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The Logic of Desire: An Introduction to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit
Peter Kalkavage's The Logic of Desire guides the reader through Hegel's great work. Given the book's legendary difficulty, one may well ask, "Why even try to read the Phenomenology?" In his preface, Kalkavage explains why he thinks a reader should try:
There is much to commend the study of Hegel: his attentiveness to the deepest, most fundamental questions of philosophy, his uncompromising pursuit of truth, his amazing gift for characterization and critique, his appreciation for the grand sweep of things and the large view, his profound admiration for all that is heroic, especially for the ancient Greeks, those heroes of thought in whom the philosophic spirit first dawned, his penetrating gaze into modernity in all its forms, his enormous breadth of interests, and his audacious claim to have captured absolute knowing in a thoroughly rational account.
According to Kalkavage, the Phenomenology belongs to a quartet of the greatest works on education. The other three members of the quartet are Plato's Republic, Dante's Divine Comedy, and Rousseau's Emile. No genuine philosophic education can omit a serious encounter with this giant of the modern age, the giant who absorbed all the worlds of spiritual vitality that came before him and tried to organize them into a coherent whole.
"This book comes as close as I have seen to a guide to Hegel for the 'courageous non-specialist,' to employ Mr. Kalkavage's expression. He writes from what is obviously a lengthy and deep study of Hegel and of the Phenomenology in particular. There is no patronising of Hegel's complex teaching. The technical terminology is not avoided or concealed by the jovial jargon of a study manual. Kalkavage has mastered the art of presenting topics of great difficulty in a way that will instruct specialists as well as non-specialists. I found especially illuminating his portrait of determinate negation and the difference between consciousness and the phenomenolgical observer. This book should be in every college and university library."—Stanley Rosen
"Having taught philosophy to undergraduates for the past thirty-nine years, I can especially appreciate the value of Peter Kalkavage's book, The Logic of Desire. This work will truly benefit anyone who wishes to learn what Hegel himself is teaching in his first major volume. It provides remarkable insights on Hegel's complex work as a whole as well as serving as a sure guide for every chapter and for virtually every paragraph. Even the many endnotes are very valuable. It should be made readily available to every undergraduate who has to read any part of the Phenomenology."—Dr. Donald C. Lindenmuth, Pennsylvania State University
Peter Kalkavage is a member of the senior faculty at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, where he has taught for thirty years. He is the author of numerous articles on philosophy. He translated Plato's Timaeus and co-translated Plato's Phaedo and Sophist.
There is much to commend the study of Hegel: his attentiveness to the deepest, most fundamental questions of philosophy, his uncompromising pursuit of truth, his amazing gift for characterization and critique, his appreciation for the grand sweep of things and the large view, his profound admiration for all that is heroic, especially for the ancient Greeks, those heroes of thought in whom the philosophic spirit first dawned, his penetrating gaze into modernity in all its forms, his enormous breadth of interests, and his audacious claim to have captured absolute knowing in a thoroughly rational account.
According to Kalkavage, the Phenomenology belongs to a quartet of the greatest works on education. The other three members of the quartet are Plato's Republic, Dante's Divine Comedy, and Rousseau's Emile. No genuine philosophic education can omit a serious encounter with this giant of the modern age, the giant who absorbed all the worlds of spiritual vitality that came before him and tried to organize them into a coherent whole.
"This book comes as close as I have seen to a guide to Hegel for the 'courageous non-specialist,' to employ Mr. Kalkavage's expression. He writes from what is obviously a lengthy and deep study of Hegel and of the Phenomenology in particular. There is no patronising of Hegel's complex teaching. The technical terminology is not avoided or concealed by the jovial jargon of a study manual. Kalkavage has mastered the art of presenting topics of great difficulty in a way that will instruct specialists as well as non-specialists. I found especially illuminating his portrait of determinate negation and the difference between consciousness and the phenomenolgical observer. This book should be in every college and university library."—Stanley Rosen
"Having taught philosophy to undergraduates for the past thirty-nine years, I can especially appreciate the value of Peter Kalkavage's book, The Logic of Desire. This work will truly benefit anyone who wishes to learn what Hegel himself is teaching in his first major volume. It provides remarkable insights on Hegel's complex work as a whole as well as serving as a sure guide for every chapter and for virtually every paragraph. Even the many endnotes are very valuable. It should be made readily available to every undergraduate who has to read any part of the Phenomenology."—Dr. Donald C. Lindenmuth, Pennsylvania State University
Peter Kalkavage is a member of the senior faculty at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, where he has taught for thirty years. He is the author of numerous articles on philosophy. He translated Plato's Timaeus and co-translated Plato's Phaedo and Sophist.
537 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 2007
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About the author
Peter Kalkavage
13 books9 followersPeter Kalkavage was a longtime tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, where he taught from 1977 until 2024 and served as director of the St. John’s Chorus. A scholar of philosophy and music, he authored The Logic of Desire: An Introduction to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit and contributed to acclaimed translations of Plato’s Timaeus, Phaedo, Statesman, and Symposium for the Focus Philosophical Library. He also wrote On the Measurement of Tones and Elements: A Workbook for Freshman Music, both widely used in the college’s music program.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
March 23, 2020
One can reread Phenomenology of Spirit [PoS] or one can read this book. It really doesn’t matter in as much as the reader will get the same out of this book as they would have from rereading PoS. This author writes his book as if he is channeling Hegel and this book reads in the same vein and for the most parts this book read as if it is a concept entwined within a concept about a thought of some thoughts, just as Hegel would write. That’s a compliment to this author. He writes this book as if Hegel was writing it while occasionally connecting thoughts that needed to be connected between sections, something that Hegel didn’t do, but would have ably served a first time reader of PoS if he had.
Hegel says cryptically what this author will say directly such as that love of wisdom pales in comparison to absolute knowledge that gets revealed through a historical synthesis which leads to the mixing of the ‘logic of desire’ with the experiences of the phenomenological that relies on our sense certainty before it becomes absolute knowledge or spirit that becomes aware of itself as an externalize notion of an objective reality. It’s our desires about our desires that differentiate us from all others, and without another we can’t really be and within Hegel’s God there must be humans in order to make him Him, while conversely Feuerbach will say it is man that creates God for man and what separates us from all other animals is that we have religion.
Hegel gets at something that is well worth understanding and this author does a great job of showing what that is. Socrates tells us how to Be a citizen within a polis, Descartes takes the world away from us in order to give us perfect rational certainty with his cogito, Hume takes causality out of the world but Kant returns it by inverting all of philosophy that came before him by starting anti-realism through intuiting space and time as foundational to the faculty of understanding for the observing subject through his Copernican Revolution of the Mind, and Heidegger will make an existential reality by showing that Being is time and time is finite, but before Heidegger gets there he must go through Hegel who takes Being and contrast it with a nothing through its negation and negates an Either/Or through a dialectic since all determinations are negations of an infinite which creates a sublation (e.g. either the stoic or the skeptic dialectically leading to an unhappy consciousness otherwise known as a Christian) , this book fills in those gaps by summarizing Hegel using Hegelise while relating what was said to previously raised points something that Hegel clearly did not do himself.
In the end, Hegel is well worth understanding because he gives one a gateway to understanding the self and soothes us from Heidegger’s Being-unto-death and his throwness which Heidegger gives without anything but an elusive hermeneutic circle which at best only flirts with authenticity through Heidegger’s mystical unveiling of a present while Hegel when carefully read makes us realize that it is not ’l’enfer c’est les autres’ (hell is others), Sartre’s most famous quote, but, rather, it is ‘hell is not having other people’ since without the objective there is no subjective, or without the other there is no self, or without the group there is no us and without the other there can be no authenticity. Understanding Hegel is necessary for putting various modern philosophers together and for soothing us from Being-unto-death and this book shows why.
Hegel says cryptically what this author will say directly such as that love of wisdom pales in comparison to absolute knowledge that gets revealed through a historical synthesis which leads to the mixing of the ‘logic of desire’ with the experiences of the phenomenological that relies on our sense certainty before it becomes absolute knowledge or spirit that becomes aware of itself as an externalize notion of an objective reality. It’s our desires about our desires that differentiate us from all others, and without another we can’t really be and within Hegel’s God there must be humans in order to make him Him, while conversely Feuerbach will say it is man that creates God for man and what separates us from all other animals is that we have religion.
Hegel gets at something that is well worth understanding and this author does a great job of showing what that is. Socrates tells us how to Be a citizen within a polis, Descartes takes the world away from us in order to give us perfect rational certainty with his cogito, Hume takes causality out of the world but Kant returns it by inverting all of philosophy that came before him by starting anti-realism through intuiting space and time as foundational to the faculty of understanding for the observing subject through his Copernican Revolution of the Mind, and Heidegger will make an existential reality by showing that Being is time and time is finite, but before Heidegger gets there he must go through Hegel who takes Being and contrast it with a nothing through its negation and negates an Either/Or through a dialectic since all determinations are negations of an infinite which creates a sublation (e.g. either the stoic or the skeptic dialectically leading to an unhappy consciousness otherwise known as a Christian) , this book fills in those gaps by summarizing Hegel using Hegelise while relating what was said to previously raised points something that Hegel clearly did not do himself.
In the end, Hegel is well worth understanding because he gives one a gateway to understanding the self and soothes us from Heidegger’s Being-unto-death and his throwness which Heidegger gives without anything but an elusive hermeneutic circle which at best only flirts with authenticity through Heidegger’s mystical unveiling of a present while Hegel when carefully read makes us realize that it is not ’l’enfer c’est les autres’ (hell is others), Sartre’s most famous quote, but, rather, it is ‘hell is not having other people’ since without the objective there is no subjective, or without the other there is no self, or without the group there is no us and without the other there can be no authenticity. Understanding Hegel is necessary for putting various modern philosophers together and for soothing us from Being-unto-death and this book shows why.
February 21, 2016
Arguably, there are at least 3 commentaries that one should consider reading. H.S. Harris' titanic Hegel's Ladder is the longest and most erudite. Hyppolite's Genesis and Structure is the most read and most influential. Kalkavage's Logic of Desire is more more approachable than either. But that isn't the main reason why you should read it.
Why, then, is this the best commentary on the Phenomenology of Spirit? Because it is the only one that is *just* about the Phenomenology. It isn't about Hegel's thought in general or Hegel's context or Hegel scholarship or Hegel's influence on later thought (if you want any or all of those or want to become a Hegel scholar, read Harris, he's a legend). Logic of Desire is just about Hegel's wild first book from start to finish.
Kalkavage follows the movement of the text closely and writes in clear, fluid prose. He is familiar with the tradition and helps the reader see how much Hegel is drawing on ancient, medieval and early modern philosophy, science and literature, while keeping the focus squarely on Hegel's arguments. Kalkavage is especially helpful on 1) the often strange natural scientific ideas that pop up in the book and 2) the nuances of the literary and poetic works Hegel engages.
Why, then, is this the best commentary on the Phenomenology of Spirit? Because it is the only one that is *just* about the Phenomenology. It isn't about Hegel's thought in general or Hegel's context or Hegel scholarship or Hegel's influence on later thought (if you want any or all of those or want to become a Hegel scholar, read Harris, he's a legend). Logic of Desire is just about Hegel's wild first book from start to finish.
Kalkavage follows the movement of the text closely and writes in clear, fluid prose. He is familiar with the tradition and helps the reader see how much Hegel is drawing on ancient, medieval and early modern philosophy, science and literature, while keeping the focus squarely on Hegel's arguments. Kalkavage is especially helpful on 1) the often strange natural scientific ideas that pop up in the book and 2) the nuances of the literary and poetic works Hegel engages.
March 24, 2021
Tries to understand Hegel on Hegel's terms. His Heideggerian turns of phrase were more confusing than elucidating, but otherwise this is a fantastic book
August 20, 2014
This is The Book on the Phenomenology. It will get you through the ferocious difficulty that is reading Hegel.
No, seriously. I don't want to say it will make Hegel "easy"—nothing will, it's Hegel!—but it will make it possible. For someone trying to read the Phenomenology independently, outside of a seminar, without colleagues or teachers to check my own readings with or correct interpretations, I had to have this book. It's less a traditional commentary than a seminar, an unpacking and translation of Hegelese into actual English. Often, I would find that, after reading what Mr. Kalkavage had to say, I'd return to Hegel to find that I'd read everything before, but more clearly stated. Sometimes, it seems as if this is a translation of the translation, an absolutely faithful interpretation of Hegel's text that makes reading him feasible.
No, seriously. I don't want to say it will make Hegel "easy"—nothing will, it's Hegel!—but it will make it possible. For someone trying to read the Phenomenology independently, outside of a seminar, without colleagues or teachers to check my own readings with or correct interpretations, I had to have this book. It's less a traditional commentary than a seminar, an unpacking and translation of Hegelese into actual English. Often, I would find that, after reading what Mr. Kalkavage had to say, I'd return to Hegel to find that I'd read everything before, but more clearly stated. Sometimes, it seems as if this is a translation of the translation, an absolutely faithful interpretation of Hegel's text that makes reading him feasible.
May 16, 2024
If Hegel’s Phenomenology has a religious cult, this book’s author, Kalkavage, is an apologist. I’d call Kalkavage a conservative like I’d call Hannah Arendt a conservative. There’s something charming about how you feel like you’re getting a lecture from a guy high on “great books” like he’s Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society but college-level Greek and German philosophy. He’s definitely feeling the world-spirit about him while writing and it shows. My guess is academics have no patients for that sort of zeal. That said, I honestly enjoyed it, had to hang it up before finishing, but would happily return to it when I’m in the mood for that sort of thing again.
February 21, 2021
This book is pure gold for anyone who wants to attempt to read Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. I have no academic experience with philosophy, and I found this book very readable and enjoyable. And yet, it was a few friends who have PhDs in Philosophy who had actually recommended this book to me, giving it the highest praise. So I feel like anyone of any background could use this book to begin their journey into the world of Hegel.
What is especially great is that Kalkagave gives historical information and citations that unless you had read quite a bit of philosophy and greek and philosophical history, you would have no idea about. He also does his best to try to give a good outline of the steps that Hegel lays out so you can keep your bearings, while at the same time, going deep into the nitty gritty of the concepts and not oversimplifying them. I would read Phenomenology of Spirit and have a slight idea of what was going on, then go to Kalkavage's commentary and be open to a slew of ideas and steps that I had missed. I definitely gained a wider breath of knowledge and understanding of Hegel's dialectical process and details of Phenomenology of Spirit thanks to this book. I can't recommend it enough.
What is especially great is that Kalkagave gives historical information and citations that unless you had read quite a bit of philosophy and greek and philosophical history, you would have no idea about. He also does his best to try to give a good outline of the steps that Hegel lays out so you can keep your bearings, while at the same time, going deep into the nitty gritty of the concepts and not oversimplifying them. I would read Phenomenology of Spirit and have a slight idea of what was going on, then go to Kalkavage's commentary and be open to a slew of ideas and steps that I had missed. I definitely gained a wider breath of knowledge and understanding of Hegel's dialectical process and details of Phenomenology of Spirit thanks to this book. I can't recommend it enough.
August 24, 2008
Anyone who writes off Kalkavage's careful reading - confident enough in its real mastery to be entirely unpretentious - as mere pedagogy is going to have to fight me. :-)
May 29, 2012
If you only read one introduction to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, make it this one.
October 5, 2016
Absolutely superb.
April 30, 2020
Definitely the best book I've read on Hegel's Phenomenology.
August 6, 2024
I am going to preface this review by making a plea to everyone here, do not buy this book in physical form. It is free to read on the internet archive (https://archive.org/details/peter-kal...). If you must read this in physical form you should look second hand.
After many years of students begging the school do actually conduct an investigation into Kalkavage’s behaviour into students St. Johns College finally fired him under violation of title IX. Peter Kalkavage has admitted to sexual assault, there are countless students who have detailed accounts of him acting inappropriately towards them. The school has allowed this to go on for a better part of his 30 years teaching there, and had yet to give an official statement on Kalkavage and title IX (something students have also began protesting as well)
It goes without saying that there is zero room to defend this persons actions and that financial support towards him should be kept at a minimum.
I first read this book back in 2019 when I was getting into Hegel and found it to be a masterfully simple and approachable book on Hegel. It is also one of the only ones which contains illustrations of any kind. This is probably in no thanks to his mentor, Stanley Rosen who wrote probably one of the only really good books on the Science of Logic. If you are interested in Hegel this is probably the best starting ground to do so.
The goal of my goodreads reviews is to not write reviews of older books I have read but to see which books I like and which ones i don’t, and I probably won’t write a review of a book here unless it genuinely touched me or impacted me in some way, even if this is negative. In this case I have to come back and condemn the actions of the author and the school as well for not doing anything about it for so long.
After many years of students begging the school do actually conduct an investigation into Kalkavage’s behaviour into students St. Johns College finally fired him under violation of title IX. Peter Kalkavage has admitted to sexual assault, there are countless students who have detailed accounts of him acting inappropriately towards them. The school has allowed this to go on for a better part of his 30 years teaching there, and had yet to give an official statement on Kalkavage and title IX (something students have also began protesting as well)
It goes without saying that there is zero room to defend this persons actions and that financial support towards him should be kept at a minimum.
I first read this book back in 2019 when I was getting into Hegel and found it to be a masterfully simple and approachable book on Hegel. It is also one of the only ones which contains illustrations of any kind. This is probably in no thanks to his mentor, Stanley Rosen who wrote probably one of the only really good books on the Science of Logic. If you are interested in Hegel this is probably the best starting ground to do so.
The goal of my goodreads reviews is to not write reviews of older books I have read but to see which books I like and which ones i don’t, and I probably won’t write a review of a book here unless it genuinely touched me or impacted me in some way, even if this is negative. In this case I have to come back and condemn the actions of the author and the school as well for not doing anything about it for so long.
October 17, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews