Essays On Hegels Philosophy Of Subjective Spirit

The first English-language collection devoted to Hegel’s Philosophy of Subjective Spirit.

The philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel is certainly one of the richest and most complex philosophical endeavours in the history of Western thought. Hegelian scholars have either tried to make sense of its individual parts through detailed analyses, or to offer a comprehensive interpretation of the system as a whole. Attempts to combine these two approaches have often appealed to some key-concepts, such as historicity, recognition, dialectic, and Aufhebung, or to a combination of these concepts, in order to develop consistent interpretations of the different components of the system. This book lays the foundation for a similar interpretive project by focusing on Hegel’s concept of recollection (Erinnerung). This collection of essays provides a detailed examination of the role played by recollection within the different spheres of the system, while at the same time acknowledging the specific character of its different instances. This undertaking is guided by the idea that the relationship between the different instances examined here constitutes a privileged key to the interpretation of Hegel’s philosophy and allows a deeper understanding of some of its essential speculative moments.

The essays in this volume address topics prominent in current debates about Hegel's Philosophy of Spirit, which originally appeared as the third part of his Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1817, 1827, 1830). Together, a group of internationally recognized Hegel scholars presents a sophisticated, well-researched, and considered account of Hegel's text, approaching it from different perspectives, philosophical schools, and traditions. Each essay focuses on a specific issue relevant to Hegel scholarship, carefully and clearly setting out established views of the text and putting forward incisive new interpretations. The essays will enable readers to obtain a broad yet analytically nuanced understanding of Hegel's thought and in particular of the Philosophy of Spirit, a rich and important work that has relevance for contemporary debates in philosophy of mind and action, philosophy of law and religion, ethics, aesthetics, and social and political philosophy.

wide criticism both from Western and Eastern scholars.

In the most influential chapter of his most important philosophical work, the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel makes the central and disarming assertions that "self-consciousness is desire itself" and that it attains its "satisfaction" only in another self-consciousness. Hegel on Self-Consciousness presents a groundbreaking new interpretation of these revolutionary claims, tracing their roots to Kant's philosophy and demonstrating their continued relevance for contemporary thought. As Robert Pippin shows, Hegel argues that we must understand Kant's account of the self-conscious nature of consciousness as a claim in practical philosophy, and that therefore we need radically different views of human sentience, the conditions of our knowledge of the world, and the social nature of subjectivity and normativity. Pippin explains why this chapter of Hegel's Phenomenology should be seen as the basis of much later continental philosophy and the Marxist, neo-Marxist, and critical-theory traditions. He also contrasts his own interpretation of Hegel's assertions with influential interpretations of the chapter put forward by philosophers John McDowell and Robert Brandom.