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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) {Order from Amazon.com}
  • Hegel's Science of Logic, tr. by A. V. Miller (Humanity, 1998) {Order from Amazon.com}
  • Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, tr. by A. V. Miller and J. N. Findlay (Oxford, 1979) {Order from Amazon.com}
  • Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Philosophy of History, tr. by J. Sibree (Dover, 1956) {Order from Amazon.com}
  • Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, tr. by A. Wood and H. Nisbet (Cambridge, 1991) {Order from Amazon.com}

Secondary sources:

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

Additional on-line information about Hegel includes:



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Last modified 9 August 2006.
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