Kierkegaard notwithstanding, Hegel's notion of the "good" and "bad" infinity was not unprecedented. On the contrary, this attempt to invest a "logical" category with ethical significances goes back to the very roots of the Western metaphysical tradition. In the Pythagorean doctrine of limit and the unlimited, limit was the arche of the good; the unlimited of evil. In the Pythagorean concept of number as an ens, limit and the unlimited attained ontological status. And since number constituted the determinate character of (...) all things, the Pythagorean peras and apeiron was a logos doctrine, the rational principle of the universe. Thereby Pythagoreanism marked a great advance over the Ionian materialisms. (shrink)

The present study seeks to treat in depth a relatively restricted portion of Hegel's thought but one that has not yet received intensive treatment by Hegel scholars in English. In the Hegelian system of philosophical sciences, the Anthropology directly follows the Philosophy of Nature and forms the first of the three sciences of Subjective Spirit: 1 Anthropo logy, Phenomenology, and Psychology. The section on Subjective Spirit is then followed by sections on Objective Spirit and Absolute Spirit. The three sections together (...) comprise the Philosophy of Spirit (Philosophie des Geistes 2), which constitutes the third and concluding main division of Hegel's total system as presented in the Encyclopedia of Philosophic Sciences in Outline. a Hegel intended to write a separate full-scale work on the philosophy of Subjective Spirit as he had done on Objective Spirit (the Philosophy of Right), but died before he could do so. · Thus the focus of our study is quite concentrated. Its relatively narrow scope within the vast compass of the Hegelian system may be justified, 1 Iring Fetscher (HegeUt Lehre vom Menschen, Stuttgart, 1970, p. 11) notes the lack of a modem commentary to Hegel's Encyclopedia, and in particular to the section on Subjective Spirit. Brief accounts of this section in English may be found in: Hugh A. Reyburn, The Ethical Theory of Hegel (Oxford, 1921), Chapter V; and O. R. O. Mure, A Study of Hegers Logic (Oxford, 1950), pp. 2-22. (shrink)

Findlay and Miller have performed another signal service for English-speaking students of Hegel. This time they have made available the Zusätze to Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind contained in Ludwig Boumann’s 1845 edition of the Philosophie des Geistes. The Geistesphilosophie was written by Hegel as the third main division of the great triad: Logic, Nature, Spirit, which comprises his Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse. The 1830 version of the Enzyklopädie was the last of the three editions that Hegel lived to (...) see through the press, and of its three main divisions the Geistesphilosophie obtained the greatest increment over the second edition. While the 1830 text had been translated by William Wallace in 1894, the Zusätze offered in the Boumann edition have never before been available in English. Hence the reason for the Wallace-Miller translation now before us. In the present work, Wallace’s 1894 rendering of Hegel’s own text is supplemented by A. V. Miller’s new translation of the Zusätze and the whole served up with an appetite-whetting Foreword by J. N. Findlay. (shrink)

Midway in the process of inquiring about what it means “to know,” Socrates is stopped short by a thought that seems to render the whole undertaking questionable.

Under the balmy Mediterranean skies of Santa Margherita Ligure on the beautiful Italian Riviera, forty Hegelian scholars from nine countries put their heads together on the theme “Hegel’s Philosophie des subjectiven Geistes” at the Conference of the Internationale Hegel-Vereinigung, May 24–27, 1973. Enjoying the generosity of the Italian Government and the official hospitality of the Municipality of Santa Margherita, the participants heard and discussed four papers by German scholars, two each by Italians and Americans, and one each by a Dutch (...) and a French scholar. Professor Valerio Verra of the University of Rome served as host, and Professor Dieter Henrich, President of the Internationale Hegel-Vereinigung, introduced the theme of the Conference and officiated the proceedings. Chairing individual sessions and participating in the discussions were such internationally known figures as Hans-Georg Gadamer of Germany, Eric Weil and Marcel Régnier of France, W. H. Walsh and Anthony Kenny of Great Britain, and Enrico de Negri of Italy. (shrink)

The first thing to be said is that Wolff’s book is a first-rank scholarly work of lasting interest in its particular area of Hegel studies. The second is that it puts forward a controversial—I believe wrongheaded—thesis which, marvellous to tell, does not detract from the scholarly value but should provoke lively debate.

The first thing to be said is that Wolff’s book is a first-rank scholarly work of lasting interest in its particular area of Hegel studies. The second is that it puts forward a controversial—I believe wrongheaded—thesis which, marvellous to tell, does not detract from the scholarly value but should provoke lively debate.

While some would see the main theme of Hegel’s Subjective Spirit as the emergence of the nature-bound subjectivity to free spirituality, or the resolution of the subject-object problem and the overcoming of subjective idealism, Petry’s chief concern is Hegel’s relation to empiricism. The doctrine of Subjective Spirit is for Petry a “survey” of the “immediate constituent factors involved in our ordinary activity as conscious beings”, organized according to the “commonsense realism and empiricism of the Idea.” The Idea makes possible a (...) hierarchical order wherein the levels of “an empirically ascertained subject-matter form a progression in degree of complexity.” Hegel’s chief contribution in Subjective Spirit is to organize into levels of complexity an existing body of “professional knowledge” in anthropology, psychology, etc., and it is Petry’s main aim to point to such a body of knowledge and show how Hegel made use of it. Before we examine this approach to Hegel, let us note the main contents of the three volumes. (shrink)

In his critical interpretation of Hegel's Wissenschaft der Logik Theunissen views the Logik as a communications theory manqué. Instead of following the demands of its own program, about which Hegel himself was not entirely clear, the Logik is a "communications theory motivated by revelation theology". The genuine program of the Logik is seen by Theunissen first of all in its "critical function." This consists in dissolving the "positivity" of traditional metaphysical thinking in order to "save the truth towards which ontology (...) strives--and from which at the same time it withdraws--by leading it over into a theory of the speculative Satz". The leading over ought to have been prepared in the Objective Logic, but Hegel's demonstration fails disastrously at crucial places both in the Seins- and Wesenslogik. To the Objective Logic the Begriffslogik stands in "schizophrenic relation." As a metaphysical theology it runs counter to the Objective Logic's critique of positivistic ontology. In its doctrine of the Judgment, however, the Begriffslogik exhibits the coming together of subject and predicate in the copula "is," which is the truth of the abstract Sein with which the Logik began. This coming together corresponds to communication theory's ideal of "communicative freedom" and the coincidence of love and freedom in a community of equals. Thus like many writers from Feuerbach and Marx to our own day, Theunissen would jettison the Hegelian Geist and take over a modified dialectic for a nonmetaphysical theory of man and society. (shrink)