Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1770–1831), German Idealist philosopher. In 1818 he succeeded J. G. Fichte as professor of philosophy at Berlin. The distinctive character of his system lay in his attempt to present all philosophical problems and concepts in an evolutionary perspective. For Hegel no idea has an unchanging and eternal validity, but it discloses its meaning in the continuous process of its development; a process in which contrasts and oppositions become intelligible through an identity within which they are related, even if only as opposites. Moreover the antitheses which thought apprehends are also constitutive of reality. Development is the outcome of a dialectical ‘movement’ in which a thesis is succeeded by an antithesis, the ensuing conflict resulting in the two being brought together on a higher plane as a synthesis. The ultimate resolution of all differences, both in thought and reality, is attained in the Absolute. This evolutionary view of the universe comprehends not only the natural sciences, but also the humanities, since truth lies not in individual disciplines but in the whole. Although Hegel regarded himself as a Christian, in his philosophy of religion he sees religious ideas as a figurative representation of truths which philosophy restates in conceptual and fully rational terms.

He exercised a vast influence on later thought, including that of Karl Marx. In Britain his followers included T. H. Green, through whom Idealism exercised a profound influence on English religious philosophy in the years 1885 to 1920.