Tom Rockmore

New readings have recently been offered by Frederick Beiser and Robert Brandom of Hegel, a notoriously difficult writer. I believe that both Beiser and Brandom go astray in reading Hegel otherwise than how he reads others, that is, in terms of the internal development of their theories in response to philosophical problems with which they were concerned as opposed to other, external concerns. Beiser reads Hegel’s position in the context of German idealism in order to refute it and Brandom reads it in the context of analytic philosophy to learn from it. I will be recommending an alternative reading of Hegel’s position in the context of German idealism in order to learn from it. I believe we cannot magically detach Hegel from idealism in order to learn from, or even to understand, his position. But I also believe we need to interpret German idealism differently in order to grasp Hegel’s contribution.

It is a fact that Hegel’s immense presence, and above all his own self-serving reading of the history of philosophy as leading up to his own position, has tended to detract attention from other views. Hegel’s position consciously builds upon its predecessors. If philosophy culminates in Hegel’s thought, then other theories are mainly valuable in that they survive as lower moments of the Hegelian synthesis. Hegel insists that he takes up what is positive in prior views. Hence, the mere fact that an earlier idea does not reappear in Hegelian guise is an indication that it is unworthy of further attention.

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.

The aim of this informal paper is to direct (or redirect) attention to the importance of Croce’s historicism. Though he is sometimes described as the best known Italian intellectual since Galileo, and though his influence remains strong in Italy, his impact outside Italy is not as important as it should be. Other than through Collingwood, his only well known English-language disciple, Croce has had very little influence on those writing in English. His theories, including his historicism, on which I will be focusing here, are only infrequently discussed in English, especially by philosophers.Historicism is a doctrine which receives almost no attention in English-speaking lands but looms very large in Italian thought.For purposes of this paper, I will treat Croce’s historicism as arising out of his readings of three very different thinkers, different from himself and from each other, who are committed to varying forms of epistemological historicism, and who are important for the development of his own position, Vico, Hegel and Marx. Croce studies these thinkers early in his very long career in inverse chronological order, beginning with Marx (1900), turning next to Hegel (1907), and then concerning himself later with Vico (1911). In considering Croce’s interpretation of three other historicists, it will be useful to keep in mind that, as an original thinker, he is never only an interpreter of other theories, always in the process of thinking for himself with and against whatever ideas he is interpreting. In each case, he made important contributions to our understanding of these thinkers while continuing to work out his own view.

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.