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Introducing Hegel: A Graphic Guide

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G.W.F. Hegel's influential writings on philosophy, politics, history, and art are parts of a larger systematic whole. They are also among the most difficult in the entire literature of philosophy. Introducing Hegel engages the reader, guiding them through a spectacular system of thought which aimed to make sense of history.

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

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Lloyd Spencer

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5 stars
115 (19%)
4 stars
212 (35%)
3 stars
196 (32%)
2 stars
56 (9%)
1 star
15 (2%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 77 reviews
Profile Image for Atri .
219 reviews157 followers
May 25, 2020
Hegel eloquently described his "own dark night of the soul" in a letter to K.J.H. Windischmann (1775-1839), a Catholic doctor who later became a professor of philosophy.

"...this descent into dark regions where nothing reveals itself to be fixed, definite and certain, where gilmmerings of light flash everywhere but, flanked by abysses, are rather darkened in their brightness and led astray by the environment, casting false reflections far more than illumination. Each beginning if every path breaks off again and runs into the indefinite, loses itself, and wrests us away from our purpose and direction. From my own experience I know this mood of the soul, or rather of reason, which arises when it has finally made its way with interest and hunches into a chaos of appearances and though inwardly sure of the goal, has not yet worked them to clarity, and a detailed grasp of the whole. I have suffered a few years of this hypochondria, to the point of ennervation. Probably everyone has such a turning point in his life, the nocturnal point of contraction of his essence in which he is forced through a narrow passage by which his confidence in himself and everyday life grows in strength and assurance..."
Profile Image for Julian Worker.
Author 44 books449 followers
January 6, 2022
This book is quite difficult to read.

The first reason is that the white text doesn't always stand out well enough from the dark grey / black of the background on certain pages.

The second reason is that I'm not 100% sure I understand what's being said. There's not much doubt that Hegel's influence is not just confined to philosophy - it has had dramatic consequences in the spheres of political ideas and politics.

There is the example of the Master and the Slave.

Out of respect for the master, the slave is shaken out of narrow self-interest. The slave is put to work and learns self-respect and comes to see himself reflected in the work of his hands. The master remains in the state of dependence while the slave gradually educates himself to independence. Desire, consciousness, and self-consciousness, dread, alienation - the true struggle in all this is shown as the struggle for recognition, which is why this example has such resonance with Marxists and Existentialists.

Philosophy always comes on the scene too late to give instruction as to what the world ought to be. As the thought of the world, it appears only when actuality is already there, after its process of formation has been completed.

It is only with the fall of dusk that the owl of Minerva spreads its wings.
Profile Image for Becky Ankeny.
74 reviews3 followers
February 3, 2017
Reading this book is like eating a box of unmarked chocolates. Some of Hegel's thoughts I read and recognized, some were unfamiliar--oh, maple, or fruit jelly, or wait, what is that? Do I like it? GWF Hegel is most famous (to me) for his explanation of the dialectic: thesis, antithesis, synthesis, though I discovered that others gave the three parts those names. So often I have lurched toward better understanding by a Hegelian motion, particularly in dialogue with someone who disagrees. The book is written by a senior lecturer in democracy and media at University of Leeds, and is illustrated by Andrzej Krauze. Illustrated, you ask? Why yes, illustrated throughout, and when the illustration is a tip of the hat to Escher, you know the concept is a bit baffling.

One thing I learned is that Hegel viewed the State as not "a set of institutions but the objective embodiment of ethical life" (105). This challenges me to hold institutions accountable to ethics, particularly when they are violating the ethics they purport to uphold. I also learned about Hegel's fable of the master and the slave: I can't do it justice here, but the set-up is two self-consciousnesses locked in a life and death struggle for recognition from the other; the self who submits rather than facing death becomes the slave, an object and a means. An insight I gained from it is that the master remains dependent despite having the upper hand, while the slave makes the world for both, learns self-respect, and educates him/herself toward independence. One apparently wins ultimately by losing at the start.
Profile Image for Jimmy.
Author 6 books279 followers
September 24, 2021
Hegel was very attached to his sister Christiane. She nursed a fierce attachment to her brother. When Hegel married at age 40, Christiane suffered what Hegel called "hysteria." In 1820 she was committed to an asylum but was released the following year. Within three months of Hegel's death, Christiane went out for a walk and drowned herself.

Throughout his life, Hegel celebrated Bastille Day. Freedom remained a central concern of Hegel's thought. The degeneration of the French Revolution into "absolute fear" was a profound crisis of the spirit. Hegel called it the result of freedom asserted abstractly, something absolute. Absolutism in freedom like we see today in the libertarian movement leads to destruction.

Young Hegel suffered periods of intense depression. This was in part caused by doubts of his ability. That was aggravated by his attempts to master many different areas of learning.

Fichte, Schelling, and then Hegel all sought to carry Kant's revolution forward. They wanted to heal the divisions enshrined in Kant's writings: between faith and reason, Church and State, and the infinite and the finite.

Hegel arrived in Jena in 1801 poor, inarticulate, disorganized, and hitherto unsuccessful. Even with Schelling's help it would be a struggle for him to make his mark.

Hegel wrote about a mythical encounter between "the master and the slave." Each is deeply absorbed in the business of living. Each demands recognition from the other. The result is a life or death struggle. The self who submits, rather than face death, becomes the slave. The slave is put to work and gradually learns self-respect and comes to see himself reflected in the work of his hands. Paradoxically the master remains in the state of dependence while the slave slowly educates himself toward independence. Marxists, existentialists, and Black leaders have been drawn to this story.

"Serious study of the ancient classics is the best introduction to philosophy. But perhaps not a road open to everyone."--Hegel

Hegel married in 1811 at age 41 to Marie von Tucker scarcely half his age. Christiana Burkhardt, nee Fischer, mother of Hegel's illegitimate child created a stir. Hegel paid money to support his son and placated her.

Hegel needed something newer than Aristotelian logic. His new idea became known as dialectical thinking. Hegel believed in a whole. It preserves what it overcomes as in a spiral. There is a triadic structure of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Then the synthesis is negated by another antithesis.

When Hegel arrived in Berlin, young men who started out as Romantics and revolutionaries espoused reactionary and chauvinistic nationalism. Hegel attacked his colleague Jacob Fries for his anti-Semitism. From this point on, Hegel philosophized in the form of lectures.

Freedom and the State are the two most important concepts in Hegel's treatment of politics, history, and ethics. He believed the will was essentially free. Government was necessary for life in any modern nation. He wanted to recapture the ancient Greek idea of commitment to community.

He equated what is rational with what is actual and vice versa.
Profile Image for Raquel.
394 reviews
August 13, 2021
Uma interessante introdução à vida e obra de Hegel. Esta introdução dá uma especial atenção às concepções políticas de Hegel, desfazendo assim alguns grandes equívocos que se foram criando ao longo do tempo acerca da visão hegeliana do mundo.

Hegel está longe de ser um autor consensual ou "fácil", mas a riqueza e as possibilidades da sua filosofia merecem ser revisitadas e debatidas, esta introdução fornece algumas ferramentas conceptuais e críticas interessantes ao futuro leitor de Hegel.
Profile Image for Anna.
96 reviews32 followers
July 31, 2009
I've read one other "Introducing" book as a review piece, comparing the "Introducing" series with the "For Beginners" series. At the time found them fairly analogous. The "For Beginners" series took the lead in terms of concepts; whereas, the "Introducing" took it historically. Introducing Hegel goes even further in that direction. It spends so much time situating Hegel in regard to his contemporaries, that it barely outlines Hegel's philosophy. In short, it was very disappointing.
Profile Image for Leonardo.
Author 1 book81 followers
July 23, 2015
No me gustó mucho, me pareció aburrido y no aprendí casi nada. ¡Leer a Hegel debe ser terrible! Igual me parece que entre los que fui leyendo de esta colección este es el que más alienta a la lectura de los originales, pero a mi hasta me costó la versión para principiantes, así que "no por ahora".
Profile Image for Niels.
45 reviews3 followers
April 17, 2023
This book was (unexpectedly) very informational and enjoyable! The complex parts about Hegel's philosophy are interwoven with biographical information, which makes for a pleasant read. The text is much much more understandable than that of the book about Kant from the same series, which I read before this one.
Profile Image for xDEAD ENDx.
248 reviews
September 17, 2013
This is a really great introduction to Hegel that explores all of his major works in an understandable language (which isn't easy!), along with his general stances on politics and religion, and all the philosophers influenced by and drawing upon him. I also enjoyed the illustrations, a number of which were genuinely humorous, such as drawings of Hegel as candles, spiral shells, etc.

The only odd bit is that the writer makes a claim that "one could write an intellectual history of our century without mentioning Hegel" but then seems to flip-flop and discuss all the influential thinkers of the 20th century and how they were either indebted to Hegel, drawing upon his ideas, or deconstructing and opposing him.
Profile Image for Sumit.
65 reviews8 followers
December 25, 2017
A good starting point, the book does provide a background of Hegel's life and the social backdrop of his work. However some the difficult concepts are not explained lucidly. Though the title claims to be a "graphic guide", the illustrations are often just that; the fill up the pages but do not assist the reader in grasping the complex concepts of Hegel's philosophy.
Profile Image for Anton .
64 reviews7 followers
July 27, 2016


So far, I've enjoyed every For Beginners book I've read. I can't really critique any of them for the simple reason that I'm at the beginners stage in all the topics. My term for it is, "being a generalist."
13 reviews4 followers
October 1, 2017
I knew some vague things about Hegel's philosophy via Marx and Marxists. I also knew that hegel was famously opaque and difficult to interpret.

I thought a comic book summary of Hegel's ideas would dumb them down enough that I could digest them easily.

That was not correct.
Profile Image for Kyaw Zayar Lwin.
120 reviews12 followers
November 25, 2021
မီနာဗာဇီးကွက်ဟာ နေ့တာကုန်ဆုံးမှပဲ ပျံသန်းလေတော့တယ်။

အလုံးစုံသဘောကို ဆောင်တဲ့ ဟေဂယ်ရဲ့ ဒဿနဟာ ပစ်ပယ်လို့ ရခြင်း၊မရခြင်းထက် အံ့ဩဖွယ်မွေ့လျော်မှုကို ပေးတယ်။
အပေါ်ယံလောက်သာ တို့ထိထားပေမယ့် အချီးတွေလောက်တော့ ပြည့်စုံတယ်။
မျက်မှောက်ခေတ်အထိ လေ့လာခံနေရဆဲ ဒဿနပညာရှင်တဦးဖြစ်တာမို့ သိထားသင့်တဲ့ထဲပါတယ်။
Profile Image for Sammy.
51 reviews4 followers
September 27, 2007
If you have read one of these, you have read all of these.
Cute, good warmer-upper, but don't expect to have great insight about Hegel afterwards.
Profile Image for Andy.
142 reviews12 followers
April 14, 2017
This book presented a very thorough summary of Hegel, including his life, thought, and legacy. Highly recommended.
Profile Image for Samuel  Melo.
52 reviews33 followers
November 20, 2021
Excellent

Absolutely precious introduction to one of the most important thinkers. The one who opened the doors for the world as we know it.
Profile Image for Gerj.
79 reviews8 followers
May 13, 2023
Would round up to a solid 3.5

I'm a longstanding fan of the Introducing [....] Graphic Guide books, and this one didn't disappoint. I cannot comment on the veracity of Spencer's depiction of Hegel with any authority, but I enjoyed the mixture of conceptual outlines and historical details. While some have commented that they found the biographical interludes in the story to be a distraction, I often found them to be a welcome break from some of the headier moments of expounding on Hegel's work.

Graphic Guide books are never perfect, and as many often remark, their illustrations are generally more decorative than they are substantive. That said, I found the frequent use of helix and swirling ammonite shells helpful to pull me into a more concrete understanding of the concepts - even as Hegel himself seemingly would have loathed such image-centric allegories.

My standard critiques of Graphic Guides unfortunately still stand for this work: the illustrations do not always match the content, and often formatting is hard to follow. There were multiple times I had to double-check I was reading a quote and not an insertion from the authors - there are still one or two places where I cannot get a full sense of who said what. In other cases, they move on too quickly from a given topic, and do not play the ideas out as fully as they could.

Overall, I thought Spencer and Krauze did their best, and mostly did a titanic figure in the field justice. Because of the book's age, its touchpoints to feminist and decolonial philosophy are, as I would have expected, vanishingly sparse. The Marxian commitment to the Hegelian project is noted towards the latter third of the book, but it utterly fails to reach into other pockets of work, such as Franz Fanon's active engagement with the master/slave dialectic. The baseline of outlining Hegel's work is retained and remains useful, but it misses the broader opportunity (even in 1996!) to showcase the full breadth of the impact of his work.

I left the book considering the nature of teleology and the possibility of cyclicality in his work. As a (Post?)post-Modern, used to the 'death of the author' and Grand Narratives and all the rest, I have an immediate, allergic reaction to what is presented (or at least felt like) the inevitability of the Geist achieving self-awareness and self-consciousness. The Fukayama reference at the very end (eery, given how I had to study it somewhat sardonically when I first went to school) puts this is even more stark relief from the vantage point of 2023, with the deep fissures of the liberal democratic order entirely visible. There is much more reading for me to do now, but particularly with regards to his grammatological approach to art, religion, nature, and philosophy itself, I am left with the sense that a cyclical sense of each of these processes and fields, rather than a dialectically linear one, has tremendous epistemic fruitfulness. I'm sure someone else smarter than me has already thought of that, though, so, I will try to find them.
Profile Image for Álvaro.
326 reviews134 followers
January 2, 2020
3 y pico.

Buenas la primera parte sobre la fenomenología, y la última sobre su influencia en los filosofos posteriores, bastante mas flojas las partes sobre historia, sociedad, religión y arte.
Yo ya habia leído otras cosas sobre Hegel y creo que este libro es una primerísima y básica aproximación a este gigante, tan buena o tan mala como cualquier otra.
Desde luego es hegel 101, pero para tener una foto amplia (más que definida) de su vida e ideas es más que suficiente.

Nota bene: Incluso en esta sencilla introducción Hegel sigue pareciendome un titán, tanto en lo bueno (su gigantesco sistema) como en lo malo (es tan abstracto que es casi incomprensible), por lo que cada libro o artículo que leo sobre él (corto o extenso) me produce la misma sensación que ésta efectiva miniatura, es decir: "el asunto hegel" aún está lejos de mis capacidades.
Profile Image for Anil Swarup.
Author 3 books721 followers
February 15, 2021
Another book that disappoints. Such graphics as have been used in the book could have been utilized to help the reader fathom the complexities of Hegel's philosophy but they have by and large been wasted.
Profile Image for Mio Tastas Viktorsson.
13 reviews8 followers
January 15, 2020
Egentligen är det väl rätt absurt att försöka lära sig Hegel från en seriebok. Jag känner mig som ett spädbarn, som i oskuldsfull förundran undersöker mina egna precis upptäckta händer, helt omedveten om den stora världen utanför min avgrundsdjupa okunnighetens vagga. Ovanför står Georg Wilhelm Friedrich själv och skrattar rakt ner i mitt lilla nyfödda ansikte. Ha ha ha ha.

Helt ok läsning. Behöver läsa mer. Tre stjärnor.
Profile Image for Castles.
674 reviews26 followers
December 7, 2020
Very interesting yet a bit too biographical of you’re interested mostly in the ideas and not in Hegel’s life. Maybe it’s important to understand the context, but I’m much more interested in how Hegel influences our current times.
Profile Image for Negin.
17 reviews
March 14, 2024
این مجموعهٔ «قدم اول» نشر شیرازه رو خیلی دوست دارم. برای آشنایی اولیه، ورود و آشناییِ کلی با اون حوزه‌ای که می‌خواید بدونید خوبن. قیمت‌هاشون هم کمه و تصویرگری‌های کمیکی داره و حوصله‌تون سر نمی‌ره موقع خوندن.
Profile Image for Icon Books.
57 reviews12 followers
November 17, 2011
INTRODUCING guide to the hugely influential German thinker. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel is one of the greatest thinkers of all time. No other philosopher has had such a profound impact on the ideas and political events of the 20th century. Hegel's influential writings on philosophy, politics, history and art are parts of a larger systematic whole. They are also among the most difficult in the entire literature of philosophy. Introducing Hegel guides us through a spectacular system of thought which aimed to make sense of history. The book also provides new perspectives on contemporary postmodern debates about 'metanarratives' (Lyotard) and the 'end of history' (Fukuyama). It is an ideal introduction to this crucial figure in the history of philosophy, and is indispensable for anyone trying to understand such key modern thinkers as Marx, Lacan, Satre and Adorno.

About the Author
Lloyd Spencer is Senior Lecturer in the School of Media at Trinity and All Saints, a college of the University of Leeds. He has written Introducing the Enlightenment and a biographical study of Walter Benjamin. Andrzej Krauze is a cartoonist and illustrator whose work is published regularly in the Guardian, the New Statesman and the Sunday Telegraph.
Profile Image for Nazmi Yaakub.
Author 10 books277 followers
January 3, 2012
BERBEZA dengan buku seputar Descartes yang menjadi pintu masuk daripada era skolastik kepada falsafah moden, introduksi mengenai Hegel yang menumbuhkan banyak pemikiran kritikal pada abad ke-20 agak sukar untuk dikunyah.

Lloyd Spencer dengan ilustrasi Andrzej Krauze mengambil 60 halaman pertama untuk menyorot sejarah Hegel dan pemikiran yang melingkungi zamannya, sebelum meninjau buah fikir Hegel daripada fenomenologi; konsep master & slave; pengetahuan mutlak; pemikiran dialektikal; kebebasan dan fungsi negara dan falsafah seni serta agamanya.

Bagaimanapun adalah penting untuk pemikir atau sekurang-kurangnya Muslim yang menyedari bahaya kerangka pemikiran Barat untuk menjejaki asal-usul pemikir moden yang membentuk acuannya yang turut berpunca daripada Hegel - kerana acuan pemikiran Barat itulah yang sebenarnya menjadi masalah besar kepada umat Islam, dan bukanlah hanya semata-mata ‘budaya sosial’ dalam lingkungan masyarakat Barat.
Profile Image for Owen M. McKinney.
40 reviews
September 7, 2018
A splendid introduction to Hegel's philosophy

This one is a four star publication. It is only a very short introduction to Hegel, but it is very good. It does spend a goodly amount of time focusing on his biography. Furthermore, it spends a good amount of time focusing on his philosophy, and not on what others say about him. Unlike most of the books like this type, it focuses on a real biography of the person.

Moreover, it provides a good look at who he is, and what he believes as a philosopher. It's not what others believe, nor what they believe in relation to him. You get a good perspective of who he is.

This is one of the better Icon Books in this series. This is one not to miss! This is a free book if you have a prime membership. Check it out!
Profile Image for Alan.
Author 0 books25 followers
November 18, 2018
As with many of the introducing books, I can't say I didn't learn anything from reading it, but I can't say I learnt much either. This guide does a good deal of detailing Hegel's life and the basic foundations of his philosophy. Unfortunately these details are far too simplistic and at times unclear. Hegel's works are complex and I was hoping to begin his Phenomenology of Spirit after reading this. I don't think I will. The book is not bad, just not as informative as I would have liked it to be.
Profile Image for Grace.
16 reviews1 follower
April 22, 2015
This book was fun and provided a concise biography of Hegel and the lives of his contemporaries, however, if you are looking to get an actual introduction to Hegelian philosophy this is not the place to start. Without the pictures, the book itself is probably only fifteen full pages of text, but it was a quick and lightminded read for a rainy day. Three stars.
Profile Image for Thomas.
4 reviews
January 16, 2017
Good balance between the biography and the theories. While the theories and the philosophy is somewhat dense - that's their nature. However, this could have been assisted with a brief/abridged dictionary at the end of the book (as other editions in the series have).
Profile Image for Euclides Jitsukawa.
15 reviews
July 26, 2018
Muita boa a abordagem e as ilustrações, servindo muito bem como uma introdução.

Os conceitos são apresentados de maneira simples mas não rasa, e os desenhos ajudam bastante na visualização e são bem caricatos.
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