The Berlin Phenomenology

by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Michael John Petry (Editor)

Since the three volume edition ofHegel's Philosophy of Subjective Spirit (1978, 19792) has been so well received, I have been encouraged to select that part of it most suitable for teaching purposes, and to publish it here as a separate work. As a teaching text, the Berlin Phenomenology has several important advan- tages. Unlike so many ofHegel's writings, must notably theJena Phenomeno- logy of 1807, it is concise and to the point, and concemed with issues already familiar to most students of philosophy. Since it consists for the most part of a searching and radical analysis of Kant's epistemology, Fichte's ethics and Schelling's system-building, it provides tirst-rate insight into Hegel's assessment of his immedi te predecessors. When considered in context, as part of the Encyclopaedia if the Philosophical Sciences, it enables us to distinguish dearly between the systematic, the logical and the psychological aspects of Hegelianism, and is therefore also relevant to some of the central issues in modem phenomenology. It is to be hoped that the introduction and notes prepared for the present edition will prove helpful to both teachers and students. Every effort has been ma de to produce a thoroughly reliable ba sic text and an accurate translation. The text published in 1978 was prepared at the Hegel Archive in Bochum from photocopies, and I am most grateful to the Central Interfaculty of the Erasmus University, Rotterdam, for having made it possible for me to check the printed version against the original manuscripts.

320 pages, Hardcover

First published May 31, 1981

About the author

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.