Hegel's central concept of the spirit evolved in these two works. An 87-page interpretation by Harris precedes the translations.

The first translation into English and the first detailed interpretation of Hegel’s System der Sittlichkeit and of Philosophie des Geistes, the two earliest surviving versions of Hegel’s social theory. Hegel’s central concept of the spirit evolved in these two works. An 87-page interpretation by Harris precedes the translations.

The first translation into English and the first detailed interpretation of Hegel’s System der Sittlichkeit and of Philosophie des Geistes, the two earliest surviving versions of Hegel’s social theory. Hegel’s central concept of the spirit evolved in these two works. An 87-page interpretation by Harris precedes the translations.

Hegel attempts both to give evil its metaphysical due and to give it intelligibility within a processive idealistic system. To accomplish these ends, he consistently employs the contrast between the natural and the free act of the subject and the contrast between the particular and the universal. He places these contrasts within the situation of an original and presupposed unity of spirit that itself is the ground of the mediation required for thinking freedom, for evil, and for ultimate reconciliation. (...) He argues for evil’s ultimate intelligibility in terms of its necessity as a consequent moment in the development of spirit from its ground; he resolves problems of evil’s penultimate irrationality in terms of its unstable contradictory elements in spirit’s history which is not yet fully concrete, a simultaneity of “ought to be” and “ought not to be” in the sense that the instability must be surpassed but not that it should never have been. The aims of this paper will be to summarize and evaluate Hegel’s efforts to give evil both significance and intelligibility within his system and to estimate if a system of progressive idealism contributes a philosophically new dimension to the problem of evil in a universe. (shrink)

Hegel’s basic position so far on the various meanings of evil as necessary and thereby intelligible directly in the development of spirit might be summed up as follows. Evil is always a necessary moment of instability which gives impetus in the movement from various meanings of particularity to various meanings of universality; from the more abstract expression of potential unity and truth to the more actualized notion and unity.

Most of the major schools of contemporary philosophy, from Marxism to Existentialism, are reactions to Hegelianism and all, if they are to be understood, require some understanding of Hegel's Logic. From its first appearance in 1812, this work has been recognized by both admirers and detractors alike as being the absolute foundation of Hegel's system.

This is a much-needed reissue of the standard English translation of Hegel's Philosophy of Nature, originally published in 1970. The Philosophy of Nature is the second part of Hegel's Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, all of which is now available in English from OUP (Part I being his Logic, Part III being his Philosophy of Mind). Hegel's aim in this work is to interpret the varied phenomena of Nature from the standpoint of a dialectical logic. Those who (...) still think of Hegel as a merely a priori philosopher will here find abundant evidence that he was keenly interested in and very well informed about empirical science. The Philosophy of Nature is integral to his philosophical system and deserves the most serious attention. Students and scholars of Hegel and the history of European philosophy will welcome the availability of this important text, which also includes a translation of Hegel's Zusatze or lecture notes. (shrink)

This paper aims to show Hegel’s system to be a self-generating and conceptually closed system and, therefore, an idealism. Many readers have agreed that Hegel intends his logic to be a self-generating, closed system, but they assume that the two branches of Realphilosophie, Nature and Spirit, must involve the application of logical categories to some non-conceptual reality external to them. This paper argues that Nature emerges from logic by the reapplication of the opening logical categories to the (...) final category of logic, Absolute Idea, and that the resulting categories are irreducible bipartite compounds that develop into new categories by characteristic forms of self-relation following, roughly, the sequence in logic from Being through Essence. With the determination of Absolute Idea by Concept, Spirit emerges, and it develops through its own characteristic forms of self-relation until Absolute Idea is self-determined. Hence, Realphilosophie is a rigorous conceptual development that goes beyond logic without introducing anything that is not conceptual. (shrink)

Herbert Marcuse called the preface to Hegel's Phenomenology "one of the greatest philosophical undertakings of all times." This summary of Hegel's system of philosophy is now available in English translation with commentary on facing pages. While remaining faithful to the author's meaning, Walter Kaufmann has removed many encumbrances inherent in Hegel's style.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Purpose of Hegel's System FRITHJOF H. BERGMANN THIS ESSAYIS MEANTtO answer the question: what was Hegel really trying to do; what was the program that his system attempted to execute; what was the general enterprise that his philosophy sought to perform? Two things are clear: (1) Hegel insisted that philosophy had to be systematic. He ridiculed philosophers who made disconnected assertions and accused them of (...) "shallowness" and of "inspirationalism." The systematic exposition of philosophy was for Hegel synonymous with doing philosophy scientifically. If a proposition was not presented in the context of a philosophic system, it could not be more than a bald and unsupported assertion that did not merit serious philosophical consideration? (2) Hegel claimed that his own system demonstrated the "necessity" of its contents. The majority of the German Hegel scholars, Haym, Haering, Fischer, Rosenzweig, and Glockner, for example, never attempted to arrive at a precise explication of the function of Hegel's system or of his concept of necessity. They were interested in altogether different questions. The Englishspeaking scholars are generally agreed that by "necessity" Hegel meant "deductive certainty" or something very akin to it and that his system was therefore intended to demonstrate the indubitability, the certainty, or the a priority, of the propositions it contains. The deductions of Hegel's system were, according to them, designed to guarantee the factual truth of the statements derived. The general function of the system was to eliminate doubt. Stace, for example, defends this interpretation in his well-known book The Philosophy of Hegel. 2 In fact, he regards this claim to deductive certainty as the "cardinal claim" of Hegel's philosophy and extends it furthermore beyond the limits of Hegel's system so that, according to him, every possible true proposition can be established with logical necessity. Stace says: If we could discover a first principle, and could prove that it followed by logical necessity from that first principle that there must be a world and that it must be just the sort of world it is, then we should have an explanation.... Thus a philosophy which would genuinely explain the world will take as its first principle not a cause but a reason. From this first reason it will proceed to deduce the world, not as an effect, but as a logical consequent. We shall then see not merely that things are as they are, but we shall see why xCf. Preface to the Phenomenology. W. T. Stace, The Philosophy of Hegel (New York: Dover Publications Inc., 1955). [189] 190 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY they are as they are. This is the fundamental Hegelian idea of explanation. This is what tIegel's philosophy attempts to do? Later in the book Stace examines the "extraordinary position" which Hegel "takes up" on the question of the "contingency of nature." Hegel, as Stace points out, believed that particular facts and things cannot be deduced, that the "details of nature.., are governed by contingency and caprice." This position, according to Stace, "will not bear examination." Stace ascribes to tIegel the premise that "there is in this stone, or this man, nothing but thought, nothing but universals," and it, in Stace's opinion, implies that everything can be deduced. "If we are to have an idealistic monism it must explain everything from its single first principle, thought. And that means that it must deduce everything. To leave anything outside the network of deduction, to declare anything utterly undeducible, is simply dualism." * To answer this interpretation thoroughly, the character and purpose of Hegel's system has to be explained. This we shall attempt in the remainder of this essay. But three points can be made in a preliminary way: 1) Is the position which Hegel did not hold, but which he should have held, according to Stace, any more tenable than the position which Stace rejects as inconsistent? Is it really conceivable that every last fact concerning tile universe--including the number of hairs on Hegel's head--could be "logically deduced" from a first principle? 2) Did Hegel really accept the premise which in Stace's opinion implies that every fact must be deducible? This would certainly be important, since Ilegel... (shrink)

G. W. F. Hegel is an immensely important yet difficult philosopher. Philosophy of Mind is the third part of Hegel's Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, in which he summarizes his philosophical system. It is one of the main pillars of his thought. Michael Inwood presents this central work to the modern reader in an intelligible and accurate new translation---the first into English since 1894---that loses nothing of the style of Hegel's thought. In his editorial introduction Inwood offers (...) a philosophically sophisticated evaluation of Hegel's ideas which includes a survey of the whole of Hegel's thought and detailed analysis of the terminology he used. (shrink)

Among the most influential parts of the philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) were his ethics, his theory of the state, and his philosophy of history. The Philosophy of Right (Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts) (1821), the last work published in Hegel's lifetime, is a combined system of moral and political philosophy, or a sociology dominated by the idea of the state. Here Hegel repudiates his earlier assessment of the French Revolution as a "a marvelous sunrise" in the realization (...) of liberty. Rejecting the republican form of government, he espouses an idealized form of a constitutional monarchy, whose ultimate power rests with the sovereign. (shrink)

In this essay, Hegel attempted to show how Fichte’s Science of Knowledge was an advance from the position of Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason, and how Schelling (and incidentally Hegel himself) had made a further advance from the position of Fichte.

The critical edition of Hegel’s works in preparation at the Hegel-Archiv in Bochum is making good progress. The most recent and biggest volume published so far is the 1830 Encyclopedia, edited, with the collaboration of Udo Rameil, by Wolfgang Bonsiepen and Hans-Christian Lucas. As the two scholars had already prepared the 1827 version of the Encyclopedia and are now close to finishing the edition of the so-called “Heidelberg Encyclopedia”, the time seemed ripe to mark the event by a wide discussion (...) of Hegel’s entire “encyclopedic” system and, more particularly, of the way in which this system developed from 1817, via 1827, to 1830. The Marburg conference was organized with this double aim in mind. (shrink)

The recent publication of the second edition of this monumental work by Hösle on Hegel’s philosophical system, which appeared for the first time in 1988, is surely to be regarded as one of the most important and encouraging events in continental philosophy this past decade. For, on the one hand, the very necessity of a second edition obviously indicates that the first fortunately did not escape the attention of a wide readership. On the other hand, it adds a postscript, (...) in which a forthright self-critique is provided with respect to what seems to me to be the most questionable thesis presented in this work, i.e. the primacy of the category of intersubjectivity over that of subjectivity. A brief but interesting paper on Hegel and Spinoza follows the Postscript. Such a self-critique, together with some enlightening remarks on the shortcomings of contemporary Marxist and historicist interpretations of Hegel’s absolute idealism—which should be construed as the completion of the tradition of Western idealistic metaphysics initiated by Parmenides and Plato—unquestionably shows that the development of Hösle’s thought in these years has moved in the very direction which is logically required by the peculiar character of its original “systematic-theoretical” approach to Hegelian philosophy. (shrink)

My thesis addresses a puzzle concerning Hegel's notion of the value of beauty. On the one hand, the contemplation of beauty, in particular artistic beauty, has the same status for Hegel as philosophical knowledge, since through both, we come to grasp the absolute truth: the unity of spirit and nature, or of the human individual and the world it lives in. On the other hand, Hegel thinks that the aesthetic unity of spirit and nature is in some way deficient, (...) when compared to the unity we come to grasp through philosophical knowledge. Thus Hegel claims that philosophy and art have the same content, while philosophy is higher than art. I suggest that this puzzle can be dissolved if we consider that beautiful art, for Hegel, is associated with a form of life, in which the aesthetic unity of spirit and nature becomes social and political reality: the ancient Greek polis. Since the social and political structure of the polis inevitably leads to tragic collisions, Hegel concludes that the value of beauty provides no ground for establishing an ultimate unity of the human individual and the world it lives in. In Hegel's view, it is only philosophical reflection, and the social and political institutions which emerge from such reflection, which can provide an adequate ground for ultimate reconciliation. Nevertheless, I argue, the contemplation of beauty remains a perfectly adequate way of grasping, if not establishing, this unity. Hence according to the interpretation I propose, philosophy is higher than art in a twofold sense for Hegel. On the one hand, it serves a critical function with respect to the value of beauty: it points out the limits of beauty, in particular the fact that beauty is incapable of making the unity of spirit and nature concrete and real, by turning it into social and political reality. On the other hand, philosophy redeems the promise which is left unfulfilled by beauty: to establish an ultimate unity of spirit and nature, of human individual and the world it lives in. (shrink)

G. W. F. Hegel is an immensely important yet difficult philosopher. Philosophy of Mind is the third part of Hegel's Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, in which he summarizes his philosophical system. It is one of the main pillars of his thought. Michael Inwood presents this central work to the modern reader in an intelligible and accurate new translation---the first into English since 1894---that loses nothing of the style of Hegel's thought. In his editorial introduction Inwood offers (...) a philosophically sophisticated evaluation of Hegel's ideas which includes a survey of the whole of Hegel's thought and detailed analysis of the terminology he used. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this paper I will provide a reading of the relation between nature and spirit starting from an analysis of the movement of positing and presupposing, discussed by Hegel in the "Science of Logic" in his discussion of the transition between Being and Essence. 1) I will offer an analysis of the logical context within which this dialectical movement emerges. 2) I will show the role played by this dialectical movement in determining the relation between the spheres of nature (...) and spirit in Hegelʼs "Encyclopedia". 3) I will then claim that a difficulty related to this movement arises in the "Logic", and that this difficulty reverberates in the relation between nature and spirit in Hegel's system. In particular, 4) an ambiguity arising at a logical level generates two different configurations of this movement, depending on whether the latter is meant to describe the relation of 4.1) the finite or of 4.2) the infinite spirit to nature. 5) I will finally focus on some problems deriving from my reconstruction and I will try to suggest - in very general and programmatic terms - in what sense the internal analysis of the relation between nature and spirit in Hegelʼs system can be fruitfully discussed against the dominant framework of the contemporary debate, i.e. naturalism. However, this suggestion does not necessarily imply an endorsement of Hegel's position. RESUMO Neste artigo, proponho-me a fornecer uma leitura da relação entre natureza e espírito a partir de uma análise do movimento de pôr e pressupor descrito por Hegel na "Ciência da Lógica", na passagem do Ser à Essência. 1) Analisarei o contexto lógico dentro do qual surge o movimento de pôr e pressupor. 2) Mostrarei o papel deste movimento dialético na determinação da relação entre as esferas da natureza e do espírito na "Enciclopédia" de Hegel. 3) Destacarei uma dificuldade que emerge na "Lógica" e mostrarei como esta dificuldade tem repercussões sobre a relação entre natureza e espírito no sistema de Hegel. Em particular, 4) uma ambiguidade que emerge no nível lógico gera duas diferentes configurações deste movimento, dependendo de se ele descreve 4.1) a relação do espírito finito ou 4.2) a relação do espírito infinito com a natureza. 5) Na última parte, mostrarei alguns problemas que derivam de minha reconstrução e tentarei sugerir - em termos gerais e programáticos - em que sentido uma análise interna da relação entre natureza e espírito em Hegel pode ser proficuamente discutida com respeito ao paradigma dominante do debate contemporâneo, isto é, o naturalismo. (shrink)

As a consequence of the successful 1984 meeting of these two research groups at Bochum - the proceedings of which have been published as Hegels Rechtsphilosophie im Zusammenhang der europäischen Verfassungsgeschichte, edited by Hans-Christian Lucas and Otto Pöggeler - this conference constituted a further step toward continuous cooperation between French and German Hegel scholars. It was held in Poitiers on December 3–5, 1986, at the CRDHM, which, since its founding in 1970 by Jacques D’Hondt, its first director, has coordinated the (...) translation of Hegel into French and published its Bulletin to provide information about all aspects of Hegel and Marx research. The conference was excellently organized by its host, Guy Planty-Bonjour, and by Hans-Christian Lucas and Otto Pöggeler on the German side, with funding from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and from the University of Poitiers. During the three full days of the meeting, about ten scholars from each side had a splendid opportunity to discuss not only the twelve papers presented, but also numerous other aspects of their work. (shrink)

Introduction to the Difference Essay. FICHTE, SCHELLING, AND HEGEL The essay on the Difference between Fichte's and Schelling's System of Philosophy was ...

The goal of this paper is to clarify the role wrong plays in Hegel ’s system of right, as both a form of freedom and the transition to morality. Two approaches will be examined to explore wrong in practical philosophical terms: First, one could take the transition to be descriptive in nature. The transition describes wrong as a realized fact of the human condition that one inherits from the outset. Second, one could see it as prescriptive. Actual wrongdoing would (...) be essential for the subject’s progression to becoming moral. Though both are most likely the case, emphasis is given to the latter since it represents the actualization of potential. Furthermore, it will be suggested that wrong plays a similar role as that which alienation does in the Phenomenology of Spirit; both bridge the will as abstract personality with the moral point of view. (shrink)

From his earliest writings as a student in the Evangelical Stift in Tübingen to the last years of his life as a professor in Berlin, art played a major role in Hegel’s various philosophical formulations. It is important to note, however, that although Hegel remained convinced of the general importance of art for his own philosophical endeavors, the particular details of his interpretation of its significance changed quite markedly over the years as he developed his own unique philosophical position and (...) as his firsthand experience of works of art increased. In this paper I will concentrate on some of Hegel’s earliest efforts toward developing his own philosophical system, and will show how this development is reflected in a fundamental transformation of his interpretation of the significance of art. More specifically, I will establish in what follows that one major consequence of Hegel’s evolving systematic philosophy is an “impoverishment” of the artistic in the sense that art comes to lose a certain fertility which it had had in his earlier views. This impoverishment is in effect the price exacted if art is to assume a place within Hegel’s system, precisely because the role and significance of art now come to be defined by and expressed in terms of its place in that system. Although this paper will be concerned with only the first stages in a process of development which continues all the way up to his Berlin lectures on beautiful art, it will nonetheless become apparent that Hegel’s early understanding of art has to have been radically altered for such a development even to begin. (shrink)

The great idea, which was portrayed and expounded in the Phenomenology of Spirit, consists in the unveiling of the meaning of negativity. Negativity, in this context, is more than just a formal procedure. Negativity, indeed, is a concept that characterizes reality itself. On the one hand, negativity portrays reality as something subjective, for negativity as a principle formulates the positioning of the real in a self-relationship through the process of negation. On the other hand, negativity portrays reality as tense, painful (...) and ephemeral. Hegel primarily comes to this idea through his discussions with Fichte and Schelling. In spite of the valid analysis of whether Hegel’s critique is justified, the argumentative strength of this concept can still be assessed: it depends on the attention turned towards concrete phenomena, their specific differences and their substantial unity, which are, through that attention, made more accessible to reasonable understanding. (shrink)

Hegel aims to defend a system of philosophy. So interpreters should consider what is required to interpret this specifically as a system. Once we are clear about this, I argue, we can see what would be involved in reading Hegel’s philosophy as a kind of metatheory. This allows discerning the strongest way of developing a reading of Hegel’s philosophy as a metatheory. But it also brings out reasons to avoid even the strongest version of that approach, or reasons (...) to read Hegel’s philosophy as metaphysics rather than metatheory. (shrink)

According to Novalis the "encyclopedization" of a field occurs when it is not just fitted into a larger architectonic of knowledge, but also reconfigures this whole. This paper begins with Hegel's encyclopedic ambitions and Schellin's parallel—if less systematic—project in his 1803/4 lectures on the method of academic study. It takes up Schelling's First Outline of a System of the Philosophy of Nature, so as to look at the encyclopedic effects of the life sciences on a philosophy that has (...) inevitably become interdisciplinary by trying to organize or at least interrelate all knowledge that matters in an “encyclopedia of the philosophical sciences”: an interdisciplinarity that makes Idealism a first version of "Theory." More specifically, it focuses on the concept of "evolution" in Schelling's First Outline: a word that did not have its current, Darwinian meaning, and that therefore allows us to think about more than one model of development, and more than one developmental paradigm for knowledge. In this text Schelling experiments with a model in which Nature evolves from the lower to the higher through a series of graduated stages, but he also explores a number of resistances to it. Given that the Stufenfolge provides the prototype for the evolutionary histories that both Schelling and Hegel project in other domains, I conclude by taking up the consequences of these resistances for one such area: namely aesthetics as discussed by Hegel. (shrink)

This book discusses the most comprehensive of Hegel's works: his long-neglected Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline. It contains original essays by internationally renowned and emerging voices in Hegel scholarship. Their contributions elucidate fundamental aspects of Hegel's encyclopedic system with an eye to its contemporary relevance. The book thus addresses system-level claims about Hegel's unique conceptions of philosophy, philosophical "science" and its method, dialectic, speculative thinking, and the way they relate to both Hegelian and (...) contemporary notions of nature, history, religion, freedom, and cultural praxis. (shrink)

This dissertation examines the relationship of skepticism and philosophy in the work of G.W.F. Hegel. Whereas other commentators have come to recognize the epistemological significance of Hegel's encounter with skepticism, emphasizing the strength of his system against skeptical challenges to the possibility of knowledge, I argue that Hegel develops his metaphysics in part through his ongoing engagement with the skeptical tradition. As such, I argue that Hegel's interest is not in refuting skepticism, but in defining its legitimate (...) role within the project of philosophical science. Hegel finds that historical forms of skepticism have misunderstood their own activity and thus have drawn the wrong conclusions from the epistemological challenges that they raise. For Hegel, these challenges lead not to the suspension of judgment, as many skeptics have assumed, but to an insight into the fundamental nature of reality itself. For this reason, I argue that it is important to distinguish between historical forms of skepticism (e.g., Pyrrhonism) and the "self-completing skepticism" that Hegel describes in the Phenomenology of Spirit. It is the latter sense of skepticism, I argue, that one finds at work in Hegel's own philosophical project at nearly every stage of his career. (shrink)

A study of shifts in scientific strategies for measuring the living body, especially in dynamic systems theory: sheds light on Hegel's concept of measure in The Science of Logic, and the dialectical transition from categories of being to categories of essence; shows how Hegel's speculative logic anticipates and analyzes key tensions in scientific attempts to measure and conceive the dynamic agency of the body. The study's analysis of the body as having an essentially dynamic identity irreducible to measurement (...) aims to contribute to reconceiving the body, in a way that may be helpful to overcoming dualism. (shrink)

This is a much-needed reissue of the standard English translation of Hegel's Philosophy of Nature, originally published in 1970. The Philosophy of Nature is the second part of Hegel's Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, all of which is now available in English from OUP (Part I being his Logic, Part III being his Philosophy of Mind). Hegel's aim in this work is to interpret the varied phenomena of Nature from the standpoint of a dialectical logic. Those who (...) still think of Hegel as a merely a priori philosopher will here find abundant evidence that he was keenly interested in and very well informed about empirical science. The Philosophy of Nature is integral to his philosophical system and deserves the most serious attention. Students and scholars of Hegel and the history of European philosophy will welcome the availability of this important text, which also includes a translation of Hegel's Zusatze or lecture notes. (shrink)