What experience and history teaches us is that people and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it''What and how much I possess is a matter of indifference so far as rights are concerned''Education is the art of making man ethical'Without Hegel, modern thought is unthinkable - all those whose ideas have made the modern age have worked in his shadow. Hegel's preoccupations remain as relevant today as ever - not least the isolation of the individual adrift in society. Yet if his 'philosophy' seems as contemporary as ever, Hegel's 'religious' views have been dismissed as irrelevant anachronism.

In this concise and illuminating guide, Raymond Plant demonstrates how the distinction is false, revealing that Hegel tackled the issues of interest to us all.