hegel ( )

Not a work written by Hegel but assembled from students' notes of some of his lectures. Well done in that respect.

Mostly the usual inconsequential word-play typical of too much of philosophy, leavened with a few insights now long incorporated into the historico-philosophical wisdom.

Skip this unless you are especially interested not in the philosophy of history, but rather in the history of philosophy.

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to be truly Hegelian, I should write this review in terminology which especially in translation, will be a fertile field for further analysis by other hands :-) ..This translation has been received text for over a century now, and is mentally, Hegel in the English speaking world.
He makes some gnomic statements that dog us yet, and some insights which are not yet shorn of relevance for the practitioner of historical works. It is also to be remembered that Hegel had experience of the German states prior to, during, and after, the Napoleonic irruption, and thus is a good guide to the minds of the early and middle nineteenth century. Thus a quite readable book, and a handy source for quotes. i do not recommend the Britannica's Great Books edition due to its lack of competent indexing. ( )

Librería 6. Estante 3.

While I have another 100 pages or so to go, this book has not seemed particularly informative or even well written. Hegel's entire view of history is premised on history being completely teleological, with each stage leading towards some grand goal. Conveniently, this goal seems to be a modern, Christian German state. Can't imagine how Hegel got to that conclusion.

This teleological view falls apart pretty quickly if you don't believe in some sort of deity guiding the process, an objection Hegel never once seems to have considered, or at least never seems worthy of addressing.

My main issue with this book is that Hegel is some vague with defining this goal, "realizing the underlying principle of history," to paraphrase. This principle is variously referred to as obtaining subjective unity, the realization of the Spirit, fully obtaining Freedom and many other equally meaningless phrases. The term Spirit itself is thrown around frequently with no explanation as though the reader ought to inherently know what is being referred to by it. It later receives multiple definitions, none of which do much to explain it or how we know it exists, including: the underlying animate material, inherent vital movement, pure Identity and even used as an explanation of the link between man and God in Hegel's system. Freedom seems only to mean having reflected upon things and deciding for yourself to submit to the rules laid out by the Christian God of your own free will, under the realization that they are the best for you rather than out of fear or under force.

The history itself is incredibly bad, with Hegel naïvely relating obvious myths and rumors about the history and people of China and India. Meanwhile he writes off vast parts of the world as being essentially unable to have any historical significance based on Hegel's farcical geographical analysis.

I picked this up hoping for an interesting introduction to Hegel and his much referenced dialectical, but was fairly disappointed in all aspects. The Hegelian dialectical is treated as a fait accompli, even though his ideas on the synthesis between an idea and its antithesis seem to form the crux of his historical analysis. In addition to his poorly explained theory, you get double servings of bad history mixed with Hegel's intermittent forays into theology.

I'll check out some of his other works to try and get a better understanding of his system, particularly the dialectic, but overall am quite disappointed, especially as this book was recommended as a good introduction to Hegelian thought. Absolutely do not understand the praise given to this book. ( )