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Stanford University
GERGEN 120N: Philosophy After the Revolution (Hegel's Phenomenology) - Syllabus Winter 2004 |
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HTML Document | 3 Nov 2003 |
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Philosophy after the Revolution (Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit)
Prof. Arthur Strum German Studies 120N TTh 12-1:05 www.stanford.edu/class/gergen120n Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit is one of the most ambitious, profound and rich books ever written – an attempt to introduce the reader into truth via a comprehensive interpretation of the expression of this truth in all of human history: politics, art, psychology, individual development, human relations, etc. The Phenomenology thus touches on many different topics:Antigone, Kant’s categorical imperative, the beginings of human history, everyday consciousness of the world of objects, Napoleon, etc. But Hegel’s Phenomenology doesn’t just touch on them – it claims to unfold their ultimate meaning in the journey of human history from natural to cultural existence. Hegel writes this book at the beginning of the 19th century, in the wake of the French Revolution. The Revolution was supposed to create one people, under one constitution, under egalitarian conditions of life. But the postrevolutionary world Hegel faces is rent by divisions: between rich and poor, between the knowledgeable and the ignorant, between the powerful and the weak. The Phenomenology is supposed to provide an account of the world which heals these divisions. This course is an experiment in reading a philosophical book, and testing its truth against our own experience. G. W. F’s Phenomenology of Spirit is a very difficult book, written in a language which bears almost no relation to the one we use everyday. At the same time, Hegel insists that no special antecedent knowledge is necessary in order to understand it, and that truth must establish itself before consciousness: we have the right to measure its truth against what we ourselves can grasp. But this means that we must also be willing to open ourselves to its truth –must be willing to abandon all of our most dearly-held beliefs and opinions if they are proved false in the course of the philosophical journey we take with Hegel as a guide. (open to all undergraduates; frosh preference) “The life of Spirit is not the life that shrinks from death and keeps itself untouched by devastation, but rather the life that endures it and maintains itself in it. It wins its truth only when, in utter dismemberment, it finds itself. It is this power, not as something positive, which closes its eyes to the negative, as when we say of something that it is nothing or is false, and then, having done with it, turn away and pass on to something else; on the contrary, Spirit is this power only by looking the negative in the face, and tarrying with it.” (Hegel, PG, Miller 19) Course texts Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, translated by A. V. Miller (Oxford) Lauer, A Reading of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit Reserve Inwood, A Hegel Dictionary Jon Stewart, editor, The Phenomenology of Spirit Reader: Critical and Interpretive Essays Michael N. Forster, Hegel's Idea of a Phenomenology of Spirit . H. S. Harris, Hegel's Ladder I: The Pilgrimage of Reason and Hegel's Ladder II: The Odyssey of Spirit . Jean Hyppolite, Genesis and Structure of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit , translated by Samuel Cherniak and John Heckman. Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit , translated James H. Nichols, Jr. Stanley Rosen, G.W.F. Hegel: An Introduction to the Science of Wisdom . Robert C. Solomon, In the Spirit of Hegel: A Study of G.W.F. Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit . Some links: Hegel Society of America: http://www.hegel.org/links.html Hegel mailing lists: http://www.hegel.org/heglist.html http://www.gwfhegel.org/ side to side presentation of German and English versions of the Phenomenology: http://www.gwfhegel.org/PhenText/compare.html http://www.hegel.net/phenomenology/ Readings/Presentations Preface and Introduction: (excerpts) paragraphs 1-3; 7-18; 20; 23; 78-79; 89. presention: arthur strum A. Consciousness: I. Sense-Certainty: or the ‘this’ and ‘meaning’ presentation: __________________________________ II. Perception: or the Thing and Deception presentation: __________________________________ III. Force and Understanding: Appearance and the Supersensible World presentation: __________________________________ B. Self-Consciousness IV. The Truth of Self-Certainty presentation: __________________________________ A. Independence and dependence of self-consciousness: Lordship and Bondage presentation: __________________________________ B. Freedom of self-consciousness: Stoicism, Scepticism, and the Unhappy Consciousness presentation: __________________________________ |
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