system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
What did Hegel think was the end goal of history? Do any current philosophers believe that history has a goal/purpose?

As a history major turned philosophy enthusiast, Im interested in Hegel's historical commentary. and the notion he seemed to have that there was some guiding force guiding the "geist" through history. im trying to get straight what he thought it was all leading to, something about the actualization of mankind's freedom, or the worlds spirit setting itself free? At the "end" of history, what did Hegel think civilization would be like?

Id also be curious to read any current Hegelian philosophers that are still writing with a similar view of history today.
gpt
1) Hegel's concept of history is different to what common people mean by history. In the introduction to the *Lectures on the Philosophy of History* Hegel makes arguments against different conceptions of what history can *mean,* much of the attack being that in truth these concepts are empty/meaningless, that they are useless despite claiming use, and that really the discipline of history is entirely presumptuous about its object of study. Hegel conceives history as specifically the history of states and nothing more.

2) The end of history isn't something Hegel assumes, but something that arises from the conceptual organization of states from simplest to most complex according to their generative social principle. Why is this complexity measured by 'freedom'? Because freedom is the form of all truth.

3) Just as the history of the wheel *as wheel* is over once we invent it, so too is the history of freedom in the state over when we have discovered/constructed the organizational process that allows the self-engendering of freedom. Obviously we've modified the wheel to perfect its operation in various conditions, likewise the state is going to forever be modifying to fit its conditions, i.e. its people and times. This modification being *internal* to the form and content of a state would reveal that such a state was the proper form which needs no reinvention. Time shall move on and *History* may be over, but history for plenty of other things will always be ongoing.