Eighty-two questions in thirteen rubrics.
How do I start?
- Why are Hegel’s texts so hard to read?
- Which texts by Hegel are there – and which is the best way in?
- Which edition should I use?
- How do I read a paragraph of this edition?
- How long will it take me to finish reading Hegel?
- Table of contents of the Encyclopaedia (1830)
- Which videos are there as an introduction to Hegel’s philosophy?
- Why read Hegel laboriously when AI can explain it?
- If I want to address Hegel by his first name – which of the three was the one he used?
How do I read Hegel?
- Do I have to have read Kant first?
- Do I need to know the Logic in order to understand the philosophy of right?
- Why does Hegel use ordinary words in unusual meanings?
- I understand every sentence, but not the thought. Why is that?
- Do I have to have understood everything in order to understand anything?
- Why does Hegel document nothing and give so few examples?
- What does „Grundlinien“ mean? And why the subtitle?
- What actually happens when one follows Hegel through – and how does one understand oneself in doing it?
Hegel and his influence
- For whom was Hegel relevant?
- Who was relevant for Hegel?
- Why is Hegel still relevant today?
- Hegel and German legal scholarship
Basic concepts: truth, idealism, spirit
- What does Hegel understand by truth?
- How is one to think „substance“ also „as subject“?
- What is idealism – in the philosophical sense?
- Is Hegel’s philosophy a „philosophy of identity“?
- Is Hegel’s philosophy a „philosophy of spirit“?
- What role does „difference“ play in Hegel?
- Is Hegel’s system hierarchical?
- Which conceptual development precedes the philosophy of right?
Dialectic, reason and method
- How does Hegel ground his claims?
- Is dialectic real, or only a method of presentation?
- Do the moments of a dialectical movement stand over against each other – dualistically?
- Is Hegel’s „speculative reason“ a higher, even mystical faculty?
- Is Hegel’s „reason“ that of the solitary thinker?
- Has Hegel not simply misunderstood the meaning of the copula „is“?
Religion, nature, the beginning of the system
- Was Hegel a Christian, a pantheist or an atheist?
- Is Hegel’s philosophy of nature the Achilles heel of the system?
- Where does a system begin that may presuppose nothing?
Objections from science and philosophy
- Why should an empiricist read Hegel – and how does he „prove“ any of it?
- How does Hegel stand to empirical inquiry?
- Hegel’s concepts are vague, his sentences confused, arguments are missing – why read this?
- Is it not naive to start from freedom? Brain research shows the brain acts before we decide.
- Is Hegel’s claim to a system across all the sciences not presumptuous?
- Does Hegel underestimate the self-movement of the individual spheres?
- Has hermeneutics made Hegel superfluous?
Freedom, state and history
- Is the will really free, especially if it is supposed to be rational?
- Is Hegel an apologist for the „total state“?
- Who, according to Hegel, has to be rational?
- Is history in Hegel made by human beings – or determined?
- Is not everything in reality unconscious, irrational drive?
Criticism of Hegel
- Does this sentence come from Hegel at all?
- Was Hegel the Prussian state philosopher?
- „What is rational is actual“ – does Hegel thereby justify everything that exists?
- Did Hegel glorify war?
- Is the state God for Hegel?
- Does Hegel deny the principle of contradiction?
- Where does Hegel stand on Judaism?
- Does Hegel exclude women from the state?
- Was Hegel a racist?
- Did the National Socialists invoke Hegel?
- Is history at an end with Hegel?
- Did Hegel claim that there could be only seven planets?
- Did Marx not finally set Hegel back on his feet?
For lawyers
- What does Hegel have to say to lawyers?
- Is Hegel’s theory of punishment still of use?
- Why does property come before human dignity in Hegel?
- What does Hegel have against the historical school of law?
- Why is the state not a contract?
- What of Hegel has remained in present-day law?
From various standpoints
- If what works is true – why Hegel?
- For nihilists everything is meaningless and null – can Hegel then be ignored?
- What do Christians get from Hegel?
- Do Marxists still need Hegel?
- What does Hegel hold against liberals?
- Is Hegel an ally of conservatives?
- What do natural scientists get from Hegel?
- Where is the best place for lawyers to start?
- What does Hegel say to readers from non-European traditions?
Hegel and the present
- Can a machine have spirit?
- Is Hegel’s recognition fit for the politics of recognition?
- Does Hegel have anything to say about the ecological crisis?
In conclusion