|
|
|
|
|
|
by heyhegalhey
1692 days ago
|
|
|
Can anyone recommend a book that makes Hegel actually legible and not completely bonkers to extract what he's saying? I think it's possible he needs to be read in German. Reading and breaking down The Phenomenology of Spirit should be used as a torture method. Here is just one random passage of The Phenomenology of Spirit, it's all like this: The distinction which was made between actual Spirit
and Spirit that knows itself as Spirit, or between itself, qua conscionsness, and qua self-consciousness, is superseded in the Spirit that knows itself in its truth; its consciousness and its self"con~sdousnessare on the same level. But, as religion here is, to begin
with, immediate, this distinction has not yet returned into Spirit. What is posited is only the Notion of religion; in this the essence is self .. consciousness, which is conscious of being all truth and contains all reality within that truth. Arthur Schopenhauer criticized Phenomenology of Spirit as being characteristic of the vacuous verbiage he attributed to Hegel: "I do not think that it is difficult to see that whoever puts forward anything like this is a shameless charlatan who wants to fool simpletons and observes that he has found his people in the Germans of the nineteenth century. |
|
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_C._Beiser#Works
Also, it's much easier to start with Hegel's lectures (on aesthetics, history, religion etc.) and just go read the Phenomenology & Science of Logic after one has a sense of his style and general philosophy. It's foolish to start by the most difficult texts.
And don't take Schopenhauer's criticisms of Hegel too seriously, as they are mostly due to personal misgivings and envy (Sch. couldn't stand Hegel's popularity, while Sch. barely managed to get any students for his classes).