Hegel is notoriously difficult to understand, but how much of that has to do with translations? Reading Hegel in the original German is no cakewalk, but it is at least cogent, coherent, and sensible, that is, after one gains some familiarity with his unique jargon. But the translations are hopeless. With this in mind, and with my own passion for translating, I am embarking on an experiment, posting my own translations of Hegel here first. I look forward to your comments. Thanks for stopping by.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Phenomenology of Spirit, Preface, paragraph 30
The position at which we now take up this movement is spared the cancellation of existence; what yet remains and requires further reconstruction is the imagination [Vorstellung] and familiarity with the forms. By that previous negation, existence, taken back into substance, only then is immediately transferred into the element of self; the property acquired by self thus still has the same character of uncomprehended immediacy, of unmoved indifference, which existence itself had; existence has in this way merely passed into imagination. At the same time, it has thereby become something familiar, something with which existing spirit is finished, in which, therefore, its activity and thus its interest no longer lies. While the activity which is finished with existence is itself merely the movement of the particular, self-uncomprehending spirit, knowledge, on the other hand is directed against the imagination which has thus arisen, against this condition of familiarity; it is the activity of the general self, the interest of thought.
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