Hegel

Translators’ Introduction

This is a translation of Martin Heidegger’s Hegel, which was originally published in German as volume 68 of Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe in 1993. This volume comprises two different works: The first, shorter part of the volume has the original title of Die Negativität. Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Hegel aus dem Ansatz in der Negativität (1938–39, 1941). The second part bears the title Erläuterung der “Einleitung” zu Hegels “Phänomenologie des Geistes”(1942). Though the text, especially the first part, is fragmentary and much less polished than many of his other texts, Heidegger seems to have considered it especially important. As the editor of the German original notes, it was Heidegger himself who grouped the two treatises together and assigned them to a special volume on Hegel. It was also Heidegger himself who assigned both treatises to the third division of the Gesamtausgabe. At the time of its publication it was the second volume to come out under the third division of the Gesamtausgabe: “Unpublished Treatises: Addresses—Ponderings.” The first volume to appear under this division was Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis), whose first edition was published in 1989.

In addition to giving some priority to these texts in the organization of his works, Heidegger also explains Hegel’s importance quite explicitly. Early on in the first part, he writes, “The singularity of Hegel’s philosophy consists primarily in the fact that there is no longer a higher standpoint of self-consciousness of spirit beyond it. Thus any future, still higher standpoint over against it, which would be superordinate to Hegel’s system—in the manner by which Hegel’s philosophy for its part and in accord with its point of view had to subordinate every previous philosophy—is once and for all impossible” (p.3). Though Heidegger’s writing and lectures on Hegel, as well as on the German Idealism of Fichte and Schelling, increased significantly during the period in which this volume takes place, his insistence on Hegel’s importance is not new. Many years earlier, in 1915, Heidegger writes that Hegel’s philosophy contains “the system of a historical worldview which is most powerful with regard to its fullness, its depth, its conceptuality, and the richness of its experiences, and which as such has removed and surpassed all preceding fundamental philosophical problems.” It is the task of philosophy, he continues, “to confront Hegel.”1

Heidegger engages in two such confrontations in the present volume, though this was not his first and would not be his last. In section 82 of Being and Time,2 some twelve years after Heidegger claimed that such a confrontation was needed, he addresses Hegel with respect to the relationship between time and spirit. Hegel is one of the philosophers whom Heidegger confronted repeatedly and extensively throughout his life. Heidegger taught a seminar on Hegel’s Logic as early as 1925–26. In the summer of 1929 he gave a lecture course on German Idealism at the University of Freiburg in which he devoted himself to the philosophies of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, although Fichte figures most prominently in the course. The lecture course was published as Der deutsche Idealismus (Fichte, Schelling, Hegel) und die philosophische Problemlage der Gegenwart (GA28) in 1997. The lecture course was accompanied by a seminar devoted to the “Preface” of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (published as part of GA86, Seminare: Hegel—Schelling). One can also look to Heidegger’s lectures at the University of Freiburg on the Phenomenology of Spirit in the winter semester of 1930–31,³ and “Hegel’s Concept of Experience,”⁴ which was written shortly after the second part of this volume, or to important later works like the 1957 essay “The Onto-theological Constitution of Metaphysics,” which is based on a seminar that Heidegger taught on Hegel’s Science of Logic, or the 1958 lecture “Hegel and the Greeks.”⁵

As the presence of direct addresses to an audience that can be found in both parts of “Hegel” indicates, the occasion for the composition of both treatises was likely their oral presentation to an audience. As the editor of the German original explains in her afterword, Heidegger may have presented or at least intended to present both treatises to a (small) circle of colleagues. Given the fragmentary and sketch-like character of “Negativity,” it is unclear whether Heidegger ever presented the reflections on Hegel’s negativity in the form in which they can be found in “Negativity.” The specificity of the address at the beginning of “Negativity,” where Heidegger told his audience that the discussion of Hegel’s negativity “should not interrupt the course of your work of interpreting Hegel’s Logic” (p.3) suggests that Heidegger had a particular audience in mind when he composed “Negativity,” even if he never actually presented his reflections to this audience.

Aside from the difference in length, one striking difference between parts one and two of Hegel is the difference in style and in their respective degree of elaboration of the two treatises. The first part contains at times an elliptical and fragmentary style. As the German editor notes, this fragmentary and sketch-like style character of much of “Negativity” gives the reader an insight into the process of Heidegger’s questioning and thinking. The second part, in contrast, displays a much greater degree of elaboration and stylistic cohesion. The differences between the two parts in terms of the respective arrangement of the material are equally striking. After a “preliminary consideration,” the second part follows the structure of the “Introduction” of the Phenomenology of Spirit. The first part, in contrast, does not have a comparable linear structure. Its first section, titled “Negativity. Nothing—abyss—beyng” comprises thirty-four pages in the German original and is longer than the other four sections combined. The significant length and the comprehensiveness of the material treated suggest a certain priority of this section. The next three sections do not go beyond the ideas found in the first section, but rather elaborate some of the ideas found therein, while the central ideas of the final section, titled “Hegel,” seem to have already been incorporated into the first section. This could suggest that the remarks of this section served as the basis for the more elaborated articulation that constitutes the beginning of the first section of “Negativity.”

Heidegger’s direct address to his audience at the beginning of the first section is not only the clearest indication that “Negativity” was indeed at least intended for presentation to an audience, but also suggests that the portion of “Negativity” that for us constitutes its first section may in fact have been projected to become the treatise that Heidegger was going to present. If this hypothesis is plausible, then the remaining twenty sub-sections of the first section of “Negativity” can be read as a kind of “outline” of Heidegger’s treatise on Hegel’s negativity, and despite the fact that much of “Negativity” is not fully elaborated we get a fairly good sense of the shape that Heidegger’s treatise on Hegel’s negativity may have had in its final version.

In part one of “Hegel” Heidegger advances the thesis that the basic determination of Hegelian philosophy that can lead to a more originary standpoint is negativity (cf. p.6). Negativity constitutes the suitable approach for this confrontation with Hegel because a fundamental confrontation with Hegel needs to be guided by an essential question and because “Negativity is questionless both in the system that constitutes the consummation of Western metaphysics and in the history of metaphysics in general” (p.31). What Heidegger aims to show in “Negativity” is that although negativity plays a prominent role throughout Hegel’s philosophy, Hegel does not take negativity seriously enough and negativity itself does not become a question for him. To say that negativity is not a question for Hegel means that its origin and essential structure are not treated as questionworthy or questionable and thus remain concealed.

It is precisely this concealed origin of negativity that interests Heidegger, because to find the origin of negativity means to attain that standpoint that would allow one to conduct a fundamental confrontation with Hegel that would satisfy the two demands that Heidegger identifies at the beginning of the treatise. What Heidegger sets out to do in “Negativity” is to examine the questionlessness of Hegel’s negativity, in terms of both what it means for his philosophy and with respect to its peculiar presuppositions.

For Hegel, “negativity” is the difference of consciousness (cf. p.11). More specifically, it is the threefold difference of unconditioned consciousness (cf. p.29). As such, negativity is the energy of unconditioned thinking, the essence of absolute subjectivity (cf. p.11). Heidegger does not only examine that which Hegel calls negativity, he also looks at Hegel’s negativity understood as a realm of inquiry, that is, “the connection of saying-no, negation, negatedness, not, nothing, and nullity” (p.29). Here it is especially the examination of the nothing that holds the promise to shed light on negativity (cf. p.13). However, what Heidegger finds is that in both cases negativity is completely questionless for Hegel, because the central determination of Hegel’s negativity is that it is “one of thinking and thoughtness” (p.17). While Hegel’s ultimate aim is to think thought and thoughtness unconditionally, thought itself is self-evident for Hegel; and it is precisely this self-evidence of thought that entails that negativity does not and cannot become a question for Hegel.

Heidegger notes that the questionlessness of negativity does not imply that an inquiry would be altogether futile or impossible. In fact, Heidegger tells us that we must tarry with what is questionless, because that which is questionless is not only that which does not allow for an inquiry but also precisely “that which is at bottom undecided but which in the flight from mindfulness passes itself off as something that is decided” (p.30). For Heidegger, Hegel’s negativity is questionless in just this ambiguous sense and thus highly questionworthy.

As Heidegger attempts to show, the questionlessness of Hegel’s negativity is a consequence of the questionlessness of the essence of thought. Thought, in turn, is self-evident and thus questionless insofar as it is the essential characteristic of man conceived as the rational animal. To ask the question of the origin of negativity, therefore, means to ask what the questionlessness of thought conceived as the basic human capacity signifies and comprises (cf. p.31). Heidegger’s approach in confronting Hegel is thus not to go beyond him, but to go back into what he takes to be the concealed ground of his thinking.

In the second part of this volume, Heidegger shifts his focus to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. The Phenomenology, and with it the “Phenomenology-system,” is rooted in experience as its most fundamental ground. Thus, Heidegger aims to explicate Hegel’s concept of experience in order to properly confront the motivating ground of Hegel’s phenomenological method in the “Phenomenology-system.” He does this through a paragraph by paragraph analysis of the “Introduction” to the Phenomenology of Spirit.

In the winter semester of 1930–31 Heidegger had given a lecture course on the Phenomenology of Spirit at the University of Freiburg. In this lecture course Heidegger omits discussion of both the “Preface” and the “Introduction” and instead devotes himself to the explication of Sections A and B of the Phenomenology. In the years following this lecture course Heidegger gave three seminars on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit.6 Next to the more comprehensive “Hegel’s Concept of Experience,” which would be published in 1950 but which is based on seminars that Heidegger taught in 1942–43, part two of Hegel offers a glimpse at the evolution of Heidegger’s thinking about Hegel’s Phenomenology since his lecture course in 1930–31.

In part two, called “Elucidation of the ‘Introduction’ to Hegel’s ‘Phenomenology of Spirit,’” Heidegger groups the sixteen paragraphs of the “Introduction” into five sections. While the first four sections are worked out in detail, the final section, dealing with paragraph 16 of the “Introduction,” consists of eighteen numbered “sketches.” Of these five sections the one dealing with paragraphs 14 and 15 is by far the longest. The title of that section is “The Essence of the Experience of Consciousness and Its Presentation.” The primacy of this topic can hardly surprise us if we recall that the original subtitle of the work that would later become known as Science of the Phenomenology of Spirit or, in short, Phenomenology of Spirit, was Science of the Experience of Consciousness, a title that is a constant interest for Heidegger, and whose disappearance, Heidegger concedes, ultimately remains something of a mystery. The centrality of the concept of experience for any confrontation with Hegel’s philosophy is further attested by the fact that in 1950 Heidegger published a separate essay titled “Hegel’s Concept of Experience.” In addition to the discussion of the proper starting point for philosophy, and Hegel’s starting point in particular, the 1942–43 essay also gives a paragraph by paragraph analysis of the “Introduction” of the Phenomenology of Spirit.⁷ What the reader will find in the analysis of experience found in this volume is Heidegger’s continuing attempt to outline the grounds for assessing the true impact of Hegel’s philosophy, an analysis of the role of the Phenomenology within Hegel’s philosophical system, an insightful and rigorous analysis of what exactly experience is, with reference to the history of philosophy (in particular, to Kant and Aristotle), and, importantly, the ways in which Hegel’s conception of experience presents us with important advances and insights into how we should properly approach philosophical investigations.

Notes on the Translation

The difficulties of translating the works of Martin Heidegger into English are well known and have been well noted. Overall we have tried to situate our translation in the context of the rich Heidegger literature. We have attempted to abstain from any unnecessary neologisms and have in many cases adopted what appeared to us to be the most plausible existing translation of a given word. While we have explained some specific translation choices in the text itself, in this introduction we want to mention some of the more general choices that we have made:

1. Hyphenation: The hyphenations that Heidegger employs frequently throughout Hegel cannot always intelligibly be rendered into English. As a general rule we have tried to preserve Heidegger’s hyphens wherever plausible. This was achieved most successfully where the etymology of the English word is sufficiently similar to that of the German. We are able to follow Heidegger’s hyphenations with words like “de-cision” (Ent-scheidung), “dis-illusionment” (Ent-täuschung), “dismantling” (Ab-bau), “pre-dilection” (Vor-liebe), and “question-worthy” (frag-würdig). In the majority of cases, however, differences in etymology did not allow for a plausible adoption of Heidegger’s hyphenations. Where this is the case we have not replicated Heidegger’s hyphenation in the English word but have included the hyphenated German word in brackets instead. This applies both to words that could be hyphenated in English but would have a meaning that differs from the one that Heidegger’s own hyphenation is meant to convey and to words in English that allow for no meaningful hyphenation based on the semantics of the word in question. To the former category belongs the word “Erfahrung,” which Heidegger sometimes renders as “Er-fahrung.” Since the meaning of the prefix “ex-“ is not the same as that which “er-“ has in German it would be misleading and would ultimately misrepresent Heidegger’s German to hyphenate the word. Examples of words where the etymology of the English term allowed for no possible hyphenation at all include “origin,” which in German Heidegger sometimes writes as “Ur-sprung,” as well as the word “difference” when rendered by Heidegger as “Unter-schied.” We have chosen to exempt certain words from this rule that are well-established in the English-speaking Heidegger literature. Words like “a-byss” (Ab-grund), “e-vent” (Er-eignis), “re-nunciation” (Ab-sage), and “re-presentation” (Vor-stellen) have become part of the Heidegger lexicon and have been adopted, though the words have no meaningful connection in terms of their respective etymologies. In those cases where we have translated Heidegger’s terms with the help of two separate words, for example, “regressive inquiry” for “Zurück-fragen,” and “leaping attainment” for “Er-springung,” we have also included the German word in brackets.

One of the more difficult hyphenations in Hegel is the word “Bewußtsein.” With one exception, we have translated “Bewußtsein,” when used without a hyphen, as “consciousness.” Where Heidegger writes “Bewußt-sein” we have on all but one occasion translated this as “being-conscious.” Where we deviate from this translation, “Bewußt-sein” is rendered as “being an object of consciousness.” Another word that deserves special mention is “Vorstellen.” In the majority of cases we have translated “Vorstellen” and its derivatives as “representation.” Where we felt that Heidegger placed a special emphasis on the literal sense of “vor-stellen,” (“vor” meaning “out in front of” and “stellen” meaning “to place, make stand, or put”) graphically expressed by the hyphenation of the word, we have translated it as “placing-before,” or “placing-before-oneself” for “Vor-sich-stellen.”

2. Heidegger’s use of quotation marks: As the editor of the German text notes, Heidegger makes ample use of underlining and quotation marks, all of which were preserved in the German edition in order to reflect the “author’s style of work” (cf. “Editor’s Afterword”). We have tried to preserve these quotation marks whenever plausible. Some of these quotation marks clearly refer to titles of published works. For example, all references to Kant’s “Kritik der reinen Vernunft” refer to Kant’s book with the same title and are thus rendered in italics. The greatest challenge was posed by the phrases “Phänomenologie des Geistes,” the shortened version “Phänomenologie,” and the long version “Wissenschaft der Phänomenologie des Geistes.” In the majority of cases the phrases refer to Hegel’s text and are thus written in italics and capitalized. Heidegger also refers to the introduction and preface of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit concisely as “‘Preface’”or “‘Introduction.’” There are instances in which Heidegger speaks about the preface or introduction of the Phenomenology without placing these terms in quotation marks. In order to be as faithful to the original German as possible we have adopted this on the assumption that this distinction is deliberate. Whether it is in all cases plausible is a separate matter that we leave for the reader to decide. Lastly, as other translators have noted with respect to other texts by Heidegger, Heidegger does not always indicate when he is talking about a book. For instance, the phrase “phenomenology of spirit” can also refer to the philosophical work done, and not the book written by Hegel. There are some instances in Hegel where Heidegger does not indicate that he is referring to a work even though the context makes any other interpretation implausible. In these cases we have added the appropriate formatting even though it does not appear in the German original.

3. Quotations from the Phenomenology of Spirit and other works: The present volume contains quotations from several works by Hegel, first and foremost the Phenomenology of Spirit and The Science of Logic. In order to maintain terminological consistency throughout this translation we have retranslated all passages from the Phenomenology of Spirit and The Science of Logic that appear in the present volume. In doing this we have greatly benefited from the work of A. V. Miller, George di Giovanni, and other translators of the writings of Hegel and Heidegger. We would like to acknowledge our indebtedness to them. For quotations from all other works by Hegel we have reproduced the translation as it can be found in the standard English translations of the respective work. Where we modified an existing translation, we have noted this in the corresponding footnote. Latin or Greek sources quoted by Heidegger in this volume were rendered following Heidegger’s own translations of these sources. This was done in order to retain the specific meaning that Heidegger gives to the original sentence or phrase, a meaning that could have easily been lost if we had only reproduced an English translation of the Latin or Greek original. In the corresponding footnote we have also provided the English translation of the original passage as it appears in an existing English translation of the primary text quoted by Heidegger.

4. We have included the original citations as they appear in the German edition. When these citations refer to Hegel’s Werke: Vollständige Ausgabe durch einen Verein von Freunden des Verewigten (19 vols. Berlin, 1832–45 and 1887), we have followed the convention of referring to the edition by the abbreviation “WW” with a Roman numeral for the volume. We have furthermore included the page numbers in the English translation of the original works. For the Phänomenologie des Geistes we refer to the paragraph numbers from A. V. Miller’s translation, which appears under the title Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). For the Wissenschaft der Logik we refer to G. di Giovanni’s translation, which appears under the title The Science of Logic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). In the footnotes we refer to these editions as “Phenomenology” and “Science of Logic” respectively. Bibliographical information for all other works that are cited in Hegel can be found in the footnotes to the corresponding quotation.

5. We have attempted to preserve the greatest possible terminological consistency both within the individual parts and between them. As such we have tried to avoid, as much as possible, using the same English word to translate two different key terms, even if different English words would have offered the most desirable English term in each case when taken individually. The practice is complicated by the fact that there are certain German words of an ambiguous semantic wealth that no single English word can simply reproduce. For example, the word “Einfall” (literally “fall into”) can mean, and is used by Heidegger at times in these two senses, both “mere idea” and “intrusion.” We have translated the term “Einfall” for the most part as “mere idea” and occasionally as “intrusion” when Heidegger emphasizes the moment of (forcefully) entering into from outside. When the adjectival form “einfallend” is used, we have translated it as “incidental,” following di Giovanni’s translation of “einfallende Reflexion” as “incidental reflection.” In all these cases, the glossary will clearly indicate the different translations that correspond to the same German word.

6. “To undergo an experience”: In part two of Hegel the phrase “eine Erfahrung machen” comes up numerous times. We have translated the standard German expression “eine Erfahrung machen” (literally “to make an experience”) by “to undergo an experience.” It should be noted that in relation to “undergo,” the German “machen” has a more active connotation. The phrases “eine Erfahrung an etwas machen” and “eine Erfahrung über etwas machen” have generally been translated by “to undergo an experience with something” and “to undergo an experience of something,” respectively.

7. Especially throughout “Negativity,” Heidegger’s writing style is often elliptical. Many times Heidegger will omit the appropriate inflection of “to be.” For the most part, this does not render the content more obscure. As such it would have been just as easy to fill in copulas or articles that are missing in the German edition in order to increase the flow of the text as it would have been redundant given the readability of Heidegger’s treatise. We have for the most part refrained from compensating Heidegger’s elliptical style, except in those instances where an equally elliptical English translation would have failed to afford the same comprehensibility as the German original. Given the ubiquity of Heidegger’s elliptical style, filling in the appropriate words would have significantly altered the overall appearance of the text and would have suggested to the English reader a much more “polished” manuscript than the original actually is.

8. Lastly, we have included a comprehensive glossary at the end of this volume in order to make our translation as transparent as possible.

Two notes on the technical aspects of the translation: First, the numbering of the footnotes in the German original differs between “Negativity” and “Elucidation of the ‘Introduction’ to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit.” In the former, the footnotes are numbered consecutively from the beginning of each subsection. In part two, in contrast, the footnotes are numbered consecutively from the beginning of each of the five main sections. Secondly, all of the additions that in the original text appeared in square brackets, whether those be Heidegger’s own (e.g., when he quotes Hegel) or those of the editor, appear in curly brackets { } in this translation. All additions to the German text by the translators of this volume are within square brackets [ ]. In addition to the original footnotes that can be found in the German text, this translation contains additional endnotes by the translators of this volume. Superscripted notes in brackets indicate a translators’ note.

Finally, we would like to thank Kenneth Maly for help at the beginning stages of the translation, our external reviewer for helpful suggestions, Dee Mortensen at Indiana University Press, and our copy editor, Carol Kennedy.

1. GA 1: 410–11. Two writers who have written on Heidegger’s lectures on negativity in English are Dahlstrom and de Boer. See Daniel O. Dahlstrom, “Thinking of Nothing: Heidegger’s Criticism of Hegel’s Conception of Negativity,” in A Companion to Hegel, ed. Stephen Houlgate and Michael Baur (Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), and Karin de Boer, Thinking in the Light of Time: Heidegger’s Encounter with Hegel (Albany: SUNY Press, 2000).

2. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1962).

3. Martin Heidegger, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980). This lecture course was published in 1980 as volume 32 of the Gesamtausgabe under the title Hegels Phänomenologie des Geistes and came out in an English translation in 1988.

4. Cf. Martin Heidegger, Holzwege, Gesamtausgabe, Band 5 (Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann Verlag, 1977), 115–208. “Hegel’s Concept of Experience,” in Off the Beaten Track (Cambridge University Press, 2002), 86–156.

5. Cf. Martin Heidegger, Wegmarken, Gesamtausgabe, Band 9 (Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann Verlag, 1976), 427–444. “Hegel and the Greeks,” in Pathmarks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 323–336.

6. These seminars are all published in volume 86 of the Gesamtausgabe.

7. This essay was published as a part of Off the Beaten Track in 1977.