spent defining and characterizing Geist or spirit. The Geist is similar to the culture of people, and is constantly reworking itself to keep up with the changes of society, while at the same time working to produce those changes through what Hegel called the "cunning of reason" (List der Vernunft). In the lectures, Hegel claims that cultural awareness of Geist originated in ancient Judaism; he thus ties his history of Geist to a narrative of disenchantment and a decline in pagan polytheism. Another important theme of the text is the focus on world history, rather than regional or state history. Thinkers such as Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) and Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) had written on the concept and importance of world history and nationalism, and Hegel's philosophy continues this trend, while breaking away from an emphasis on nationalism and striving rather to grasp the full sweep of human cultural and intellectual history as a manifestation of spirit. Theodicy Hegel explicitly presents his lectures on the philosophy of history as a theodicy, or a reconciliation of divine providence with the evils of history. This leads Hegel to consider the events of history in terms of universal reason: "That world history is governed by an ultimate design, that it is a rational process... this is a proposition whose truth we must assume; its proof lies in the study of world history itself, which is the image and enactment of reason." The ultimate design of the world is such that absolute spirit, here understood as God, comes to know itself and fully become itself in and through the triumphs and tragedies of history. Hegel is clear that history does not produce happiness - "history is not the soil in which happiness grows. The periods of happiness in it are the blank pages of history"; "History as the slaughter-bench" (Geschichte als Schlachtbank) - and yet the aims of reason are accomplished. Hegel writes: "we must first of all know what the ultimate design of the world really is, and secondly, we must see that this design has been realized and that evil has not been able to maintain a position of equality beside it." To see the reason in history is to be able to account for the evil within it. He argued against the 'professional historians' of the day such as Ranke. Hegel points out that the understanding and consequently writing of history