Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

About the author

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) stands as one of the towering figures of Western philosophy, whose influence stretches from metaphysics and epistemology to political thought, aesthetics, and religion. Born in Stuttgart, his intellectual life straddled the Enlightenment and Romanticism, and his thinking was profoundly shaped by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars. His crowning achievement was the system of absolute idealism — centered on the concept of Geist, or spirit — elaborated in landmark works such as the Phenomenology of Spirit and the Science of Logic.

He ended his career as chair of philosophy at the University of Berlin.