G. W. F. Hegel

Key ideas

1. Geist and absolute idealism. Hegel holds that reality is intelligible through and through, and that its fullest form is Geist, mind or spirit: the shared life of self-conscious beings in their institutions, art, religion and thought. Scholars disagree whether this is a claim about a cosmic Absolute or a post-Kantian account of how our concepts become self-critical.
2. The dialectic. A concept or form of life, taken on its own terms, runs into contradiction and gives way to a fuller one that both cancels and preserves it, which Hegel calls Aufhebung or sublation. The textbook triad of thesis, antithesis and synthesis fits only some of his transitions.
3. Recognition. Self-consciousness exists only by being acknowledged by another self-consciousness. In the lordship and bondage passage the recognition between master and bondsman is one-sided and unequal, and the master finds that he has achieved only a dependent consciousness.
4. The Phenomenology of Spirit. Consciousness educates itself through a series of shapes, from sense-certainty onward, each of which fails by its own standard and gives way to the next. The path ends in absolute knowing, and Hegel says that the truth is the whole.
5. Logic and the system. The Science of Logic begins with pure being, which has no content and so passes into nothing, and both pass into becoming. The Encyclopaedia then arranges his system in three parts: logic, philosophy of nature and philosophy of spirit.
6. Freedom and ethical life. Freedom is realised in social institutions that people can recognise as reasonable. The Philosophy of Right moves from abstract right and morality to ethical life, Sittlichkeit, in the family, civil society and the state.
7. History and absolute spirit. Hegel reads world history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom. Art, religion and philosophy are the forms of absolute spirit, and philosophy puts in concepts what art and religion express in images and feeling.

G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831) was a German philosopher, the most systematic of the German idealists, who argued that mind or spirit (Geist) develops through history and that reason, freedom and reality are one process. His absolute idealism, his dialectical method and his account of recognition shaped Marx, existentialism and critical theory.

He was born in Stuttgart, studied at the Tübingen seminary with Hölderlin and Schelling, worked as a tutor in Bern and Frankfurt, and taught at Jena from 1801. He was completing the Phenomenology of Spirit when Napoleon’s army took the city in October 1806, and he called Napoleon “this world-soul”. After editing a newspaper in Bamberg and heading a Nuremberg school, where the Science of Logic appeared (1812–16), he held chairs at Heidelberg (1816) and Berlin (1818) and published the Philosophy of Right in 1820–21. He died in Berlin on 14 November 1831; physicians named cholera, though Wikipedia says another gastrointestinal disease is likelier. His lectures on aesthetics, religion, history and the history of philosophy were published after his death from students’ notes.

What is the master–slave dialectic?

Two self-consciousnesses meet, and each wants the other’s acknowledgement. “Self-consciousness exists in itself and for itself,” Hegel writes in the Phenomenology (Baillie’s translation), “in that, and by the fact that it exists for another self-consciousness; that is to say, it is only by being acknowledged or ‘recognized’.” One yields and becomes the bondsman, who works on things for the master. But the recognition is “one-sided and unequal”, and the master finds that what he has achieved is “a dependent consciousness”. Recognition theory, which treats failure to recognise someone’s standing as a wrong of its own (see misrecognition), draws on this passage, and Kojève’s reading of it influenced Sartre and Lacan.

What are Geist and absolute idealism?

Geist is mind or spirit, understood not as a private soul but as the shared life of self-conscious beings in their customs, institutions, art, religion and thought. Hegel’s absolute idealism treats the whole of reality as intelligible in these terms. The Stanford Encyclopedia distinguishes readings of this as a metaphysical claim about the Absolute and as a post-Kantian one that gives up the thing-in-itself, completing Kant’s critique rather than refuting it.

What is the dialectic?

It is the method of following a concept as it meets its own limits. “Pure Being makes the beginning”, says the Encyclopaedia Logic (Wallace’s translation), but being with no determination is indistinguishable from nothing, and the pair resolve into becoming, which sublates both: Aufhebung cancels and preserves at once. The slogan “thesis, antithesis, synthesis” is the textbook version. The Stanford Encyclopedia’s entry on Hegel’s dialectics says it fits only some of his transitions and that he himself rejected squeezing the stages into triads; his own terms for a concept’s moments are the understanding, the dialectical and the speculative. He traced the idea back to Heraclitus: “there is no proposition of Heraclitus which I have not adopted in my Logic” (Haldane’s translation).

What is freedom for Hegel?

In the Philosophy of Right freedom is not doing as one likes but is realised in institutions people can recognise as reasonable. The argument runs from abstract right and morality to ethical life (Sittlichkeit) in the family, civil society and the state. The Preface says that “What is rational is real; And what is real is rational” (Dyde’s translation), and that “philosophy also is its time apprehended in thoughts”. Answering the surprise and hostility it caused, he wrote in the Encyclopaedia that “a casual (fortuitous) existence” does not deserve the name of actual. This is political philosophy at its most systematic.

How did he read history and other traditions?

Hegel read world history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom. The scheme is Eurocentric, as the Stanford Encyclopedia says. His lectures on the history of philosophy give Chinese and Indian thought, including the Sāṃkhya of Kapila and the philosophies of Gotama and Kaṇāda, a preliminary section, because “Philosophy first begins in the Grecian world” (Haldane and Simson’s translation). Readers of Indian philosophy, and of its Nyāya, Vaiśeṣika and Sāṃkhya schools, will want to test that verdict against the texts.

What did he leave behind?

His followers split into Right and Left Hegelians, and Marx adapted the dialectic to a materialist critique of society (see historical materialism). Schelling’s criticisms reached existentialism through Kierkegaard, and the Frankfurt School and Habermas developed critical theory in Hegel’s wake. British idealists such as T. H. Green and F. H. Bradley built on him, and Russell and Moore reacted against it. Serious interest in his logic revived in the last quarter of the twentieth century.

How should you start reading Hegel?

Begin with the Preface and the lordship and bondage chapter of the Phenomenology, or the Preface to the Philosophy of Right. The UGC NET syllabus lists Geist, the dialectical method, being, non-being and becoming, absolute idealism and freedom, and UPSC Paper I lists the dialectical method and absolute idealism; see the UGC NET guide and the UPSC guide. The free translations are old; the guide to reading philosophy explains how to use them.