ABSTRACT
Writing to F. W. J. Schelling, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel appears to be thinking of going to a quiet place, such as Bamberg, in the first instance in order to prepare himself further, before moving on to the intellectual focus of Jena. When his father Georg Ludwig died in January 1799, the twenty-eight year old Hegel was able to pursue a career of his own choice. The loss of his father had positive side-effects too: filial piety no longer committed Hegel to the ‘profession of preacher’ which his parents had intended him for. Hegel’s friend Schelling, well-known himself for the rapid pace of his publishing, was highly prudent in such matters and may well have urged Hegel to establish himself through the publication of a philosophical book. At any rate, Hegel put politics aside for the time being and used the early summer of 1801 to write his essay Difference between the systems of J. G. Fichte and Schelling.
