Abstract

H. S. Harris is the elder statesman of North American Hegel scholarship. He has made a career of working against and correcting the dominant biases and tendencies of Anglophone scholarship. Hegel’s Ladder is the culmination of thirty years of study, including several translations and introductions to Hegel’s early writings, and two massive studies that deal with Hegel’s career up to the publication of the Phenomenology of Spirit. Hegel’s Ladder is the book Harris innocently set out to write thirty-five years ago, when Hegel studies were rare in English. He soon realized that the project required considerably more tools and attention to detail than he had initially anticipated. Hence the intervening studies and translations, all of which are milestones in contemporary renewal of interest in Hegel’s thought. In his translations, Harris seeks to make and for the most part succeeds admirably in making Hegel speak English, without the usual metaphysical jargon and baggage. His conviction is that, notoriously difficult as Hegel’s thought is, and in spite of the fact that Hegel’s writing makes no concessions to his reader, Hegel’s ideas and thought make sense, and make sense in ordinary language and experience. This conviction means that Harris places enormous demands upon himself as a translator, student, and interpreter, in making Hegel speak English. The results are translations that are accurate and accessible, and studies that provide a wealth of detailed, erudite information about Hegel’s thought in its historical-philosophical context.