What Is Absolute Idealism According to Hegel?

In philosophy, absolute idealism is a big idea that tries to bring together different thoughts on the nature of reality. One of the most famous philosophers behind this powerful way of thinking is from Germany—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. He wrote many important books that serve as the foundation for much of philosophy as we know it today. Hegel wanted to go beyond how other people saw existence and consciousness traditionally as two separate things. But what did he think?

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a significant philosopher who lived in Germany from 1770 to 1831. He studied at Tübingen Seminary with the poet Friedrich Hölderlin and the future philosopher Friedrich Schelling, where they were all exposed to Enlightenment ideas and new currents in art known as Romanticism.

Hegel developed an elaborate philosophy that he worked out further while employed as a school principal and later as a professor. At its core, dialectic thinking is a way of thinking. Hegel believed that by examining contradictions, we can come closer to understanding how everything fits together. For him, this isn’t just a technique—it’s how reality is structured.

According to Hegel’s dialectic, there are three stages to working through a contradiction: first stating what you think (thesis), then considering the opposite (antithesis), and finally realizing that both contain elements of truth (synthesis)—which becomes your new starting point.

Hegel applied this approach across many disciplines—from studying history or art, for instance, to trying to comprehend existence itself. He concluded that humanity is progressing toward rationality and grasping why things are the way they are.

Hegel believed that our thoughts create reality – an idea known as absolute idealism. To grasp this fully, he argued, we need to understand that there’s a “world spirit” behind historical events and philosophies that resolves all contradictions. Everything is ultimately part of one big plan.

At its core is the notion that the universe is unfolding in a rational, coherent manner. Indeed, for Hegel, history is logic coming into being over time. This powerful concept helps shed light on how we experience the world around us today.

Idealism is a philosophical idea that thoughts and ideas are more important than the material world. Many philosophical debates stem from this idea, which is based on how we think versus what is around us.

There are many types of idealism, each with a different way of looking at reality. For example, subjective idealism, famous thanks to philosopher George Berkeley, says objects only exist because they are being thought about – “to be is to be perceived.”

In contrast, Immanuel Kant’s transcendental idealism suggests that our experience of an object comes from how our mind organizes information through our senses. While objects might exist independently from our minds, what we think about them depends on who is thinking.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel takes these thoughts further in his theory of absolute idealism, which suggests that everything in the world is part of a rational process. Hegel sets out this theory using a dialectic method.

He does not agree with Berkeley that things only exist when we perceive them. However, he does not agree with Kant about our minds supplying structures to raw sensory information. Instead, Hegel thinks our minds do have logical structures—and so does the universe; they’re just the same structure.

For Hegel, reality, history, and human life form a single whole (something he calls Spirit), moving towards truths about freedom and how things should be done. This includes everything: nothing is left out or doesn’t count because there are contradictions within it.

Core Concepts of Hegel’s Absolute Idealism

Hegel’s absolute idealism revolves around the idea of the “absolute,” which encompasses the complete and ultimate synthesis of all material and philosophical contradictions. According to Hegel, the absolute is not merely a concept. It constitutes reality itself. Within this framework, dichotomies are resolved and united rather than divided.

As mentioned, dialectics is at the core of Hegelian philosophy. This approach enables him to explore how thought processes unfold and chart progress within history or even the cosmos. The method consists of three stages: thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. The latter denotes a higher state that resolves the conflict by incorporating truth elements from a previous thesis and its corresponding antithesis.

To illustrate this with an example from political history: consider monarchy as an existing political system (thesis). There will almost inevitably be opposition to monarchical rule at some point (antithesis). However, human societies require order as much as they do liberty.

The absolute plays a critical role in this dialectical process as it is the ultimate resolution to all conflict, at which thesis and antithesis merge into something new.

Hegel suggests that each development in nature, society, and human thought takes us one step closer to realizing the absolute. To make sense of this progression and see it as more than just a series of unrelated stops along the way, we need to consider each stage carefully, how they relate, and how they change. 

Think of the absolute not so much as an abstract idea (though it is that, too) but rather as a tool for examining how things have developed so far and why.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s book Phenomenology of Spirit, published in 1807, is an in-depth look at how consciousness develops. It is an important part of his overall philosophy. The book examines how consciousness evolves through a series of conflicts and resolutions that ultimately lead to a greater understanding—and which also serves as the basis for Hegelian dialectics.

Hegel explains in Phenomenology of Spirit that there are several stages on the way from simple awareness to absolute spirit recognizing itself. These include self-consciousness, reason, and spirit—until finally reaching absolute knowing. This progression is an example of what is known as absolute idealism: the idea that everything we consider real can be understood as shaped by consciousness and its development over time.

Certain parts of the Phenomenology of Spirit are crucial to comprehend absolute idealism. Equally important are the “Preface” and “Introduction,” which establish foundational concepts for his approach. Another key section is “Absolute Knowing,” which marks the endpoint of a process called dialectics. Here, consciousness not only perceives but grasps itself as inseparable from everything that exists.

In this book, Hegel shows that progress toward thinking rationally about everything in a unified way does not just happen inside individuals. It happens collectively, too. This makes the Phenomenology of Spirit fundamental for understanding absolute idealism as a system and how it works.

Hegel’s Logic and the Science of Logic

Another significant component of absolute idealism is logic. One work in particular, Hegel’s Science of Logic from the early 1800s, is important because it reimagines what logic actually does – something philosophy students still study today.

Traditionally, people thought of logic as rules for thinking about things that exist outside minds themselves. But Hegel suggests that we should see logic as more like a framework that helps structure not just how we think but also reality (everything there is).

In this book, Hegel examines categories such as Quality, Quantity, and Measure to show that they are not just ideas we’ve made up. They reflect how things do or can change in the world—whether it’s the difference between something being real or not real at all or a shift from, say, water being liquid to ice.

Hegel’s logic also uses dialectics. This means that each idea or category (thesis) leads to its opposite (antithesis), which is then reconciled into a higher-level combination (synthesis). The point is that thinking changes and develops in exactly this way—and so does reality itself, according to Hegel.

At the end of this process—the point everything has been leading up to—is the absolute. It is the ultimate category of Hegelian logic. Here, all contradictions are resolved. We achieve complete unity between our thinking selves and what is out there in reality.

It’s not just a question of using logic to think about things. Rather, logic shows an intimate connection between how we think about stuff and its structure.

Hegel’s absolute idealism has had a massive influence on a broad range of philosophical thought, reverberating across many different movements and giving rise to both adherence and criticism. 

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were affected by his dialectical method, which they adjusted into a materialist framework. They suggested that society’s material conditions propel historical change through dialectical conflicts, such as those between classes (as seen in their theory of communism).

Existentialists like Søren Kierkegaard didn’t like Hegel’s grand systematic approach. They thought it couldn’t capture individual experience, which isn’t abstract and universal like Hegelian thinking would suggest. They stressed personal responsibility, the subjective nature of human existence, and how each person experiences life. In contrast, Hegel talked about humankind moving forward together toward freedom (which, for him, meant knowing everything there is to know).

Continental philosophers drew on Hegel in the 20th century when they developed phenomenology and critical theory. His ideas have had a big influence on thinkers such as Martin Heidegger and Theodor Adorno. These philosophers used Hegelian dialectics to examine how society is structured and how we experience things.

There has also been criticism of Hegel’s system. Some people say that seeing everything in history and reality as part of one rational process can be too deterministic. It might not leave room for the complexity or irrationality of human life (or nature).

Hegel’s thinking is still important when we discuss whether systems shape us more than we shape them or how societies develop over time compared to individuals within them. Metaphysics, politics, and ethics all still grapple with his philosophy today – showing just how much he still matters when we try to understand the challenges faced by modern life!

Hegel’s absolute idealism is a revolutionary philosophical framework that suggests consciousness shapes reality. It rejects older ways of thinking that separate mind from matter. At the heart of his system is the concept of the absolute: a unity in which all contradictions in thought and being are resolved.

Hegel’s method of dialectics—progressing through stages of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis—shows how conflicts in ideas and history lead toward rational completeness. 

In works such as Phenomenology of Spirit and Science of Logic, he examines this progress towards absolute knowing. Later, his ideas influenced movements, including Marxism, existentialism, and 20th-century continental philosophy.

While it has been criticized for being impenetrable and deterministic, Hegelian philosophy continues to underpin contemporary discussions about everything from the nature of reality to ethics and how societal structures evolve. These questions are impossible to grapple with without grappling with Hegel, too.