George Di Giovanni

The reader of Joseph Navickas’s recent book will be disappointed if he expects the author to keep the promise made in the note on the back cover: “The book combines a textual analysis with a new constructive interpretation of the Phenomenology.” And the note goes on to say, “The complete working out of the notion of subjectivity requires a re-examination of the phenomenological transitions and a re-investigation of some allegedly insignificant achievements of the subject.” In point of fact there is nothing particularly new in Navickas’s interpretation. His book actually repeats certain misunderstandings which one would think were the stock of older text-books. And as for the promised “textual analysis”, it consists mostly in a textual exposition of uneven quality. Some sections of Parts IV and V are lucid and accurate. Others, notably the sections of Part II, are woefully cursory, and often misleading. For instance, the theme of the “inverted world” is treated in these words

Whether transcendental arguments are possible or not is a question that has received wide attention in the analytical literature of recent years. It is important to distinguish carefully, however, between Kant’s own Transcendental Deduction and the kind of reasoning which has lately been dubbed “transcendental.” Eva Schaper has accurately defined the difference some years ago. The “transcendental arguments” to which we have recently been accustomed are arguments that seek to establish the logical preconditions of empirical enquiry. They all start from the fact that we conceptualize experience in a certain way, and then proceed to uncover the conditions necessary to our process of conceptualization. Kant’s own Transcendental Deduction, on the other hand, is concerned with “the wider task of showing the conditions of what is to count as experience at all.” While it is always possible to render a “transcendental argument” of the contemporary type pointless simply by refusing to accept the peculiar manner of conceptualizing experience from which it starts, the conclusion of Kant’s Deduction would be irrefutable. To deny it would be tantamount to denying the possibility of experience itself. The notorious difficulties that accompany the Deduction are to be seen precisely in the light of the strong claim to proof that it makes.

Jacobi’s importance in the history of German philosophy has long been recognized. Yet his writings have been little studied in the English-speaking world, mainly because very few of them have been translated. George di Giovanni’s translation and edition of some of Jacobi’s main philosophical writings now fills this serious gap. This is the first major scholarly edition in English of Jacobi’s writings. The quality of the translation and the editing set a high standard for future work. Giovanni’s translations capture the freshness and fluency of the German original, and his scholarly notes leave nothing to be desired in thoroughness and erudition. But it is not only students who will appreciate this volume. The long introduction, and the many notes, will be useful even for specialists. It is among the very best scholarship on Jacobi in any language.

The theologians of the late German Enlightenment saw in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason a new rational defence of their Christian faith. In fact, Kant's critical theory of meaning and moral law totally subverted the spirit of that faith. This challenging new study examines the contribution made by the Critique of Pure Reason to this change of meaning. George di Giovanni stresses the revolutionary character of Kant's critical thought but also reveals how this thought was being held hostage to unwarranted metaphysical assumptions that caused much confusion and rendered the First Critique vulnerable to being reabsorbed into modes of thought typical of Enlightenment popular philosophy. Amongst the striking features of this book are nuanced interpretations of Jacobi and Reinhold, a lucid exposition of Fichte's early thought, and a rare, detailed account of Enlightenment popular philosophy.

This is good news for those of us who have tried for years to teach Hegel’s Logic only to discover each time that by the end of term we have not gone past the first few pages. We have finally a book on which we can rely to lead our students through the intricacies of at least some of its sections. Burbidge’s handling of the parts of the Logic which he has singled out for his commentary is detailed, lucid, accurate, and penetrating. For this reason alone his book will no doubt become standard reference for anyone, beginner and professional alike, interested in Hegel’s Logic. But the book is more than simply an explication of the Hegelian text. It is also a highly original statement about the nature of the Logic made in direct opposition to other interpretations, notably those of Mure, Findlay and Taylor. This aspect of Burbidge’s book is bound to be controversial; I shall claim for my part that it is seriously flawed. On the other hand, since Burbidge’s meta-logical reflections are closely linked to a detailed analysis of Hegel’s own text, they bring with them their own corrective. In spite of any objection one might want to raise against them, they are more likely to initiate an instructive debate on what the nature and the value of the Hegelian Logic truly are than any other commentary has done in the past. For this reason too the book deserves credit, and an important place in the literature of Hegelian interpretation.

Two conferences recently held in Europe, one on Reinhold and the other on Jacobi, reflect this new development. Both testify to the present high degree of maturity reached by the scholarship on the subject. In both, the two philosophers finally emerge as figures spanning the distance between the late Aufklärung and the nineteenth century. In some respects, Jacobi and Reinhold are closer in mental attitudes to our contemporary world than any of the idealists. So far as the present writer is concerned, the most interesting development noted in the conferences was however the repeated references made in the presentations to “common sense” philosophy, to the influence that this originally Scottish phenomenon had on the Aufklärung in general, and to the more specific influence that Thomas Reid had on both Jacobi and Reinhold. Manfred Kühn is of course the one who wrote the now classic work on the Scottish “common sense” background of Kant’s philosophy. But it now appears that the same background also extended to, and influenced, the post-Kantian developments. Hegel’s disparaging remarks regarding common sense philosophy, and his sharp criticisms of both Jacobi and Reinhold, are well known. One should not however make the mistake, in reading these remarks, of concentrating exclusively on their negative tone, and thereby forgetting that, in engaging in controversy with his chosen opponents, Hegel was at the same time defining his own problematic—by implication, therefore, making his own the opponents’s themes and problems. I have already said that Jacobi and Reinhold shared many of our contemporary mental attitudes. It might well be that one way of undercutting historically the normally assumed opposition between the analytical tradition of philosophy and the more idealistic, as well as phenomenological traditions, is to recover the common ground of them all in the philosophical discourse of the late Enlightenment.

Heinz Kimmerle’s dating in 1967 of the Jena writings [“Zur Chronologie von Hegels Jenaer Schriften”, Hegel-Studien, 4, 125–176.] which definitely places at 1804–05 the fragment of a Reinschrift on Logic, Metaphysics and Philosophy of Nature previously thought to belong, on the authority of Rosenkranz, to the earlier Frankfurt period, throws a new light on the development of Hegel’s thought during the crucial Jena years. The fact that, throughout that period, Hegel was so much concerned with the Logic is significant both for an understanding of the Phenomenology of Spirit, and retrospectively, for a proper estimate of the meaning that the Logic must have had for him as early as 1801. Many studies have recently appeared that re-examine both the Phenomenology and the early Logic. Dusing’s latest book follows on their wake. Its main concern is the Logic; it differs greatly, however, from the other recent works on the same subject both in historical and philosophical scope. Rather than concentrating exclusively on the Jena writings, it follows the vicissitudes of Hegel’s conception of the Logic from its pre-history in the Frankfurt period all the way down to the form it finally assumed in 1812–1816. Düsing also makes a definite proposal as to what value the Logic might still have. I shall first give a sketch of the development of the Logic as it appears from Düsing’s reconstruction.

Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason is a key element of the system of philosophy which Kant introduced with his Critique of Pure Reason, and a work of major importance in the history of Western religious thought. It represents a great philosopher's attempt to spell out the form and content of a type of religion that would be grounded in moral reason and would meet the needs of ethical life. It includes sharply critical and boldly constructive discussions on topics not often treated by philosophers, including such traditional theological concepts as original sin and the salvation or 'justification' of a sinner, and the idea of the proper role of a church. This volume presents it and three short essays that illuminate it in new translations by Allen Wood and George di Giovanni, with an introduction by Robert Merrihew Adams that locates it in its historical and philosophical context.

The World, understood as a system of meaningful relations, is for Hegel the exclusive product of the human mind. In this, Hegel stands together with Kant in direct opposition to the Christian metaphysical tradition, according to which reality reflects God's ideas. For both Kant and Hegel, faith and religion therefore acquire new meaning. Yet, that meaning is just as different for each with respect to the other as it is for both with respect to the Christian tradition. This paper explores these differences, taking Kant's and Hegel's differing attitudes towards evil as the litmus test for differentiating their respective idealism.