Spirit of Trust

There seems to be a lot of new content in Brandom’s epic A Spirit of Trust: A Reading of Hegel’s Phenomenology (Belknap 2019), since the first version he posted on the web some years ago. It will take me quite a while to do it justice.

Simply put, this is a proper Great Book by a living great philosopher, which happens to take the form of a book about another great philosopher. It is not to be missed if you care about such things. The first version decisively overthrew my preconceptions about Hegel, acquired from too hasty a reading of Hegel himself and much time spent in earlier years with French anti-Hegelians. Simultaneously, Brandom’s book attracted me with its ethical message. (See many related articles under Hegel, and Brandom on Hegel; also under Brandom and Hegel on Modernity.)

Useful related resources include the works of Brandom’s co-thinkers Robert Pippin and Terry Pinkard on Hegel, and the monumental line-by-line commentary on the argument of the Phenomenology by H.R. Harris, Hegel’s Ladder.

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