Hegel's Grammatical Ontology - by Jeffrey Reid (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Reading The Phenomenology of Spirit through a linguistic lens, Jeffrey Reid provides an original commentary on Hegel's most famous work. Beginning with a close analysis of the preface, where Hegel himself addresses the book's difficulty and explains his tortured language in terms of what he calls the "speculative proposition", Reid demonstrates how every form of consciousness discussed in The Phenomenologyinvolves and reveals itself as a form of language.

Elucidating Hegel's speculative proposition, which consists of the reversal of the roles of the subject and predicate in such a way that the copulaof the proposition becomes the lively arena of dialogical ambiguity and hermeneutical openness, this book offers new onto-grammaticalreadings of every chapter of The Phenomenology.

Not only does this bring a new understanding to Hegel's foundational text, but the linguistic approach further allows Reid to unpack its complexity by relating it to contemporary contexts that share the same language structures that we discover in Hegel. Amongst many others, this includes Hegel's account of sense-certainty and the critique of the immediacy of consumer culture today.

Review Quotes

A refreshing and original reconstruction of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit in its entirety, Hegel's Grammatical Ontology mobilizes linguistic tools to offer a new account of the movement from "consciousness" to "absolute knowing" showing how language and its specific forms are constitutively embedded in the progression of the figures of consciousness.
Angelica Nuzzo, Professor of Philosophy Graduate Center and Brooklyn College, CUNY, USA

Jeffrey Reid's work on the significance of Hegel's linguistic thought for his overall philosophical project has always been cutting edge. In this new work, he zeros in on the role of language in the Jena Phenomenology of Spirit, both extending his earlier insights and rendering them more explicit and concrete. It represents an important contribution both to current Hegel scholarship as well as to broader contemporary philosophical discussions concerning the relations among philosophy, language, truth, and 'the Real.'
Jere O'Neill Surber, Professor of Philosophy and President of the Hegel Society of America, The University of Denver, USA

This impressive new book is a rich exploration of the role of language in Hegel's Phenomenology. A strikingly original work that is as provocative as it is insightful. Reid's subtle understanding of Hegel's thought is harnessed masterfully to demonstrate that Spirit has agency in and as language.
Simon Lumsden, Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of New South Wales, Australia

About the Author

Jeffrey Reid is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He is author of numerous books and articles on Hegel, including The Anti-Romantic: Hegel Against Ironic Romanticism (Bloomsbury, 2014).