Eric v.d. Luft

Lofts’s purpose is to interpret Cassirer in the light of francophone post-structuralist thought, particularly that of Jacques Lacan. Portraying a cautious neo-Kantian as a proto-post-structuralist may seem almost perverse, but the notion has potential. Unfortunately, the book reads as if it were still in rough draft. Its sections are disconnected, its arguments and insights are truncated or aphoristic, its style is careless, and it is poorly edited. Orthographical and typographical errors abound, even to the point of printing Lofts’s own name wrong once. The long note about Hegel repeats previous text. Lofts’s analysis does not flow with the stream of the history of philosophy, but rather leaps from stone to stone in that stream, lingering too long on some stones and avoiding others. Dilthey, Gadamer, and Habermas, for example, are conspicuously absent from the discussion. Originally presented as Lofts’s dissertation, this book seems not yet to have proceeded far enough beyond that phase to warrant wider distribution.

Yovel is a prolific, diligent, and sagacious Israeli scholar who has published extensively on Maimonides, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche, and who holds named chairs in philosophy at both Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the New School for Social Research. That such a prominent Jewish intellectual has created a perceptive book-length analysis of an important topic which frequently inspires articles and books by non-Jews is a welcome addition to the literature on German philosophy. It is all the more welcome since Yovel’s study is philosophical rather than political or ideological, applies an accurate comparative reading of a wide variety of Hegel’s and Nietzsche’s texts, and sees their separate estimations of the Jews respectively in the light of each’s entire philosophical project.

The transition from self-consciousness as the unhappy consciousness to reason as the critique of idealism is among the most important in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Yet this transition is implicit and not readily discernible. This paper investigates (1) whether we can discover and describe any roadblock that the unhappy consciousness is able to knock down, or despite which it is able to maneuver, and so become reason; or (2) whether the unhappy consciousness arrives at an impassable dead end and either manages to create a detour around it or just begins again, unexplained and unexplainably, almost ex nihilo, as reason; or (3) whether, despite its implicitness, there exists a continuous, tenable, and unimpeded path from self-consciousness to reason.

One notices immediately that this is a very well organized piece of work, complete with both name and subject indices. The six-page analytic table of contents helpfully distinguishes Angehrn’s various digressions, chiefly into Marxian thought, from the mainstream of his argument. The bibliography is generally an excellent brief sampling of the pertinent Hegelian literature of the last fifteen or twenty years; although, as one might easily expect, since Angehrn earned his doctorate with this work at Heidelberg in 1976, there is perhaps a disproportionate emphasis on the contributions of his dissertation director, Michael Theunissen.

Pure serendipity got me involved in the HSA. I was in my first month of graduate school, had already decided to write my M.A. thesis on Hegel, and had begun to study the Philosophy of Right in preparation for this work. Then I learned from a posting on a bulletin board that some outfit called the “Hegel Society of America” - which I had never heard of - was about to have a meeting just two miles down the road. My thesis advisor strongly encouraged me to attend - so I went, but with no idea what to expect.

This paper argues for the primacy of language over vision as a means of communication. Words convey information more clearly, accurately, reliably, and profoundly than images do. Images by themselves give only impressions; they do not denote, unless accompanied by some sort or level of description. Also, any visual image, whether physical or mental, unless it is eidetic, must involve some degree of interpretation, interpolation, or description for it to be capable of conveying information, having meaning, or even being intelligible. Pictorialism is the theory that mental imagery is visual, while descriptionalism holds that mental imagery is nonvisual. As an epistemology, pictorialism supports representationalism as a philosophy of art. The poverty and limitations of representational theories of art militate against pictorialism. Descriptionalism as an epistemology supports several versions of symbolist theories of art. The richness and versatility of symbolic interpretations of art works support descriptionalism. Pictorialism fails the test of consistency unless eidetic imagery exists. Any pictorialism that claims support from noneidetic imagery or invokes the photographic fallacy is in fact a crypto- or quasi-descriptionalism. Since the photographic fallacy denies eidetic imagery, it is invalid and misbegotten as a defense of pictorialism. The interplay between the richness of visual images and the precision of verbal descriptions is a key element in developing a comprehensive pedagogy of aesthetics.

A book on this topic is long overdue. It is high time that a competent Hegel scholar recognized and assessed the danger posed to Hegel’s whole system by the skeptical tradition, argued that Hegel’s Jena writings, culminating in the Phenomenology, are primarily works of epistemology rather than metaphysics, examined Hegel’s own views on ancient and modern skepticism, identified and criticized Hegel’s own strategies for defending his thought against the skeptical threat, and took Hegel seriously as an epistemologist. Forster does all this and more, and does it very well.