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Author : Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Publisher : Dover Publications, 2004

ISBN : 9780486437552

Call Number : 901 HEG

Summary :

Hegel wrote this classic as an introduction to a series of lectures on the “philosophy of history”—a novel concept in the early nineteenth century. With this work, he created the history of philosophy as a scientific study. He reveals philosophical theory as neither an accident nor an artificial construct, but as an exemplar of its age, fashioned by its antecedents and contemporary circumstances, and serving as a model for the future. The author himself appears to have regarded this book as a popular introduction to his philosophy as a whole, and it remains the most readable and accessible of all his philosophical writings.

Eschewing the methods of original history (written during the period in question) and reflective history (written after the period has passed), Hegel embraces philosophic history, which employs a priori philosophical thought to interpret history as a rational process. Reason rules history, he asserts, through its infinite freedom and power. Hegel argues that all of history is caused and guided by a rational process, and God’s seemingly unknowable plan is rendered intelligible through philosophy.