No, but it helps \u2014 and for two places it is indispensable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First, in morality<\/strong>. Hegel\u2019s chapter on purpose, intention, the good and conscience (\u00a7 105<\/a> to \u00a7 141<\/a>) is over long stretches a reckoning with Kant, and the sharpest sentences are only half intelligible without the opposing position. Hegel\u2019s objection is that the categorical imperative is purely formal: it says that one should will without contradiction, but not what. One has to know what Kant claims in order to see whether the objection hits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Second, with the will<\/strong>. Hegel\u2019s concept of freedom (\u00a7 5<\/a> to \u00a7 7<\/a>) is built as an answer to Kant\u2019s concept of autonomy. Without Kant one reads it as a description; with Kant, as a correction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Abstract right \u2014 person<\/a>, property<\/a>, contract<\/a>, wrong and punishment \u2014 and the whole of civil society with its economy, administration of justice and poverty can be read without prior knowledge of Kant. Lawyers find familiar ground here in any case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead of the whole Critique of Practical Reason<\/em>, the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals<\/em> (1785) is enough to begin with \u2014 a slim book. Together with Kant\u2019s Metaphysical First Principles of the Doctrine of Right<\/em> (1797), to which Hegel refers explicitly more than once \u2014 among other places in \u00a7 75<\/a>, where he says that the concept of contract cannot subsume marriage under it and calls Kant\u2019s doing so \u2014 \u201eone must say\u201c \u2014 a disgracefulness. Whoever knows these two books understands three quarters of Hegel\u2019s polemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And the reverse holds too: one can begin with Hegel and catch up on Kant when one notices that one needs him. At the decisive points Hegel says himself whom he is writing against.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Literature.<\/strong> Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals<\/em> (1785) and The Metaphysics of Morals<\/em> (1797); Hegel\u2019s early reckoning in Faith and Knowledge<\/em> (1802) and in the essay on natural right<\/a> (1802\/03). \u2013 For the wider setting Eckart F\u00f6rster, Die 25 Jahre der Philosophie<\/em>, Frankfurt a. M. 2011 (English: The Twenty-Five Years of Philosophy<\/em>, Cambridge, Mass. 2012).<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhere it works without Kant<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
A suggestion, if you want to save time<\/h2>\n\n\n\n