/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.18204200]

How do I get into Hegel?
With which works should I start and with which to end?
I dont know, how hard it is to comprehend his works. Should I start with his lectures, are those easier?
I have the same question about Aristotle

[Anonymous No.18204238]

>>18204200
Read the previous major German thinkers before Hegel (Leibniz, Jacobi, Lessing, Kant, Maimon, Reinhold, Fichte, Holderlin, Schlegel, Novalis, Schelling). Also make sure to cover the Rationalist/Empiricists with emphasis on Spinoza. If you have not read Aristotle, forget about Hegel (idk why you would want to jump straight into Hegel if you haven't even read Aristotle).

If you already read all that here is the order I would take after reading some Schelling as refreshment:
>Early Theological Writings
>Intros to all the Lectures
>Faith and Knowledge
>Encyclopedia Logic
>Lectures on Aesthetics, History of Philosophy and Philosophy of History
>Preface to Phenomenology of Spirit
>Philosophy of Nature
>Lectures on Art
>Philosophy of Mind
>Lectures on Philosophy of Religion
>Phenomenology of Spirit
>Philosophy of Right
>Science of Logic
>Other minor lectures/essays
Should only take a few years of struggling to grasp the schizophrenia inducing autism of Absolute Idealism, but at the end of it you will be able to out-pseud pretty much anybody who isn't an academic philosopher.

[Anonymous No.18204245]

Either read his lectures on the History of Philosophy to get used to his thinking or just jump right into the Phenomenology. The Phenomenology really isn't that hard contrary to what the people who haven't even tried say. ttps://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hp/hpconten.htm

[Anonymous No.18204257]

Charles Taylor and Frederick Beiser both have books called simply Hegel that are good starting points. Between the two of them you will have a reasonable starting point.

[Anonymous No.18204334]

>>18204238
This is overkill, like you don't want him reading because you didn't read

[Anonymous No.18204373]

>>18204334
That is the order I would read him in. I don't see how it's overkill, I just provided Hegel's own works. If you just want to read PoS, go ahead and start there but it will be more difficult and you won't get the most out of Hegel. Sure you can skip the early stuff, but they provide a contextual framework and more than that they have some very interesting insights and developments in their own right. As for the precursory stuff, you have to keep in mind that Hegel is one of the most exit level philosophers out there, you can't just jump into him because he really does perform a grand synthesis of pretty much everything prior to him. I could see someone jumping into Nietzsche, or even guys like Heidegger/Deleuze without as much background as one would need for Hegel.

[Anonymous No.18204384]

>>18204200
Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy, of course.

[Anonymous No.18204387]

>>18204200
Read the Preface to his Phenomenology of Spirit (60 pages). Hegel doesn't get any better than that.

[Anonymous No.18204394]

>>18204334
>This is overkill
the autodidact pseuds of /lit/ never like the path to knowledge

[Anonymous No.18204430]

>>18204334
"reading hegel" (and reading anyone for that matter) involves reading their corpus, not some cute "best of" list. The insights of great thinkers are not immanently available to you outside of time, you have to hermeneutically reconstruct the authors mind within your own by understanding the developments of their thought in time and the greater historical context within which they wrote. This is real understanding

[Anonymous No.18204436]

>>18204200
It's literally impossible to understand Hegel without understanding all theory of everything before him.

[Anonymous No.18204439]

>>18204384
dude i listened to the phenomenology of spirit audiobook before and it made me laugh, it really needs to be read out loud in order to be appreciated as the satire that it is

[Anonymous No.18204443]

>>18204439
>phenomenology of spirit audiobook

[Anonymous No.18204446]

Look, it’s the Hegel age – you know it and I know it. It’s been the Hegel age for the past 200 hundred years, but only recently have we come to realize that in all the recent attempts to “overcome Kant” there is no overcoming Kant like the Hegelian overcoming of Kant. Thus Hegel is back (because he never left).

Now, the problem with Hegel is that, well, he is too Hegelian – too difficult to understand, too German and inaccessible, too time-consuming. Fear not, dear future Hegelians! Here are a few useful tips on faking your way through Hegel – if you follow these, you will surely come across as the most intelligent and thought-provoking expert on all things Hegelian.

Rule 1: Never (ever) actually read anything by Hegel.

First of all, of course, you cannot just come out and say you never read Hegel. No one reads Hegel, but no one ever admits to not having read Hegel. It’s a sacred law of (not) reading Hegel. In fact, you cannot ever say you are reading Hegel when you are reading Hegel for the first time (if you have committed this atrocious act, see Rule 2), you are always re-reading Hegel. Here is how you do it:

“I have been re-reading Hegel’s Jena Lectures recently. Some fascinating stuff, really helps you understand [insert more known works by Hegel], don’t you think?”

When you send things back to other pretending Hegelians, you are projecting confidence in your ability to fake having read Hegel. Don’t be afraid to use this move – they haven’t read Hegel either so they are not likely to come back with an objection to your interpretation.

Second of all, be sure to buy Phenomenology of Spirit and Science of Logic. Open them at about 10-20 page intervals, glance at a page here and there, underline a few sentences, insert an occasional “Hmm…” and “Bullshit!” comment in the margins, close the book and never open it again. Make sure the spine is sufficiently broken (and get only paperback editions) in case anyone grabs the book off your shelf.

If you are brave enough, actually tear the spine of your paperback and have the book in a kind of torn-up state on your desk for a while. Insert various notes into it, make bookmarks using post-it notes, spill some coffee in an obscure part of Logic (don’t go for Master-Slave dialectics, everyone non-reads that part). Needless to say, a broken paperback communicates a clear message: I read this book so many times, it fell apart.

Quick tip: If you bought a volume or two of Hegel in German, never open it or take it off your shelf. No one actually pretends to read Hegel in German. If you try to pretend to have read Hegel in German, everyone will see through your game. Only do that if you are a Hegel scholar of significant status, otherwise you will appear to have taken the “faking your way through Hegel” game too far.

[Anonymous No.18204449]

>>18204238
OP, this fucker is trying to intimidate you into not reading. Some Greeks and Kant are the only absolute essentials.

[Anonymous No.18204451]

>>18204446
Rule 2: If you do make a mistake of reading something by Hegel, use my personal technique of “carefully phrased selective emphasis” on certain aspects of Hegel.

So you made a mistake and started reading Hegel. This is not good. Why? Because you might actually begin to think that you can and should read more Hegel. Nothing could be more counter-productive for faking your way through Hegel. It will only lead you to more reading of Hegel, to self-doubt (“Do I really understand this correctly? Shouldn’t I read more before making claims about Hegel in general?”) and ultimately to your untimely demise as a future Hegelian.

Here is what you do – whatever it is you managed to read (most likely introductory sections of Phenomenology or Logic), take it and make into the crux of your interpretation of Hegel. In fact, since you have already made the mistake of having decided to read Hegel, be adventurous, read some really obscure section of the well-known book and claim that this is, in your humble opinion, the key to understanding the entirety of Hegel’s philosophy. If you don’t see how this works, you are an idiot and you must stop reading this post immediately. For the rest of you, obviously, this is how you fake it in the big league. When you say that passage X is the key passage, you clearly communicate to others that you have read the entirety of Hegel, again and again, and, having done so with sufficient effort, you concluded that this and not some other passage is the key passage.

Quick tip: The more grandiose your claim, the better. You can even push it further and make statements like this: “We don’t need more Hegel today, we need more Plato!” This is big league faking. It quite clearly states: 1) I read all of Hegel, 2) I read all of Plato, 3) I grasped the very essence of our time and discerned that it needs Plato and not Hegel.

Rule 3: Read only tertiary literature.

This is a no-brainer. Only real losers read secondary literature. Read literature that refers to literature about Hegel. But, and here comes the useful bit, if you choose to use any of the tertiary literature for your own paper/book/presentation, follow their quote to the original Hegel’s passage (be sure not to read any of the context, it is dangerous – see Rule 1) and under no circumstances actually mention this tertiary source. Remember, if it is a citation, it’s not plagiarism.

The advantage of tertiary literature is clear: those who choose to cite secondary literature in preference to actually citing the primary source are already compromised and are already under the general suspicion of faking, so taking ideas from them is simply expropriating from the expropriators (as Lenin aptly put it). When you fake with the fakers, everyone wins!

[Anonymous No.18204454]

>>18204446
Go off line for a little while, my friend

[Anonymous No.18204459]

>>18204451
Rule 4: Remember, no one actually speaks Hegelian language, so you only have to learn to translate things into it, but never from it.

Any good philosophical conversation must use the lingo – people who try to explain complex philosophical points in the common tongue of the great unwashed masses are an abomination to the profession and to the human race. If you could explain Hegel in simple accessible language, then the entire inexplicably turgid pile of steaming secondary lit about Hegel is shown to be fake. Remember, no faker likes to be revealed as a faker – that is one button you do not want to push.

Luckily, unlike real languages, in Hegelian language you only need to learn to put things into it, and never to translate things out of it. Most of it is nonsense to you and your friends anyway, but, again, you mustn’t do it ironically. Learn it just like you learn any other language: start with good vocabulary building exercises (“absolute” – “concrete” – “spirit” – “sense-perception” – “sublation” and so on), add some verbs and adjectives, learn some phrases and you are ready. Because it is ultimately a made-up language, only a few truly master it to the point of actually saying something – you are quite safe to use it in almost any circumstance.

Quick tip: the more boldly you state things in Hegelian language, the less there is a chance you will be discovered. So take it to the next level, write a paper for a Hegelian conference, be confident, use it all the time, especially during the Q&A session. There is no other way to learn a language, even a fake one.

Rule 5: Always claim to have already overcome Hegel.

This is the easiest rule to follow. No one reads Hegel for the sake of reading Hegel – no one fakes to have read Hegel for the sake of creating an illusion of having read Hegel for the sake of having read Hegel. All of this is done for a simple purpose: to create your own peculiar philosophical position on the basis of your having overcome Hegel. Hegel is in the way of any real philosophical achievement. You can never claim that your particular philosophical system is the next best thing until you show how it falls outside of the already predicted historical development of philosophy by Hegel. The man ruined it for every ambitious youngster who can’t wait to create his own ontology – he must be overcome! But be not afraid, if you follow all the previous rules, you will not ever actually have to overcome anything – you will, however, have the sufficient “experience” of Hegel to claim to have overcome him. And that’s all you need.

These should get you on your way!

[Anonymous No.18204464]

[Anonymous No.18204470]

>>18204449
Hegel is such an extremely original writer that one has to wonder how did many of his concepts became common sense.

[Anonymous No.18204471]

>>18204443
>he never listened to the phenomenology of spirit audiobook
a couple hours in and you'll start lollin when it hits you that it's all a farce

[Anonymous No.18204474]

>>18204471
I'm sure you have it all figured out

[Anonymous No.18204478]

>>18204454
If you understood Hegel's exegesis of the immaculate absolute as overcoming, you would realize that one should not go outside - that would be akin to the the overcoming of the inert sublation that takes place after the unübersach-sein. In order for one to go outside, one would have to accompany the unaufklärung des Geistes, which can only be accomplished by separating the object and the subject.

[Anonymous No.18204484]

>>18204478
I didn't said go outside. I said go off line.

[Anonymous No.18204486]

>>18204474
maybe, maybe not, but you'll always have that little doubt that it might all be one big *honk*

[Anonymous No.18204494]

>>18204486
sounds pretty convenient for you—it's a lot less work

[Anonymous No.18204502]

>>18204484
you missed the point. By going offline one is engaging in the antegesis of the nicht-sein, the rejection of the Weltgeist's unerschöpflichkeit. In other words, going outside is akin to going offline, and the contrapositive holds self-evidently.

[Anonymous No.18204523]

>>18204238
ignore this tard. Here's the real order:
PoS
SoL
PoN
LoA
PoR

[Anonymous No.18204532]

>>18204523
Why not the Encyclopedia?

[Anonymous No.18204543]

>>18204523
Fucking retarded....

[Anonymous No.18204554]

>>18204523
>shortening them like they're wow expansions
so this is what gamerbrain does to a man...

[Anonymous No.18204568]

>>18204200
You don't get into hegel
He gets into your ass

[Anonymous No.18204585]

Be familiar with Heraclitus and I guess Kant and Fichte. Then just watch some lectures/podcasts on Hegel and you’ll be fine. Maybe read some secondary lit afterwards

[Anonymous No.18204616]

>>18204502
bro, what the fuck are you talking about? I'm not reading that shit

[Anonymous No.18204742]

>>18204502
Have sex

[Anonymous No.18204824]

>>18204200
>How do I get into Hegel?
The more philosophy I read, the less I know how to answer to questions like these. Lately I have started reading lots of Meister Eckhart and lots of Renaissance philosophy (mostly Cusanus, Bruno, Boehme, Pico della Mirandola and Ficino) and now I am fully convinced that without these authors large swathes of Hegel's system are unintelligible. I had the same experience in the past, when I first got familiar with post-Kantian minor philosophers (Reinhold, Herder, Schiller, Jacobi, Humboldt, etc), when I got more familiar with Schellingian philosophy of nature, and when I got more familiar with medio- and neo-platonism. I wonder if it'll happen again when I'll get more familiar with scholastic philosophy. I'm getting the impression that to have a good grasp of Hegel's two major works (PoS and SoL) one has to have an EXCELLENT grasp on most of the history of philosophy, and that Hegel wrote those books expecting his readers to be already knowledgeable on these regards. Basically, those are books written for erudites.
>Should I start with his lectures, are those easier?
Definitely. Those are the books that made Hegel famous. They're surprisingly accessible, some of them can even be read by bright high schoolers. The easier ones are by far the Lectures on Aesthetics, on the Philosophy of History, and on the History of Philosophy, in this order (avoid for now the lectures on Philosophy of Religion and on Philosophy of Right). The prefaces and introductions are usually the hardest sections (since they concern methodology, and other very abstract philosophical issues), so don't get too discouraged if you're having trouble deciphering them: as soon as Hegel will start talking about concrete examples I'm sure you'll be able to follow him, and you'll probably find his various takes interesting and witty (or at least, this was the average reception of his lectures).

[Anonymous No.18205318]

>>18204200
The phenomenology? Not a bad place to start. Also use the greg sadler video series if you get stuck
I read spinoza hegel and he pretty much "made sense" to me. But I also don't like this kind of reading because there is no way to verify you actually understand the text. A good counterexample is doing exercises from math textbook, then there is immediate verification
I disagree w/ >>18204238
Just because I think this kind of relationship to the text is just too goddamn much. Read what you are interested in, and if you are actually interested in it you WILL figure it out (or take necessary detours you are also interested in in order to figure it out). When you read, don't make it some pedantic exercise, just chase the revolutionary "aha!" moments of realization
(actual hegelians probably don't like this paradigm because it isn't pedantic enough)

Also question for >>18204824
I'm not planning on getting into hegel again any time soon (too time consuming), but of the people you say you've read, what did you get out of them? I'm always looking to add people to my reading list

[Anonymous No.18205583]

>>18204446
>>18204451
>>18204459
>>18204478
>>18204502
dangerously based

[Anonymous No.18205697]

>>18204238
Only good answer itt. Don't be lazy and put in the work to understand Hegel's background. His philosophy is basically syncretic of all of philosophy before him.

[Anonymous No.18205703]

>>18204200
Read Heidegger first, and maybe some Lacan

[Anonymous No.18205823]

>>18204436
Not at all and he explains this in the preface of Spirit

[Anonymous No.18205835]

>>18204436
No, all you need is spinoza bro

[Anonymous No.18205877]

>>18204200
phrenology of the spirit

[Anonymous No.18207487]

[Anonymous No.18208505]

>>18205877
Hegel believes the Absolute is so defined as to have a measurable skull?

[Anonymous No.18209167]

>>18204200
>How do I get into Hegel?
I'd read Beiser's German Idealism, then his monograph on Hegel.

[Anonymous No.18209211]

>How do I get into Hegel?
You start by slamming your head repeatedly against a hard surface until you suddenly feel the need to filter everything you experience through Hegelian metaphysics

[Anonymous No.18209277]

He’s like... the one you read when you’ve read all literary works of fiction, non-fiction and philosophy as a whole, he’s exit-level, just read everything else first