Preface: I’m currently reading The Hegel Reader, edited by Stephan Houlgate. After giving it one go around I’m going to go look at interpretations and such. My first one after this will probably be Losurdo’s book on the matter. I don’t like just relying on interpretations, though, although I recognize their value. I want to put in my own work in trying to understand him.

Also, I rotate my books throughout the day, so I’m reading it concurrently with Capital (which im rereading with Hegel specifically to understand the dia-mat better, since the first time through i only came for the economics) and War and Peace. This actually makes it easier, because it gives me a break, while still keeping my brain in thinking mode.

Anyway

Oh my god I can’t understand anything. I’ve gotten through his early works of

-the earliest system-programme of german idealism -love -Fragment of a system -difference between fichtes and Schellings system

And the preface to the Phrenology of Spirit.

I think I’ve understood like…two concepts? I recognize the unity of opposites because marxism relies heavily on it, and then I think I understand the argument he posits of needing philosophy for science (in that, to go from sensory inputs to actual understanding, you need a process for actually understanding and deriving meaning. Like how you need to know a process of turning leather into shoes and such).

There’s also his stuff about the finite and infinite and the absolute and such and…I can recognize the point I think, but I couldn’t describe it even if I had a gun pointed at me.

Overall im spent though. I genuinely feel like I’ve ran a mile just trying to understand what he’s saying. I’m thankful I’m able to understand any of it at all tbh

There’s actually a quote from war and peace (referring to a charecter in the book, not Hegel) that I’m thinking of right now,

“because of the self confidence with which he had spoken, no one could tell whether what he had said was very clever or very stupid.”

I’m sure Hegel is leaning on the clever side here but it gave me a good chuckle when I read it