The Beginning and the End of Philosophy: Hegel’s Philosophical Pedagogy (Presentation)

Hegel’s Philosophical Pedagogy (Presentation)

Opening presentation for day 2 of the 1st Hegelian Society of Spirit Conference:

Abstract

From as early writings such as the Tübingen essay, we find that Hegel is considerably invested in the project of education, culture, and cultivation — notably sharing a etymological root in German between the term Bildung, which is specially notable when Hegel deploys Bildung instead of Kultur with respect to his approach to culture as the domain of spirit. In his earliest work, Hegel adopted the late Katian project of pure religious faith and universal religion in conceiving of a ground for the ethical formation and inclination towards philosophy by the members of a given society.

Although Hegel’s work distances himself from Kant’s critical philosophy and its conception of the ethico-theological ends of reason, this interest in philosophical cultivation remains throughout Hegel’s mature work. This presentation will aim to introduce the major themes of Hegel’s early work as well as their reflection in Hegel’s mature work such as the Phenomenology of Spirit, the Science of Logic, the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, and the Philosophy of Right. Most crucially, in the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel hints at an implicit pedagogy through the ambiguous status of the preface to the Phenomenology — a text which was written after the first draft of the Phenomenology was produced and lost, thus acting both as a testament from Hegel’s own commitment to undergo the process of the Phenomenology as well as a prop that seeks to mobilize our philosophical drive to commit to the process and the patience that it requires. In the Science of Logic, Hegel makes this implied element of his philosophy more explicit with the discussion concerning where we begin with philosophy. And in the Philosophy of Right, Hegel offers an image of philosophy coming of age into old age through the figure of the owl of Minerva.

In short, Hegel provides a sketch of a philosophical pedagogy as well as an intergenerational exchange between lovers of wisdom and those have actualized a wisdom concerning that love: we fall in love with wisdom, we exhaust all of its possible avenues into a bedrock of contradiction that constitutes the Absolute, we share communion among those who share in this Absolute Spirit, and we lower the ladder of wisdom for the philosophers to come while looking on to the passing of our own time.