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Hegel and the Myth of the Accessibility of the Lectures on the Philosophy of History
Adam Myers
______________________________
Craig Q. Hinkson, Ph.D.
Chairman of Thesis
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Thomas A. Provenzola, Ph.D.
Committee Member
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Michael A. Babcock, Ph.D.
Committee Member
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Brenda Ayres, Ph.D.
Assistant Honors Director
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Date
14
15
20
25
29
31
Concluding Remarks
38
13. This is probably one reason why the LPH is such a popular entre to Hegel.
14. For instance, see G. D. O'Brien, Hegel on Reason and History (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1975), 6; W. H. Walsh, "Principle and Prejudice in Hegel's Philosophy of History" in Z. A.
Pelczynski (ed.) Hegel's Political Philosophy: Problems and Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1971), 181; McCarney, 78; B. T. Wilkins, Hegel's Philosophy of History (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1974), 18. C. J. Friedrich, The Philosophy of Hegel (New York: Random House,
1954), 2, seems to indicate that a reliance on Sibree is unwise, but then he claims in the preface to Sibree,
iv, that neglecting the new insights offered by Hoffmeister's translation will not impair a student's ability to
catch Hegel's vision.
16. One may object that I have unnecessarily belabored my point and that only by extensive
exegesis can it be satisfactorily demonstrated. Unfortunately, such a demonstration would increase the bulk
of this thesis beyond acceptable bounds. Nonetheless, I think, the deficiencies of the textual tradition of the
LPH are such that, even without such exegetical support, the claim on trial fails to meet my criterion of
authenticity. On a separate but not unrelated note, see John McCumber, "On Teaching Hegel: Problems and
Possibilities" in T. Kasachkoff (ed.) Teaching Philosophy (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), 171.
He has opined that the greatest obstacle English-speaking students face in accessing Hegel is the fact that
Hegel wrote in German, not English. Still worse, Hegel's German has been characterized as idiosyncratic,
neologistic, and frequently given to wordplay and abstruse technicalities, potentially making the LPH,
which is a mixture of the notes of both Hegel and his students', an even more remote work. So, although I
hardly have the space in this paper to prove it exegetically, I am inclined to believe all the more that the
LPH, maybe even all of Hegel's works, is exponentially more difficult to access than the others.
17. Wilkins, 13. Unfortunately, as points out, the Logic suffers from its own interpretive
difficulties, even in relevant passages that Wilkins uses in interpreting the LPH (91). This, of course, only
serves to render more difficult the task of determining Hegel's meaning in the LPH.
18. Ibid., 13.
19. Ibid., 1926. The correction of this error, as Wilkins notes, is commonplace today; in Hegel's
day, it was not. That Hegel is often construed as violating this very rule of which he was apparently very
aware is ironic. If he did violate this rule, he either was, in fact, aware of the error but committed it anyway
(for some ulterior purpose, perhaps) or so lacked the ability to self-criticize that he committed the error
unconsciously. I am inclined toward neither option.
20. Ibid., 28. The importance of Hegel's movement from original history to philosophical history
has also been recognized by Duncan Forbes, "Introduction" in Nisbet, xvii, who argues that the movement
is, in fact, a dialectical one.
21. Wilkins, 4748.
22. Ibid., 7273. Correspondent to teleology and mechanism may be Hegel's concepts of Spirit
and Nature.
23. Ibid., 8788.
24. Ibid., 9092.
25. Ibid., 91.
26. Ibid., 9192.
27. Ibid., 121. It is worthwhile to mention here, like Wilkins, that the dialectic of selfconsciousness is relevantly analogous, too. That is, a man qua subject opposes, or estranges, himself, thus
creating himself as an object in the natural order, and so, subject to mechanism, only to reconcile himself to
himself with a more sophisticated self-awareness. As Wilkins, 132133, notes in passing, Hegel is likely
displaying this process in the world-historical survey of the LPH.
28. Ibid., 134.
29. Ibid., 151152. Wilkins notes that Hegel himself is quick to qualify that what is really possible
cannot be otherwise in particular conditions and circumstances. Per Wilkins, Hegel's claim amounts to
this: that, for a particular phenomenon to occur, there are particular necessary and sufficient conditions
which need to be in place such that, when they are, it necessarily follows that the phenomenon occurs
(155156).
30. Ibid., 157158.
31. Ibid., 186190. Cf. also Robert Anchor, review of Hegel's Philosophy of History, by B. T.
Wilkins, American Historical Review (June 1975): 611612.
32. H. S. Harris, review of Hegel's Philosophy of History, by B. T. Wilkins, Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research (March 1975): 422. Walsh holds a view of the relation between Hegel's
varieties of history with which Wilkins takes issue; Marcuse, as Wilkins sees it, misunderstands Hegel's
'cunning of reason.'
33. As if Hegel himself were not routinely impenetrable in thought, see Patrick Gardiner, review
of Hegel's Philosophy of History, B. T. Wilkins, History and Theory (February 1976): 5455. He says that
Wilkins' treatment is sometimes equally impenetrable: Wilkins presents at once "a fair-minded and
objective account of some of the things Hegel actually wrote about history . . . [H]owever . . . he is less
successful when he goes on to try to illuminate Hegel's picture of historical development by relating it to
the general doctrines . . . propounded in the Science of Logic and elsewhere."
34. Michael P. Zuckert, "Future of Hegel's Philosophy of History," review of Hegel's Philosophy
of History, by B. T. Wilkins, Review of Politics (July 1977): 410. He also criticizes Wilkins for relying too
heavily on English translations of Hegel's work, specifically on Hartman's translation of Karl Hegel's
edition. See also John P. Burke, review of Hegel's Philosophy of History, by B. T. Wilkins, The
Philosophical Review (April 1976): 261264. Whether or not this greatly affects Wilkins' work is probably
irrelevant.
35. See O'Brien, 3, 89. For more on Kojve, see below.
36. See also Zuckert, 409.
40. While the organization of Hoffmeister's text of the Introduction to the LPH manifests, however
vaguely, the four causes, O'Brien cites Kojve as the explicator from whom he borrows both the simile of
history as a created edifice and the organizing principle of the four causes specifically in treating Hegel.
O'Brien's contention is, of course, that Hegel was aware that he was organizing his 1830 lectures in this
Aristotelian fashion (98100).
41. O'Brien, 101102.
42. Ibid., 164.
43. Says Gardiner: "[O'Brien] makes a commendable effort to unravel sympathetically the
complexities of the Hegelian texts" (56).
44. Harris says that O'Brien's analysis "worked . . . out magnificently," "correctly," and
"convincingly" (237).
45. See Alexandre Kojve, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, 2d ed., trans. J. H. Nichols, Jr.
(Paris: Gallimard, 1947; reprint, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980).
46. Robert Pippin, Idealism as Modernism: Hegelian Variations (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997), 21.
47. Michael Forster, Hegel's Idea of a Phenomenology of Spirit (Chicago: University of Chicago,
1998), 248249. See also Tom Rockmore, Before & After Hegel (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1993),
3. He echoes that Kojve "errs in taking a part [of Hegel] for the whole." McCarney points out the
incompleteness of Kojve's interpretation of Hegel's philosophy of history, calling it "a kind of heroic
generalisation" of Hegel's master-slave dialectic, and so concludes that "whatever brilliant insights or
transforming perspectives [Kojve] may provide, they are unlikely to come with a panoply of textual
references" (92).
48. See P. T. Grier, "The End of History and the Return of History" in J. Stewart (ed.) Hegel
Myths and Legends (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1996), passim. One may recall the similarity
between a new interpretation of Hegel based on recently found, early writings, and that new interpretation
of Marx offered by certain Marxist historians who made much of newly found early writings of Marx.
49. If the reader is interested to give nuance to the relationship between O'Brien, Kojve, Koyr, et
al., consult the following works: Grier; Kojve, 4370; and O'Brien, 3, 89, 53, 57, 87, 9091, 9899, 105,
122. For a more thorough assessment of O'Brien's debt to Kojve, see Zuckert, 410; Gardiner, 5556;
Harris, 428; Stanley Rosen, review of Hegel on Reason and History, by G. D. O'Brien, The American
Political Science Review (September 1977), 1149); and Georg G. Iggers, review of Hegel on Reason and
History, by G. D. O'Brien, American Historical Review (October 1976): 844.
50. Because this work is relatively recent, there has been little scholarly, peer-reviewed criticism
of it. See Frederick Beiser, Hegel (New York: Routledge, 2005), 336. There he briefly mentions the work,
among other books, as a good starting point for those interested in Hegel's philosophy of history.
51. McCarney, 6. He aims also to justify these presuppositions. Whether or not he is successful in
doing so is an inquiry for another paper.
52. Ibid., 19.
58. Ibid., 127129. The relevant criticisms of Kant are contained in the Encyclopaedia.
59. Ibid., 133. Here McCarney goes to the Logic.
60. Ibid., 159. 'Ethical life' translates Hegel's term Sittlichkeit.
61. Thus Hegel says of the LPH: "I have no text book on which to base my lectures; but in my
'Elements of the Philosophy of Right' . . . I have already defined the concept of world history proper, as
well as the principles or periods into which its study can be divided. This work should enable you to gain at
least an abstract knowledge of those moments of world history with which we shall be concerned here"
(Nisbet, 11). Cf. also McCarney, 6.
62. McCarney, 26.
63. Ibid., 3948, passim. Says McCarney: "No progress can be made in explicating that
philosophy [of history] without declaring, and attempting to vindicate, where one stands on the issues at
stake in [the debate between immanent and transcendent readings]. This is a nettle that simply has to be
grasped" (40). If he is right, this debate captures in a snapshot the very delicate nature of Hegel
interpretation, particularly as regards his LPH.
64. Whether Hegel meant "God" in any traditional sense of the term is debated heavily. See
McCarney, 40.
65. See ibid., 124126.
70. Beiser, Hegel's Historicism, 284. Another example from Beiser's article: in discerning what
type of teleology Hegel is dealing with in the LPH, Beiser warns that "Hegel's language here can be
extremely misleading. If, however, we consider Hegel's remarks in the light of his other works, it becomes
clear that the kind of teleology in question is not that commonplace in the eighteenth century" (288289,
emphasis mine). If one had been aware of Hegel's commitment to the Aristotelian dictum that universals
only exist in re, made explicit in Hegel's Encyclopaedia, then Hegel's musings on the teleology of Geist in
the LPH would not have been as confusing.
71. Hegel: A Reinterpretation (Garden City: Doubleday, 1966), 270. Kaufmann also emphasizes
Hegel's lectures on the history of philosophy as a high point of Hegel's philosophy in general (275).
72. Hegel: A Re-examination (London: Allen & Unwin, 1958), 328333. Findlay says
specifically: "This Philosophy of History is no independent part of the system, which can be studied in
isolation" (238).
73. "Introduction" in Nisbet, viixxxv. Of the LPH, Forbes says: "it is liable to be used as a
substitute rather than an introduction [to Hegel], especially as a substitute for the Philosophy of Right, and
one suspects that much of the misunderstanding and misrepresentation of Hegel has been due to this" (vii).
74. Introduction to Hegel's Philosophy of History (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996).
His use of the Phenomenology can be seen throughout the work. For examples of his use of the Philosophy
of Right, cf. 5670, passim; and of Hegel's youthful writings, cf. 2025.
75. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 2005). Says Lewis: "It is essential to distinguish
Hegel's claim about the rationality of the ways of life of particular nationsa claim we might rejectfrom
his analysis of individuals' relations to these ways of life" (146).
76. Frederick Beiser, "Introduction: Hegel and the Problem of Metaphysics" in F. C. Beiser (ed.)
The Cambridge Companion to Hegel (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 2. He names
Dilthey, Haym, Haering, Rosenkranz, and Kroner among such early interpreters.
77. See Charles Taylor, Hegel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 538. These quotes
are paraphrased from Sibree, 9, 26.
78. Benedetto Croce, What is Living and What is Dead of the Philosophy of Hegel (London:
Macmillan Press, 1985), 203.
79. Karl Popper, "What is Dialectic?" Mind (October 1940): 426.
90. Terry Pinkard, Hegel's Phenomenology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 349.
In fact, Pinkard says that much of what he put forth in Hegel's Dialectic he has retooled, particularly with
reference to Hegel's historical context.
91. Beiser, "Introduction," 2. Cf. also Beiser, Hegel, 5556. Beiser considers Pippin's work to be
neo-Kantian. For Beiser's more thorough critique of these 'deflationary' readings, as he calls them, see
Frederick Beiser, "Hegel, A Non-metaphysician? A Polemic," review of Hegel Reconsidered: Beyond
Metaphysics and the Authoritarian State, by H. T. Englehardt, Jr. and T. Pinkard (eds.), Bulletin of the
Hegel Society of Great Britain (Autumn/Winter 1995): 113.
92. Beiser, "Introduction," 7.
Concluding Remarks
In this paper, I set out to evaluate the claim that the LPH is Hegel's most
accessible work. My thesis is that the claim is in need of serious qualifying. I argued this,
first, by setting up three basic criteria of accessibilityauthenticity, self-containedness,
and navigabilityand, second, by showing how the LPH fails in some measure to meet
each of those criteria. I did this mainly by considering the text of the LPH itself, the
secondary literature on the LPH, and the wider corpus of Hegel scholarship.
With respect to the text itself, we discovered that its long and variegated career,
both in its German and English editions, is reason enough to doubt how representative of
Hegel's thought the LPH truly is. Though Hegel's lectures include a relatively abstract
Introduction and a lengthy world-historical survey from ancient China to modern
Christendom, often translators would only translate the Introduction. Moreover,
subsequent editions of the Introduction took an increasingly text-critical approach that
rendered the earlier, but still widely-circulated, editions of the Introduction inferior, while
also exposing their organizational and interpretive flaws.
that they had, in one way or another, abandoned Kant's critical philosophy and returned to pre-critical,
dogmatic speculative metaphysics. It is this reductionistic, withered view of German idealism, common in
Anglo-American circles, that has been redressed by the burgeoning, recent literature in English. One such
example is Frederick Beiser's The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1987), in which he retraces the reception of Kant's philosophy up to Fichte, a
grasp of which sets in relief the rising tensions of the Enlightenment and provides a framework in which
the German idealists can be seen, not as reverting to pre-critical dogmatism, but as responding to those
tensions. The advent of such seminal scholarship leads one to wonder how clear the picture of Hegel has
been that English-speaking students have been looking at. If just Beiser's account shows anything of the
clarity and depth that can be had as a result of situating Hegel in his historical context, then a reexamination of how best to navigate Hegel's philosophy may be warranted; and if so, then we have a prima
facie reason to believe that the claim on trial needs qualifying. For other examples of the recent English
language literature, consult Karl Ameriks, ed., The Cambridge Companion to German Idealism (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Frederick Beiser, German Idealism: The Struggle Against
Subjectivism, 17811801 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002); Deiter Henrich, Between Kant and
Hegel: Lectures on German Idealism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003); and Terry Pinkard,
German Philosophy, 17601860: The Legacy of Idealism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
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