Abstract
In this paper I analyze Hegels concept of life in the Phenomenology of Spirit and Heideggers critical comments regarding this concept of life in his 1930/31 Lecture Course on Hegels Phenomenology of Spirit. I claim that Heidegger's lecture course shows his continued fascination with life, despite his official distance to Dilthey and the then contemporary life-philosophy. I argue that one of the fundamental tenets of life-philosophy, the opposition of "life" to "reason," still motivates Heideggers critique of Hegels supposedly logocentric concept of life. I begin the paper with a brief review of Heideggers life-philosophical starting point after World War One (Section I)and, drawing on Hans Jonas, suggest some meta-reflections on the reasons behind the renewed interest in "life" in the last decades of the nineteenth and the first decades of the twentieth century (section II). After a sketch of Hegels concept of life in the Phenomenology of Spirit (Section III), I then turn to Heideggers interpretation of Hegels Phenomenology of Spirit in 1930/31 (Section IV), in particular Hegels conception of the correlation of life and time