His mother, Franziska, a devout, strict, and stoic Christian lady, was distracted by grief through most of his childhood, and his grandmother and aunts were – like many provincial German women of the time – practical, resourceful, and community-minded, but not generally given to displays of emotion. Two years later, his baby brother died, leaving him the only male in a family comprising his mother, his sister, his grandmother, and two elderly aunts.ĭespite living in a household full of women, the young Nietzsche didn’t receive much in the way of maternal affection. When he was only two years old, he watched his father, a pastor, die from rapidly progressing brain disease. His early childhood was marked by a series of devastating traumas.
Nietzsche was born in 1844 in Röcken, a small and otherwise unremarkable village in rural Saxony. Nietzsche was a complex and sensitive man whose outlook was at least partly coloured by his experiences of being repeatedly rejected in love. This enfant terrible of nineteenth-century thought would declare, infamously, that ‘God is Dead’, and warn Europe that a new type of man, a Superman, was needed to face the challenges of this new Godless society.īut simmering beneath Nietzsche’s grim pronouncements about the state of Europe lay an even grimmer personal reality. Friedrich Nietzsche would take the lead from Hegel’s examination of history to focus on the collapse of Christianity. Although today we refer to these ideas as ‘Marxism’ or ‘Communism’, Marx called his theory dialectical in acknowledgement of the fact it was inspired by Hegel’s dialectical Marx’s main point of difference with Hegel was that he saw historical change determined not by the opposing forces of a universal Spirit or Mind, but by the contrasting material relations between the owning and working classes.Īlthough Hegel’s rather mystical philosophy is out of keeping with the scientific, materialistic worldview that dominates contemporary thinking, his interest in understanding history has had a persisting influence, not just in continental philosophy, but more broadly in both academic and popular thought.īy incorporating history into philosophy, Hegel laid the groundwork not only for Marxism, but for the explosive ideas of another continental philosopher. Marx would transform the next century’s political landscape with his radical ideas on how Europe should respond to the challenges and inequities posed by the rise of capitalism and mass industrialization.
Twenty years after Hegel’s death, Marx developed a philosophical framework that made sense of the Industrial Revolution, in particular the oppression and exploitation of the newly formed working class. That different perspective would be provided by a young Left Hegelian called Karl Marx. Although his philosophy had convincingly explained the changes in Europe following the French Revolution, the arrival of the Industrial Revolution called for a different perspective. Within only a few decades of his passing, however, Hegel went from being one of the most admired thinkers in Europe to being all but forgotten. His followers split into two opposing camps: the Left Hegelians who believed further revolutionary changes were needed, and the Right Hegelians who ardently defended the Prussian monarchist state.
After his death, Hegel’s students hurried to transcribe his lectures, believing he was one of the few who grasped the changes sweeping Europe as the church and aristocracy gave way to Napoleon’s vision of a more egalitarian society.Įven after his death, the ebb and flow of Hegel’s influence resembled the moving tides of history he had described in his philosophy. At the height of his fame and in the immediate wake of his death, Hegel was seen as the thinker of his age, the spokesman par excellence for post-revolutionary, post-Napoleonic Europe.
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