introduction to hegel

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a German philosopher. 
	He is considered one of the most important figures in German idealism 
	and one of the founding figures of Modern philosophy, 
		with his influence extending to 
			epistemology, 
			logic, 
			metaphysics, 
			aesthetics, 
			philosophy of history, 
			philosophy of religion, 
			and the history of philosophy.

Hegel's principal achievement was the development of a distinctive articulation of idealism, sometimes termed absolute idealism, in which the dualisms of, for instance, mind and nature and subject and object are overcome Pure concepts are not applied subjectively to sense-impressions, but rather things exist for their concept. The unity of concept and reality is the idea The idea itself is dynamic, active, self-determining, self-moving, and purposive. The idea properly exists as life In life, the parts of the body are unified for the final cause of actualizing the living organism. Non-organic nature is also grounded in the concept, but is only "latent" and not fully self-determining Geist, or Spirit, is the highest form of life and the idea. Geist is the collective purposive agency and genus of man Geist is equally substance and subject, meaning that geist is not only a living organic substance, but also a subject involved in complex normative and social spaces In contrast to Immanuel Kant, who held that the subject imposes rational a priori pure concepts of understanding upon the sense-data of intuitions, Hegel believed that the pure concepts are grounded in reality itself Hegel is also known for his dialectical logic, which is mostly contained within his Science of Logic. In this book, Hegel creates a presuppositionless logic of pure thought, which begins with pure being. In the logic, positions and ideas are examined and revealed to be immanently contradictory. The contradiction within the position and itself is sublated, in which a new position is posited that negates the previous position's contradiction
		An example of sublation is the contradictory nature of pure indeterminate being
			Pure being is revealed to be both equal to and different from nothing
			This contradiction within being is resolved with its sublation into becoming, 
				in which nothing passes into being and being passes into nothing
			However, becoming also reveals its own contradictions and is sublated into determinate being
		The logic progresses along through contradictions and sublations 
			until there are no more contradictions that can be sublated. 
		This is the absolute, which for Hegel is the idea
	

Hegel influenced a wide variety of thinkers and writers