Introduction

'The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.' Hegel lectured on the philosophy of history five times at Berlin; after his death his students compiled these lectures from his manuscripts and their notes. History, he argues, is not a heap of chance events but the unfolding of reason in the world, the process by which spirit comes to know its own freedom. The Orient knew only that one is free, the despot; the Greeks and Romans knew that some are free; only the Germanic world, under the influence of Christianity, came to know that all men as men are free. The passions of individuals are the motive force of history; great men become, without knowing it, 'agents of the world spirit', and reason cunningly uses their passions to achieve its own ends. It is Hegel's most accessible work and the best introduction to his thought as a whole.