HEGEL’S LECTURES ON THE
HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
VOLUME ONE
Hegel’s Lectures on
THE HISTORY OF
PHILOSOPHY
Translated from the German by
E. S. HALDANE
In three volumes
VOLUME ONE
ROUTLEDGE & KEGAN PAUL LTD
Broadway House, 68-74 Carter Lane
London, E.C.4
First published in England 1892
by Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co. Ltd
Reprinted 1955
by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd
Broadway House, 68-74 Carter Lane
London, E.C.4
Reprinted by lithography in Great Britain by
Jarrold and Sons Limited, Norwich
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
It is perhaps unnecessary to say anything respecting the difficultyof making any adequate translation of Hegel’s writings.In the case of the History of Philosophy, that difficulty ispossibly enhanced by the fact that the greater part of thebook is put together from the notes of different courses oflectures delivered on the subject at various times. Hegel,as we learn from Michelet, in his preface to the first editionof this work, lectured in all nine times on the History ofPhilosophy: first in Jena in 1805-1806, then in Heidelbergin 1816-1817 and 1817-1818, and the other six times inBerlin between the years 1819 and 1830. He had begunthe tenth course on the subject in 1831 when death cut hislabours short. It was only for the first course of lectures—thatdelivered in Jena—that Hegel fully wrote out hislectures; this was evidently done with the intention offuture publication in book form. At Heidelberg he composeda short abstract of his subject, giving in a few tersewords the main points dealt with in each system of Philosophy.In the later courses of lectures Hegel trusted toextempore speaking, but at the same time made considerableuse of the above writings, the margins of which he annotatedwith subsequent additions. Besides these annotationshe left behind him a large number of miscellaneous notes,which have proved of the greatest value. The presenttranslation is taken from the second and amended editionof the “Geschichte der Philosophie,” published in 1840.This edition is derived from no one set of lectures in particular,but carefully prepared by Michelet—himself one ofHegel’s pupils—from all available sources, including the[vi]notes of students. The Jena volume is, however, made thebasis, as representing the main elements of the subjectafterwards to be more fully amplified; or, in Michelet’swords, as the skeleton which was afterwards to be clothedwith flesh.
I have endeavoured to make this translation as literalas possible consistently with intelligibility, and have attempted,so far as might be, to give the recognized symbolsfor the words for which we have in English no satisfactoryequivalents. “Begriff,” when used in its technical sense,is translated by “Notion,” “Idee” by “Idea,” as distinguishedfrom the colloquial “idea”; “Vorstellung” isusually rendered by “popular” or “ordinar