Rudolf Haym on Hegel

Rudolf Haym (1821-1901)

This post summarizes the illuminating introduction by Pierre Osmo to his French translation of politician and Hegel scholar Rudolf Haym's famous biography and commentary Hegel and his Time (1857).

Key to our Hegel Biography

Here is a key to our Hegel biography, which is based largely on Karl Rosenkranz's Hegels Leben (1844) in the French edition by Pierre Osmo. It includes links to the individual chapters. Whilst we cannot compete with the books of Walter Kaufmann, Horst Althaus, Jacques D'Hondt or Terry Pinkard, we can claim an exposition refounded on the earliest source, Karl Rosenkranz. Hegel scholarship has corrected Rosenkranz on the dating and authorship of several early manuscripts and built on his indications of Hegel's role in society, but perhaps diverged for many years from the facts he set out, particularly on the politics of the Restoration period in Berlin.

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.

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.

Hegel in Berne and Frankfurt

Here is a further summary of Karl Rosenkranz' Life of Hegel (1844), starting from Hegel's time as a tutor in Switzerland from 1793-96. As the book is not available in English and my German is not (yet) up to the job, I work from the French translation of Pierre Osmo.

Karl Rosenkranz on the life of Hegel

This is a summary of the preface and first eleven chapters of Karl Rosenkranz's Life of Hegel (1844), the first biography of the German philosopher Hegel. Rosenkranz was a Calvinist and Professor in Königsberg in East Prussia who had access to Hegel's papers through his family.