This book shows that the repeated announcements of the death of Hegel's philosophical system have been premature. Hegel's Philosophy of Freedom, Reality, and God brings to light accomplishments for which Hegel is seldom given credit: unique arguments for the reality of freedom, for the reality of knowledge, for the irrationality of egoism, and for the compatibility of key insights from traditional theism and naturalistic atheism. The book responds in a systematic manner to many of the major criticisms leveled at Hegel's (...) system, from Feuerbach and Kierkegaard to Heidegger and Charles Taylor. It provides detailed interpretations of Hegel's Philosophy of Spirit, large parts of his indispensable Science of Logic, and important parts of his Philosophy of Nature and Philosophy of Right. Unlike many academic books on Hegel, this one treats him very much as a 'live' thinker, whom we can learn from today. (shrink)

This book provides a lucid commentary on Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and on Hegel’s other major writings on ethics and politics. Since it is the only commentary in English that covers the Philosophy of Right almost section by section, from start to finish, and it also carries on an instructive dialogue with many of the other commentaries published in recent years, it will be very useful to students and to scholars who aren’t specialists in Hegel. Although Franco can’t, of course, (...) afford to go into great detail on all of the many issues that he deals with, his judiciousness and wide reading in Hegel enable him to clarify a remarkable number of them, especially in the domain of “ethical life”. His discussions of Hegel’s conceptions of the state and of war and international relations are especially well balanced, neither avoiding difficulties nor abandoning Hegel to his legions of critics. His treatments of Hegel’s earlier works—especially the Jena lectures and the relevant portions of the Phenomenology of Spirit—are also quite helpful. Only readers who have themselves attempted to reconcile these disparate and dense texts and to reconstruct some of Hegel’s major arguments in ordinary language will fully appreciate how much Franco has accomplished. (shrink)

Robert Williams objects that my interpretation of Hegel’s philosophical theology makes him an “Enlightenment naturalist.” In response, I explain how my book describes Hegel as decisively criticizing Enlightenment naturalism by showing that the finite and the natural must be sublated in the infinite. Second, I show that Hegel’s apparently paradoxical conception of the relation between humans and God makes sense when it is seen as part of the long tradition of rational mysticism, which includes Plato, Plotinus, Proclus, St. Augustine, and (...) Meister Eckhart. (shrink)

Plato was among the first to give prominence to the apparent conflicts between philosophy, religion, and the arts, conflicts that are still alive in modern cultures. Philosophers often challenge the legitimacy of religion, in various ways; philosophy as an advocate of ethics challenges the arts as lacking a moral compass; and advocates of the arts and religion stage counterattacks against these challenges. However, Plato wasn’t only a critic of religion and the arts. He had his own preferred version of religion, (...) and his own practice of art, of which he was quite aware. And in modern times, Hegel presents a systematic account of the sciences, the arts, religion, and philosophy, as aspects of “Spirit,” which shows how all of them make indispensable contributions to freedom and thus, in fact, to the highest and most "real" reality. My goal in this talk is to show how, elaborating on Plato’s hints on these issues, Hegel not only resolves the disputes between the sciences, the arts, religion, and philosophy, but reveals a unified higher and more real reality that is composed of efforts within all of these cultural domains. (shrink)

This book provides a lucid commentary on Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and on Hegel’s other major writings on ethics and politics. Since it is the only commentary in English that covers the Philosophy of Right almost section by section, from start to finish, and it also carries on an instructive dialogue with many of the other commentaries published in recent years, it will be very useful to students and to scholars who aren’t specialists in Hegel. Although Franco can’t, of course, (...) afford to go into great detail on all of the many issues that he deals with, his judiciousness and wide reading in Hegel enable him to clarify a remarkable number of them, especially in the domain of “ethical life”. His discussions of Hegel’s conceptions of the state and of war and international relations are especially well balanced, neither avoiding difficulties nor abandoning Hegel to his legions of critics. His treatments of Hegel’s earlier works—especially the Jena lectures and the relevant portions of the Phenomenology of Spirit—are also quite helpful. Only readers who have themselves attempted to reconcile these disparate and dense texts and to reconstruct some of Hegel’s major arguments in ordinary language will fully appreciate how much Franco has accomplished. (shrink)

_Plato's Dialectical Ethics,_ Gadamer's earliest work, has now been translated into English for the first time. This classic book, published in 1931 and reprinted in 1967 and 1982, is still important today. It is one of the most extensive and imaginative interpretations of Plato's _Philebus_ and an ideal introduction to Gadamer's thinking. It shows how his influential hermeneutics emerged from the application of his teacher Martin Heidegger's phenomenological method to classical texts and problems. The work consists of two chapters. The (...) first, which puts Socratic/Platonic dialectics and ethics in the context of Gadamer's thinking about how we come to shared understanding through conversation, helps to clarify the intentions and trajectory of all Gadamer's subsequent work. The second chapter, on the _Philebus, _will interest everyone who is concerned with the connection between Plato's discussions of ethics and those of Aristotle, and with the substantive issues of the relation between pleasure and reason that Plato explores and Gadamer interprets. This edition includes a new and useful introduction by the translator, Robert M. Wallace. (shrink)

This major work by the German philosopher Hans Blumenberg is a monumental rethinking of the significance of the Copernican revolution for our understanding of modernity. It provides an important corrective to the view of science as an autonomous enterprise and presents a new account of the history of interpretations of the significance of the heavens for man.Hans Blumenberg is Professor of Philosophy, emeritus, at the University of Munster in West Germany. This book is included in the series Studies in Contemporary (...) German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy. (shrink)

468 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 34:3 JULY 1996 right that this distinction need not be a problem for Kant's, or his own, account. Indeed, further discussion of this could be the basis for defending both empirical explanation and a more interpretive or phenomenological understanding of events. But Hudson does not provide this discussion, and without it the "thinkability" of the free agency description is weak. Hudson himself seems uncertain at times as to how much authority to grant to (...) this thinkability. He says, for example, in his Chapter 5 discussion of freedom, that "our first conception of freedom is a causality of reason through which we choose and act on some maxim or law" . Hudson's claim of adequacy for a descrip- tion that does not admit of explanatory certitude demands a more complete defense. This issue highlights, perhaps, the challenges of interpreting.. (shrink)

Many readers have suspected that Hegel---in arguing against Kant’s individualistic and critical way of approaching ethics and favoring instead an “ethical life” he associates with custom and habit---is in effect eliminating both individual judgment and any basis for criticism of corrupt or unjust communities. Most specialists reject this view of Hegel’s ethical theory, but they haven’t explained precisely how, on the contrary, ethical life preserves individual judgment and criticism within a new way of thinking about ethics. The goal of this (...) paper is to do that. (shrink)

Many readers have suspected that Hegel---in arguing against Kant’s individualistic and critical way of approaching ethics and favoring instead an “ethical life” he associates with custom and habit---is in effect eliminating both individual judgment and any basis for criticism of corrupt or unjust communities. Most specialists reject this view of Hegel’s ethical theory, but they haven’t explained precisely how, on the contrary, ethical life preserves individual judgment and criticism within a new way of thinking about ethics. The goal of this (...) paper is to do that. (shrink)