The best of Hegel's early writings, with an introduction on Hegel's philosophical development.

This volume includes Hegel's most important early theological writings, though not all of the materials collected by Herman Nohl in his definitive Hegels theologische Jugendschriften (Tuebingen, 1907). The most significant omissions are a series of fragments to which Nohl give the general title "National Religion and Christianity" and the essay "Life of Jesus."

"With the appearance of this book the English-speaking world will learn something at first hand of the genesis of Hegel's ideas, the dominant intellectual themes of his youth, and the struggle of his penetrating, comprehensive mind to achieve clarity." - Philosophical Review

"In these youthful essays there appears a Hegel almost unknown to the textbooks-not the master theorizer but an existential thinker who at times can outexistentialize even Kierkegaard himself; not a monolithic rationalist but a brooding, perceptive romantic. The writer of these pages is no defender of 'The System''; he is more prophet than professor, and more seeker than seer." - Christian Century