G. W. F. Hegel

“Hegel's first book, written when he arrived in Jena to join his friend Schelling: an essay arguing that philosophy arises from the divisions of modern life, that its task is to overcome fixed oppositions, and that Schelling, not Fichte, had grasped the true principle — the absolute identity of subject and object, of nature and spirit.”

“Hegel's first great work traces the journey of consciousness from the simplest certainty — 'this, here, now' — through perception, self-consciousness, the struggle of master and servant, reason, the history of ethical life, culture and revolution, morality and religion, to 'absolute knowing': spirit that comprehends itself and its own history.”

“Hegel's most ambitious work sets out to think the pure forms of thought themselves — beginning with the emptiest thought of all, 'being,' and showing how it passes into nothing and becoming, and so on, through quality, quantity and measure, essence, appearance and actuality, to the concept, the judgement, life, cognition and, at last, the 'absolute idea.'”

“Hegel's whole system in outline, written as a handbook for his students: the Logic, the pure forms of thought; the Philosophy of Nature, from space and time to the living animal; and the Philosophy of Spirit, from the soul and consciousness, through law, morality, the family, civil society and the state, to art, religion and philosophy itself.”

“Hegel's lectures argue that religion and philosophy have the same content — God, the truth — and differ only in form. He sets out what religion is, then surveys the religions of the world, from magic and the religions of China, India, Persia and Egypt to the Jewish, Greek and Roman religions, and ends with Christianity as the 'consummate religion,' whose doctrines of Trinity, incarnation, death and spirit philosophy can comprehend.”

“Hegel tells the story of philosophy from Thales to his own day — not as a gallery of errors and rival opinions, but as the development of one reason, each philosophy a necessary stage, from water and number, being and becoming, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, through the long night of the Middle Ages, to Descartes, Spinoza, Kant and the idealism of his own age.”

“Hegel's lectures on the philosophy of art — also known in English as 'The Philosophy of Fine Art' — argue that beauty is the sensuous shining of the idea, trace art through its symbolic, classical and romantic forms, from the pyramids to Greek sculpture to Christian painting and music, survey architecture, sculpture, painting, music and poetry, and end with the claim that art, in its highest vocation, is for us a thing of the past.”

“Hegel's lectures on world history argue that reason governs the world, and that history is the progress of the consciousness of freedom — from the ancient East, where one alone was free, through the Greeks and Romans, where some were free, to the modern world, which knows that all are free.”

“The young Hegel's unpublished manuscripts, written in Tübingen, Bern and Frankfurt in the 1790s: on what a true 'folk religion' would be; a life of Jesus as a teacher of pure moral reason; how Jesus' teaching hardened into an authoritarian, 'positive' religion; the spirit of Christianity as love overcoming law, and its fate; and a fragment on life and religion in which his later philosophy is first glimpsed.”