Phenomenology of Spirit

The works of the German thinker Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) became the pinnacle of German classical philosophy. It was Hegel who, using the dialectical method he developed, gave the doctrine later called idealism its form as a complete, deeply thought-out philosophical system. Hegel managed to formulate one of the most important ideas in the modern world: freedom. By uniting ethics, the theory of state governance, and religion into a single teaching, he found a place in his system for the logical and the natural—the human and the divine. Hegel’s philosophy gave rise to a powerful movement of followers—Hegelianism—and from debates with his ideas emerged the most influential philosophical currents of the modern age: Marxism, positivism, existentialism.