The 13 essays, most previously published, discuss his logical theory, his applications in general, and his applications to Christianity. Paper edition (unseen), $14.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Seldom does human reasoning fit the standards of deduction. Yet logicians have tended to use the strict standards of deductive validity for assessing all inferences. _Within Reason_ develops instead a way of assessing arguments and inferences that is directly appropriate to the non-deductive forms people regularly use. It uses analogy, and argument from analogy, to provide a thread that unites various forms: raising objections, inductions of various sorts, arguments to explanation, and arguments to action. The discussion is developed progressively, at (...) each stage building on the skills learned previously. And at each stage the book suggetss ways of assessing the strength of reasoning. Most of the examples are taken from the great texts of the Western tradition. In the exercises that form an integral part of each chapter an even broader range of writing is presented, offering instructors an extraordinary variety of texts at various levels ot assign to their students. The thesis implicit in the book is that induction, arguments to explanation and arguments to action are all sophisticated forms of arguments from analogy. Burbidge is concerned not simply to warn against the misuse of non-deductive reasoning but also to develop a more positive theory that allows us both to better udnerstand the workings of non-deductive reasoning, and to better employ it. (shrink)

George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel has seldom been considered a major figure in the history of logic. His two texts on logic, both called The Science of Logic, both written in Hegel's characteristically dense and obscure language, are often considered more as works of metaphysics than logic. But in this highly readable book, John Burbidge sets out to reclaim Hegel's Science of Logic as logic and to get right at the heart of Hegel's thought. Burbidge examines the way Hegel moves from (...) concept to concept through every chapter of his work, and traces the origins of Hegel's effort to "think through the way thought thinks" to Plato, Kant, and Fichte. Having established the framework of Hegel's logical thought, Burbidge demonstrates how Hegel organized the rest of his system, including the Philosophy of Nature, Philosophy of Spirit and his Lectures on World History, Art, Religion and Philosophy. A final section discusses English-language interpretations of Hegel's logic from the nineteenth through twentieth centuries. Burbidge's The Logic of Hegel's 'Logic' is written with an eye to the reader of general interests, avoiding as much as possible the use of Hegel's technical vocabulary. It is an excellent introduction to an otherwise very difficult text, and has recently appeared in an Iranian translation. (shrink)

In the conclusion to his long book on Hegel, Michael Inwood cites a passage describing the way Stephen Spender’s tutors approached the study of philosophy: “This might be described as the Obstacle Race way of teaching philosophy. The whole field of human thought is set out with logical obstacles and the students watch the philosophers race around it.” Inwood mentions it because “it represents … one of the ways in which we should not treat Hegel - disqualifying him from the (...) race altogether on account of his obscurity or allowing a simplified parody of him to stumble at an early stage”. (shrink)

All the essays gathered here are concerned with the radical singularity of history and existence on the one hand and the demands of philosophical truth on the other.

John Burbidge shows that, far from incorporating everything into an all-consuming necessity, Hegel's philosophy requires the novelty of unexpected contingencies to maintain its systematic pretensions. To know without fear of failure is to expect that experience will confound our confident claims to knowledge. And the universal character of all life involves acting, discovering what happens as a result, and incorporating both intention and result into a new comprehensive understanding. Burbidge explores how Hegel applied this approach when he turned from his (...) logic to chemistry, biology, psychology and history, and suggests how a Hegelian might function within the changed circumstances of contemporary science. (shrink)

In order to answer the debate whether Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature is just an extension of his logic (Halper and Winfield) or combines thought with its other (Maker), this paper considers what Hegel writes about chemism (in the logic) and about chemical process (in the philosophy of nature). The logical argument can be constructed without reference to experience, from paradoxes that emerge within an original concept. In the philosophy of nature, however, an initial concept is analyzed, but its instantiation reflects (...) nature’s “impotence”: unrelated processes, fours and twos rather than threes, and so on. The singular conclusion combines universal conceptual framework and particular natural processes into a new, non-logical concept. (shrink)

"Hegel's Philosophy of Nature was for a long time regarded as an outdated historical curiosity. Yet if systematic completeness is given up, the value of Hegelian arguments and of Hegelian logic generally becomes uncertain. In this book, John Burbidge reveals the abiding significance of the Philosophy of Nature as the intermediate movement in Hegel's system." "Burbidge looks at three specific texts in Hegel's work: the two chapters of the Science of Logic that deal with the concept of chemism, and the (...) section on chemical process in the Philosophy of Nature. Through his detailed commentary, he clarifies Hegel's distinction between a strictly theoretical philosophy and one that understands the natural world. He shows that Hegel does not presume to derive natural data a priori, nor is he simply dependent on the explanatory theories arrived at by chemists themselves. Experience provides the data, but thought sets the parameters. Burbidge sets Hegel's thought in context with sketches of what Kant, Fichte, and Schelling had to say about chemistry, and with background outlining the stage chemistry had reached at the time Hegel was writing. He also reveals how Hegel changed his mind as he revised each section for succeeding editions of his work, thus providing a fascinating case study of the development of Hegel's ideas."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

The second edition of the Historical Dictionary of Hegelian Philosophy covers all aspects of Hegel's thought. It discusses his students and colleagues, as well as key figures who either adopted his thought or attempted to explicate it for later generations. This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, a glossary of German terms, a bibliography, and over 500 cross-referenced dictionary entries.

A significant disagreement has punctuated my conversations with Henry Harris for over thirty years. Harris maintains that Hegel does not need an actual historical Jesus to achieve his philosophical ends; all he requires is a Paul who believed there to be a historical Jesus. I, on the other hand, hold that a historical Jesus is critical, and without it, Hegel’s system falls apart.

In 1976 The Hegel Society of America chose as a theme for its biennial meeting “Hegel’s Social and Political Thought.” At a meeting held during the United States’ bicentennial year in the subterm that included Watergate and a few days after the election of President Carter, the abstractions of philosophy could not help but be associated with concrete reflection. What is the relation between political theory and political action?

When he died in 1831, Hegel had just completed a revision of the first Book of the Science of Logic, “The Doctrine of Being”. Since the revised edition has been consistently used in subsequent printing, the first edition disappeared from view, to surface again only in 1966 when Vanderhoeck and Ruprecht of Gottingen published a facsimile reprint. Along with the never-revised “Doctrine of Essence” of 1813, that original text of Book I has now received elegant treatment in volume 11 of (...) the critical edition. (shrink)

On Thursday evening, August 30, 1989, in the Combination Room of Trinity College, Cambridge University, Michael Petry of Erasmus University, Rotterdam, opened the conference he had organized on “Hegel and Newtonianism.” Under the sponsorship of the Istituo per gli Studi Filosofici of Naples, Petry invited more than 40 scholars from Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada to discuss the relation between eighteenth century Newtonian science and Hegel’s philosophy of nature.

In the year 1841, the sixty-six year old philosopher, Schelling, was installed in the chair of philosophy at Berlin. Because he wanted someone with sufficient authority to combat the influence of Hegel, the new king of Prussia supported his appointment. As Crown Prince he had been concerned about the liberal and subversive elements in Hegel’s political philosophy. In power, he chose an associate of Hegel’s youth to lead the attack, a man who had disappeared from the intellectual scene just as (...) Hegel’s star was beginning to rise. Although Schelling and Hegel were collaborators in the years that led up to the Phenomenology of Spirit, Schelling had not been converted to dialectical philosophy. Indeed, in lectures on the history of philosophy given in Munich during the years after Hegel’s death, he challenged its rationality. The move from the logic of pure thought to a philosophy of nature was unjustified. For Schelling there could be no logical bridge between transcendental idealism and the theory which expressed the inherent structures of the natural order. They are two quite different disciplines, of quite a different order. When Hegel moved from one to the other, then, he was violating a fundamental logical principle, first enunciated by Aristotle. He was passing over into another genus—from thought to reality. The image that sprang to Schelling’s mind was one vividly expressed by Lessing for an analogous problem. Between the two—thought and reality—lay a “nasty broad ditch.”. (shrink)

Discussions of Hegel’s Logic often concentrate on the first chapter, which starts from pure being and ends with Dasein. Quite regularly commentators find the argument flawed; having thus disposed of its foundation, they dismiss the rest of the logic as equally unreliable.

The second volume of Hegel’s Science of Logic, containing “The Doctrine of the Concept”, first appeared in 1816, three years after the second book of the first volume, and just prior to the Heidelberg Encyclopaedia. After Hegel’s death it was republished in the first collected edition with minor changes in punctuation. There remain no manuscripts.

This is a good book. The quality of Flay’s analysis grows on the reader as he moves from the introductory comments, through the discussions of self-consciousness, reason, and spirit. We have here an interpretation of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit which does justice to the Hegelian project and at the same time renders most, if not all, of the standard criticisms ineffective. But it is not just a new reading of a work which has challenged many commentators of the past and (...) present. In addition this volume provides us with a thorough critical review of most of the literature on the Phenomenology up to 1980. The bibliography includes 543 references, each of which is either discussed or referred to, in many cases more than once, in the 140 pages of detailed notes. From now on no student of this work of Hegel can avoid turning to Flay, if only to find out what his predecessors have said. (shrink)

For the Fnlightenment a continuing question was the reasonableness of Christianity. John Locke devoted a treatise to the question; and it lies at the core of Hume’s essay on miracles, of Lessing’s ugly broad ditch, and of Kant’s religion within the limits of reason alone.

The essays in this volume do more than simply conjoin Hegel with his critics. There is a full-fledged debate: on occasion the critics gain the upper hand; far more often Hegel rises from the dead to defeat, by anticipation, his opponents.

To formulate a philosophy of time is not easy, even though it would seem to be the basic requirement for any philosophy which attempts to comprehend the world of nature or of history. The problem is briefly posed: Can the conceptual framework of philosophical thought do justice to the dynamic character of time?The purpose of this paper is not to provide a definitive answer to this question. Its aim is more limited. By discussing carefully the way in which Hegel's philosophy (...) related conceptual thought to time, it hopes to provide new perspectives on this vexing philosophical problem. (shrink)

By comparing the argument in the first edition of Hegel’s Science of Logic with that of the second we find that he not only introduces significant changes but indicates why he found the changes necessary. As over time he rethought his method in the course of his annual lectures he realised that pure thought should not anticipate results but follow from the inherent sense of each term. The details of his logical method suggest how the novelties that emerge in history (...) can require the introduction of new modified categories. (shrink)

Hegel defines his Logic as the science that thinks about thinking.nbsp; But when we interpret that work as outlining what happens when we reason we are vulnerable to Fregersquo;s charge of psychologism.nbsp; I use Hegelrsquo;s tripartite distinction among understanding, dialectical and speculative reason as operations of pure thought to suggest how thinking can work with objective concepts.nbsp; In the last analysis, however, our ability to move from the subjective contingency of representations and ideas to the pure concepts we think develops (...) from mechanical memory, which separates sign from sense so hat we can focus simply on the latter.nbsp; By becoming aware of the connections that underlie our thinking processes we may be able to both move beyond the abstractions of symbolic logic and clarify what informal logicians call relevance. (shrink)

Does the fact that everything has a cause imply that all events are causally determined? Drawing on discussions from the history of philosophy, John Burbidge's Cause for Thought captures the diverse dynamics found in physics, chemistry, biology, animal psychology, and rational action. At each level, forms of activity emerge that cannot be reduced to the functioning of simpler, more elementary components. By exploring the logic of what happens when two causal conditions reciprocally interact, Burbidge develops a concept of complex cause (...) in which an agent generates effects not simply because of the action of its constituent components, but also because of the way those components mutually supplement and reinforce one another. By extending this to the interaction of agents with their environment, Burbidge throws light on the structure of organisms, on the distinctive contributions of consciousness and rationality, and on the quest for a comprehensive explanation of the cosmos. Recovering the force and legitimacy of metaphysical inquiry by focusing on the concept of cause and causality, Cause for Thought offers a new way of understanding natural processes, the role of consciousness and free will, and the significance of rational explanation. (shrink)

Do concepts exist independently of the mind? Where does objective reality diverge from subjective experience? John Burbidge calls upon the work of some of the foremost thinkers in philosophy to address these questions, developing a nuanced account of the relationship between the mind and the external world. In Ideas, Concepts, and Reality John Burbidge adopts, as a starting point, Gottlob Frege's distinction between "ideas," which are subjective recollections of past sensations, and "concepts," which are shared by many and make communication (...) possible. Engaging with Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Hegel, and many others, the book argues that concepts are not eternal and unchanging, as Frege suggested, but open to revision. We can move from ideas to thoughts, Burbidge suggests, that can be refined to the point where they acquire independent and objective status as concepts. At the same time, they are radically connected to other concepts which either complement or are differentiated from them. Ideas, Concepts, and Reality offers a fresh perspective on the ways in which rigorous thought differs from other operations of the mind. Daringly inventive and accessibly written, the book will appeal to philosophers at all levels of interest. (shrink)