Philosophical Encyclopedia · Part One · Logic

Author: (German) Hegel, translated by Liang Zhixue
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-04-01
Features: Hegel was born on August 1770 in Stuttgart, Germany. At the age of 30 in 1801, he began teaching at the University of Jena and served there until 1829, when he became the Rector of the University of Berlin. It was only by then that his philosophical ideas were finally declared the state-ordained doctrine of Prussia. Therefore, it is no exaggeration to say that he was a late bloomer. Hegel regarded the Absolute Spirit as the origin of the world. The Absolute Spirit is not something that exists beyond the world; rather, nature, human society, and the phenomena of human spirit are all manifestations of it at different stages of its development. Thus, the alternation, development, and eternal life process of things are, in fact, the Absolute Spirit itself. The task and purpose of Hegel's philosophy is to reveal the Absolute Spirit as it manifests through nature, society, and thought, and to uncover its developmental process and its laws. In essence, it explores the dialectical relationship between thought and existence, revealing their dialectical unity on the basis of idealism.
Around this fundamental proposition, Hegel built an astonishingly magnificent system of objective idealism, primarily discussing the three stages of the self-development of the Absolute Spirit: Logic, Natural Philosophy, and Spirit Philosophy. Throughout his discussions of every concept, thing, and the entire system, Hegel consistently upheld the principle of dialectics. This is one of the most audacious and remarkable thoughts in the history of human thought. Later, Engels highly praised him, saying: "Modern German philosophy reached its peak in Hegel's system. In this system, Hegel—for the first time—this is his great achievement—described the entire natural, historical, and spiritual world as being in constant motion, change, transformation, and development, and attempted to reveal the internal connections of this movement and development." Hegel wrote extensively throughout his life, and his representative works include Phenomenology of Spirit, Science of Logic, Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Philosophy of History, and Aesthetics, among others.