An Introduction to Hegel: Freedom, Truth and History

✍ Scribed by Stephen Houlgate

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2005
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 314
• Edition: 2
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This classic introduction to one of the most influential modern thinkers, G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) has been made even more comprehensive through the addition of four new chapters.

• New edition of a classic introduction to Hegel.
• Enables students to engage with many aspects of Hegel's philosophy.
• Covers the whole range of Hegel's mature thought.
• Relates Hegel's ideas to other thinkers, such as Luther, Descartes and Kant.
• Offers a distinctive and challenging interpretation of Hegel's work.

The philosopher G.W.F. Hegel (1771-1831) is now recognized to be one of the most important modern thinkers. His influence is to be found in Marx's conception of historical dialectic, Kierkegaard's existentialism, Dewey's pragmatism and Gadamer's hermeneutics and Derrida's deconstruction. Until now, however, it has been difficult for the non-specialist to find a reasonably comprehensive introduction to this important, yet at times almost impenetrable philosopher. With this book Stephen Houlgate offers just such an introduction. His book is written in an accessible style and covers a range of topics: the philosophy of history, logic and phenomenology, political philosophy, aesthetics and the philosophy of religion. In the course of the book the author relates Hegel's ideas to those of many other thinkers, including Luther, Descartes, Kant and Thomas Kuhn.

Stephen Houlgate is a professor of philosophy at the University of Warwick. His books include The Opening of Hegel's Logic: From Being to Infinity (Purdue, 2006), and An Introduction to Hegel: Freedom, Truth and History (Blackwell, 2005).

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgements to the Second Edition
Acknowledgements to the First Edition
List of Abbreviations
Chronology
Introduction
1. History and truth
The historicity of thought and civilisation
Comparing civilizations
Self-consciousness and historical progress
History, truth and relativism
History and the Absolute
2. Thinking without presuppositions
Thought and freedom
From indeterminate to determinate thought
The method of dialectical thinking
Logic and ontology
Logic, science and history
3. Phenomenology and natural consciousness
Logic and phenomenology
The method of phenomenology
Logic in phenomenology
The role of the "we"
Sense-certainty
From certainty to truth
Absolute knowing: the standpoint of philosophy
4. The path to absolute knowing
Self-consciousness and the master/slave relation
Stoicism
The unhappy consciousness and reason
Spirit and absolute freedom
Moral spirit
Conscience
The beautiful soul, evil and forgiveness
Religion
Absolute knowing
Phenomenology and philosophy
5. Reason in nature
From logic to nature
Nature: the Idea as the "negative of itself"
Reason and nature's "system of stages"
Contingency and the limits of philosophy
Philosophy and natural science
6. Space, gravity and the freeing of matter
Space and its dimensions
Time
Place and motion
Matter and its gravity
Mass, inertia and weight
Falling bodies and Galileo's law
The solar system
Kepler's laws of planetary motion
Hegel and Newton
Hegel and relativity
7. Life and embodied spirit
The "ideal" structure of life
Chemistry and life
Plants and animals
Sensation in animals
Life, death and spirit
Evolution
Embodied spirit
Intelligence and its signs
8. Freedom, rights and civility
From Hegel to Hitler?
The limits of choice
Rights, property and slavery
The problem with being moral
Freedom at home in the world
Civil society and poverty
Freedom and the state
9. Art and human wholeness
Art, religion and philosophy
The function of art
Beauty and ideal character
The historicity of art
Symbolic and Classical art
Christianity, aesthetic autonomy and the "death" of art
10. Philosophy and Christian faith
Philosophy, reason and Geist
Philosophy and religious representation
God as reason and love
Faith and worship
Death, freedom and new life
Faith, interpretation and philosophy
Philosophy and faith in history
Notes