Hegel: A Biography

American author and professor Terry Pinkard’s comprehensive biographical survey of the life and ideas of German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel: A Biography (2000), is "the only substantial biography of Hegel" that's been published since 1844, according to The New York Review of Books' Anthony Quinton.

Born in 1770 in Stuttgart, Germany, Hegel was an enthusiastic scholar from an early age. By the time he turned five, Pinkard notes, Hegel could already read and translate basic Latin phrases. He continued to read voraciously and write prolifically until graduating from Eberhard-Ludwigs-Gymnasium at age eighteen. Hegel then attended the University of Tubingen where he enrolled in a Protestant seminary. There, he made friends with fellow future-philosophers such as Friedrich Holderlin and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling. Over the next year, Hegel became fascinated by the French Revolution and the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. While steadfastly supporting the ideas behind the French Revolution, he favored the more moderate Girondin political faction. The violent purging carried out by the more radical Montagnard faction during the bloody Reign of Terror deeply disturbed Hegel.

After graduating, Hegel worked as a tutor for wealthy families but found the draw of academia and ideas too powerful to resist. He worked for the next few years as an unpaid lecturer at the University in Jena, struggling to get by financially while finishing what would become his most significant work, The Phenomenology of Spirit.



In 1807, Hegel finally published The Phenomenology of Spirit. This book was considered by Hegel's contemporaries as well as modern scholars to be the next logical step in the evolution of European philosophy after the work of Immanuel Kant. Hegel fashioned it as a "biography of spirit," focused largely on the struggle to achieve fully realized self-consciousness. In one of the book's most famous passages, Hegel sets up what is known as the "master-slave dialectic." In short, it argues that achieving self-consciousness is a process that cannot be done alone. One may achieve self-consciousness only through the mutual recognition of a separate consciousness. If the first consciousness asserts his or her will on the second consciousness—becoming the master—then the second consciousness is negated through fear. However, this negation is, in fact, cyclical in nature. The master's dependence on the slave for labor ends up negating his or her own consciousness over time. Moreover, the idea of compassion comes into play. Although the master successfully asserts his or her sense of consciousness over being by refusing to submit to a fear of death as the slave does, the master also negates his or her own consciousness by failing to see the reflection of the self in the slave.

It's worth noting here that even Pinkard admits that Hegel's philosophy can be difficult to understand, owing to the seeming contradictions within it as well as the German translation. In fact, Hegel himself argued that German is the most "natural" language for philosophers. For this reason, the author largely focuses on how the political and historical context of Hegel's writings, along with Hegel's own sometimes-contradictory political opinions, have affected his legacy in the minds of contemporary and modern readers. For example, both right-wing fascists like Mussolini as well as left-wing Marxists who advocate for communist systems have used Hegel as a justification.

To help explain this paradox, Pinkard discusses one of Hegel's most frequently quoted passages, “The Real is the Rational and the Rational is the Real." Many conservatives, the author writes, have latched onto this phrase to justify the preservation of existing systems. In their minds, because "innovation" or "progressivism" is aspirational in nature and thus "not real," it is important to rely on existing orthodoxy to solve the problems of today, which are "real" and therefore require "rational" (or existing) solutions. However, Pinkard asks readers to look more closely at the statement and note that there are two parts to it. The second part, "the Rational is the Real," suggests to Pinkard that when a situation ceases to be rational in nature, it begs solutions that do not yet exist in the real world. This, he writes, is why various progressives and left-wing thinkers have latched onto Hegel's ideas just as readily as conservative thinkers.



To further emphasize Hegel's contradictions in terms of orthodoxy versus radicalism, Pinkard takes special note of an event later in Hegel's life when he served as a government commissar to supervising the University of Berlin. He approved of the dismissal of a colleague named de Wette because he was deemed too radical by the state. Nevertheless, Hegel petitioned the university to continue paying de Wette's salary despite his dismissal. When the university refused his petition, Hegel paid the man out of his own pocket.

While Hegel: A Biography may not be the best entry point for newcomers looking to understand Hegelian philosophy, it is an eye-opening account of Hegel's life that adds helpful context to his writings.