Abstract

Alfredo Ferrarin has written an excellent study of Hegel’s interpretation of Aristotle. He clearly states his intention on p. 18: He wishes to examine the “effective presence of Aristotelian themes in Hegel,” particularly that of energeia, in order to follow the way in which “the idea of autoreferential activity in its Aristotelan sense operates in the details and in the particular contents of Hegel’s interpretation [of Aristotle] and in the course of Hegel’s own philosophy.” Bringing together an admirable familiarity with the principal texts, fine linguistic skills, and a wide-ranging knowledge of the secondary literature, Ferrarin presents the reader with a treatment that is careful in its details, clear in its structure, and altogether up to the daunting task it sets for itself. For, as Ferrarin notes several times, the appropriation of Aristotle is so important for Hegel that Aristotle’s thought does not appear confined within a few categories of the Science of Logic or a few spiritual shapes in the Phenomenology of Spirit, but constitutes a pretext, a “model” of a “philosophy of unification” that Hegel takes up at all levels of his own thought.