I literally can't comprehend anything after the preface. What the fuck is he trying to say? Am I a brainlet?

youre close then. keep in mind that kant's transcendental idealism is what is being responded to in many parts of the hegelian program ie the limitations of understanding and the thing-in-itself.

use this as a sort of lighthouse if you get lost in the storm of the dialectic.

...

>thahb not hod da diblecteg worgs
Brainlet detected. This is what happens when you aren't smart enough to read Hegel. :^)

>Thinks he comprehended the preface

You understood the Preface... but not the much easier actual book? I mean, the preface and latter half of the introduction are the hardest things since those all assume the end view of the Phenomenology, but the actual phenomenology does not.

Buy a copy of Kojève's 'Introduction to the reading of Hegel', then read Hegel after you have read that.

Wrong. Telling people to do these things is why people think Hegel is difficult. Hegel does not assume you know who or what he's talking about, and this is clear in reading the actual Phenomenology and Logic. Afterward, yes, he does assume you have background in his philosophy (he says as much in his intros). No, he's not crafting his philosophy as a response to Kant or anyone, his system is made to answer his own question, the question of knowing the Absolute.

Hegel is very self-contained and couldn't care less about who or from where ideas come from—he says as much in the history of philosophy. He also doesn't care about what they thought they were doing so much as what he sees them doing according to his own logical method.

Basically, no, don't read others to shed light on Hegel, it's something you only do in order to gain further insights as to what Hegel is posing himself against. The idea of the history of philosophy is that it is a necessary development that had to occur to generate the full fleshing out of logical concepts we find in the Science of Logic.

Anyway, Hegel stands on his own and is almost fully intelligible on his own. The logical method is purely universal and requiring of nothing else to engage and work through. This has been my experience, and I have written work and reading group recordings to prove it. Yes, there is the historical and phenomenal stuff, but that is expansion of detail and not really expansion of idea.

I'm used to reading dense texts. Should I just go straight into the Phenomenology?

Hegel is nonsense. Life is short, OP, stick to Hume.

The guy is fucking retarded, autistic, and/or trolling. He's doing it in another thread too.

You should read the Phenomenology first if you can stomach not knowing what the hell is going on, and you prefer to read the source text before looking at commentary. But even the OP version has Findlay's commentary attached (though it's no less confusing than Hegel half the time). Then you can turn to commentary.

Don't do this, Kojeve's interpretation is incredibly idiosyncratic and creative. Stern's guide is the most honest and thorough one I've seen, in terms of connecting to other passages in Hegel or his influences and presenting other historical or plausible interpretations of passages.

hs harris's short (~100 pages) summary of the phenomenology is pretty good but he definitely is in the camp that emphasizes hegel's weird form of christianity so at least be aware of that.

thats pretty bold for you to say since the SOL has constant references to aristotle and kant (regarding the self-subsistence). hegel wasnt writing himself out of context so i dont see why we must read him so.

>(((Stern)))
>honest

pic related, it ok op

Hegel said nothing of use anyway.

I'm sorry you can't understand things, unfortunately there is nothing for me to do to fix that. I haven't been in the other thread.

Constant references as foils is not a necessity. Hegel is talking to an audience that he knows will assume things, he makes his comments to compare himself against them. I've yet to see a single proof that I cannot take Hegel's own account of his own philosophy as sufficient for grasping his philosophy. This is typically a claim made by people who seem to think Hegel is a historicist who does not hold himself to have any universal ahistorical conceptions, when in fact the whole Logic is a refutation of this idea. The Logic in itself is built on itself and its own structures, Hegel tells us this, he more importantly actually does this, and thus your claim is simply mistaken.

>Am I a brainlet?
Yes.

>What the fuck is he trying to say?
He has said it, hundreds of years ago. YOU are the one 'trying' to understand what has been written on the page. Perhaps this confusion of your role in the process of perception is a symptom and a clue to finding your error. Good luck OP.

>Hume
If you're satisfied in the cave, go for it. Otherwise, turn around and throw his works into the fire.

Go to bed, Hyperion.

I don't know who that is! But it's 9:19. You go to bed. There's school tomorrow.

If you don't know what he's talking about but you're committed to reading him, just make your best guess what any word/concept means, put the ideas together as best you can with your guesses, and plow forward. After you've finished a substantial section and you know whether or not he eventually answers your initial questions, you'll have a pretty good idea what to pay closest attention to on your second pass/supplementary readings.