SOURCE: Gagan, Rebecca. “Hegel Beside Himself: Unworking the Intellectual Community.” European Romantic Review 13, no. 2 (June 2002): 139-45.

In the following essay, Gagan maintains that passages in The Phenomenology of Spirit make important points about the act of scholarly production and the work habits of academia.

1 Academia for Dummies

There are undoubtedly some who would see a comparison of a section of Hegel's The Phenomenology of Spirit with any book with the words “for Dummies” in the title as crude and objectionable. Indeed, in 1969 Allan Bloom declared: “Hegel is now becoming so popular in literary and artistic circles, but in a superficial form adapted to please dilettantes and other seekers after depth who wish to use him rather than understand him” (ix). Bloom's comments, which beg the questions, who owns Hegel? who owns philosophy? and even more generally, who owns thought?, are questions which, ironically enough, inform much of Hegel's...