Mesoscope’s Reviews > Hegel: Der Philosoph der Freiheit > Status Update

This is beautifully written for a book of this type. A sample:

'Eine Abneigung gegen das beschaulich-hinterwälderische Bamberger Krähwinkel-Milieu wächst in ihm; er fühlte sich zeitweise wie Jean Pauls Siebenkäs in Kuhschnappel. Spöttisch erklärt er das Bierfass zur eigentlichen Musenquelle der fränklischen Stadt, deren umgebende Wälder keine Lorbeerhaine, sondern Wildschweinreviere seien.'

Increasingly odd - some of the quotes attributed to Phenomenology of Spirit do not seem to occur in that work, like "einer Malerei, die nur das formlose Weiße auf ihrer Palette hat, die Farbigkeit aber erschleichen muss." Again, the only reference I find for that quote at all is this biography.

The ratio of "study of his thought" to "biography" is about 15:1 so far - so much so that major events are frequently heavily under-explained.

Hegel's quotes are cited only by the volume and page number of the official collected works, making it impossible to identify the source text without a trip to a major research library. It's infuriating and arbitrary - just a terrible convention. Just name the text on first reference, for heaven's sake. I've searched for quotes half a dozen times and found no online match except to this very book.

So far this book is terrifically stimulating and enjoyable, if a bit restricted in its scope of interpretation.

In a close reading of his intellectual development at the Tübinger Stiftung, Vieweg does a solid job establishing that Hegel should not be construed as a post-Kantian mystic who assimilates idealism to some kind of pantheism.