Journal of the History of Philosophy

BOOK REVIEWS 267 and ~o) are at least as good as anything else in the literature on these topics. The book is well documented and has an excellent index. ALLEN W. WOOD CorneU University David Punter. Blake, Hegel and Dialectic. Elementa, vol. 26. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, Inc. (for Rodopi), 1982. Pp. 268. $~3.oo (paper). A "dialectic of contraries and progression" in the works of Blake and Hegel springs from a shared dissatisfaction with rationalisms and their romantic alternatives. In analogous ways for both writers, holistically developing opposition constitutes the actual, historical process and the means of overcoming the hegemony of logical formalism without surrendering to sentiment or even to the fatalism of earlier dialecticians . This intriguing thesis, which underlies Punter's work, is necessarily broadstroked , since his models are the "Weltanschauung" studies by Dilthey and Hirsch. Here there can be no question of direct influence, reciprocal or one-sided, since "neither Blake nor Hegel, or course, read a word of each other's work; and there a§ reasons for doubting whether either would have relished the experience" (74)- Instead , Punter aims to show that the "dialectical world view" (x~; 249) shared by Blake and Hegel illuminates the obscure grandeur of the former's poetry and rests, beyond a certain shared tradition, on "objective social changes" (254). In the opening chapter Punter reconstructs that tradition from the seminal ideas of Heraclitus through reformulations by Bruno, Boehme, and the German Enlightenment to the romantic synthesis of Schelling. Such an ambitious overview is naturally disturbing in details. "For example, Kant is called with Fichte a "developer of dialectical method, that is, of the use of a thesis/antithesis/synthesis structure as a mode of explanation" (6o). There is some truth to this remark but it is grossly misleading, like the remark of the man who lost a hundred dollars playing poker and told his wife he lost ten. In fact, 'dialectic' signifies for Kant a "logic of illusion" (Logik des Scheins, A293:B349) and his passing remarks about the triplicate structure of the categories in the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason are in no way intended as a structure for explanation in general. Nevertheless, the chapter is well-conceived and will probably prompt even unsympathetic readers to give Punter's Weltanschauung -thesis the benefit of doubt. However, that benefit is forfeited as it becomes increasingly clear that the thesis accounts for little more than the misleading title of the book. Punter has in fact little to say about Hegel's dialectic and not simply because of the relative paucity of pages devoted exclusively to it. He acknowledges that, for the sort of study he has undertaken to be successful, differences as well as similarities must be taken into account. (Chapter Two is entitled "Blake and Hegel: Comparisons and Distinctions.") Yet Punter rarely and then only obliquely casts shadows on his Weltanschauung by noting the systematic role of dialectic in Hegel's philosophy. Similarities with Blake's 268 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY poetic notions are drawn largely from the Phenomenologyof Spirit, without mention of the onto-logic it supposes or the more embarrassing (as far as the comparison with Blake is concerned) contents of the chapters on religion and absolute knowing. Punter is not unaware that he is adopting a particular reading of Hegel, but seems to consider it the "usually accepted interpretation" (73)- That interpretation is in fact largely lifted from the writings of such early critics of Hegel as Feuerbach and Marx and from twentieth century emendations of the same (Lukfics, Koj~ve, Horkheimer and Adorno, Marcuse, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty). The influence of Hegel's writings , especially the Phenomenology of Spirit, on this group of thinkers is as undeniable as their often clear and profound perceptions of certain themes in those writings. Nonetheless, these thinkers were under no illusions about the profound differences separating Hegel's vision from their own, and it would be surprising, given Punter's analysis, if similar differences did not obtain between Hegel and Blake. For example, in the fifth and final chapter, entitled "The Humanisation of the World," Punter makes a convincing case that Blake and Hegel, alike...