Major Works

• 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

• 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

• Encyclopedia 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… More

• Encyclopedia 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… More

Commentary

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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 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 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

• 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

• 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