×
welcome covers

Your complimentary articles

You’ve read all of your complimentary articles for this month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please


If you are a subscriber please sign in to your account.

To buy or renew a subscription please visit the Shop.

If you are a print subscriber you can contact us to create an online account.

Hegel & History

G.W.F. Hegel: An Introduction

Matt Qvortrup observes the watcher of the world spirit.

No philosopher has been more influential in the modern age than Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831). He has inspired individuals as diverse as Karl Marx, Francis Fukuyama, and, latterly, the football manager Jose Mourinho. “Have you ever read Hegel?” the former Manchester United boss asked a baffled journalist at a press conference in 2018.

The oldest son of a civil servant from south-west Germany, Georg Hegel was born a quarter of a millennium ago, in 1770. As a theology student in Stuttgart, Hegel feared that he would become a Populärphilosoph – a populariser of complex theories.