Hegel

Wtf dude I feel exactly the same way desu

reading the preface (specifically paragraph 25) made me feel as though a separate but concealed consciousness was occupying my space of thought. i intimately knew the form of its processes, but its objective content was blocked to me. it was the strangest experience i have ever had, except for the time me, two of my friends, and my cousin saw an array of glowing red orbs gently drift maybe thirty yards over my cousin's roof.

Holy... I want more Hegel, I don't even care if i'm being meme. What are the absolutely necessary precursor philosophers to read?

You can go the traditional route and read Kant to know the role intended for Hegel's speculative philosophy, or you can go backwards and read Marx and the Marxists to get a feel for dialectics. Or you could just take Hegel at his word and carefully read through the Phenomenology; he intended as a student's handbook.

Hello, I'm currently reading Kant's Prolegomena as a prelude to Hegel... I picked up Kojéve's "Introduction to the Reading of Hegel" and Jameson's "The Hegel Variations". Should I read these before or after reading Phenomenology? I'm afraid they'll skew my interpretation of Hegel, leading me to a purely "Left Hegelian" interpretation, but I understand he work is incredibly difficult and secondary lit is highly recommended... can anyone who has actually read the Phenomenology weigh in?

I just started reading the Phenomenology and have reached the last section on Consciousness, Force and the Understanding. Honestly, this is where i think it's going to start getting difficult, Hegel's concept of Force is abstract as fuck. The Introduction was fairly easy (I skipped the Preface since I believe it is supposed to be read last) and Sense-Certainty and Perception are manageable with a close reading. I think I'll have to watch those Half Hour Hegel videos to help with Force and the Understanding but my eyes tend to gloss over and I honestly find Hegel himself to be more entertaining for some reason.

avoid kojeve at all costs. sorry to tell you this too late. his juvenile reading of the master/slave section is responsible for the thesis-antithesis-synthesis stereotype that has done more to domesticate hegelian dialectics than any bourgeois "left hegelianism" ever could.

as for jameson, remember that he's a culture critic first, a literary theorist and historian second, and a philosopher only provisionally. i haven't read the whole of that work but as i understand it he understands the phenomenology as a kind of orchestral piece which requires the reader to furnish both the instruments and the performance. i like the metaphor—but knowing jameson as well as i do, i can say authoritatively that this work will not be helpful to you as an introduction.

the best, shortest, and most legible introductions to hegel that i can think of, however, are jameson's recent essay, "marxist criticism and hegel," which provides a practical example of his dialectics in action; martin nicklaus's introductory essay to marx's grundrisse manuscript, wherein nicolaus provides an excellent comparison of the marxian and hegelian dialectics; richard norman's Philosophical Introduction to the text; and the introduction and analysis furnished by findlay in that yellow oxford press edition.

as for "primary" texts, the prolegomena will do you good, and so would the critique—but you might want to consult secondary literature for this. it will definitely be helpful to have passing familiarity with the greater Logic, and to have read the lesser Logic, an encyclopedia article summarizing the former: the Phenomenology is the presentation of dialectic in action, while the Logics delineate the dialectic as method.

forgot to mention that i added nicolaus on marx to this reading list precisely because he does a very good job of getting you think about the difference between dialectical presentation and dialectical method—this neatly articulates the difference between Capital Vol 1 and the Grundrisse, and is useful for thinking about the difference between the Phenomenology and the Logics, as well—though I would be remiss to suggest straight isomorphism.

Hegel is Marx's guy, Marx is our guy, Schop is no one's guy which is how he'd like it.

Is the Phenomenology reading group still on?

You'd probably have better luck with Hyppolite than with Kojeve. Kojeve is cool too though. No reason not to read him, if you're interested in philosophy and intellectual history more generally.

Frankly you'd probably have the best luck with some Cambridge Companion to the Phenomenology of Spirit, or something like that.

Also: Hegel is weird. It's OK to think it's weird. Look up positively stated interpretations of the Phenomenology (this is why Hyppolite's is helpful) and see which ones you like.

I would suggest the Hegel Dictionary and the Blackwell Companion to Hegel for secondary literature. You might also ease your way into Hegel with his lectures on History and Religion before starting the Phenomenology. Forget the Marxists for now.

I personally think Hegel's Logic is revolutionary, and is at the very least extremely interesting. However I think Philosophy of Right and certain parts of the Phenomenology are complete abortions. Though having said that Schopenhauer isn't in a good position to call anyone else a hack, hypocrite that he was.

There are things I disagree with him on, namely due to my studies of Kierkegaard... a lot of Hegelians are very dogmatic and pretend to understand a lot more than they do, and can't generally justify a lot of what they agree with when it comes to Hegel. Sometimes I think he was just too smart for us.

Tl;Dr no he wasn't a hack, he was very intelligent, but many Hegelians are hacks.

Anyone who tells you that Hegel is "unreadable" or "obscurantist" is just salty or have pretended to read Hegel before and now are foisting that upon others. Science of Logic is not difficult to understand. You shouldn't start w/ Phenomenology.

GOOD SECONDARY LIT RECOMMENDATION:

W.T. Stace - The Philosophy of Hegel

>Science of Logic is not difficult to understand.

It is sitting on a desk next to me, I am literally fucking paid to study it for a living, and I am studying it with one of the foremost authorities on it in the world. It's mind-breakingly incomprehensibly difficult for the vast majority of people, and even for the minority of people who can realistically set about reading it, it's an uphill slog in the sense that a sheer wall is uphill.

Being & Time is easy as fuck. Philosophical Investigations is easy as fuck. The Critique of Pure Reason is just tedious. But the Logic is hard.

Being and Time is easy, I'll give you that. Logic isn't "difficult to understand". I disagree with you on that. As I said, if you have proper secondary lit you can understand it fine, otherwise maybe your teacher is not so great as you think.

As I say, try reading it along w/ Stace.

and btw I read it in a small mumble reading group with 4 other laymen. If we could do it by ourselves, you can do it with an "authority".

Lots of people seem to forget that Hegel and the German Idealists are merely winking out the spiritual from the body of philosophy. Everything is pure spirit, and if you don't read the book in spirit you're basically missing out on the subterranean aspects of the book in contradistinction to the superficialities

>Logic isn't "difficult to understand". I disagree with you on that.

Then you disagree with a lot of the secondary lit you're referring to. Hegel's Logic is neglected for a reason. It's hard. Most philosophers in the 20th century weren't well acquainted with it and never got beyond the Phenomenology.

It's not impossible or anything, but telling some guy who is just reading the Phenomenology that it's easy is just dick-waving IMO.

Thanks all, going to take this into consideration once I finish Prolegomena. I was excited/anxious to read Phenomenology as soon as possible getting the bare minimum prereqs out of the way, but I'll be sure to take my time with secondary lit. I appreciate it.

Definitely use the secondary materials but honestly it's not that big a deal to just push through the thing in itself. It's something you'll want to reread anyway. Findlay's exegesis is helpful though sometimes it's just as fucking cryptic as the actual passages.

Same thing with Kant. Definitely don't beat yourself up over thinking that other people can easily understand it, or that you need to read secondary materials until it becomes easy. Sometimes you just gotta read the shit and get like 70% of it on the first run.

>reading hegel instead of an interpretation
do u want to torture urself?

Literally the first page of the Phenomenology answers your question.

Thanks, yeah in the Preface to Prolegomena when Kant said that anyone who finds the Prolegomena obscure should consider that "it simply is not necessary for everyone to study metaphysics" I was a bit disheartened... I understand probably 80-85% of what he says, but even that requires some rereading sentences.

I'm pretty committed to understanding Hegel as a mid-long term goal, so I should make it through.