Another response to Kant's worldview has been as influential as Schleiermacher's, on a more political level. Georg Wilhelm Hegel (1770-1831) was born the son of a minor official in Stuttgart, in southern Germany. His family was poor, but he managed to obtain a university education. He became a private tutor, later a newspaper editor and school principle, finally a university professor.

Hegel was a prolific writer. His Phenomonology of Spirit contained over 750 pages, though its author considered it but a preface to his larger system. Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences is the outline of his entire system. His collected works in German comprise some twenty volumes. And they are exceedingly difficult to follow, given the intricate difficulty of his theories and his obfuscating writing style.

Nonetheless, his basic ideas are clear, and profoundly important. Hegel believed (against Kant) that the universe is rational. The mind creates form and shapes in the experiential world, and participates in them.

Here's how: thesis reacts with antithesis, resulting in synthesis. Hegel says this is how your mind processes its experiences, and shapes and forms them. Just as hydrogen and water make oxygen, so every experience you have suggests to your mind its opposite; your mind combines the best from both into a synthesis.

Hegel believed that this "dialectic" is the pattern for all of reality, in this progression (from bottom to top):

Spirit (God) / Idea-Nature

Notion / Being-Essence

Measure / Quantity-Quality

Being for Self / Being-Determinate Being

Becoming / Being-Nothing

This "triadic pattern" constitutes the way all experience and reality works, in Hegel's view. In just a moment, you'll see why such a complex worldview matters today.