In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.4 (2002) 550-551 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Hegel and Aristotle Alfredo Ferrarin. Hegel and Aristotle. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. xxii + 442. Cloth, $64.95. This is an important book which should be read by anyone interested in either of the two philosophers. Ferrarin demonstrates that the structure and detail of Hegel's executed project owe more to Aristotle than (...) to Kant or any other philosopher. He also shows that Hegel's interpretation of Aristotle is profound and worth careful study, even if it is in some ways mistaken. With the exception of the Poetics and Aesthetics, Ferrarin discusses all the relevant primary texts, and he judiciously uses secondary literature. To my knowledge, aside from his Italian dissertation (published in 1990 and here revised and greatly expanded), this is the first monograph which is exclusively devoted to comparing the executed projects of the two philosophers. He most thoroughly compares the Metaphysics with the Science of Logic and On the Soul with the Organics and Subjective Spirit sections of the Encyclopedia. This latter comparison forms the center of the book, and all scholars of Aristotle and Hegel will benefit from it. Ferrarin does not simply present and praise or criticize Hegel's interpretations of Aristotle; he also investigates Hegel's appropriation of Aristotle for the execution of his own project. Quite significant effort and insight went into the writing of this book, which is densely argued but only very rarely unclear.Ferrarin bases all comparisons on the understanding of energeia. Aside from God, all processes for Aristotle involve not only energeia but also dunamis. For Aristotle, the ends of processes are energeiai, but a process is either an activity (exercising a habit whose end is this exercising) or a motion (expending a power whose end is other than the expending) (cf. 22-5, 266, 270). Accomplishment of the end terminates the motile expending of power but not the active exercise of habit. For both philosophers, activity and motion are the two main types of intelligible. Ferrarin shows that Hegel, in part because of his accurate reliance on Erasmus's superseded edition, misinterprets Aristotle's God as involving both energeia and dunamis.Ferrarin excellently shows that for Aristotle nous (mediated by a dialectical consideration of endoxa) attains a noetic (rather than dianoetic) identity with an intelligible. Ferrarin also asserts that Hegel (supposedly following Leibniz) "efface[s] all notion of rest and coming to a stand from Aristotelian energeia" (229; cf. 20, 399) and "does not see... that... [the exercised habit of] nous finds rest in the discontinuous intellection of indivisibles" (320). However, Aristotle claims that "not everything which is motionless may be at rest but only that which is deprived of motion but can by nature be moved" (Physics 221b12-13, Apostle translation), so since habits cannot be moved by nature, neither unexercised nor exercised habits can be said to be at rest (even though the natural body without which the habits could not be can in some respects be said to be at rest). Therefore, Hegel does not diverge from but rather advances Aristotle's insight when he treats that noetic identity [End Page 550] as a moment of energizing the otherwise static intelligible to entail a further intelligible, so that these intelligibles and this entailing are part of a continuously intellected logos (but cf. 51, 318-9). Contra Ferrarin (98, 194), this is not to assert that some sort of supposedly hubristic modern nous thereby produces the further intelligible.Analogously to how a compulsion to examine one's past can lead one to enact a different future, Hegel claims that some already entailed, posterior intelligibles of this logos are sufficient (once energized by nous) to entail the prior intelligibles which entailed them and that by entailing these prior intelligibles the posterior intelligibles thereby also entail previously unentailed, posterior intelligibles of the logos. Ferrarin erroneously (albeit not without some textual basis) interprets this claim as the assertion that some as yet unentailed posterior intelligibles entail prior intelligibles (77, 251-3)—as the analog of... (shrink)

The following little paper has a rather large scope. No particular issue or problem has occasioned this text; rather, it presents a mini-treatise on love, marriage, and parenting. The attempted method is quasi-Hegelian: to allow one topic to engender a further topic, and this in turn to engender a third, etc., while avoiding at any stage anticipations of later topics. If reasoning in accordance with this dialectical method is successful, the result is a system of topics, but it is contingent (...) whether or not these topics can be employed as knowledge of the historical world. Indeed, some of the topics considered below cannot be employed descriptively under present historical conditions. Thus, those who would execute this dialectical project must renounce any claim that the system of topics has more than a contingent relation to knowledge, but it would be utter misology to denigrate this project merely because it requires this renunciation. (shrink)

If a concept, or thought, is not only something one can be aware of but also something which, unlike everything else, can be the same for every thinker, then language is a problem for thinkers. Although a linguistic sign is not itself a concept, but rather is only used to signify a concept, signs are required to think concepts—or, at least, to think the relations of concepts—and the use of linguistic signs may sometimes lead to confusion, for two signs may (...) be used to signify one concept, and one sign may be used to signify two concepts. A thinker may attempt to avoid confusion by using only one sign to signify one concept, but it may be that in any given language there is only one sign with which to signify two concepts. In this case the thinker may borrow a sign from a foreign language or invent a new sign to signify one of the two concepts. A similar problem arises for a thinker who discovers a concept, and may signify it by either using a sign in the given language, borrowing a sign from a foreign language, or inventing a new sign. Even with all these precautions, however, a thinker may occasionally lapse into using one sign to signify two concepts, and this presents a problem for anyone interpreting the thinker’s utterances and written texts. (shrink)

James H. Wilkinson - Hegel and Aristotle - Journal of the History of Philosophy 40:4 Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.4 550-551 Book Review Hegel and Aristotle Alfredo Ferrarin. Hegel and Aristotle. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. xxii + 442. Cloth, $64.95. This is an important book which should be read by anyone interested in either of the two philosophers. Ferrarin demonstrates that the structure and detail of Hegel's executed project owe more to Aristotle than to Kant (...) or any other philosopher. He also shows that Hegel's interpretation of Aristotle is profound and worth careful study, even if it is in some ways mistaken. With the exception of the Poetics and Aesthetics, Ferrarin discusses all the relevant primary texts, and he.. (shrink)

The first edition of Hegel’s Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline appeared in 1817, followed by a second, much enlarged edition in 1827, and a third, somewhat less expanded edition in 1830. For this review it will first be necessary to recount the complex publishing history of these editions, a history which is perhaps not familiar to all readers of The Owl. After Hegel’s death his students prepared two editions of his Werke. The second of these editions was the (...) basis of the Sämtliche Werke: Jubiläumsausgabe, which appeared in 1927-40 under the editorship of Hermann Glockner. The 1817 Encyclopedia was first reprinted as volume 6 of the Jubiläumsausgabe. The first of the above books here under review contains the first published translation into English of the entire 1817 Encyclopedia, as well as the first published English translation of Hegel’s 1828 review, “Solger’s Posthumous Writings and Correspondence,” both of which are preceded in this book by a reprint of A. V. Miller’s 1977 translation of the famous Preface to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit of 1807. Since 1968, under the general editorship of Otto Pöggeler and Friedhelm Nicolin, individual volumes of the excellent Gesammelte Werke have been published by Felix Meiner Verlag. Their edition of the 1817 Encyclopedia, edited by Wolfgang Bonsiepen and Hans-Christian Lucas, is still under preparation, but their first German re-edition of the 1827 Encyclopedia, also edited by Bonsiepen and Lucas, appeared as volume 19 in 1989. No translation into English of this second edition has ever appeared. (shrink)

This book is an admirable addition to the genre of books which concentrate on a single Platonic dialogue so as to exhibit the mutual dependence of the overt logos and the interlocutors' historically situated characters. The overt logos of the second half of the Laches is an aporetic discussion of courage, and Schmid shows how Plato portrays the different character flaws of the famous generals, Laches and Nicias, as hindrances to further investigation. Through a fine treatment of the relevant sections (...) of Thucydides' The Peloponnesian War, Schmid makes clear how these flaws also led to the failures of courage by Laches at the battle of Mantinea and by Nicias in the Sicilian campaign. He maintains that the secondary literature has failed to appreciate sufficiently not only that Laches' definition of courage is thoroughly traditional, deriving from Homer and Tyrtaeus, but also that Nicias's definition is not Socratic but rather sophistic and Promethian, connected with Periclean humanism. Laches defines courage as "the endurance of the soul" who fears disgrace, especially in reference to soldiers in a phalanx, but his definition omits the element of boldness, for instance, of a general who formulates an unexpected and even unpopular plan of attack or retreat. Nicias defines courage as "the knowledge of dreadful and emboldening things" which, for instance, enables a general to lead soldiers to victory. His definition not only denies the unavoidable contingency of life, and especially of war, but also overlooks the endurance of soul which is required to control one's fear of this contingency and to pursue one's plan. (shrink)