Wolfhart Pannenberg

  Biography Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher, who became one of the most influential thinkers of the 19th century. [1] Hegel was born in Stuttgart on August 27, 1770, the son of a revenue officer with the civil service. He was brought up in an atmosphere of Protestant Pietism and became thoroughly acquainted with the Greek and Roman classics while studying at the Stuttgart gymnasium (preparatory school). Encouraged by his father to become a clergyman, Hegel entered the seminary at the University of Tübingen in 1788. There he developed friendships with the poet Friedrich Hölderlin and the philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling.  Having completed a course of study in philosophy and theology and having decided not to enter the ministry, Hegel became (1793) a private tutor in Bern, Switzerland. At this early age, 23, Hegel is already poking holes in the cold rationalism of the Enlightenment and in the dusty creeds of the church.   I...

  Introduction I read my first book by Hegel in 1973, under the guidance of Dr. R. Duane Thompson. Since then, I have returned to Hegel sporadically, reading and keeping his published books and lectures, though largely omitting the writings of the young Hegel. The persistence of my interest in him stems from a personal suspicion of easy answers. I resist having truth nailed down for the last time, in part because truth itself keeps moving. Hegel probes doubt and unsettles certainty. He persistently presses the question of what energizes human life beyond the merely instrumental—beyond money, power, and utility—toward the classical concerns of Beauty, Goodness, and Truth, which find expression in the human activities of Art, Religion, and Philosophy. The synthesis Hegel achieved—his speculative philosophy that sought to unite opposites within a system elevated through negation—can fairly be said to be dead. He stands as witness to a reality of modern culture. It resists any attempt ...

Postmodernism has been a term used by many writers, but one has the suspicion that people mean differing ideas and ways of life when referring to it. Some writers and speakers will give the impression that we live in a postmodern culture, as if postmodernism is a dominant theme throughout the culture. If this were accurate, it would be an irony that an intellectual movement that casts suspicion on the notion of a theme in history, in the formation of the self, or in the interpretation of a text, would suddenly become a theme of contemporary culture.   My assumption is that postmodernism describes an important subculture within a larger intellectual and cultural environment. As a product of human activity, it will have valid insights that illuminate human experience. It will also have dimensions of its thought and way of life that are of questionable value.  A postmodern perspective is one among several live options that one might choose as a way of thinking and behaving in thi...