A short introduction to Hegel's life and Philosophy.

1. GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL
PRESENTER: AMANI SALMEEN

2. INTRODUCTION
 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (often known as G. W. F. Hegel or Georg Hegel).
 A German philosopher of the early Modern period; He was a leading figure in the German
Idealism movement in the early 19th Century.
 He has been called the "Aristotle of modern times", and he used his system of dialectics to explain the
whole of the history of philosophy, science, art, politics and religion.
 Hegel is considered the summit of early 19th Century German thought and had a profound impact on
many future philosophical schools.

3. LIFE
 Hegel was born on 27 August 1770 in Stuttgart in south-western Germany..
 He was an avid reader from a young age. He read Shakespeare, the ancient Greek
philosophers, the Bible and German literature. In addition to German and Latin, he
learned Greek, Hebrew, French and English.
 Graduated from the Tübingen Seminary in 1793, Majoring in Theology.
 In 1801, Hegel was a lecturer at the University of Jena
. He lectured on Logic and Metaphysics and, with Schelling, gave joint lectures.
 In 1802, he produced his first real book on philosophy, "The Difference between Fichte's
and Schelling's Systems of Philosophy“

4. LIFE
 In 1805, he wrote his book Phenomenology of Mind.
 From 1808 until 1816, he was headmaster of a gymnasium in Nuremberg,
where he adapted his "Phenomenology of Mind" for use in the classroom
 From 1816 to 1818, Hegel taught at the Univeristy of Heidelberg,
 and then he took offer of the chair of philosophy at theUniversity of Berlin,
where he remained until his death in 1831

5. WORK
1. Phenomenology of Mind in 1807
2. Science of Logic in 1811
3. Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in 1816
4. Elements of the Philosophy of Right in 1821

6. AN OVERVIEW OF HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY
 A major philosopher of German idealism.
 The importance of History : learn from the past. He believed that strange parts of history have
much to teach us. He believed that progress is never linear. So, important ideas and attitudes
get lost. the role of a historian is to Save those ideas.
 We can learn from opposite ideas (Dialectic).
 Art has a purpose: rejects the idea of Art for Art’s sake.
 Man is the highest part of nature because he is conscious of it.

7.  Modern philosophy, culture, and society seemed full with contradictions , such as those
between the subject and object of knowledge, mind and nature, self andOther, freedom and
authority, knowledge and faith.
 Hegel's main philosophical project was to take these contradictions and interpret them as
part of a comprehensive, evolving, rational unity that, he called "the absolute Idea“
 According to Hegel, the main characteristic of this unity was that it evolves through and
manifests itself in contradiction.

8.  Hegel insisted on an absolute(which many commentators have seen as a substitute for God
and others as a substitute for the laws of the material world.) What Hegel argues is that in
order to for one to have a sense of the world they must have an identity and self-
consciousness in order to have perception of an outside object
 Hegel saw all reality as being composed of “spirit” and what he means is the realization of
ideas that have come from a necessity of being.
 Hegel is similar to Kant in that he attempts to try to give us a hint of an ultimate reality
through the subjective consciousness of human experience and insists that this is a reflection
of an absolute reality.

9. GEIST
 The moment when consciousness fully understands its own nature-its essential unity with all
that exists.
 It develops through History , with each period having a “spirit of the age”
 Spirit (Geist) is the name Hegel most often uses to designate this fundamental unity, and the
goal of philosophy is to gain the “absolute knowledge"
 The changes of history, its dialectical path, would then come to an end.

10. DIALECTIC AND SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS

11. DIALECTIC
 A method of argument for solving disagreement;
reaching the truth by exchanging logical arguments.
 Hegelianism believes that the human mind cannot
understand anything unless it is split into two
opposites.
Dialectic= extracting the truth

12. Tall Short
The different heights
Thesis
Antithesis
synthesis

13.  He believes that we are born lacking Self- consciousness then come to
awareness of ourselves as self.
So, What is the process of becoming the self? how does a human being come to
consciousness of itself as a self ?
 It’s through confrontation with the other.

14. THE REALITY OF SELF DEPENDS ON TWO THINGS:
Consciousness
of the self
(being-for-self)
Self existence
acknowledged by
other human beings
(Being-for-others)

15.  Selves are not born but made. A child develops a sense of self mainly because
others treat it as self . Thusly, it is socially constructed depending on the
treatment.
 The self can come to full self Consciousness through encountering the other.

16. MATER –SLAVE DIALECTIC
 Every individual needs recognition from “the other” to ensure his Selfhood.
 In the battle between master and slave, the slave looses by choosing a life of
servitude over death at the hands of his master. However, The master cannot
enjoy his victory because the slave , who is not equal in status, cannot freely
acknowledge or recognize his master and his acknowledgment is forced.
 Recognition is only possible by someone who is like the master in status.

17.  The master: by being served , looses contact with reality
and becomes dependent
 Through labor, a slave can achieve consciousness.

18. MATER –SLAVE DIALECTIC
 If recognition is forced= doubts of master continue (lacks being-for-other) as
the other is removed.

19. FINE ART
 For him, the main goal of humanity is to come to full consciousness of the spirit, and the way to achieve
that is philosophy.
 The spirit /idea dwells within humans, and Art gives it a concrete form.
 “Artistic objects are superior to natural , God-made ones because of the spiritual purpose.”
 Natural objects can represent the outer world against which the self can achieve spiritual
consciousness.
 Another view of Art is Art as a product of human activity by placing the work of art in relation to the
external phenomena of nature.
 “the work of art attains the appearance of life only on its surface; inside it is ordinary stone. External
existence is not what makes a work into a product of fine art but the fact that it originates from the
spirit, it now belongs to the territory of the spirit”

20. HEGEL AND NATURE
• Nature has presented itself as the idea in the form of otherness.
• “Hegel asserts the superiority of man-made artistic objects'to God-made
natural ones by appealing to their spiritual purpose.” .
• “God is more honored by what the spirit makes than by the productions and
formations of nature. For not only is there something divine in man, but it is
active in him in a form appropriate to the being of God in a totally different
and higher manner than it is in nature.”
• “God is spirit, and in man alone does the medium, through which the Divine
passes”

21. HIS INFLUENCE
 shaped the thought of JEAN-PAUL SARTRE, SIMONE DE
BEAUVOIR, JACQUES LACAN, and JACQUES DERRIDA, among
others.
 Sigmund Freud: Anticipated the process of Self-affirmation
 Marxism: the effect of war , description of labor as redeeming.
Hegel's most famous disciple, KARL MARX, adopts both the vision
of struggle and the dream of an end to strife.

22. CONCLUSION

23. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Leitch, Vincent B., William E. Cain, Laurie Finke, and Barbara Johnson, eds. The Norton Anthology of
Theory and Criticism . N.p.: Norton & Company, 2001. Print.
The School of Life.” Philosophy - Hegel,” YouTube. Caption authors: Daniel Marques, Sonia D, Anas Naeem,
Annie Alford. 10 July, 2016.