Hegel

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) was a German philosopher whose system of absolute idealism became a central framework of modern German philosophy. Born in Stuttgart, he studied at the University of Tübingen, where he befriended Friedrich Hölderlin and Schelling. He taught and wrote in Jena, Heidelberg, and Berlin. His most influential works include Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), the Science of Logic (published in parts during the 1810s), the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1817), and Philosophy of Right (1820). His lectures on the history of philosophy and on the philosophy of history, published posthumously, also shaped later scholarship.

Core ideas: He argued that reality is rational and knowable through the development of concepts within a dynamic process of dialectics, a method in which opposing moments are reconciled in higher unity. Although commonly summarized as thesis–antithesis–synthesis, Hegel did not coin those terms; his dialectic centers on sublation (aufheben), whereby elements both negate and preserve earlier form as the thought advances. In his system, the Absolute or World Spirit realizes freedom through history, art, religion, and philosophy. The Phenomenology traces the consciousness's path from sense perception to absolute knowledge; The Science of Logic develops the fundamental categories by which reason itself organizes experience; The Philosophy of History presents history as the rational process by which freedom becomes explicit; The Philosophy of Right examines freedom within the modern constitutional state.

Influence and reception: Hegel's thought shaped the development of German idealism after Kant and influenced the Young Hegelians, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and later Continental philosophy, including phenomenology and deconstruction. His work is known for its ambitious system and dense method, and has been the subject of extensive debate and critique across various traditions.