Hegel

Rating:
Summary: Logical Concupiscence and the Flight from the Unconscious
Review: Hegel's philosophical perspective digs deeply into the rhythms of the real, expressing an omnivorous quality that is remarkable for both its sheer beauty and its conceptual power. Whether or not he solved the knotty issues bequeathed to him by Kant concerning the structure and limits of consciousness (I go back and forth on this issue), he certainly probed into the ways in which self-consciousness shapes itself as entwined with history and the self-alienated realms of nature. For me, he is the model of what philosophical query should be. Such ramified query must be couragous, unrelenting, bound by what gives itself over to self-consciousness to live-through, and sensitive to the generic powers of language. In Terry Pinkard's biography we find such a Hegel. He is presented within the context of an unrelenting series of negations that push against his inner philosophical drive. We learn a great deal about how he sharpened his political awareness, both in terms of the French Revolution and its aftermath, and in terms of the always shifting realm of academic politics (as embedded in German State politics). What I especially appreciate is Pinkard's presentation of how Hegel came to know of his Stuttgart provincialism and how he overcame much of it--in particular, his Lutheran distaste for Catholicism. Pinkard pushes us past the normal left-wing vs. right-wing readings of the late Hegel by showing that both aspects were fully operative, perhaps for different reasons, and that his views on Christianity were not career enhancing expressions of Prussian sanctioned Lutheran conservativism. For example, Hegel rejected any hint of biblical literalism, an immortal personal soul, a literal reading of creation, and the notion of a personal god "begetting a son"(p. 589). It is clear from Pinkard's reading that Hegel had a strong, if feared and abjected by him, impulse toward creating a world religion (much like his despised colleague Schleiermacher). In short, Hegel's pro-Napoleonic and emancipatory tendencies remained strong until the end. A psychoanalyst would ask: what drove Hegel toward his pan-logicism? My sense is that he deeply feared madness (consider the dementias of Holderlin and Hegel's sister) and that he sensed the possibility of disintegration within himself (as argued by Alan Olson in his "Hegel and the Spirit," Princeton 1992). His materialized and thickened Wissenschaft of logic provided him with a bulwark against the unconscious (as it was presented by his friend/enemy Schelling in 1808 with his concept of das Regellose--the unruly ground). He likewise rejected Egyptian art because it merely evoked the "measureless," unlike the art of the classical Greeks that found measure (and hence, safety). Yet his desire to devour the world, perhaps motivated by his flight from the unruly unconscious, was the root source for his unsurpassed series of philosophical productions. Pinkard has a muted sense of this divide in Hegel and shows it operating, I think, in Hegel's ambivalence about the Romantic flights of some of his friends. Pinkard has done something quite impressive with this work and many of us now have a much more compelling picture of the fragmented wholeness of Hegel. We see a man on the margins who produced great works which were initially surrounded by silence. We see a justly ambitiuous thinker who had to push against the wall of mediocrity around him to gain contact with the powers who could free him from lowly high school teaching and newspaper work so that he could enter the world of the university. And we see a man who, unlike Kant, reveled in the delights of physical embodiment and the material conditions of the world. Above all, Hegel's work shines through as his profound whole-making answer to his and the world's fragmentary features. Unlike most, his flight from the unruly ground bore positive fruits, even if he left much of the unconscious of nature and the self to be explored by others.

Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Biography
Review: I was afraid that this biography would be as oscure as the infamous oscure prose of the Hegel himself. What a relief!. As a layman that likes to delve into philosophy I found this book extremely useful not only in understanding Hegel the man, but also in understanding his ideas. Pinkard succeeds in putting Hegel in the context of the turbulent political times and in the exciting cultural milieu prevalent in "Germany" at the time when philosophy flourished like it hadn't for centuries.

Hegel's single minded persuit of his career and of his own "Bildung" are described in highly readable fashion. As a bonus we also get a glimpse at the petty infighting among the pleiad of philosophical "stars" of the time. Probably at no other moment in human history since the glory days of Greece so many great thinkers where alive and interacting. The cast of characters includes Kant, Fichte, Schlegel, Schilling, Jacobi, Hamman, Holderlin and Goethe himself, with a special guest appearances by Schopenhauer and Marx.

If you are interested in the history of thought, you can't miss this book.

Rating:
Summary: brilliant
Review: It would be difficult to justify a biography of a philosophy as being essential: if you want to understand a philosopher you should read their works instead. But Pinkard manages to wage an astonishingly battle on two fronts: first, elaborating on his philosophical development with a view towards prominent influences and second, foisting off common misconceptions about Hegel.

So, for part one. Hegel is difficult. It was, as I learned, his distinguishing mark in early years: "more obscure than Fichte!" was something like a slogan. Pinkard does a marvellous job of showing the diversity and complexity of Hegel's experience (the chapters on his university friendship with Schelling and Hoderlin are especially absorbing) and pulling out some of the more unexpected sources of his thought. (Adam Smith and Gibbon and the New Testament, for example.) Ever since Dilthey more attention has been payed to Hegel's early work and for good reason. Moving from this account Pinkard gives excellent insights into the genesis and exposition of Hegel's notoriously difficult "system." Having been absoloutely dumbfounded by Hegel in the past I think this book is the best possible introduction to what Hegel is up to in his Philosophical work. Pinkard in addition to being keen has some serious philosophical chops so he brings out some aspects of Hegel that get overlooked.

As for the second front Pinkard does a great job of countering some of the more cartoonish and absurd pictures of Hegel: the pioneer of German nationalism, the doddering obscurantist, the proto-fascist conservative. Pinkard does a good job showing how the most common images of hegel are thorough characters whose longevity has more to do with the fact that few people actually read or know much about Hegel. I particularly liked the way Hegel's complex political commitments were mapped out and how the more intimate aspects of Hegel the person (his addiction to whist, his love of coffee) were brought out.

I am given to understand that Hegel scholarship is experiencing something of a revival these days, and by my account Pinkard's biography should be at the forefront of any movement. He deserves a great deal of credit for producing a skillfull, well-written and insightful work on an extremely difficult thinker.

Rating:
Summary: brilliant
Review: It would be difficult to justify a biography of a philosophy as being essential: if you want to understand a philosopher you should read their works instead. But Pinkard manages to wage an astonishingly battle on two fronts: first, elaborating on his philosophical development with a view towards prominent influences and second, foisting off common misconceptions about Hegel.

So, for part one. Hegel is difficult. It was, as I learned, his distinguishing mark in early years: "more obscure than Fichte!" was something like a slogan. Pinkard does a marvellous job of showing the diversity and complexity of Hegel's experience (the chapters on his university friendship with Schelling and Hoderlin are especially absorbing) and pulling out some of the more unexpected sources of his thought. (Adam Smith and Gibbon and the New Testament, for example.) Ever since Dilthey more attention has been payed to Hegel's early work and for good reason. Moving from this account Pinkard gives excellent insights into the genesis and exposition of Hegel's notoriously difficult "system." Having been absoloutely dumbfounded by Hegel in the past I think this book is the best possible introduction to what Hegel is up to in his Philosophical work. Pinkard in addition to being keen has some serious philosophical chops so he brings out some aspects of Hegel that get overlooked.

As for the second front Pinkard does a great job of countering some of the more cartoonish and absurd pictures of Hegel: the pioneer of German nationalism, the doddering obscurantist, the proto-fascist conservative. Pinkard does a good job showing how the most common images of hegel are thorough characters whose longevity has more to do with the fact that few people actually read or know much about Hegel. I particularly liked the way Hegel's complex political commitments were mapped out and how the more intimate aspects of Hegel the person (his addiction to whist, his love of coffee) were brought out.

I am given to understand that Hegel scholarship is experiencing something of a revival these days, and by my account Pinkard's biography should be at the forefront of any movement. He deserves a great deal of credit for producing a skillfull, well-written and insightful work on an extremely difficult thinker.

Rating:
Summary: History and Phenomenology
Review: One might hope to master philosophy, yet find it one's master. One could aspire to avoid this and find resolution in science, yet find metaphysics again in this science. These issues find their historical moment of truth in the passage of German Philosophy as it whitewaters in grand style in the generation from Kant to Hegel. Pinkard's fascinating history of the great philosopher of history gives this drama a quiet but exciting chronicle in the career of Hegel, beginning in the wake of the great critiques of Kant, and leading through an extraordinary generation that saw the French Revolution, Napoleon, the Restoration, and finally the July Revolution. We see the genesis of Hegel's Phenomenology of the Spirit in the midst of the turbulence of Napoleonic era, thence the perilous passage through the era of reaction, dangerous to any philosopher. Although Hegel's reputation seesaws in the confusions of later history still mastered by philosophy, the cogency of his thinking to our time is direct, recorded in such lowkey and with the false appearance of reaction in his later works such as the Philosophy of Right which speaks directly to all the issues of liberal societies, communist societies, and the explosion of the new market world that came into being at this time. Just at the end of this extraordinary tale we see the impetus of revolution start again, one whose tide has barely ceased in our own post-revolutionary era, with much of Hegel's perspective ironically apt, just before its turnabout in the Left Hegelian generation to come, that spawned the Hegelian strains of Marx. We hear the drumbeat already in the philosopher's direct reflections of a lifetime on the legacy of the French Revolution, and its contradictions, that so beset the modern world, at risk of being frozen in the themes of this era of great beginnings, to which Hegel was such a fair witness. This nickelodeon is much better than Hollywood.

Rating:
Summary: A great success!
Review: Terry Pinkard, who has already made notable contributions to Hegel scholarship, goes a step further by providing us with a truly outstanding biography of one of the 19th century's greatest thinkers. Pinkard's prodigious research enables him to offer a richly detailed portrait not only of Hegel himself, but of his wife, his family (including his illegitmate son, whom he later formally adopted), his friends, colleagues, and enemies. For the first time, readers will be able fully to understand the enormously complex social and political--not to mention philosophical!--context in which Hegel's thought developed. In addition to all this, Pinkard provies brief but penetrating discussions of all of Hegel's works. Although the book is long, I found myself continually drawn back to it, so fascinated was I by what I was learning about Hegel's life and times. My appreciation for Hegel's thought, which is at times notoriously obscure in part because of Hegel's dense prose style, has been significantly enhanced because of what this book taught me about Hegel's effort to reconcile the particularist demand of German "home towns" with the universalizing impulse of Enlightenment modernity. I can't recommend this book highly enough.

Rating:
Summary: Hegel the human being
Review: The idea of an 800-page book as an easy introduction to Hegel sounds like a morbid joke guaranteed to send any student running for Cliff's Notes or a class change. Pinkard, who teaches at an Eastern university, has produced a very readable and meticulously researched account of Hegel's life, plus 4 chapters of a very basic explanation of his philosophy - if this isn't quite "Hegel for Dummies", it's as close as you're going to get. In contrast to the complex and obscure Hegel (even Germans have trouble with Hegel), Pinkard's own writing is clear, straightforward, free from jargon, and well-organized. Hegel as a person has always tended to disappear into the great systems of his own intellect. Pinkard successfully retrieves the man behind the thought, giving us a much more human Hegel, who enjoyed playing whist, dressing up for costume balls, and eating Christmas cookies. His life is covered in chronological fashion, with considerable attention paid to the earlier years. Particularly interesting and important, however, are the last ten years of his life in Berlin. How did it happen that Hegel, who was born in Stuttgart, enthusiastically supported Napoleon, drank a toast every year on the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, and who had never even visited Berlin until he was offered a job there, became in that short time a public figure and came to be viewed (as he often still is) as the leading apologist for - or theorist of - the Prussian state? Pinkard, whose previous books include a biography of Varnhagen Von Ense, is thoroughly at home in the time period, and offers us an striking view of the issues and infighting.

Those who have always wanted to know more about Hegel, but didn't know where to begin, and those who are studying him for a required course, should start with this book; and even old radicals who cut their eyeteeth on dialectic should find a few fresh insights.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant!
Review: While you are unlikely to approach Hegel aa a novice, all the same, if you were and did, this is a remarkably well written, clear presentation of Hegel's life and thinking, as well as a thoughtful setting of the philosophical questions of his time. It was a time when thinking still mattered to the spirit of a people. Pinkard has written a great account of a life of a man who sought his own voice after so many disappointments. His friendship with Holderlin, his relationship with his illegitamate son, his rancourous rapport with his nephew, the slights suffered working for philistines or in the shadows of lesser minds were the sand in his soul that ground a pearl. Pinkard details them all with a truly 21st Century American voice, and in so doing makes the drama of Hegel's life present to today.
Pinkard is another great Georgetown Hegelian in the line of Wilfrid Desan, and in so doing weaves the dynamics of Hegel's life into the dialectics of his thinking. Pinkard presents a terrifically concise and to the point analysis of the immediate momentums initiated by Kant, Fichte, Schelling and others, casts them in as true a light as possible, and so opens an entire tradition, well regarded for its complexity for consideration by those trained in this tradition as well as by those wondering what all the fuss was about. Hegel was not an Ivory Tower elitist. His life formed the ground of his philosophy, and while he was also not an everyman, he is one in whom thinking took hold at any early age and kept calling him out into its light. Hegel meant that his writings have an impact. He was not interested in building flights of fancy that had no repercussions for culture, politics, spirituality. He distanced himself from traditions that would have ensnared him, compromised his boldness, and left him in a tradition, instead of clearing new ground.
Pinkard clearly shows how and why you have to deal with Hegel in Western Philosophy, just as much as you have to confront Plato, Aristotle, Kant. Nothing was the same after Hegel. History, psychoanalysis, culture, politics were all forever changed. His was an original voice, and the call, once heard, altered everything.
I keep returning to the point that this is a great read. And it is! So novice or enthusiast, you'll find this a book you'll return to often. This should be mandatory reading for anyone pursuing a higher education. The lessons of the life as well as the philosophy produced deserve thoughtful consideration.