Idealist philosopher, born in Stuttgart, Germany. He studied theology
at Tübingen, and in 1801 edited with Schelling the Kritische Journal
der Philosophie (1802--3, Critical Journal of Philosophy), in which he
outlined his system with its emphasis on reason rather than the Romantic
intuitionism of Schelling, which he attacked in his first major work, Phänomenologie
des Geistes (1807, The Phenomenology of the Mind). While headmaster of
a Nuremberg school (1808--16) he wrote his Wissenschaft der Logik (1812--16,
Science of Logic). He then published his Enzyklopädie der philosophischen
Wissenschaften (1817, trans Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences),
in which he set out his tripartite system of logic, philosophy of nature,
and mind. He became professor in Heidelberg (1816) and Berlin (1818). His
approach, influenced by Kant, rejects the reality of finite and separate
objects and minds in space and time, and establishes an underlying, all
embracing unity, the Absolute. The quest for greater unity and truth is
achieved by the famous dialectic, positing something (thesis), denying
it (antithesis), and combining the two half-truths in a synthesis which
contains a greater portion of truth in its complexity. His works exerted
considerable influence on subsequent European and American philosophy.