Abstract

This collection of fifteen philosophical essays, principally prepared between 1974 and 1987, is an indispensable complement to Darrel E. Christensen’s major work on the Hegel-Whitehead relation, The Search for Concreteness: Reflections on Hegel and Whitehead, which appeared only two years earlier. The problematic of the earlier work was predominantly “methodological,” the intent having been to outline an authentically “critical” approach to fundamental issues of epistemology and metaphysics from a “somewhat Hegelian perspective.” The present work, building out from SC, is mainly devoted to a historical “dialogue” between his original Hegel appropriation and reconstruction and some representative streams of contemporary philosophy. This is on the basis of his assumption, shared by the reviewer, that today’s most helpful contribution to Hegelianism can no longer consist in entanglements in “potentially endless interpretative debate of a sort that would be found of interest only to a few specialists,” so much as in bringing out “something of the import of Hegel’s work” “in confrontation with competing philosophical orientations”. Such a confrontation cannot, of course, be fruitful apart from having previously made clear what aspects or tenets of Hegel’s philosophy are being appropriated. This clearly presupposes the development of a consistent Hegel interpretation, to which especially the preface along with Essays I and XI offer an invaluable contribution. In the last two parts of the work he presents his readers with a somewhat detailed account of his position with respect to much debated issues in contemporary thought such as the “philosophy of language” and “cultural relativity.” This seems to me to be very likely the most original and up-to-date contribution to philosophy to be found in all of his philosophical work. In fact, as I shall presently show, although never departing from a close commitment to Hegelian principles, his reflections on these subjects seem to go a little, at least, toward justifying his claim to have advanced “first philosophy” somewhat “beyond” Hegel.