Lectures on the Philosophy of History

A posthumous book assembled from the lectures Hegel gave in Berlin five times between 1822 and 1831, first edited by Eduard Gans in 1837 and later by Hegel's son Karl. The long Introduction is the most read part. It distinguishes original, reflective and philosophical history, and claims that reason governs the world, so that world history is the progress of the consciousness of freedom. Individuals pursue their own passions, but through them, by what Hegel calls the cunning of reason, larger ends are realised; 'world-historical individuals' such as Alexander and Caesar carry these ends forward. The main text then surveys the Oriental world, which knew only that one is free, the Greek and Roman worlds, which knew that some are free, and the Germanic world, which knows that all are free, ending with the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. Its dismissal of Africa as outside history is widely criticised as Eurocentric and racist.

It is the classic statement of the idea that history has a direction and a meaning, a claim taken up by Marx and contested by almost every later critic of grand historical narratives.