Nelly Motroshilova as a Teacher: the 2014 Lectures on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit

Abstract

The reader is presented with the second and third lectures on the Phenomenology of the Spirit by Hegel, delivered by the outstanding Russian philosopher Nelly Vasilyevna Motroshilova in the spring of 2014 at the State Academic University for the Humanities. Much attention in the lectures is paid to the key topics of the famous Hegelian Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit: the formation of knowledge, the concept of Bildung, the systematic and scientific nature of philosophy, and the understanding of substance as a subject. Special emphasis is placed on the innovative nature of the Phenomenology as a work in which philosophical abstractions (“Gestalten des Geistes”) come to life, take on historical and social flesh, and engage in dramatic dialogue with each other. The lecture is preceded by a memorial essay written by a student of Nelly Vasilyevna. The published memoirs add important touches to the portrait of Motroshilova, reveal the importance of the concept of “objective connections,” which was important for her in the last years of her life, and show how such connections (including philosophical ones) form a community united not by formal frameworks, but by spiritual and intellectual closeness.