World history is a court of judgment.
georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegelquotes
1770 - 1831
German philosopher George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) was learning Latin declensions by age three, and enrolled in Latin school at five. His love of knowledge was instilled from the earliest age. Known for his attempt to synthesize opposites, like spirit and nature, to understand the whole, Hegel was an Absolute Idealist with a strong Christian faith.
His philosophies were influenced by Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, and all the Greek philosophers. He has even been called the “Aristotle of modern times.” Hegel proposed a new form of thinking called “speculative reason”, and was the first philosopher to seriously regard the history of society as essential for understanding the individual.
The University of Jena hired him as an unsalaried professor where he worked for many years, and wrote extensively. Later, he accepted paid teaching positions at both the University of Heidelberg and the University of Berlin. A school of Hegelianism eventually formed, but since Hegel’s ideas are experiential and not strict methods of set principles, philosophers of all types have been able to draw inspiration from his works over the years, whether atheist or believer, conservative or liberal.
There are four main books Hegel produced in his life (Phenomenology of Mind, Science of Logic, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, and Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences) that clarify his dialectical system for finding a place for everything be it history, ethics, politics, or religion. Many of his other essays and works were compiled by students’ lecture notes, and published after his death from cholera in 1831.
Once the state has been founded, there can no longer be any heroes. They come on the scene only in uncivilized conditions.
heroes / state / uncivilized
Too fair to worship, too divine to love.
America is therefore the land of the future, where, in the ages that lie before us, the burden of the World’s History shall reveal itself.
If we go on to cast a look at the fate of world historical personalities… we shall find it to have been no happy one. They attained no calm enjoyment; their whole life was labor and trouble; their whole nature was nothing but their master passion. When their object is attained they fall off like empty hulls from the kernel. They die early, like Alexander; they are murdered, like Casear; transported to St. Helena, like Napoleon.
fate / Passion / personalities
The state of man’s mind, or the elementary phase of mind which he so far possesses, conforms precisely to the state of the world as he so far views it.
History in general is therefore the development of Spirit in Time, as Nature is the development of the Idea is Space.
development / history / nature
People who are too fastidious towards the finite never reach actuality, but linger in abstraction, and their light dies away.
When liberty is mentioned, we must always be careful to observe whether it is not really the assertion of private interests which is thereby designated.
The valor that struggles is better than the weakness that endures.