Hegel’s Philosophy and Influences

Hegel is the most influential of the three major German Idealists after Kant (the others are Johan Fitche and Friedrich Schelling). He achieved wide renown in his day and, while primarily influential within the continental tradition of philosophy, he also became increasingly influential in the Analytic tradition as well. Hegel has influenced many thinkers and writers whose own positions vary widely like, Karl Barth described Hegel as a “Protestant Aquinas”, while Maurice Merleau- Ponty wrote that “all the great philosophical ideas of the past century- the philosophies of Marx and Nietzche, Phenomenology, German existentialism, and psychoanalysis had their beginnings in Hegel. 

Hegel’s influenced was immense both within philosophy and in the other sciences. Throughout the 19th century many chairs of philosophy around Europe were held by Hegelians, and Soren Kierkegaard, Ludwig Feuerbach, Marx, and Friedrich Engels- among many others were deeply influenced by, but also strongly opposed to, many of the central themes of Hegel’s philosophy. Scholars continue to find and point out Hegelian influences and approaches in a wide range of theoretical and learned works, such as Carl Von Clausewitz’s magnum opus on strategic thought, On War (1831). After the period of Bruno Baucer, Hegel’s influence did not make itself felt again until the philosophy of British Idealism and the 20th century Hegelianism Western Marxism that began with Gyorgy Lukacs. The more recent movement of communitarianism has a string Hegelian influence.
Many in the nineteenth century eagerly embarked Hegel’s system. It was intellectually satisfying, because it provided a coherent way to weave together every area of human experience. Its impact on the discipline of history and on the way scholars understood the historical development of every other discipline is hard to overestimate. Furthermore, it was emotionally satisfying, for in the midst of political and social upheavals it assured people that a rational pattern was unfolding and that historical events had an ultimate purpose. For these reasons, Hegelianism triumphed in academic circles. Despite a tendency for British and American philosophers to resist the grand speculations of the Europeans, by the end of the century the leading philosophers in the Anglo-American world had embraced Hegelian thought.
In addition to his influence on philosophy as such, Hegel also had a significant impact on the social sciences. For example, he provided a helpful corrective to the extreme individualism of many seventeenth- and eighteenth- century thinkers, who tended to see society as simply a collection of many separate and distinct people. Instead, Hegel made us realize that our lives take shape within a particular society and that our social and intellectual environment is as much a part of us as the air we breathe. He drew attention to the fact that society is more than the sum of its individuals, for in each age is a spirit of time. Furthermore, he made us aware that ideas and cultural forces have a momentum of their own that shapes us as much as we shape them. 
However, Hegel’s main philosophical project then was to take contradictions and tensions he saw throughout modern philosophy, culture and society and interpret them as part of a comprehensive, evolving, rational unity that, in different contexts he called “The Absolute Idea” or “Absolute Knowledge”. He believed that the separation of reality into discrete parts was wrong. He advocated a kind of historically-minded Absolute Idealism (developed out of Transcendental Idealism of Immanuel Kant), in which the universe would realize its spiritual potential through the development of human society, and in which mind and nature can be seen as two abstractions of one indivisible whole spirit. 
At the time of Hegel’s death, he was the most prominent philosopher in Germany. His views were widely taught, and his students were highly regarded. His followers soon divided into right-wing and left-wing Hegelians. Theologically and politically the right-wing Hegelians offered a conservative interpretation of his work. They emphasized the compatibility between Hegel’s philosophy and Christianity. Politically, they were orthodox. The left-wing Hegelians eventually moved to an atheistic position. In politics, many of them became revolutionaries. This historically important left-wing group included Ludwig Feuerbach, Bruno Bauer, Friedrich Engels, and Karl Marx.