Home › Thinkers › G. W. F. Hegel
1770–1831 · German Idealist
The philosopher of the dialectic, for whom history is reason unfolding.
Die Eule der Minerva beginnt erst mit der einbrechenden Dämmerung ihren Flug
Original (German)
“The owl of Minerva begins its flight only with the falling of dusk.”
Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1820), Preface
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel taught at Jena, Heidelberg, and finally Berlin, and built the most ambitious system of German Idealism. He held that reason unfolds through history in a dialectical movement: each form of thought and of society generates its own contradiction and is carried into a richer form that preserves what was true in it. The Phenomenology of Spirit follows consciousness from bare sense-certainty to self-knowledge won through the struggle for recognition, including the celebrated dialectic of master and servant. His lectures on world history read the past as freedom gradually becoming aware of itself. The owl of Minerva grants philosophy only hindsight: an age can be comprehended in thought only as it draws to a close. Marx claimed to stand his method on its feet, and much of modern thought is still arguing with him.
To be added: how this thinker was received, contested, and read today.
Thinkers in conversation with G. W. F. Hegel: