| | “Hegel's Phenomenology is just unintelligible rubbish.”
I would like to make a little plea for Hegel. If the above statement is correct, it makes it difficult to explain all those thinkers who have found Hegel, and especially the Phenomenology enlightening. Let’s start with Peikoff and Kelley. Peikoff likes to stress that Hegel was right! Right in at least one respect, viz., that the Truth is the Whole. And Kelley cites the Phenomenology against Kant’s notion that reason can critique itself. See p. 39 n. 45 in The Evidence of the Senses. Evidently neither Peikoff nor Kelley find Hegel unintelligible.
On the other hand, Hegel is damn tough. I don’t recommend him to the Reardens of the world, but only to the Ragnars. Nevertheless, if you insist, I can recommend two guides noted for their clarity and intelligibility; Walter Kaufmann and Robert Solomon. Take the latter. In his book, In the Spirit of Hegel (nice pun on Geist) he provides a wonderfully clear exegesis of the Phenomenology.
But if I had to recommend to Objectivists one chapter of the Phenomenology, I would choose “II. Perception: Or the Thing and Deception.” Since Objectivism is a thing or entity ontology, this chapter forces one to focus on what exactly we mean by “thing.” I also like the section on the “Unhappy Consciousness” where Hegel seems to be having so much (serious) fun with poor old Augustine.
Finally, if Sciabarra is right and Rand is a dialectical thinker, what better guy to cut your teeth on than the master of the dialectical thinkers, Hegel.
Fred Seddon
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