How did Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel describe the role of reason in reality?

For Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, reason is not merely a subjective tool or a framework imposed by the human mind upon the world, as Immanuel Kant had suggested. Instead, Hegel argued that reason is constitutive of reality itself—it is the underlying structure of the world that the mind discovers.12

Hegel’s perspective is encapsulated in his famous assertion that "the rational is the real, and the real is the rational". This signifies that reality is fundamentally spiritual and intelligible, operating according to rational laws that can be understood through philosophical inquiry. He viewed the universe as a single, all-inclusive Absolute or Spirit that undergoes a dynamic, historical development known as the dialectical process.3214

In this view, history is the progress of this Spirit toward freedom, unfolding through stages of human culture, including law, art, religion, and philosophy. By understanding these processes, the philosopher gains "absolute knowledge," grasping the rational structure of existence and overcoming the limitations and oppositions—such as subject versus object—that characterized earlier modern philosophy.1524