Hegel on the History of Philosophy

Abstract

Hegel first lectured on the history of philosophy in the winter of 1805-6 when he was Privat-Dozent at Jena. He gave course on the subject in each of the two winter semesters of his professorship at Heidelberg (1816-18), and took it up again soon after his transfer to Berlin. His first Berlin series on the history of philosophy was given in the summer of 1819, his first winter course there on the topic began in October 1820. From the autumn of 1823 he made practice of lecturing on the history of philosophy in alternate years, and had just begun fresh series when he died suddenly in November 1831. Hegel's lectures on the history of philosophy were first edited by his pupil Carl Ludwig Michelet. In his preface, dated 28 April 1833, Michelet explained that in preparing the text he had at his disposal both material from Hegel's own hand and number of sets of student's lecture notes, including one taken by himself. Hegel had left behind (1) fully-written out manuscript from the Jena period; (2) short summary of the history of philosophy, made at Heidelberg; (3) supplementary material for (1) and (2), in the form of marginal notes or notes, mostly scrappy, on separate sheets; (4) part of manuscript covering the introduction, most of which was composed in the Berlin period and the rest at Heidelberg. About third of the introduction as Michelet printed it represented what Hegel had written, as opposed to spoken. But he had clearly improvised lot in his later years, and it was therefore necessary to eke out the manuscript material with lecture notes. Michelet mentioned three sets of notes, all taken in Berlin, which he had consulted, but gave no indication in his published, text when he was relying on Hegel's own manuscripts and when having recourse to what his hearers had recorded. Michelet's version of Hegel's lectures was republished in corrected form as part of the collected edition of his works, issued by a group of friends of the deceased, in 1840-42. It was from this text that the three-volume Eng.lish translation, by Elizabeth Haldane and Frances Simson, was made. I shall