Hegel

Hegel’s systematic approach to philosophy earned him the title of being the “German Aristotle.” Few philosophers in the past two hundred years have had as much influence on philosophy and intellectual culture in general as Hegel. Through a careful reading of parts of the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences and some other major Hegelian texts students will learn how he transformed modern philosophy in terms of its approach to logic, critical theory, history, and the social sciences in general. In this course students will learn to identify and explain key concepts in Hegel’s dialectico-speculative philosophy. By the end of the course students will be acquainted with Hegel’s basic concepts of logical and mental development, In addition, students will learn how to explain the principal features of Hegel’s political philosophy as well as identify his unique views on aesthetics or his philosophy of fine art, his understanding of religion as fundamentally figurative representation, and how and why he thought philosophy stands at the pinnacle of absolute mind.