Hegel on Self-Consciousness Desire and Death in the Phenomenology of Spirit [Paperback]

In the most influential chapter of his most important philosophical work, thePhenomenology of Spirit, Hegel makes the central and disarming assertions that self-consciousness is desire itself and that it attains its satisfaction only in another self-consciousness.Hegel on Self-Consciousnesspresents a groundbreaking new interpretation of these revolutionary claims, tracing their roots to Kant's philosophy and demonstrating their continued relevance for contemporary thought.

As Robert Pippin shows, Hegel argues that we must understand Kant's account of the self-conscious nature of consciousness as a claim in practical philosophy, and that therefore we need radically different views of human sentience, the conditions of our knowledge of the world, and the social nature of subjectivity and normativity. Pippin explains why this chapter of Hegel'sPhenomenologyshould be seen as the basis of much later continental philosophy and the Marxist, neo-Marxist, and critical-theory traditions. He also contrasts his own interpretation of Hegel's assertions with influential interpretations of the chapter put forward by philosophers John McDowell and Robert Brandom.

Robert B. Pippinis the Evelyn Stefansson Nef Distinguished Service Professor in the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought and in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. His books includeHegel's Practical Philosophy: Rational Agency as Ethical LifeandHenry James and Modern Moral Life. Pippin, one of the finest contemporary scholars on Kant and post-Kantian German idealism, presents here two essays that focus on two of Hegel's claims--that self-consciousness is desire itself, and that it finds its satisfaction only in others. . . . Pippin's essays provide a skillful interpretation of one of the most important parts of Hegel's corpus, and illuminatePhenomenology of Spiritas well as historical and contemporary interpretations of Hegel's al#5