Robert B. PippinBesprekingen

Hegel makes the key and disarming arguments that "self-consciousness is desire itself" and that it achieves its "satisfaction" only in another self-consciousness in the most famous chapter of his most important philosophical work, the Phenomenology of Spirit. Hegel on Self-Consciousness offers a ground-breaking new understanding of these revolutionary assertions, tracing their origins to Kant's philosophy and establishing their continuing significance for modern thought.½

12/13/21

Quite a conundrum with this one, since it won't be much use to you if you haven't read Hegel, but if you've read Hegel you've probably read it with the exact opposite assumptions to those claims with which Pippin convincingly claims you should be reading. In short: Hegel should be read as a Kantian. The Phenomenology of Spirit shows that self-consciousness is needed for any form of knowledge, and discusses a variety of forms of self-consciousness, most of which fail in the goal of providing us with the opportunity to know anything. Only one doesn't: modern, absolute knowledge. This is, in a sense, what is then laid out in the Science of Logic, which is not about crazy metaphysical monism of the mind, nor a mere category theory (that is, a theory of the concepts *we* use). It's something in between: both an account of the concepts we use, and a defense of the claim that they are also really determinate of the possibility of knowledge.

That's all pretty convincing, actually. The obvious flaw in the book is it's failure to look beyond Hegel at all: it's all well and good to claim that 'modern' Absolute Knowledge provides us with knowledge, but that's not actually a defense of modernity. That would require a defense of capitalism, amongst other unfortunate social features, or, alternatively, a critique of those features. But Pippin's dismissive attitude towards later Hegelians (e.g., the Frankfurt School) makes it impossible for him to take this next step. His book does, however, allow for the possibility of taking it.

This is like the book I've been hoping for so long! Except not quite.

Pippin's awesome. Zero bullshit.