Idealist philosopher, born in Stuttgart, Germany. He studied theology at Tubingen, and in 1801 edited with Schelling the Kritische Journal der Philosophie (1802-3, Critical Journal of Philosophy), in which he outlined his system with its emphasis on reason rather than the Romantic intuitionism of Schelling, which he attacked in his first major work, Phänomenologie des Geistes (1807, The Phenomenology of the Mind). While headmaster of a Nuremberg school (1808-16) he wrote his Wissenchaft der Lgik (1812-16, Science of Logic). He then published his Enzyklopadie der philosophischen Wissenschaften (1817, Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences), in which he set out his tripartite system of logic, philosophy of nature, and mind. He became professor in Heidelberg (1816) and Berlin (1818). His approach, influenced by Kant, rejects the reality of finite and separate objects and minds in space and time, and establishes an underlying, all embracing unity, the Absolute. The quest for greater unity and truth is achieved by the famous dialectic, positing something (thesis), denying it (antithesis), and combining the two half-truths in a synthesis which contains a greater portion of truth in its complexity. His works exerted considerable influence on subsequent European and American philosophy.

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