Hegel's Theory of Ideas

Author: (American) Pippin, translated by Chen Huiping
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2006-03-01
Features: In the history of interpretations of Hegel, this book is highly influential. It will forever dispel the myth that Hegel's speculative philosophy is a direct return to the extreme rationalism tradition, which Kant considered "dogmatism" and severely condemned. This achievement makes Pippin's work a major event in our understanding of Hegel. The book is divided into three parts: the background of idealism, the phenomenology of idealism, and the logic of idealism. It also discusses the thoughts and achievements of famous Western philosophers such as Kant, Jena, Schelling, and Fichte. The research approach of the author has been clearly stated in the chapter. Here, I will briefly outline the intellectual context of this book. Broadly speaking, Pippin understands Hegel from the perspective of Kant's transcendental unity of apperception. It is worth mentioning that his 1987a Kantian paper, as a representative of this thought, has had a wide influence in the field of Kant-Hegel studies and in the philosophy of mind. If Kant aimed to combat skepticism while persistently advocating transcendental intuition and the separation of conditions of knowledge from phenomena and things-in-themselves, then one could say that Hegel, also aiming to combat skepticism primarily from his own side, introduced social and historical dimensions into his thought by abandoning the logical network of conceptual conditions and responding to the requirements of conceptual development. Understanding Hegel from Kant, understanding Hegel from a specific sense of logic—this approach overturns the entire understanding of metaphysics and religion. Moreover, this book does not advocate the view of a necessary progression from Kant to Hegel, as Kroner did, but examines the sources and elements of Hegel's thought, giving Kant, Fichte, and Schelling distinct intellectual positions. Philosophically, this book may at least serve three functions:
1. As an analysis of Hegel's philosophy, particularly examining Hegel in light of its origins since Kant.
2. As a clarification of the philosophical approach from Kant to Fichte to Schelling to Hegel, which, within a certain scope, can be mutually explained and supported to some extent with the approach of Mr. Yang Zutao's The Logical Process of German Classical Philosophy.
3. As a viable philosophical program in the contemporary era—one that builds upon the transcendental conditions philosophy pioneered by Kant's transcendental idealism.