HEGEL, ha'gel, Georg Wilhelm Fried rich, German philosopher: b. Stuttgart, 27 Aug. 1770; d. Berlins 14 Nov. 1831. He attended the gymnasium of his native city, and in 1788 was matriculated at the University of Tubingen, where he studied theology, finishing his course of study in 1793. From 1793 to 1796 he was private tutor in Switzerland, devoting his lei sure, meanwhile, to theological and historical studies. In 1797 he accepted a private tutor ship in Frankfort and remained there until 1800. During this period he wrote out the earliest sketch of his philosophical system, and, resolving to devote himself to philosophy, went, in November 1800, to the University of Jena, as privat docent. Here he lectured on philosophy until the troubles which followed the battle of Jena in October, 1806, interrupted for a time his scholarly work. During the years be tween 1800 and 1806 Hegel's philosophical teach ings had assumed a much more highly organized form; he had published a number of important essays ;, and at the moment of the battle of Jena was just completing his first great sys tematic treatise, hinomenologie des Geistes,> i.e., the 'Phenomenology of Mind.' Unable to obtain, for the time, satisfactory opportunity as an academic teacher, Hegel thereafter passed a year as editor of a journal in Bamberg; 'and then obtained a position as rector of a gymnasium in Nurnberg, in 1808. He married the daughter of a distinguished Niirnberg family in 1811. Thereafter, while still at Nurnberg, he wrote his most important and finished' Philosophical treatise. the
Hegel's philosophical position can only be understood in the light of his relation to Kant. Immanuel Kant (q.v.) (1724-1804) becarhe, by the publication of his 'Critique of Pure Rea son,' in 1781, the leader in the movement of modern German philosophical thought. In an age when the guidance of *Reason" was espe cially glorified by all the leading liberal and progressive teachers and parties of the day, -- Kant undertook a systematic inquiry into the nature, the limits and the scope of the human reason. Previous philosophers, in the 17th and 18th centuries, had been especially divided in opinion regarding the question whether experi ence or reason is the source of our knowledge. undertook to reconcile the conflicting views regarding this problem and at the same time to map out, in a systematic way, the whole field which is accessible to human science. His result was, in substance, as follows: Human _ knowledge depends upon two factors, exneri. ence and our own intelligence. ri oth fac tors are equally necessary for knowledge. Ex perience, when viewed apart from our intel ligence, is a collection of mere data of sense, which are given, but which, in so far as they are merely given, are meaningless. The data of sense get their coherence solely through the active work of our intelligence. Our intelli. Fence, whose manner of acting is spontaneous, is indeed awakened to reaction only through sense; and can give us knowledge only with reference to the facts of experience; but the data of sense get all their form, coherence, structure, meaning, only through the fact that our intelligence is guided in its activity by certain *categories,* and formative principles, in terms of v,hich we interpret these data, view them as due to coherent "objects of experience,' and connect these objects so that the tatter form the "world of experience.° Without the intelligence, then, with its "forms,' no coherent experience is possible. Sense shows by itself alone, no objects, no connections of objects, 'vsb laws, no facts, no world. That we appear to find, in our world of perception, connected things, subject to laws, is due to the more of less hidden work of our• intelligence, which gives form to the otherwise incoherent sense!. tions. That we all have the same phenomenal world to deal with is due to the fact that in telligence is common to us all, in the same forms.