ABSTRACT
When all is said and done, to let go of a book is to go through a bout of mourning. Hegel's struggle to get the thing off gives separation anxiety a whole new spin. Craziness, hypochondria, missed deadlines, publisher's hassles, promises, more promises, bad postal service, no document back-up, money problems, job insecurity — the usual academic nightmare — plus a dose of history: the Napoleonic horseman of the apocalypse, Jena under siege: Hegel's lawyer finally reassures him that, contractually speaking, acts of war do indeed count as extenuating circumstances. The manuscript somehow gets finished anyway, sent off nervously in instalments, the postman braving enemy gunfire, arson, looting, chaos in the streets; Hegel frets, looks over the printer's shoulders, cringes, indulges in fantasies of instant re-publication in a new and improved edition, tacks on one of his trademark self-undermining prefaces, frets some more, procrastinates, suddenly has to find a new job, shamefully confesses dissatisfaction with his orphan text, shamelessly flogs the book anyway, pre-emptively defers judgment day (the usual way: caveat lector, don't leap to conclusions, my book needs slow reading, multiple rereading, and, don't forget, it's just the “first part” to the system, it needs to be supplemented by the Logic, which in turn, and so on …), the thing still doesn't really sell, life goes on, new job, next book. … The rest is history.
