Maker (philosophy, Clemson U.) contends that Hegel's philosophy is not consummately foundational and absolutist, but rather a nonfoundational philosophy which incorporates some contemporary criticisms of foundationalism without abandoning ...

Hegel’s notion of a systematic science requires that his system be autonomous. Any determinative role for extra systemic givens would compromise the system’s autonomy. Nonetheless, the system addresses an extra-systemic given world. It is usually held that the basis for this lies in Hegel’s postulation of a metaphysical idealism that denies the autonomy of that world from conceptual thought. I argue that this interpretation is exactly wrong. Just by beginning in logic as the self-articulation of conceptual autonomy, the system is (...) equipped to conceive of other domains of the real in and as they are thoroughly and radically autonomous from and other than the system itself. A consideration of the end of the logic and the beginning of the philosophy of nature shows how Hegel brings this off and establishes his system as capable of conceptualizing autonomy and otherness because of its thoroughgoing rejection of reductionist metaphysics. (shrink)

Agreeing that Hegel is a realist, I take issue concerning how Hegel establishes realism. Westphal’s Hegel develops a Kantian formal-transcendentalphilosophy founded in an epistemology which establishes how consciousness apprehends a given world. My account contends that Hegel has moved beyondfoundational epistemology, beginning philosophical science in a logic which develops conceptual self-determination independently of and prior to any assumptions about consciousness and world. This methodological idealism leads to metaphysical realism in that the completion of logic’s selfdeterminationnecessitates the subsequent consideration of the (...) nonlogical in the Realphilosophie. This reconciles Hegel’s insistence that philosophy be thoroughly self-grounding with his recognition of a world beyond thought which philosophy conceptualizes realistically as a distinct domain that is neither thought itself nor thought-like. (shrink)

An argument contending that Hegel is not the last and greatest exponent of an outdated onto-theologism, but rather the philosopher of modernity, a thinker who anticipates, diagnoses and replies to the spiritual and social crises of the 19th and 20th centuries, would have two parts. The first would hold that the issue of modern theoretical-philosophical crisis and malaise - an issue raised by many and most recently by Richard Rorty in Philosophy And The Mirror of Nature - is both anticipated (...) and replied to by the Phenomenology and the conception of a systematic philosophy which it introduces and makes possible. Such an argument would work to show how Hegel articulates a systematic philosophy not founded on epistemology or metaphysics. The second part of the argument would hold that the issue of modern ethical and socio-political crisis and malaise - an issue raised by many and most recently by Alasdair MacIntyre in After Virtue - is both anticipated and replied to by the Philosophy of Right with its sweeping conception of morality, ethics, society and the state. Such an argument would work to show how Hegel articulates those social and political structures in and through which individuals can realize their humanness in a way which is not destructive, not disruptively arbitrary and alienating but communal and harmonious. (shrink)

The main title of this work nicely captures its central claim, one with which Owl of Minerva readers are certainly familiar, as it is a commonplace postmodernist motif: philosophy has been overcome through its inevitable self-transformation into art. In the author’s words, “The proud philosophical pretension of speaking the Truth about the Real is revealed as just another metafiction”. Thus Nietzsche, the free-spirited artist, has triumphed over Hegel, the old fogey metaphysician. But the Miklowitz version of this oft-told tale is (...) not that simple. For one thing, the author aims to show that Hegel has unintentionally anticipated Nietzsche in certain respects. More interesting is that his critique of Hegel and vindication of Nietzsche are effected from a theological perspective. Somehow the self-proclaimed antichrist is more pious than the defender of mainstream Protestantism. I suppose that if ironic-inversional readings in the manner of Rorty’s reinterpretation of 1984 are the new standard, we shouldn’t be surprised by such a tack. And perhaps this work’s curious amalgam of the latest in academic avant-garde styles with an ambiguously religious message ought not to be unexpected. Consider the legacy of the neo-Nietzschean strain of ‘postphilosophical thought’ whose Master Thinker is the Nazi philosopher Heidegger, waiting for a new god. (shrink)

Leading scholars consider Hegel's philosophy of art and its contemporary significance.

Dutiful followers of the Hegel-Literatur, and particularly of writings on the Phenomenology and the Science of Logic, are undoubtedly aware of that line of interpretation which is founded on the contention that either of these works are in the last analysis unintelligible, ultimately mysterious in and of themselves when read in the terms and according to the aims and objectives which their author assigned to them. Distinctive about several of such interpretations of Hegel’s first two published books is the frequent (...) critical claim that turning to other material by this author is not merely something to be done to gain extra illumination, as an aid to understanding. Rather, the claim is often made that these central texts cannot be understood, or cannot fulfill the claims which their author has made for them without going beyond what he himself has presented as sufficient for the intelligibility and workability of their philosophical arguments. Often explicit in this approach is the critical charge that Hegel has failed to do what he set out to do. In the case of the Phenomenology, it is frequently argued, a la Ottmann, that the argument of that book necessarily presupposes the categories of the Logic, and hence that it fails in its intended function as an introduction. In the case of the Science of Logic, it is frequently argued in an attempt to explicate the nature of the dialectical argument and development of Being, a la Henrich, that Hegel must in some manner presuppose structures of reflection and hence that his own intentions are thwarted. (shrink)

Hegel Society of America members of long standing will remember that The Owl first took flight in the summer of 1969 as a newsletter featuring notes of interest to Hegel aficionados — and book reviews. I was then an undergraduate philosophy major, caught up in the heady thrall of Nietzsche mania, and as contemptuously dismissive of that “dead dog” Hegel as any of the epigones Marx denounced. How times have changed! When, in 1982, our Editor told me of his plans (...) to transform The Owl into a full-fledged journal and asked me to take the job of its Book Review Editor, I was a relatively new Ph.D. with an even newer teaching position and an enthusiasm for the importance of Hegel’s philosophy which had first begun to take shape in the fall of 1969, when my philosophical education temporarily shifted to Germany. I am still at the same university as in 1982, still handling the book reviews for The Owl, and still as enthusiastic about Hegel as before, if not more so. (shrink)

Widely recognized as a crucial text in his corpus, and a popular object of scholarly attention, Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit remains controversial, generating almost as many vexing questions about its meaning and significance as it has inspired divergent interpretive approaches. With Hegel's Idea of a Phenomenology of Spirit, Michael N. Forster has made a significant contribution to the literature, one certain to stimulate much discussion and likely to spark many responses. His study is a work of first-rate scholarship in a (...) philosophical area where, sadly, this is more often the exception rather than the rule. This is a valuable and important book indeed, for a number of reasons. (shrink)

A common criticism of Kant’s ethics is that the abstractness and purity of the categorical imperative make any meaningful use of it impossible. This book aims to show that, while the charge of formalistic puritanism traditionally leveled against Kant is not without foundation, a charitable reinterpretation which corrects Kant on certain points and expands his thinking on others can yield a systematic and coherent ethics which meets the criticism that Kant’s is an empty and otherworldly ethics. While not claiming that (...) Kant in fact offers a finished and adequate ethics, Auxter argues that its foundations are to be found in Kant, and Kant’s Moral Teleology is presented as the first step toward a critical reinterpretation which will bring to clear articulation the substantive ethical theory only implicit in Kant’s writings. (shrink)

In 1807 Hegel published thePhenomenology of Spiritwhich calmly asserted that philosophy had, at long last, ceased to be merely the love of knowing and had finally consummated its lust for truth, giving birth to ‘strenge Wissenschaft’ in logic and the system (Hegel, 1807: 3). In 1944, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno circulated mimeographed copies ofDialectic of Enlightenment, ominously asserting that the same process of reason's self-clarification which Hegel described brings us, not, as he claimed, to truth and freedom, but to (...) barbarism. Somehow critical reflection's efforts to liberate humanity from superstition, darkness, and oppression has lead instead to Auschwitz.A crucial aspect of Horkheimer and Adorno's critique of enlightenment is the notion that enlightenment and its seeming antithesis, myth, are inextricably linked. In thePhenomenologyHegel had already investigated the underlying link between the rationality of the Enlightenment period and faith, its ostensible arational other, in Chapter VI. In various places Horkheimer and Adorno acknowledge the influence of Hegel, and they make suggestive passing references to thePhenomenology. Obviously, their connecting of enlightenment and myth bears more than a family resemblance to Hegel's pairing of enlightenment and faith. Just as Hegel disclosed that enlightenment and faith have more in common than usually thought, Horkheimer and Adorno aim to show that there is an important aspect of enlightenment already in myth and further, that enlightenment has itself fallen back into the essential features of myth it purports to be have overcome. (shrink)

Agreeing that Hegel is a realist, I take issue concerning how Hegel establishes realism. Westphal’s Hegel develops a Kantian formal-transcendentalphilosophy founded in an epistemology which establishes how consciousness apprehends a given world. My account contends that Hegel has moved beyondfoundational epistemology, beginning philosophical science in a logic which develops conceptual self-determination independently of and prior to any assumptions about consciousness and world. This methodological idealism leads to metaphysical realism in that the completion of logic’s selfdeterminationnecessitates the subsequent consideration of the (...) nonlogical in the Realphilosophie. This reconciles Hegel’s insistence that philosophy be thoroughly self-grounding with his recognition of a world beyond thought which philosophy conceptualizes realistically as a distinct domain that is neither thought itself nor thought-like. (shrink)

A common criticism of Kant’s ethics is that the abstractness and purity of the categorical imperative make any meaningful use of it impossible. This book aims to show that, while the charge of formalistic puritanism traditionally leveled against Kant is not without foundation, a charitable reinterpretation which corrects Kant on certain points and expands his thinking on others can yield a systematic and coherent ethics which meets the criticism that Kant’s is an empty and otherworldly ethics. While not claiming that (...) Kant in fact offers a finished and adequate ethics, Auxter argues that its foundations are to be found in Kant, and Kant’s Moral Teleology is presented as the first step toward a critical reinterpretation which will bring to clear articulation the substantive ethical theory only implicit in Kant’s writings. (shrink)

This paper argues that Hegel and Rorty agree in rejecting foundationalism, but diverge significantly in their critiques of it, with important consequences for their visions of postfoundational discourse. An analysis of the Phenomenology of Spirit indicates how Hegel effects a thoroughly immanent critique of foundationalism. In contrast, the flaws of Rorty’s critique are shown to trap him in a cryptofoundationlism which undermines his efforts to endorse humanism, realism, and pluralism. Hegel’s successful transcendence of foundationalism is disclosed as enabling his postfoundational (...) philosophy which succeeds in providing coherent articulations of the nature and truth of humanism, realism, and pluralism. (shrink)

This work offers a general interpretation of Hegel's philosophy according to which it must be understood and judged as a failed attempt to satisfy a fundamental human need. Schulte contends that Hegel offers us a particular mode of philosophical thinking--the speculative-dialectical--as nothing less than an all-encompassing therapeutic way of life which we must embrace if the lack in human existence left by the Enlightenment's undermining of religion and art is to be met. By establishing reason as paramount in human affairs, (...) and thus by disparaging religion and art as modes of experience in and through which man realizes that he is at home in and at one with the cosmic whole, the Enlightenment introduced the modern problem of alienation. Schulte reads Hegel's philosophy both as symptomatic of this problem which modern rationality created and as an attempt to solve it by substituting a "life" of pure thought for those modes of life which reason had invalidated: Hegel's notion of Geist signifies the process of man's return out of otherness and alienation, a process whose goal is the reintegration of the individual in the universal and whose foundation and vehicle is self-reflective thought. (shrink)

Dutiful followers of the Hegel-Literatur, and particularly of writings on the Phenomenology and the Science of Logic, are undoubtedly aware of that line of interpretation which is founded on the contention that either of these works are in the last analysis unintelligible, ultimately mysterious in and of themselves when read in the terms and according to the aims and objectives which their author assigned to them. Distinctive about several of such interpretations of Hegel’s first two published books is the frequent (...) critical claim that turning to other material by this author is not merely something to be done to gain extra illumination, as an aid to understanding. Rather, the claim is often made that these central texts cannot be understood, or cannot fulfill the claims which their author has made for them without going beyond what he himself has presented as sufficient for the intelligibility and workability of their philosophical arguments. Often explicit in this approach is the critical charge that Hegel has failed to do what he set out to do. In the case of the Phenomenology, it is frequently argued, a la Ottmann, that the argument of that book necessarily presupposes the categories of the Logic, and hence that it fails in its intended function as an introduction. In the case of the Science of Logic, it is frequently argued in an attempt to explicate the nature of the dialectical argument and development of Being, a la Henrich, that Hegel must in some manner presuppose structures of reflection and hence that his own intentions are thwarted. (shrink)

Since its emergence in Marx by way of German idealism, what has come to be known as critical theory has remained powerfully appealing while being plagued with fundamental problems which its more sophisticated proponents have to some extent recognized and wrestled with. I shall connect these problems to a serious equivocation within critical theory concerning the kind of theory it aims to be, an equivocation which can be traced to Marx and which has manifested itself in different ways throughout the (...) tradition of critical theory. My central objective is to indicate that what critical theory sees as its defining theoretical move in fact gives rise to the equivocation and is the ultimate source of its persistent and most vexing problems. (shrink)