The Phenomenology of Spirit is both one of Hegel's most widely read books and one of his most obscure. The book is the most detailed commentary on Hegel's work available. It develops an independent philosophical account of the general theory of knowledge, culture, and history presented in the Phenomenology. In a clear and straightforward style, Terry Pinkard reconstructs Hegel's theoretical philosophy and shows its connection to ethical and political theory. He sets the work in a historical context and shows the (...) contemporary relevance of Hegel's thought for European and Anglo-American philosophers. The principal audience for the book is teachers and students of philosophy, but the great interest in Hegel's work and the clarity of Pinkard's exposition ensure that historians of ideas, political scientists, and literary theorists will also read it. (shrink)

Although Hegel's philosophy of history is recognized as a great intellectual achievement, it is also widely regarded as a complete failure. Taking his cue from the third century Greek historian Polybius, who argued that the rapid domination of the Mediterranean world by Rome had instituted a new phase of world history, Hegel wondered what the rise of European modernity meant for the rest of the world. In his account of the contingent paths of world history, he argued that at work (...) behind it is an eternal human struggle over justice, and that it had led to a new conception of justice in which nobody by nature had authority to rule over anybody else. Moving away from the ancient conception of justice as ordered through a cosmic system, the modern conception is based instead on freedom. This is, so Hegel argues, not an accident of history but part of the necessary development of the institutions and practices through which humans establish and maintain their changing shapes of agency. Behind it is an infinite end, justice, which as infinite is neither something which can ever be finally achieved nor a goal to which we are getting closer but which requires an infinite effort at sustaining.--. (shrink)

In the second half of the eighteenth century, German philosophy came for a while to dominate European philosophy. It changed the way in which not only Europeans, but people all over the world, conceived of themselves and thought about nature, religion, human history, politics, and the structure of the human mind. In this rich and wide-ranging book, Terry Pinkard interweaves the story of 'Germany' - changing during this period from a loose collection of principalities into a newly-emerged nation with a (...) distinctive culture - with an examination of the currents and complexities of its developing philosophical thought. He examines the dominant influence of Kant, with his revolutionary emphasis on 'self-determination', and traces this influence through the development of romanticism and idealism to the critiques of post-Kantian thinkers such as Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard. His book will interest a range of readers in the history of philosophy, cultural history and the history of ideas. (shrink)

One of the founders of modern philosophical thought Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel has gained the reputation of being one of the most abstruse and impenetrable of thinkers. This major biography of Hegel offers not only a complete account of the life, but also a perspicuous overview of the key philosophical concepts in Hegel's work in a style that will be accessible to professionals and non-professionals alike. Terry Pinkard situates Hegel firmly in the historical context of his times. The story of (...) that life is of an ambitious, powerful thinker living in a period of great tumult dominated by the figure of Napoleon. The Hegel who emerges from this account is a complex, fascinating figure of European modernity, who offers us a still compelling examination of that new world born out of the political, industrial, social, and scientific revolutions of his period. (shrink)

Hegel is one of the most often cited and least read of all major philosophers. He is alternately regarded as the best and the worst that philosophy has produced. Nobody, however, disputes his influence. In Hegel's Dialectic, Terry Pinkard offers a new interpretation of Hegel's program that assesses his conception of the role of philosophy, his method, and some of the specific theses that he defended. Hegel's dialectic is interpreted as offering explanations of the possibility of basic categories. Pinkard argues (...) that the traditional standard reading of Hegel as the esoteric metaphysician of Absolute Spirit overlooks major elements of his thought. In presenting this alternative reading of Hegel, Pinkard offers a new understanding of the role of history in Hegel's thought and a new perspective on his moral and political thought. Departing from the tradition of explicating Hegel exclusively in Hegelian terms, Pinkard discusses the much disputed philosopher in a way that is accessible and appealing to both analytic and non-analytic philosophers. Hegel's Dialectic is not just an interpretation of Hegel's thought: it is also a reconstruction and defense of Hegel's philosophy as having something of importance to say to late twentieth-century philosophers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Hegel’s Hermeneutics by Paul ReddingTerry PinkardPaul Redding. Hegel’s Hermeneutics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996. Pp. xvi + 262. Cloth, $39.95. Paper, $16.95.Following on the heels of fruitful reception of Kant at work in the last several decades in English-speaking philosophy, one of the most productive lines of interpretation of [End Page 327] Hegel has tried to reconstruct Hegel’s thought in light of its relation to Kantianism. Paul Redding’s (...) new work carries this line further. As Redding sets matters up, Hegel builds explicitly on the unfinished “Copernican” move in Kant’s work, which, as the “Copernican” metaphor suggests, stresses the way in which our particular perspectives on the world must be understood as located within a set of conditions that, although not themselves experienced, are conditions of that experience. It calls, that is, for an investigation of how and whether “subjective” and “objective” points of view relate to each other. The “communicative” interpretation of Kant’s “Copernican” move sets up the Hegelian development of it: For one agent to be able to understand the claims of another’s experience, he must be able to conceive the other as an object-agent in the world and a subjective-agent that has a point of view on the world, and the other must likewise see him in the same way. Redding’s thesis is that Hegel appropriated the way that Kant, Fichte, and Schelling tried to provide such an account, and without falling into the pitfalls they did, developed a recognitive, “intersubjective,” theory of consciousness that successfully gives the proper account of how these two points of view are both necessary and relate to each other.Redding’s interpretation thus lays great weight on the short section of “master and servitude” in the Phenomenology as the key to the structure of all of Hegel’s thought. Each agent can recognize his own point of view only by virtue of recognizing the points of view of other agents, and this kind of recognition can arise when “an intention is common to subjects facing each other from opposed points of view” (111). The structure of recognition that emerges is, of course, quite complex and full of self-reflexive moments, but what emerges is Geist, spirit, the “I that is a We and the We that is an I,” which is not itself an entity having a point of view but a structure of self-conscious, mutually recognizing beings. Thus, at the basis of Hegel’s philosophy is a hermeneutical theory of how agents address and understand each other—that is, how they interpret each other’s acts, intentions, and expressions. Redding puts this interpretation to work in a short account of the progression of the Phenomenology, which he takes to be an account of the way in which the European community has historically failed to realize the kind of institutional and social structures of mutual recognition that would create the “conditions adequate for rational and free intentionality” (141) until modern times. The end of the Phenomenology—“absolute knowing”—is thus not the achieving of a “body of complete or final knowledge” but of the “(tragic) insight that particular and determinate bodies of knowledge are always conditioned and so perspectival” and thus calling for hermeneutical activities of interpretation (140).To make good on his account of the central status of “recognition” (and therefore of “hermeneutics”) to Hegel’s enterprise, Redding gives a short but quite insightful sketch of how Hegel’s notorious Science of Logic might be understood as a formalization of the logic of such recognitive practice, an account of how it is that agents can adopt these complex patterns of recognizing their own points of view as being recognized by others. Hegel’s Logic depends on the rejection of there being any “immediate” truths that can serve as absolute starting points or premises and from which we can then derive “mediated” true conclusions. There are no such “truths” outside of the circle of thought; this is, Redding argues, “characteristic of that ‘hermeneutic circle’ within [End Page 328] which, according to Heidegger and Gadamer, thought always moves,” namely, “a structure of reciprocal recognition... [as... (shrink)

Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit has a long-standing reputation as one of the key books in the history of Western philosophy, but many are unsure just what it is about. Even the words in the title are disputed: What sense of "phenomenology" is being used? Is Geist to be rendered "spirit" or "mind"? What does this have to do with Hegel's original title, "The Science of the Experience of Consciousness"? To add to the perplexity, Hegel developed his own technical vocabulary in (...) writing the book, but the jargon he created never caught on and thus there is no common usage for it. As a consequence, both the beginner and the Hegel specialist must make key decisions about to understand many basic terms in the book. This Oxford Guide walks the reader through this canonical text paragraph-by-paragraph using accessible and approachable language, such that both students and instructors--whether they come from philosophy, political theory, literature, or history backgrounds--will benefit. (shrink)

Philosopher Terry Pinkard revisits Sartre’s later work, illuminating a pivotal stance in Sartre’s understanding of freedom and communal action. Jean-Paul Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason, released to great fanfare in 1960, has since then receded in philosophical visibility. As Sartre’s reputation is now making a comeback, it is time for a reappraisal of his later work. In Practice, Power, and Forms of Life, philosopher Terry Pinkard interprets Sartre’s late work as a fundamental reworking of his earlier ideas, especially in terms (...) of his understanding of the possibility of communal action as genuinely free, which the French philosopher had previously argued was impossible. Pinkard reveals how Sartre was drawn back to Hegel, a move that was itself incited by Sartre’s newfound interest in Marxism. Pinkard argues that Sartre constructed a novel position on freedom that has yet to be adequately taken up and analyzed within philosophy and political theory. Through Sartre, Pinkard advances an argument that contributes to the history of philosophy as well as key debates on action and freedom. (shrink)