Hegel

How to get into Hegel?
What should I read of him and, maybe most importantly, what should I read before reading into his work?

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hegel.net/en/kaufmann1959.htm
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You don't. Go in the right direction instead. The true heir to Kant.

If you've read the Greeks, Kant, Descartes, Hume, and all that good stuff, I'd say you're good to go. Start with the easier stuff (theological writings is actually the easiest and in fact gives an overview, philosophy of history).

After those 2, go to Phenomenology. It gives you a purely negative view on his dialectical idealism. Then read Philosophy of Right.

Finally, read the magnum opus Science of Logic, his most important work. Take your time.

just read the science of logic for an easy introduction, that's where most people start

OPTIONAL: After that, read the only people who understand Hegel: Kierkegaard and Foucault. They both make important additions to his work.

Ignore the Schopenlosers. LA JOIE DE VIVRE"!

fpbp

...

>Plato's doctrine of ideas as 'actualized' by Aristotle

Just dive into the Phenomenology. Read slowly, read each chapter once through and then read it again slowly, each section 2 or 3 times to try to absorb everything. Hegel is very dense.

If you want some historical context read German Philosophy 1760-1860 by Pinkard.

If it's too hard to understand, read it along a companion guide.

Feel free to skip the Preface. It's great and there are some of my favorite Hegel quotes and jokes, but otherwise you won't extract anything of value from it on a first read until you understand Hegel better. It was written after the rest of the book and it's pretty much a critique of other schools of thought of his time and an overall description of his system, but it starts from the end of the system so to speak, it may scare you while the introduction is much clearer and starts from the beginning of the system.

no rudeness, but please ignore this poster. Do *not* start with the phenomenology.

Take up Routledge's companion by Stern, there's Pinkard's sociality of reason or Forster's book. We're all dilettantes here anyway.

Someone reading the phenomenology by himself without indepth knowledge of hegel and german idealism isn't going to understand it, even with secondary literature.

I read it in a small class at a german university with a professor who's a hegel nut. We still only got through the first half in an entire semester. We had some really smart masters students in the class and even they struggled near the end. I had to present about 20 pages near the end of the first half and that took me like a week reading every page of both the primary text and the secondary twenty times and in the end I still got a lot wrong. Without a professor to correct you I think it's really easy to misunderstand half of it, even with secondary literature.

The Science of Logic is even tougher.

it's actually not.

Well, obviously since it builds on the phenomenology.

I've actually studied a bit of Hegel.

What I will say is that 99% of people simply don't need go into much depth with him. Firstly, because some of his ideas/foundations have since been proven wrong. Secondly, because it is typically a lifelong pursuit. There are Hegelians who have studied his work for DECADES, and they often go a bit mad/eccentric from doing so - such as with Žižek.

The book I would advise most people to read regarding Hegel is 'Hegel - A Very Short Introduction' (Oxford) by Peter Singer. It is extremely concise and will give you a very good outline for Hegel, which will suffice for the lion's share of instances in which he will ever be brought up.

He is also pleasingly impartial, and dispels a few popular myths regarding Hegel - such as his supposed belief in the innate godliness of the state (a myth made doubly pernicious given that Hegel's use of the term 'state' means much more than just government).

talking about myths, this is a nice extract debunking all the garbage that retard Popper wrote about Hegel

hegel.net/en/kaufmann1959.htm

At a glance, the author does seem to have a bone to pick with Nietzsche. I'm also confused as to what the author means by "Schopenhauer’s flamboyant irrationalism was, stylistically, too, much closer to most Nazi literature", considering Schopenhauer was not only one of the most rational/logical German Philosophers, and arguably the one who wrote with the most clarity (alongside Nietzsche).

Still, it is on fucking 'hegel.net' so I guess that goes some way to explaining it. In spite of that, I still like seeing the Hegel myths dispelled - although I would take care not to oversanitize him, given that some of what he wrote/believed is still objectionable.

none of these steps will matter unless you learn German and study the German commentaries on Greek philosophers that hegel would haver read in his day

the German philosophical tradition, even the romanticists, is autistically structured and precise with their language, the king of all of these being Hegel, anglo interpreters and translators of Hegel usually don't correspond with their German or european counterparts because they get yelled out of the room for their horrible misreadings

>Singer
Damn, I was taking you serious up till then. Holy shit dude, please let's talk about science of logic not his politics.

Singer leaves his admittedly stupid politics out of the book I mentioned. As I said, it's a pleasingly impartial overview of Hegel, which is more than enough for anyone who isn't prepared to put in the time that Hegel's actual works require.

This

What's the point of insisting on a perfect reading of it to get into it at all? OP (and readers generally) shouldn't be afraid to start reading and to make mistakes along the way.

You don't get into Hegel, Hegel gets into you.

Why does anyone waste their time on this piffling kraut bastard? Schopenhauer was right that he was a babbling hack.

Here's a MEGA link to a .rar containing a bunch of Hegel commentaries and introductions.

mega.co.nz/#!aZAmxT6b!TIgDY4QmMeKV1KjR5SBumJvYg6tfH86JPJcW00i3z08

>none of these steps will matter unless you learn German

Even if you did learn German just to read Hegel, he will still be incomprehensible for the most part.

Nice, thanks!

Hegel really looks like Werner Herzog.

Do you have the one with Plato's?

I have a couple. First one is a collection of ancient to early modern commentaries on Plato:

mega.co.nz/#!bBAknYga!xAxS9-oBKdFOEDWjvGvEx-orU7n28BqZCS73fuvEjQc

Next one is modern commentaries of Plato of different fashions and schools:

mega.co.nz/#!KQBDAA6C!wlk-zU-QPvio0kCyjqmQqCz3u_-fxQK36X4IKSpl9fQ

Last one is commentaries and works devoted to the Republic:

mega.nz/#!KU5lDJoA!Ol1zX1V-I5fhAQ4F5dAALmhgYcqMmZq3q_4A230akgA

Appreciated.

There's a lot of room for intelligent disagreement or quibbling with Gregory Sadler's Half Hour Hegel series, but it really is helpful for the total neophyte.

youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4gvlOxpKKIgR4OyOt31isknkVH2Kweq2