Philosophy 181

This course will give an overview of Hegel’s philosophy in order to make students familiar with the significance of ‘absolute idealism’ in the philosophy of the 18th and 19th century. The major themes that will be discussed are: Hegel’s criticism of Empiricism as presented in the Phenomenology of Sprit, his account of experience in the Phenomenology of Sprit and the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, Hegel’s criticism of Kant and his pursuing the aim to show skepticism to be ultimately unintelligible; as it is argued for in the Logic of Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences and by the idea of a unity of the three volumes of the Encyclopedia. We shall be interested in reading closely the section on consciousness in the Phenomenology of Sprit, the ‘three attitudes of thought to objectivity’ in the Encyclopedia I and the section ‘subjective logic’ in the same work. This course will also cover essential ideas in Hegel’s thoughts about mind, nature and history in order to make understandable the relationship envisages of a philosophy of mind, logic and nature.

The course will presuppose no prior knowledge of Hegel.