Hegel’s Philosophy of World History

Abstract

This chapter first provides an overview of the history of the development of Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of World History. A second section is devoted to the systematic location of world history between the objective and absolute spirit. World history, as the labor of the world-spirit, is “elevation to God,” but this must be understood as the development of the consciousness of freedom, insofar the philosophical notion of God is nothing but the fully developed concept of freedom. Section three, examines Hegel’s manuscript of the “Introduction” 1822–1828, where Hegel introduces his historiography, distinguishing between its “original,” “reflected” and “philosophical” types same. A fourth section turns to Hegel’s last “Introduction,” which considers the relation of history and reason in general. For Hegel, “theodicy” as the reconciliatory consideration of history is the result of the philosophical historiography. This theodicy consists in the fact that history emerges from the free will, and that the will is able to give itself as an idea of a self-consciousness in the complete concept of freedom. The fifth, and final, section deals with Hegel’s speech about the end of history. This end is defined by the telos of world history, the fully completed consciousness of freedom in the philosophical knowing of the absolute idea, but this means that the realization of freedom based on this consciousness is still outstanding.

Draft translation by Anna Moentmann and Marina F. Bykova; translation completed, revised and edited by Kenneth R. Westphal. (Passages from Hegel’s German translated by Westphal are marked as krw.)