Hegel as a Social Scientist

The purposes of this essay are (1) to identify Hegel's role in the propagation of certain philosophic principles essential to the development of an interpretive social science, (2) to demonstrate in what ways Hegel himself can be understood as an early sociologist, and (3) to indicate those aspects of Hegel's thought that might be of greatest use to contemporary philosophers of social and political inquiry.The first part of the exposition relies on the Preface to The Phenomenology of Mind in order to outline Hegel's epistemological and methodological recommendations. The second part demonstrates the practical meaning of these recommendations by looking at the analysis of ancient Greece found in the Philosophy of History. It is concluded that this analysis is indeed a social scientific analysis and, moreover, is suggestive of subsequent work by such interpretivists as Weber, Schutz, and G. H. Mead.