The essay addresses Hegel’s treatment of character in §395 of Encyclopedia together with the commentaries given in his lectures. Hegel tackles some crucial philosophical problems concerning character. In his view, human character has a “natural basis” and yet depends on a free individual choice. Attention is drawn at Kant’s treatment of the same subject matter in Anthropology form a pragmatic point of view, which is the source of Hegel’s tripartite arrangement of Naturell, temperament and character. Diverging from Kant, however, Hegel introduces a dialectic development within the concept of character.
