Gillian Rose here follows her masterful critical exposition of Adorno and the Frankfurt School, The Melancholy Science, with a broad interpretation of Hegel focused on contemporary problems of method in the social sciences. Rose aims to retrieve the Hegelian speculative experience, and the first chapter is devoted to the discovery, analysis and unmasking of the barriers which stand in the way of any such rereading. Rose argues that all forms of sociology operate within the narrow limits of a neo-Kantian paradigm (...) of validity and value, first formulated by Lotze. In this, Lotze attempted a Kantian grounding of knowledge via the dual criteria of validity and values; i.e., either theory may be grounded in the validity of necessary truths and given facts, or theory may be grounded in the values of absolute standards. Rose suggests that each of these criteria was later given primacy. In late nineteenth century philosophy the criterion of validity was developed by the Marburg school of neo-Kantian philosophers. The criterion of values was given priority in the work of the Heidelberg school. (shrink)