I bumped into the word Hegelian for the first time recently, and after researching it for a bit, I can tell you: I won't be using it myself. It seems unnecessary and too highfalutin. At the same time, I'm glad to know it! Now it can't catch me off guard.

I figured many of you guys feel the same way about fancy words: that it's good to recognize them, even if you choose to never use them yourself.

As we'll see in a second, Hegelian is a philosophical term. Let's recall some others:

1. Auguste Comte (1798–1857), the French philosopher, urged us to vivre pour autrui, to live for others. His philosophy was al____sm: a selfless focus on other people's happiness (at the expense of one's own).

2. The philosopher William of Occam, born around the year 1285, wrote "Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate:" Plurality must never be posited without necessity. Now we call that idea Occam's _____.

3. Jean-Jacques Rousseau drew a distinction between two kinds of self-love: amour pr____ (the unhealthy kind that depends on what other people think of you) and amour de soi (the healthy kind that comes from inside yourself). 

(To reveal any word with blanks, give it a click.)   

Alright, I gotta hold onto my hat, because I'm about to summarize the work of a massively influential philosopher, which will undoubtedly upset anyone who's actually read his works. They're complex, and they resist summary. Here I go anyways!

Throughout the world today, the way we think is often similar to, or shaped by, that of the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831). Hegel wrote a great deal, trying to make sense of the world, reality, and every philosopher and philosophy who came before him. One enduring idea he wrote about is that any truth can have an opposite truth, and you can seek a higher truth by trying to reconcile these opposites.

So, since the 1830s, we've used the word "Hegelian" to describe ideas and other things that remind us of Hegel or Hegel's ideas, especially the one about every truth having an opposite truth, or the one about opposing truths giving rise to a higher, more nuanced truth.

grammatical bits:

Part of speech:

Proper adjective, so you capitalize it: "a Hegelian perspective."

Also a proper noun, meaning "a person who follows Hegel's ideas," as in "They're a bunch of Hegelians."

Other forms: 

None are common, but we've got "Hegelianism," "Hegelianize," and "Hegelianizing."

how to use it:

Hmm. Maybe don't? It's a rare word, with many potential meanings and very small chances of being understood by your listeners.

So, let's say, use the word "Hegelian" when you want to sound over-the-top scholarly in a goofy way. I'm pretty sure that's the tone that the two writers quoted below were going for. In that case, you might talk about a Hegelian split or dichotomy, a Hegelian balance or dilemma, or a Hegelian truth or analysis.

examples:

"Upstairs, Downstairs was first broadcast on Sunday 10 October 1971... There was no Upstairs in Eileen Atkins and Jean Marsh's original idea for the show. The two actors concocted a comedy called Behind the Green Baize Door, in which they would play two maids. They soon realised the Hegelian truth that servants need to serve somebody and so created an Upstairs to go with their Downstairs."
 — Christopher Solomon, The Guardian, 24 December 2010

"The Disney brothers cordially loathed one another and the company split into 'Walt people' and 'Roy people' who schemed against one another in secret and sometimes even erupted into open conflict. There's something Hegelian about the Walt/Roy split: Walt went bust trying to run a creative empire that ignored the financials, and fled the ashes of his first venture to work with Roy in California. Roy disciplined Walt with financial rigor, often to excess."
 — Cory Doctorow, Pluralistic, 15 July 2024

has this page helped you understand "Hegelian"?

Awesome, I'm glad it helped!

Thanks for letting me know!
If you have any questions about this term, please message me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com.

study it:

Explain the meaning of "Hegelian" without saying "reconciling antitheses" or "dealing with contradictory truths."

try it out:

Fill in the blanks: "(Doing something) presents the Hegelian dilemma of (finding a balance between two opposites)."

Example 1: "Scrolling through social media presents the Hegelian dilemma of keeping in touch with your friends without getting sucked into endless ads, rabbit holes, and feelings of jealousy or FOMO."

Example 2: "[Performing in costume as the team's mascot presents] the Hegelian dilemma of occupying the space between player and fan."
 — Steven Zeitchik, L. A. Times, 24 February 2015

As I mentioned earlier, I'm glad that the word "Hegelian" lives in my receptive vocabulary, but I'm not granting it space in my productive vocabulary. Would you agree with me that in the examples above, and maybe in your own version also, it would be better to just delete the word "Hegelian"? Why or why not?

If you like, use this space to write. (To save your work, copy and paste it into an email or a document.)

before you review, play:

Try to spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—first, let your working memory empty out.

Our game for this month is "The LOL Is In the Details."

I'll give you a vague version of a quote from a funny writer or speaker, then prompt you to liven it up with detail. To see the original quote, scroll all the way down.

Here's an example:

"Don't order any of the faerie food… It tends to make humans a little crazy. One minute you’re snacking, the next minute you’re doing something insane."

Snacking on what? Doing what?

You might say, "One minute you’re sampling a mushroom tart, the next minute you’re doing the Macarena."

And the writer's original version was "One minute you're munching on a faerie plum, the next minute you're running naked down Madison Avenue with antlers on your head."
— Cassandra Clare, City of Bones, 2007

Try this one today:

"And he taught the boy many a useful skill: how to perform physical tricks, and how to imitate the sound of animals."

What kind of physical tricks? What kind of animal, and what kind of mood is in this animal in?

review this word:

1. A near opposite of HEGELIAN is

A. POLYCHROMATIC: made of many colors.
B. PROCRUSTEAN: tending to cause harm by forcing uniformity.
C. MANICHAEAN: having or showing very simplistic black-and-white thinking.

2. In 2020, Britannica purchased ProCon.org, the site where writers hash out Hegelian answers to perennial questions, like ______

A. "How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?"
B. "Is cheerleading a sport?", "Should schools have uniforms?", and "Is it okay to eat meat?"
C. "What gets wetter the more it dries?", "If a plane crashes on the border between the United States and Canada, where do they bury the survivors?", and "What word is spelled incorrectly in every single dictionary?"

Answers to the review questions: 1. C 2. B From the game: Any unique version of the quote that you created is great! Here's the original: "And he taught the boy many a useful skill: how to stand on his head; how to wiggle his ears; and how to imitate the call of a lovesick toad." — Kate McMullan, Dragon Slayers’ Academy: The New Kid at School, 1997

a final word:

I hope you're enjoying Make Your Point. It's made with love. I'm Liesl Johnson, a reading and writing tutor on a mission to explore, illuminate, and celebrate words. From my blog: On vocabulary...       36 ways to study words.       Why we forget words, & how to remember them.       How to use sophisticated words without being awkward. On writing...       How to improve any sentence.       How to motivate our kids to write.       How to stop procrastinating and start writing.       How to bulk up your writing when you have to meet a word count. From my heart: a profound thanks to the generous patrons, donors, and sponsors that make it possible for me to write these emails. If you'd like to be a patron or a donor, please click here. If you'd like to be a sponsor and include your ad in an issue, please contact me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com. A disclaimer: When I write definitions, I use plain language and stick to the words' common, useful applications. If you're interested in authoritative and multiple definitions of words, I encourage you to check a dictionary. Also, because I'm American, I stick to American English when I share words' meanings, usage, and pronunciations; these elements sometimes vary across world Englishes.