Robert Pippin

Martin Heidegger claimed that German Idealism, especially the thought of Hegel, had brought to light a deficiency in the entire rationalist tradition of philosophy, which, when exposed as clearly as Hegel had, meant that the tradition could no longer credibly continue. He went on to argue that the implications of this deficiency had spread far beyond academic philosophy, were manifest in the daily life of the modern West, contributing to a historical world dominated by the technological predation of nature, conformism, thoughtlessness and a degraded cultural life. The tradition, he said, had “culminated” in the thought of Hegel; that is, the deficiency and its implications had finally become clearest in his system. The question raised in this article is whether Heidegger meant to charge that Hegel had simply neglected a question (“the meaning of being”) which he should have raised, or whether that neglect renders suspect the many other issues Hegel raises.

This chapter provides insight about the role that actual ethical life plays in the possibility of value. Careful classification of the social dependence thesis is brought about for an argument and the chapter considers the politically and socially conservative position of the author on this matter. The chapter then cites ‘Future of an Illusion’ by Sigmund Freud as a typical example of a non-evaluative account and discusses confusing points of view as exemplified on interpretative issues. In conclusion, the chapter states that social roles are made by the people actively doing them and are not just dispositions, and argues in favor of breaking free from misleading ideas on social practices and instead reflecting on more valuable concepts.

Hegel famously says in the “Preface” to The Philosophy of Right that that outline or Grundriss presupposes “the speculative mode of cognition.” This is to be contrasted with what he calls “the old logic” and “the knowledge of the understanding” (_Verstandeserkenntnis_), a term he also uses to characterize all of metaphysics prior to his own. He makes explicit that he is referring to his book, The Science of Logic, but he does not explain the nature of this dependence anywhere in the book. This chapter attempts to explain the nature of this dependence, and to show that it is indeed crucial to understanding the argument of the work.

Although there are several recognizable themes in Nietzsche's discussion of freedom (such as independence from societal pressures and some sort of self-rule or individual sovereignty), at many places he seems especially interested in the issue of ‘self-overcoming’. In these passages he considers freedom a kind of perpetual self-overcoming. Freedom is not a metaphysical capacity to have done otherwise, nor the unconstrained expression of one's identity, but: (i) a psychological self-relation, a relation to one's own drives, desires, commitments, etc; (ii) a difficult achievement that depends neither on force of will or self-knowledge, or reflective endorsement alone; (iii) a paradoxical form of mindedness, at once affirmative and negative, whole-hearted and ironic (a ‘tension of the spirit’); and (iv) a form of self-mastery or an expression of the ‘will to power’, very unlike what traditional interpretations ascribe to Nietzsche. This chapter argues against literary self-creation models of this self-relation, and focuses attention on the underlying issue in all the relevant passages: the proper status of Nietzschean ‘psychology’, and why Nietzsche considers such a psychology the new ‘queen of the sciences’.

Among Kant's innovations in the understanding of logic (‘general logic’) were his claims that logic had no content of its own, but was the form of the thought of any possible content, and that the unit of meaning, the truth-bearer, judgement, was essentially apperceptive. Judging was implicitly the consciousness of judging. This was for Kant a logical truth. This article traces the influence of the latter claim on Fichte, and, for most of the discussion, on Hegel. The aim is to understand the relations among self-consciousness, reason and freedom in the idealist tradition.

Although there are several recognizable themes in Nietzsche's discussion of freedom (such as independence from societal pressures and some sort of self-rule or individual sovereignty), at many places he seems especially interested in the issue of ‘self-overcoming’. In these passages he considers freedom a kind of perpetual self-overcoming. Freedom is not a metaphysical capacity to have done otherwise, nor the unconstrained expression of one's identity, but: (i) a psychological self-relation, a relation to one's own drives, desires, commitments, etc; (ii) a difficult achievement that depends neither on force of will or self-knowledge, or reflective endorsement alone; (iii) a paradoxical form of mindedness, at once affirmative and negative, whole-hearted and ironic (a ‘tension of the spirit’); and (iv) a form of self-mastery or an expression of the ‘will to power’, very unlike what traditional interpretations ascribe to Nietzsche. This chapter argues against literary self-creation models of this self-relation, and focuses attention on the underlying issue in all the relevant passages: the proper status of Nietzschean ‘psychology’, and why Nietzsche considers such a psychology the new ‘queen of the sciences’.