Genesi e struttura della «Fenomenologia dello spirito» di Hegel

by Jean Hyppolite, Gian Antonio De Toni (Traduttore), Vincenzo Cicero (Contributor)

Jean Hyppolite si propone di fare un commento e una parafrasi che seguono con fedeltà il testo hegeliano pagina per pagina, nell'intento di renderne più comprensibile l'insieme. Ogni appiglio interno al testo viene sfruttato per chiarire le varie connessioni di un'opera che ha esercitato sulle menti più diverse un fascino quasi pari alle difficoltà intrinseche che l'accompagnano. Grazie alla inesauribile fruibilità e all'esemplare rigore di questo strumento, come scrive Vincenzo Cicero nella sua introduzione al volume, "il commento di Jean Hyppolite alla Fenomenologia dello Spirito è ancora oggi, a sessant'anni suonati, un modello insuperato di interpretazione 'oggettiva' del libro più famoso di Hegel".

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Theory, History, Germany, France

783 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1947

About the author

Jean Hyppolite was a French philosopher known for championing the work of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and other German philosophers, and educating some of France's most prominent post-war thinkers. His major works include Genesis and Structure of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit and Studies on Marx and Hegel.

Reviews

[Jesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Spectacular explication of the Phenomenology. As the first thing I read in depth on Hegel, it will undoubtedly influence my views from here forward.



*UPDATE* It has been about a year since I read this. Since then, I have read everything about Hegel I can get my hands own. Needless to say, my understanding has been greatly enriched over that period of time and now, in looking back at my copy of this book, I can see even more clearly just how magnificent a commentary it truly is. Surely one of the best commentaries on Hegel there is. As opposed to a lot of the other commentaries on the Phenomenology, this one incorporates Hyppolite's understanding of the Logic into its explication of the text. Naturally, this flew far above my head the first time but, looking at it again, I realize how magisterial this book's extremely careful exegesis truly is.

[Beauregard Bottomley · Rating 5 out of 5]

To read Hegel’s ‘Phenomenology of Spirit’ [‘PoS’] is to love it. I’ve never read a book that grabbed me from the first paragraph onward as that book did. It has an ebb and flow that scratches the itch of that part of the mind that lies beyond the ordinary and takes one beyond the appearance of reality and transcends one to the thoughts between the thoughts such that it makes one realize that authenticity must be jealous of irony. I would say if one revels in sentences such as the absolute notion is the concept of the concept and if one prefers thinking about thinking instead of dwelling in the mundane Hegel’s ‘PoS’ is a must read and books such as this one are too.

Hyppolite’s take on Hegel is Hegelian. He’ll write in the same fashion as Hegel does and will explain using an abstract to get at an abstract and then tell you the universal as it is related to the specific down to the individual. I speak Hegelise. I wish others that I met did too. That way I could cut through their bullshit and get to the substance of matters and meaning. Alas, regretfully Hegel is so last century, but, nevertheless, he is relevant to today.

Can one read this book without having first read Hegel’s ‘PoS’? Yes, an emphatic yes would be the answer. There is one warning. Make those two warnings. Hyppolite thinks Hegel’s ‘Science of Logic’ is necessary and ultimately links Hegel back to that. I think one doesn’t need the seriousness of the ‘Science of Logic’ (I’ve read it; it strikes me as if Hegel was taking himself way too seriously). Hyppolite keeps the Hegalise in this book and will dissect each chapter by using the original Hegalian speak. If Hegel’s patois confuses you in its original form, it will just as likely confuse you in this version.

I’ve read Hyppolite’s ‘Marx and Hegel’ which is referred to frequently within this book. From this book and that book I have the suspicion that Hyppolite misconstrues Hegel’s religiosity. I think Feuerbach and his ‘Essence of Christianity’ which is quoted extensively in this book by way of contrast to what Hyppolite thought Hegel meant gets Hegel’s religiousity more correct than Hyppolite did. One of the keys to understanding Hegel and for which Hyppolite seems to disagree with is to realize that it is with certainty that God exists within us and He is me because every time I pray to God I hear that prayer because I am only praying to myself. Man created God in their own image not God created Man in His image. Avicenna’s ‘floating man’ with its inherent soul is antithetical to what Hegel is getting at.

It doesn’t really matter where one enters their study of Hegel’s ‘PoS’. Hegel is well worth the effort. One can read Harris’ ‘Hegel’s Ladder’, or this book, or ‘PoS’ itself. All are equally challenging reads but well worthwhile. Hegel is just as relevant today no matter which form one chooses to ingest him by. Our actions, our thoughts and our meaning get convoluted by our experiences, culture, class, nation, and it us up to us to find our own authentic meaning, and it helps to have Hegel as your guide. (Dante plays a surprisingly large part within this book and even a larger part within Harris' 'Hegel's Ladder'. As Virgil and Beatrice were Dante's guide, it's okay for other's to be our guide for reconciling our actions with our thoughts and discovering our non-alienated meaning).

Bryan Magee in his excellent book ‘Philosophy of Schopenhauer’ makes the point that Schopenhauer had more in common with Hegel than was commonly thought. Hitler’s monstrous autobiography listed his 3 most favorite Germans as Goethe, Luther and Frederick the Great. The first two make major appearances in this book, and it’s clear from ‘Mein Kampf’ that Hitler would have put Hegel on his short list of favorite Germans. To understand Trump and his fascism and especially his narcissism, it really helps to understand Hegel, for within Hegel the narcissist’s denial of the other as a real human being means that the narcissist can never see the other as anything but an object to be used. Torture and saying such things as ‘there needs to be more torture’ as Trump did during the campaign of 2016, for example, would mean nothing for those with no sense of the other as human beings, mocking the disable or making fun of fat people (as Trump did last night, 8/15/2019), all of that kind of behavior is easily understandable as undesirable and would easily be understandable for its perversion of being human within the Hegelian dialectic. In order to have meaning, one must first recognize the other as another.

As for me, I love a good book that speaks abstractly about the abstraction of an abstract and never really talks down to the reader because they assume the reader wants to understand and determine one’s own meaning. This book, Hegel’s ‘PoS’, and Harris’ ‘Hegel’s Ladder’ all do that for those who value scratching that hard to get at itch in the hidden recesses of one’s own mind.

[Domhnall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hippolyte suggests that Hegel has set out his philosophical system fully on two occasions, in his Phenomenology and in his Logic and he makes clear that – in his opinion at least – there is no important difference between the two. I am not sure if that qualifies Lenin’s demand that we must read Hegel’s Logic; does reading the Phenomenology suffice?

This is a comprehensive guide to the Phenomenology and his book is as long and as challenging as Hegel’s. I can’t say that the language used is radically more accessible than Hegel’s, or even much different, but it is more human, supplying introductory sections, often points out a historical context in relation to other philosophers, especially Kant and his immediate successors, regularly relates this to other Hegel texts and sets out an interpretation of what it is that Hegel was trying to communicate. Hippolyte makes explicit that Hegel’s text is at times impossibly obscure or even dubious, absolving the reader who needs permission to stop trying to make sense of passages that don’t. There remains the nagging worry that one has been diverted from working directly with Hegel into accepting a more digestible substitute which is really an interpretation but one cannot accuse Hippolyte of trying to over-simplify the system and without a guide than I wonder what mortal has the time or the energy to attempt the task.

Simply finishing every page of Hippolyte, hot on the heels of reading the Phenomenology itself, is for the moment sufficient achievement for me. I'm not qualified to make a very useful comment on such a monolith.

[Buck · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a chapter by chapter intro and guide to the text, it is miles ahead of the (obnoxiously) polemical and almost one-sided focus of Hyppolite's main interpretor alternative in France at the time(Kojeve). Its a good book to introduce yourself to the main threads of the chapters examinations of figures of spirits(in normal parlance, the staging of self-consciousnesses' norms vis a vis its instantiations across different modulations of the search for certainty, whether this be epistemic, ethical, communal, etc.). As to whether this book will answer more meta-textual questions in an in-depth manner(the relation of Phen.Of.Spirit to the rest of the system, or an examination of the meaning of true infinity across Hegel's corpus) you are better off elsewhere, but as a textual guide, it is good enough as a start.

[Silvester Borsboom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Très utile.

[Alex Obrigewitsch · Rating 5 out of 5]

This work is the fruit much study of Hegel's texts and thought. A significant aid in any understanding not only of the Phenomenology, but of all of Hegel's thought.
By looking to the genesis of the text, by working through it to formulate the structure of its thought, and even in looking beyond it to the Logic, Hyppolite maps out and carefully guides the reader through a reading of the Phenomenology, ever careful to look back and recollect each stage and transition of the unfolding of spirit's self-consciousness as absolute through its phenomenal, dialectical development.

I highly recommend this text to those venturing into Hegel, as it takes less interpretive freedoms with Hegel's thought than other contemporary, though important, readings, such as Kojéve (Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit) for example.

[Aeisele · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good interpretation of Hegel, or at least groundbreaking at the time. At the time, the "anthropological" reading of Hegel was in vogue, and Hyppolite was the first one to question whether or not Hegel was actually dealing with structural issues (i.e., what "structures" had to be in place in order to bring out self-consciousness, and then knowledge). For a younger generation (his students like Foucault, Derrida, etc.) this was a pretty important reading.

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ja, ik ben fan. hyppolite maakt - tot op zekere hoogte - Hegel begrijpelijk. En iedereen die wel eens Hegel heeft geprobeerd te lezen, of zelfs maar over hem heeft gehoord, weet dat dat een enorme prestatie is. Ja, ik ben fan.

[Nathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best commentaries on Hegel; an absolute classic. However, do not mistake everything Hyppolite says for Hegel’s thought. Proceed with caution. Highly recommended, just read Hegel first.

[Dionysius the Areopagite · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not quite canis lupus familiaris, but as Lonergan notes in Insight that we are not actively concerned with kittens at present, the dog analogy may be improper. Nonetheless, a good companion is that Hyppolite by way of Northwestern. It'll be tough on the work if H.S. Harris's tome ever comes down in price, but either way it's great to have on one's Hegel Shelf. I often take it up at various hours of the day in lieu of newspapers.

[James Millikan · Rating 4 out of 5]

You need a good Virgil to guide you through the harrowing passages of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. If you are searching for a section by section reference to make sense of this philosopher's complex prose, Hyppolite is a good choice. If you are looking for a more thematic approach, I recommend Hans-Georg Gadamer's treatment.

[Davidk · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wouldn't recommend this as an intro to Hegel because for me (amateur philosopher) I found this very hard to understand. Still, it gave me a good 'sense' of the understanding of hegel's book. It definitely requires a re-read.

[Jack W · Rating 4 out of 5]

they should write a commentary for the commentary

[Lucas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite invaluable for understanding the historical and literary allusions abundant in the Phenomenology. However, I much prefer Brandom’s read in terms of the argumentative gloss (although I do think the two pair well together, as understandings of different layers of the onion that is the Phenomenology of Spirit).