-century philosophy. His influence extends across the entire range of contemporary philosophical topics, from metaphysical issues in epistemology and ontology, to political philosophy, the philosophy of history, philosophy of art, philosophy of religion, and the history of philosophy.

Born in 1770 in Stuttgart, Holy Roman Empire, during the transitional period between the Enlightenment and the Romantic movement in the Germanic regions of Europe, Hegel lived through and was influenced by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars. His fame rests chiefly upon The Phenomenology of Spirit, The Science of Logic, his teleological account of history, and his lectures at the University of Berlin on topics from his Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences.

Throughout his work, Hegel strove to address and correct the problematic dualisms of modern philosophy, Kantian and otherwise, typically by drawing upon the resources of ancient philosophy, particularly Aristotle. Hegel everywhere insists that reason and freedom, despite being natural potentials, are historical achievements. His dialectical-speculative procedure is grounded in the principle of immanence, that is, in assessing claims always according to their own internal criteria. Taking skepticism seriously, he contends that people cannot presume any truths that have not passed the test of experience; even the a priori categories of the Logic must attain their "verification" in the natural world and the historical accomplishments of humankind.

Guided by the Delphic imperative to "know thyself", Hegel presents free self-determination as the essence of humankind – a conclusion from his 1806–07 Phen