HISTORY
For me the most intriguing part of Hegel’s philosophy of ultimate reality is his integration of human history with his first three components – Geist, Idea, and Nature – creating a then unprecedented intersection of philosophy and history. Briefly the logical power of Spirit or Mind – the Idea – enters and guides mortal men in historical events and learning. “All dialectical thought-paths lead to the Absolute Idea and to a knowledge of it which is itself.”8 As such, the Begriffe, or universal notional shapes are evinced in the facts of history and the ways in which they align themselves leading one to the next, ultimately means they are distinguishable facets of a single all-inclusive universal.9 That is “what must be conceived as realizing itself in what is individual and empirical, and as responsible both for the being and intelligibility of the latter.”10
In brief then, human history is the ‘self-development’ of Spirit, the actualization of the divine Idea or cosmic plan.11 When the historical process ends, Spirit will have fully realized itself within a state of ‘global reason’ of all of mankind – at which point, “historical and spiritual greatness will coincide.”12,13 Moreover this actualization will extend beyond the terrestrial globe.14 In that history, Hegel believes is the progress of consciousness of freedom.15 Thus the goal for us as participants in history is to create a fully rational organization of the world and a truly free community where duty and self-interest harmonize.
SUMMARY
One is awed if not completely convinced by Hegel’s thinking. Spirit and Idea defy ontological speculation, but do in fact seem to fit our experience of the world and of our history as directional even if imperfectly so. While the things in the world may have independent existence, their nature and classification and the laws that govern them are only revealed conceptually in the minds of rational creatures. 
It is tantalizing to think of human minds as portions of or sharing in a larger mental entity. The hope that the progress and rationality manifest in the universe is recognized and advanced in the history of humanity is at a minimum a reason for optimism. Hegel, it seems, asks all of us to participate in ultimate reality via thoughtful involvement in human history through politics, science, and culture. If he is right, no more tangible relationship to ultimate reality is possible.
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8Miller, A.V. (translator), Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Oxford University Press, Oxford, England, 1977. ISBN 978-0-19-824697-1, page vii .
9Ibid.
10Ibid, page viii
11There are some less becoming components of Hegel’s theory, such as the state as the culmination of world history and the great man (Napoleon in his lifetime) as mastering the world. His philosophy is later modified by Karl Marx into communism and by less virtuous individuals to justify tyrannical regimes.
12Hartman, Robert S. (editor), The Liberal Arts edition of Hegel, G.W.F., Reason in History. The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., Indianapolis, IN, 1953. Page xiv.
13Hegel goes even further, possibly too far, by identifying his book, Phenomenology of Spirit, as the very path that was taken by Spirit in past history and then “rehearsed in the consciousness of Hegel, in whom the notion of Science first became actual.” (Miller, A.V. (translator), Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Oxford University Press, Oxford, England, 1977. ISBN 978-0-19-824697-1, page vi)
14Hartman, Robert S. (editor), The Liberal Arts edition of Hegel, G.W.F., Reason in History. The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., Indianapolis, IN, 1953. Page xv.
15Honderich, Ted, The Oxford Guide to Philosophy. Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 978-0-19-534093-8 pages 367.
For Hegel the Idea is very tightly related to Geist, and I suspect some scholars might argue they are identical, but I understand the Idea as emanating from Geist as the abstract thought or logical power of the divine that enters and guides mortal beings. The Idea is absolute, and thus “remains untouched by the human passions which actualize it.”3 Idea includes the laws of logic coming from the divine mind that constitutes Reason. And the greatest principle of divine logic is that thoughts and events encounter counter-positions and events that resolve into new paradigms or situations wherein the process begins again; hence the unending cycle of thesis – antithesis – synthesis.
Nature, or perhaps more accurately, the physical world, is the third manifestation of Hegel’s ultimate reality. Like Kant, Hegel believes things which we perceive are real, but unlike Kant he feels there is no undisclosed “thing-in-itself.” In fact Hegel takes a nearly opposite position that things are realized through our conceptions of them. In perceiving things of the world, we uncover the universals. For instance, for a tree in front of me it is Here and Now, but as I turn away, what I perceive changes but the Here and Now still apply to the next perception. Here and Now then are in Hegel’s thinking universals. Other universals include pure being, the ‘I,’ meaning, Truth, and the ‘Also’ (referring to the multiple facets manifest in a thing such as color or shape).5
“Within the purposes of the Cosmos, and vivifying all meteorology, and all the congeries of the mineral, the vegetable, and animal worlds – all the physical growth and development of man, and all the history of the race of politics, religions, wars, etc., there is a moral purpose, a visible or invisible intention, certainly underlying all … That something is the All, and the idea of All, with the accompanying idea of eternity, and of itself, the soul, buoyant, indestructible, sailing space forever.” – Walt Whitman1
In Phenomenology of Mind, his first major work published in 1807, Hegel develops his central theory of Geist, sometimes translated as Spirit, but more often and presumably more accurately as Mind. Some authorities believe Hegel chose the word Geist specifically because of its ambiguous or dual meaning – connoting both a spiritual being and an absolute intelligence.
