Introducing Hegel Book

Reading this book is like eating a box of unmarked chocolates. Some of Hegel's thoughts I read and recognized, some were unfamiliar--oh, maple, or fruit jelly, or wait, what is that? Do I like it? GWF Hegel is most famous (to me) for his explanation of the dialectic: thesis, antithesis, synthesis, though I discovered that others gave the three parts those names. So often I have lurched toward better understanding by a Hegelian motion, particularly in dialogue with someone who disagrees. The book is written by a senior lecturer in democracy and media at University of Leeds, and is illustrated by Andrzej Krauze. Illustrated, you ask? Why yes, illustrated throughout, and when the illustration is a tip of the hat to Escher, you know the concept is a bit baffling.

One thing I learned is that Hegel viewed the State as not "a set of institutions but the objective embodiment of ethical life" (105). This challenges me to hold institutions accountable to ethics, particularly when they are violating the ethics they purport to uphold. I also learned about Hegel's fable of the master and the slave: I can't do it justice here, but the set-up is two self-consciousnesses locked in a life and death struggle for recognition from the other; the self who submits rather than facing death becomes the slave, an object and a means. An insight I gained from it is that the master remains dependent despite having the upper hand, while the slave makes the world for both, learns self-respect, and educates him/herself toward independence. One apparently wins ultimately by losing at the start.