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In Our Time: Hegel's Philosophy of History

26/05/2022

Hegel's Philosophy of History

BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Hegel's Philosophy of History

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on the consciousness of freedom.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.

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

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