No. The claim belongs among the rumours that readers of Hegel copy from one another, and it has kept more than a few from starting at all. It is expressly listed in the teaching literature as one of the prejudices that make a fair reading impossible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hegel\u2019s concepts acquire their full meaning only in context, and one understands an early paragraph better on a second reading because one now knows what it is leading to. But that holds for any demanding book. It does not mean that nothing can be understood beforehand; it means that repeated reading pays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Groundlines<\/em> are not built so that the sense only clicks into place at the end. They are a course, and each section has for itself an object one knows: property, contract, punishment, family, the market, poverty, the courts, the constitution. One can read and understand \u00a7 244<\/a> on the rabble<\/a> without having studied the Logic. One can read \u00a7 100<\/a> on punishment and test one\u2019s own theory of punishment against it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The price is that one does not read the grounding along with it \u2014 why the rabble stands just here, why punishment is treated in abstract right and not in the state. That is a real loss, but no reason not to begin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read first what concerns you. A lawyer sensibly begins with property and punishment, someone interested in economics with civil society, someone thinking about politics with the state. And leave the Preface<\/a> aside for now: it is famous, it is polemical, and as a way in it could hardly be less suitable. One reads it at the end \u2014 in which there is a certain irony, for in that very preface Hegel warns against trying to get at a philosophy through its preface.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Literature.<\/strong> Robert C. Solomon, \u201eTeaching Hegel\u201c, Teaching Philosophy<\/em> 2 (1977) \u2013 against the myth that in Hegel one understands nothing before one has understood everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\nA recommendation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n