G. W. F. Hegel

G. W. F. Hegel finished the Phenomenology of Spirit in Jena as Napoleon’s army entered the town in 1806, and rose from schoolmaster to the chair of philosophy at Berlin, where his lectures drew the future of German thought. His system holds that reality is Spirit coming to know itself through history, by a dialectic in which every position generates its opposite and both are taken up into a higher one. The Philosophy of Right set out the modern state; the lectures on history and aesthetics were published from students’ notes. Marx stood him on his head; everyone since has had to decide where he stands.