Abstract

Verene’s book is neither a commentary nor an introduction to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Assuming that the reader is already acquainted with the text, Verene writes, “my approach has been to open the text up, to see it with new eyes”; moreover, “I do not regard the views I express to be exactly what Hegel himself meant”. Nevertheless, the book has at least two major aims. First of all, Verene draws attention to the role played by Hegel’s “extraordinary command of metaphor and irony” which is usually neglected by commentators when they attempt to extract Hegel’s underlying conceptual argumentation. Secondly, and more specifically, Verene offers a novel interpretation : “Erinnerung, which can be translated by the English word ‘recollection’, but which does not preserve the sense of ‘inner’, das Innere, is the master key to the Phenomenology. Hegel’s work is a colossus of systematic memory”.