Hegel's Grammatical Ontology: Vanishing Words and Hermeneutical Openness in the 'Phenomenology of Spirit'

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Reading The Phenomenology of Spirit through a linguistic lens, Jeffrey Reid provides an original commentary on Hegels most famous work. Beginning with a close analysis of the preface, where Hegel himself addresses the books difficulty and explains his tortured language in terms of what he calls the speculative proposition, Reid demonstrates how every form of consciousness discussed in The Phenomenology involves and reveals itself as a form of language. Elucidating Hegels speculative proposition, which consists of the reversal of the roles of the subject and predicate in such a way that the copula of the proposition becomes the lively arena of dialogical ambiguity and hermeneutical openness, this book offers new onto-grammatical readings of every chapter of The Phenomenology. Not only does this bring a new understanding to Hegels foundational text, but the linguistic approach further allows Reid to unpack its complexity by relating it to contemporary contexts that share the same language structures that we discover in Hegel. Amongst many others, this includes Hegels account of sense-certainty and the critique of the immediacy of consumer culture today.

Reviews

A refreshing and original reconstruction of Hegels Phenomenology of Spirit in its entirety, Hegel's Grammatical Ontology mobilizes linguistic tools to offer a new account of the movement from consciousness to absolute knowing showing how language and its specific forms are constitutively embedded in the progression of the figures of consciousness. * Angelica Nuzzo, Professor of Philosophy Graduate Center and Brooklyn College, CUNY, USA *
Jeffrey Reid's work on the significance of Hegel's linguistic thought for his overall philosophical project has always been cutting edge. In this new work, he zeros in on the role of language in the Jena Phenomenology of Spirit, both extending his earlier insights and rendering them more explicit and concrete. It represents an important contribution both to current Hegel scholarship as well as to broader contemporary philosophical discussions concerning the relations among philosophy, language, truth, and 'the Real.' * Jere O'Neill Surber, Professor of Philosophy and President of the Hegel Society of America, The University of Denver, USA *
This impressive new book is a rich exploration of the role of language in Hegels Phenomenology. A strikingly original work that is as provocative as it is insightful. Reid's subtle understanding of Hegels thought is harnessed masterfully to demonstrate that Spirit has agency in and as language. * Simon Lumsden, Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of New South Wales, Australia *

Author Bio

Jeffrey Reid is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He is author of numerous books and articles on Hegel, including The Anti-Romantic: Hegel Against Ironic Romanticism (Bloomsbury, 2014).