The Emancipation of the Preface in the "Phenomenology of Spirit"

Abstract

In his work Prefaces, Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Nicolaus Notabene refers satirically to the preface of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, claiming the value of a preface beyond its connection with the book, against the hegelian objections to prefaces. The present paper aims to compare both works in order to reconsider the relation between them, proposing and alternative interpretation according to which Kierkegaard’s book, beyond its ironical nature, can be regarded as an explicit statement of the inherent meaning to Hegel’s critique of prefaces carried out in the very preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit. Thus Notabene’s satire will help to identify the hegelian preface as an “emancipated preface”, just as Kierkegaard’s heteronym describes them, as texts whose real meaning would consist in its ability to operate exclusively as a disposition [Stemning / Stimmung] towards the work that they precede.