Reading Hegel the Introductions

Bringing together for the first time all of G.W.F. Hegel’s Major introductions in one place, this book ambitiously attempts to present readers with Hegel’s systematic thought through his introduction alone. The editors articulate to what extent, precisely, Hegel’s Introductions truly reflect his philosophic though as a whole. Certainly each of Hegel’s introductions can stand alone, capturing a facet of his overarching idea of truth. But compiled together, they serve to lay out the intricate tapestry of Hegel’s thought, woven with a dialectic that progresses from one book to another, one philosophical moment to another.

Hegel’s reflections on philosophy, religion, aesthetics history, and law-all included here have profoundly influenced many subsequent thinkers, from post-Hegelian idealists or materialist like Karl Marx, to the existentialism of Kierkegaard and Jean-Paul Sartre, from the phenomenological tradition of Edmund Husserl to Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida and other post-moderns, to thinkers farther afield, like Japan’s famous Kyoto School or India’s Sri Aurobindo. This book provides the opportunity to discern how the ideas of these later thinkers may have originally germinated in Hegel’s writings, as well as to penetrate Hegel’s worldview in his own words, his grand architecture of the journey of the Spirit. (jacket)