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Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit

georg wilhelm friedrich hegel yirmiyahu yovel

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This is a new translation, with running commentary, of what is perhaps the most important short piece of Hegel's writing. The Preface to Hegel's first major work, the Phenomenology of Spirit, lays the groundwork for all his other writing by explaining what is most innovative about Hegel's philosophy.

This new translation combines readability with maximum precision, breaking Hegel's long sentences and simplifying their often complex structure. At the same time, it is more faithful to the original than any previous translation.

The heart of the book is the detailed commentary, supported by an introductory essay. Together they offer a lucid and elegant explanation of the text and elucidate difficult issues in Hegel, making his claims and intentions intelligible to the beginner while offering interesting and original insights to the scholar and advanced student. The commentary often goes beyond the particular phrase in the text to provide systematic context and explain related topics in Hegel and his predecessors (including Kant, Spinoza, and Aristotle, as well as Fichte, Schelling, Holderlin, and others).

The commentator refrains from playing down (as many interpreters do today) those aspects of Hegel's thought that are less acceptable in our time, and abstains from mixing his own philosophical preferences with his reading of Hegel's text. His approach is faithful to the historical Hegel while reconstructing Hegel's ideas within their own context.

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240 pages,

First published January 1,1807

This edition

Format
240 pages,
Published
January 17, 2005 by Princeton University Press
ISBN
9780691120522
ASIN
0691120528
Language
English

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About the author

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georg wilhelm friedrich hegel

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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) was a German philosopher and one of the founding figures of German Idealism. Influenced by Kant's transcendental idealism and Rousseau's politics, Hegel formulated an elaborate system of historical development of ethics, government, and religion through the dialectical unfolding of the Absolute. Hegel was one of the most well-known historicist philosopher, and his thought presaged continental philosophy, including postmodernism. His system was inverted into a materialist ideology by Karl Marx, originally a member of the Young Hegelian faction.

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29 reviews All reviews
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mosenco
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Verð að viðurkenna að ég vanmat hve fáránlega torskilin Hegel er því ég átti í stökustu vandræðum með að fylgja textanum. Það kom heldur ekkert svakalega mikið fram þar sem þetta er formáli en ég veit þó að ég þori ekki í megin verkið í bráð(er bara bíða eftir þýðingunni þinni vignir).
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Mikashimotaku
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Prior to Hegel, the philosophic world had both the subject/object divide under the purview of mental legislation and its attendant moral freedom, via Kant, and an Absolute Substance permeating all, as per Spinoza. Hegel's great task was to effect a copacetic methodology for interweaving these two threads together, such that we have Substance as Subject, and Subject unified with Substance—a system wherein both sides of this perduring existential divide would be endowed with an autonomy that yet did not denegate the one to the other, thanks to the becoming-in-synthesis of the Hegelian Dialectic and its mirroring of subjective negativity to effect evolved syllogisms of antithetic corollaries—made sufficiently rigorous that it could assume a fundamental Spiritual role in the extension of an increasingly powerful, relevant, and revelatory Science. At its heart, what one finds beating at the lowest, but steadiest, register is the theme of being-for-itself—the individuality previously considered as subjective processor of temporal, causal extension—subsumed within Spirit's universal, organic whole, and yet the key instigator in the latter's enveloping arc: a communal tether for morally-free souls borne along with the current, a trending towards microcosmic stochasticity/volition and macrocosmic orderliness/determinism. Yovel's translation somewhat improves upon that of Miller's, while offering much more extensive commentary—indeed, at times to the point of excess, particularly in its momentum-laming, page-inflated pervasiveness—along the procession through Hegel's potent but obfuscatory and densely-wrought thought.
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MrWbolt
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Fantastic translation and remarkably helpful annotations, commentary, and introduction.
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itsDavid
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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It is nice that readers have a second, decent text to compare to Miller. Miller is sometimes better, Yovel is sometimes better. Yovel is usually clearer, Miller usually more lyrical.

The commentary is alright, sometimes a little biased, often a little pointless, sometimes helpful. Yovel's introduction is a bit long winded and not helpful enough to justify the time invested in my opinion. If you want historical context, Beiser's introduction to the Cambridge Companion on Hegel is concise. If you want to know what is important to Hegel, just read the author himself.

There isn't anything quite like this book (except Kaufmann's Hegel: Texts and Commentary) and it may be a good place to start with Hegel for some readers. Just be forewarned, like most contemporary scholars, Yovel thinks Hegel's writing needs to be contextualized and updated. Both assumptions fail to treat the book as a whole statement that can stand on its own.
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kwartel
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Will probably need to revisit this, but it was the most approachable work of Hegel's in the library so I figured "why not?" Most of the book came in the form of axioms, like Spinoza's Ethics or DeBord's Society of the Spectacle, and the book was made less intimidating as a result of this format. It is a thoroughly fascinating book. I trudged through some swathes with much difficulty but also flew through others pages effortlessly. If you don't read for total comprehension the first time around you will likely enjoy it.
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Boogiepop20
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April 26,2025
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Seeming philosophy creating consciousness scientifically.
Altho’ more like a stream-of-consciousness narrative ergo literary—
And hence its perceived verbiage philosophy
(tho’ any form of consciousness can flow for O philosophy).

By equaling consciousness times the awareness sensed, objects subsumes and are Being  absorbed by Understanding  which Hegel calls - absolute power (?) processing, such that Hegel attains it via processions, stages com levels incrementally up unto the ultimate (?) he nominates as - the Spirit (?),
which still, sans a scientific (mathematic) rigor so unsubstantially defined, that a a fortiori follows his verbiage prose (a curious finite recursions in reflections!) imbues his writings. .

Perhaps a 'process philosophy', still in progress, be its pinnacle. . thesis.

( Being, Becoming, Knowledge is 'its' 'truth', but all of Hegel be mere Becoming, not yet in its greatest level ).

Perchance due a discord distinguishing unconsciousness contra consciousness then prevailing over 18-19 century continental philosophy.
Perchance too, that, for as before I had liken his prose unto like a stream of consciousness narrative, his being unique therefor (o'er 19 cent. continental philosophers) plays relevant solely to his own solipcist(ical) self..

Perhaps a process philosophy which wills a progress, striving for perfection, be its pinnacle... synthesis.

( Being, Becoming, Knowledge is 'its' 'truth', but all of Hegels' be mere Becoming, its greatest level ).

Evolutionary Hegel fails qua bio-co-neuro scientific way.
But may its greatest uplifting of philosophy be, howe'er parochial it be, due its lack of collective unconsciousness com Eastern reflections, the history learn'd of our consciousness (nous) evolutionarily.
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