The Logic of Desire: An Introduction to Hegels Phenomenology of Spirit

by Kalkavage, Peter

• ISBN13: 9781589880375
• ISBN10: 1589880374
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-04-30
• Publisher: Consortium Book Sales & Dist

Summary

Peter Kalkavage's The Logic of Desire guides the reader through Hegel's great work. Given the book's legendary difficulty, one may well ask, "Why even try to read the Phenomenology?" In his preface, Kalkavage explains why he thinks a reader should try: "There is much to commend the study of Hegel: his attentiveness to the deepest, most fundamental questions of philosophy, his uncompromising pursuit of truth, his amazing gift for characterisation and critique, his appreciation for the grand sweep of things and the large view, his profound admiration for all that is heroic, especially for the ancient Greeks, those heroes of thought in whom the philosophic spirit first dawned, his penetrating gaze into modernity in all its forms, his enormous breadth of interests, and his audacious claim to have captured absolute knowing in a thoroughly rational account."

Author Biography

Peter Kalkavage is a member of the senior faculty at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, where he has taught for thirty years.

Table of Contents

Prologue: The Ladder and the Labyrinth	p. xi
Preparing the Journey
A World of Knowing	p. 1
What Is Experience? (Hegel's Introduction)	p. 11
Consciousness
Of Mere Being (Sense-Certainty)	p. 29
The Crisis of Thinghood (Perception)	p. 40
The Dynamics of Self-Expression (Understanding)	p. 55
Principles of Motion and the Motion of Principles (Understanding, Continued)	p. 70
Self-Consciousness
On Life and Desire	p. 91
The Violent Self: In Quest of Recognition	p. 109
Freedom as Thinking	p. 126
Infinite Yearning and the Rift in Man	p. 137
Reason
Idealism	p. 157
Adventures of a Rational Observer	p. 166
The Romance of Reason	p. 186
Rational Animals and the Birth of Spirit	p. 207
Spirit
Ethical Life: Laws in Conflict	p. 235
Interlude	p. 260
Culture as Alienation	p. 268
From Pure Insight to Pure Terror: The Darkness of the Enlightenment	p. 292
Pure Willing and the Moral World-View	p. 315
Conscience and Reconciliation: Hegel's Divine Comedy	p. 334
Religion
The Depiction of God	p. 361
The Greek Phase	p. 374
Christianity, the Figure of Science	p. 396
Absolute Knowing
Speculative Good Friday: The Top of Hegel's Ladder	p. 423
Epilogue	p. 452
A Brief Bibliography	p. 459
Notes	p. 463
Index	p. 523
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