Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss ideas of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770 - 1831) on history. Hegel, one of the most influential of the modern philosophers, described history as the progress in the consciousness of freedom, asking whether we enjoy more freedom now than those who came before us. To explore this, he looked into the past to identify periods when freedom was moving from the one to the few to the all, arguing that once we understand the true nature of freedom we reach an endpoint in understanding. That end of history, as it's known, describes an understanding of freedom so far progressed, so profound, that it cannot be extended or deepened even if it can be lost. With Sally Sedgwick, Professor and Chair of Philosophy at Boston University; Robert Stern, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield; And Stephen Houlgate, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick. Producer: Simon Tillotson
Hegel's Philosophy of Right
What links Beethoven & Hegel's philosophy of freedom? Anne McElvoy talks to New Generation Thinker Seán Williams, Christoph Schuringa, Gary Browning, and Alison Stone about Hegel's discussion of freedom, law, family, markets and the state in his Principles of the Philosophy of Right 1820. Dr Christoph Schuringa is a Lecturer in Philosophy at the New College of the Humanities in London. Gary Browning is Professor in Political Thought at Oxford Brookes University. Alison Stone is Professor of European Philosophy in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion at Lancaster University. Seán Williams is Senior Lecturer in German and European Cultural History at the University of Sheffield
READING LIST (from BBC's In Our Time)
Eric Michael Dale, Hegel, the End of History, and the Future (Cambridge University Press, 2014)
Michael N. Forster and Kristin Gjesdal (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of German Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford University Press, 2015), especially ‘Philosophy of History’ by Sally Sedgwick
G. W. F. Hegel (trans. J. Sibree), The Philosophy of History (Dover, 1956)
G. W. F. Hegel (ed. Johannes Hoffmeister), Lectures on the Philosophy of World History: Introduction, Reason in History (Cambridge University Press, 1975)
G. W. F. Hegel (trans. H. B. Nisbet), Elements of the Philosophy of Right (Cambridge University Press, 1991)
G. W. F. Hegel (ed. and trans. Robert F. Brown and Peter C. Hodgson), Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, volume 1: Manuscripts of the Introduction and the Lectures of 1822-3 (Oxford University Press, 2011)
Gunnar Hindrichs and Axel Honneth (eds.), Freiheit: Stuttgarter Hegel-Kongress 2011, (Klostermann, 2011), especially ‘Freedom in History’ by Michael Rosen
Peter C. Hodgson, Shapes of Freedom: Hegel’s Philosophy of World History in Theological Perspective (Oxford University Press, 2012)
Stephen Houlgate, Hegel: Freedom, Truth, and History, 2nd edn (Blackwell, 2005), especially Chapter 1
Stephen Houlgate and Michael Baur (eds.), A Companion to Hegel (John Wiley & Sons, 2011), especially ‘Hegel and Ranke: A Re-examination’ by Frederick C. Beiser and ‘“The Ruling Categories of the World”: The Trinity in Hegel’s Philosophy of History and The Rise and Fall of Peoples’ by Robert Bernasconi
Jean Hyppolite (trans. Bond Harris and Jacqueline Bouchard Spurlock), Introduction to Hegel’s Philosophy of History (University Press of Florida, 1996)
Thomas A. Lewis, Religion, Modernity, and Politics in Hegel (Oxford University Press, 2011)
Joe McCarney, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Hegel on History (Routledge, 2000)
Angelica Nuzzo, Memory, History, Justice in Hegel (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)
George Dennis O’Brien, Hegel on Reason and History (Chicago University Press, 1975)
Terry Pinkard, Does History Make Sense? Hegel on the Historical Shapes of Justice (Harvard University Press, 2017)
Sally Sedgwick, Time and History in Hegelian Thought and Spirit (Oxford University Press, forthcoming)
Rudolf J. Siebert, Hegel’s Philosophy of History: Theological, Humanistic, and Scientific Elements (University Press of America, 1979)