G. W. F. Hegel

1770 – 1831 · Germany · Philosophy

Dialectic and the history of spirit; the pivot from which Marx and existentialism both turn.

Index entry

G. W. F. Hegel is currently a short index entry. The research desk can draft the full profile — achievements, works, living legacy and what is documented about the family line.

Expand this profile

Continuity of ideas

Who shaped G. W. F. Hegel, and who they shaped

Inherited from2

  • Immanuel Kant

    1724 – 1804 · Philosophy

    Hegel's system begins as a repair of Kant's unknowable thing-in-itself.

  • Thomas Aquinas

    1225 – 1274 · Philosophy

    Scholastic system-building is the model Hegel secularises into dialectical logic.

Passed the work to2

  • Karl Marx

    1818 – 1883 · Political Economy, Philosophy

    Marx inverts the dialectic: material conditions, not spirit, move history.

  • Søren Kierkegaard

    1813 – 1855 · Philosophy, Theology

    Kierkegaard's whole authorship is a protest against the Hegelian system's erasure of the individual.

Sources and references

Numbered markers in the text above point to the entries below. Each links to a primary document, archival collection or scholarly reference where the claim about G. W. F. Hegel can be checked.

  1. 1.
  2. 2.

Nearby in the annals