This book provides a comprehensive survey of Hegel's philosophical thought via a systematic exploration of over 100 key terms, from `absolute' to `will'. By exploring both the etymological background of such terms and Hegel's particular use of them, Michael Inwood clarifies for the modern reader much that has been regarded as difficult and obscure in Hegel's work.

_A Heidegger Dictionary_ enables the student to read Heidegger's immensely rich and varied works with understanding, and assigns him to his rightful place in both contemporary philosophy and in the history of the subject.

Stemming from a reading of Hegel’s account of the struggle for recognition in the Phenomenology of Spirit, Kojève argued that death is the central notion of Hegel’s philosophy. I will discuss several themes in relation to this claim of Kojève’s interpretation of Hegel, namely the themes of freedom, individuality, and historicity. I will also discuss Kojève’s reading that Hegel rejects both all conceptions of the afterlife, and too the belief in the afterlife as a manifestation of the “unhappy consciousness”. I (...) will point out flaws of Kojève’s interpretation throughout. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger is probably the most divisive philosopher of the twentieth century: viewed by some as a charlatan; as a leader and central figure to many philosophers. Michael Inwood's lucid introduction to Heidegger's thought focuses on his most important work, 'Being and Time', and its major themes of existence in the world, inauthenticity, guilt, destiny, truth, and the nature of time. This is an invaluable guide to the complex and voluminous thought of a major twentieth-century existentialist philosopher.

It is one of the main pillars of his thought. Inwood gives the clear and careful guidance needed for an understanding of this challenging work.

In this clear, critical examination of the ideas of one of the greatest and most influential of modern philosophers, M.J. Inwood makes Hegel's arguments fully accessible. He considers Hegel's system as a whole and examines the wide range of problems that it was designed to solve - metaphysical, epistemological theological and political. He concentrates especially on the logical and metaphysical ideas which underpin the system and which supply the key to understanding much of what is obscure in Hegel's thought. (...) Throughout the book, M.J Inwood reconstructs Hegel's thought by arguing with him. He examines Hegel's arguments and restates his views precisely and clearly. He also conveys the impressive unity of Hegel's system and its links with the thought of such philosophers as Aristotle, Spinoza and Kant. (shrink)

The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 63, Issue 253, Page 809-811, October 2013.

The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 63, Issue 253, Page 842-843, October 2013.

© 2013 The Editors of The Philosophical QuarterlyScott Davidson and Diane Perpich set high standards for the assessment of this volume. Fifty years after its publication in 1961, Levinas's Totality and Infinity is going through a ‘midlife crisis’. Scholarship on Levinas ‘sometimes seems to do little more than plow familiar terrain, remaining stuck in the rut of well‐worn interpretations and overused phrases’. One response to a midlife crisis is to exchange one's established partner for a younger model. But the editors (...) do not recommend this solution to the ‘dull routine’ into which our relationship with Levinas has fallen. They believe that the essays they have collected will pep up our relationship with him by venturing ‘along unexplored pathways’. Other thinkers are introduced into the ménage – Karl Marx, Stanley Cavell... (shrink)

Aristotle argued that there are no true statements of the form. In his lectures on history of philosophy Hegel does not challenge this view and in his Science of Logic expresses admiration for Aristotle's rebuttal of Zeno of Elea's attempt to find such contradictions in his paradoxes of motion. Yet more than once in his logics Hegel insists that everything is contradictory. I approach this problem from two directions. First, Widerspruch often means, and is understood by Hegel to mean, ‘opposition’ (...) rather than ‘contradiction’ in the strict logical sense. Thus Catullus's simultaneous love and hatred of Clodia is a contradiction, but not an Aristotelian, or formal logical, contradiction. I defuse Hegel's occasional suggestions of Aristotelian contradictions in motion and time. Second, I exploit Hegel's tacit rejection of Aristotle's official bivalence account of truth and falsity, in favour of the view that truth is approached by successive improvements in our inevitably imperfect attempts to attain it. In this respect Hegel's procedure is similar to that of Aristotle himself, who characteristically constructs his own view of metaphysics, physics, ethics, etc., from the imperfect, but not flatly false, opinions of his predecessors. ‘The truth is the whole’, that is, the whole sequence of our attempts to reach it. (shrink)

In 1929 Heidegger gave his Freiburg inaugural lecture entitled ‘What is Metaphysics?’ In it he announced: Das Nichts selbst nichtet, ‘The Nothing itself noths . This soon earned Heidegger fame as a purveyor of metaphysical nonsense. In his 1931 paper, ‘Overcoming of Metaphysics through Logical Analysis of Language’ Rudolf Carnap charged Heidegger with the offences of the whole metaphysical genre. His sentence has the same grammatical form as the sentence ‘The rain rains’ – a sentence which Carnap, or at least (...) his translator, regarded as a ‘meaningful sentence of ordinary language’. But this harmless guise conceals severe logical blemishes. Heidegger treats the indefinite pronoun ‘nothing’ as a noun, as the ‘name or description of an entity’. He introduces the meaningless word ’to noth‘. He implies, and later affirms, the existence of the nothing, when the ‘existence of this entity would be denied in its very definition’. If all this were not enough, the sentence is meaningless, since it is neither analytic, nor contradictory, nor empirical. It is metaphysics, and metaphysics seriously damages our spiritual health. (shrink)

In this clear, critical examination of the ideas of one of the greatest and most influential of modern philosophers, M.J. Inwood makes Hegel's arguments fully accessible. He reconstructs Hegel's thought throughout the book by arguing with him, considering Hegel's system as a whole and examining the wide range of problems that it was designed to solve - metaphysical, epistemological, theological and political. Inwood concentrates especially on the logical and metaphysical ideas which underpin the system and which supply the (...) key to understanding much of what is obscure in Hegel's thought. He examines Hegel's arguments and restates his views precisely and clearly. He also conveys the impressive unity of Hegel's system and its links with the thought of such philosophers as Aristotle, Spinoza and Kant. (shrink)

Hegel is an immensely important yet difficult philosopher. His Philosophy of Mind is one of the main pillars of his thought. Michael Inwood, highly respected for his previous work on Hegel, presents this central work to the modern reader in an accurate new translation supported by a philosophically sophisticated editorial introduction.

Hegel is an immensely important yet difficult philosopher. His Philosophy of Mind is one of the main pillars of his thought. Michael Inwood, highly respected for his previous work on Hegel, presents this central work to the modern reader in an accurate new translation supported by a philosophically sophisticated editorial introduction and elucidating scholarly commentary.

Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit is one of the great works of philosophy. It remains, however, one of the most challenging and mysterious books ever written. Michael Inwood presents this work in an intelligible and accurate new translation, alongside a detailed commentary that explains Hegel's arguments and the philosophical issues they raise.

Hegel is an immensely important yet difficult philosopher. His Philosophy of Mind is one of the main pillars of his thought. Michael Inwood, highly respected for his previous work on Hegel, presents this central work to the modern reader in an accurate new translation supported by a philosophically sophisticated editorial introduction.

Stemming from a reading of Hegel’s account of the struggle for recognition in the Phenomenology of Spirit, Kojève argued that death is the central notion of Hegel’s philosophy. I will discuss several themes in relation to this claim of Kojève’s interpretation of Hegel, namely the themes of freedom, individuality, and historicity. I will also discuss Kojève’s reading that Hegel rejects both all conceptions of the afterlife, and too the belief in the afterlife as a manifestation of the “unhappy consciousness”. I (...) will point out flaws of Kojève’s interpretation throughout. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Phenomenology of Spirit Hegelian Logic Nature and Spirit Dialectic and System.

One of the things that makes Hegel hard to understand is the difficulty of identifying the problems and questions to which he was responding, at least in a form in which we can appreciate them. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, he was involved in the intellectual life of his time, and many of the themes which engaged him have now lost their urgency. Secondly, because he wanted to connect every topic into a single, coherent system, and because the (...) transition from one topic to the next usually depends on some problem which cannot be solved unless the transition is made, some of the problems he unearths seem fairly insubstantial. Finally, his desire to philosophize without making any presuppositions means that he is reluctant to state the problems which he is trying to solve in advance. Any problem involves presuppositions, both of facts and about the meaning and coherence of the words or concepts used in stating it. Problems arise within Hegel's system, therefore, and they do so in a guise appropriate to their context. To some extent, the appreciation of the problems presupposes an understanding of the system. (shrink)

One of the things that makes Hegel hard to understand is the difficulty of identifying the problems and questions to which he was responding, at least in a form in which we can appreciate them. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, he was involved in the intellectual life of his time, and many of the themes which engaged him have now lost their urgency. Secondly, because he wanted to connect every topic into a single, coherent system, and because the (...) transition from one topic to the next usually depends on some problem which cannot be solved unless the transition is made, some of the problems he unearths seem fairly insubstantial. Finally, his desire to philosophize without making any presuppositions means that he is reluctant to state the problems which he is trying to solve in advance. Any problem involves presuppositions, both of facts and about the meaning and coherence of the words or concepts used in stating it. Problems arise within Hegel's system, therefore, and they do so in a guise appropriate to their context. To some extent, the appreciation of the problems presupposes an understanding of the system. (shrink)

Kant, God and Metaphysics: The Secret Thorn. By Kanterian Edward.

The World We Live In. By Dragomir Alexandru. Edited by Liiceanu Gabriel, Partenie Catalin. Translated by James Christian Brown.