Hegel's Concept of Consciousness: The Satisfaction of Self-Consciousness

Author: (USA) Pippin
Publisher:
Publication Date: 2006-03-01
Features: In the history of interpretations of Hegel, this book is highly influential. It will forever end 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, a brief introduction to the book's intellectual position is provided. Generally, Pippin understands Hegel from the perspective of Kant's transcendental unity of apperception and idealism. It is worth mentioning that his 1987a paper on Kant, as a representative of this thought, has had a broad influence in the field of Kant-Hegel studies and the philosophy of mind. If Kant aimed to combat skepticism while persistently advocating transcendental intuition and the separation of conditions of cognition from phenomena and things-in-themselves, then one could say that Hegel also sought to combat skepticism primarily stemming from himself but introduced social and historical dimensions into it by abandoning the logical network of conceptual conditions and due to the requirements of conceptual development. Understanding Hegel from Kant and from a specific sense of logic has turned 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. From a philosophical perspective, 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, especially the philosophical program of transcendental conditions pioneered since Kant's transcendental idealism.