G. W. F. Hegel

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) is generally considered to be the most systematic philosopher within the movement of “German idealism” in the first decades of the Nineteenth Century. In his writings, and particularly in his popular lectures at the University of Berlin in the 1820s, Hegel attempted to elaborate a comprehensive and systematic philosophy from a “logical” starting point. He is perhaps most well-known for his social and political philosophy and for his teleological account of history, an account which was later taken over by Karl Marx and “inverted” into a materialist theory of an historical development culminating in communism. For most of the twentieth century, the “logical” and systematic side of Hegel's thought had been largely forgotten, but his political and social philosophy continued to attract interest and support. Since the 1970s, a degree of more general philosophical interest in Hegel’s systematic thought has also been revived, often treating Hegel’s philosophy in relation to the earlier “transcendental” idealism of Immanuel Kant.