Hegel in Berlin (Part One)

This post is the first of several, dealing with Hegel's time in Berlin from 1818 to 1831. The material is drawn from Karl Rosenkranz's Life of Hegel (1844), the first biography of Hegel. During this time Hegel taught at Berlin University and was involved in the development of Prussian politics, culture and society. Many of his posthumously published lectures date from this period, during which his original works included the Philosophy of Right (1821), the second and third editions of his Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences (1827, 1830) and some notable contributions to journals.

Hegel in Heidelberg

This is an account of Hegel's time in Heidelberg from 1816 to 1818, drawn from Karl Rosenkranz's Life of Hegel (1844), the first biography of Hegel. It includes discussions of Hegel's essays on Jacobi and on the Wurtemberg Estates. I exclude from this the chapter on the first edition of the Encyclopadia (1817), which I have translated in a previous post.

First edition of the Encyclopedia

There follows a complete translation of the very brief chapter on the first edition of Hegel's Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences (1817) in Karl Rosenkranz' Life of Hegel (1844) taken from his coverage of Hegel's time in Heidelberg. The standard English translations of the Encyclopaedia are of the later editions rather than of this edition of which Rosenkranz speaks so highly. William Wallace translated the later editions of the Encyclopaedia Logic (1873) and Philosophy of Mind (1894), with the Encyclopaedia translation only completed in the 1970s with AV Miller's Philosophy of Nature. In this light, Rosenkranz' preference for the first edition is worth pondering.

Brief notes on the Science of Logic

 

These are my notes from the brief chapter on Hegel's Science of Logic in Karl Rosenkranz' Life of Hegel (1844). This gave rise to an interesting exchange of views on the Hegel-list on the nature of the Logic, which we concluded was a logic of experience-as-a-whole rather than a pure development of abstract concepts (as my version of Rosenkranz suggested) or a deceptive removal of layers of abstraction to return to a common sense view of the world (as alleged by Friedrich Trendelenberg and Andrew Seth later in the 19th century).

Hegel and John Macmurray on Personhood and Society

There follows my review from the John Macmurray Newsletter 30, Autumn 2012, of Esther McIntosh's book John Macmurray's Religious Philosophy (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011). In my view Macmurray's thought contains some views deriving ultimately from Hegel, in particular the Form of the Personal, whilst other ideas are adopted from French phenomenology and the British idealist tradition. The review follows the structure of the book and addresses in turn: the nature of persons; child development; society and politics; and religion.

The John Macmurray Fellowship can be found here.

Hegel in Nuremberg

This post covers my reading of Hegel's period at Nürnberg, including his rectorship at the Aegidiengymnasium and marriage, drawn again from Book II of Karl Rosenkranz's Hegels Leben (1844). I will reserve comments on the Science of Logic for a separate post.

John Macmurray’s Early Milieu

This post reproduces Stephen Cowley's article in the John Macmurray Fellowship Newsletter 24 (2009). The article relates some central ideas of the personalist philosopher John Macmurray (1891-1976) to those of his British Idealist teachers in Glasgow (see photo above, from Kelvingrove Park) and Oxford. The Idealist movement flourished in Victorian and early 20th century Britain, seeking to develop ideas drawn from Kant and Hegel by way of a critique of contemporary empiricist and scientific thought on society and the nature of the mind.

The John Macmurray Fellowship website can be found here.

Hegel in Bamberg

There follows an account of Hegel's time in Bamberg as editor of the Bamberger Zeitung, drawn from Karl Rosenkranz's Life of Hegel (1844), followed by Rosenkranz's analysis of Hegel's essay on The German Constitution in the subsequent chapter, which later commentators state that he misdates to this period and which certainly has a less mature style than he attained in the Phenomenology and Critical Journal articles.

Hegel in Jena (Part Two)

This post covers the remainder of Hegel's time in Jena, drawn from chapters 7-14 of Hegels Leben (1844) by Karl Rosenkranz, down to publication of the Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) and the fleeting encounter with Napoleon.

Hegel In Jena (Part One)

This post summarises chapters 1-7 of the middle book of Hegels Leben (1844) by Karl Rosenkranz that cover Hegel's time in Jena, including publication of the Critical Journal of Philosophy. This middle book as a whole starts with Hegel's arrival in Jena in 1801 and takes us up to his departure from Heidelberg for Berlin in 1818.

Hegel's early views of Religion

Here is a further summary of my reading of Karl Rosenkranz's Life of Hegel (1844), the first biography of Hegel from whom later biographers draw extensively. This post covers the end of Part One and briefly describes Hegel's system of ethical life and philosophy of religion prior to publication of the Phenomenology of Spirit in 1807.

The early Logic, Metaphysics and Philosophy of Nature

Here is a further summary of my reading of Karl Rosenkranz's Life of Hegel (1844), the first biography of Hegel from whom later biographers draw extensively. This post covers the start of chapter 19 of Part One, by far the longest chapter in the book describing Hegel's philosophical system and philosophy of nature prior to publication of the Phenomenology of Spirit in 1807.

The Owl of Minerva and Cencrastus

In a blast from the past, I added a brief review of Michael Rosen's Hegel's Dialectic and its Criticism (1985) to Amazon. You may wish to improve on my memories, as at present what follows is the only review:

2012 Baccalauréat questions

The French baccalauréat exam subjects for 2012 are now known.  No mention of Hegel, but two of his favourite authors, Rousseau and Spinoza, are amongst the subjects commented on:

Hegels Schwester by Alexandra Birkert

I recently found an intriguing book by Alexandra Birkert called Hegels Schwester (Stuttgart: Thorbecke, 2008) concerning Christiane Luise Hegel (1773 to 1832), sister of our own Hegel. The back cover says:

THE EXCITING SEARCH FOR THE TRACES OF A REMARKABLE WOMAN IN THE SHADOW OF THE GREAT PHILOSOPHER!

Three Canadian Hegelians

Robert C. Sibley's Northern Spirits: John Watson, George Grant, and Charles Taylor: appropriations of Hegelian political thought  (McGill-Queen’s:  UP,  2008) clearly deserves a mention here given the general theme of this blog. At present this is based on publicly available information.  

New translation of the Phenomenology of Spirit

Here is a link to a recent radio interview with Jean Pierre Lefebvre, whose revised French translation of the Phenomenology of Spirit (Flammarion, 2012) - the second of four into that language - has just been published:

Johannes Hoffmeister (1907-55), a Hegel Scholar in Paris

Friedrich Hölderlin, en commémorisation du centenaire de sa mort le 7 juin 1843. Ed. Hoffmeister. Paris: Sorlot, 1943.

This post reviews the above book on Friedrich Hölderlin, the German poet and friend of Hegel, edited by German Hegel scholar Johannes Hoffmeister and published in Paris in 1943 when Hoffmeister was teaching German literature there, with contributions from a range of German and French scholars, including Maurice Boucher and Martin Heidegger.

Autobiographical sketch by Hegel from 1804

The following autobiographical sketch is from Johannes Hoffmeister’s edition of Hegel’s correspondence. I have never seen this in English, despite its interest. Hoffmeister thinks the original was probably attached to a letter to Goethe in September 1804:

Our review of a biography of Alexandre Kojève

This is a review of Marco Filoni's The Sunday Philosopher, the most recent biography of French Hegel scholar Alexandre Kojève (1902-68), which supplements the work of Dominique Auffret on the same subject. The review was originally posted on the hegel@yahoogroups.com [now .io] email list in 2011:

Our review of a biography of Jacques D'Hondt

This post is a review of Fiorinda Li Vigni's recent biography of the French Hegel scholar Jacques D'Hondt, originally posted on the discussion list  hege@yahoogroups.com, where it gathered a little reaction.

Our review of Domenico Losurdo on Hegel

This post is a review of Domenico Losurdo's important book Hegel and the German Catastrophe (Paris: Michel, 1994), posted on the hegel@yahoogroups.com email discussion group in 2011.