27 August 18

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born on this date in 1770. He lived until 1831. His most famous contribution to philosophy (and every other discipline) was seeing the progress of ideas through "SYNTHESIS," where every new thought (a thesis) is naturally met by some opposition (the antithesis), and it is out of their competition that we derive an even better position (the synthesis). The "Hegelian dialectic" was a primary source for the historical analysis of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and strongly influenced essentially every area of philosophy and theology from the 19th century to the present day. In my philosophical library, Hegel's "Science of Logic" is one of the thickest, densest volumes, from one of the heavyweight champions in Western philosophy.