Professor Hall with this work supplements the earlier bibliography of T. E. Jessop, who has collaborated on some of the entries in the current work. There is an overlap of some ten years, inasmuch as Hall’s work commences with the year 1930; entries run through early 1971. The bibliography is extensive, containing some 800 items in all the various Western languages as well as transliterated Japanese. In addition, attention is directed to critical studies of many of the listings. An eighteen-page (...) subject index contributes further to making this a quite useful and valuable addition to the field of Hume scholarship.—R. J. G. (shrink)

The title of this work evokes suspicion: how can Soll aim at one "part"--metaphysics--of a philosophy such as Hegel's? How would one go about introducing only Hegel's metaphysics? One might, with some validity, go about discussing Hegel's metaphysics ; but how would one, assuming his reader's general unfamiliarity with Hegel, introduce his "metaphysics," and that alone? Alas, one's worst fears are soon realized: the opening sentence reads, "Hegel's method is best approached by asking what he was trying to accomplish with (...) it." Bifurcation. The operant supposition which guides the work is that Hegel "has" a method with which he attempts to "do" various things. This view is utterly un-Hegelian, as even a cursory reading of the introduction to the Logic, to cite only one source, illustrates. No guide to Hegel is going to be useful that clouds this fundamental point. The whole texture of Hegel's integrated and integrative system is never rescued. Soll's presentation approaches, and treats of, Hegel from the standpoint of pedestrian philosophizing, leaning heavily on the collected tradition to make distinctions in a glib and altogether external way. From his starting point, Soll proceeds, drawing on a handful of secondary sources, to deliver an extended series of facile, shotgun commentaries: but if one already has the ability to adjudge which of them find their mark, he does not need the book in the first place. The primary problem a book of this kind faces is the perhaps insuperable difficulty of creating a suitable "introduction" to Hegel's thought. And to be fair, one might say that most of the shortcomings of Soll's book are attributable to this problem. Where does one start, if not where Hegel did; and whither does one proceed, except in the direction Hegel did? One should either attempt to go that path, or elect not to go at all. It is too easy to lose one's way in so dense a forest.--R. J. G. (shrink)

This book is a collection of essays, and is an exercise in literary criticism. Most of the entries couple a philosopher with a literary artist, and the majority of these have an emphasis on the philosophical partner which one frequently fails to find in this sort of study. While few of the critics are capable of sustaining their subtle distinctions, a task properly required of a philosopher, it is nonetheless true that few philosophers can likewise do this. The ability to (...) systematically sustain these distinctions is what characterizes those first-order thinkers whom the body of philosophers and critics alike study. Granting this, the fact still remains that first-rate criticism is vastly more palatable intellectual fodder than is less than first-rate philosophizing. Studies such as the current one bring philosophy back into reality; the relation of a philosopher’s thought to his period, in all of the latter’s diversity, gives to that thought a realistic character that more transparently informs the creations of the fine arts than it does the original products of thought. And if thought is to avoid the sterility which so antagonized both a Sterne and a Hegel, and to become genuinely meaningful, this larger context will be forever indispensable.—R. J. G. (shrink)

The point of departure in this work is a defense against that view which would hold Hegel to be a glorifier of the Prussian state, a reactionary, and an enemy of freedom. Hegel, as the work illustrates, recognized that the French Revolution only annihilated what was already in itself destroyed; and he saluted it with "rapture" as the coming of a "new dawn" in the preface of the Encyclopaedia. He continued to celebrate its anniversary even while at the same time (...) and with no less intensity holding before himself an awareness of the dangers and horrors which it occasioned. In fact, Ritter submits that one might well understand the idea of freedom brandished by the Revolution to be the fundamental element of Hegel’s entire philosophy. Hegel disengages the notion of freedom from all previous connections which, over the centuries, have distorted it, and recovers the classic definition of Aristotle : "free is the man who is for himself and not for another." Political order must guarantee this possibility. The problem posited by the Revolution is: how? Hegel, the supposed "reactionary," in all his writings, both public and private, was consistently opposed, and occasionally with passion, to any political restoration. Yet one should also take notice of Hegel’s extreme and profound antipathy for the associations of students and demagogical movements, which he saw had no rapport with the real political and historical events of the time. Both the romantic liberal and the romantic conservative united in "hatred against the law." They were concerned not with freedom as such, but with political activity which pretended to be in its service, spewing platitudes which would renounce all searching knowledge and make truth an affair of the heart, the soul, or enthusiasm. Hegel alone, with perhaps the exception of Goethe, perceived the profound danger of anarchy revealed in these movements, a danger menacing to all, when one elevates pure subjectivity and sentiment to the rank of norm for political structures. The Revolution was accompanied by the dissolution of all the representations, concepts, and norms of the previous world as if they had been the fabric of dreams. In the face of this event, along with that of the constant danger of anarchy, philosophy must furnish the ideas which can determine that which can be conserved and that which can no longer survive. For both the advocates of restoration and the revolutionaries the Revolution was understood to be the end of previous history, the severing of man from his past: one wanted merely to recover it, the other to bury it. This scission, together with the real power which it has exerted on man and his conscience, is the fundamental structure of the new age. The remainder of the current study pursues the development of this scission, revealing the inner contradiction of the poles when taken alone: the scission itself to be the unity of historic existence in the form of subjectivity and objectivity; and the scission to find its objective expression in modern civil society. There is an on-going enrichment in the notion of freedom until it finds its fulfillment in the modern State, which assures freedom by providing the structures through which it can exist. Most of what should be said is said, although Ritter’s presentation occasionally harbors some confusion, a common and probably inescapable fate when one cuts in on the dialectic to forage for an isolated topic. Still, the book achieves its goal with admirable success, and is certainly a valuable tract on Hegel vis-à-vis the notion of political freedom. The main work is a translation from the German original; it is followed by an address which develops the material in the Philosophy of Right, § 34-81; and the book concludes with a rather amazing fifty-page bibliography citing the influence exercised by Hegel’s political theory throughout the nineteenth century.—R. J. G. (shrink)

This book aims at remedying the deficiency which the author sees in the fact that not a single critical study of Heidegger's treatment of the history of philosophy has appeared in English. Magnus finds the basic theme of Heidegger's later works to lie in this treatment. He is concerned that "no sustained efforts have hitherto been made to come to grips with the methodological questions which Heidegger's hermeneutic occasions," and considers Heidegger's treatment of Nietzsche in order to make such an (...) effort. His ultimate motive in so doing is to present his conclusion that "to interpret the great philosophers from Heidegger's point of vantage... is ruinous to the history of philosophy as a discipline and is foreign to Heidegger's own thinking as well." The book is divided into two parts, the first clarifying Nietzsche's presentation of eternal recurrence; the second critically considering Heidegger's methodological approach in general and his conclusions vis-à-vis Nietzsche. The study will show a "partial and inadequate reading of Plato and Descartes" on Heidegger's part; the inadequacy of Heidegger's bald imputation of a "correspondence" epistemology reigning supreme throughout Western philosophy; and the textual evidence cited by Heidegger in his study of Nietzsche to be inadequate to his purposes. Chapter One of Part I points out the questionable nature of the material in Nietzsche's Nachlass; also, that much of the material consists of notes which Nietzsche abandoned or rejected as unfit for inclusion into the published works to which they refer. Nowhere in the published works or those designated for publication is the doctrine of eternal recurrence posited explicitly in "empirical-cosmological" terms. Magnus points out that Nietzsche scholars are unanimous in failing to draw the crucial methodological distinction between his published and unpublished works. To make this distinction is to come to recognize that the significance of eternal recurrence for Nietzsche is its existential imperative and not its empirical verification, which he mulled over as a "corroborative" hypothesis in his notes ; and which was attempted to confirm a doctrine which he had already embraced for other reasons. To understand this primary attraction to the doctrine one must consider Nietzsche's methodological challenging of the law of contradiction, his temperamental abhorrence of systematic, i.e. analytic philosophy. This latter methodology properly obtains in the empirical "proof" which was presented above as of derivative importance. To get at the existential significance of the doctrine, one might properly consider it "within the context of its opposition to three interpenetrating realities as Nietzsche understood them: Metaphysics, Christianity, and nihilism." This is the concern of the remainder of Chapter Three. Eternal recurrence emerges as the doctrine of becoming, and is seen to be "a critique [sic] and alternative to metaphysics." Part II illustrates how Heidegger reworked his understanding of Western philosophy from the period of Being and Time, when metaphysics was seen to begin with Aristotle and to have had its "decisive" phases with Descartes and Kant, to the subsequent consideration of its having begun with Plato and having had its "decisive" culmination with Nietzsche. Magnus argues that the contention that for Plato truth devolved from alétheia to orthotes is highly questionable; that the "humanistic" truth criterion of Western metaphysics pervades Heidegger's own Being and Time; and that the claim by Heidegger that Western philosophers have traditionally presupposed a subject/object correspondence conception of truth is patently false. He concludes that "[Heidegger's] interpretation is subordinated to a thesis which superimposes its meaning upon the history of philosophy." It remains the task of the concluding two chapters to elucidate how this "metahistory" of philosophy distorts Nietzsche's critique and alternative to metaphysics into the very embodiment of metaphysics. This project points out the disparity in the understanding of "nihilism" between the two thinkers; likewise, their variant understandings of the crucial notion of "revenge"; and, finally, Nietzsche's thoroughgoing rejection of Being as a precisely metaphysical notion. Magnus shows that the contexts from which Heidegger draws the quotations for his Nietzschean meditations themselves refute his distorted interpretation of Nietzsche's doctrine. A more careful consideration might not sacrifice thinking broadly in order to think deeply. Heidegger's metahistorical methodology Heideggerizes every philosopher to which he turns; hence, the Heideggerian virtue is "to comprehend and express not what another thinker thought/said, but what he did not think/say, could not think/say, and why he could not think/say it". To consider Nietzsche in terms of what he said regarding eternal recurrence rather in terms of the fundamentally contradictory words which Heidegger attributes to him, is to see the doctrine as the ultimate affirmation of becoming--and to see Heidegger as the last metaphysician. The serious alternative to metaphysics rests with Nietzsche.--R. J. G. (shrink)

This exceedingly rich book can be understood as an attempt to grasp the nature of Hegel’s system, specifically the relationship obtaining between that system and its vaunted "transitions." This attempt is carried out through a study of Hegel’s account of Vorstellung and thought. The operational point d'appui of the study is what Clark identifies as the central paradox essentially inherent in his subject, which may be variously formulated as: how language can be the "other" of thought and yet sublated in (...) thought; how pure thought can abide an other; how the Logic can from within itself develop its categories to absolute fulfillment and yet refer beyond itself to its fulfillment; how Hegel can be understood to have "completed" philosophy in the first quarter of the nineteenth century; how one makes sense of the notion of an essentially temporal eternality; how the Logic and the Phenomenology of Mind can each presuppose the other. The developing treatment of this paradox constitutes almost an object lesson in the "preserved" aspect of aufhebung—The or a methodological enactment of the second book of the Logic—for Clark wrestles with the tacky conceptual framework upon which rests the topic under investigation. The whole is deftly handled. Particularly inspired is the close analysis of the Theoretical Mind chapter of the Philosophy of Spirit and its bearing upon the Logic’s "Essence." This coupling, together with a treatment of the Philosophy of Religion constitutes one of the two foci of the book. What comes clear from this extended study is an appreciation of the fundamental difficulties connected with any philosophical explanation that has failed to resolve satisfactorily the relationship between ground and consequent and treats them either as being simply different or from the standpoint of a simply presumed totality. Clark’s considered position is that Hegel’s thought is paradoxical precisely in its intelligibility. Ultimately, he can only reiterate the paradox one final time: "The paradox of a Logic that is at once the whole and but a part of experience is thus a systematic expression of the need for reconciliation of a standpoint that is simply accomplished and a standpoint that is ever accomplishing itself." Now for the misgivings, which are for the most part issues of form. There is an obstinate problem of indistinctness running through the work. The recurrent summaries, both internal and thematic, the forecasts, the exhaustively particularized table of contents, are all tacit concessions to the existence of this problem. Seldom do positions come ringing through with conviction; often, notwithstanding the above-mentioned signposts, their origin, their precise connection to the text, is obscure. This is particularly true of the truncated final passages, where interpretation converts to criticism. In short, a fuller statement of significance might well have been supplied. A second problem, or at the least an annoying inconvenience, is the decision not to translate most of the abundant quotations from Hegel’s works into English. Some of the quotations are, for no apparent reason, in fact translated; and with well over 900 footnotes in a 200-page text anyway, translations would hardly constitute a stylistic blemish.—R. J. G. (shrink)

One might legitimately wonder why, if Christopher Middleton, in his Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche, published translations of approximately ten per cent of the total available Nietzschean correspondence, the current translators have elected to repeat roughly sixty per cent of these in the present work. One might extend this misgiving to a further questioning as to why the co-translators have chosen to include "representative" passages of these letters when Middleton translates them in their entirety. Stripping sentences from paragraphs and paragraphs (...) from pages is surely no way to present a meaningful portrait of their author. If this were done with the intention of presenting a simple, non-contradictory view of Nietzsche's development or personality, it would be understandable, if unjustifiable. But it is not. If the present translations were markedly fresh and lucid in contrast to previously bungled efforts, it would be understandable. But they are not. If Middleton's content footnotes were occasionally lifted from Schlechta, they made up in substance what they lacked in originality. The few footnotes scattered here might be copiously expanded to explain what is going on--going on in the letter, going on in Nietzsche's development, going on in the book. As it is, all one can do is ask: Why bother?--R. J. G. (shrink)

This book, one of a large series, is a compilation of quotes. On the surface, this would seem an especially precarious task to undertake with Nietzsche; for he, perhaps more than any other philosopher, runs the danger of being drastically misunderstood when his remarks are wrenched from a broad context-having said practically everything at one point or another. Nietzsche has suffered so much from this that it is perhaps in principle unjustifiable to assent to any further effort along these lines. (...) Yet, this book does have the redeeming feature of organizing itself into a consistent pattern which does some justice to the notion that Nietzsche was, in fact, engaged in a systematic undertaking--albeit in his highly idiosyncratic way. It opens with a presentation of the symptoms of nihilism and its origin in metaphysics. The succeeding chapter deals with the overcoming of metaphysics. Out of this arises "The World as Will-to-Power." The epistemological consequences of this ontology are contained in "Truth and Valor". The collection concludes with a consideration of the over-man. A very precise index makes this a valuable reference book for those willing to trace their Nietzsche through the mediation of the French language.--R. J. G. (shrink)