Le lezioni dedicate a Platone nel semestre invernale 1825-1826 danno a Hegel l'opportunitą di chiarire il suo concetto di filosofia: non un'astrazione rivolta unicamente all'arricchimento spirituale del singolo individuo, ma un insieme di principi da applicare nella societą e nello Stato per il benessere di tutti.

No philosopher has held a higher opinion of art than Hegel, yet nor was any so profoundly pessimistic about its prospects - despite living in the German golden age of Goethe, Mozart and Schiller. For if the artists of classical Greece could find the perfect fusion of content and form, modernity faced complicating - and ultimately disabling - questions. Christianity, with its code of unworldliness, had compromised the immediacy of man's relationship with reality, and ironic detachment had alienated him from his deepest feelings. Hegel's Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics were delivered in Berlin in the 1820s and stand today as a passionately argued work that challenged the ability of art to respond to the modern world.

Hegel's Philosophy of History stands as a fascinating example of this influential German thinker's efforts to capture the multidimensional character of reality within a broad theoretical framework.

Hegel draws upon many of his well-known concepts - Mind, Spirit, dialectical method (thesis-negation-synthesis), the relation of the whole to its parts, and how rational human beings relate to that which transcends their individuality. History is the evolution of freedom as societies and cultures acquire a greater awareness of, and appreciation for, the interaction of individuals with the rational goals and purposes of the greater whole, and how rationality emerges, evolves, and develops through the dynamic relationship of each individual citizen's will with that of the community at large.

Hegel first focuses on the various ways in which history can be comprehended and then turns his attention to the Oriental, Greek, Roman, and German worlds to demonstrate how the human community dialectically evolves through these various historical periods, with each disclosing its own facet of the will that frees citizens to grasp their special place in society.