Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
German · 1770–1831
German idealist philosopher whose dense and systematic work shaped almost everything that came after it in continental philosophy — Marx, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, the existentialists and the postmodernists all wrote in his shadow, whether building on him or trying to escape him. He is best known for a dialectical view of history as a process by which "Spirit" (Geist) comes to self-consciousness through the clashes of opposing ideas, and for the related notion that world-historical individuals — "great men" — serve as unwitting instruments of that process. His major works include the Phenomenology of Spirit, the Science of Logic, and the Philosophy of Right.