PhilosophersGeorg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

The real is rational: Spirit realises itself in history.

German idealism1770 – 1831 GermanyGerman idealistThinker of dialecticPhilosopher of historyPhilosopher of the state and of right
Das Wahre ist das Ganze.
The truth is the whole.
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Was vernünftig ist, das ist wirklich; und was wirklich ist, das ist vernünftig.
What is rational is actual; and what is actual is rational. ("Actual" translates wirklich: what is truly effective, not everything that exists.)
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die Eule der Minerva beginnt erst mit der einbrechenden Dämmerung ihren Flug.
The owl of Minerva takes flight only as dusk falls: philosophy understands an age when it is ending.
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so ist auch die Philosophie ihre Zeit in Gedanken erfaßt.
So philosophy too is its own time apprehended in thoughts.
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daß nichts Großes in der Welt ohne Leidenſchaft vollbracht worden iſt.
Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion. (Lectures on History: students' notes, not his pen.)
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es ist nur als ein Anerkanntes.
Self-consciousness exists only in being recognised.
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Misconceptions

False
Hegel thought in "thesis, antithesis, synthesis".

In all of Hegel's German texts in our corpus, the words "thesis" and "antithesis" appear together only once, describing Kant's antinomies, in an addition compiled from students' notes. In the Phenomenology, Hegel credits the three-step form to Kant and mocks those who turn it into a "lifeless schema", a table stuck onto everything. According to historians (for instance G. E. Mueller, 1958), the vocabulary "thesis, antithesis, synthesis" is found rather in Fichte, and it was a commentator, Heinrich Chalybäus (1837), who popularised it as a summary of Hegel. Neither point can be checked in our corpus. His dialectic rather describes a thing that develops by going through its own contradiction, like the bud, the blossom and the fruit. (The Science of Logic is not yet in our corpus: on that text we follow the specialists.)

Nuanced
Hegel wrote: "The State is the march of God on earth".

The sentence is not from his hand: it comes from an addition (Zusatz) to § 258 of the Philosophy of Right, compiled in 1833 by his student Eduard Gans from lecture notes. The German says: "It is the way of God in the world that there should be a state", not that any given state is God on the march. Dyde's English translation (1896), "The state is the march of God in the world", made the phrase famous. And the next sentence says one must not think of particular states but of the idea of the state.

Nuanced
For Hegel, "world history is the world's court": the winner is always right.

The exact phrase "Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht" is a line by Schiller (1786). Hegel takes it up in § 340 in a more discreet form (the world spirit exercises its right "in world history, as the world's court"). And two paragraphs later he states that this court is not that of mere power or of blind fate, but the development of reason and freedom. One may dispute the idea, but it is not "might makes right".

False
"What is actual is rational" means that everything that exists is justified.

Hegel himself answered this reading in 1827: "actual" (wirklich) does not mean everything that exists. Existence is "only partly" actuality; chance, error and evil exist without being "actual" in the strong sense. He adds that anyone can see many things around them that are not as they ought to be. The question remains debated: is his political philosophy conservative or reformist?

Nuanced
Hegel wrote that peoples never learn anything from history.

The sentence exists, but in the Lectures on the Philosophy of History, published after his death from lecture notes: his thought, not necessarily his exact words. And the meaning is precise: each age is so particular that the "lessons" of the past are not enough to decide what to do.