Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Martin Heidegger

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СКАЧАТЬ in each instance which of the two senses was meant. This became a matter of interpretation, a task that the German edition could avoid.

      In order to see the originality of the work, we must go beyond the legacy of Romanticism and historicism, which assumes a direct correlation between life and work and reduces the work to an accomplishment of human subjectivity. When Heidegger began a lecture course on Aristotle, instead of giving the customary account of the philosopher’s life, he chose merely to say: “Aristotle was born, he worked, and he died.”⁵ Thus, he intimates that biographical data do not provide a reliable starting point for entry into the work of a philosopher. Any view which assumes that a work is born out of life is an explanation offered about the work instead of an attempt to come to grips with its originality. The notion of the “history of the evolution of a work in the course of the development of the life of an author” tends to lead away from what occurs in the work—it is a mis-leading notion. The unexamined assumption concerning the nature of the work as a by-product of life is a way of explaining the work away rather than coming to terms with its original character. This explanation tends surreptitiously to annihilate the work’s questioning power.

      As Heidegger returns to the originality of the work as a work of thinking, as he demands that the reader be guided by the ἔϱγον (which is the work) rather than by the desire to place the work alongside other biographical peculiarities of the author, he leads the reader back to the original togetherness of thinking and questioning. Thus, Heidegger points beyond the correlation of life and work to the work’s independent stature as a work of thinking.

      It is certainly naive to want to explain anything in the Phenomenology of Spirit by going back to the events of Hegel’s life in Jena before 1807. For understanding what goes on in this work, curiosity about Hegel’s life in that period is a bad guide. Rather, it is the Phenomenology of Spirit as a work that made that life to be Hegel’s life. As a work of thinking, the Phenomenology of Spirit inheres in itself: Its independence forbids external and biographical explanations. It is good to pause for a moment and to wonder about the phenomenology of spirit as that which claimed Hegel’s “attention” in the midst of the events that made up his life in Jena. What is it that occurs in the work of the phenomenology of spirit that made this life to be Hegel’s life? Is it not the overriding concern with the phenomenology of spirit that stamps life with a Hegelian mark? The response to this question should come from a direct exposure to the ἔϱγον of thinking, which, as the phenomenology of spirit, leads the way in Hegel’s life. This is to suggest that, in opposition to romantic and historicistic views, we should see life in the light of the work. If we take up the questions that make up the very fabric of the phenomenology of spirit (or of the Phenomenology of Spirit), then we gain access to a plane from which the written history of the life of Hegel (his biography) appears in a new light. It is from such a plane that we understand Heidegger when he asks: “Is it not rather such that the work makes possible an interpretation of the biography?”⁶ This question is a warning that the work should be viewed not as a by-product of life, but rather as a central light which colors and tunes the contingencies and inevitabilities that are called life.

      The independent and integral character of the work of thinking is central for Heidegger’s own work and applies to the works of others as well. In order to preserve this independent and integral character and to stress the need for taking up the work as it claims one’s thinking in its immediacy, the volumes of Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe are published without an interpretive introduction and a commentary. This is a significant point and has direct bearing on the character of the present text. Thus, it needs to be addressed briefly here.

      When we come to a work of thinking, we should entertain no illusion as to what awaits us in reading the work. We do not come to grips with a work if we seek refuge in the convenience which an introduction or brief commentary provides. Either we are prepared for confronting the task with all its demands, or we are simply not yet prepared. No interpretive introduction or commentary will change that. We must be sincere with ourselves. More than anything else, a work of thinking calls for sincerity. Such a sincerity already knows that the labyrinthian device of an introduction cannot circumvent the actual encounter with the work of thinking. We must face the work as it is. If we fail to do so, if we get into the work in accordance with the suggestions made in the introduction, then we run the risk of learning later that those suggestions are peripheral, external to the work, and inappropriate. Thus, they will need correction. But since the correction of those views or suggestions is accomplished by getting into the work itself, then why not begin with the work in the first place? That is why volumes of the Gesamtausgabe of Heidegger’s works are not supplemented with an introduction or brief commentary. Instead, the reader should face the work in the freedom in which the work comes forth as a work of thinking. This freedom is not preserved when the work is considered to be a riddle whose basic solutions are expected to be found in a brief commentary or introduction.

      The text of Hegels Phänomenologie des Geistes appears without an introduction or brief commentary, because nothing should stand between this work and its readers, who attentively participate in the work of thinking therein. This present text needs not to have such a commentary or introduction, because the character of this text—as a reading that participates in the movement of the work of thinking that is opened up for us in the text-work—demonstrates above all else the inappropriateness of such an introduction. There is no question that, when an introduction is added to a work, a specific way of reading the work is suggested. But this specific way of reading the work is not the only way to read the work. An exceptional and extreme case—but nevertheless relevant—is Jacques Derrida’s French translation of Husserl’s Ursprung der Geometrie. When Derrida supplements his translation of this work with an introduction and commentary, he suggests a certain way of reading this work, which is certainly not the only way to read it. Whatever the merits of Derrida’s commentary—and these merits are certainly there—there is no doubt that his introduction and his comments stand between the reader and Husserl’s work. By contrast, we can say: The absence of an introduction in the original edition of Hegels Phänomenologie des Geistes safeguards the independence of the work of thinking as it occurs in the space of freedom that is necessary for the flourishing of the work itself.

      The Tension of Translation. The work character of the work of thinking, whether it is the Phenomenology of Spirit by Hegel or Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit by Heidegger, is primarily manifest in the language of the work. In both Hegel and Heidegger, this language takes on a unique character. In order to say what needs to be said, both Hegel and Heidegger speak a rigorous and precise language that goes beyond the traditional language of philosophy. In this new territory that language traverses, as it is molded in the works of Hegel and Heidegger, thinking itself enters new territories. It is easy to accuse both Hegel and Heidegger of taking inappropriate measures with language, of wanting to be deliberately abstruse, obscure, and unclear. This accusation comes from the reluctance to recognize that in both philosophers language manifests new territories of thinking. If we grasp the urgency of what these philosophers want to think, then we realize that they cannot say what they think without saying it in their own way.

      But precisely this demand that the work of thinking places on both Hegel and Heidegger, as language was molded in their thinking, sometimes leads to virtually insurmountable difficulties for the translator. The difficulties in translating Hegel and Heidegger arise mainly in pointing, in another language, to the territories that these thinkers have opened up. It goes without saying that there is no general rule or universal method for doing this. Beyond bending and twisting the existing resources of a language, in order to let it fit the needs of what is being translated, we as translators are mindful of the realms or territories that this work opens up. (The desire to deal as adequately as possible with these difficulties prompted us to work closely with the French translation of this volume, by Emmanuel Martineau.)⁷

      Aware of these difficulties and with an eye or ear toward letting those difficulties resonate for the reader of this English translation, СКАЧАТЬ