About the author

“Vieweg’s biography of Hegel is more than the best work in its field—it sets new standards for a book on Hegel and for a philosopher’s biography as such. It magically unites a detailed knowledge about Hegel’s life and work with a deep engagement in today’s emancipatory struggle. It is not a historicist account of Hegel’s work as the result of its time; it makes Hegel our own contemporary.”

—Slavoj Žižek, author of Hegel in A Wired Brain

“This is a landmark in the 200-year literature on Hegel. Skillfully uncovering the complex strands of ideas and influences that the philosopher weaves together, Vieweg takes Hegel seriously as a living presence in our efforts to understand the world today.”

—James J. Sheehan, author of Where Have All the Soldiers Gone?

“In a crystal clear and vivid style, as far as its subject matter allows, one can trace the development of Hegel’s thinking, its roots and influences, but also its originality and, above all, its enduring political relevance.”

—Richard Kämmerlings, Die Welt

“An extensive biography of Hegel has been missing for many decades. Thankfully, Klaus Vieweg now offers one that will be standard for years to come.”

—GNOSTICIKA

“The indisputable value of Vieweg’s treatment of Hegel is the paraphrastic intellectual history, his ‘walk-throughs’ of the main works. Each is a tour de force. For the student of any of these Hegelian works, Vieweg provides a reliable and focused guide.”

—Russell Berman, author of Fiction Sets You Free

“In a clever and vivid way, Vieweg combines biographical and anecdotal elements… with systematic considerations, which however always follow Hegel’s way of thinking.”

—Micha Brumlik, Die Tageszeitung

“Vieweg’s opulent biography sets standards and may remain unmatched for years to come.”

—Otto A. Böhmer, Frankfurter Rundschau

“A great, often surprising biography.”

—Jens Bisky, Süddeutsche Zeitung

“Klaus Vieweg’s outstanding biography, based on original research and written with verve and imagination, rightly places freedom and reason at the center of Hegel’s thought. It paints an engaging and colorful picture of one of the world’s greatest thinkers.”

—Stephen Houlgate, author of Hegel on Being

“Vieweg’s new biography makes us understand how, paradoxically and dialectically, Hegel’s personal experience of the frustrated early attempts at founding a German Republic can account for a philosophy enabling and encouraging life in freedom, independently of place and time.”

—Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, author of Prose of the World

“In a bravura weaving together of a richly textured narrative of Hegel’s incident-packed life, the tumultuous socio-political world in which he lived, and exuberant reconstructions of the four foundational works, Vieweg has produced an all but unanswerable case that Hegel was, from his youth until his last days, a philosopher of the French Revolution, forever loyal to its ideals and promises, and his system, then and now, the most compelling philosophy of freedom, social freedom, we possess. Scintillating and irreplaceable.”

—Jay Bernstein, author of Political Concepts