Major Works
Phenomenology of Spirit (Phänomenologie des Geistes)
- Recommended translation: Hegel, G. W. F. Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by 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… MoreThe 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… MoreElements of the Philosophy of Right (Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts)
- Hegel, G. W. F. Elements of the Philosophy of Right. Translated by 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. Hegel, G. W. F. Elements of the Philosophy of Right. Translated by T. M. Knox. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1942. 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… MoreEncyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences Part 2: Philosophy of Nature (Wissenschaft der Natur)
Excerpt: […] If we do want to determine what the Philosophy of Nature is, our best method is to separate it off from the subject matter with which it is contrasted; for all determining requires two terms. In the first place, we find the Philosophy of… MoreEncyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences Part 3: Philosophy of Spirit (Wissenschaft des Geistes)
Excerpt: The knowledge of Mind is the highest and hardest, just because it is the most ‘concrete’ of sciences. The significance of that ‘absolute’ commandment, Know thyself – whether we look at it in itself or under the… MoreLectures on the Philosophy of World History
- Hegel, G. W. F. Lectures on the Philosophy of World History. Translated by 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… More
Commentary
Introduction a la Philosophie Politique de Hegel
- Hyppolite, Jean. Introduction a la philosophie politique de Hegel, Paris, 1964.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)… MoreHegel’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… MoreHegel’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’… MoreGenesis and Structure of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit
- Hyppolite, Jean. Genesis and Structure of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, tr. John Heckman, 1974Excerpt: 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… MoreHegel’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… MoreHegel’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… MoreHegel’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… MoreHegel’s Ethical Thought
- Wood, Allen. Hegel’s Ethical Thought, Cambridge, 1990Excerpt: 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… MoreThe Cambridge Companion to Hegel
- Beiser, Frederick C., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Hegel. Cambridge: 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… MoreHegel’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… MoreHegel’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… MoreHegel’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… MoreHegel 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… More
Multimedia
Introductory Lecture to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit
- Video. Joe Rouse. An introduction to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Wesleyan University, 27 March 2013.From Hegel to Marx: What Went Wrong?
- Terry Pinkard, From Hegel to Marx: What Went Wrong?