History, Spirit and Experience: Hegel’s Conception of the Historical Task of Philosophy in His Age

This book is about the legitimation of Hegel’s philosophy. Its central thesis is that Hegel’s philosophy is one of human experience. The point of Hegel’s philosophy of history, the author argues, is an apologetic one: to disclose how human experience connects the activity of philosophical thought to the intellectual attitude which assent to the Christian Incarnation requires. It is this connection alone which legitimates Hegel’s conception of philosophy as absolute knowledge. The rationale for that connection is made manifest to us by Hegel’s philosophy of history, of which the focus is his philosophical engagement with the experience of his own time.