Educated in philosophy at the University of Tubingen, Hegel graduated in 1790 and spent some time tutoring in Berne. In 1796, he moved to Frankfort-on-Main and continued to work as a tutor while expanding his own ideas on philosophy. He had become deeply impressed with the works of Immanuel Kant, but disagreed with him on reason and the limitations that Kant placed on it. Moving to Jena in 1801, Hegel lectured and continued to work on his theses which eventually culminated in his first major work Phanomenologie des Geistes (Phaenomenology of Spirit) (1807). Between 1812 and 1816, he published Wissenschaft der Logik (Science of Logic) which presented his philosophical system and which earned him the Heidelberg professorship in philosophy. In 1817, he published his Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences and was invited to take the chair in philosophy at Berlin University, which he retained until his death from cholera in 1831. His Philosophy of Right (1821) established him as the leading philosopher in Germany. His philosophical system of thesis, antithesis and synthesis influenced the development of Existentialism, Positivism, and even Marxism. |
