Born in 1770 in Stuttgart, Holy Roman Empire, during the transitional period between the Enlightenment and the Romantic movement in the Germanic regions of Europe, Hegel lived through and was influenced by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars.

Taking skepticism seriously, he contends that people cannot presume any truths that have not passed the test of experience; even the a priori categories of the Logic must attain their "verification" in the natural world and the historical accomplishments of humankind.

Guided by the Delphic imperative to "know thyself", Hegel presents free self-determination as the essence of humankind – a conclusion from his 1806–07 Phenomenology that he claims is further verified by the systematic account of the interdependence of logic, nature, and spirit in his later Encyclopedia.

[5] Although the violence of the 1793 Reign of Terror dampened Hegel's hopes, he continued to identify with the moderate Girondin faction and never lost his commitment to the principles of 1789, which he expressed by drinking a toast to the storming of the Bastille every fourteenth of July.

[19] In Berne, Hegel's writings had been sharply critical of orthodox Christianity, but in Frankfurt, under the influence of early Romanticism, he underwent a sort of reversal, exploring, in particular, the mystical experience of love as the true essence of religion.

[5] Hegel secured a position at the University of Jena as a Privatdozent (unsalaried lecturer) after submitting the inaugural dissertation De Orbitis Planetarum, in which he briefly criticized mathematical arguments that assert that there must exist a planet between Mars and Jupiter.

"[33] Although Napoleon had spared the University of Jena from much of the destruction of the surrounding city, few students returned after the battle and enrollment suffered, making Hegel's financial prospects even worse.

[5] This period saw the publication of his second major work, the Science of Logic (Wissenschaft der Logik; 3 vols., 1812, 1813 and 1816), and the birth of two sons, Karl Friedrich Wilhelm (1813–1901) and Immanuel Thomas Christian (1814–1891).

Soon after, his illegitimate son Ludwig Fischer (now ten years old) joined the Hegel household in April 1817, having spent time in an orphanage after the death of his mother Christiana Burkhardt.

[45] Meanwhile, Hegel and his pupils, such as Leopold von Henning, Friedrich Wilhelm Carové, were harassed and put under the surveillance of Prince Sayn-Wittgenstein, the interior minister of Prussia and his reactionary circles in the Prussian court.

Hegel's two remaining sons – Karl, who became a historian; and Immanuel [de], who followed a theological path – lived long and safeguarded their father's manuscripts and letters, and produced editions of his works.

[57] As H. S. Harris recounts, when Hegel entered the Tübingen seminary in 1788, "he was a typical product of the German Enlightenment – an enthusiastic reader of Rousseau and Lessing, acquainted with Kant (at least at second hand), but perhaps more deeply devoted to the classics than to any thing modern.

[71][d] The influence of Johann Gottfried von Herder, however, would lead Hegel to a qualified rejection of the universality claimed by the Kantian program in favor of a more culturally, linguistically, and historically informed account of reason.

As Hegel was no longer in need of money or credentials, H. S. Harris argues that "the only rational conclusion that can be drawn from his decision to republish the book… is that he still regarded the 'science of experience' as a valid project in itself" and one for which later system has no equivalent.

[108] This is to say that, among other things, Hegel's philosophical project endeavors to provide the metaphysical basis for an account of spirit that is continuous with, yet distinct from, the "merely" natural world – without thereby reducing either term to the other.

"[112][120] In the words of scholar Glenn Alexander Magee, the logic provides "an account of pure categories or ideas which are timelessly true" and which make up "the formal structure of reality itself".

For instance, in the opening dialectic of the Logic, Hegel claims to display that the thought of "being, pure being – without further determination" is indistinguishable from the concept of nothing, and that, in this "passing back and forth" of being and nothing, "each immediately vanishes in its opposite.

"[149] This is to say that what makes the philosophy of the real scientific in Hegel's technical sense is the systematically coherent logical form it uncovers in its natural-historical material – and so also displays in its presentation.

"[171] This section, particularly its first part, contains various comments that were commonplace in Hegel's day and can now be recognized as openly racist, such as unfounded claims about the "naturally" lower intellectual and emotional development of Black people.

As a first approximation, Michael Inwood distinguishes three senses: Beiser observes that Hegel's theory is "his attempt to rehabilitate the natural law tradition while taking into account the criticisms of the historical school."

Although he insists upon the importance of public participation, Hegel severely limits suffrage and follows the English bicameral model, in which only members of the lower house, that of commoners and bourgeoisie, are elected officials.

[252][253] Some commentators – most notably, Alexandre Kojève and Francis Fukuyama – have understood Hegel to claim that, having achieved a fully universal concept of freedom, history is complete, that it has reached its conclusion.

Since Hegel's day, the scope of the concept of freedom has been expanded to acknowledge the rightful inclusion of women, formerly enslaved or colonized peoples, the mentally ill, and those who do not conform to conservative norms with respect to sexual preference or gender identity, among others.

Instead of seeking to answer a question or solve a problem directly, he frequently recasts it by showing, for instance, "how the dichotomy underlying the dispute is false, and that it is therefore possible to integrate elements from both positions.

The primary thrust of their criticism is concisely expressed in the eleventh of Marx's "Theses on Feuerbach" from his 1845 German Ideology: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.

'"[305] Although it cannot be attributed entirely to Kojève, this reading of Hegel shaped the thought and interpretations of thinkers such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Claude Levi-Strauss, Jacques Lacan, and Georges Bataille.

[306] Kojève's interpretation of the "master-slave dialectic" as the basic model of historical development also influenced the feminism of Simone de Beauvoir and the anti-racist and anti-colonial work of Frantz Fanon.

[309] As Dewey himself describes the attraction, "There were, however, also 'subjective' reasons for the appeal that Hegel's thought made to me; it supplied a demand for unification that was doubtless an intense emotional craving, and yet was a hunger that only an intellectualized subject-matter could satisfy.

[314] McDowell is particularly interested in dispelling the "myth of the given," the dichotomy between concept and intuition, whereas Brandom is concerned mostly to develop Hegel's social account of reason-giving and normative implication.

As Peperzak puts it (commenting upon the Encyclopedia version of the dialectic), "Hegel likewise emphasizes the mutual benefit and commonality of the union between a free master and the 'animal sapiens' who serves him as an appropriate organon.