Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (August 27, 1770–November 14, 1831) was a German philosopher, best known for attempting to elaborate a comprehensive and systematic ontology from a logical starting point.

1 Sourced
- 1.1 The Phenomenology of the Spirit (1807)
- 1.2 Lectures on the History of Philosophy (1832)
2 Attributed
3 External Links

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Sourced

The owl of Minerva first begins her flight with the onset of dusk. (Die Eule der Minerva beginnt erst mit der einbrechenden Dämmerung ihren Flug.)
- Preface to Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1821)

Was vernünftig ist, das ist Wirklich; und was wirklich ist, das ist vernünftig.
- Translation: What is reasonable is real; that which is real is reasonable.
- Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1821)

The essence of the modern state is the union of the universal with the full freedom of the particular, and with the welfare of individuals
- Section 260, Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1821)

Not curiosity, not vanity, not the consideration of expediency, not duty and conscientiousness, but an unquenchable, unhappy thirst that brooks no compromise leads us to truth.
- Hegel's Stammbuch

...Altogether, Hegel's conversation was always a kind of monologue, sighed forth by fits and starts in a toneless voice. The baroqueness of his expressions often started me, and I remember many of them. On beautiful starry-skied evening, we two stood next to each other at a window, and I, a young man of twenty-two who had eaten well and had good coffee, enthused about the stars and called them the abode of the bessed. But the master grumbled to himself: "The stars, hum! hum! the stars are only a gleaming leprosy in the sky." For God's sake, I shouted, then is no happy locality up there to reward virtue after death? But he, starring at me with his pale eyes, said cuttingly: "So you want to get a tip for having nursed your sick mother and not having posioned your dear borther?" -Saying that, he looked around anxiously, but he immediately seemed reassured when he saw that it was only Heinrich Beer, who had approached to invite him to play whist...
- Heinrich Heine: Confessions (Gestandnisse, 1854)

The force of mind is only as great as its expression; its depth only as deep as its power to expand and lose itself. [1]
- The Phenomenology of Mind

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The Phenomenology of the Spirit (1807)

The very attempt to determine the relationship of a philosophical work to other efforts concerning the same subject, introduces an alien and irrelevant interest which obscures precisely that which matters for the recognition of the truth. Opinion considers the opposition of what is true and false quite rigid, and, confronted with a philosophical system, it expects agreement or contradiction. And in an explanation of such a system, opinion still expects to find one or the other. It does not comprehend the difference of the philosophical systems in terms of the progressive development of the truth, but sees only the contradiction in this difference. The bud disappears as the blossom bursts forth, and one could say that the former is refuted by the latter. In the same way, the fruit declares the blossom to be a false existence of the plant. These forms do not only differ, they also displace each other because they are incompatible. Their fluid nature, however, makes them, at the same time, elements of an organic unity in which they not only do not conflict, but in which one is as necessary as the other; and it is only this equal necessity that constitutes the life of the whole.

For the subject matter is not exhausted by any aim, but only by the way in which things are worked out in detail; nor is the result the actual whole, but only the result together with its becoming. The aim, taken by itself, is a lifeless generality; the tendency is a mere drift which still lacks actuality; and the naked result is the corpse which has left the tendency behind.

But the other side of its Becoming, History, is a conscious, self-meditating process- Spirit emptied out into Time; but this externalization, this kenosis, is equally an externalization of itself; the negative is the negative of itself. This Becoming presents a slow-moving succession of Spirits, a gallery of images, each of which, endowed with all the riches of Spirit, moves thus slowly just because the Self has to penetrate and digest this entire wealth of its substance. As its fulfilment consists in perfectly knowing what it is, in knowing its substance, this knowing is iat withdrawal into itself in which it abandons its outer existence and gives its existential shape over to recollection. Thus absorbed in itself, it is sunk in the night of its self-consciousness; but in that night its vansihed outer existence is perserved, and this transformed existence- the former one, but now reborn of the Spirit's knowledge- is the new existence, a new world and a new shape of Spirit. In the immediacy of this new existence the Spirit has to start afrsh to bring itself to maturity as if, for it, all that preceeded were lost and it had learned nothing from the experience of the earlier Spirits. But recollection, the inwardizing, of that experience, has perserved it and is the inner-being, and in fact the higher form of the substance. So although to bring itself to maurity, it is none the less on a higher level that it starts. The realm of Spirits which is formed in this way in the outer world constitutes a succession in Time in which one Spirit relieved another of its charge and each took over the empire of the world from its predecessor. Their goal is the revelation of the depth of Spirit, and this is the absolute Notion. This revelation is, therfore, the raising-up of its depth, or its extension, the negativity of this withdrawn 'I', a negativity which is its externalization or its substance; and this revelation is also a Notion's Time, in that this externalization is in its own self externalized, and just as it is in its extention, so it is equally in its depth, in the Seld. The goal, Absolute Knowing, or Spirit that knows itself as Spirit, has for its path the recollection of the Spirits as they are in themselves and as they accomplish the organization of their realm. Their preservation, regarded from the side of their free extistence appearing in the form of contingency, is History,; but regarded from the side of their comprehended organization, it is the Science of Knowing in the sphere of appearance: the two together, comprehended History, form alike the inwardizing and the Calvary of the absolute Spirit, the actuality, truth, and certainty of his throne, without which he would be lifeless and alone. Only

from the chalice of this realm of spirits

foams forth for Him his own infinitude.

- The last two lines are an adaptation of Schiller's Die Freundschaft

Das Wahre ist das Ganze.
- Translation: The true is the whole.
- Section 20

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Lectures on the History of Philosophy (1832)

What experience and history teach is this—that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.
- Introduction

Amid the pressure of great events, a general principle gives no help.
- Introduction

To him who looks upon the world rationally, the world in its turn presents a rational aspect. The relation is mutual.
- Introduction

The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.
- Introduction

We may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.
- Introduction

It is easier to discover a deficiency in individuals, in states, and in providence, than to see their real import or value.
- Introduction

Life has a value only when it has something valuable as its object.
- Introduction

Serious occupation is labor that has reference to some want.
- Pt. I, sec. 2, ch. 1

It is a matter of perfect indifference where a thing originated; the only question is: "Is it true in and for itself?"
- Pt. III, sec. 3, ch. 2

The Few assume to be the deputies, but they are often only the despoilers of the Many.
- Pt. IV, sec. 3, ch. 3

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Attributed

Any philosopher who uses the word and too often cannot be a good philosopher.

Was das Individuum betrifft, so ist ohnehin jedes ein Sohn seiner Zeit; so ist auch Philosophie ihre Zeit in Gedanken erfaßt.
- Translation: As far as the individual is concerned, each individual is in any case a child of his time; thus, philosophy, too, is its own time comprehended in thoughts.

I saw the World Spirit seated on a horse.
- On first seeing Napoleon

It is remarkable when a nation loses its Metaphysics, when the Spirit which contemplates its own Pure Essence is no longer a present reality in the life of a nation.

Logic is to be understood as the System of Pure Reason, as the realm of Pure Thought. This realm is Truth as it is without veil, and in its own Absolute nature. It can therefore be said that this Content is the exposition of God as God is in God's eternal essence before the creation of Nature and a finite mind.