Introducing Hegel (Beginners) (Paperback)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Insightful text and elegant line drawings detail this philosopher's life.

Product Details

• Paperback: 175 pages
• Publisher: Totem Books (January 25, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1874166447
• ISBN-13: 978-1874166443
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #966,718 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a good launching off point to learning about Hegel's philosophy, September 22, 2007

By	Patrick Regan "Patrick Regan" (Northampton, MA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Introducing Hegel, Third Edition (Introducing (Totem Books)) (Paperback)

Introducing Hegel, like all the introducing series provides only an introduction to the philosophy of Hegel. Still, I found it interesting. I now know that Hegel's philosophy is tied to history. History, and humanities progress through it, represents our becoming aware that we are self conscious. History is a process of taking a whole broken into fragments and piecing it together into a whole. Hegel was very interested in Napoleon and the French Revolution. He believed the struggle by the oppressed was a struggle for recognition. As the oppressed are the ones who have made the world, they are the ones who benefit most from the experience of history. This aspect of his work is represented in the Master and the Slave where one "person" gets control of another "person" and forces him to do work. But in forcing him to do so the Master becomes dependent on the slave and meanwhile the slave learns the self respect that comes from working. So in the end the Master becomes even more dependent on the slave and the slave becomes free. I think the purpose of the introducing series is to whet your appetite for more and this book certainly has done so. Hegel is a fascinating person and his ideas are well worth exploring.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars perfectly dreadful!, June 6, 2009

By	K. Draper (oklahoma) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Introducing Hegel, Third Edition (Introducing (Totem Books)) (Paperback)

I picked this up "used" thinking that this illustrated "Intro" might be a fun or useful review of Hegel. It was neither. While the author does hit on most of the main points of Hegel's thinking and his millieu, he does so in such a haphazard, inconsistent way that it ends up being more confusing than enlightening. I was quite aggrevated by way that the author would change tense of the verbs from past to present and back, often on the same page. If a writer cannot maintain consistent use of verb tense, it's hard to take his work seriously. And then I found out that he misused the word "schizophrenia". Twice. I mean, many people misuse that word to mean something like "split personality" or even "thinking two different ways about something", but this is totally inexcusable in a scholarly work, or at least, a work about a scholar.

Page 28 has Hegel remarking: "I sought [past tense] to make amends in the only way I could. My philosophy includes [present tense] a 'schizophrenic' principle of self-division, negation, contradiction...."

Excuse me, Mr. Spencer, only a PERSON can be "schizophrenic", which, btw, means mentally ill (psychotic) with delusions, hallucinations and disordered thinking.

And the artwork is equally distracting because of it's poor quality. Each page is liberally illustrated with pen and ink drawings by Andrezej Krauze, but the drawings are so coarse and poorly done that they further hinder the text, IMHO. His renderings of contemporary philosophers, such as Marcuse and Adorno toward the end of the book are actually quite nice, though, so why does he not take the time to make all the artwork good qualtity?

I'm not even going to go into my opinions about some specifics of the philosophy, except to say that this book does not have special contributions or insights, and, often as not, can be misleading. For a good Introduction to Hegel, I recommend reading the "Hegel" entry of the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and the current Wikkipedia article is also good. There, I saved you ten bucks. Good philosophy, it'd say.

1 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Intro into Hegel's love of wisdom, December 25, 2005

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Introducing Hegel, 2nd Edition (Paperback)

Enough said. This book is short, simple, and sweet.
A fantastic launchpad into Hegel's philosophy of history!