Hegel's Phenomenology: The Sociality of Reason

by Terry P. Pinkard

This book is the most detailed commentary on Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit available and develops an independent philosophical account of the general theory of knowledge, culture, and history contained in it. Written in a clear and straightforward style, the book reconstructs Hegel's theoretical philosophy and shows its connection to the ethical and political theory. Terry Pinkard sets the work in a historical context and reveals the contemporary relevance of Hegel's thought to European and Anglo-American philosophers.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Politics, Academia

464 pages, Paperback

First published June 24, 1994

Reviews

[Justin Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perhaps *the* place to start if all you know about Hegel is that he's a metaphysical lunatic who thinks 'The Absolute' develops over time and individuals don't exist. Pinkard effectively destroys this silly reading, and provides an interesting one in its place: that Hegel is basically talking about the accounts we give of things and ourselves, and showing how they change over time. This leaves out a great deal though, reducing Hegel to a bit too much of a pragmatist. Pippin's work (e.g., 'Hegel's Idealism') is a good corrective, since it involves much more the transcendental question of how we come to know objects, or what an object is for us.

The best thing about this book, though, is that it makes the Phenomenology - one of the least coherent books of all time - coherent. Pinkard treats the opening chapters as they obviously ought to be treated, an investigation into the minimal conditions for an account of how things are (to put it in unhelpfully abstract terms). He argues that these minimal conditions include consciousness, and that the second section of the PhS is an investigation into the minimal conditions for an account of consciousness - which turns out to include self-consciousness, so that the next section is an investigation into *its* minimal conditions. The last, historical portion of the PhS is an account of how we came to this point. That all this makes sense is remarkable; not sure if it's right though. I suspect it just is incoherent.

One thing to note: I've read the PhS, and re-read most of it many times. It's not clear to me if this is helpful as an introduction to the reading of the PhS, but I'm certain it would be helpful to read alongside Hegel's work. And the introduction is excellent if you're looking for a short intro.

[A prince from Serendip · Rating 4 out of 5]

One day I decided that I wanted to read Hegel. But how does one read Hegel?
I figured there were two ways. Either, I pick up a book by him, read it while knowing that I’m not going to understand most of it, and then subsequently become (1) someone who rejects Hegel due to criticisms generated out of fundamental misunderstandings of his philosophy, or (2) a recovering Hegelian. The other option was to read someone else’s take on him, without feeling that I was missing out on the sensations that reading Hegel reputedly could invoke. I opted for the latter, and Terry Pinkard’s Hegel’s Phenomenology: The Sociality of Reason appeared as a good candidate. The fact that it was a "reconstruction" of the PhS rather than a presentation of Hegel’s main ideas gave me the impression that there would be a lot of analysis (struggle) left to the reader, and having now finished the book I can say with confidence that my initial impressions were correct.

So what is this book? Primarily, it is a reconstruction and commentary of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, in addition to a 50 or so page long suggestion of how the PhS is tied to Hegel’s view on ethics as presented in his Philosophy of Rights (which was published after the PhS).

Pinkard claims that a common misunderstanding of the PhS is that it is some kind of causal account of the history of Western civilization. More specifically (and using Hegelian terms), the misconception lies in the (mis)understanding that the negation generated by one form of life as it reflects on its own accounts of what are authoritative reasons for belief and action (the negation being generated by the revelation of inconsistencies and incoherencies within that form of life) has causal historical consequences. An example would be to think that Hegel argues that the Roman form of life succeeded the Greek form of life because Greek life carried within it the incompatibility of human and divine law, thereby necessitating a formation of consciousness (the understanding of “how things are done”, what counts as authoritative reasons for action and belief) that solved this negation (i.e the Roman form of life). Pinkard argues this is wrong, because Hegel did nothing of the sorts of attempting to create a causal law of history, i.e that once one formation of consciousness is negated, it will lead to a new one, which leads to a third one once this one is negated etc etc.

"Rome does not enter the scene in order to complete Greece, but in the retrospective viewpoint given by dialectical history, it becomes to be seen as having completed Greece" (Pinkard: 335)

Spirit can therefore not be understood as some metaphysical force that drives history into a determined direction, having a clear end point in sight. It only appears teleological when approaching it retroactively from an already given end point (in the case of the PhS the “now” of Hegel). This leads us to what Pinkard argues to be Hegel’s actual project, namely an attempt of trying to understand how we have become the type of people that one needs to be in order to be able to carry out a project like the Phenomenology. The PhS is here then presented as the attempt of understanding how “we”(meaning Hegel and his contemporaries) have reached “absolute knowledge”, which is a position where authoritative reasons for action and belief are such that agents understand what they are doing, why they are doing it and why it should be authoritative – all without having to resort to tradition (we do what we do and are what we are because it was the way of our ancestors) or the metaphysical (we do what we do and are what we are because it is the prescription given by the Gods). Absolute knowledge realized thereby presupposes a form of life where agents have a non-alienated understanding of themselves as agents, because, as opposed to alienated forms of life, they are not blind to the human (social) origins of the institutions that dictate their lives.

Hegel’s final task is to prove that his thesis is right, that is that modern life(which is what he calls his contemporary time) does provide modern subjects with a non-alienating account of themselves. This is a task Hegel took on in the Philosophy of Rights, where also, Pinkard argues, the real meaning behind Hegel’s claim that we have reached the end of history is revealed. History ended only in the sense that it marked the end of the conceptual development of freedom, meaning that, on a conceptual level, the modern formation of consciousness now allowed agents to provide a non-alienating account of what they are doing and why they were doing it without having to ground it in the metaphysical. From this perspective, the “end of history” thus simply means the end of the conceptual development of freedom.


“Absolute knowledge is the internal reflection on the social practices of a modern community that takes its authoritative standards to come only from within the structure of the practices it uses to legitimate and authenticate itself” (Pinkard: 262)

What does it mean that the concept of freedom has been fully developed? Shortly put, it means that modern life allows for a synthesis of the subjective experience of social reality and the objective reflection on it. His demonstration of how this synthesis is made possible is also a criticism of Kant's categorical imperative. More precisely, Hegel offers a solution to what he perceived to be a problem in Kant's categorical imperative; the failure to account for why agents would be motivated to act as they "ought" to act (being Kant's universal law maxim). Kant offers agents with ethical ends that he claims they as self-determining agents can reach through reason, thereby enforcing these ends by virtue of them being rational. Hegel however argues this to be an insufficient account of subjective motivation, the biggest problem being that Kant didn't offer any substance. More specifically, Kant didn't provide any prescriptions of what modern agents should do, only a method of deciding whether or not potential actions are or are not morally righteous. This posed the second problem as seen by Hegel, namely that, according to Kant, the morally righteous was accessible by the agent using his or her subjective point of view. Hegel saw this as a non-justifiable resolution of the subjective and objective point of view. Hegel claims to solve this by introducing ethical ends, which are both socially presented as things that one ought to do, while at the same time being desirable for the agent when reflecting on it from an objective point of view, thereby motivating him or her to pursue these ends on both levels. These ethical ends are essentially manifested as roles: (1) family member, (2) modern individual, and (3) citizen, operating within the social institutions of (1) the family, (2) the market and (3) the political community. These are ends, Hegel claims, that are both appealing from the subjective point of view, as well as rational froman impersonal/objective perspective. They are ethical ends with substance. As for situations that fall outside of the sphere of these three roles and institutions, Hegel claims that, in modern life, this is the arena where the conscience is allowed to make decisions. Hegel however doesn’t problematize the justification of giving conscience the primary role in deciding on moral issues, which leaves a lot of questions unanswered, as well as leaving Hegel’s claim of having improved on Kant’s self-proclaimed synthesis of the subjective and objective motivations prone to criticism.

"The superiority of modern life consists in the rationality that it brings to spirit – that is, in achieving an internal coherence of a “social space” such that a form of life is achieved in which there is no cleft between the objective and the subjective point of view, in which the type of systemic alienation that had characterized past forms of life – namely, alienation as a reflection of the irrationality of social space – vanishes”" (Pinkard: 336)

So, why should one read Pinkard’s reconstruction of the PhS?
Hopefully, it helps one dodge some of the more fundamental misunderstandings that reading Hegel might lead do. Without having read the PhS myself, it appears that many misconceptions might arise from the fact that Hegel had to write somewhat cryptically in order to bypass the censorship of his era. This potentially makes reading the PhS alone (without having any references to his complete set of works) not sufficient for actually understanding the PhS. Only when one takes into account Hegel’s lectures and other writings, does one acquire the “deciphering” that is needed in order to get to what Hegel “really “ meant in the PhS. At least, this is the notion that I got from reading Pinkard. If anything, a reading of the PhS by someone with proficiency in (1) German, (2) the cultural context in which he was writing, (3) the works that he was implicitly and explicitly criticizing/referring to in his writings, and, perhaps most importantly, (4) Hegel’s complete collection of works, arguably allows for a more graspable take of Hegel’s philosophy for someone with limited or no proficiency in the areas listed above.

[Mesoscope · Rating 5 out of 5]

An invaluable guide to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. There are many long passages that would have remained completely incomprehensible to me without it. I did not always agree with every point of interpretation, but on the whole I think his approach is persuasive and fundamentally sound. Of the several commentaries I consulted and used, if I were forced to choose just one, it would be this.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is probably the best commentary of any of Hegel’s works I’ve read yet. It is in-depth without being inscrutable for non-professionals and while it is not a section by section readers guide like Findlay’s addenda to the Miller translation, the commentary does track the progression of the Phenomenology with careful and detailed analysis of the major ideas as they unfold in Hegel. Pinkard brings to bear a so-called “anti-metaphysical” reading (à la Pippin and Brandom) that interprets Hegel in a way agreeable to those more familiar with American Pragmatism or Analytic Philosophy than with Continental Philosophy which, in my view, can seem cryptic and unclear. This commentary is effective in the Herculean task of making Hegel relatively clear and plain.

More specifically, Pinkard interprets the Phenomenology as a reconstruction of the various forms of life (“shapes of Spirit”) which have historically unfolded as humanity attempts to construct an internally coherent account of itself and what it takes to be authoritative for belief and action. In this reading exotic Hegelian terms like “Spirit” are recast as “social reflective practices”, “essence” as “authoritative reasons for belief and action”, “negativity” as “skeptical doubts”, and so on. Explained in this way, Hegel’s Phenomenology aims to reveal how knowledge is an incredibly complex social practice involving much more than the faculties at play in earlier empiricist or rationalist or transcendental philosophy (hence the subtitle of the book: The Sociality of Reason).

Another strength of the book was its inclusion, in the final chapter “The Essential Structure of Modern Life”, of an analysis of Hegel’s project beyond what is contained in the Phenomenology. The last eighty pages or so is really a reading of Hegel’s later “Philosophy of Right” as it relates to the project of the Phenomenology. That is, as an account of how the self-identity and institutions of modern life (or early 19th century Prussian life really) provide a way of living that brings the subjective view of ourselves as rationally free agents and the objective view of ourselves as a moral community with rights together such that the earlier deficiencies in Greek, Roman, Medieval, Enlightenment life and so on are overcome.

[Jaakko · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paras Hegel-kommentaari mitä oon lukenu. Tai siis kirjottajan mukaan tämä ei ole kommentaari, vaan Hengen fenomenologian "rekonstruktio".

Joka tapauksessa analyyttisen koulukunnan Hegel-luennassa määritellään käsitteet tarkkaan ja selkeästi ja niitä käytetään johdonmukaisesti. Tämä on erittäin kaivattu lähestymistapa Hegelin tunnetusti haastavaan proosaan.

Analyyttinen Hegel-tulkinta on myös filosofisesti kiinnostavaa. Siinä tehdään Hegelistä ei-metafyysinen luenta, jossa modernin itsestään synnyttämään skeptisismiin pyritään vastaamaan modernin omilla kriteereillä.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very similar to Stephen Houlgate's An Introduction to Hegel: Freedom, Truth and History, with some minor differences in interpretation regarding Hegel's socio-economic thought and the debate on whether Hegel held to "true/false self" view (Houlgate pro, Pinkard no). Very good explanation of teleology in the Hegelian framework, as well as critiques of Kojeve and Fukuyama's misreadings of the Hegelian notion of History.

[Ceena · Rating 4 out of 5]

My Review:

I was fortunate to have read some Hegel beforehand and had also just recently finished Marcuse’s Reason and Revolution before picking up this book. When I asked Arash Abazari—a Hegel scholar—a technical question about the Phenomenology of Spirit a few years ago, he simply suggested me to read this book. Having read it now, I can confidently say that this is the book to start with if you're unfamiliar with the subject matter or still uncertain about it. As Pinkard makes clear at the very beginning, this work is, in many ways, a reconstruction of the ambitious Hegelian project—with a major focus on the Phenomenology of Spirit—delivered in a clear and comprehensive manner. In this regard, the book can absolutely be treated as a stand-alone volume, with an epilogue toward Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Approached as a Bildungsroman, Phenomenology of Spirit presents a dialectical-historical narrative of how the European community has come to understand and define what it takes as authoritative and self-defining.

Pinkard does an excellent job of placing the Hegelian project within its proper philosophical and historical context. He carefully addresses the many pitfalls of misunderstanding and misinterpretation that have long surrounded this notoriously complex text, ensuring that Hegel’s ambiguous—if not often elusive—terminology is thoroughly explained. At times, it may seem as though Pinkard is repeating himself—again and again—that Hegel is Not a historian, and that the Phenomenology of Spirit is not a record of historical facts. Rather, Hegel examines historical forms of consciousness on their own terms, exposing their inherent contradictions—their negativity—and showing how one form, through Aufhebung, gives rise to the next. Pinkard is insistent on this point, ensuring the reader never loses sight of the philosophical stakes involved. Throughout the work, he draws a crucial distinction between the historical contingencies of any given epoch and the immanent negativity within a form of consciousness—the latter being what drives the historical process forward. It is this negativity that propels agents of history toward new forms, each attempting to resolve the contradictions of its predecessor.

All in all, this is the book for anyone seeking a solid grasp of Hegel’s system of thought. I couldn’t say with certainty whether Marcuse or Pinkard does a better job in that regard—Marcuse perhaps brings a more polemical tone, with a clear intent to defend Hegel against various accusations from the Left, which were prominent after World War II, while Pinkard is far more focused and detailed in his exposition. That said, I did find myself wishing he had engaged with Marcuse’s book directly—unfortunately, there’s no reference to it at all.

My summary/points of the book:

Hegel begins his project, as he professes in the introduction, without presupposition, critically probing the claims of "immediate" or self-sufficient forms of knowledge—how we come to know and form knowledge. Each claim of immediate knowledge is examined according to its own merits. He demonstrates how each form arises necessarily from the one before it. Moreover, Hegel seeks to establish the clear object of knowledge in each form and tests whether the claim of knowledge aligns with its object of knowing. While sense-certainty and perception hold up under scrutiny, I found myself in disagreement with portions of the chapter (Pages 34-43) concerning force, laws, and reflective judgment. Yet the upshot remains genuine and correct: "the true object of the understanding is the understanding itself"—what he lables as “self-consciousness”. This claim becomes a more concrete and tangible once we realize that “all consciousness is … self-consciousness in the sense that any awareness of any object is already mediated by the organism’s assuming a position in some normative “social space.”” And this is where the subtitle of the book becomes clearer. The development of consciousness and the conception of Geist, can only happen within the societal normative, whatever they might be.

The third chapter focuses on forms of self-consciousness, and Pinkard puts the matter into perspective quite well. It becomes clear from the onset that self-consciousness requires an object of recognition and that is feasible not through any object, but only through another self-consciousness. This notion of recognition between self-consciousnesses is beautifully explained through the famous Master/Slave dialectic. The crucial point however is that during this process, that Master acquires the recognition through dominance and the salve forfeits his in order to preserves his life, “the dominance of the master’s point of view is dependent on the salve’s having come to accept it as dominant, i.e. the dominance of the Master’s point of view is fully dependent on the salve’s contingently coming to accept it and on his continuing to accept it of… [in this dynamic] the salve acquires a more genuinely social, quasi-objective point of view out of his subjective point of view through his encounter with the other”.

Moving to the next form of self-consciousness, Hegel moves from the abstract format of Master/Slave dialectic into a more practical format by introducing the Stoicism as “historically and conceptually the first of attempted affirmations that emerge out of the kind of reflections on the mastership and slavery... Stoics’s solution is to become indifferent to whether he is a master or slave, for if true independence lies in the freedom of thought, one’s independence cannot be a matter of either servitude or mastery”. The shortcoming of stoicism in terms of its lack of particularity leads to the truth of its matter; the Skeptisim, a divided form of consciousness, torn between two internal standpoints: the contingent, personal perspective and the detached, impersonal one.

After arriving at the stage of unhappy consciousness—which gives rise to the power of religion and the aspiration for unification with the universal, still relevant today in forms of spirituality, nostalgia for the “good old times,” and the longing for “lost empires”—Hegel begins to probe reason as the self-proclaimed authoritative agent, particularly as it manifests in modern science and humanism. Though Hegel’s treatment of science can be somewhat hand-wavy at best, this can be overlooked by attending to the chain of thought he is trying to establish.

The most compelling section of this chapter is undoubtedly the Faustian project, where Hegel draws on the famous story of his contemporary celebrity, Goethe, using Faust as a symbolic figure of the hedonistic individual—one whose agency is believed to be fully independent and without limits, capable of forcing the world to yield to his will. This marks a step beyond the Baconian scientific mindset, which merely “forces” nature to reveal its secrets. The Faustian agent’s belief in being the master of his own fate is, however, hollow and self-deceptive; the tragedy of Faust lies in the realization that he is, in fact, anything but. Marshall Berman explores this modern tragedy beautifully in a dedicated chapter of his book All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity.

Out of the nihilistic and hedonistic Faustian project emerges the birth of the Romantics—champions of "natural virtues" and expressive egotists. Within these dialectical encounters, one can easily trace the early currents of both socialism and liberalism (Pages 98-111). On page 122, Hegel (and Pinkard!) very clearly shows—and this remains strikingly relevant today—that for individuals to express themselves meaningfully, they must conform to certain normative structures within the social space, above all linguistic ones, if only to be understood at all, for “what counts as the individuality if the individual is not something that is the real thing (die Sache selbst) that transcends contingency or circumstance; it is as much a part of the pattern of social recognition as its expressions were taken to be. The attempts of each of the spiritual animals to preserve a part of himself as the real thing turns out to be a deceptive enterprise”. In other words, “the social space” is the absolute medium of “reason”.

This becomes a crucial point in the following pages of the rest of this chapter, where Hegel then moves toward what could be seen as the pinnacle of Enlightenment by briefly, and somewhat obscurely, engaging with Kant. Pages 121–132 are especially important here, as Pinkard does an excellent job of situating Hegel’s ideas in perspective. Hegel clearly appreciated Kant’s attempt to examine reason on its own terms—a genuine pre-Hegelian project—but he ultimately critiques Kant for introducing fixed categories, rather than generating them immanently from within the movement of reason itself.

At this stage, Hegel examines the possibilities of authoritative reason through his own methodology, grounded in the unfolding of European history. This becomes the topic of the long chapter 5. Pinkard takes his time through this chapter—it's not as exciting as the earlier chapters, but it carefully preserves the coherence of Hegel’s trajectory. It’s important to remember, and Pinkard repeatedly reminds the reader, that Hegel’s project does not aim to uncover the sociological details behind historical events. Rather, he sets out to examine claims to authoritative reason as they appear historically, evaluating them according to their own term, their internal logic and contradictions. The first example is that of the Greeks, a society in which the social roles of its members—father, mother, king, soldiers and so on—are pre-defined, and each individual feels “at home” within their role. Hegel refers to this shared set of mores including the divine rituals, as ethics (Sitte), and thus, self-conscious reflective life unfolds within the context of a widely held understanding of ethical life—the Sittlichkeit of the community. This could be seen as the ideal form of society, were it not for its inherent negative force, which Hegel addresses in the pages following (page 144 onward), particularly through the tragedy of Antigone. It is important to recognize that the paradox lies in the inherent conflict within the predefined social roles themselves—not in any external force. This is the essence of Tragedy, and what sets it apart from other forms of storytelling. It is precisely through the internal contradictions of the Greek Sittlichkeit that there emerges what Hegel calls the “unhappy consciousness”; the Hellenistic period. The breakdown of the Greek form of life gave rise to a new social space in which individuals could recognize one another only through purely contingent, legally defined forms of community. This becomes the normative of the Roman form of life. In contrast to the Greek world, the Roman community was held together solely by custom and human law. The major difference in “the way things are” in the Roman form of life lies in the legality of social roles and norms—binding the individual regardless of whether he identifies with them or not. Chapter 5 closes with what Hegel ultimately proposes as the model of the modern Community. The long journey of self-consciousness through its historical unfolding slowly culminates in this point. Pages 180–193, which deal with the actualization of individual will as the authoritative source of reason—especially within the context of the French Revolution—are among the most compelling parts of the chapter. The text becomes somewhat iterative afterward, but the ideas stick. One does not forget.

Chapter 6 shifts the focus to religion—as a self-reflective form of life. It opens with the early impersonal, nature-based religions such as the Zarathustrians, followed by the Egyptian gods, and eventually arrives at the Greek forms. I have to admit this was the most boring chapter. For the careful reader, the repetition of certain concepts—particularly those related to Greek drama and tragedy—feels redundant and unnecessarily prolonged. However, pages 260–268 are dense and powerful: a true condensation of the Phenomenology of Spirit. These pages clearly outline Hegel’s understanding of philosophy as the only communal, self-reflecting form of knowledge that can—and perhaps should—offer an account of ground truth, of absolute knowing. The recap beginning around page 265 is especially sharp; it brilliantly gathers the threads of the entire work into a lucid but dense Coda.

After the Phenomenology, the path leads toward the realization of Geist through the Philosophy of Right. This, too, is no straightforward walk—Hegel undertakes a long, tedious investigation of various conceptions of "freedom." But in the end, the project rests on the possibility of an ethical society: something that resembles the Greek format of Sittlichkeit, yet is grounded not in myth or tradition, but in moral and rational justification. The crucial point Pinkard tries to emphasize here is that Hegel’s vision is by no means a reflection of his own contemporary society, nor is it an endorsement of conformity. This isn’t about validating the status quo—it’s about charting a philosophical map toward a form of communal life that is both rational and ethical, even if still unrealized.

[The Coat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very clear. I read Pinkard's analysis after reading the corresponding sections in the Phenomenology and it is enormously helpful. Pinkard provides great explication of the contemporary dynamics to which Hegel was (too subtly) referring throughout. For example, i'm currently reading the bit about the development of modern individuality from Faustian individuality to the "champion of natural virtue", and after reading the Pinkard I'm much enlightened as to tone and personality of the perspectives that Hegel is criticizing. This is something I didn't understand at all after just reading the Phenomenology itself, which is surely due primarily to my own intellectual limitations. So I appreciate Pinkard enormously for the assistance.

[Tim Elston · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read large portions of Stephen Houlgate's Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit and Peter Kalkavage's The Logic of Desire: An Introduction to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, but Terry Pinkard's Hegel's Phenomenology: The Sociality of Reason is, to me, by far, the clearest, most accurate exposition of Hegel's thought, of the three. Houlgate summarizes and runs out of steam half-way through. Kalkavage gets captivated by his own metaphors, which more distract than elucidate Hegel's ideas. But Pinkard reconstructs the Phenomenology's argument with precision, detail, and masterful expository skill.

Perhaps it is the reconstructive aspect of Pinkard's work that sets it apart. While Houlgate and Kalkavage structure their introductions as commentaries, intently following the sections of the Phenomenology in their original order, Pinkard expressly aims to reconstruct the logic of Hegel's phenomenological argument, without necessarily being tied to the text section by section. At a high level, the exposition follows the contours of the text, but by freeing himself from the section-by-section approach, Pinkard affords himself a focus on the logical flow of the argument, with a liberty to be expansive and illustrative at all of its critical points. And make no mistake, Pinkard has an incisive grasp of Hegelian thought and has the writing skill to capture that thought with astounding clarity without getting lost in extraneous words and diversions.

Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit is one of the most difficult works in the canon of Western philosophy. Pinkard's reconstruction is a breathtaking exposition that leaves the reader in awe, if not necessarily of Hegel's thought, certainly of Pinkard's explanatory power. Without a doubt, Pinkard's masterpiece is deserving of Hegel's own.

[GJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book to be more stimulating and interesting than Hegel’s book itself, so much so that I kinda gave up on Hegel but continued with this book and then only referred back to the Phenomenology when inspired by this book. It’s not really a guide or an introduction, this is more like an interpretation or a recapitulation of the book. I read the PDF of this at my desk at work while fully caffeinated and procrastinating; I noticed I started writing work documents in Terry Pinkard’s voice.

[Imanol Faya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Me cambió la vida, es excelente. Comprensible y ameno sin sacrificar la complejidad de la Fenomenología. De todo la bibliografía complementaria que he leido sobre el opus magnum hegeliano, este es, sin dudas, el mejor de todos ellos. Terry Pinkard es un intelectual del re carajo y lo pienso recomendar hasta el hartazgo.

[Mr. Manning · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely helpful companion to Phenomenology of Spirit. A little boring at times but the highs are quite high and revelations abound. You could read this without reading Hegel himself if you really wanted to.

[Jerrett Lyday · Rating 4 out of 5]

I now feel capable of completing the system of German Idealism.

Seriously, though, best book on Hegel I have read yet. Pinkard is a phenom.

[Manuel Gabbert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not only guides you through the PoS but also a commentary an the Philosophy of Right in relation to the PoS. Very good

[David Teachout · Rating 5 out of 5]

A more thorough understanding of Hegel and his phenomenology can be eminently helpful in pursuing a greater depth of exploration of psychology, community and how dialogue works. Pinkard takes the obscurity of Hegel's writing and presents it in convincing way that Hegel himself would have been impressed by. The result is a work that will certainly have you thinking long after you've done reading.