San Francisco Philosophy Reading Group

For this session, we'll read and discuss Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. The section we will be focusing on is Section B: Self-Consciousness. Feel free to skim other sections if you are interested as well.

This text is Hegel’s ambitious attempt to trace the development of human consciousness toward absolute knowledge. It’s both a historical and philosophical journey, showing how various shapes of consciousness (like sense-perception, self-consciousness, reason, etc.) inevitably lead to contradictions that force a higher synthesis. In response to both Kant’s critical philosophy and post-Kantian skepticism, Hegel proposes that truth is not found in static propositions, but in a dynamic process of becoming—what he calls the dialectic.

For this session, we'll read and discuss Ludwig Feuerbach's Principles of the Philosophy of the Future. We'll aim to read and discuss the full essay (~100 pages), but if you are pressed for time you can focus on the later half (§31 - 65) where Feuerbach describes his vision for the Philosophy of the Future.

Feuerbach was a Young Hegelian philosopher, who is perhaps best known for his critiques of Religion, as well as his influence on Marx + Engel's historical Materialism (we'll read Marx's critique of Feuerbach in our next session). In Principles of the Philosophy of the Future, Feuerbach traces the history of modern philosophical development, culminating in his critique of Hegel's absolute idealism. He then presents his vision of materialist philosophy, which emphasizes the primacy of sensuous, material reality over Hegel's idealism.