TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
It is perhaps unnecessary to say anything respecting the difficulty of making any adequate translation of Hegel’s writings. In the case of the History of Philosophy, that difficulty is possibly enhanced by the fact that the greater part of the book is put together from the notes of different courses of lectures delivered on the subject at various times. Hegel, as we learn from Michelet, in his preface to the first edition of this work, lectured in all nine times on the History of Philosophy: first in Jena in 1805-1806, then in Heidelberg in 1816-1817 and 1817-1818, and the other six times in Berlin between the years 1819 and 1830. He had begun the tenth course on the subject in 1831 when death cut his labours short. It was only for the first course of lectures—that delivered in Jena—that Hegel fully wrote out his lectures; this was evidently done with the intention of future publication in book form. At Heidelberg he composed a short abstract of his subject, giving in a few terse words the main points dealt with in each system of Philosophy. In the later courses of lectures Hegel trusted to extempore speaking, but at the same time made considerable use of the above writings, the margins of which he annotated with subsequent additions. Besides these annotations he left behind him a large number of miscellaneous notes, which have proved of the greatest value. The present translation is taken from the second and amended edition of the “Geschichte der Philosophie,” published in 1840. This edition is derived from no one set of lectures in particular, but carefully prepared by Michelet—himself one of Hegel’s pupils—from all available sources, including the notes of students. The Jena volume is, however, made the basis, as representing the main elements of the subject afterwards to be more fully amplified; or, in Michelet’s words, as the skeleton which was afterwards to be clothed with flesh.
I have endeavoured to make this translation as literal as possible consistently with intelligibility, and have attempted, so far as might be, to give the recognized symbols for the words for which we have in English no satisfactory equivalents. “Begriff,” when used in its technical sense, is translated by “Notion,” “Idee” by “Idea,” as distinguished from the colloquial “idea”; “Vorstellung” is usually rendered by “popular” or “ordinary conception.”
Miss Frances H. Simson has rendered very valuable assistance in going carefully over most of the proofs of the first volume, and she is now engaged with me in the translation of the volumes following.
E. S. H.