Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
1770-1831 · German Idealism · Household name
Hegel was a German idealist who held that everything there is amounts to Spirit, or mind, coming to know itself. Contradictions drive the process, each one taken up into a wider view, and he called that movement dialectic. His Phenomenology of Spirit follows one consciousness from bare sensing to full self-knowledge. On the way it passes through the master who needs recognition from the slave he counts as nobody.
Signature
The position Hegel is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Opposition
- leans Sublation
- End of Things
- Transfiguration
Positions on the 13 axes the sources answer
- Natural Processes
- leans Purposeful (75 on a 0–100 scale from Mechanistic to Purposeful)
- Society
- leans Collectivism (25 on a 0–100 scale from Collectivism to Individualism)
- Mind
- leans Beyond Brain (75 on a 0–100 scale from Brain Only to Beyond Brain)
- The Divine
- leans Describable (25 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- Universals
- leans Realism (25 on a 0–100 scale from Realism to Nominalism)
- Identity
- leans Unchanging (25 on a 0–100 scale from Unchanging to Changing)
- Meaning
- leans Inherent (86 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Nature of Reality
- leans Unity (14 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Truth
- leans Objective (75 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Opposition
- leans Sublation (28 on a 0–100 scale from Sublation to Concurrence)
- Nature
- mildly between Mastery and Harmony (58 on a 0–100 scale from Mastery to Harmony)
- Ignorance
- leans Bondage (13 on a 0–100 scale from Bondage to Bliss)
- Conviction
- mildly leans Certain (65 on a 0–100 scale from Uncertain to Certain)
7 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Hegel refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Panentheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Government
- Monarchy
What is your ideal form of government? - Highest Good
- Freedom
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Dialectical
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - End of Things
- Transfiguration
What is the ultimate end of all things? - Perception
- Idealism
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Coherence
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Virtue
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Compatibilism
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Emanation
What is the origin of reality? - Time
- Linear Progressive
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Economy
- Distributism
What is the ideal organization of economic life? - Authority
- Collective Will
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Language
- Social Construction
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Paradox
- Dialectical Sublation
What is the status of paradox? - Law
- Other
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Death
- Union with the One
What happens at death? - Role of Emotion
- Cognitive Theory of Emotion
What is the proper role of emotion? - Human Nature
- Other
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- Nation
What is your primary bond and loyalty?