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Hegel Biography

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HEGEL, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1770-1831). One of the greatest German philosophers. He was born Aug.. 27, 1770, at Stuttgart and became in 1788 a student in the University of Tübingen, where his speculative abilities, however, were outshone by his younger companion, Schelling, who, together with Hölderlin, exercised a great intellectual influence on him. In the university he studied theology, philosophy, and natural science, and was interested in political events and theories. His diploma described him as having good parts, but did not mention him as distinguished for his knowledge, philosophical or otherwise. After leaving the university in 1793, he was a private tutor at Bern and Frankfort-on-the-Main for seven years, during which period he continued his studies in philosophy and theology and wrote a Life of Jesus, which, however, was never published. In the beginning of 1801 he left Frankfort for Jena, where he published his first work, Über die Differenz des Fichteschen and Schellingschen Systems der Philosophie (1801), and entered the university as privatdocent. Next year he joined Schelling, to whose philosophy he seems at this time to have adhered, in the editorship of the Kritisches Journal der Philosophie. This alliance did not last long and soon turned into philosophical antagonism. His lectures in Jena did not attract much notice, but it was at this place, while the din of the battle of 1806 was sounding through the town, that he completed his first important work, Phänomenologie des Geistes (1807) , which he used afterward to call his voyage of discovery. Shortly before the battle he had been made professor extraordinarius of philosophy; but the disaster which the war brought upon Jena compelled him to seek means of subsistence elsewhere, and he went accordingly, at Niethamers request, to Bamberg, where he edited a political paper for a year or two. In 1808 he was appointed rector of the Gymnasium at Nuremberg, and there he had just completed the first edition of his Wissenschaft der Logik (1812-16), when he was called in 1816 to a professorship of philosophy in Heidelberg. There he published his Encyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften (1817), in which he first developed his complete system. In 1818, however, be was called to Fichte's place in Berlin, and it was here that be first began to gather around him a new philosophical school. His lectures, which were delivered without rhetorical ornament, yet with an impressiveness due to the expression of laborious thought, attracted hearers from all ranks and professions. He rose to great political influence by reason of his defense of existing political institutions. This defense subsequently led his critics to charge him with time service; the charge, however, does him a great injustice. In 1821 he published his Grundlinien der Philosophic des Rechts, in which he gave expression to his ethical and political views. He demands in that work, among other things, representation of the people, freedom of the press, publicity of judicial proceedings, trial by jury, the administrative independence of corporations, and, above all, a monarch who shall "put the dot over the i," i.e., complete the constitution of the state. In the midst of an active life he was suddenly cut off by cholera, Nov. 14, 1831. He was buried beside Fichte. A complete collection of his works was published in 18 volumes (Berlin, 1832-41), some of them compiled from notes taken by his students. Of his works translated into English may be mentioned: Philosophy of Mind (Oxford 1894) and Logic (2d ed., ib., 1892) , translated by Wallace, both of which are portions of the Encylclopädie; Philosophy of Right, translated by Dyde (London, 1896); Philosophy of Religion, translated by Spiers and Sanderson (ib., 1895); Philosophy of History, translated by Sibree (ib., 1857); History of Philosophy, translated by Haldane and Simpson (ib., 1892); Hegel's Doctrine of Reflection, translated by W. T. Harris, book ii of Greater Logic (New York, 1881); portions of book i of the Greater Logic by J. H. Stirling in his Secret of Hegel (2d ed., Edinburgh, 1897); The Phenomenology of Mind, by Baillie (London, 1910); The Philosophy of Art (New York, 1879).

It is impossible in this article to give any detailed account of Hegel's system of philosophy. He called it the system of the Absolute Idea. The idea is, for him, the indissoluble unity of the universe, existing in the two polar distinctions of subject and object. This idea is absolute because all-inclusive. The method by which Hegel arrived at this result he called dialectic (Dialektik), and by this he meant the process of exhibiting the incomplete character of any conception except the all-inclusive conception of the Absolute Idea. Thus, in his Logik, which expounds the method, Hegel begins with the conception of Being (Sein) and shows that it is not a complete conception, i.e., that it cannot be thought by itself. It is always only a partial conception and has no independence. The other part of the conception is Naught (Nichts). These two parts are not put together in any external way, but each is originally connected with the other. The organic unity of the two conceptions he calls Becoming (Werden). In the same way Becoming is not a complete thought; it is only part of a larger thought, which in its turn is part of a still larger, till at last we reach the thought of the Absolute Idea. But the thought of the Absolute Idea is itself only a partial fact if it is conceived as a mere conception, i.e., as something that has existed only "in the abstract medium of pure thought." Thought must have its objects. These, objects we may try to conceive as existing apart from thought, but this conception is in its turn shown to be as incomplete as that of thought without object. The Absolute Idea, then, is not a conception in the ordinary sense of the word, but it is a fact, the fact of the inevitable union of thought and object of thought. Again, the inseparability is not spatial; it is doubtful whether it should be interpreted as even temporal. That is to say, Hegel does not mean that the act of thinking and the object thought must be in the same place or at the same time. All that he means is that whatever may be the temporal or spatial relation between the act of thinking and the object thought, the latter cannot be conceived as existing except either as an actual object of thought or as standing in necessary intelligible relation to some actual thought, just as the act of thinking cannot exist except in thinking some object. Though an interval of time may separate subject and object, an object which stands out of all relation to a subject or a subject which stands out of all relation to an object is inconceivable. In other words, all reality is one, in the sense that all real things, physical or psychical, are interconnected in such ways that their several reality is not something they have in isolation from the system of real things of which each is an integral part. Hegel's theology and the other parts of his system, such as the philosophy of law, of nature, of art, and of mind, are too subtle to admit of treatment here. Indeed, even the short sketch of the dialectic, given above, would be rejected by many students of Hegel as inaccurate, so difficult is the task of interpreting Hegel. Four years after Hegel's death a controversy was raised among his followers by Strauss's Leben Jesu (see STRAUSS) and was further embittered by Strauss's Christliche Glaubenslehre. The Hegelians then split into three sections, called severally, the right, the left, and the centre, accordingly as they represented supernaturalism, naturalism, or a mediating tendency. The first section was represented, among others, by G. A. Gabler, H. T. W. Hinrichs, and K. T. Gosehel; the leftists, by Bruno Bauer, Feuerbach, Strauss, and K. L. Michelet; the centrists, represented by J. K. Rosenkranz, J. E. Erdmann; while W. Vatke, Weisse, I. H. von Fichte the younger Ulrici, Fischer, and Carrèire, were named pseudo-Hegelians, because, though retaining a large element of Hegel's doctrine, they did not follow closely the Hegelian tradition as represented by the three schools.

Hegel's philosophy has had great influence in other countries than Germany, notably on British and American thought. T. H. Green (q.v.), J. Caird, E. Caird, W. Wallace, J. H. Stirling, B. Bosanquet, F. H. Bradley, II. Jones, J. Watson, D. G. Ritchie, A. S. Pringle-Pattison, McTaggart, and Baillie in Great Britain, and G. S. Morris, W. T. Harris, J. Dewey, and J. Royce in the United States, have been more or less influenced by Hegel, although many of these thinkers have attacked Hegelianism. In Italy at the present time a modernized form of Hegelianism is advocated by B. Croce. In Germany the encouraging patronage extended by the Prussian government created in the later years of Hegel's life a great professorial constituency of Hegelians. But the metaphysical excesses of these Hegelians led to a violent reaction, the effects of which have lasted to the present day.