Hegel Book

In Reverse Gear

Peter Singer in this VSI has decided to limit his discussion primarily to one aspect of Hegel's philosophy: His conception of progress and about his idea of its endpoint. To this end Singer starts with The Philosophy of History and discusses it in some detail. He then introduces us to The Philosophy of Right to show us how Hegel uses his historical conception of mankind's consciousness-evolution to arrive at the 'Right' or 'Recht' or in more prosaic terms 'Laws'.

All this while we are only told about Man's consciousness progressing towards an idea of Freedom. Conceptually it is all very easy (relatively!) to grasp because none of Hegel's core complications are brought into the visual field of the reader yet! Singer has held all that back so that the reader can have the comfort of grasping at something at least before plunging into those torrents.

In the last part of the book Singer gradually unveils some of those complications. First he lets us know that until now we have discussed only the manifestation of progress, but not the causation of it, not the theory behind it. This is, of course, the key component. Finally we have entered The Phenomenology of Mind, and here we are introduced to the dialectic process, and the consciousness encountering the Other, thus developing self-consciousness and gradually pulling itself by its own shoestrings towards Phenomenology itself.

This bootstrapping process too leads towards the Idea of Freedom which we had already been shown was where history was headed anyway. Thus we have arrived back at The Philosophy of History, after going in reverse gear for so long (starting from later works and moving towards the earliest and then backing up again), but this time with an understanding of why the process works the way it was illustrated there. Also, the concept of Spirit is kept camouflaged all this while (Singer prefers 'Mind') and is introduced only at the last possible stage. So any reluctance towards the concepts due to an implied religious coloring is also avoided in this way.

Overall, I believe this was a very interesting way to present things. It allows the reader to grasp the concepts in a much more intuitive way ' since first he is shown how things are, and then he is asked to tag along as Hegel deconstructs why things work out the way they do. (Kant prolegomena analytic synthetic include?) Singer has done a good job in making hegel accessible in his choice of books and in his order of their presentation. It also shows the reader the best approach to take towards Hegel as a whole too.