First set forth in lectures given at the University of Berlin in the 1820s, Hegel's «Philosophy of History» fully explores his ideas on many of the major and minor philosophers who preceded him on the subject of world history. Essentially, Hegel wished to demonstrate that history follows reason, and hence the direction and meaning of history could possibly be discovered. Hegel traced a progression of understanding from Eastern pantheism to a more individualistic and freedom-producing...
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, a late 18th and early 19th century German philosopher, was one of the foremost thinkers of German Idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality revolutionized European philosophy and was an important precursor to Continental philosophy and Marxism. He created a framework known as Absolute Idealism that was able to account for the relation of the mind, nature, art, the state, and history. Ultimately, he believed that the mind was comprised of several...