Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)/Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
HEGEL (hā'gl), GEORG WILHELM
FRIEDRICH, a German metaphysician;
born in Stuttgart, in 1770. He studied
at the theological institute of Tübingen
from 1788-1793, and was next a private
tutor at Berne (1793-1796), and
subsequently at Frankfort-on-the-Main (1797-1800).
Having removed to Jena, and
contracted an intimacy with Schelling,
he devoted himself to metaphysical
study. After the battle of Jena, Hegel
was employed on a newspaper at
Bamberg till 1808.

He was professor successively at
Jena, Heidelberg, and Berlin. He was
at first the disciple of Schelling, with
whom he was associated in the conduct
of a philosophical journal in 1802-1803.
But his opinions gradually took a
different turn. He rejected Schelling's
intellectual intuition as an unwarrantable
assumption, though he continued to
maintain its leading idea — the unity of
the subjective or ideal, and the objective
or real; and in this idea endeavored to
establish that absolute cognition and
absolute truth, which alone, according
to this school, can satisfy the demands of
the philosophical spirit. Hegel seems not
to have perfected his system; and as
he had no power of exposition, or of
lucid expression of his thoughts, it is
impossible to give a clear view of his
philosophy. His most important works
are his “Phenomenology of the Mind”;
“Logic”; and “Encyclopædia of
Philosophical Sciences.” He died in Berlin, in
1831.