Hyppolite was the most famous scholar of Hegel in modern France and teacher of five of this century's major French philosophers - Derrida, Deleuze, Foucault, Bataille, and Guattari. This work is an explication of the meaning of Hegel's vision of history. In it, Jean Hyppolite plots the developments - both correct and incorrect, within scholarship and historical events - of the apprehension of Hegel's "Absolute Spirit.". The French figures whose thought was shaped by their encounters with Hegel's philosophy represent the extraordinary richness of the intellectual and cultural life of twentieth-century France and define our contemporary intellectual landscape, both modern and postmodern. As a thinker, a great scholar, a translator of Hegel, a professor at and a director of the Ecole Normale (1954-1963), and finally a professor at the College de France, Hyppolite was a shaping force of this landscape. Until now, Hyppolite's work was inaccesible to those who either could not read French or could not read it well enough to appreciate fully the scope and depth of his contribution to Hegel's work. Its availability in English will widen opportunities for participation in the Hegelian renaissance.