Born: 8/27/1770   Died: 11/14/1831

Hegel was a German idealist philosopher whose most important works are the Phenomenology of Mind, Science of Logic, and Philosophy of Right. Hegel's view that history is a rational process of development heavily influenced Marx, who adopted Hegel's teleological conception of history but "turned it on its head" by making matter rather than mind essential to the process. In the Science of Logic, Hegel attempts to use his system of dialectical logic to demonstrate the necessity of absolute idealism, the view that ultimate reality consists in a universal Mind. In the Phenomenology, Hegel argues that human development represents the logically necessary process of Mind coming to know itself. One famous part of the Phenomenology is the master-slave dialectic, used to explain the transition from consciousness to self-consciousness. Hegel's political philosophy is developed in the Philosophy of Right, the best known parts of which include his account of freedom, his critique of Kant’s moral philosophy, and his conception of ethical life.