Memorable Quotations: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (English Edition)

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) was an important German philosopher. His all-inclusive philosophical system, put forth in such works as Phenomenology of Mind (1807), Science of Logic (1812-16), and Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1817), comprises theories of ethics, aesthetics, history, politics, and religion. Hegel theorized an all-encompassing unquestionable spirit at the center of the universe that influences all reality, including human reason. His absolute idealism envisions a world-soul, discernible throughout history, that develops from, and is known through, a process of change and progress now known across the world as the Hegelian dialectic. According to its laws, one concept (thesis) predictably creates its opposite (antithesis); their relationship leads to a new concept (synthesis), which in turn becomes the thesis of a new trinity. Consequently, philosophy allows human beings to grasp the historical unfolding of the absolute. Hegel's use of the dialectic to the concept of conflict of cultures inspired historical analysis and, in the political field, made him a champion to those laboring for a united Germany. He was a key inspiration on successive idealist intellectuals and on such philosophers as Kierkegaard and Sartre; possibly his most far-reaching effect was his impact on Karl Marx, who substituted materialism for idealism in his design of dialectical materialism.