Georg Hegel is a 19th century German philosopher. His system claims to be universal in scope. An important place in it is the philosophy of history.
Hegel’s dialectic is a developed view of history. History, in his understanding, appears as a process of formation and self-development of the spirit. It is generally regarded by Hegel as the realization of logic, that is, the self-movement of an idea, a certain absolute concept. For the spirit, as the main subject, the historical and logical necessity is to know oneself.
The phenomenology of the spirit
One of the important philosophical ideas that Hegel developed was the phenomenology of the spirit. Spirit for Hegel is not an individual category. This is not the spirit of an individual subject, but a superpersonal principle that has social roots. Spirit is "I", which is "we", and "we", which is "I". That is, it is a community, but it represents a certain individuality. This also reveals Hegel's dialectic. The form of the individual is a universal form for the spirit, so that concreteness, individuality is inherent not only to an individual person, but also to any society or religion, philosophical teaching. The spirit cognizes itself, its identity with the subject, therefore progress in cognition is progress in freedom.
The concept of alienation
Hegel's dialectic closely connected with the concept of alienation, which he considers an inevitable phase of the development of anything. The subject of the process of development or cognition perceives any object as something alien to him, creates and shapes this object, which acts as a kind of obstacle or that dominates the subject.
Alienation applies not only to logic and cognition, but also to social life. The spirit objectifies itself in cultural and social forms, but all of them are external forces in relation to the individual, something alien that suppresses him, seeks to subjugate, break. The state, society and culture as a whole are institutions of repression. The development of man in history is the overcoming of alienation: his task is to master what compels him, but at the same time is his creation. This is the dialectic. Philosophy Hegel sets before man the task of transforming this power so that it is a free continuation of his own being.
Story purpose
For Hegel, history is the final process, that is, it has a clearly defined goal. If the goal of cognition is comprehension of the absolute, then the goal of history is the formation of a society of mutual recognition. It implements the formula: I am we, and we are me. This is a community of free individuals who recognize each other as such, recognize the community itself as a necessary condition for the realization of an individual. Hegel's dialectic manifests itself here: the individual is free only through society. A mutual recognition society, according to Hegel, can exist only in the form of an absolute state, and the philosopher understands it conservatively: this is a constitutional monarchy. Hegel always believed that history had already reached its finale, and even initially linked its expectations with the activities of Napoleon.