Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) was a German philosopher whose system of absolute idealism dominated European thought for decades. Born in Stuttgart, he studied theology at Tübingen with Hölderlin and Schelling, worked as a tutor, newspaper editor and school headmaster, and published the Phenomenology of Spirit in 1807 while at Jena. The Science of Logic, the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences and the Philosophy of Right followed during professorships at Heidelberg and Berlin, and his lectures on history, art, religion and the history of philosophy were published by his students. His dialectical account of reason unfolding through history shaped Marx, existentialism and much of modern theology and political thought.