The prologue to this series can be found here.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel is a fascinating figure in the history of philosophy. Hegel provides a grand metaphysical system that encompasses all elements of reality and perennial questions. For example, Hegel believes that the role of philosophy is to explicate the development of “reason,” or “idea” as it unfolds in world history, political life, and every aspect of culture and society. According to Hegel, when exploring the philosophy of history (how one is to understand the meaning and significance of history), it is important to understand that human events are the ordered development and process of the Idea or world-mind, “The concrete Ideas, the minds of the nations, have their truth and their destiny in the concrete Idea which is absolute universality, i.e. in the world-mind” (116). Whether Hegel is discussing the philosophy of right (systems of right actions, ethics, and contractual law) or the grand purpose of human affairs in history, it is “reason,” “idea,” and world-mind that fundamentally guides reality and leads to all truth, and in fact, knows all things (165-166). Hegel explains further, “This vast congeries of volitions, interests and activities, constitute the instruments and means of the world-spirit for attaining its object; bringing it to consciousness, and realizing it” (171). Hegel’s far-reaching metaphysics touches on all reality. To further grasp Hegel’s metaphysical system, however, it is important to more closely examine his concept of the “world-mind” and its implications for understanding the world.

In both his Philosophy of Right and Philosophy of History, Hegel uses the terms “world-mind” or “world-idea” and “reason” as a kind of immaterial guiding force for all reality and Being. Sometimes, he even uses the theological German term “geist” to capture this notion (88, 147, among others). For Hegel, world-mind is the one ultimate substance that binds and guides all things in the universe (163). The one essential nature or character of Being is mind. One of the great questions Hegel explores is the nature and character of reality (or what is known as “Being”). Being is the formal object of study for the metaphysician and it involves exploring reality, itself, along with how and why things exist as they do. In metaphysics, the study of being seeks to explore the ultimate foundations and causes of all that exists. The study of Being is a far-reaching inquiry which explores what it means for a thing to exist, the various ways in which a thing can exist, and the metaphysical principles which make possible a thing to exist in the first place. Being, then is not the study of one thing among the already existing things which exist; it is the study of why and how the universe is the way it is and explores the fundamental principles of its existence. In the classical Aristotelian sense, the study of reality (being) takes being as it is and attempts to carefully demonstrate the first principles of reality and describe what it means for a thing to exist.¹ Through a careful understanding of ontology (what it means for a specific thing to exist), philosophers find clues for what it means for the universe to exist.

Hegel, however, does not take the classical approach of examining the properties of reality such as the logical laws of noncontradiction, identity, and excluded middle, or the various modes of existence (rational, mental, and intentional being and the relationships among being), and develop a metaphysical system from there, rather, he begins with the “world-spirit” and its organic processes and development in the universe. Hegel reduces all being to mind, idea, or world-spirit and this is why his conceptual scheme for reality is known as “idealism.” In metaphysics, idealism is any theory which reduces all reality to mind and its ideas. Idealism makes the mind or “world-mind” (in Hegel’s case) the ultimate character, or substance of reality and makes all reality mind-dependent.

As pointed out, Hegel believes that all reality is driven by a world-spirit or world-mind. This world-spirit, is not the transcendent Christian God, but a nonphysical spiritual force that is immanent, indwelt, and part of the universe itself—what is known as metaphysical monism. Since Hegel reduces all reality to only one thing, mind or spirit, his position can also be identified with theological pantheism or panentheism (the idea that all is in God). The universe is in continual change and development due to the careful guidance of the world-spirit. Hegel’s position is known as idealism because he believes that all reality is based on, or consists of spirit, idea, or mind. Hegel connects this notion to his overall understanding of idealism, “Now it is the interest of spirit that external conditions should become internal ones; that the natural and the spiritual world should be recognized in the subjective aspect belonging to intelligence; by which process the unity of subjectivity and being generally—or the idealism of existence—is established” (231). Hegel argues that idealism is established if one can reduce all reality to the subjective aspect of intelligence or mind. He believes that the subjective intelligent individual serves as a kind of microcosm of the universal world-spirit or intelligence (162-163). If the universe is reasonable, there must be an ultimate intelligence or “reason” that is at work, infused into, and guiding the universe. Humans have the intellectual capacity of discovering reason at work in reality. Hegel applies this notion of “reason” to all aspects of life and the world, including this unfolding of idealism to history and human events.

In part two we will explore how Hegel applies the notion of the world-spirit to history itself.

1 Aristotle takes the primacy of being, or the fact of existence, as his philosophical point of departure. This is the point of his famous phrase “being as being” in book IV of his Metaphysics (522).

Works Cited

Hegel, Georg. Philosophy of Right. Translated by T. M. Knox. The Great Books of the Western World, edited by Mortimer J. Adler et al., Vol. 43. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1996.

— Philosophy of History. Translated by J. Sibree. The Great Books of the Western World, edited by Mortimer J. Adler et al., Vol. 43. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1996.