With this work, Hegel introduced a scientific approach to the study of the history of philosophy. The author himself regarded this book as a popular introduction to his entire philosophy, and it ranks among his most readable and accessible writings. Hegel develops the concept of history as a rational proceeding, rather than a series of random events. His doctrine of the historical process -- governed according to the laws of evolution and embodying the spirit of freedom -- exercised an enormous and enduring influence.

It may be noted in passing that it was an extraordinary notion of Kant's to claim that the definition of the straight line as the shortest distance between two points is a synthetic proposition, for my concept of straightness contains nothing of size, but only a quality. In this sense every definition is a synthetic proposition. What is defined, the straight line, is in the first place the intuition or representation.

It is not history itself that is here presented. We might more properly designate it as a History of History; a criticism of historical narratives and an investigation of their truth and credibility. Its peculiarity in point of fact and of intention, consists in the acuteness with which the writer extorts something from the records which was not in the matters recorded.

The appearance of this translation is a major event in English-language Hegel studies, for it is more than simply a replacement for Wallace's translation cum paraphrase. Hegel's Prefaces to each of the three editions of the Enzyklopadie are translated for the first time into English. There is a very detailed Introduction translating Hegel's German, which serves not only as a guide to the translator's usage but also to Hegel's. Also included are a detailed bilingual annotated glossary, very extensive bibliographic and interpretive notes to Hegel's text (28 pp.), an Index of References for works cited in the notes, a select Bibliography of recent works on Hegel's logic, and a detailed Index (16 pp.). The translation is guided by the (correct) principle that rendering Hegel's logical thought clearly and consistently requires rendering his technical terms logically. . . . This ought immediately to become the standard translation of this important work. --Kenneth R. Westphal, in Review of Metaphysics

With over 100 works from 20 years of interventions in urban space, the Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte in Dortmund has dedicated a large overview exhibition to René Schoemakers (*1972). From the very beginning, he has rejected any appropriation of the individual. As a direct reflex, examining the extremisms of the present has become central to his work, whether Christian or Islamic, left-wing autonomist or right-wing radical: the latter, however, in particular, since one of the attempted murders by the Nationalist Socialist Underground (NSU) in Dortmund was committed with the backing of a very active right-wing scene. Text in English and German.

Complete and unabridged, this edition of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's 1821 classic offers a comprehensive view of the philosopher's influential system. In the "Philosophy of Right, " Hegel applies his most important concept -- the dialectics -- to law, rights, morality, the family, economics, and the state. The last of Hegel's works to be published in his lifetime, this volume combines moral and political philosophy to form a sociologic view dominated by the idea of the state. Hegel defines universal right as the synthesis between the thesis of an individual acting in accordance with the law and the occasional conflict of an antithetical desire to follow private convictions. The state, he declares, must permit individuals to satisfy both demands, thereby realizing social harmony and prosperity--the perfect synthesis. Further, Hegel renounces his formerly favorable assessment of the French Revolution and rejects the republican form of government, suggesting instead an idealized form of a constitutional monarchy, in which ultimate power rests with the sovereign.

This is a new translation, with running commentary, of what is perhaps the most important short piece of Hegel's writing. The Preface to Hegel's first major work, the "Phenomenology of Spirit," lays the groundwork for all his other writing by explaining what is most innovative about Hegel's philosophy.

This new translation combines readability with maximum precision, breaking Hegel's long sentences and simplifying their often complex structure. At the same time, it is more faithful to the original than any previous translation.

The heart of the book is the detailed commentary, supported by an introductory essay. Together they offer a lucid and elegant explanation of the text and elucidate difficult issues in Hegel, making his claims and intentions intelligible to the beginner while offering interesting and original insights to the scholar and advanced student. The commentary often goes beyond the particular phrase in the text to provide systematic context and explain related topics in Hegel and his predecessors (including Kant, Spinoza, and Aristotle, as well as Fichte, Schelling, Holderlin, and others).

The commentator refrains from playing down (as many interpreters do today) those aspects of Hegel's thought that are less acceptable in our time, and abstains from mixing his own philosophical preferences with his reading of Hegel's text. His approach is faithful to the historical Hegel while reconstructing Hegel's ideas within their own context."

"Hegel's Geschichte der Philosophie was one of the grand products of the renaissance in historical learning that took place in early nineteenth-century Germany. . . . Hegel remains relevant today for his recognition that any self-critical philosophy must include a knowledge of its own history. A self-aware philosopher, Hegel firmly believed, knew where his ideas came from and their social and cultural context. . . . This is still the only available translation of all three volumes of Hegel's history."-Frederick C. Beiser. "The main reason why Hegel will remain worthy of study lies in his incomparable gathering together of the whole range of human experience into vital connection with what is best in that experience. . . . He is, without doubt, the Aristotle of our post-Renaissance world."-J. N. Findlay, Hegel: A Re-examination. G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831), the influential German philosopher, believed that human history was advancing spiritually and morally according to God's purpose. At the beginning of this masterwork, Hegel writes: "What the history of Philosophy shows us is a succession of noble minds, a gallery of heroes of thought, who, by the power of Reason, have penetrated into the being of things, of nature and of spirit, into the Being of God, and have won for us by their labours the highest treasure, the treasure of reasoned knowledge." In his introduction to this Bison Book edition, Frederick C. Beiser notes the complex and controversial history of Hegel's text. He makes a case that this English-language translation by E. S. Haldane and Frances H. Simson is still the most reliable one. A professor of philosophy at Indiana University, Beiser is the author of The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kante to Fichte.