I am a fan of the Very Short Introduction series published by Oxford University Press. The series covers topics of history, literature, philosophy, and the sciences among others. Almost any academic subject is treated and the books are easily digestible and comprehended. I often recommend the series to those who ask me for an introduction to a philosopher or topic but do not want to immediately dive into a dense textbook. These books are great for anyone who wants a basic understanding of a topic, looking for a source that will aide their reading in the subject, or is beginning to read in a particular field and looking for a solid point of departure for further study. I have read several of these short introductions and gained valuable insight from them. I use one chapter from Floridi’s Information: A Very Short Introduction as required reading in one of my classes.
As I am currently reading through the works of Georg W. F. Hegel (primarily his Philosophy of Right, and Philosophy of History), I took a small detour and picked up Peter Singer’s Hegel: A Very Short Introduction. Hegel is an important thinker, but he not easily discernable. I found Singer’s short introduction to by helpful and what I needed to get back on track with my Hegel reading. So if you are interested in finding a “quick-start” guide to understanding Hegel, at least at the basic level, I recommend Singer’s Hegel: A Very Short Introduction. For me, Singer provides all the necessary explication of Hegel’s main ideas that I needed to make my reading of Philosophy of Right much more meaningful.
Singer divides this introduction into six chapters: Hegel’s Life and Times, History With a Purpose, Freedom and Community, The Odyssey of Mind, Logic and Dialectics, Aftermath. It would be beyond the scope of this review to break down each chapter. However, I will try to demonstrate why this introduction is worth reading, especially if you are interested in understanding the thought of Hegel. The two most important concepts to understand in Hegel’s philosophy is his idea of Geist and his conceptual theme of dialectic.
After situating Hegel in his historical context, Singer highlights and explains the most important aspects of Hegel’s philosophy. This is really helpful because Hegel was one of the last great system builders of the Western intellectual tradition. In other words, Hegel was among the last to attempt to make sense out of such perennial questions as (What is reality? What is the ultimate good? What is the total meaning of things?) and answer these questions in a complete and systematic way which makes sense out of reality and experience as a whole. Today, due to postmodernism, grand narratives of reality have fallen out of fashion. Hegel’s great interpretive scheme of the world is a cosmic one—a spiritual one really—grounded in mind or what he calls Geist (the German word for mind or spirit) it is where the English word for ghost comes from and also, interestingly, the word geyser. Hegel’s conception of Geist, then, is something like an immaterial life force or purposeful spiritual ‘world-mind’ that encompasses all reality (some translations of Hegel’s works use the term ‘world-mind’ for Geist). For Hegel, Geist, is the complete totality of all reality, including being and becoming, the mental and external, finite and infinite—everything is grounded in Geist. (As we sill see below, much of Hegel’s philosophy seeks to bring unity out of conflicting paradigms or opposing forces, for now it is enough to know that everything is grounded in Geist and the dialectic is the process that Geist uses to bring about unity from opposites). Singer explains that Geist is both a spiritual or mental force in the world and it is central to Hegel’s philosophical system. Singer puts it this way, “So crucial is this idea that Hegel actually says that the whole object of the Philosophy of History is to become acquainted with Geist in its guiding role in history” (60). So when reading Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, or his Philosophy of History, it is helpful to understand that Hegel is trying to explain how the world-mind, or Geist is driving society, nations, ethics, law and history.
The concept of dialectic is also important to Hegel. In Philosophy of Right, Hegel is careful to distinguish his method of dialectic from that of Socrates and Plato. Dialectic, means ‘conversation’ and in philosophy, in the classical sense, dialectic means the rational and analytical investigation of truth through conversation and dialogue. According to Hegel, however, Plato’s dialectical method does not go far enough. Hegel thought that coming to greater clarity about something through conversation did not serve a greater historical purpose. For Hegel, dialectic is the process which Geist reconciles conflicting ideological forces in history. Singer explains that there is nothing mysterious about Hegel’s line of thought. He further points out that Hegel developed this formula in his work on logic. The dialectic starts with an assertion or proposition, the thesis, moves to a second stage which is the opposite of the thesis, the antithesis, and is unified in what Hegel calls the synthesis. Hegel applies this line of thinking to various movements in history from classical Greece, the Reformation, and the French revolution to name a few. A really quick example might help. In political economics a Hegelian dialectic could look like this—Thesis: Capitalism (private property is allowed) Antithesis: Communism (private property is not allowed), Synthesis: Fascism (private property and enterprise is allowed as long as the producers obey the dictates of the totalitarian State) this is oversimplified, of course, but Hegel’s dialectic is an attempt to show the unification of opposing ideas in a new idea. The thesis would be the first stage in history, the antithesis would be the second state in history, the historical working out of the opposite idea, and the synthesis would be the final stage of some kind of new intellectual or historical unity. For Hegel, however, the dialectic does not stop at the synthesis. The synthesis becomes the foundation of a new thesis and the dialectic moves on to greater and grander abstraction.
Some scholars have doubted the importance and significance of Hegel’s dialectic. To Hegel, it was very significant. It is assumed that the reader is familiar with it in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. It was also an influence on Marx, who modified the formula to what he called dialectical materialism. Marx made the dialectic a purely material phenomenon. Singer’s introduction does a great job explaining these ideas and he clearly demonstrates the influence of Hegelian philosophy on other thinkers such as Marx and how those ideas have influenced the world around us. Singer’s short book Hegel: A Very Short Introduction is very helpful for those who want to gain a better understanding of Hegel and his importance in intellectual history.
Works Cited
Singer, Peter. Hegel: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2001.
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