Abstract

Kaufmann's reinterpretation of Hegel's philosophy is based upon insights into the man Hegel and his situation gleaned from letters and other documents not available to or else not used by earlier commentators. Translations by Kaufmann of some of these letters as well as a new translation of the Preface to the Phenomenology are contained in the book. The author is concerned to explode the existentialist myth of a passionless, abstracted, professorial Hegel. Rather we should read Hegel as a man of concrete insight and fluid thought who sometimes, however, cramped his style by an overly disciplined systematic ideal of philosophy. "The System" was never intended to be the final rigid structure of knowledge it is often construed to be. Kaufmann at times gets bogged down in philological minutiae at the expense of expounding the content of Hegel's thought, but he does provide a helpful background to supplement and sometimes correct previous commentaries.—P.M.