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Critical Analysis Of Hegelian Idealism And Its Implications For The Individual Human Person
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A SHORT BIOGRAPHY OF HEGEL
George
Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, greatest of German Idealists and one of the
renowned philosophers of western tradition was born at Stuttgart on
August 27th, 1770. He was the oldest son of a minor state official. In
his school years at Stuttgart the future philosopher was not
spectacular. However, at this period, his attraction to the great
genius, especially the plays of Sophocles and above all in the Antigone
was evident. At the age of eighteen he entered the University of
Tubingen as a student of theology. However, he showed little aptitude
for theology. The certificate which he received in 1793 commended his
excellent talents but declared that his industry and knowledge were
mediocre and above all deficient in philosophy. He seems to have
profited most from the companionship of his friends, notably Holderlin
and Schelling, with whom he read Kant and Plato. The friends studied
Rousseau together and shared a common enthusiasm for the ideals of the
French Revolution, which obviously might have stirred up in Hegel the
later development of his philosophical ideals.
After his stay in
Tubingen, Hegel became a family tutor at Berne in Switzerland and
Frankfurt respectively. During his residence in Switzerland he wrote a
life of Jesus, a critique of positive religion and several studies in
the history of religion. Later, his attention turned to questions of
economics and government, and he left writings on the reform of the
Prussian land laws, a commentary on James Stuart’s Political Economy,
and other studies of similar character which have since been published.
In 1800, he produced a sketch, which is generally regarded as the first
systematic statement of his philosophy.
At the time, when Schelling
was in his heydays, Hegel made a request from Schelling demanding him to
suggest a suitable town for a brief period of studious withdrawal as
well as “a good beerâ€. He joyfully acclaimed the success of his friend
in the academic world, which spurred on ambitions in him (Hegel).
Consequently, he said: “the ideal of my youth has necessarily taken a
reflective form and been transformed into a system… how can I return to
influencing the life of mankind?â€[3] Shelling must have given him an
enthusiastic answer which pushed him into abandoning his previous plans
and joined him (Schelling) at Jena. At the university, he became a
privatdocent (an unsalaried university lecturer) and gradually famous,
through the series of lectures he delivered. As such, before
Schellings’s departure from Jena, in 1803, he and Hegel collaborated in
the publication of the journal of critical philosophy. This work
however, strengthened the impression that Hegel was to all intents and
purposes a disciple of Schelling[4]. On the contrary, with the
publication of his first great work, The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807),
Hegel showed his divergence from Schelling. It was while he was engaged
in the details of publication of this work that his academic career was
brought abruptly to a halt by the Napoleonic campaign culminating in
the battle of Jena in the autumn of 1806.
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