Context
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born in
1770 in Stuttgart, Wurttemberg, which was then one of numerous autonomous
German principalities that would become the German state in 1871.
His eventual preoccupation with the link between human experience
and history can be traced to the uncertainties of the time and place
in which he lived. The German urban middle class, which made up
his early social environment, expressed Enlightenment optimism and
faith in human progress, but it was numerically and politically
weaker than the middle class elsewhere in northwestern Europe. Many
young, cosmopolitan Germans viewed England and France with envy
and resentment as their hopes for German progress and reform were consistently
thwarted by an aristocracy that clung to old feudal privileges and
institutions and suppressed criticism whenever it felt threatened.
The old order was especially anxious after the French Revolution
began in 1789, a war that would lead to the dissolution of aristocratic
institutions and the execution of many aristocrats, including the
French monarch. These events would have a profound impact on the
worldviews of Hegel and other intellectuals of his generation.
In 1788, when he was eighteen, Hegel entered the protestant theological
seminary in Tuebingen, following in the footsteps of the several
generations of Lutheran pastors from whom he had descended. However,
he never really acclimated to seminary life. He learned more from
his studies outside of official theology and, above all, from the
friendships he made there with fellow students Friedrich Hoelderlin,
who would become one of Germany's great Romantic poets, and Friedrich
Shelling, the future idealist philosopher. The three friends exchanged
ideas, excitedly watched the events in France unfold, and participated
in societies in which students discussed and promoted revolutionary
ideals. Following his graduation, Hegel did not become a pastor.
Instead, he worked as a private tutor for wealthy families in Berne
and Frankfurt, devoting his free time to the study of philosophy
and theology. Much of his writing represents an attempt to come
to grips with Christianity, to wrestle with the significance of
Christ and his teachings, and to outline the historical legacy of
the Christian Church and its cultural and social implications as
an institution. Hegel's lifelong claim that he was an orthodox Lutheran
may be subject to question, as it could have easily been motivated
by the religious intolerance of the Prussian state, but his philosophy
is heavily influenced by theological language, and a theological
outlook colors his vision of human experience.
When Hegel's father died, Hegel received a modest inheritance, which
allowed him to pursue his academic career. In 1801, he went to the
city of Jena to work as a private professor. At the time, Jena was
a center of intense intellectual and artistic creativity and one
of the epicenters of German romanticism, a diverse movement that challenged
the rationality and sober-mindedness that characterized the Age
of Enlightenment. Hegel consorted with philosophers and poets and
began to envision his own unique philosophical approach. He sought
to combine his diverse influences, including Kantian idealism, theology,
romanticism, and contemporary political and social theory, which
all contribute to his philosophical voice. Early examples of this
emerging voice include The Difference Between the Philosophical
Systems of Fichte and Shelling (1801), in which he begins
to critique some of the basic assumptions of Kantian idealism, and
an 1802 essay on Natural Law, in which he formulates a philosophical
approach to the analysis of culture, modernity, and modern institutions.
In 1807, the year after Napoleon marched into Prussia,
Hegel published the Phenomenology of Spirit, an
ambitious and difficult philosophical treatise. Here, Hegel fully
elaborates some of his most striking and innovative concepts, such
as the idea of Spirit, or collective consciousness, and his view
that consciousness and knowledge develop dialectically, in a repeating
pattern. After teaching in Bamberg and Nuremberg, where he met his
wife, Hegel took up a professorship in Heidelberg and, later, took
another at the new university in Berlin. Hegel's output from this
period includes the three-volume Encyclopedia of the Philosophical
Science (1817), in which he systematizes his approach to
philosophy, and Elements of a Philosophy of Right (1821),
which combines his philosophical insights with analysis and critique
of modern society and modern political institutions. Hegel's students
of this period include liberal civil servants in Prussian government,
a fact that points to the widening and influential audience Hegel
commanded in the years leading up to his death in 1831.
Although Hegel's status in the field of philosophy has
varied in the nearly two centuries since his death, his reflections
have considerably influenced other disciplines as well, including
literary and cultural theory, theology, sociology, and political
science. His lifespan roughly coincides with the German composer
Beethoven (1770–1827), whose greatness rests partly in the way he
took neoclassical musical conventions in new directions and incorporated diverse
influences into his music in novel and idiosyncratic ways. Similarly,
the originality of Hegel's insights stems partly from his adaptation
of the available philosophical language to describe aspects of human
experience that were beyond the immediate concerns of his philosophical
predecessors. Like them, Hegel would devote a great deal of intellectual
effort wrestling with the nature and possibilities of human knowledge.
However, he also sought to understand his rapidly changing world
and to describe the social, institutional, and historical dimensions
of human experience.
