Hugh Adam Reyburn

“ At the same time there is much that may be strange to us in Hegel’s view. Judgements of his, with which the plain man concurs, are linked up by Hegel with logical and metaphysical doctrines which seem very remote from the point at issue; and as one reads one finds out gradually that the short introduction to the Philosophy of Right is a substitute for a very large scheme of thought in which there are examined many important principles which one is apt to assume uncritically from time to time as occasion arises. ”

“ But one must not assume that the phase of mind which succeeds the moral consciousness is simply the embodiment of the next ethical category. The Phenomenology has to take into account a further inter-play of subject and object which is not necessary to the direct analysis of categories. The other point is a qualification of this. When he wrote the Phenomenology Hegel had in the main reached his final position, but the principles of his thought still required to be worked out and were subject to revision. ”

“ The full exposition of the Logic would occupy greater space than this book itself, and cannot be given propaedeutically. I regret also that I have not been able to carry forward my account into the region of what Hegel calls absolute mind. But again the task is so involved that I have had to content myself with little more than a bare indication of the problem which has to be solved by succeeding portions of philosophy. In reference to both these fields I have tried to adopt Hegel’s own point of view, and have not developed any criticism. ”

“ The stages are (a) mind in its motion, (b) practical mind, and (c) mind in its pure exposition. The whole treatment of ethical mind is called practical rather than objective. The framework, however, is laid down, and the chief weakness is in the transitions.
In 1817 the first of the mature expositions of Hegel’s ethical philosophy appeared in the Encyclopaedia. This work is a complete, but brief, statement of Hegel’s philosophy as a whole—lacking, however, the approach offered in the Phenomenology—and his more specialized works are fuller statements of various positions adopted in it. ”

“ They were written when Hegel was still under the influence of Schelling; and, while the criticism of previous thought which they contain is not cancelled by the more mature view, they are tinged not only in expression but also in principle with some presuppositions which Hegel afterwards discarded. The System of Ethics in particular is a difficult work to understand fully, because in it the general attitude, which may be broadly called Hegelian, is very imperfectly worked out, and is crossed by other tendencies. ”

“ Unless otherwise stated, the references to Hegel’s Werke are to the edition of 1832-40; the exceptions being the early treatise of 1802 Concerning the Scientific Modes of Treating Natural Right, for which references are given to the edition in 1913 of Hegel’s Schriften zur Politik und Rechtsphilosophie by Georg Lasson as well as to volume I of the Werke, and the Philosophy of History which is quoted from the third edition of the Werke, dated 1848. ”

“ The next two chapters, the sixth and the seventh, deal with abstract right, the first division of the world of right; in the succeeding two, eight and nine, the principles of morality are expounded and examined. ”