German idealism has attempted to think an absolute ground to self-conscious I-hood. As a result it has been theologically disqualified as pantheistic or even atheistic since many maintain that such a ground cannot be reconciled with a personal God. In the early writings of Friedrich Schelling (1775-1854), it is clear that he and his contemporaries were aware of this difficulty. His Tubinger fellow student, Friedrich Holderlin (1770-1843), was convinced of the ultimate inadequacy of any philosophical system to grasp the unitary ground of all that is and turned to poetry. The metaphysical...

In his attempt to give an answer to the question of what constitutes real knowledge, Kant steers a middle course between empiricism and rationalism. True knowledge refers to a given empirical reality, but true knowledge has to be understood as necessary as well, and so consequently, must be a priori. Both demands can only be reconciled if synthetic a priori judgments are possible. To ground this possibility, Kant develops his transcendental logic. In Frege's program of providing a logicistic basis for true knowledge the same problem is at issue: his logicist solution places the...

Hegel's Science of Logic is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest works of European philosophy. However, its contribution to arguably the most important philosophical problem, Pyrrhonian scepticism, has never been examined in any detail. Pyrrhonian Scepticism and Hegel's Theory of Judgement fills a great lacuna in Hegel scholarship by convincingly proving that the dialectic of the judgement in Hegel's Science of Logic successfully refutes this kind of scepticism. Although Ioannis Trisokkas has written the book primarily for those students of philosophy who already have an...

No topic ever disquieted Hegel more than that of Religion. It haunted him, and he wrestled with it all during his life: from his brilliant youthful writings on spirit of Judaism and Christianity, up until the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion of 1831. Of the 'Determinate Religions', Hegel wrote many profound and exhilarating philosophical interpretations. This volume brings together a collection of critical essays that discuss Hegel's relation to each of these historical Religions, including the Islam, and (of course) the 'revealed' religion of Christianity (Catholicism and...

In Modern Individuality in Hegel's Practical Philosophy, Erzsebet Rozsa aims to reconstruct Hegel's theory of individuality in the light of his idea of modernity. Modern individuality is one of the central topics of Hegel's practical philosophy, discussed systematically in the forms of subjectivity in subjective, objective, and practical spirit. Hegel interpreted modern existence and lifeworld in the context of law, politics, economy, and private life. "Infinite subjective freedom" is the historical principle of the "modern age," as well as the basic determination of modern individual...

There has been an intensive debate in recent years, particularly in political philosophy, on how the concept of recognition ( Anerkennung) can bring insight into understanding social and political relationships and answering ethical questions. Proponents of this philosophy seek to apply German Idealism, especially Hegel, to the arguments of recognition in order to solve contemporary problems. However, does the present debate incorporate sufficiently the requirements of the idealist philosophy which it pretends to inherit and update? As a new paradigm for philosophy claiming to actualize...

Kant's theory of practical freedom represents a masterpiece of the philosophical inquiry into self-constitution, self-government, and volitional self-determination. It includes a sophisticated theory of action intrinsically determined by a specific concept of control over the processes that determine the contents of volition as well as those which facilitate the realization of ends. The most distinctive feature of this theory of action consists of the specific function of autonomously generated principles which, according to Kant, facilitate control over the process of volitional...

"The determinate negation" has by Robert Brandom been called Hegel's most fundamental conceptual tool. In this book, Terje Sparby agrees about the importance of the term, but rejects Brandom's interpretation of it. Hegel's actual use of the term may at first seem to be inconsistent, something that is reflected in the scholarship. However, on closer inspection, three forms of determinate negations can be discerned in Hegel's texts: A nothing that is something, a moment of transformation through loss (like the Phoenix rising from the ashes), and a unity of opposites....

Marx's analysis of the commodity results in his conception of Capital as substance in the form of alienation. While Hegel claims that substance can be understood as the realization of freedom, Marx shows this freedom to be alienated labor: abstract labor, which Marx identifies as the capitalist conception of value. The book clarifies why Marx's so-called materialist criticism of Hegel can be conceived of as an immanent criticism of Hegel: Marx's criticism explicates that the realization of freedom in the Philosophy of Right contradicts Hegel's basic point of departure. The adequate...

In The Marriage of Aesthetics and Ethics, fifteen authors reflect on the nature of friendship and love and on the complex relation between art and morality. Karl Verstrynge, Vincent Caudron, Anne Christine Habbard, and Walter Jaeschke draw from authors from Aristotle to Derrida, Montaigne to Kierkegaard, and Hegel to Blanchot to discuss friendship and love. Andreas Arndt, Paul Cobben, Paul Cruysberghs, Gerbert Faure, Simon Truwant, and Margherita Tonon focus on the connection between aesthetics and ethics in the works of Kant, Schiller, Hegel, Schleiermacher, Kierkegaard, Cassirer, and...