HEGEL, GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH
Philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel had a profound effect on modern thought. Hegel wrote his earliest work in 1807 and his groundbreaking Philosophy of Right in 1827. An idealist, he explored the nature of rationality in an attempt to create a single system of thought that would com-
prehend all knowledge.Among his chief contribu-
tions was developing the hegelian dialectic, a
three-part process for revealing reason that ulti-
mately influenced nineteenth- and twentieth-
century theories of law, political science, econom-
ics, and literature. Especially in the late twentieth
century, scholars debated the ideas of Hegel for
their relevance to contemporary legal issues.
Born August 27, 1770, in Stuttgart, Ger-
many, Hegel achieved fame in his lifetime as a
teacher and writer. The son of a German gov-
ernment official, he was originally a divinity stu-
dent who later turned to philosophy. He worked
as a tutor in his twenties, and later as a school
principal and a professor at German universities
in Heidelberg and Berlin. At the same time, he
wrote far-ranging and lengthy books, including
Science of Logic (1812–16) and Encyclopedia of
the Philosophical Sciences (1817), which contains
every element of his system of philosophy. He
died November 14, 1831, in Berlin.
Hegel’s theories arose partly in response to
those of his predecessor, the Prussian philoso-
pher IMMANUEL KANT. Believing that percep-
