Commentary

[in chronological order]

The Idea of Hegel’s Science of Logic by Stanley Rosen

- Rosen, Stanley, The Idea of Hegel's Science of Logic, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.
The great Stanley Rosen on Hegel’s understudied but fundamentally important work, the Science of Logic. For a review of the work, see here. Blurbs: Omri Boehm, New School: “Stanley Rosen’s undertaking in The Idea of Hegel’s ‘Science of… More

Less Than Nothing by Slavoj Zizek

- Slavoj Zizek. Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism. London, 2012.
Excerpt: The same holds for the unreliability of the verbal reports given by Holocaust survivors: a witness who was able to offer a clear narrative of his camp experience would thereby disqualify himself. In a Hegelian way, the problem here is part of the… More

Hegel’s Naturalism by Terry Pinkard

- Pinkard, Terry. Hegel’s Naturalism: Mind, Nature, and the Final Ends of Life, Oxford, 2012.
Excerpt: In his 1807 Phenomenology, Hegel titled the sections on ancient Greece “The True Spirit.” This form of life is “true” in that it presents us with a view of what our agency would look like if we were both self-conscious (and… More

Hegel on Self-Consciousness by Robert Pippin

- Pippin, Robert. Hegel on Self-Consciousness: Desire and Death in the Phenomenology of Spirit, Princeton, 2010.
Excerpt: You all at this moment know what you are doing – reading a book about Hegel, let us say – and as Elizabeth Anscombe among other made famous, you know it not by observation (the way you would know that someone else is reading something)… More

The Logic of Desire by Peter Kalkavage

- Kalkavage, Peter, The Logic of Desire: An Introduction to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, Paul Dry Books, 2008.  
From the publisher: Peter Kalkavage’s The Logic of Desire guides the reader through Hegel’s great work. Given the book’s legendary difficulty, one may well ask, “Why even try to read the Phenomenology?” In his preface, Kalkavage… More

Hegel’s Practical Philosophy

- Pippin, Robert. Hegel’s Practical Philosophy, Cambridge, 2008.
Excerpt: … What is important, Antigone implicitly asserts, is what one claims for oneself, what sort of recognition one demands; that the issue of the status of Polyneices as a family member as well as citizen is not independently real, a mere… More

Hegel (Frederick Beiser)

- Beiser, Frederick. Hegel, 2005.
Excerpt: These religious and political controversies within the Hegelian school were not so easily resolvable because they involved an apparently intractable problem in the interpretation of Hegel’s metaphysics. Namely, what is the nature of… More

Between Kant and Hegel: Lectures on German Idealism

- Heinrich, Dieter. Between Kant and Hegel: Lectures on German Idealism, ed. David S.  Pacini, 2003
Excerpt: … Three of [Hegel’s philosophical period’s] contributions continue to have a bearing on the ways in which we think today. First, in Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s Science of Knowledge, the romatic theory of art and poetry… More

Between Kant and Hegel: Lectures on German Idealism

- Heinrich, Dieter. Between Kant and Hegel: Lectures on German Idealism, ed. David S. Pacini, 2003
Excerpt: After his encounter with Hölderlin’s nascent system, Hegel developed his conception of a higher form of moral behavior. His first system of 1800 reflected the structure underlying this form, which he had isolated and generalized. Its highest… More

Hegel: A Biography

- Pinkard, Terry. Hegel: A Biography. Cambridge, 2000.
Excerpt: Hegel’s family was certainly well connected but was not included among what in Württemberg were known as the Ehrbarkeit, the “non-noble notables,” who staffed the Württemberg assembly of estates (its parliament) and who had a… More
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Major Works

Lectures on the History of Philosophy

- Recommended edition: Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Humanity Books, 1989.
From the publisher: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was not only a great philosopher but a great historian of philosophy. He invented the idea of the philosophical tradition as a discussion among philosophers extending over centuries centering on a few main… More

Lectures on the Philosophy of World History

- Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, trans. H.B. Nisbet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.
From the publisher: An English translation of Hegel’s introduction to his lectures on the philosophy of history, based directly on the standard German edition by Johannes Hoffmeister, first published in 1955. The previous English translation, by J.… More

Early Theological Writings

- Hegel, Early Theological Writings, tr. T.M. Knox, 1948.
Sect. 30 – The Rise of Sects Inevitable The various Christian churches share this policy of determining the motives, or the disposition, behind actions partly by the public statutes and ordinances, partly by the force necessary to give effect to these.… More

Elements of the Philosophy of Right (Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts)

- Recommended translation: Elements of the Philosophy of Right, trans. H. B. Nisbet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. In addition, the translation by T. M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1942) is widely used in existing Hegel scholarship. The Nisbet translation is recommended because it is more literal, and includes the canonical "additions" of Hegel's student Eduard Gans in the body of the text where they are relevant. First published in 1820.
Excerpt from the Preface: This treatise, therefore, in so far as it deals with political science, shall be nothing other than an attempt to comprehend and portray the state as an inherently rational entity. As a philosophical composition, it must distance… More

The Science of Logic (Wissenschaft der Logik)

- Hegel's Science of Logic, tr. A. V. Miller, (London: Allen & Unwin, 1969).
Excerpt: Introduction. General Notion of Logic In no science is the need to begin with the subject matter itself, without preliminary reflections, felt more strongly than in the science of logic. In every other science the subject matter and the scientific… More

Phenomenology of Spirit (Phänomenologie des Geistes)

- Recommended translation: Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, tr. A. V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. First published in 1807.
Excerpt from the Preface: Besides, it is not difficult to see that ours is a birth-time and a period of transition to a new era. Spirit has broken with the world it has hitherto inhabited and imagined, and is of a mind to submerge it in the past, and in the… More

Multimedia

Robert Berman on the Phenomenology of Spirit

- Robert Berman on Hegel's "Phenomenology of Spirit": The Nerve of the Argument, Montesquieu Forum, Roosevelt University, Chicago, Marh 23, 2017.
Robert Berman analyzes Hegel’s Philosophy of Geist.

Half-Hour Hegel: Video Commentary on the Phenomenology of Spirit

- Video Series. Gregory B. Sadler. Two hundred plus half-hour videos, 2013 to ongoing.
This is a sequence of videos providing a close reading and commentary on G.W.F. Hegel’s early masterwork, the Phenomenology of Spirit.  In each 25-35 minute video, Sadler reads paragraphs from the text verbatim, and then in front of his home studio… More

An Introduction to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit

- Video. Dr. Gregory B. Sadler, Introduction to Philosophy Course. Marist College, Spring 2013.
In this lecture/discussion session we tackle the Introduction to a very challenging philosophical work, Georg William Friedrich Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. This recording is from from my Spring 2013 Introduction to Philosophy class at Marist… More

Slavoj Zizek: Return to Hegel

- Slavoj Zizek, Return to Hegel, Lecture at European Graduate School, Saas-Fee, Switzerland, 2009.  
Slavoj Žižek speaking about Hegel and Hegelian concepts of history and historicity, drawing not only on the works of Marxs Grundrisse and Jacques Lacan, but also on opera, Schoenberg’s atonal revolution, the experience of impossibility, Freud’s… More

Peter Singer on Hegel and Marx

- Video. Peter Singer with Bryan Magee. Undated interview. Likely 1970s.
In this program, Brian Magee and contemporary philosopher Peter Singer discuss rational Hegelian philosophy, and the historicism and organicism at its root. Hegel’s theories of absolute idealism and of a dialectic emphasize history in their development… More