G. W. F. Hegel 
Philosophy of History (Barnes & Noble Digital Library) 

This edition includes a modern introduction and a list of suggested further reading.


 


Hegel’s philosophical history of the world is a work that grows out of a genre in philosophy that looks at history as the development of human abilities and charts the progress of humankind through a series of epochs. For Hegel, history is centered largely on political developments, on the deeds of the great historical figures, such as Alexander the Great and Napoleon Bonaparte, leading up to the modern nation-state. Moreover, he shows that history exhibits real progress toward the ultimate goal of freedom and that the modern period, the epoch in which he lived, brought this development to a culmination.

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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the son of an official in the government of Württemberg, was born in Stuttgart on August 27, 1770. At seminary in Tübingen where he met German poet Hölderlin and Friedrich Schelling, who would have a profound influence on Hegel’s philosophy. He published his first major work, the
Phenomenology of Spirit, in 1807. On November 14, 1831, Hegel died of cholera in Berlin, a year after being elected rector of the University of Berlin and four months after having been decorated by Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia.