About Hegel.net - Mission Statement and Contact
What this site is
hegel.net presents Hegel’s system as a structure you can walk through. Every concept has its place, and every place shows what it follows from and what follows from it. Around 2,100 concepts in thirteen languages.
Three things hold it together.
The triangles. Hegel’s system is triadic throughout, and the site shows it that way: each concept sits in a triangle with its two neighbours, and every triangle opens into three more. You can start anywhere and walk in any direction. The visualisation was devised by Martin Grimsmann and Lutz Hansen.
The commentaries. Two continuous commentaries work through Hegel’s main works step by step: one on the Logic in eighteen chapters, one on the Philosophy of Right in nine parts. They follow the movement of the thought rather than the paragraph numbering.
The glossary. 268 entries explaining what Hegel means by Aufhebung, Maß, Wesen — and where the term stands in his works. In the commentaries every term is linked at its first appearance.
What else you will find
Pages on the people around Hegel: his sources, contemporaries, students and opponents. Topics that cut across the tree — who was in Jena around 1800, who belonged to the pantheism controversy.
The original texts, in German and in translation.
A quiz.
Posters.
Who makes it
Kai Froeb has run this site since 1997. Martin Grimsmann and Lutz Hansen wrote most of the German content and devised the triangle visualisation. Further contributions by Stephen Cowley, Georg Werckmeister, Annette Schlemm, Aditi Mukherjee and R. Srivatsan.
The site is non-commercial and carries no advertising.
Where this began
This site started in 1997 with a programme: what one would have to read, and in what order, to understand Hegel. Much of it has since been done — the reading programme has largely become the site itself.
That original statement is kept, unchanged, at the 1997 statement of purpose. It is there for the record, not as a description of what this site is now.