Abstract
The Introduction to the Phenomenology sets out, with a clarity and accessibility that are remarkable for Hegel, a program for the book, at least as Hegel conceived it when he wrote the Introduction. In this paper I give a detailed reading of the main points in the Introduction. The Introduction provides an answer to the question what the Phenomenology is supposed to teach us. The plan Hegel explains for the work is to describe a progressive series of self-understandings for a human consciousness, starting out in a state of philosophical naiveté about the power of knowing understood in a way that characterizes it as human. The way in which one stage is succeeded by the next will be determined, in a way that Hegel explains, so that once the series has begun, its progressive trajectory will be inexorable. His idea is that the progression will culminate in a complete understanding of what is distinctive about human mindedness.
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Notes
- 1.
Since this makes it possible to find passages in any text, I cite by the paragraph numbers in Miller’s translation: A. V. Miller, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). Translations are my own.
- 2.
See Brandom’s Erkennen und Repräsentieren. Eine Lektüre (zwischen den Zeilen) von Hegels Einleitung in die Phänomenologie, in Brandom (2015, 123–221). This material is projected to figure in Brandom’s forthcoming book on the Phenomenology.
- 3.
In the Encyclopedia (§ 10), he offers an apt image for what is in effect the natural supposition: it is like the idea that someone who wants to learn to swim should investigate what swimming is before getting into the water.
- 4.
Pippin (2011, 21–34).
- 5.
Strawson (1959, Ch. 2).
References
Brandom, Robert. 2015. Widererinnerter Idealismus. Berlin: Suhrkamp.
Pippin, Robert. 2011. Hegel on Self-Consciousness: Desire and Death in the Phenomenology of Spirit. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Strawson, Peter F. 1959. Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics. London: Methuen.
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McDowell, J. (2018). What Is the Phenomenology About?. In: Sanguinetti, F., Abath, A. (eds) McDowell and Hegel. Studies in German Idealism, vol 20. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98896-2_2
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