Commentary on the Philosophy of Nature, Chapter 4
What the Lectures Show
Since 2012, the transcripts of the lectures on nature have been available in edited form (GW 24.1 to 24.3). They change the picture, and in a direction one would not have expected.
Hegel taught the philosophy of nature five times, between 1819 and 1830, and rebuilt it every time. He works through what appears: Berzelius’s series of oxidation and his electrochemistry — “it has been found that two chemically opposed bodies are also electrically opposed” —, Richter’s stoichiometry, Cuvier’s anatomy, Werner’s geology, Goethe’s metamorphosis of plants.[1] Newton appears in the transcripts more than a hundred times, almost always in dispute.
Someone who gives the same lecture course over twelve years and rebuilds it every time is not defending a finished system. He is working on a problem.
From this follows a rule of reading for this volume: Authoritative is the Encyclopedia of 1830. Earlier versions are not wrong, but superseded by Hegel himself — and the lectures show what he had in mind as he superseded them.
Ibid., the Berzelius passages in the transcript of the 1819/20 lecture course. ↩︎