Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Along with J. G. Fichte and F. W. J. von Schelling, Hegel (1770-1831) belongs to the period of German idealism in the decades following Kant.

The most systematic of the post-Kantian idealists, Hegel attempted, throughout his published writings as well as in his lectures, to elaborate a comprehensive and systematic ontology from a logical starting point. He is perhaps most well-known for his teleological account of history, an account which was later taken over by Marx and inverted into a materialist theory of an historical development culminating in communism. For most of the twentieth century, the logical side of Hegels thought had been largely forgotten, but his political and social philosophy continued to find interest and support. However, since the 1970s, a degree of more general philosophical interest in Hegels systematic thought has also been revived. 3. 3 Philosophy of Right 1. Life, Work, and Influence Born in 1770 in Stuttgart, Hegel spent the years 1788-1793 as a theology student in nearby Tubingen, forming friendships there with fellow students, the future great romantic poet Friedrich Holderlin (1770-1843) and Friedrich W. J. von Schelling (1775-1854), who, like Hegel, would become one of the major figures of the German philosophical scene in the first half of the nineteenth century. These friendships clearly had a major influence on Hegels philosophical development, and for a while the intellectual lives of the three were closely intertwined. After graduation Hegel worked as a tutor for families in Bern and then Frankfurt, where he was reunited with Holderlin. Until around 1800, Hegel devoted himself to developing his ideas on religious and social themes, and seemed to have envisaged a future for himself as a type of modernising and reforming educator, in the image of figures of the German Enlightenment such as Lessing and Schiller. Around the turn of the century, however, possibly under the influence of Holderlin, his interests turned more to the issues in the critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) that had enthused Holderlin, Schelling, and many others, and in 1801 he moved to the University of Jena to join Schelling. In the 1790s Jena had become a centre of both Kantian philosophy and the early romantic movement and by the time of Hegels arrival Schelling had already become an established figure, taking the approach of J. G. Fichte (1762-1814), the most important of the new Kantian-styled philosophers, in novel directions. In late 1801, Hegel published his first philosophical work, The Difference between Fichtes and Schellings System of Philosophy, and up until 1803 worked closely with Schelling, with whom he edited the Critical Journal of Philosophy.

In his Difference essay Hegel had argued that Schellings approach succeeded where Fichtes failed in the project of systematising and thereby completing Kants transcendental idealism, and on the basis of this type of advocacy was dogged ...