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I cannot find the track on the internet of the english translation of a book published in french as :

Hegel, Leçons de logique et de métaphysique ( Heidelberg, 1817).

Could anyone tell me under which title these "Heidelberg 1817 lectures on logic and metaphysics " have been published in English.

Is there any online available version of Hegel's Works ( in German) in which I could find these lectures.

I have an edition of " Werke von 1832-1845" ( Suhrkamp editor) in which these lectures don't seem to appear.

Is there also a way to find the 1801 Lectures on Logic and Metaphysics?

Thanks for your help.

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    The book you speak of in French sounds very interesting to me. vrin.fr/book.php?code=9782711627998 This speaks of his summer lectures of 1817. Very interesting.
    – Gordon
    Nov 26, 2019 at 22:11
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    These lectures really would be some of the best commentary on his Science of Logic but they are new to me. I will look for an English version but so far I can’t find it.
    – Gordon
    Nov 26, 2019 at 22:38
  • @JohnAm No. I don’t think so. These were lectures given in the summer of 1817, and not the same thing as the Encyclopedia.
    – Gordon
    Nov 26, 2019 at 23:06

1 Answer 1

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1817 lectures

PhilPapers translates the title as Lectures on Logic and Metaphysics (from Wyss's announcement of the find in Hegel-Studien). Here is the German edition Vorlesungen über Logik und Metaphysik, Heidelberg 1817, Hamburg: Meiner (1992). The publisher's description explains (my translation):

"It was not until 1984 that the postscript of a lecture on logic and metaphysics from the summer semester of 1817 was found in a Swiss private archive, transcribed by the law student Franz Anton Good. This transcription is based on a dictation and testifies, with great authenticity, to the expression and thought of Hegel, who here refers, in outline, to the conception of Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences, the first part of which was published that semester."

Reviews by Kruck and by Comoth, also in German, are available on ProQuest. I do not believe there is an English translation. Nothing comes up on Google Scholar, and Ficara's commentary Hegel on the Interplay between Logic and Metaphysics (2016) cites the German edition. Here is some of her commentary:

"In the Lectures on Logic and Metaphysics of 1817 Hegel maintains that not only the forms of thought, but also their truth, constitute the research field of logic. This also implies that logical forms are necessarily linked to nature and natural language: “Logic is for us a natural metaphysics. Everyone who thinks has it. Natural logic does not always follow the rules which are established in the logic as theory; these rules often trample on natural logic”. (Logik und Metaphysik 1817, p. 8).

Significantly, Hegel distinguishes between logic as theory and logic as natural logic or natural metaphysics. First, he underlines the role of concrete experience (natural logic and natural metaphysics) for the discovery and fixation of logical rules in the logical theory; second, he understands experience in an expanded way as already structured by language and thought (natural logic and natural metaphysics). This conception perfectly coheres with Hegel’s Aristotelianism, as Hegel repeatedly underlines that Aristotle’s empiricism is speculative (Verra 2007, p. 364)."

1801-02 lectures

From what is sometimes referred to as "Hegel's Lectures on Logic and Metaphysics from the winter semester 1801-1802" we only have Troxler's notes (found in 1970-s) Schellings Und Hegels Erste Absolute Metaphysik, Zusammenfassende Vorlesungsnachschriften von I.P.V.Troxler. Köln, Jürgen Dinter, 1988. No luck with an English translation either, there is a Russian one online. Here is Olivier's review, in German, and English commentary in Siep's chapter 4 from Cambridge's Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. According to Siep:

"Hegel is here continuing his Differenzschrift criticism of Reinhold and Bardili, who attributed such an introductory and foundational role [in coming to know the absolute] to logic, as the theory of the forms of thought. The crucial task is precisely to overcome such a separation of form and content and, indeed, the very dichotomous structure - the "fixed oppositions" - of the fundamental concepts of logic and ontology. The only thing an introduction to philosophy, conceived as the knowledge of the absolute, can accomplish is to demonstrate the one-sidedness or "subjectivity" of every other standpoint apart from actual knowledge of the absolute. Hegel's first systematic implementation of this function of the introduction is to be found in the Phenomenology itself."

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  • @Thanks for this detailed answer!
    – user37859
    Nov 27, 2019 at 18:16

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