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

Hegel’s Critique of Liberalism

- Smith, Steven, Hegel's Critique of Liberalism, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.
From the publisher: In Hegel’s Critique of Liberalism, Steven B. Smith examines Hegel’s critique of rights-based liberalism and its relevance to contemporary political concerns. Smith argues that Hegel reformulated classic liberalism, preserving… More

Hegel’s Philosophy of Freedom

- Franco, Paul, Hegel's Philosophy of Freedom, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.
From Yale UP: Human freedom is the central theme of modern political philosophy, and G. W. F. Hegel offers perhaps the most profound and systematic modern attempt to understand the state as the realization of human freedom. In this comprehensive examination… More

Logic and Existence

- Hyppolite, Jean. Logic and Existence, tr. Leonard Lawlor and Amit Sen. New York, 1997
Excerpt: If it is true, however, that thought is a dialogue, a dialogue with another or with oneself, we can indeed wonder whether being lends itself to expression and whether it does not escape radically from the Logos which claims to signify it. In ancient… More

Hegel’s Phenomenology: The Sociality of Reason

- Pinkard, Terry. Hegel’s Phenomenology: The Sociality of Reason, Cambridge, 1994.
Excerpt: The Phenomenology‘s obscure style is notorious. One of the first books ever to be written in English on Hegel was James Stirling’s The Secret of Hegel. A reviewer commented that Stirling had succeeded in keeping the secret, and, for… More

The Cambridge Companion to Hegel

- The Cambridge Companion to Hegel, ed. Frederick C. Beiser, Cambridge University Press, 1993.
From the publisher: Few thinkers are more controversial in the history of philosophy than Hegel. He has been dismissed as a charlatan and obscurantist, but also praised as one of the greatest thinkers in modern philosophy. No one interested in philosophy can… More

Hegel’s Ethical Thought

- Wood, Allen. Hegel’s Ethical Thought, Cambridge, 1990
Excerpt: 5. Does Hegel have an ethics? It is sometimes said, by Hegel’s sympathizers as well as his detractors, that Hegel’s system contains no “ethics” at all, that for Hegel moral philosophy is “dissolved in sociology” or… More

Hegel’s Critique of Liberalism

- Smith, Steven B. Hegel’s Critique of Liberalism. Chicago and London, 1989.
Excerpt: My purpose here is… to examine the genesis of the critique of rights-based liberalism in the philosophy of Hegel. One advantage of this approach is that as a critic of liberalism in at least its early modern or classic form, Hegel provides us… More

Georg W. F. Hegel

- Pierre Hassner, "Georg W. F. Hegel," History of Political Philosophy, ed. Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, University of Chicago Press, 1987 (3rd. edition).
Excerpt: Against the attitude of a moral, religious, or intellectual consciousness which attempts to take refuge in the inner life and to reject the “sound and fury” of political realities, Hegel justifies political life as such. It is only in and by the… More

Contradiction in Hegel’s Science of Logic

- Bole, Thomas J. “Contradiction in Hegel’s Science of Logic,” in Review of Metaphysics 40 (1987): 515-34.
Excerpt: Anglo-American philosophers who are anxious to redeem Hegel’s thought have come to grips with his remarks about contradiction in a variety of ways. Generally, however, they have seen the statements in question here as two sides of one coin… More

Hegel’s Critique of the Enlightenment

- Hinchman, Lewis. Hegel’s Critique of the Enlightenment, Gainsville 1984.
Excerpt: … [I]nternal democracy does not have an intrinsic value for Hegel. He portrays it as an arena for caprice and subjective opinion that, in spite of their relative justification as an expression of subjective freedom, are mainly exercised in… More

Hegel, Heidegger, and the Ground of History

- Gillespie, Michael Allen. Hegel, Heidegger, and the Ground of History, Chicago, 1984.
Excerpt: From Antinomy to Dialectic Hegelian philosophy is fundamentally dialectical. The meaning and character of this dialectical essence, however, arises out of Hegel’s reception and transformation of Kant’s antinomy doctrine. While his… More

Hegel and Modern Society

-

Taylor, Charles. Hegel and Modern Society. Cambridge, 1979.

Excerpt: Against [expressivism], Herder and others developed an alternative notion of man whose dominant image was rather tha of an expressive object. Human life was seen as having a unity rather analogous to that of a work of art, where every part or aspect… More

The Critique of Pure Modernity: Hegel, Heidegger, and After

- Kolb, David.  The Critique of Pure Modernity: Hegel, Heidegger, and After, Chicago, 1978.
Excerpt: One common understanding of progress and development urges the creation or liberation of something like a pure personal individuality and a pure human society. At the same time we also feel it is important to have roots that can give us more than… More

Hegel’s Retreat from Eleusis

- Kelly, George Armstrong. Hegel’s Retreat from Eleusis. Princeton, 1978.
Excerpt: We do not know whether Hegel read Fichte’s incendiary tract against the German Burkeans, but it seems likely that he did, since it was, to say the least, hot copy among young intellectuals. In any case, the contemporary associations of lordship… More

Hegel’s Metaphysics and the Problem of Contradiction

- Pippin, Robert. “Hegel’s Metaphysics and the Problem of Contradiction,” in Journal of the History of Philosophy 16 (1978): 301-12.
Excerpt: Hegel’s contributions to social and political philosophy and to the philosophy of history, his lectures on the history of philosophy, and his comprehensive analysis of the details of human history are all fairly well known and often discussed.… More

Hegel and the Dialectic of the Ancient Philosophers

- Gadamer, Hans-Georg. “Hegel and the Dialectic of the Ancient Philosophers,” Hegel’s Dialectic, tr. P. Christopher Smith. New Haven, 1976.
Excerpt: In Plato Hegel sees the earliest development of speculative dialectic, for Plato goes beyond allowing the universal to emerge indirectly by merely confounding a point of view. That the Sophists had done too. In contrast to them, as Hegel sees it,… More

Hegel (Charles Taylor)

- Charles Taylor, Hegel, Cambridge University Press, 1975.
[…] In fact, our difficulties just begin when we accept the central role of reason; and it was these difficulties which motivated [the Romantics] in turning away from it to fantasy, invention, and art. For if we abandon the view of spirit as endless… More

The Young Hegel

- Lukacs, Georg. The Young Hegel, tr. Rodney Livingston. London, 1975.
Excerpt: The present analysis of Hegel’s economic views will confirm the accuracy of Marx’s observations, both in their positive and in their negative aspects. Hegel did not produce a system of economics within his general philosophy, his ideas were… More

Hegel’s Theory of the Modern State

- Shlomo Avineri, Hegel's Theory of the Modern State, Cambridge University Press, 1974.
[…] Hegel has to be seen as the first major modern political philosopher who attempted to confront the realities of the modern age. While many among eighteenth-century philosophers undoubtedly helped to shape the emergent modern world, their basically… More

Hegel’s Philosophy of History

- Wilkins, Burleigh T. Hegel’s Philosophy of History. Ithaca, 1974.
Excerpt: How Contingency is “Sublated” in Necessity It has frequently been argued that Hegel’s fear of contingency was so great that he sought either to explain it away as mere appearance or to explain it in terms of its contribution to some… More

Hegel: An Introduction to the Science of Wisdom

- Rosen, Stanley. Hegel: An Introduction to the Science of Wisdom. New Haven, 1974.
Excerpt: Stoic and Skeptic We have now arrived at the threshold of history in the proper sense: the war and work of self-consciousness. This is the history of the unhappiness or homelessness of the human spirit. The unhappiness, of course, is not unmitigated.… More

Genesis and Structure of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit

- Hyppolite, Jean. Genesis and Structure of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, tr. John Heckman, 1974
Excerpt: The dialectic that Hegel presents in the first part of his book on consciousness is not very different from Fichte’s or Schelling’s. One must begin with naïve consciousness, which knows its object immediately or, rather, thinks that it… More

The Opening Arguments of the Phenomenology

- Taylor, Charles. “The Opening Arguments of the Phenomenology,” in Hegel: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Alasdair MacIntyre. New York, 1972.
Excerpt: Hegel’s aim in the Phenomenology is to move from the “natural,” i.e. commonsense, view of consciousness to his own. He makes clear in the Introduction that he intends to take nothing for granted, that he does not intend to present… More

New Studies in Hegel’s Philosophy

- Steinkraus, W.E. ed. New Studies in Hegel’s Philosophy, New York, 1971.
Excerpt: Rational theology further claims to determine by thought the attributes of the divine nature, and theologians are again faced with the problem of knowing a transcendent being. Moses Maimonides declares that all predicates assigned to the Deity, wise,… More

Hegel’s Political Philosophy: Problems and Perspectives

- Pelczynski, Z. Ed. Hegel’s Political Philosophy. Cambridge, 1971.
The following excerpt is from the editor’s own essay, “The Hegelian conception of the state.” It is noteworthy that the concept of the state as Hegel first elaborated it has all the clarity and simplicity of Hobbes’… More

Hegel’s Political Philosophy

- Kaufmann, Walter, ed. Hegel’s Political Philosophy, New York, 1970.
Excerpt: 8. The State When Hegel speaks of “the State” he does not mean every state encountered in experience. Immediately after first offering his epigram about the rational and actual, he himself continued: What matters is this: to recognize in… More

Hegel and the Philosophy of Religion

- Christensen, Darrel, Ed., Hegel and the Philosophy of Religion, The Hague, 1970.
Excerpt: This back and forth movement of the mind between the abstract and empty notion of a thing – in the above example, a chair – and those characteristics or attributes drawn from immediate experience by which the concept of that thing is to… More

Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right

- Marx, Karl.  Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, tr. Joseph O’Malley, Cambridge, 1970.
Excerpt: Hegel: The maintenance of the state’s universal interest, and of legality, in this sphere of particular rights, and the work of bringing these rights back to the universal, require to be superintended by holders of the executive power, by (a)… More

Hegel’s Concept of Experience

- Heidegger, Martin, Hegel’s Concept of Experience. New York, 1970.
Excerpt: Hegel: 2. If concern about falling into error makes one in the meanwhile distrustful of science, which takes up its work and actually knows without any such hesitations, then one should not overlook the possibility of reversing this procedure by… More

An Introduction to the Reading of Hegel

- Alexandre Kojeve, An Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, trans. James H. Nichols, Basic Books, 1969.
Man’s humanity “comes to light” only in risking his life to satisfy his human Desire – that is, his Desire directed toward another Desire. Now, to desire a Desire is to want to substitute oneself for the value desired by this Desire.… More

Studies on Marx and Hegel

- Hyppolite, Jean. Studies on Marx and Hegel, tr. John O’Neill. New York, 1969
Excerpt: The Phenomenology is the history of human consciousness in its progression to Absolute Knowledge. this history is much more a description than a construction of the experiences of consciousness. Moreover, by the term “experience” we must… More

Idealism, Politics and History

- Kelly, George Armstrong. Idealism, Politics and History. Cambridge, 1969.
Excerpt: [Hegel] aspired to be the Aristotle of modern thought and the Proclus of Christian speculation. His deep involvement in the structure of knowledge and the rationale of all historical life – whose qualitative opposition he mediated with his… More

Hegel: An Illustrated Biography

- Weidmann, Franz, Hegel: An Illustrated Biography, Pegasus: 1968.
Accessible and interesting biography of Hegel, still reads extraordinarily well today.

La Science Universelle

- Fleischmann, Eugène. La science universelle ou la logique de Hegel, Plon, Paris 1968.

Hegel im Kontext

- Heinrich, Dieter. Hegel im Kontext, Frankfurt am Main, 1967

The Religious Dimension in Hegel’s Thought

- Fackenheim, Emil L. The Religious Dimension in Hegel’s Thought. Bloomington and London, 1967
Excerpt: Hegelian “science” is marked by an unprecedented presumptuousness. The Encyclopedia [of Philosophic Sciences] is no mere conceptual philosophical system inclusive of other conceptual philosophical systems and related to Reality as its… More

Hegel: A Re-interpretation

- Kaufmann, Walter. Hegel: A Re-interpretation, 1966.
Excerpt: Whoever looks for the stereotype of the allegedly Hegelian dialectic [“thesis, antithesis, synthesis”] in Hegel’s Phenomenology will not find it. What one does find on looking at the table of contents is a very decided preference… More

From Hegel to Nietzsche

- Lowith, Karl. From Hegel to Nietzsche, tr. David E. Green. New York, 1964.
Excerpt: … For Hegel, the spirit as substance and subject of history was the absolute and basic concept of his theory of being. Thus natural philosophy is just as much a spiritual discipline as are the philosophies of the state, art, religion, and… More

Reason and Revolution

- Marcuse, Herbert. Reason and Revolution, new edition. Boston, 1960.
Excerpt: Any recognition of individual freedom consequently seemed to involve tearing down the ancient democracy. ‘That very subjective freedom which constitutes the principle and determines the peculiar form of freedom in our world – which forms… More