Can Hegel be read and understood in translation, or must one read Hegel in German to comprehend it?

Question

I've read about a half of Hegel's Logic and a bit of Phänomenologie des Geistes, but both are difficult to understand; I do not whether it is the translation or the intent that is ambiguous.

I know some Hochdeutsch and can read Nietzsche/Hitler/Heidegger with moderate success. I recently started to study Hegel in German and I still can't understand what's in the language.

The question is whether Hegel is at all comprehensible in (e.g. English) translation. I know of books like 'The Secret of Hegel' but they are not philosophy to me.

Answer 1

To get things out of the way, I wouldn't describe Hegel as an obscurantist (i.e., a philosopher or thinker committed to making his position obscure), but I would say he's very difficult to read. At the same time, I would say that Hegel is often obscure to 21st century readers. I would also say that he's a poor "author" -- where we need to understand that he's not exactly an "author" in the sense of someone who sat down to write a book.

While knowledge of German definitely helps even when reading in English, I would say this matters more for technical vocabulary than for grammar. To put it another way, it's confusing when you're gliding through in English and see words like "existence", "real" , "actual", "sublimation", "thing", "matter", "concept" -- when these are actually technical terms (real and actual have different meanings at most points in Hegel). Getting a grasp on what's a technical term and not is helpful.

Thus, what I would say is that it's important to read Hegel along with the right sort of secondary supports to make sense of what he's doing. Sometimes, the secondary reader will agree that a section makes no sense. At other times, they can provide insight into discussions that are obscure to us now but that make sense of the terms and elements in the debate that might have made sense to late 18th / early 19th century Germans but do make any sense to us now.

Answer 2

I think yes, of course it makes sense to read Hegel in translation. But reading it in English only and without guidance will not work. Think of the books of Hegel (and other contempory philosophers) and their origin: Summarizing past and basing future lectures. If you read this book while hearing the lecture of Hegel himself, I think with some effort you would have easily understood him. But alone? I do not think so.

In particular if you are capable of understanding German to some extend, reading Pinkard's translation with both languages in one file could help getting the point and the meaning behind concepts. You have to parse this book sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph anyway, so doing it in both languages does help from time to time.

You can find it here.

In addition, there are of course companions which may help if read simultaniously. A quick google search gave e.g. this one.

Hegel is understandable, and I heard (and at some rare points made the experience myself as german native speaker) that in English it was easier. But my opinion is that the best would be to read both German and English to get as much as possible out of it. Because if I only read the English translation, the loss would have been bigger than reading German only.

Regarding the rants of @iphigenie and others: There are different opinions on Hegel. It may take a lot of time to get into it, but most who do say it's worth it. I think he is one of the deepest thinkers of all time. But there are others who are saying that if you took the time to get into it, you cannot help but stating it was worth it, rather than saying it isn't that good anyway after wasting months and years. Up to now, I am member of the former.

I think that while the whole point of absolute mind [I think this is the better translation compared to "spirit"] is construed due to the "need" of a place for something divine (socially and historically based; Fichte lost his chair because he was blamed for not leaving place for it!), the rest is deep insight. It is hard to understand, yes. But if it was easy, it wouldn't be anything other than obvious. Philosophy had so many people stating obvious things in form of not-so-obvious, but still comparably simple language recently.

Answer 3

I would say from personal experience that reading Hegel in translation is worthwhile. I would go so far as to say that all worthwhile philosophy must be translatable across languages almost by definition.

Of course, a lot will be missed. Hegel apparently delights in words with double meanings, for example. Yet I too have heard from German speakers that some of Hegel may actually be clearer in English, once forced through the interpretive "strainer" of translation.

Some people claim that it helps to read his early theological writings to get a better sense of him. On the other hand, much of his writing, "The Philosophy of History," for example, is not obscure at all.

In more difficult works like "The Science of Logic," you just have go very, very slooooowly. I'd recommend just reading the section on "The Doctrine of Being" line by line about 10 times over, chewing and cogitating. It's actually very interesting. It contains much "Hegelianism" in a few pages. And the slow-drip method is much more rewarding than attempting to "read the book" at a first go.

Answer 4

It is true that Hegel's Logic cannot be understood in one read. Any reader has to do a lot of preparatory work before he takes up either the Lesser Logic or the Science of Logic. The kind of training and preparation the reader has undertaken in reading a philosophical work is more important before talking about the difficulties. Of course, the German language has been praised by Hegel for its richness. A reader of German has to master not only their use of German but also their thought content. The question is whether you are so prepared? If you are well-prepared you can sail with Hegel's thought easily, if not you'll have to put in the effort.