Hegel:
an introduction

This seminar is hosted by Res Futura, a Toronto-based collective of workers, artists, and students.

Registration now open. Register using the form below. Please review the below seminar details before registering. This seminar is an in-person seminar. It will take place twice weekly on Monday and Saturday evenings, from 6pm to 9pm, starting in the first week of May and ending in the last week of August. By registering for this seminar, you commit to regular in-person attendance.

Seminar overview. Hegel is one of the most important and influential philosophers in the Western tradition. Many of the most prominent thinkers in later philosophical fields derived their insights by wrestling with Hegel's system: as in Marx and his tradition, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, Foucault, the post-structuralists Lacan, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty, queer theorists like Judith Butler and José Esteban Muñoz, and so on. Similarly, our modern reception of thinkers who preceded Hegel, such as Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, and Kant, has been indelibly shaped by Hegelian interpretation.

In its own right, the study of dialectics is excellent training for a wide capacity to engage the world and its thinkers. Its potential as a tool for self-transformation and development explains its thorough influence on modern psychoanalytic thought, particularly in Jungian theory.

Unfortunately for the contemporary student in Toronto, it is difficult to find education on Hegel and his tradition in our local universities' philosophy departments — and it is difficult, as an autodidact, to break through Hegel's obscure writing style for the first time.

It will be the purpose of this seminar to offer a guided tour of Hegel's core texts, with the intent that attendees will walk away not only with a basic understanding of Hegel's philosophy, but also with the capacity to engage with his texts independently. Our main text will be the Phenomenology of Spirit, but we will also discuss selections from the three volumes of the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences (Logic, Nature, Spirit), as well as the Philosophy of Right, which was to have such a historical impact through Marx.

Structure and participation. This seminar will meet in-person and will take place on the University of Toronto, St. George campus (exact location to be announced to registered participants). Sessions begin on Saturday, May 2, 2026 and end on Monday, August 31, 2026 with one week’s break. There will be two sessions per week:
• Session A: Saturday, 6pm – 9pm
• Session B: Monday, 6pm – 9pm

Each session comprises two hours’ instruction time, plus a final, optional hour to serve as “office hours.”

You are strongly encouraged to attend in-person. The opportunity to ask questions and to engage with fellow participants is invaluable for grappling with dialectics. However, sessions will be recorded and distributed on our mailing list for your reference and for participants who cannot attend specific sessions. Your voice may be audible in these recordings.

The syllabus lists readings for each session. While you will be allowed to participate in the session without having done the readings, you will benefit much more from the session if you do them. There are about 24 pages of reading per week.

Facilitators
James Yuan is a registered psychotherapist (qualifying) and executive of Res Futura. His lecture series at Res Futura have included Theories of the Other, a dialectical analysis of major social theories, and Method, an ongoing introduction to philosophical and scientific method. His scholarship is currently focused on an examination of the methodological properties of Hegelian dialectics, and its relation to systems of memory. His areas of expertise include the application of dialectics to psychoanalysis, social theory, Marxist theory, queer theory, and theology.

Jonathan Russell is an independent scholar and trade unionist. He has led reading groups across Toronto on Marx and Hegel for many years.

Syllabus
Read more about the seminar texts and scheduled topics here.

About the poster. The poster for this seminar is based on an illustration by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, from his Theory of Colours (copied below). Although best known as a poet and man of letters, Goethe's experimental work with botany and optics was a significant inspiration for Hegel's dialectical method. Goethe theorized that the spectrum of colours is best understood as a totality, each colour being in rational relationship with the others and emerging through the interplay of the two basic principles of light and darkness. Against Newton's empiricist theory, Goethe championed this rationalist theory under the symbol of the color wheel, which he invented in its modern form. Modern artists, such as Wassily Kandinsky, have continued to draw inspiration from Goethe's theory of colours.