Hegel’s Jena Moment remains the undiscovered continent of his thought. This book explores this continent by examining the Logic and Metaphysics from Hegel’s 1804-5 Jena System-Project, and it is the first book-length treatment of these works in English. Previously, H. S. Harris has written fruitfully on the Jena Moment, but his work is couched in terms of the Jena Moment as preparation for Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Instead, this book reads the Jena Moment on its own terms.
Hegel’s Jena System-Project is a masterpiece of philosophical thinking and in some ways more radical than anything he would go on to publish. In a contemporary philosophical climate largely dominated by receptions of the Phenomenology of Spirit, it points to new inroads and programs for reading Hegel.
This book should appeal to anyone interested in using Hegel as a springboard for philosophical thinking in the twenty-first century.
O. Bradley Bassler is Associate Professor, Emeritus in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Georgia. He has published six previous books, most recently The Legitimacy of Poetic Reason with Palgrave Macmillan (2022).
