Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy Volume 1 (of 3)
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Recorded or compiled by others
- Condition of the text:
- Some scanning errors (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand) · 2 illegible passages, excluded from answers
- Extent:
- ~210,000 words · 1,010 passages
Cite this work
- APAHegel. (n.d.). Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy Volume 1 (of 3). Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/georg-wilhelm-friedrich-hegel/hegel-s-lectures-on-the-history-of-philosophy-volume-1-of-3
- MLAHegel. Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy Volume 1 (of 3). Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/georg-wilhelm-friedrich-hegel/hegel-s-lectures-on-the-history-of-philosophy-volume-1-of-3.
- ChicagoHegel. Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy Volume 1 (of 3). Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/georg-wilhelm-friedrich-hegel/hegel-s-lectures-on-the-history-of-philosophy-volume-1-of-3.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The first volume of the lectures on the history of philosophy: the introduction on method and the Greek philosophy of the beginnings.
Context and history
Remember where the text comes from: Hegel did not write these books. They are lectures given several times at Jena, Heidelberg and Berlin, which editors fused after his death into continuous prose out of his own notes and hearers' notebooks. The thesis is worth having even though the wording is not his: the history of philosophy is not a museum of mistaken opinions but a single piece of reasoning that takes centuries, and no system is cancelled by the next one but preserved inside it.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
And this old creed has been an acknowledged influence to every age, and will still be acknowledged unchanged as the Truth, even though this acknowledgment were become no more than a pretence, and the words an empty form. But the history of this doctrine in its wider sense includes two elements: first the various additions to and deviations from the truth formerly established, and secondly the combating of these errors, the purification of the principles that remain from such additions, and a consequent return to their first simplicity. The other sciences, including Philosophy, have also an external history like Religion. Philosophy has a history of its origin, diffusion, maturity, decay, revival; a history of its teachers, promoters, and of its opponents—often, too, of an outward relation to religion and occasionally to the State. This side of its history likewise gives occasion to interesting questions. Amongst other such, it is asked why Philosophy, the doctrine of absolute Truth, seems to have revealed itself on the whole to a small number of individuals, to special nations, and how it has limited itself to particular periods of time. Similarly with respect to Christianity, to the Truth in a much more universal form than the philosophical, a difficulty has been encountered in respect to the question whether there is a contradiction in the fact that this religion should have appeared so late in time, and that it should have remained so long and should still remain limited to special races of men. But these and other similar questions are too much a matter of detail to depend merely on the general conflict referred to, and when we have further touched upon the peculiar character of philosophic knowledge, we may go more specially into the aspects which relate to the external existence and external history of Philosophy.