Optional course, MA in Social and Political Thought

Tutor: Andrew Chitty

Note: from 2009-10 this course and the Marx course will be replaced by a single new course, Hegel and Marx.

The course focuses on Hegel's social and political philosophy, in and its place in his overall account of consciousness, historical change, and the Absolute. It aims especially to elucidate notions such as recognition, spirit, freedom and ethical life in Hegel and their political implications. The course is organised around a reading of key sections from Hegel's The Spirit of Christianity and its Fate, The Phenomenology of Spirit and Philosophy of Right.

Provisional course outline

1. The Spirit of Christianity and its Fate
The contrast between love and domination

2. Phenomenology: Introduction and ch. 1
The dialectical method

3. Phenomenology: ch. 4
Self-consciousness, master and servant, and mutual recognition

4. Phenomenology: ch. 6A
Ancient ethical life and its breakdown

5. Phenomenology: ch. 6B-C
The French revolution, the community of forgiveness

6. Phenomenology: ch. 8, Preface
The standpoint of absolute knowing, Hegel's metaphysics

7. Philosophy of Right: preface and introduction
The rational and the real, right as the existence of freedom

8. Philosophy of Right: ethical life and the state
Society and the individual in Hegel

9. Left Hegelianism
Essays by Ruge, Bruno Bauer and Marx

Preparatory reading

For introductions to Hegel's philosophy as a whole see Stephen Houlgate's An Introduction to Hegel: Freedom, Truth and History (2005) and Frederick Beiser's Hegel (2005)

A good collection of essays on Hegel's political thought is Robert Williams (ed.) Beyond Liberalism and Communitarianism (2001).

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Photo: HEGEL'S EYES - Underpuppy - Some rights reserved