James H. BillingtonThinkers

G.W.F. Hegel is a philosopher whose method applied reason to precisely those phenomena that most interested the romantic mind : art, philosophy, and religion.

G.W.F. Hegel is a philosopher who began as a student in search of a justification of the ways of God to man and ended up instead creating a new God : the "World Spirit”, a unifying rationale to the historical process.

G.W.F. Hegel is a philosopher who pressed the Enlightenment idea that all was rational.

G.W.F. Hegel is one who sought to convert philosophy into a political weapon when political reaction followed Napoleonic innovations and Prussian reform. He succeeded in politicizing philosophy; his lectures satisfied the striving toward power and "relevance" that was inherent in the University of Berlin-and in much of modern intellectual life.