Hegel: Lectures on the Proofs of the Existence of God - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199213844 ISBN 13: 9780199213849

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2007

Synopsis

The Hegel Lectures Series
Series Editor: Peter C. Hodgson

Hegel's lectures have had as great a historical impact as the works he himself published. Important elements of his system are elaborated only in the lectures, especially those given in Berlin during the last decade of his life. The original editors conflated materials from different sources and dates, obscuring the development and logic of Hegel's thought. The Hegel Lectures series is based on a selection of extant and recently discovered transcripts and manuscripts. The original lecture series are reconstructed so that the structure of Hegel's argument can be followed. Each volume presents an accurate new translation accompanied by an editorial introduction and annotations on the text, which make possible the identification of Hegel's many allusions and sources.

Lectures on the Proofs of the Existence of God
Hegel lectured on the proofs of the existence of God as a separate topic in 1829. He also discussed the proofs in the context of his lectures on the philosophy of religion (1821-31), where the different types of proofs were considered mostly in relation to specific religions. The text that he prepared for his lectures in 1829 was a fully formulated manuscript and appears to have been the first draft of a work that he intended to publish and for which he signed a contract shortly before his death in 1831. The 16 lectures include an introduction to the problem of the proofs and a detailed discussion of the cosmological proof. Philipp Marheineke published these lectures in 1832 as an appendix to the lectures on the philosophy of religion, together with an earlier manuscript fragment on the cosmological proof and the treatment of the teleological and ontological proofs as found in the 1831 philosophy of religion lectures.
Hegel's 1829 lectures on the proofs are of particular importance because they represent what he actually wrote as distinct from auditors' transcriptions of oral lectures. Moreover, they come late in his career and offer his final and most seasoned thinking on a topic of obvious significance to him, that of the reality status of God and ways of knowing God. These materials show how Hegel conceived the connection between the cosmological, teleological, and ontological proofs.
All of this material has been newly translated by Peter C. Hodgson from the German critical editions by Walter Jaeschke. This edition includes an editorial introduction, annotations on the text, and a glossary and bibliography.

About this title

About the Author

Peter C. Hodgson is Charles G. Finney Professor of Theology, Emeritus at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee.

Review

Review from other book by this author: "In this definitive English edition we now at last possess an adequate tool for scholarly work on Hegel's philosophy of religion. The translation, accurate and yet readable, is bound to last more than a life time. The introductions provide us with
up-to-date information on scholarship and with the best available guide to Hegel's own thought. This edition clearly constitutes the most significant achievement in Hegel scholarship . . . in years."

--Louis Dupre, Religious Studies Review

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0199213844
• ISBN 13: 9780199213849
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 213