Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Born in Stuttgart in 1770, Hegel studied at the Tübinger Stift, where he was part of the same intellectual world as the poet Friedrich Hölderlin and the philosopher F. W. J. Schelling. After working as a tutor, he went on to teach and write in Jena, Bamberg, Nuremberg, Heidelberg, and finally Berlin, where he became one of the most prominent philosophers in Europe.

His major works include Phenomenology of Spirit, Science of Logic, and Elements of the Philosophy of Right. Across them, he developed an ambitious system that aimed to explain how mind, society, history, and freedom develop through conflict, change, and reconciliation. He is often associated with dialectic, though his thought is broader and more intricate than the simple formula it is sometimes reduced to.

Hegel died in Berlin in 1831. Even when readers disagree with him, they rarely escape his influence: later thinkers ranging from Karl Marx to existentialists, pragmatists, theologians, and modern political philosophers all had to reckon with his work.