ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on 19th-century philosopher – G.W.F. Hegel. According to Hegel, traditional rationalism tends to classify all experience formally into abstract, lifeless universals. The individual as an individual is outside of history entirely and only finds freedom and meaning within the unified self-consciousness of a people known as the State. Hegel explains that the entire history of philosophy is a “necessary development.” The dialectical movement from one philosophy to the next is not a “blind collection of brain-waves, nor a fortuitous progression.” The object of philosophy is an actuality of which those objects, social regulations, and conditions, are only the superficial surface. The most universal definition would be that philosophy of history is nothing but the thoughtful contemplation of history.
