Hegel: A Biography [Hardcover]

Terry Pinkard (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0521496799 | ISBN-13: 978-0521496797 | Publication Date: March 28, 2000

One of the founders of modern philosophical thought Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) has gained the reputation of being one of the most abstruse and impenetrable of thinkers. This first major biography of Hegel in English offers not only a complete, up-to-date account of the life, but also an overview of the key philosophical concepts in Hegel's work in an accessible style. Terry Pinkard situates Hegel firmly in the historical context of his times. The story of that life is of an ambitious, powerful thinker living in a period of great tumult dominated by the figure of Napolean. Pinkard explores Hegel's interactions with some of the great minds of this period: Hölderlin, Goethe, Humboldt, Schelling, Novalis, the Schlegels, Mendelssohn, and others. Throughout, he avoids Hegal's own famously technical jargon in order to display the full sweep and power of Hegel's thought. Terry Pinkard is professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University and is author/editor of five previous books, the most recent being ^UHegel's Phenomenology (Cambridge, 1996). He is honorary Professor of the Philosophy Faculty of TÜbingen University, Germany and serves on the advisory board for the Zeitschrift fÜr Philosophique Forschung.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Hegel scholar Pinkard (a professor of philosophy at Georgetown) presents his deep knowledge of the "paradigmatically obscure" German philosopher (1770-1831) to the broad reading public. Hegel himself would be pleased, for he saw himself as a public intellectual, offering up the only philosophy that could explain modern humanity to itself. Obscure language was merely the battering ram of his thought, provoking readers to shed their slavish acceptance of received tradition and learn to think for themselves. German traditionalists (and romantic nationalists) exemplified, in Hegel's memorable quip, not Deutschtum (Germanness) but Deutschdumm (German stupidity). Though Hegel praised the American Revolution (and the French--he was always keenly interested in politics), he could not have anticipated how inadequate a foundation American public education would lay for his ideas. In clear and modest language, Pinkard fills the breach between Hegelian Bildung (humanistic education) and the average American adult. He concisely summarizes the philosopher's key works, placing them in the larger context of Hegel's life and times. Rich details of Hegel's own person--his Napoleonic haircut, wooden lecture style and "very characteristic smile"--enrich a narrative of operatic scope, complete with mad poet friend (H lderlin), illegitimate son (Ludwig Fischer) and philosophical nemesis (J.F. Fries). Hegel's philosophy, which finessed contradiction, mirrored the contradictions in his life. A touching instance: his early harsh judgments on Judaism softened under the influence of his Jewish (later Christian) friend, the jurist Eduard Gans. The portrait that emerges wins sympathy and understanding. Pinkard frees Hegel from the obscurity that unfairly clouds his memory and shows him, stunningly, for who he really was: an early modern version of ourselves. (May)

Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Pinkard (philosophy, Georgetown Univ.) points out that Hegel occupies an ambivalent position in the philosophical world, where he is regarded by some as a consummate philosopher, ignored by others as having nothing of importance to say, and derided by still others as "humbug, poppycock, maybe even a fraud." Among the educated populace generally, Pinkard also sees Hegel as being stereotypically and incorrectly understood. His challenge here, then, is to examine Hegel's life in detail, to show how it "intersected with his thought in a variety of deep ways," and to reveal the real Hegel. The writing is fluid and engaging and the historical period vividly realized. The purely biographical material is kept separate, as much as possible, from discussion of the works. Hegel is notoriously difficult, and while it is doubtful that nonphilosophers will come away from this study with a deep understanding of the Hegelian system, they should be in a good position to study it more fully if so inclined. All philosophy collections should have this.
-Leon H. Brody, U.S. Office of Personnel Mgt. Lib., Washington, DC
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 800 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (March 28, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521496799
• ISBN-13: 978-0521496797
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,007,411 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great success!, September 21, 2000

By 

Michael E. Zimmerman (Department of Philosophy, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hegel: A Biography (Hardcover)

Terry Pinkard, who has already made notable contributions to Hegel scholarship, goes a step further by providing us with a truly outstanding biography of one of the 19th century's greatest thinkers. Pinkard's prodigious research enables him to offer a richly detailed portrait not only of Hegel himself, but of his wife, his family (including his illegitmate son, whom he later formally adopted), his friends, colleagues, and enemies. For the first time, readers will be able fully to understand the enormously complex social and political--not to mention philosophical!--context in which Hegel's thought developed. In addition to all this, Pinkard provies brief but penetrating discussions of all of Hegel's works. Although the book is long, I found myself continually drawn back to it, so fascinated was I by what I was learning about Hegel's life and times. My appreciation for Hegel's thought, which is at times notoriously obscure in part because of Hegel's dense prose style, has been significantly enhanced because of what this book taught me about Hegel's effort to reconcile the particularist demand of German "home towns" with the universalizing impulse of Enlightenment modernity. I can't recommend this book highly enough.

26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars worth every penny, June 12, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Hegel: A Biography (Hardcover)

I'm glad to see that Cambridge is building on its series of philosophical biographies, established last year with the very nice volumes on Hobbes and Spinoza. This Hegel biography has the advantage of the far greater documentation available on the life of this 19th century giant.

Where it most outdoes the usual familiar accounts of Hegel's life is in the treatment of his early years. Other than scattershot anecdotes, his years in Stuttgart and Tuebingen and Bern and Frankfurt are usually treated as a period of echoey darkness leading up to the philosopher's drmatic residence in Jena. Thanks to Pinkard's skilled account, we are enabled to live with Hegel in detail through the years of his ambitious but stifled youth. This biography will be sure to shake up our usual conception of Hegel's education.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant!, August 23, 2003

By 

o dubhthaigh (north rustico, pei, canada) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Hegel: A Biography (Paperback)

While you are unlikely to approach Hegel aa a novice, all the same, if you were and did, this is a remarkably well written, clear presentation of Hegel's life and thinking, as well as a thoughtful setting of the philosophical questions of his time. It was a time when thinking still mattered to the spirit of a people. Pinkard has written a great account of a life of a man who sought his own voice after so many disappointments. His friendship with Holderlin, his relationship with his illegitamate son, his rancourous rapport with his nephew, the slights suffered working for philistines or in the shadows of lesser minds were the sand in his soul that ground a pearl. Pinkard details them all with a truly 21st Century American voice, and in so doing makes the drama of Hegel's life present to today.
Pinkard is another great Georgetown Hegelian in the line of Wilfrid Desan, and in so doing weaves the dynamics of Hegel's life into the dialectics of his thinking. Pinkard presents a terrifically concise and to the point analysis of the immediate momentums initiated by Kant, Fichte, Schelling and others, casts them in as true a light as possible, and so opens an entire tradition, well regarded for its complexity for consideration by those trained in this tradition as well as by those wondering what all the fuss was about. Hegel was not an Ivory Tower elitist. His life formed the ground of his philosophy, and while he was also not an everyman, he is one in whom thinking took hold at any early age and kept calling him out into its light. Hegel meant that his writings have an impact. He was not interested in building flights of fancy that had no repercussions for culture, politics, spirituality. He distanced himself from traditions that would have ensnared him, compromised his boldness, and left him in a tradition, instead of clearing new ground.
Pinkard clearly shows how and why you have to deal with Hegel in Western Philosophy, just as much as you have to confront Plato, Aristotle, Kant. Nothing was the same after Hegel. History, psychoanalysis, culture, politics were all forever changed. His was an original voice, and the call, once heard, altered everything.
I keep returning to the point that this is a great read. And it is! So novice or enthusiast, you'll find this a book you'll return to often. This should be mandatory reading for anyone pursuing a higher education. The lessons of the life as well as the philosophy produced deserve thoughtful consideration.