Stephen Houlgate

This companion provides original, scholarly, and cutting-edge essays that cover the whole range of Hegel’s mature thought and his lasting influence. A comprehensive guide to one of the most important modern philosophers Essays are written in an accessible manner and draw on the most up-to-date Hegel research Contributions are drawn from across the world and from a wide variety of philosophical approaches and traditions Examines Hegel’s influence on a range of thinkers, from Kierkegaard and Marx to Heidegger, Adorno and Derrida Begins with a chronology of Hegel’s life and work and is then split into sections covering topics such as Philosophy of Nature, Aesthetics, and Philosophy of Religion.

G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831) was the last and greatest of the German Idealists and exercised an unparalleled influence on nineteenth‐ and twentieth‐century thought. His legacy includes the idea that human existence is essentially historical, that history is the development of the consciousness of freedom, and that true freedom involves living in an ethical community whose members accord one another reciprocal recognition and respect. Through his emphasis on human historicity and freedom, as well as his analysis of concepts such as “alienation” and “dialectic,” Hegel's thought helped spawn such divergent philosophical movements as Marxism, existentialism, pragmatism, hermeneutics, and deconstruction. He also had a profound impact on modern social theory and modern (especially, Protestant) theology; and he has even been called the “father” of art history.

Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit is probably his most famous work. First published in 1807, it has exercised considerable influence on subsequent thinkers from Feuerbach and Marx to Heidegger, Kojève, Adorno and Derrida. The book contains many memorable analyses of, for example, the master / slave dialectic, the unhappy consciousness, Sophocles' Antigone and the French Revolution and is one of the most important works in the Western philosophical tradition. It is, however, a difficult and challenging book and needs to be studied together with a clear and accessible secondary text. Stephen Houlgate's Reader's Guide offers guidance on: Philosophical and historical context Key themes Reading the textReception and influence Further reading.

Hegel on Being provides an authoritative treatment of Hegel's entire logic of being. Stephen Houlgate presents the Science of Logic as an important and neglected text within Hegel's oeuvre that should hold a more significant place in the history of philosophy. In the Science of Logic, Hegel set forth a distinctive conception of the most fundamental forms of being through ideas on quality, quantity and measure. Exploring the full trajectory of Hegel's logic of being from quality to measure, this two-volume work by preeminent Hegel scholar, Houlgate situates Hegel's text in relation to the work of Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, and Frege. Volume I: Quality and the Birth of Quantity in Hegel's 'Science of Logic' covers all material on the purpose and method of Hegel's dialectical logic and charts the crucial transition from the concept of quality to that of quantity, as well as providing an original account of Hegel's critique of Kant's antinomies across two chapters. Volume II: Quantity and Measure in Hegel's 'Science of Logic' continues the discussion of Hegel's logic of being and considers all aspects of quantity and measure in his logic, including his basic categories of being, writings on calculus, philosophy of mathematics, as well as a comparative study of Hegel and Frege's approach to logic. Lucidly written, with characteristic philosophical depth and analysis, Houlgate's Hegel on Being explicates one of Hegel's most complex works, providing a vital reference for a generation of Hegel scholars and a major contribution to the literature on 19th century German philosophy.

Robert Pippin's impressive new book examines Hegel's claim in his Science of Logic that "logic coincides with metaphysics". Part 1 contains chapters on logic and metaphysics, self-consciousness in the Logic, and negation, and part 2 then considers what Pippin takes to be the central topics of the three books of the Logic. Throughout, there are also important discussions of Aristotle, Kant, and Brandom. Pippin's book is well-written and immensely thought-provoking, and will be essential reading for anyone studying Hegel's Logic.In Pippin's view, Hegel follows Kant in claiming that concepts determine what counts as an...

Hegel is aware that it is only in the modern world, with the emergence of civil society, that ‘the freedom of property has been recognized here and there as a principle’. Nonetheless, he contends, property is made necessary by the very idea of freedom itself. The purpose of this essay is to explain why this is the case by tracing the logic that leads in Hegel's Philosophy of Right from freedom, through right, to property and its use. I conclude by briefly comparing Hegel and Marx on the topic of ‘value’.

Stephen Houlgate is one of the leading Hegel scholars of the English-speaking world. In this interview he explains how he became a “Hegelian” while studying in Cambridge, and he offers a fundamental profile of his account of Hegel. The interview addresses the following questions: Why does Houlgate consider Hegel’s philosophy to be the “consummate critical philosophy”? What are the main barriers to a proper access to Hegel’s thought? Why is logic as dialectical logic still indispensable for philosophical thought? And finally, what can both analytical and “continental” philosophers learn from Hegel?

It is a commonplace among certain recent philosophers that there is no such thing as theessenceof anything. Nietzsche, for example, asserts that things have no essence of their own, because they are nothing but ceaselessly changing ways of acting on, and reacting to, other things. Wittgenstein, famously, rejects the idea that there is an essence to language and thought — at least if we mean by that somea priorilogical structure underlying our everyday utterances. Finally, Richard Rorty urges that we “abandon […] the notion of ‘essence’ altogether”, along with “the notion that man's essence is to be a knower of essences”.It would be wrong to maintain that these writers understand the concept of essence in precisely the same way, or that they are all working towards the same philosophical goal. Nevertheless, they do share one aim in common: to undermine the idea that there is some deeper reality or identityunderlyingandgroundingwhat we encounter in the world, what we say and what we do. That is to say, they may all be described asanti-foundationalistthinkers — thinkers who want us to attend to the specific processes and practices of nature and humanity without understanding them to be the product of some fundamental essence or “absolute”.