THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY - A MAIN INFLUENCE ON HISTORICISM

HEGEL, GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH.

Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie. Herausgegeben von Karl Ludwig Michelet. 3 Bde.

Berlin, 1833-36. 8vo. Three contemporary uniform brown half calf bindings with gilt title- and tome-labels. Professional restorations to capitals and hinges. Elegant library-stamp to inside of front boards of the first two volumes. Vol. 2 with a few pencil-underlinings, and vol. 3 with pencil-annotations to last leaf. A bit of occasional brownspotting. With all three title-pages for "Werke. Vollständige Ausgabe", vol. 13-15, facing the title-pages for the "Vorlesungen". XX, 418, (1, -errata); VI, 586; VIII, 692 pp.

First edition of Hegel's seminal "Lectures on the History of Philosophy", which was published posthumously by Michelet.

The work comprises Hegel's nine lectures on the history of philosophy, given in Jena in the winter of 1805-6, Heidelberg in the winters of 1816-17 and 1817-18, Berlin in the summer of 1819 and the winters of 1820-21, 1823-23, 1825-26, 1827-28 and 1829-30. Just before his death, in November 1931, Hegel had begun his tenth lecture course on the history of philosophy, but only get two give the first two hours of it. The work is based on Hegel's own lecture manuscript from Jena, which is stilized throughout and written in full ("er wagte damals noch nichts dem freien mündlichen Vorträge zu überlassen", -Michelet, Preface, p. VI), his shorter draft written in Heidelberg meant for further development at the lectures as well as number of later endorsements and additions written in the margins of the two manuscripts and on loose leaves ("Diese Blätter sind von unschätzbarem Werthe, weil sie die höchst reichen Zusätze aller Vorlesungen spätere Jahre durch seine eigene Handschrift dokumentieren", Michelet, Preface, p. VI). Besides this, a number of lecture notes from learned students, including those of Michelet and the other "Freunde des Verewigten", have been used to establish the text as correctly as possible.

These highly influential lectures, which attracted philosophers from all over Europe, make up a cornerstone in the philosophy of Hegel, and his view on the history of philosophy is something that understreams all of his thought. These lectures, and not least the publication of them after his death, have seminally influenced later philosophy, and the following fifty years after Hegel's death were philosophically, culturally and historically much indebted to them. It is the Hegelianism that also springs from Hegel's lectures on the history of philosophy that carries historicism, the conception of cultural and social relations as products of history, through the 19th century.

Order-nr.: 43486