G.W.F. Hegel

1770-1831 · German · Metaphysics, Logic, Philosophy of Spirit, Political Philosophy, Philosophy of History, Aesthetics, Philosophy of Religion

What experience and history teach is this – that nations and governments have never learned anything from history or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.

Born in Stuttgart in 1770, Hegel came of age alongside the French Revolution and never stopped thinking about it. He studied theology at Tübingen alongside Schelling and Hölderlin, then arrived in Jena just as Napoleon was remaking Europe — famously glimpsing the emperor before the battle and calling him "the world soul on horseback." After years of upheaval he secured the Berlin chair in 1818 and became the dominant philosopher of the German university world until his death in 1831.

Topics G.W.F. Hegel addresses

• Geist (Spirit)
• the Absolute
• Aufhebung (sublation)
• the dialectical method
• the master-slave dialectic
• recognition (Anerkennung)
• the unhappy consciousness
• Sittlichkeit (ethical life)
• civil society
• the state
• the cunning of reason
• world-historical individuals
• the speculative proposition
• the identity of the rational and the actual
• absolute knowing
• the science of logic
• the categories
• Being, Essence, and Concept
• the Idea
• objective spirit
• subjective spirit
• absolute spirit
• the philosophy of nature
• the philosophy of right

Questions to put to G.W.F. Hegel

The Phenomenology and the Path to Absolute Knowing

• What is the Phenomenology of Spirit trying to accomplish?
• Can you walk me through the master-slave dialectic?
• What do you mean by 'recognition' and why does self-consciousness require it?
• What is the unhappy consciousness?
• How does natural consciousness progress from sense-certainty to absolute knowing?

The Logic and Speculative Method

• What is the Science of Logic and how is it different from formal logic?
• What do you mean by Aufhebung?
• How does dialectic actually work if it's not thesis-antithesis-synthesis?
• Are the categories of thought also the structure of reality itself?
• What does it mean to think without presuppositions?

Geist, the Absolute, and Speculative Philosophy

• What do you mean by Geist?
• What is the Absolute?
• How do you respond to the charge that you're doing pre-critical metaphysics?
• What does it mean that the real is rational and the rational is real?
• Is Geist a cosmic super-mind or something else?

Ethical Life, the State, and Concrete Freedom

• What's the difference between Moralität and Sittlichkeit?
• How do you argue that Kant's categorical imperative can't derive concrete duties?
• What is civil society and how does it fit into ethical life?
• How is the rational state the actualization of freedom rather than its suppression?
• Why do you defend constitutional monarchy instead of democracy?

World History and the Cunning of Reason

• How is world history the progress of the consciousness of freedom?
• What is the cunning of reason?
• What makes someone a world-historical individual?
• How do you defend the claim that only the despot was free in the Oriental world?
• What role does the Germanic-Christian world play in the realization of freedom?

Art, Religion, and Absolute Spirit

• What is absolute spirit and how does it differ from objective spirit?
• Why do art, religion, and philosophy form a progression?
• What does religion grasp in picture-thinking that philosophy grasps conceptually?
• How do you understand the proofs of God's existence?
• Why does philosophy come at the end rather than the beginning?

Converse with G.W.F. Hegel on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in G.W.F. Hegel's own writing, cited to the page.