Hegel by Charles Taylor (PDF)

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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 sees these in terms of a pervasive tension between the evolving ideals of individuality and self-realization on the one hand, and on the other a deeply-felt need to find significance in a wider community. Charles Taylor engages with Hegel sympathetically, on Hegel’s own terms and, as the the subject demands, in detail. We are made to grasp the interconnections of the system without being overwhelmed or overawed by its technicality. We are shown its importance and its limitations, and are enabled to stand back from it.

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⭐Perhaps because of that perpetual need to stay relevant, we’re used to seeing Hegel as the philosopher of history. Probably every Philosophy 101 student thinks that Hegel saw the thesis and the anti-thesis proceeding through history until its culmination in the Prussian state of the early 19th century. How eye-opening then is Charles Taylor’s review of Hegel’s entire corpus. Instead of being merely an insightful scholar of history, Hegel emerges as concerned with resolving Enlightenment and Romantic tensions through an entirely novel ontology. Essentially, Hegel wrote in an era that assumed the death of the grounding of man in a larger metaphysical order. So while the Enlightenment offered a vision of desacralized nature as a resource to conquer and the Romantics wanted to recover a unity of man within the natural world, Hegel made an attempt to continue the Enlightenment insight that man’s purpose stems from within himself and the Romantic insight that man is part of a larger cosmos. He does this most completely in his Logic, one of the least studied works. There he elaborates the philosophy that there is a Geist/Idea embedded throughout creation. It strives to achieve self-awareness throughout natural and human history. Thus, man achieves his greatest freedom when he unites with the unfolding Geist and becomes aware of its presence within him. Human history is only a part of this synthesis: there is a larger cosmic history of the original unity diversifying throughout nature only to unite itself in human states, arts, religions and philosophies. Thus, the highest realization of freedom comes from within but it because the Geist employs humanity in its quest for self-realization. If all of this sounds somewhat strange, it’s because it certainly is. It takes Taylor some six hundred pages to explain Hegel’s philosophy. But in the end he emerges as one of the most imaginative and powerful minds in history. While no one today may accept his ontological vision of a Geist unfolding throughout the world only to unite again in man, it’s a much more powerful synthesis than the historical reflections Hegel is most well known for. This book was, hands down, the best non-fiction book I’ve read this year. Though something of a tome, I now understand Hegel in a way that even reading the Phenomenology of Spirit, Reason in History and Lectures on World History could not accomplish. If you are interested in comprehensive accounts of reality, however unrealistic they may have turned out to be, Charles Taylor’s study of Hegel is worth reading. I, for one, will never read Hegel in the same way again.

⭐Taylor begins his narrative with the epistemological problems the Enlightenment posed against Medievalism and eventually against itself. These thinkers (Descartes, Bacon, Hobbes) held to an atomistic view of man and society. They rejected the medieval worldview of “final causes” (4). The world was no longer seen as “symbol manifesting the rhythm of the divine” (5).This hard Enlightenment anthropology will itself break down (almost immediately). Some couldn’t live without a God; these are the mild Deists. Others took the epistemology consistently and became radical materialists.The German Romantic Counter-attackPost-Reformation Germany never experienced the same “church versus state” problems that France did. Thus, German’s religious expression to the Enlightenment was formed differently: pietism. Pietism stressed a heart-felt religious experience of the soul’s meeting with Christ (11). There followed a denigration of dogma and confessional status. Like with the Enlightenment itself, the reaction in Germany went along two paths.Self-Positing SpiritThis introduces Hegel’s “identity of difference and identity.” Starting slowly, following Taylor, here is what I think he means. Hegel is trying to overcome the Kantian duality. Hegel wants to overcome this with his notion of “overcoming oppositions.” Therefore, identity cannot sustain itself on its own, but posits an opposition, but also a particularly intimate one (80). In short, Hegel married modern expression with Aristotle’s self-realizing form (81).Following this was Hegel’s other point: the subject, and all his functions, however spiritual, were necessarily embodied (82-83).The Contradiction ArisesContrary to mindless right-wing bloggers, Hegel did not form the “dialectic” in the following way: we posit a thesis (traditional community), then we negate it (cultural marxism), which allows for the “synthesis” (our pre-planned solution all along). Here is what Hegel actually meant: there is reality, but the very structure of reality already contains a contradiction. The subject then must overcome that contradiction.Taylor notes, “In order to be at all as a conscious being, the subject must be embodied in life; but in order to realize the perfection of consciousness it must fight and overcome the natural bent of life as a limit. The conditions of its existence are in conflict with the demands of its perfection (86).Building on Hegel’s premise that God/Geist/Spirit, which is the ultimate reality, must be embodied in history, it follows that one must ask in what manner is it embodied? One of the most fundamental modes, Hegel posits, is in religion (197). Briefly stated, Hegel sees each epoch in human history as manifesting religion, but always in a contradictory way. The Greeks were able to apprehend “the universal,” but they could only do so in a finite and limited way (and thus the infinite/finite contradiction). This contradiction is not a bad thing, though, for it opened up the possibility of the Christian religion (with a detour through the Hebrews). Hegel sees the ultimate religious expression in the Incarnation.A Dialectic of CategoriesWhen one is studying reality, Hegel says, one can start anywhere in the system, for each facet is ultimately tied together (226). If we start with “Being” then our method will proceed dialectically. What he means by that is the very structure of reality has a contradiction, and in overcoming that contradiction Being moves forth to something else. Throughout the whole of this discussion, Hegel is starting from Kant and reworking the system along problems he sees in Kant.To avoid confusion, and to silence the right-wing conspiracy bloggers, Hegel’s idea of contradiction is this: he has a two-pronged argument, the first showing that a given category is indispensable, the second showing that it leads to a characterization of reality which is somehow impossible or incoherent (228).Hegel is trying to overcome the dilemma that social life poses: per man’s subjective life the important thing is freedom of spirit. However, man also lives in community and the norms of the community often bind his freedom of spirit (it is to Hegel’s credit that he recognized this problem generations before Nietszche and the existentialists).Hegel suggests the form man must attain is a social form (366). It is important to note that what Hegel means by “state” is much different than what Anglo-Americans mean by it. Hegel means the “politically organized community” (387). Let’s explore these few sentences for a moment. Throughout his philosophy Hegel warns against “abstractions,” by which he means taking an entity outside its network of relations. With regard to politics, if abstraction is bad then it necessarily follows that man’s telos is in a community. Man comes into the world already in a network of relations.ConclusionAs other reviewers noted, this book is excellent. I have a few qualms, though. While Taylor is correct that Hegel cannot simply be seen as a “conservative,” Hegel does embody (pun intended) most of the main 19th century views of conservatism: fear or Revolution, fear of an unbridled free market, a hierarchical social order culminating in monarchy–Taylor notes the latter and is frankly embarrassed by it. Still, a good read.

⭐I’m about 1/3 of the way through this large book and have yet to be bored or feel encumbered by the language. Taylor’s exposition of Hegel, while some have called aspects of it into question, is an extremely readable and accessible text. Very useful in understanding some of the more complex and often misunderstood ontological positions Hegel takes.

⭐This books represents and incredible way to get started (and clarify, if you are already had a class or read the author) on Hegels ideas. Charles Taylor book becomes a helpful way to understand hegels complex formulations on topics suchs as logic, history and essences (wich in my case was very useful).I would definitely recommed this book for anybody who is interested on XIX century philosophy, german philosophy and/or political philosophy.

⭐The first book on Hegel I’ve read that’s actually more accessible than the rather opaque writings of Hegel himself (at least to a layman or non-academic like me) 🙂

⭐Ich kann mich den euphorischen Besprechungen für Taylors „Hegel“ nur bedingt anschließen. Es handelt sich sicher um das umfangreichste noch erschwinglichen Werk, das sowohl Phänomenologie, als auch Logik und Enzyklopädie relativ detailliert bespricht. Allerdings relativ: Denn tatsächlich sind zwischen 100 und 200 Seiten für jedes Werk natürlich doch wenig Raum.Wenn auch nicht so stark wie andere Hegelauslegungen, ist Taylor ein Kompromiss zwischen einfacher Nacherzählung, Interpretation und selbstständigem Weiterphilosophieren. Anders als bei Kojeve oder Löwith zB liegt der Fokus aber stärker auf dem einfachen verstehenden Nachvollziehen.Umso problematischer, dass einige Interpretationen vollzogen wurden, die erstens nicht als solche angeführt werden und zweitens mE tatsächlich im „orthodoxen“ Sinne falsch sind. Als Beispiel nur die entscheidenste zum Kapitel Herr und Knecht. Taylor sieht hier, was auf der bildlichen Ebene auch überzeugt, den realen Kampf zweier Bewusstseine, genauer: zweier Menschen, um gegenseitige Anerkennung. Dieser Kampf sei gemodelt nach dem frühen feudalen Verhältnis. Das ist, wenn auch keine marxistische, so doch eine materialistische Lesart der Phänomenologie. Orthodox ist es viel sinnvoller, den Kampf als solchen innerhalb eines Seins zu lesen, wiederum gemodelt nach dem frühen feudalen Verhältnis. Das gebietet schon die zeitliche Stellung in der Dialektik des Bewusstseins, die hier noch gar keine Gesellschaft kennt.Hegel selbst ist am Missverständnis sicherlich mitschuldig, die Metaphern gehen ihm hier (wie so oft) durch und tatsächlich ist die Konstruktion eines gespaltenen Bewusstseins, das sich in jeder individuellen Entwicklung durch die Herr-Knecht-Phase bewegt hochproblematisch und eines der vielen Beispiele, wo Hegel Beobachtungen zur gesellschaftlichen Entwicklung ins einzelne Bewusstsein projiziert. Orthodox gelesen meint Hegel es aber nun mal genau so. Auf diese Weise schiebt Taylor Hegel an einigen Stellen eine eigentlich schon nicht mehr hegelsche, wenn auch mE plausiblere Lesart unter.Den orthodoxen Hegel der Phänomenologie schlüsselt tatsächlich das kurze, auf den ersten Blick kindisch wirkende „Hegel für Anfänger“ von Ralf Ludwig deutlich besser auf. Taylor bleibt dennoch unverzichtbar, allein weil es zu Logik und Enzyklopädie kein vergleichbares Werk „für den Hausgebrauch“ gibt.Hervorragende Gliederung der Säulen der Hegelschen Gedanken mit didaktischen und gut verständlichen Mitteln.Das Buch macht das in der Initialen Hegel Lektüre unverständliche lesbar ja sogar genießbar. Mit besten Gewissen weiterzuempfehlen.Viel Spaß an der neuen Erkenntnis.Great commentary on Hegel, the Best One I nave ever read,iVery Good the part on Hegel Science ofLogic

⭐I have no liking for Hegel, but the book went down well with the recipient.

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