Robert Stern

(? - 2024)

Raison et déraison d'État. Théoriciens et theories de la raison d'État aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles sous la direction de Yves Charles Zarka Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1994 pp. 436, 248 FF. ISBN 9–782130–461616. Beverly C. Southgate: ’Covetous of Truth’: The Life and Work of Thomas White, 1593–1676 Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993. 189 pp. £60.00 ISBN 0–7923–1926–5 George Dicker: Descartes: An Analytical and Historical Introduction Oxford University Press, 1993 (248 pp.) £14.95 pbk. ISBN 0–19–507590–0 Theo Verbeek: Descartes and the Dutch: Early Reactions to Cartesian Philosophy, 1637–1650. Carbondale and Edwardsville, Southern Illinois University Press, 1992, x + 168 pp. $30.00 ISBN 0–8093–1617‐X David Berman: George Berkeley: Idealism and the Man Oxford University Press, 1994. £27.50 ISBN 0–19–826746–0 Joseph Mali: The Rehabilitation of Myth: Vico's New Science Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. pp. xv + 275. £35.00 ISBN 0–521–41952–2 R. C. Solomon and K. W. Higgins (eds): The Age of German Idealism Routledge: London, 1993. Pp. 408. £55.00 (hbk) ISBN 0–415–05604–7 T. L. S. Sprigge: James and Bradley: American Truth and British Reality Chicago and La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1993 Pp. xiv + 630. $66.95 (hbk), $29.95 (pbk). ISBN 0–8126–9227–6 (pbk) A. W. Moore: The Infinite Routledge, London and New York (1990). First published in paperback, 1991. xiv + 268 pp., £10.99 ISBN 0–415–07048–1.

In trying to reach some view regarding the philosophical exchanges that went on between F. H. Bradley and William James at the turn of the century, it is in some respects tempting to endorse Bradley's view that ‘our differences may perhaps on the whole be small when compared with the extent of our agreement’. Indeed, in most of the articles, letters and books in which the debate between these two men was carried on, one finds the protagonists claiming to be mystified as to the grounds of the dispute, and to see no great distinction in their respective outlooks

The nature of Hegel’s idealism has been much disputed, and this chapter offers an account of it that is distinctive. Against recent commentators such as Robert Pippin, it is argued that Hegel was not a Kantian or transcendental idealist; it is also argued that Hegel was not a mentalistic idealist, offering a kind of ‘spirit monism’ that reduced the world to mind. It is argued instead that Hegel understood idealism to be the view that ‘the finite has no veritable being’, where this leads to a position according to which thought cannot grasp what truly exists through experience but only through a kind of rationalist theorizing, and that this in turn requires us to accept a form of realism about concepts. It is therefore argued that this conceptual realism makes up the core of Hegel’s idealism, understood as the anti-nominalist doctrine that reality is structured by concepts that render it accessible to thought.

[INTRODUCTION] Like the terms 'dialectic', 'Aufhebung' (or 'sublation'), and 'Geist', the term 'concrete universal' has a distinctively Hegelian ring to it. But unlike these others, it is particularly associated with the British strand in Hegel's reception history, as having been brought to prominence by some of the central British Idealists. It is therefore perhaps inevitable that, as their star has waned, so too has any use of the term, while an appreciation of the problematic that lay behind it has seemingly vanished: if the British Idealists get any sort of mention in a contemporary metaphysics book (which is rarely), it will be Bradley's view of relations or truth that is discussed, not their theory of universals, so that the term has a rather antique air, buried in the dusty volumes of Mind from the turn of the nineteenth century. This is not surprising: the episode known as British Idealism can appear to be a period that is lost to us, in its language, points of historical reference (Lotze, Sigwart, Jevons), and central preoccupations (the Absolute). Even while interest in Hegel continues to grow, interest in his Logic has grown more slowly than in the rest of his work, with Book III of the Logic remaining as the daunting peak of that challenging text - while it is here that the British Idealists focussed their attention and claimed to have uncovered that 'exotic' but 'vanished specimen', the concrete universal. Finally, as the trend of reading Hegel pushes ever further in a non-metaphysical direction, it might be thought that the future of the concrete universal is hardly likely to be brighter than its recent past - for it may seem hard to imagine how a conception championed by the British Idealists, who were apparently shameless in their metaphysical commitments, can find favour in these more austere and responsible times. In this paper, however, I want to make a case for holding that there is something enlightening to be found in how some of the British Idealists approached the 'concrete universal', both interpretatively and philosophically. At the interpretative level, I will argue that while not everything these Idealists are taken to mean by the term is properly to be found in Hegel, their work nonetheless relates to a crucial and genuine strand in Hegel's position, so that their discussion of this issue is an important moment in the reception history of his thought. At a philosophical level, I think that the question that concerned Hegel and these British Idealists retains much of its interest, as does their shared approach to it: namely, how far does our thought involve a mere abstraction from reality, and what are the metaphysical and epistemological implications if it turns out it does not? As such, I will suggest, taking seriously what these British Idealists have to say about the concrete universal can help us both in our understanding of Hegel, and in our appreciation of the contribution Hegel's position can make to our thinking on the issues that surround this topic

The Kant-Hegel relation has a continuing fascination for commentators on Hegel, and understandably so: for, taking this route into the Hegelian jungle can promise many advantages. First, it can set Hegel’s thought against a background with which we are fairly familiar, and in a way that makes its relevance clearly apparent; second, it can help us locate Hegel in the broader philosophical tradition, making us see that the traditional ‘analytic’ jump from Kant to Frege leaves out a crucial period in post-Kantian thought; third, it can show Hegel in a progressive light, as attempting to take that tradition further forward; fourth, it can help us locate familiar philosophical issues in Hegelian thought that otherwise can appear wholly sui generis; and finally, and perhaps most importantly of all, focusing on this relation can help raise and crystalise some of the fascinating ambiguities concerning Hegel’s outlook, regarding whether Hegel’s response to Kant shows him to have been a reactionary, Romantic, pre-critical thinker, who sought to turn the philosophical clock back to a time before Kant had written, or a modernist, Enlightened and essentially critical one, who remained true to the spirit if not the letter of Kant’s philosophy.

"Interpreting Hegel means taking a stand on all the philosophical, political and religious problems of our century." Merleau-Ponty G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831), arguably the greatest philosopher of the nineteenth century, decisively influenced the direction of all subsequent European thought. He has been interpreted variously as a theist and an atheist, a conservative and a liberal, an essentialist and a proto-existentialist, a rationalist and an irrationalist. In all the areas he covered, Hegel sought a new form of understanding that had eluded his predecessors but which he believed was necessary for mankind to once again find itself "at home in the world." This collection of works on Hegel reflects the many-sided nature of Hegel's reception from 1831 onwards, and offers critical studies on the full range of his work. The four volumes incorporate the classic readings of Hegel, from both the continental and analytic traditions, and also include the central twentieth-century readings influenced by developments in European thought which reappraise his work. These volumes offer a unique perspective on Hegel by revealing how our understanding of him is influenced by historical readings of his work. Each volume provides a clear and helpful introduction which sets the articles in their historic context and highlights the central philosophical issues they raise.

This paper considers the prospects for the current revival of interest in Hegel, and the direction it might take. Looking back to Richard J. Bernstein's paper from 1977, on ‘Why Hegel Now?’, it contrasts his optimistic assessment of a rapprochement between Hegel and analytic philosophy with Sebastian Gardner's more pessimistic view, where Gardner argues that Hegel's idealist account of value makes any such rapprochement impossible. The paper explores Hegel's account of value further, arguing for a middle way between these extremes of optimism and pessimism, proposing an Aristotelian reading which is more metaphysical than Bernstein recognizes, but not as at odds with thinking in current analytic philosophy as Gardner suggests, as it finds a counterpart in the work of Philippa Foot, Michael Thompson, Rosalind Hursthouse and others.