Hegel's Philosophy of Mind

by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

is Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's most important and widely discussed philosophical work. Hegel's first book, it describes the three-stage dialectical life of Spirit. The title can be translated as either The Phenomenology of Spirit or The Phenomenology of Mind, because the German word Geist has both meanings. The book's working title, which also appeared in the first edition, was Science of the Experience of Consciousness. On its initial publication (see cover image on right), it was identified as Part One of a projected "System of Science", of which the Science of Logic was the second part.

Genres: Philosophy

418 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 27, 2017

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.

Reviews

[Erick · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the last volume of Hegel's three volume Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences and was also the conclusion to his system. The subsequent works were largely expansions and lectures fleshing out what was laid out in the Phenomenology Of Spirit/Mind (his introduction to the encyclopedia), the Science Of Logic, the Philosophy Of Nature and the Philosophy Of Mind (the last three being the encyclopedia). I have now read all of the above. I am no where close to being a Hegelian, but I thought him well worth reading and I do recommend him but not without reading Fichte and Schelling as well. They all have their strengths and weaknesses.
There wasn't a whole lot new here. A lot of it was a recapitulation of ideas already set forth in previous works. He does go more into his concept of freedom though. Of course, freedom is a process that needs to be worked out, just as optimum consciousness is a process involving spirit/mind, objectivity/subjectivity, particularity/universality, etc -all notions discussed before. Much of this work deals with the psychology of freedom, if one can use the phrase and it not be an anachronism. I did note that Hegel addresses the charge of pantheism that was often leveled at philosophy, and at Idealism specifically, at the time; I found his response interesting. The last part of the book was probably the most engaging.
It appears to be the first time he went into more detail as to the political ramifications of his system. This is something he expanded on in the Philosophy Of Right.
This translation was by William Wallace, who also translated the Science Of Logic edition that I read previously. I wanted to read older translations because I am intending to research British and American Idealism in the future and these older translations are important context and/or material for that. I have seen some criticisms of Wallace's translations but I think it a fair one; and being acquainted with German Idealism already, I think he got the concepts across adequately. His introduction was a bit long, taking up half the book; but being interested in the influence that German Idealism had on the English speaking West is partly what I am interested in, so I wasn't that bothered by the length of the introduction. The print, I will say, is very small, so the book would actually be longer than it appears if the font were a more appropriate size.
I am considering reading Hegel's Philosophy Of Right and the Philosophy Of History next, but there's some works of Schelling I'd still like to read first.

[Aren Lerner · Rating 5 out of 5]

The section on the phenomenology of mind was phenomenal!