Hegel's Idea of Philosophy with a New Translation of Hegel's Introduction to the History of Philosophy

Quentin Lauer

Jan 1983 · Fordham Univ Press

About this ebook

In his Introduction to the History of Philosophy, Hegel undertook to say what philosophy is; that it can be said to have a history. He treated philosophy as an organic unity, a process, to which philosophers down through the ages have made contributions. Thus in Hegel's view, the history of philosophy is inseparable from doing philosophy, and philosophy can be done only historically. Hegel engaged in a critique both of "philosophies" and of the ways of treating philosophy's history. The author's analysis, combined with his translation of a version of the Introduction not previously available, makes intelligible a mode of philosophical thinking which is highly complex and which has had an extraordinarily formative influence on contemporary thought. The result is a treatment more readily understandable to the educated reader than would be Hegel's own technical vocabulary.

About the author

Quentin Lauer S. J. was a Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University from 1954 to 1990. He was an American Jesuit priest and a philosopher. He was president of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association from 1985-1986, and a President of the Hegel Society of America. He was also a major influence in the introduction of Hegel's thought in the United States. His publications include A Reading of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (1977), The Triumph of Subjectivity (1958) and Edmund Husserl: Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy (1965).