ABSTRACT
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) was born, wrote and died. Nothing else interesting happened in his life. (Actually, this is not strictly true. He had an illegitimate child and was intimate friends with the great romantic poet Friedrich Hölderlin.)
Readers disagree as to where, in his massive output, the ‘real’ Hegel is to be found. Following Marx and Sartre, I take the view that he is to be found in the relatively early work, the Phenomenology of Spirit, which he completed in 1806, in Jena, to the sound of the guns of Napoleon’s advancing army.
