The section dealing with the "phenomenology of consciousness" is finally dominated by the question, How does consciousness become self-consciousness, or how does consciousness become conscious that it is self-consciousness? This assertion, however, that consciousness is self-consciousness, is a central teaching of modern philosophy since Descartes. To this extent, Hegel’s idea of phenomenology lies in the Cartesian line. Contemporary parallels show how much this is the case, especially the quite unknown book of Sinclair, the friend of Hölderlin and Hegel, which deals (...) with the Sphragis in the Rhein hymn, and is entitled Truth and Certitude. The work attempts, beginning quite explicitly with the Cartesian concept cogito me cogitare, to lead one along the path from certitude to truth in two rather similar fashions, through Fichte, and, almost contemporaneously, in Hegel. (shrink)

This is an ambitious book. Onora O'Neill argues for an interpretation of the Critical philosophy as a whole which recognizes the categorical imperative as the first principle of theoretical as well as practical reason. She offers an interpretation of Kantian ethics which attempts to answer the central charges that have been brought against it since the critiques of Mill and Hegel: empty formalism and moral rigorism. She enters into dialogue with contemporary positions both hostile and sympathetic to Kant's practical philosophy. (...) In both cases the claim is made that Kant has resources that would enable MacIntyre's communitarian and Rawls's constructionist positions to complete their own projects. (shrink)

Pinkard characterizes his interpretation of Hegel's philosophy as "by no means a straightforward and noncontroversial" reading. This is a fair characterization as his recent exchange with Robert Pippin indicates. The book presents Hegelian philosophy as essentially an explanatory project aiming at achieving a coherent set of beliefs about experience: "A philosophical problem arises when two basic beliefs both seem to be true but seem also to be inconsistent with each other; both seem to be true, but it also seems that (...) both cannot be true". Philosophical problems on this reading have the form of Kantian antinomies. Philosophical explanation takes the form of transcendental as opposed to metaphysical argumentation. Metaphysical explanations answer the question "how is x possible?" by positing the existence of some entity. Transcendental explanations claim that we must conceive of experience in terms of certain categories if we are to think about it in an intelligible way. What distinguishes a Hegelian speculative argument from a Kantian transcendental argument, in Pinkard's view, is that it cannot claim to present the conditions of the possibility of experience. A Hegelian speculative argument "cannot claim its solutions are unique or necessary". (shrink)

Hegel on Logic and Religion is a collection of previously published essays which have been arranged under three general headings: “Logic,” “Logic Applied,” and “Christianity.” It proposes a Hegelian response to Lessing’s well-known rejection of the claim of Christian apologetics to provide an adequate “rational theology.” Such apologetics held that the reliability of the historical testimony to Christ’s miracles and resurrection is cogent evidence to warrant claims for his divinity. Lessing concedes the assertions of historical veracity but denies their cogency (...) for drawing rational conclusions about divinity. There is, he argues an “ugly broad ditch” separating the necessary truths of reason from the contingent truths of history. Lessing’s attack, moreover, did more than strike at the heart of traditional Christian apologetics. It also rendered a central project of the German Enlightenment problematic. Thinkers such as Mendelssohn held that metaphysics could provide a new rational basis for the claims of historical religion. So—according to Lessing—whether one approached historical faith from the perspective of a metaphysical system, or began on the opposite site side and used history as evidence for conceptions of divinity, one was brought to a halt before the “ugly, broad ditch.”. (shrink)

McCarthy discusses the central issues in Marx interpretation--for example, the relationship of the young Marx to the author of Capital, Marx's view of ethical theory in general and justice in particular, the meaning of praxis as a criterion of truth, the significance of Marx's atheism, and the positivistic and transcendental interpretations of Marxist Wissenschaft-from the perspective of a retrieval of his classical scholarship. His contention is that a study of Marx's doctoral dissertation, The Difference between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy (...) of Nature--together with the 1838-40 Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy-yields the outlines of a fundamental intellectual project which is developed throughout the rest of his writings. That project, rooted in the humanism of the late classical period, gives a distinctive character to Marx's dialogue with modern political economists and with the liberal natural rights tradition. McCarthy thus stresses the fundamental coherence of Marx's writings, and at the same time disassociates him from modern positions--such as Ricardo's understanding of the labor theory of value--with which Marx's thought has been conflated. He does this by presenting Marx's interpretive interests as being distinctively premodern, and concludes that his classical formulation of the problems of social ethics affords Marx the critical distance to be "the most forceful opponent of modernity... [and] the first postmodern critic. (shrink)

Smith reads Marx's Capital as "a systematic theory of economic categories constructed according to a dialectical logic". He argues that the influence of Hegel's Logic on the architectonic plan of Capital is "the one central area that has yet to be explored adequately" in the oft-tilled field of Hegel's influence on Marx.