someone said you only have to read the preface. i did and it was good.

Avec une très utile présentation du texte allemand en page gauche et une traduction plus aérienne (!), ce livre ravira les amateurs de Hegel, d'autant que le vade-mecum qui suit le texte reprend les passages qu'une première lecture aurait pu laisser dans l'obscurité.

Une citation pour la route: "... l'attitude antihumaine, animale, consiste à demeurer dans le sentiment et à ne pouvoir communiquer que par lui." p. 145.

"Das widermenschliche, das thierische besteht darin, im Gefühle stehen zu bleiben, und nur durch dieses mittheilen zu können." (§ 70)

3 stars for Yovel's commentary, which is clear and especially well-suited to helping beginners understand Hegel, but not brilliant. 4 stars for his translation.

Yovel's commentary on the Preface is superb (even if a bit too thorough), and his introduction is a clear introduction to Hegel's philosophy.

Abstract nonsense considering dialectical propositions to know what absolute knowing is?, consciousness is?
"Consciousness is the first step toward the knowledge of reality, but it is itself only a limited and contingent form of knowledge."

This was extremely helpful. I had previously read the preface a couple of times and did not walk away with much. However, I think I now have a solid idea of what Hegel is up to in that text. Here is my summary of Yovel's very helpful and succinct introductory essay:

Written in Jena while the French were defeating the Prussian Army, H composed the “Preface” after completion of The Phenomenology.

Through the changing networks of social relations—which are grounded on the human striving for recognition and self-hood—and through the historical evolution of these social forms, H thinks that something is going on that transcends the purely social. That is, he thinks being is made actual and known to itself. In this way, H’s social thought cannot be separated from his ontological thought, as many interpreters want to do.

Similarly, H regards philosophy as having transcended religion by having the capability to recognize religion’s spiritual content. That is, H holds that reason, philosophy, is superior to image and metaphor. Yet, “the is rational only in so far as it contains the essence of the experiences of imagining, feeling, and real being, and links them to a historical tradition” (3). The type of thinking that excludes feeling and history from reason H associates with the Enlightenment and designates as “Understanding,” as Verstand, rather than as Reason [Vernunft]. Relatedly, religion, for H, endows philosophy with experiential and historical depth. In short, the Hegelian dialectic is supposed to evolve through the practical and secular means of work, family, social concerns, and political participation in the state. It also evolves through ordinary religious practice. In this way, the highest spiritual states need to be realized in worldly life. Indeed, it is this practical and ordinary domain of life over which the owl of Minerva spreads its wings. Equally distinctive of the way H connects theory and life is his argument that the institutional anchors of the self, which he designates as ‘objective spirit,’ serve to realize ‘absolute spirit.’ Thus, H stresses spirit’s anchoring in the empirical world. However, spirit is the unifying, or totalizing, principle of these empirical happenings.

From an ontological standpoint, insisting that the true is not only substance, but subject, as H does in Preface, is to insist that being itself exists as a process. As far as it concerns the subject, it is not merely self-identical but proceeds towards itself through its opposites. This is true of the Absolute Subject, too. In this way, Hegel uses the Kantian model of the subject as finite, conditioned, and social, but expanded it to include the infinite, absolute Being. This being, given it is a subject, exists as a becoming totality, rather than a static one. Like this subject, knowledge depends on its own journey through history and all its affective, social, and political forms.

As far as the dialectic is concerned, a few generalized statements can be made. Spirit’s rational essence needs its other (i.e., empirical existence and all its affective weight and contingency) as a medium for its own development. The rational essence must become other than itself to become itself. Rational essence thus exist only as itself at the end of its road; early in history it is abstract and latent. Dialectical logic thus becomes conscious of itself. In dialectical logic, the life and evolution of its consciousness maintains that which it negates, it ‘recollects’ the negated. Unlike formal logic, the dialectic has no a priori rules.

Similarly, the dialectic has an educational-subjective role. That is, the individual goes beyond their own immediate consciousness and begins to recognize truth as their own—as an expression of themselves. Within a personal milieu, the person is driven beyond themselves and their positions in search of new positions. As such, rationality cannot be imposed externally, but it must become one’s own.

Regarding the people H critiques in the Preface, it’s evident that he dismisses Hölderlin’s claim that the absolute is ineffable. For H, the absolute does not ground knowledge while not being implicated in it. Similarly, H disagrees with Hölderlin’s claim that one can experience immediacy in existence. H argued that a complex set of mediacies informs how that existence is perceived. Even though H also sharply disagrees with Schelling, Fichte is the main object of critique in the Preface; especially Fichte’s claim that absolute primacy and absolute identity could be attributed to the ‘I.’ For H, such an insistence on the absolute’s self-identity reduces the absolute, and thus our processual becoming, to an undifferentiated form.

Tangentially, speculative reason is a hybrid between rationality and the intellectual intuition that can experience and deduce the first principles of life. It is a way relating particulars and universals to one another.

Ugh, this took forever. Interestingly, the introduction to the Phenomenology is very clear and easy to read in comparison. I still don't understand a lot of what he wrote in this (who does? Hegel's famous last words about the only person who understood him not actually understanding him seem believable), so I'll probably come back to it shortly.

Incredibly dense (as Hegel is bound to be) but Yovel's commentary is extremely helpful.

The translation is much clearer than the standard Miller and the commentary really opens the text making for an excellent introduction. Hoping that he (or someone) decides to do something similar for the entirety of the phenomenology or encyclopedia down the line. Understanding Hegel is hard enough that any resource is a good resource - this is a great one.

One of the first books I read about philosophy was Will Durant's The Story of Philosophy, in which I discovered many strange men, one of them being Hegel. I sensed a deep optimism in him that I liked, in addition to the controversy surrounding him, particularly Schopenhauer's rants. Controversy usually attracts me, especially when other great thinkers either hate or love him, it signifies that there is something important going on.

While researching how to read philosophy, I discovered, dissapointedly, that reading modern philosophers basically required reading the ancient philosophers first. Simultaneously, I learned that Hegel is considered something like a "last boss" of philosophy, that makes reference to many his predecessors. So I read some of the ancients, mostly Plato, some Aristotle, then i tried to jump straight to Kant. That did not work, and I understood nothing. A few years and many books later, Kant opened up, even though his writing is dense, it is in a sense traditional and straightforward. Technical, rigorous, but manageable.

After having consumed some of Kant's thoughts, I assumed that Hegel would be somewhat understandable. He was not. I have tried reading the Phenomenology, listening to the Phenomenology, but each time I gave up about a third of the way in. Enveloping oneself in a book such as that is a strange experience, even when it is almost impenetrable, it's a journey for the mind. I decided I needed help, and was referred to reading secondary literature - and here I am.

The difficulty of reading Hegel is diverse. The translation, the long winded sentences, his implicit references to other philosophers, his new conception of what constitutes logic and so forth. All the while, a voice in my head kept sneaking up: "How could he possibly know these things? Is he just bullshitting? Is Hegel the biggest trickster in the history of philosophy?" - the thing is, the way Hegel thinks is so unusual and abstract, with such gigantic ambition, that it is hard to comprehend wether doing what he sets out to do is even possible.

In this work, I think Yovel provided some sort of key for unlocking the entrance gate to Hegel. The most helpful part is his insertion of brackets, to make explicit what is implicit, and also naming those philosophers Hegel are referring to, which of course, Hegel mostly does implicitly. Any writing about Hegel is doomed to be dense and difficult, which this book is, but it is at least easier than reading Hegel himself. One step closer to the Phenomenology, maybe, hopefully?

Missing one star, as reading a commentary - constantly jumping from the main text to Yovel's comments - is tedious, but it really is a good book for those seeking to understand the German mad man.

This is some of the best translations of Hegel's preface one can find in the english language. I assume at least. But this does not mean that other translations aren't possible. What do I mean by this? That Yovel, being a good translator, translates the preface of Hegel with a specific interpretation. His interpretation of this preface, is to show how Hegel's main goal with philosophy as a science takes the form of self-concious activity, unpacking the abstract point of knowledge the Spirit has arrived at in the historical process. We as subjects cannot rely on common sense, daily thought or abstractions if we are to philosophize, but are obliged to not take truths for granted. Truth needs to become concrete, by being thought through on our own, opening up for the experience of truth as something neccesary. Necessity here is not abstract, meaning something given and direct, but is rather a point at which we arrive when we ourselves indulge in the process of the becoming of truths.
The only problem with this book is the wierd format at which the commentary is presented, appearing as small notes and explanations every time Hegel writes something with a slight possibility of being hard. This does not mean that I didn't appreciate the commentary, as Yovel shows many links between Hegel's sayings and German Idealist thought. Good read!

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