Abstract
I argue that Hegel’s Phenomenology is an attempt to prove that human experience displays a sui generis logical structure. This is because, as rational animals who instinctively create a universe of meaning to navigate our environment, the perceptual content of our conscious experience of objects, the desires that motivate our self-conscious experience of action, and the beliefs and values that make up our sociohistorical experience all testify to the presence of rationality as their condition of possibility. As such, Hegel’s Phenomenology not only requires of us that we transform the mission of logic into a description of the immanent logic at the basis of human experience, thereby making the task of logic “anthropological.” It also presents us with a novel model of human experience—one that: demonstrates the rationality already instinctively at work in our bodily sensations, perceptions, and desires; gives an account of the origins of human society and history; and also makes human experience irreducible to cognitive processes in the brain, psychological mechanisms, and the biological imperatives of survival and reproduction.
References
Beiser, Frederick. Hegel. New York: Routledge, 2005.10.4324/9780203087053Search in Google Scholar
Brandom, Robert B. A Spirit of Trust: A Reading of Hegel’s Phenomenology. Cambridge, Massachusetts. Harvard University Press, 2019.10.2307/j.ctvfjczmkSearch in Google Scholar
Brandom, Robert B. “Holism and Idealism in Hegel’s Phenomenology.” Hegel-Studien. 36 (2001): 61–95.Search in Google Scholar
Carew, Joseph. “Describing the Rationality of Human Experience: The Anthropological Task of Hegel’s Logic.” Idealistic Studies. 46, no. 1 (2016): 79–96. https://doi.org/10.5840/idstudies201751958.10.5840/idstudies201751958Search in Google Scholar
Giovanni, George di. “¿Cómo de necesaria es la Fenomenología para la Lógica de Hegel?” La Lógica de Hegel, edited by Edgar Maraguat, 19–36. Valencia: Pre-Textos, 2017.Search in Google Scholar
Giovanni, George di. “Religion, History, and Spirit in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit.” In The Blackwell Guide to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, edited by Kenneth R. Westphal, 226–245. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.Search in Google Scholar
Harris, H. S. Hegel’s Ladder. 2 vols. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1997.Search in Google Scholar
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Basic Outline, Part 1, Science of Logic. Edited and translated by Klaus Brinkmann and Daniel O. Dahlstrom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.10.1017/9780511780226Search in Google Scholar
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. The Science of Logic. Edited and translated by George di Giovanni. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.10.1017/9780511780240Search in Google Scholar
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Gesammelte Werke. Edited by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. 31 vols. Felix Meiner, 1968–.Search in Google Scholar
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature. Edited and translated by Michael John Petry. 3 vols. London: Allen & Unwin, 1970.Search in Google Scholar
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Lectures on Logic: Berlin, 1831. Translated by Clark Butler. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008.Search in Google Scholar
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by Arnold V. Miller. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977.Search in Google Scholar
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. Oxford: Blackwell, 1962.Search in Google Scholar
Houlgate, Stephen. Hegel’s “Phenomenology of Spirit”: A Reader’s Guide. London: Bloomsbury, 2013.Search in Google Scholar
Houlgate, Stephen. The Opening of Hegel’s Logic: From Being to Infinity. West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 2006.Search in Google Scholar
Husserl, Edmund. Experience and Judgment: Investigations in a Genealogy of Logic. Translated by James S. Churchill and Karl Ameriks. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1975.Search in Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Edited and translated by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.10.1017/CBO9780511804649Search in Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. Practical Philosophy. Edited and translated by Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.Search in Google Scholar
Kojève, Alexandre. Introduction to the Reading of Hegel. Edited by Allan Bloom and translated by James H. Nichols, Jr. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980.Search in Google Scholar
Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Edited by Peter H. Nidditch. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975.Search in Google Scholar
Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. The German Ideology: Including Theses on Feuerbach and Introduction to The Critique of Political Economy. Prometheus Books, 1976.Search in Google Scholar
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Donald Landes. New York: Routledge, 2013.10.4324/9780203720714Search in Google Scholar
Pinkard, Terry. Hegel: A Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.Search in Google Scholar
Pinkard, Terry. “Hegel’s Phenomenology and Logic: An Overview.” In The Cambridge Companion to German Idealism, edited by Karl Ameriks, 227–47. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.Search in Google Scholar
Pinkard, Terry. Hegel’s Phenomenology: The Sociality of Reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.Search in Google Scholar
Sellars, Wilfrid. Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1997.Search in Google Scholar
Sparby, Terje. Hegel’s Conception of the Determinate Negation. Leiden: Brill, 2014. https://brill.com/view/title/26625.10.1163/9789004284616Search in Google Scholar
Stern, Robert. “Hegel’s Idealism.” In The Cambridge Companion to Hegel and Nineteenth-Century Philosophy, edited by Frederick C. Beiser, 137–74. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.10.1017/CCOL9780521831673.007Search in Google Scholar
Taylor, Charles. Hegel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977.Search in Google Scholar
Žižek, Slavoj. Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism. London: Verso, 2013.Search in Google Scholar
© 2019 Joseph Carew, published by De Gruyter
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.