Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Born in Stuttgart in 1770, Hegel studied at the Tübinger Stift, where he was a contemporary of the poet Friedrich Hölderlin and the philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling. He later worked in Jena, Nuremberg, Heidelberg, and Berlin, gradually becoming one of the central figures of German idealism.

His major works include The Phenomenology of Spirit, The Science of Logic, and Elements of the Philosophy of Right. Across these books and his lectures, he tried to show how thought, history, and social life develop through tension, conflict, and transformation, an approach that made him famous for dialectical thinking.

Hegel died in Berlin in 1831. His influence reached well beyond his own century: later philosophers, political theorists, theologians, and critics all argued with him, borrowed from him, or defined themselves against him, which is one reason he remains such a lasting presence in intellectual history.