Tom Rockmore

This is not an ordinary study of Hegel’s thought; it is rather an unusual effort to apply that thought to contemporary issues, in particular to that complex problem known as liberation theology. Lakeland’s approach can be loosely characterized as both right wing Hegelian, in that stress is placed on Christian elements, and as progressive Catholic as concerns the interest in liberation theology. The thesis he advances is that Hegel’s political theology is appropriate to illuminate the connection between the Christian expectation of salvation and the struggle for political liberation, two topics which are linked through the Christian concept of incarnation. Lakeland suggests that this concept is central to Hegel’s Religionsphilosophie; and he further suggests that the concept of incarnation provides the satisfactory basis for a theological view which is both a Christian anthropology and a political theology.

If Marx is to survive as a source of unparalleled insight into the modern world, he needs to be recovered. This article will begin to address some of the difficulties which arise in recovering Marx, above all the need to free Marx from Marxism. Marx has always been studied through Marxism, hence in a way which profoundly distorts his philosophical ideas. If we remove this Marxist 'filter', we see a rather different, more philosophical, and more philosophically-interesting thinker, Hegel's most important student, a full member of German idealism, who comes closer than anyone else to grasping the nature of the modern industrial world. Key Words: capitalism • Engels • Hegel • Lukács • Marx • Marxism.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Reading Hegel’s PhenomenologyTom RockmoreJohn Russon. Reading Hegel’s Phenomenology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004. Pp. xi + 299. Cloth, $50.00. Paper, $27.95.Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit has been increasingly studied in ever-greater detail in recent years. In John Russon's interpretive study of Hegel's theories in this book, explanation is tightly constrained by the core argument of its various sections. The text is divided into an introduction and fifteen chapters concerning different aspects of Hegel's great treatise.Russon describes and justifies his strategy in a detailed introduction. Unlike other commentators, Russon focuses on the methods, premises, evidence, reasons and conclusions of Hegel's argument without consideration of the language, allusions and cultural context in which the book was composed. Russon further proceeds through separate studies of the separate sections of Hegel's treatise, which he treats as independent arguments about various aspects of human experience, as opposed to a continuous commentary on the work as a whole.These methodological innovations give Russon's discussion a distinctive character. Hegel stresses the intrinsically historical character of all thought. According to Hegel, all philosophical positions, including his own, belong to the history of philosophy. Treating Hegel's argument without reference to the specific context in which it was formulated makes it more difficult to grasp Hegel's claims. It further creates the illusion that Hegel's theories do not belong to their time and place, or historical moment. Russon's strategy of discussing each section of the Phenomenology as if it stood alone suggests that each is independent of the other and that the overall argument, which other commentators often strive to bring out, is non-existent. Russon emphasizes precisely this point in suggesting that a good reader of the Phenomenology must learn to treat each chapter autonomously. That is a useful hint if it means that Hegel's readers need to take each part of the book seriously and on its own terms. But if it also means that his readers should not be attempting to discern a deep but often elusive structure in the work as a whole, then for many this suggestion would appear to be seriously misleading.Since Hegel is one of most difficult authors in the Western tradition, it is hardly surprising that there is little agreement and much controversy about even basic moves in his arguments in the Phenomenology. Yet one of the more surprising traits of Russon's discussion [End Page 493] is that he simply does not mention well-known accounts of the Phenomenology by such authors as Q. Lauer, H. S. Harris, T. Pinkard, A. Kojève and J. Hyppolite. Russon insists that his intention in writing this book is pedagogical. He suggests that his study is intended to serve as a companion volume in a one-semester course on Hegel's Phenomenology. Each chapter intends to provide a lesson for someone concerned to grasp the argument of the book. Yet the lack of any reference to other such studies makes it not easier but more difficult for the student to evaluate the specific utility of Russon's approach with respect to available alternatives.Russon says that the basic themes of his approach are stated in chapter 11, and his distinctive approach is best brought out in chapter 5. Chapter 11 considers the existential drama of the "Struggle to the Death" as the foundation of self-consciousness and intersubjectivity. Self-consciousness and intersubjectivity are rooted in the lived body, which Russon regards as central to the development of spirit. According to Russon, unlike many later thinkers, for Hegel, the fact that the themes of language and embodiment are paired, not separable, is central to his position. Russon goes on to argue that the famous discussion of master and slave turns on the problem of communication. He extends this approach to Hegel's treatment of Antigone, which he interprets as depicting the way a social system takes the place of the individual ego in pointing to what he calls an absolute, or dialectical, reading.Chapters 9–11 analyse the argument of Hegel's chapter on spirit. Chapter 9 focuses on "Spirit and Skepticism"; chapter 10...

Recent discussion has seen an increase in the interest in hermeneutics. The increased interest in hermeneutics goes back at least until the appearance of Being and Time in 1927, more than sixty years ago. Thisbookis characterized by the unresolved tension between two clearly incompatible theses: the Husserlian form of absolute truth, and a post-Husserlian view of truth arising from the hermeneutical circle. More recently, the interest in hermeneutics has been strengthened by the appearance of Truth and Method in 1960, in which Gadamer, Heidegger’s most important student, developed the hermeneutical thesis of the latter’s Fundamentalontologie in a way which has influenced numerous other thinkers, notably Ricoeur and Habermas, in a wide-ranging and often confused discussion. The latter’s theory of communicative action can be seen as carrying further the Gadamerian view that knowledge results from interpretation. In Habermas’s version of the linguistic turn, which is further influenced by Kant’s view of Vernunftinteresse and Habermas’s own, peculiar reading of Peirce, speech is intrinsically aimed at potential agreement through the development of consensus.

This volume is a collection of previously unpublished papers dealing with the neglected "phenomenological" dimension of the philosophy of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, which it compares and contrasts to the phenomenology of his contemporary Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and to that of Edmund Husserl and his 20th century followers. Issues discussed include: phenomenological method, self-consciousness, intersubjectivity, temporality, intentionality, mind and body, and the drives. In addition to Fichte, authors discussed include: Hegel, Brentano, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Levinas, and Ricur.

This is a paper about Hegelian constructivism in relation to theory of knowledge. Constructivism, which is known at least since Greek antiquity, is understood in different ways. In philosophy, epistemological constructivism is often rejected, and only occasionally studied. Kantian constructivism is examined from time to time under the heading of the Copernican revolution. Hegelian constructivism, which is best understood as a reaction to and revision of Kantian epistemology, seems never to have been discussed in detail. This paper will sketch the outlines of Hegelian constructivism in relation to the critical philosophy. Hegelian constructivism amounts to an intrinsically historical view of epistemology as a trial and error process situated in the social context. Knowledge emerges from a trial and error process in which we construct a cognitive framework to grasp objects constructed in and through this process. I suggest that the considerable interest of a historical, constructivist, phenomenological approach to knowledge, such as Hegel’s, lies in its largely unexplored possibilities for advancing the epistemological debate.