Transcription of GEORGWILHELMFRIEDRICHHEGEL - libcom.org
1 GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGELThe Phenomenology of SpiritHegel sPhenomenology of Spirit(1807) is one of the most influentialtexts in the history of modern philosophy. In it, Hegel proposed anarresting and novel picture of the relation of mind to world and ofpeople to each other. Like Kant before him, Hegel offered up a sys-tematic account of the nature of knowledge, the influence of societyandhistoryonclaimstoknowledge,and thesocialcharacterofhumanagency itself. A bold new understanding of what, after Hegel, cameto be called subjectivity arose from this work, and it was instru-mental in the formation of later philosophies, such as existentialism,Marxism,andAmericanpragma tism,eachofwhichreactedtoHegel sradical claims in different ways. This edition offers a new translation,an introduction, and glossaries to assist readers understanding of thiscentral text, and will be essential for scholars and students of pinkard is Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown Univer-sity.
2 He has published numerous books on German philosophy andon Hegel in particular, includingHegel s Phenomenology: The Socialityof Reason(Cambridge, 1994),Hegel: A Biography(Cambridge, 2000),andGerman Philosophy 1760 1860: The Legacy of Idealism(Cambridge,2002).CAMBRIDGE HEGEL TRANSLATIONSG eneral editor:Michael BaurThe Phenomenology of SpiritEdited and translated by Terry PinkardHeidelberg Writings: Journal PublicationsEdited and translated by Brady Bowman and Allen SpeightEncyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Basic OutlinePart 1: Science of LogicEdited and translated by Klaus Brinkmann and Daniel O. DahlstromThe Science of LogicEdited and translated by George di GiovanniGEORG WILHELMFRIEDRICH HEGELThe Phenomenology of Spirittranslated and edited byTERRY PINKARDG eorgetown University, Washington DCUniversity Printing House, Cambridge cb2 8bs, United KingdomOne Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, ny 10006, USA477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, vic 3207, Australia314-321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi - 110025, India79 Anson Road, #06-04/06, Singapore 079906 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of furthers the University s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit ofeducation, learning, and research at the highest international levels of on this title: : Terry Pinkard 2018 This publication is in copyright.
3 Subject to statutory exceptionand to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,no reproduction of any part may take place without the writtenpermission of Cambridge University published 2018 Printed in the United Kingdom by Clays, St Ives plcA catalogue record for this publication is available from the British LibraryLibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication dataNames: Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1770 1831, author. | Pinkard, Terry P., : Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel : The phenomenology of spirit / Georg WilhelmFriedrich Hegel ; [edited by] Terry Pinkard, Georgetown University, Washington titles: Ph nomenologie des Geistes. EnglishDescription: New York : Cambridge University Press, 2017. | Series: The American Society ofMissiology series ; No. 55 | Includes bibliographical references and : LCCN 2017035387 | ISBN 9780521855792 (alk.)
4 Paper)Subjects: LCSH: Spirit. | Consciousness. | Truth. | Hegel, Georg WilhelmFriedrich, 1770 1831. Ph nomenologie des : LCC P56 2017 | DDC 193 dc23LC record available at 978-0-521-85579-2 HardbackCambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracyof URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publicationand does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,accurate or SusanContentsAcknowledgmentspageviiiIntr oductionixTranslator s Notexxxviithe phenomenology of spiritPreface3 Introduction49A. Consciousness60B. Self-Consciousness102C. (AA) Reason136(BB) Spirit253(CC) Religion390(DD) Absolute Knowing454 Appendix: Hegel s Advertisement and Hegel s Note to Himself468 Further Reading470 Glossary of Translated Terms475 German to English475 English to German479 Index484viiAcknowledgmentsSince the draft of this translation had an online existence for a few years, Ireceived many helpful tips and suggestions from too many people to men-tion.
5 Thanks to all of long discussions with Rolf-Peter Horstmann at the beginning ofthe project helped to put it in sharper focus, and I am grateful for his Moore of Cambridge University Press was a great help and dis-cussant for the project. It was he who actually launched it. All who workedwith him miss his lively talks and successor, Hilary Gaskin, has been very helpful in shepherding thisproject Baur, the editor of the series, gave me some very helpful adviceabout the introduction and the first two chapters of the Consciousness section. I have also tried to incorporate his advice into the rest of the would like to thank my copyeditor, Rose Bell, for her irreplaceable helpin preparing the s path to the phenomenologyTheVoyageofDiscoveryHegel frequently described his 1807 Phenomenology of Spiritto his studentsas his voyage of discovery. It was in that work, Hegel s first published ver-sion of his own systematic views, that Hegel, a virtually unknown, barelyemployed academic figure in Jena, became Hegel, the philosopher cele-brated all over Europe.
6 Nonetheless, however much of a voyage the bookwas for him, it was by no means an easy passage. Published in April of1807, it was a work written hurriedly while Hegel was in extremely dire cir-cumstances. He was thirty-seven when thePhenomenologyappeared, andduring its composition he had no tenable job, no real prospects, and anillegitimate child on the way. He did indeed have a teaching position at theuniversity at Jena, but the salary for that position was not merely meager,it was nothing at all (Hegel was a private lecturer at the university). He hadbeen supporting himself in a condition rapidly approximating to a state ofpenury on the basis of a small inheritance he had obtained when his fatherdied in 1799. In 1806, the minister of the government which ran the univer-sity, Johann Wolfgang Goethe himself, managed to procure a 100 Thalerper year salary for the beleaguered Hegel, but that really amounted to aminor honorarium, not a sum that even the poorest student could live survive, Hegel needed some type of employment, and, if it was to be ina university, he was going to have to produce a book of some , not only were positions at universities few and far between, theywere becoming even scarcer because of the Napoleonic wars in Germanyat the time.
7 ThePhenomenologywas a book born out of both despair anda steadfast confidence on Hegel s own part that his audience whom heenvisaged to be no less than the people of modern Europe itself neededthis did not originally set out to be a he graduatedfrom T bingen s famous Theological Seminary in 1793, his career path hadsupposedly already been set for him. He was supposed, and in one senseeven obligated, to become a Lutheran pastor in the duchy of W rttem-berg. He rejected that option while he was at T bingen, and quite fortu-nately for him, at least as far as he was concerned, the number of positionsavailable for pastors were about as few as those for university professors,ensuring that the matter would never really come to a head. At the Semi-nary, he had struck up a close friendship and shared a room with two otherstudents who had equally decided against the destiny chosen for them ofbecoming pastors: Friedrich H lderlin, who was to become one of Ger-many s greatest poets, and F.
8 W. J. Schelling, who was also to become oneof Germany s greatest philosophers. Each of the three T bingen friendshad a great impact on the others, and the development of their own viewsand talents after leaving the Seminary around 1793 were intertwined witheach other for a number of years. After a short stay in Bern, where Hegeltried, unsuccessfully, to work up some more popular manuscripts for pub-lication, he moved in 1797 to Frankfurt to be near H lderlin, who alreadyhad a position as a private tutor there and who had managed to procure lderlin sinfluence in Frankfurt, Hegel came to believe that his early conceptions ofwhat was needed in philosophy were severely misguided, and it was therethat he began to entertain the idea of seeking a position as a universityprofessor of leaving the Seminary, Schelling himself had gone on to becomethe boy-wonder of German philosophy.
9 He staged a meteoric rise in Ger-man intellectual life, and in 1798, at the age of twenty-four, he became aprofessor at the celebrated university at Jena. Shortly thereafter he becamethe successor there to the famous post-Kantian philosopher Johann Got-tlieb Fichte, who was forced to leave Jena after having trumped-up chargesof atheism leveled against him. Schelling managed to arrange for Hegel toleave Frankfurt and come to Jena in 1801, where, at the age of thirty-one,Hegel decided to see if he could make his mark as a philosopher. Hegel s1 For the more detailed account of Hegel s life, see T. P. Pinkard,Hegel: A Biography(Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2000). ,hetranslatedintoGerman and provided a commentary on a political pamphlet by the French-speaking Jean-JacquesCart. The pamphlet was a quasi-revolutionary indictment of the Bernese aristocracy (one of whomHegel was working for as a private tutor for the children).
10 The translation and commentary werepublished anonymously, and not even Hegel s own family in Berlin many years later knew that thiscame from his own at Jena was an unpaid one (although he was allowed to charge apittance for admission to his lectures, which was the accepted practice atthe time), and his financial support was almost entirely due to his smallinheritance. He was at first taken by the intellectual world to be simply adisciple of Schelling, and his first few published monographs were widelytaken to be mere variations if not simple iterations on the Schellingianprogram in philosophy. When Schelling left Jena to assume a position inW rzburg in 1803 (as scandalous and utterly false rumors having to do withhis marriage to the talented Caroline Michaelis B hmer Schlegel circulatedaround Jena), Hegel was left with nothing much to rely upon for , the university around him had begun to collapse, and not merelySchelling but almost all the other intellectual luminaries at Jena at the timerapidly departed, leaving Hegel virtually alone Intellectual, Political, and Social Ferment of the TimeTwo major developments during this period should be kept in mind.