Hegel was born in a bureaucratic family in Stuttgart, Wü rttemberg. His father is an employee of the tax bureau, and his mother is well educated. Hegel entered Latin school at the age of 5 and went to middle school in this city at the age of 7. He is a model student, because of his excellent academic performance, he can get a scholarship every time. Parents also asked the teacher to help him learn geometry, Greek and Latin. Hegel showed intelligent learning ability from an early age, which was valued by his teacher Levler. When he was 8 years old, he was given a collection of Shakespeare's plays because of his excellent academic performance. On the surface, however, Hegel is a well-behaved, complacent, mature and steady young man, and he can't see anything outstanding. As a teenager, Hegel liked to keep a diary to record what he saw and heard every day. In middle school, I showed many hobbies, and I devoted a lot of energy to studying literature, history, mathematics, philosophy and poetics. He also spent a long time studying ancient culture, especially ancient Greek literature.
Due to the insistence of his deeply religious father, Hegel entered Tubingen Theological Seminary in 1788. As a seminary student, he prefers the works of Rousseau, a French enlightenment thinker. In the life of the seminary, Hegel was still not interested in other activities as he was in middle school, but devoted himself to book study. He neglected the training of equestrian and fencing. When I get along with girls, I am also stupefied. He wears vulgar and outdated clothes and moves slowly. His classmates gave him a nickname: "old man", and his classmates wrote an inscription for him: "May God bless this old man." Hegel studied philosophy for two years and theology for three years in the seminary, and obtained the title of bachelor of philosophy. He also came into contact with Kant's newly published works, although he did not quite understand the spirit of critical philosophy. Here, Hegel has two close friends, one is Holderlin, who later became an outstanding poet, and the other is Schelling. 1793, Hegel passed the exam and graduated from Tubingen Theological Seminary.
After leaving the seminary, Hegel worked as a tutor in Switzerland, Frankfurt, Germany and other places, taking studying Greek culture and Kant's philosophy as his hobby. 1798, his first book Ethics was published. The next year, his father died, leaving him a legacy. With this small amount of property, Hegel resigned as a tutor in 180 1 and came to Jena at the invitation of Schelling.
Jena was the university town of Prussia at that time, where young intellectuals gathered and the center of the student movement at that time. After Schelling's introduction, Hegel went to the University of Jena as a lecturer in philosophy, and edited the magazine Critical Philosophy with Schelling. He submitted an academic paper written in Latin to the University of Jena, discussing the orbits of planets, which was highly praised. 1805, 35-year-old Hegel was promoted to professor. The following year, he published the book Phenomenology of Spirit, describing his philosophical views. This year, Napoleon's army invaded Jena, and the war completely interrupted all school activities. Hegel, 36, is unemployed and penniless. Thanks to the help of his influential friend Friedrich Nitemore in Bavaria, he became the editor of a local newspaper in Bamberg. Hegel spent a year and a half in this kind of "forced labor" as he said, and Nietmore managed to make him a middle school principal in Nuremberg. Hegel, 4 1 year-old, felt for the first time that he had certain economic security and could consider the major events of marriage. His bride is a beautiful 20-year-old girl from a respectable family. Hegel wrote in his thank-you letter to Nietmore: "I have achieved my goal in this world. With a formal position and a lovely wife, I already have everything I can ask for in this world. " They have two sons. Carl, the eldest son, later became a famous historian. Their happy union lasted for 20 years until Hegel's sudden death.
During Nuremberg, Hegel completed the book Logic (Grand Logic). 18 16, Hegel was hired as a professor of philosophy at Delbourg university. 18 18, at the invitation of Prussian government, he went to Berlin University as a professor of philosophy. Hegel spent the last 13 years of his life in Berlin University. While teaching at the University of Berlin, he published works such as Little Logic, Philosophy of Nature, Philosophy of Spirit and Principles of Philosophy of Right. 1830 President of Berlin University.
Hegel was recognized as the official philosopher of Prussia at the beginning of19th century. His social and political views tend to be conservative, and he tried his best to defend Prussia's national monarchy and private property system.
Hegel's philosophy is formed and developed directly from the philosophy of Kant, Fichte and Schelling by criticizing their philosophical thoughts. On the one hand, he pushed the German classical idealism philosophy initiated by Kant and developed by Hitt and Schelling to the peak; On the other hand, they criticized metaphysics, systematically developed dialectical thoughts in philosophy and founded conceptual dialectics. Hegel pointed out that "absolute concept" is the essence and foundation of the world and the core and lifeline of everything; Everything in the world is just the embodiment of "absolute concept". Hegel adheres to the idealistic philosophical line of Kant, Fichte and Schelling, and regards ideas or spiritual things as primary and original things. At the same time, he played their initiative in philosophical thinking. Philosophy of Nature is the second part of Hegel's philosophy system, which describes the movement and development process of "absolute concept" in nature. "Spiritual philosophy" is the third and last part of Hegel's philosophical system. From logical stage to natural stage and spiritual stage, it is an "absolute concept" and a "process of producing itself, developing itself and returning to itself". "Spiritual philosophy" is a description of all the specific contents and processes of "absolute concept" abandoning nature, returning to itself and developing itself. The three parts of "spiritual philosophy" are subjective spirit, objective spirit and absolute spirit.
The greatest achievement of Hegel's philosophy is his dialectical thought. Hegel systematically criticized the metaphysical way of thinking that had ruled for centuries, ended its dominance, restored the dialectical way of thinking, and promoted it to objective truth and universal law. All Hegel's works are for one purpose, that is, to reveal the most universal laws of the development of nature, human society and thinking through the description of the dialectical development process of spirit and reason. Hegel's great historical achievement lies in applying dialectics to different fields for the first time and describing the whole natural, historical and spiritual world as a process. Of course, Hegel's philosophy is the product of his time, and like any philosophy, it has inevitable limitations. There is a contradiction between the idealistic system and dialectical method of Hegel's philosophy, and the progressive and revolutionary side of his theory is mixed with the conservative and even wrong side. The contradiction between method and system in Hegel's philosophy reflects the dual characteristics of German bourgeois revolution and compromise. Hegel's dialectics only expresses the requirements of bourgeois revolution in a mysterious and abstract form, but does not directly draw the conclusion of action.
183 1 year1month 65438+4, Hegel died in Berlin at the age of 6 1 year. After Hegel's death, his students compiled and published his lectures on the history of philosophy, historical philosophy and aesthetics.
As an outstanding representative of German classical philosophy, an objective idealist, a master of dialectics and a profound scholar, Hegel's influence covers many fields such as philosophy, theology, history, law, social science, political thought and so on, and his ideological system is an encyclopedia. In the process of establishing Marxism, Marx and Engels critically reformed Hegel's philosophy and reached a brand-new conclusion. For the first time in the history of human thought, they combined dialectics and materialism and applied them to the field of social history, thus giving birth to Marxist philosophy. From19th century to 20th century, Hegel's philosophy has received extensive attention. Today, few philosophers and philosophical schools in the East and West have direct or indirect relations with Hegel. Hegelianism or New hegelianism has become a historical phenomenon. However, Hegel's philosophy is playing its own role and enlightening the thoughts of contemporary people.