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FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY
Department of Religious Studies
REL 4461 Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit
Fall 2012
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Instructor: Mr. Daniel Alvarez Class Days & Times: MWF 11:00 - 11:45 a.m.
Office Hours: TBA Class Room: PG5 Market Station 134
DM 302
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course examines a specific topic in the philosophy of religion, such as faith and reason, religious experience, or an important thinker. It may be repeated with permission of the instructor.
TEXTBOOK
Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, translated by A. V. Miller (Oxford, 1977). ISBN : 0198245971.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Books with single asterisks (*) strongly recommended; books with double asterisks (**) have sections or chapters on the Phenomenology . Stern, Norman, and Lauer strongly recommended, followed by Solomon. Hyppolite is the best but quite demanding.
*Robert Stern, Routledge Guidebook to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (Routledge, 2001)
*Richard Norman, Hegel’s Phenomenology: A Philosophical Introduction (Sussex University Press, 1976).
*Robert Solomon, In the Spirit of Hegel: A Study of Hegel’s Phenomenology (Oxford, 1983).
*H. S. Harris, Hegel’s Ladder: A Commentary on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (Hackett, 1995).
*Jean Hyppolite, Genesis and Structure of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (Northwestern, 1979).
*Quentin S. Lauer, A Reading of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (Fordham, 1993).
*Alexandre Kojeve, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit (Cornell, 1980). [An influential commentary from Marxist perspective.]
*John Russon, Reading Hegel’s Phenomenology (Indiana University Press, 2004).
**Charles Taylor, Hegel (Cambridge, 1975).
**Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory (Routledge, 1955).
**J. N. Findlay, Hegel: A Re-Examination (Allen & Unwin, 1958).
H. S. Harris, Hegel’s Development (Oxford, 1972).
Michael Inwood, A Hegel Dictionary (Blackwell, 1992).
Allen Speight, The Philosophy of Hegel (McGill, 2008).
Stephen Crites, Dialectics and Gospel in the Development of Hegel’s Thinking (Penn State, 2008).
Beatrice Longuenesse, Hegel’s Critique of Metaphysics (Cambridge, 2007).
Robert M. Wallace, Hegel’s Philosophy of Reality, Freedom, and God (Cambridge, 2005).
Michael Inwood, Hegel (Routledge, 2002).
Robert B. Pippin, Hegel’s Idealism: The Satisfactions of Self-Consciousness (Cambridge, 1989).
Robert Solomon, In the Spirit of Hegel (Oxford, 1983).
Michael Rosen, Hegel’s Dialectic and Its Criticism (Cambridge, 1982).
R. G. Mure, An Introduction to Hegel (Oxford, 1940).
W. T. Stace, The Philosophy of Hegel (Macmillan & Co., 1924).
INSTRUCTIONAL OBJECTIVES AND COURSE STRUCTURE
Hegel (b. 1770), professor of philosophy at the University of Berlin from 1818 until his death in 1831, became the leading exponent of Idealism in philosophy. Hegel is best known for his Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) and for his influence on Karl Marx, but his influence, direct or indirect, on philosophy and religion is incalculable and pervasive. No other philosopher dominated and shaped the 19th century (and the course of subsequent contemporary philosophy) as Hegel did, with the exception of Immanuel Kant (d. 1804). However, Hegel’s philosophy is unique in that he placed the philosophy of religion at the center of his philosophical enterprise, not as a peripheral and incidental addendum but as constituting the heart of his entire and vast epistemological and metaphysical system. Religion was the subject matter of concern for Hegel, which he identified with philosophy itself, and he lectured on the subject several times n his mature years (most notably 1824, 1827, and 1831). In this course we will focus on the introduction to Hegel’s vast system, the Phenomenology of Spirit (System der Wissenschaft. Erster Theil: die Phanomenologie des Geistes)m, which, as the German title clearly states, Hegel saw as the first part of the much larger and ambitious “ System of Science” (which culminates in his Science of Logic [1812-1816]). But the Phenomenology is more than an introduction, and it has come to be seen as perhaps Hegel‘s greatest work, in which he surveys the European consciousness in its “spiritual” (geistliche, from Geist which can mean spirit or mind, or intellect, as in intellectual) development or evolution, which for Hegel is mirrored in the intellectual development of consciousness to some degree from its beginning until his own time. Even in what some interpreters perceive as an overcoming of religion through ascent to the higher stage of philosophy, Hegel’s philosophy remains through and through a grand religious interpretation of philosophy itself. Furthermore, the influence of Hegel’s thought, despite the inherent limitations and weaknesses of the system, on the subsequent development of political and metaphysical philosophy, and the study of religion in all of its aspects, is pervasive and permanent.
In this course we will attempt a close reading of the text itself. The first half of the book will be our primary focus: Consciousness, Self-Consciousness, and Reason), which constitutes the phenomenology proper (pages 46-262). This is the heart of the Phenomenology. Then we will turn to the last part, Spirit (pages 263-493), where Hegel, more closely matching the evolution consciousness to corresponding historical stages, guides us in our itinerary or, more properly, ascent to the highest stage of Absolute Knowledge itself. The Phenomenology can and has been read as purely a treatise about the nature and content of knowledge, and the nature of reality itself (an epistemology and the metaphysics that unfolds inevitably and inseparably from the epistemology), but it can also be read on a par with a mystical treatise such as St. Bonaventure’s The Itinerary of the Mind to God (commonly translated as The Mind’s Road to God ), because that is what the phenomenology in fact is, and what Hegel calls his philosophy of religion, a “rational mysticism” (in the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion). In other words, The Phenomenology of Spirit is a manual for the sensual or phenomenal mind to rise to reality itself, to Spirit, something that implicitly (in itself) already is.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS AND GRADES
1. One research 12-15 research paper on a topic provided by the instructor (70% of final grade).
2. Class Presentation (based on the reading assignment for each week): Two (2) pages, orally delivered in class (30% of final grade).
GRADE DISTRIBUTION
A 95-100 C 70-74
A- 91-94 C- 68-69
B+ 88-90 D+ 66-67
B 83-87 D 63-65
B- 79-82 F 0-62
C+ 75-78
COURSE OUTLINE
Week 1
Introduction: Syllabus, Requirements, Textbooks, Overview of course
Hegel’s influences: Descartes to Kant
Week 2
Background to Hegel and the Phenomenology: Leibniz, and Spinoza
Recommended: Articles on Fichte and Schelling in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (free online).
The break with Fichte and Schelling
Week 3
Introduction to the Phenomenology
Week 4
A. Consciousness
Presentation: ______
Week 5
B. Self-consciousness
Presentation: ______
Week 6
C. (AA.) REASON V. The Certainty and Truth of Reason, and A. Observing Reason
Presentation: ______
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Week 7
B. The Actualization of Rational Self-Consciousness, etc.
Presentation: ______
Week 8
C. Individuality, etc.
Presentation: ______
Week 9
(BB.) SPIRIT. VI. Spirit. A. The True Spirit. The Ethical Order
Presentation: ______
Week 10
B. Self-Alienated Spirit. Culture
Presentation: ______
Week 11
C. Spirit that is Certain of Itself. Morality
Presentation: ______
Week 12
(CC.) RELIGION VII. Religion. A. Natural Religion
Presentation: ______
Week 13
B. Religion in the Form of Art
Presentation: ______
Week 14
C. The Revealed Religion
Presentation: ______
Week 15
(DD.) ABSOLUTE KNOWING
Presentation: ______
LAST DAY OF CLASSES, RESEARCH PAPERS DUE