PHIL 420: HEGEL
PHIL 420: Hegel
Adriaan Peperzak
In this seminar we will analyze and discuss Hegel’s ethics and politics. At the same time, it will be an introduction into Hegel’s “logic” (which, in fact, is a fundamental or general ontology or metaphysics), because we will pay special attention to the conceptual structures of his overall method and particular arguments. The central text is Hegel’s Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts (Berlin 1820. There is a good edition by Meiner, Hamburg). The translation we will use is Elements of the Philosophy of Right, translated by H.B. Nisbet and edited by Allen W. Wood, Cambridge University Press. (Please, do not bring another translation to our class meetings, because that only creates confusion).
Hegel’s text is dense and difficult, while the semester is short. Therefore commentaries are indispensable. For information about the historical, political and philosophical context in which Hegel wrote his work, we will use Philosophy and Politics. A commentary on the preface of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Springer, Boston-Dordrecht (formerly Nijhoff, 1987) and for the articulation and explanation of its arguments and overall composition, we will follow the interpretation of Modern Freedom; Hegel’s Legal, Moral, and Political Philosophy, Boston-Dordrecht (Springer [formerly Kluwer], 2001).
All participants have to attend all sessions. If some exceptionally important event prevents regular attendance, I expect an explanation – if possible, before the scheduled meeting.
Our main goal is to understand not only what Hegel thinks, but also the method that – explicitly or implicitly – shapes his argumentation.
Hegel’s Logic contains his own explicitation of the categories and moves that dominate the rest of his philosophy, including his book on Right. For access to this logic I recommend the excellent translation of the first part of Hegel’s Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences: “The Encyclopedia Logic” (Indianapolis, Hackett, 1991) by T.F. Geraets, H.S. Harris, and W. A. Suchting.
During the semester the participants will write short paraphrases and explanations of small passages of Hegel’s (sometimes puzzling) texts. Acquaintance with Plato (especially the Republic), with Aristotle (especially his logic, metaphysics, psychology, ethics, and politics) and Kant (especially the second Critique) will help to understand Hegel.
It is important that each participant quickly discover whether (s)he has found access to Hegel’s manner of thinking. Therefore I invite you to see me within the first three weeks of the course for a short conversation about your experiences with Hegel.
A midterm paper is due on February 19 and a final paper on April 21.
PHIL 420: Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit
Ardis Collins
Every time a philosopher uses the laws of logic to support or challenge a claim about the world of human experience, this philosopher assumes that the subject-matter is or should be logical. Yet nature and the realities of life seem to be very different from the stark, rigid rules of logic. Why should we assume that the abstract structures of thinking reveal anything at all about nature or about human desires, feelings, aspirations, or life plans? Hegel recognizes that such questions must be asked. He takes on the task of questioning, examining, and justifying the assumption that the realities of nature and human life are fundamentally logical. He also questions the truth claims of experience, since experience is compromised by the contingency of given facts, the relativity of customary attitudes, the arbitrariness of an individual's subjective convictions. Hegel questions everything, demands proof of everything. He even questions the rules of proof itself. As a result, he must invent a whole new way of making a case, because he cannot take for granted the presuppositions that usually operate in proof procedures. In the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel formulates this radical questioning and meets the challenge posed by such questioning. This course studies the way the Phenomenology introduces a new kind of proof procedure, the way it uses this procedure to critically examine different forms of experiential knowledge, and the way this critique justifies the first principles of philosophy.
The course begins with work on Hegel’s proof procedure focusing on the way a self-critical dynamic belongs to the internal structure of each experience form, the way a determinate negation emerges from this internal self-critique, and the way this produces as a result a retreat into a ground. This part of the course also examines the presupposition status of the Phenomenology’s beginning principles. After developing some familiarity with Hegel's proof strategy, the course focuses on the way Hegel examines and develops the first two fundamental forms of experience: object dominated consciousness, and subject dominated self-consciousness. The famous master-servant dynamic belongs to the development of self-consciousness. In the examination of these experiences, Hegel shows how the self-critical dynamic of consciousness and self-consciousness determines and justifies the claims of reason.
The Phenomenology’s strategy for developing a critique of experience carries it through a vast array of different experience frameworks beyond the move into the presuppositions of reason: empirical science; practical reason; the society of ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, Medieval Feudalism, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the culture of morality and conscientiousness; religions of various kinds, ending with absolute knowing and the transition into the beginning of philosophy in the Logic. It is not possible to do justice to all this in a one-semester course. After the move into reason, the course studies selections from the rest of the work. Different principles govern the selections in different semesters. For example, sometimes the selections focus on moral and social issues, sometimes on religious concerns, sometimes on the technicalities of epistemology. The primary philosophical interests of the students enrolled are taken into account in the determination of these selections.