Desmond’s ambitious effort to re-conceive the problem of dialectic and otherness is both timely and provocative. Moving beyond the “generous hermeneutic” of Hegel exemplified in Art and the Absolute, Desmond develops more fully a discussion about the alleged “closure” of dialectical philosophies generally and Hegel’s philosophy specifically. Whereas Art and the Absolute tended to defend Hegel’s insights and achievements — at least in aesthetic theory — against a wide variety of critical approaches, the work under review attempts to engage seriously (...) the persistent charge of “closure” made against Hegelian speculative philosophy. Repeated by critics as various as Habermas, Heidegger, Lonergan, and Derrida, the charge is too widespread and too frequently levelled to ignore. At issue seems to be the very possibility of an “absolute” knowing. How is it possible to know absolutely without trimming up the edges of the knowable, dotting all i’s and crossing all t’s, and leaving nothing for future philosophers but the relationships of disciple, exegete, or rebel angel? It is of course arguable that the self-developing categorial criticism in terms of which Hegel develops his doctrine of absolute knowing renders such objections irrelevant, but Desmond does not opt for this strategy. Rather, in the development of his own original metaphysics of origin, Desmond attempts to “sublate” the Hegelian philosophy. (shrink)

In the decade since the late George Armstrong Kelly announced in the pages of this journal that Richard Winfield’s project has something significant to contribute to the debate over the contemporary relevance of Hegel’s systematic philosophy, Winfield has produced a number of works in support of that claim. These works have established Winfield as an important neo-Hegelian thinker.

It is no secret that Hegel, along with Vico, whom he never read, and Rousseau, whom he read with enthusiasm, regarded poetic meaning as historically prior to prosaic meaning - the figurative preceded the literal, the tropological antedated the logical per se. Indeed, Hegel went so far, in his Aesthetic, as to qualify poetry as “Man’s original grasp of truth”. Since, as we know, for Hegel the true is the whole, it would seem that this original grasp of the truth (...) would have to be accounted for in any speculative account of truth. (shrink)

Hegel has often been held by his critics to have failed in his efforts to achieve his professed goal to make of philosophy a science. Some of the major objections have been that he overlooked problems of finite, embodied existence, that he ignored the constitutive power of language, and that he did not make allowance for a creative unconscious. Wilfried Ver Eecke has written an oddly-titled work which traces the role of negation in the realms of child development, psychoanalysis, linguistics, (...) and Hegelian thought. In the course of his complex, nuanced study, he provides ample material for defending Hegel from these charges, even where he himself seems ambivalent about their validity. (shrink)

Hegel has often been held by his critics to have failed in his efforts to achieve his professed goal to make of philosophy a science. Some of the major objections have been that he overlooked problems of finite, embodied existence, that he ignored the constitutive power of language, and that he did not make allowance for a creative unconscious. Wilfried Ver Eecke has written an oddly-titled work which traces the role of negation in the realms of child development, psychoanalysis, linguistics, (...) and Hegelian thought. In the course of his complex, nuanced study, he provides ample material for defending Hegel from these charges, even where he himself seems ambivalent about their validity. (shrink)

French interpretations of Hegel have been immensely influential in the past fifty years. One has only to think of the names Alexandre Kojève and Jean Hyppolite to begin to recognize the enormous debt which all students of Hegel owe to French scholarship in this period. Beyond the problems posed by the specific interpretations of Hegel advanced by Kojève and Hyppolite, however, there is also the task of beginning to assess the great influence upon subsequent French thought brought about by their (...) students, among whom are grouped a veritable pantheon of modern French thinkers. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Alexandre Koyré, Raymond Aron, Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Lacan, and Georges Bataille, among others, all attended Kojèves’s lectures, while Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida attended seminars with Hyppolite. (shrink)

French interpretations of Hegel have been immensely influential in the past fifty years. One has only to think of the names Alexandre Kojève and Jean Hyppolite to begin to recognize the enormous debt which all students of Hegel owe to French scholarship in this period. Beyond the problems posed by the specific interpretations of Hegel advanced by Kojève and Hyppolite, however, there is also the task of beginning to assess the great influence upon subsequent French thought brought about by their (...) students, among whom are grouped a veritable pantheon of modern French thinkers. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Alexandre Koyré, Raymond Aron, Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Lacan, and Georges Bataille, among others, all attended Kojèves’s lectures, while Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida attended seminars with Hyppolite. (shrink)

It is ironic that deconstructive criticism reveals itself most patently as neo-formalism in its treatment of Hegel. Sallis’s book resumes all the by-now-canonical elements of the Derridean conception of Hegel: Hegel as the philosopher of “closure” par excellence, Hegel as the last figure in “the metaphysics of presence,” Hegel as the philosopher most clever at dissembling his ideological preoccupations behind a facade of “reason.”.