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Fall 2006
Volume 06, Number 1

Newsletter on Teaching Philosophy

Book Reviews

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Hegel's Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit
G.W.F. Hegel, edited and translated by Yirmiyahu Yovel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005) 248 pp.

Reviewed by Ido Geiger
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

This very welcome new addition to the works of Hegel in English comprises three parts: a substantial introduction to Hegel's philosophy; a new translation of the Preface to his Phenomenology of Spirit; and a running commentary on this text.

The introductory essay describes in broad strokes the historical and philosophical background of Hegel's philosophy and its aim. Yovel explains the decisive influence on Hegel of Spinoza and Kant, as well as Hegel= s response to his more immediate contemporaries, viz., Fichte, Schelling, and Hölderlin. Hegel is still often associated with the latter and charged with being a romantic critic of the Enlightenment and as an origin (indeed, the origin) of irrationalism in contemporary philosophy. This common prejudice is contested by Yovel by presenting in detail (in the commentary as well as the introductory essay) Hegel= s criticism of the notion of faith and of an immediate intellectual intuition of the absolute. Hegel is a stalwart defender of Kantian conceptual and reflective rationality. Like Spinoza, Hegel views God, which he thinks of as Spirit or Reason, as immanent in the world and identical with its totality, but for Hegel, God is not substance. Like Kant, Hegel places the subject center-stage: The world is the world of theoretical and practical rational subjects. The famous aphorism that "everything depends on comprehending the true not as substance, but equally also as subject" (95) sets this synthesis between Kant and Spinoza as the end of philosophy (16ff.).1 But in contrast to Kant, for Hegel reason is not essentially limited, and the union between subjects and their world can be attained. Reason develops in history, i.e., in the process of the development of theoretical and practical rational thought, of actual theoretical and social-political shared forms of life, and of their discordant relations. Only at the end of this process do subjects find themselves in a rational world wholly their own to know as well as to shape in action.

The true is the whole. Yet the whole is but the essence which brings itself to fulfillment through its development. Of the absolute it must be said that it is essentially a result, that only at the end is the absolute what it is in truth; and herein consists its nature B to be actual, subject, or becoming-its-own-itself. (102; for the discussion of the passage see, 31ff.)

To be sure, this is all very abstract. But abstraction is the notorious and acknowledged fault of the Preface.

It seems to me important to be on guard against a misunderstanding of the position of the introductory essay and its relation to the extant interpretative literature. Yovel begins by suggesting that we "view Hegel in his own context and his variety of aspects, without suppressing elements of his thought that were crucial to him only because they can no longer be so to us" (1). Yovel's example of such piecemeal reading is the "social Hegel" B distinguished from his own ontological reading. He does not name his foils. The annotated bibliography, however, suggests that they are not those who simply choose Hegel's social or political thought as the focus of their research, nor even Wood's bold assertion, in Hegel's Ethical Thought, that "Speculative logic is dead; but Hegel's thought is not" (see 8).2 The "social Hegel" seems to be Pinkard's Hegel's Phenomenology: The Sociality of Reason (209).3 Yovel's criticism is not, however, directed against Pinkard's thesis of the sociality of reason, namely, the view that giving reasons for knowledge claims and actions is a social practice.4 To endorse the thesis that the games of asking for and giving reasons are always played within social forms of life is not to interpret Hegel's "ontology as social philosophy" (1; see also, 6-7). Reason is not taken to be merely a social phenomenon but, rather, as having an essential social dimension. Yovel himself quite clearly subscribes to this thesis. His shorthand answer to the ontological question of what it takes actually to be is: "It takes living and being involved in a society, one that, despite inevitable regressions, eventually leads to freedom and mutual recognition" (9; see also, 25-26 and passim). Yovel seems to direct his criticism against Pinkard's reading because in "detaching itself from Hegel's running text and several core ideas (with their ontological import), it constructs a revised Phenomenology, which the author thinks fit for our time" (209). Pinkard's text is rich indeed with details of the social conceptions and practices of reason the Phenomenology describes, and it highlights the modern standpoint of reason. But Pinkard says explicitly that Hegel does not take the present (or any) standpoint of reason to be merely a social-historical given.5 It is the logic that grounds Hegel's project by showing thought itself to be self-grounding.6

Furthermore, the term "ontology" might on first hearing suggest that Yovel takes Hegel to be constructing the sort of dogmatic metaphysical edifice Kant criticized. This remains a very common misreading and a pit into which students almost inevitably fall when, with trepidation or enthusiasm, they first approach Spirit. Yovel, however, emphatically distinguishes his reading from the dogmatic metaphysical readings that take God or World-History or the Logic of the Concept to be an agency driving the progress of reason (10-13, 52, 58): there are in Hegel's history and phenomenology only empirical, human agents (11). Hegel aims to answer Kant's question, "How is metaphysics possible as science?" He takes on the task of continuing and transforming the ontological project which Kant's notion of metaphysics implies: "Kant's system of a priori categories and principles sets the conditions for thinking actual entities in nature (= the world of experience); it is thereby a logic of being derived from the structure of the subject B in other words, it is a subject-like ontology" (52). Yovel's ontological reading affirms the sociality of reason and disavows dogmatic metaphysics. It places at the center of attention the relationship of Hegel's practical philosophy to his logic. The highly influential works on Hegel's practical philosophy of the last fifteen years or so all recognize the centrality of this relationship for Hegel, but their focus is not on this relationship but on the practical philosophy itself. The difference is a difference of emphasis.

The introductory essay seems best suited to advanced students. It requires considerable knowledge of the history of philosophy and considerable philosophical refinement. It should be emphasized that the essay is not an introduction to the Phenomenology but to Hegel's philosophy in general. The Preface may well be the text most often used to introduce Hegel's philosophy in the classroom. Thus, the present volume is particularly well suited for this very purpose. A word of caution is due here. Hegel's criticism of abstraction is central to his own end in philosophy and a very important idea of the Preface. Hegel clearly expresses this idea; and the introductory essay and commentary conscientiously underscore it. However, there is only one remedy for the feeling that Hegel's philosophy is itself often suffocating in its abstraction B and the Preface is a paradigmatic example. The Preface is best read with one of Hegel's detailed and concrete analyses. The purpose of introducing Hegel as the concrete thinker he in fact is might best be served by reading the conclusion of his lectures on the philosophy of history B the discussion of the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the French Revolution. Revised not long before his untimely death in 1831, it reveals how Hegel views his historical-political times and complements the very famous phrase of the Preface, viz., "our time is a time of birth" (82), and his expectation of "the rising day which, in a flash, outlines the features of the new world" (84).

Yovel= s excellent running commentary on the Preface does not proceed by singling out and attempting to define the main technical terms of Hegel's language, which are very often too abstract and flexible to be explicated in such a manner. Considerably longer than the text, Yovel's commentary explains Hegel's ideas clearly and in a conversational manner with the main ideas patiently presented several times, in different ways and with different emphases. Yovel speaks with the voice of a seasoned teacher who has been reading and teaching Hegel for many years. Indeed, if the conversation of the commentary has a fault, it is simply that it is written, with no opportunity for classroom elaboration.

The Preface contains many important arguments against (amongst others) Spinoza, Kant, Romantic metaphysics, Fichte, and Schelling, though Hegel usually does not name the targets of his criticism or explicitly identify their doctrines. Here Yovel's commentary is invaluable. Other particularly illuminating entries discuss the notion of a method in philosophy (155ff.), the criticism of mathematics as a model for philosophy (156ff.), the "cunning of reason" (170-171, 176) and the speculative proposition (182ff.).

This volume is an invaluable introduction to Hegel's philosophy. The introductory essay presents well its central ideas and their background. The reader should note though that Yovel decidedly emphasizes Hegel's system and his logic. The translation is precise and eminently readable and the commentary is indispensable for those setting out on their own into the Hegelian thicket. Though very detailed, it invites further discussion and will also prove an excellent aid in the seminar room.

Endnotes

1. All references in the body of the text are to Hegel’s Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit.

2. Allen W. Wood. Hegel’s Ethical Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 4-6.

3. Terry Pinkard. Hegel’s Phenomenology: The Sociality of Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); see also the entry on Hardimon (206).

4. Ibid., 3-17.

5. In a review of his book, Sedgwick expresses concern that Pinkard might be read this way. See Sedgwick, Sally, review of Hegel’s Phenomenology: The Sociality of Reason, by Terry Pinkard, The Philosophical Quarterly, 45 (1995): 536.

6. Pinkard, Hegel’s Phenomenology: The Sociality of Reason, 270.

7. Hegel himself says ontology is the first part of pre-Kantian or dogmatic metaphysics. See Hegel, G. W. F., The Encyclopaedia Logic [Part One of the Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences], trans. T. F. Geraets, W. A. Suchting, and H. S. Harris (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1991), 33.

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