Hegel
Charles Taylor | 1977-05-27 00:00:00 | Cambridge University Press | 596 | History of Ideas
This is a major and comprehensive study of the philosophy of Hegel, his place in the history of ideas, and his continuing relevance and importance. Professor Taylor relates Hegel to the earlier history of philosophy and, more particularly, to the central intellectual and spiritual issues of his own time. He engages with Hegel sympathetically, on Hegel's own terms and, as the subject demands, in detail. This important book is now reissued with a fresh new cover.
Reviews
A sweeping, insightful and erudite survey of Hegel's work, originally published in 1975 Taylor text has become a modern classic in the field of Hegelian studies. The following comments are offered for potential purchasers.
First, a few minor criticisms. From a physical perspective the text (paperback) is less than ideal; the font is small and at nearly 600 pages the book is a bit too bulky. Stylistically, Taylor has his eccentricities, occasionally mixing top flight academic prose with awkward colloquialisms and ill-fitting literary devices, e.g. an unnatural interspersing of untranslated French terms where English or German terminology would seem more appropriate.
These few drawbacks aside the text has much strength. Hegel is a notoriously difficult read for the uninitiated. In this regard Taylor is particularly effective in using an appropriate combination of technical Hegel-speak and non-Hegelian terminology to both maintain the author's meaning and make it more accessible. Perhaps the greatest value, of Taylor's work, however, is the corrective it offers to much modern Hegelian scholarship. Often scholars are guilty of reading their worldviews back into the thought of earlier thinkers. While to a degree this is unavoidable, when overdone it can be quite misleading. An example of this is the tendency of twentieth century thinkers to read their atheistic/materialistic assumptions into early-modern thinkers such as Hobbes, Descartes, Kant and Hegel, often dismissing the clearly theistic views/comments of these early thinkers as nothing more than the idiom of the day and, in the process often recasting them as radical atheists. This is particularly distorting with regard to Hegel. Divorced from his pantheistic teleological view of embodied spirit much of his subsequent thought becomes incoherent nonsense. Finally, the concluding chapter on the contemporary relevance of Hegelian thought is helpful in situating Hegel in the modern Western tradition- although recent developments (i.e. the demise of communism), have likely made it of lesser interest to the broader public.
Overall the text is highly recommended for students of German idealism - an excellent if rather dense tomb. A solid background in modern philosophy, however, is likely a prerequisite to enjoying this work.
Reviews
Since I'm not half through, I wouldn't be reviewing this if anyone else had stepped up. I'm enjoying the book. Hegel's been a sore spot ever since the seminar on the "Phenomenology of Spirit" where I felt like a complete illiterate trying to read him (in translation no less).
Since Hegel's practically the definition of "pseudo-philosophy" in the English-speaking world, it's fascinating to read this treatment by a sensible English (?) philosopher. Taylor does a great job in the 1st chapter setting up Hegel's problematic, with a survey of German romanticism and its issues. Those issues are in large part still with us today, so that Hegel's working on problems that should be of interest to us.
But are those problems solvable? Can we take seriously someone who argues that "the rational is real, and the real is rational"? Taylor's carefully developing and qualifying Hegel's claims of universal rationality and trying to see his case for them.
Even if you hate Hegel, or think you do, the great anti-Hegelian Bertrand Russell said that the 1st step to evaluating a philosophy is to engage with it as sympathetically as possible (in a bit of a Hegelian moment himself as I recall: sympathy-antipathy-evaluation). This book may be your best shot in English.
Nietzsche argued that (1) the world is meaningless and "irrational," and that (2) humans cannot accept (1). If he's right, then something like Hegel's system may be the necessary consequence.
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