Hegel

It seems the formula of any conspiracy documentary is Carmina Burana playing in the background, with a bunch of out of context quotations, and usually a reference to the Hegelian Dialectic. Well, here is a summary of what Hegel presents in his Philosophy of Right

Hegel
    Hegel wrote during a period of romantic thinking following the Napoleonic wars. His chief view is that of upholding the status quo. Like all thinkers, we went through a period of development. His writings form a trinity, with the philosophy of right being the political part with a corresponding logic and ethics. He ends up defending the system of his day while upholding a pseudo-metaphysical view that mankind must develop into a spiritual being through education, take his place in society, become a political being by living in a state, and then act out the force of god in history which he sees as the thesis/anti-thesis duality for which he is best known, and most misunderstood.
    The Philosophy of Right (as it is usually called) begins with a discussion of the concept of the will exercising itself though social relation. A person is only truly free in society which is opposed to the ideal of freedom which in its platonic idea is seen as a state of nature. Hegel then discusses the ethical life. Ethical life encompasses all and he discusses all of this in relation to the state. One is at a disadvantage when reading Hegel and not having command of German. He is not a first rather author, like a Nietzsche or Schopenhauer and seems to cloak in language in academic verbosity, while not crossing the line of an Immanuel Kant and inventing words out of thin air. It is useful to define some terms while discussing his work. There is the concept of Einzelheit, the immediate individuality which confronts that which is before it in nature. Dasein is the phrase for existence, later used by Heidegger to define 'being'. Aktionen means the right of action, which is part of what Hegel means by rights. His discussion of freedom follows. Hegel is an Idealist philosopher in the most literal sense. He goes so far as to resurrect the Ideas of Plato. He says freedom is usually wanted in the abstract. That is, people want the Idea of Freedom rather than its actuality. He thinks that institutions are made up of individuals and hated by those who desire for freedom because they do not want actual freedom and see these agencies with their distinctive characteristics as made  up of individuals. He thinks that the state is the end of all humans, and serves the force of god in history. His discussion of contracts is the discussion of wills in relation to ownership. People are assumed to be persons even if they do not act like them. Law presupposes that all those governed by the laws to be persons. Hegel defines this as such. Hegel uses the term geist to denote mind, but it can also mean spirit. Personality contains in general the capacity for right. Sachen is the right of persons and things. Sitte means custom. He sees custom as a natural part of society. 'Custom is what law and morality have not reached, namely, spirit'.
Personality is that which acts to overcome. Right is primarily that immediate existence which freedom gives itself in an immediate way. There is a difference between his concept of will and the general will of Rousseau. In relation to property ones will becomes external to another will. Each will is distinctive.
Social institutions have their own character but are made up of individual wills. Rationality consists in general in the unity and interpenetration of universality and individuality. Hegel opposes general will. This means he has issues with the common social contract paradigm. Property is part of a persons self-concept. Property is the “embodiment of personality,” says Hegel. Contract and exchange define individuals. Institutions arise from competing wills, do not have a will of their own, but manage to find their personalities as institutions. Habit, is learned, but appears 2nd nature. Education is the art of making human beings ethical according to Hegel. This is where his view of Right comes into confluences with his views of Spirit. Ethical sphere- includes everything. The person is to be transformed from a natural one into a second spiritual nature and this becomes habitual. This is his goal of education. His idea of the dialectic is that of opposing forces acting on each other to produce synthesis. This is misunderstood in common times to be a sort of strategy by political elites. But in reality Hegel views this as happening on all levels- from the person all the way up to the society.
    In his Master versus slave dialectic, Hegel basically says  a person should have a consciousness based on life for itself rather than being confined in its own mind. This is the meaning of the master and slave dialectic. This makes sense. But Hegel creates a few problems in his philosophical career. The first would be his legacy. The Right  and Left Hegelians confused the Hegelian legacy in the extreme by literally being on opposing sides during the revolutions of 1848. His attribution to the Marxist camp is highly doubtful and even more so with the Fabian socialism that characterized the intellectual class in England for the reminder of its history until the present day. Hegel's influences and influence on Prussia is complicated. He appears to have simply formulated a theory and seen to it that it fit the powers that be. Prussia was highly centralized, full of censorship and practiced conscription on a mass scale even before it became common in the Napoleonic Wars. Hegel speaks of international law in the closing and seems to predict some of the 20th century developments in that area. The main area where Hegal errors is that he preached a metaphysics which elevated collectivism to the extreme. The state is the actuality of freedom. It is upheld by the state being the destiny of individuals. He does not put violence into the equation and believes people should be. 'Union is the destiny of individuals'. Hegel makes many dangerous collectivist assumptions. He thinks that humanity should be taught to reach its highest potential, which for him is to be a citizen of a state. Why is it human destiny to live in a state? It is clear that 90% of human history was lived without a state, so it is unclear why this would be the case. Fundamental Hegelian error is in assuming that the state is the actuality of the Idea of Ethics. He seems to criticize idealism in regards to freedom, but does not turn this criticism against his own idealism. The problem with Hegel is that he is an idealistic philosopher. God is the logic of History. Why is history intertwined with the notion of god? Again, God is not really defined but is simply used as a sort of stock phrase. He is attempting to say that history has a grand rationality. He is defending the idea of progress. In the end, Hegel is saddled with bad translators on top of unclear and bad prose. It is doubtful the English-speaking world ever would have been able to appreciate even the literary greatness of a Nietzsche without Walter Kaufmann's translations.