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)