Dave Carlson

One of the more mysterious transitions in Hegelrsquo;s mnoumental lsquo;Science of Logicrsquo; is the transition from the last stages of Being into the shadowy negative realm of Essence. This paper assesses the logic of those steps, in which measure becomes fully present but unable to capture an absence Hegel will eventually name as Essence. The paper emphasizes that the correlativity that marks the realm of essence is already introduced in the final two chapters of Hegelrsquo;s analysis of measure. It concludes by explaining why Hegel thought bad astronomymdash;the division of planetary orbit into centripetal and centrifucal forcemdash;illustrates the final sublation of quality and quantity. While quality and quantity both have lsquo;beyondsrsquo;, the realm of essence does not. Essence is revealed to be a totality that contains both itself and other (measure, or appearance)nbsp; in a single correlation.

In 1902, Bertrand Russell overturned set theory, which aspired to reduce all sets to their rules of recognition. These rules were to have logical priority to empirical sets posited by empirical human beings. As a result of Russell's Paradox, set theory gave up the hope of theorizing sets. This paper claims Russell's Paradox can be applied directly to jurisprudence. The result is that legal positivism (carefully defined as the claim that law can be reduced to rules of recognition) is invalid and must be abandoned. The corollary to this proposition is that law cannot be entirely separated from morality.

What is the future of legal philosophy? No doubt it has many. But we are betting that jurisprudence will gravitate towards freedom. Freedom, the attribute of the human subject, has largely been absent from legal philosophy. This is a lack that psychoanalytic jurisprudence aims to correct. In this essay, drafted as chapter in "On Philosophy in American Law" (Francis Jay Mootz III, ed.) to be published by the Cambridge University Press, we set forth what we think are the primary differences between a jurisprudence based in the Continental tradition of speculative philosophy, and the liberal jurisprudences that dominate in the American academy. Most importantly, all liberal theories start with some intuition of the free, autonomous individual. In contrast, psychoanalysis views the subject's definition as the problem of philosophy. For psychoanalysis, as reformulated by Jacques Lacan, personality and freedom cannot exist in any empirical or hypothetical state of nature because nature is unfree - bound by iron-clad laws of cause and effect. Personality and freedom are artificial creations - hard-won achievements. Subjectivity - the capacity to bear duties and rights - is a stage in this struggle.

This book constitutes a major advancement in the study of Hegelian philosophy by offering the first full commentary on the monumental The Science of Logic, Hegel's principal work which informs every other project Hegel ever undertook. The author has devised a system for diagramming every single logical transition that Hegel makes, many of which have never before been explored in English. This reveals a startling organizational subtlety in Hegel's work which heretofore has gone unnoticed. In the course of charting Hegel's logical progress, the author provides a vigorous defence and thorough explication of unparalleled scale and scope. The book covers the entire range of subjects connected with The Science of Logic such as Being, Essence, Measure, Subjectivity and God, showing how Hegel used logic to make transitions from one category to the next. The book also mediates Hegel's confrontation with Kant, whose Critique of Pure Reason is Hegel's major competition in metaphysical systemization. Any student encountering The Science of Logic, perhaps the most difficult and by far the most rewarding of Hegel's philosophical works, will find in Carlson's book an invaluable companion to their study.