Germany finds it hard to love Hegel 250 years after his birth
New books try to lighten up the intimidating reputation of Germany’s ‘most difficult’ philosopher
In March 1807, aged 36, a towering giant of German philosophy was struggling to come to terms with a career dip.
With an illegitimate son to support and a patrimonial inheritance run dry, George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel had chucked in an unpaid academic post and accepted a job as an editor at a local newspaper in Bamberg, where he was compiling reports on royal boar hunts. Only a newly acquired coffee percolator offered brief caffeinated thrills.