Customer Reviews

The Encyclopaedia Logic: Part 1 of the Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences With the Zusatze

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This translation (the Geraets, Suchting and Harris translation) is undoubtedly superior to the Wallace translation. One does not have to do mental gymnastics to understand a simple point Hegel makes; the words flow fluently and coherently and are easily understood (as compared to Wallace's translation, which requires a great deal of patience to make it through even the simplest sentences). Reviewing the texts side-by-side (Wallace's 1975 Oxford edition and the Hackett 1991 edition) shows no loss of content nor the complexity of Hegel's logic. The Hackett edition comes highly recommended.

When this ambitious new translation of Hegel's Encyclopedia came out' I took for granted that we English speakers would now know exactly what Hegel had to say in his shorter Logic. (The new translation also includes the Zusätze.) After all, the detractors of Wallace's 1892 translation had been calling that one a mere paraphrase.

Now I'm disappointed. This is undoubtedly an exact translation, but what Hegel has to say gets lost in this flat word-by-word rendition of the German. There are three translators of the work, and they have formed themselves into a majority of two which is openly ranged against the other one in the book about how this word or that should be rendered into English.

I went back and could actually enjoy the clear, meaningful English in Wallace's translation. Here you see Hegel in all his monstrous misunderstanding of how Reality operates.

The new translation undoubtly will have some utility for specialists who are involved with hard choices that need to be made when doing translations, but as a work to help us understand just what Hegel had to say, I didn't find it useful.