Abstract

As rector of the Gymnasium at Nuremburg between 1808 and 1811, Hegel attempted to introduce his young students to his system of philosophy in courses spread over three years. Karl Rosenkranz edited Hegel’s course notes and published the results under the title, Philosophische Propaedeutic in his 1840 edition of Hegel’s collected works. English translations of portions of the Propaedeutic by W. T. Harris were published in the 1860’s in The Journal of Speculative Philosophy and have since appeared in Jacob Loewenberg’s Hegel Selections. A. V. Miller has now reworked and completed Harris’s translation on the basis of subsequent, somewhat expanded German editions. The editors introduce the volume with a helpful account of Hegel’s pedagogical practice and his thoughts about how to introduce philosophy to young students of high school age. They have wisely ignored the chronological ordering of the most recent German edition. Instead, they present the courses in the order in which Hegel taught them, hoping thereby to provide a short, but comprehensive introduction to Hegel’s system in the very form and format he employed himself.