Jeffrey Reid

Great Philosophers tells the story of Western philosophy through the thought of its main protagonists, the great philosophers. The narrative begins with the Presocratic philosophers Heraclitus and Parmenides and ends in recent times, as each philosopher wrestles with the problems and solutions of his or her predecessors. Along the way, Jeffrey Reid provides an engaging introduction to many of the principal ideas of luminaries such as Plato, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche and Sartre. Great Philosophers not only provides an ideal introduction to philosophical thought, but also an original understanding of the discipline of philosophy itself. The book aims not only to recount an important tradition, but also to reveal something about how it has affected who we are

This paper deals with the problematic relationship between thought and nature in Hegel. This entails looking at the philosophy of nature and discovering to what extent it claims to incorporate natural otherness or contingency and how it does so. I briefly summarize other approaches to this question (Maker, Winfield, Braun, Wandschneider, Hoffheimer...) while putting forward my own solution. This is expressed in an argument articulated around the three Hegelian images (and their texts) in the paper’s title. We discover how the relation between philosophy and nature is a dynamic one, mediated by the actual content of the positive natural sciences. In other words, thought and nature are mediated by the human activity of scientific knowing, within the systematic project of knowing all of nature. This raises the possibility of conceiving Hegel’s system as open to the future.

Friedrich Schlegel's theory of irony is examined with reference to his theory of the literary fragment. Both are informed not only by Fichte's I = I but by Ritter's theory of galvanism as well as by John Brown's theory of medicine. In Ritter, electrical energy is created through the compression of opposite chemical elements in a closed (fragmentary) space. Brown's theory of excitability presents the compressive "other" as actually soliciting the energetic sparks that Schlegel associates with Witz. The literary fragment is an electrically charged engine for the ironic production of further fragments.

L'objectivité dont s'occupe la science hégélienne n'est pas celle d'une réalité détachée, mue selon les lois dialectiques, et le discours scientifique n'est pas vrai et objectif parce qu'il serait la réflexion adéquate d'une telle réalité. L'objectivité scientifique chez Hegel doit être saisie comme le logos , c'est-à-dire le discours de la science elle-même dans son actualité existante. Il s'agit d'un discours qui est son objet et qui est l'objectivité véritable. Ce type de langage est seulement possible s'il est compris comme le moyen terme entre l'être et le penser, c'est-à-dire en termes du syllogisme hégélien et non pas de la prédication. Concrètement, les objets de la science, ou les contenus de l' Encyclopédie , sont eux-mêmes des discours objectifs, c'est-à-dire existants et vrais. Ainsi, par exemple, c'est seulement comme discours que l'Etat peut constituer un objet/contenu de la science hégélienne.The objectivity that Hegelian science deals with is not a detached reality running on dialectical laws, and scientific discourse is not true and objective because it is the faithful reflection of such a reality. Scientific objectivity, in Hegel, should be understood as logos, as existing scientific discourse. It is a discourse that is its object and is true objectivity. This type of language is only possible if it is grasped as the middle term between mere being and thought, in terms of the Hegelian syllogism rather than predication. Concretely, the objects of science, or the contents of the Encyclopedia, are themselves existing, true discourses. Thus, for example, only as discourse does the State become an object/content of science

The creation of the University of Berlin in 1810 was the result of interaction between the state and philosophy, two human expressions whose relationship, at least since Socrates' death and Aristotle's exile, has tended to be problematical. That university, which became an important model for North American institutions of higher learning, was from the outset a state university; it was designed and run by the state, as opposed to what was previously the rule: institutions dependent on the Church or princes. The bind, of course, is that this idea of a modern university, defined by its independence with regard to ecclesiastical and private interests, must henceforth depend on the state to guarantee its independence. This dilemma is already apparent in the philosophical ideas at work in the University of Berlin's early evolution.

In this paper, I explore the largely ignored ethical dimension in the first section of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, Sense-certainty, which tends to be understood exclusively as an epistemological critique of sense-data empiricism. I approach the ethical aspect of the chapter through Hegel’s analysis of language, there, as unable to refer to individual things. I then show that the position Hegel analyses is akin to the one presented by Thomas Hobbes in his Leviathan, as well as in his De Corpore, and which serves to ground his naturalistic ethics. The linguistic juxtaposition consequently allows me to relate the ethics of sense-certainty to Hobbes, not only to his “shallow” empiricism, as Hegel puts it, but to the ethical vision Hobbes presents in his state of nature.

ABSTRACT: Within Hegel’s system of science, judgement (Urteil) is thought’s original dividing from identity into difference. In the same context, judgement is also an act of predication where “subject” must be understood in both a grammatical and psychical sense. Thus, judgement expresses a language act that is a self-positing into the difference of being. This article looks at two examples where Hegel’s ontological notion of judgement obtains, then finds, the roots of this notion in Hölderlin and Fichte.RÉSUMÉ: Dans le système scientifique hégélien, le jugement (Urteil) se présente comme une division originelle de l’esprit allant de l’identité à la différence. Dans le même contexte, le jugement est également un acte de prédication où «sujet» doit être compris dans un sens aussi bien grammatical que psychique. Ainsi, le jugement exprime un acte langagier qui consiste en une autoposition dans la différence de l’être. Cet article examine deux exemples où se trouve réalisée la notion ontologique du jugement hégélien, et ensuite retrace les racines de cette notion chez Hölderlin et Fichte.

The paper explores Hegel's earlier-than-supposed encounter with Kant's thought, at the Tuebingen Stift, where a reading group formed around the "radical" Kantian, C.I. Diez. The paper argues that Hegel avoided this group and its interpretation because its strictly anthropological interpretation of Kant and its eschewal of any reference to divine (absolute) revelation left it anchored in empirical understanding, leaving aside the speculative elements of Kantian philosophy, notably, the ideal agency of reason and the possibility of rational faith.