Five-minute digest
The Philosophy of History
Summary
The Philosophy of History (Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte) is the posthumous edition of the lectures on the philosophy of world history that G. W. F. Hegel gave five times at the University of Berlin between the winter of 1822-23 and that of 1830-31. Hegel never wrote it as a book. After his death, his student Eduard Gans assembled the text from Hegel's own manuscripts and students' notebooks and published it in 1837 in the collected works; Hegel's son Karl revised it in 1840, and J. Sibree's English translation of that edition appeared in London in 1857. Sibree's translation is in the public domain, but the library does not yet hold a clean digital text, so this record gives a summary and study guide only and does not quote the work. The long Introduction distinguishes three ways of writing history: original history, written by those who lived through events, like Herodotus and Thucydides; reflective history, which surveys the past from a later standpoint and draws lessons from it; and philosophical history, which Hegel undertakes. Its one presupposition, he says, is that Reason governs the world, so that world history is a rational process. The essence of Spirit is freedom, and history is the progress of the consciousness of freedom. Hegel summarizes this in a famous formula: the Oriental world knew that one is free, the Greek and Roman world that some are free, and the Germanic world, under Christianity, that all are free as human beings. Spirit works through human passions and interests, and especially through world-historical individuals such as Alexander, Caesar and Napoleon, who pursue their own aims while carrying out a larger purpose; Hegel calls this the cunning of reason. The State is the form in which freedom becomes actual. A section on the geographical basis of history surveys the continents and their climates. The main body follows this scheme across four worlds. The Oriental World covers China, India, Persia, with Judea and Egypt treated as transitional. The Greek World describes the beautiful individuality of the city-state, Greek religion and art, Athens and Sparta, the Peloponnesian War and Alexander. The Roman World treats Rome's abstract universality, law and empire, the inner life of the Stoics and Epicureans, and the appearance of Christianity, which Hegel regards as the decisive event in which the infinite worth of every person became known. The Germanic World runs from the migrations of the Germanic peoples and the rise of Islam, through Charlemagne, feudalism, the Church and the Crusades, to the Reformation, which Hegel calls the all-enlightening sun, and finally to the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. The lectures end by describing world history as the development and realization of Spirit, which Hegel calls the true theodicy, the justification of God in history.
Top Lessons
Three ways to write history
Hegel's Introduction distinguishes historians who write from inside events, those who survey the past to draw lessons, and the philosopher who seeks the meaning of the whole. The distinction is still useful for reading Herodotus, Gibbon or a modern textbook.
History as the progress of freedom
Hegel's master idea is that history is the story of human beings coming to know and realize their freedom, from one ruler, to a free citizen class, to all persons. He places the turning point in Christianity's teaching that each person has infinite worth before God.
Great individuals and larger purposes
Hegel says nothing great is accomplished without passion, and that world-historical individuals like Caesar pursue their own ambitions while carrying forward what their age requires. He calls this the cunning of reason, which uses the passions for ends their bearers do not see.