A Companion to Hegel

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

Notes on Contributors ix

Chronology of Hegel’s Life and Work xv

G.W.F. Hegel: An Introduction to His Life and Thought 1
Stephen Houlgate

Part I Early Writings 21

1 Religion, Love, and Law: Hegel’s Early Metaphysics of Morals 23
Katerina Deligiorgi

Part II Phenomenology of Spirit 45

2 The Project of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit 47
John Russon

3 Self-Consciousness, Anti-Cartesianism, and Cognitive Semantics in Hegel’s 1807 Phenomenology 68
Kenneth R. Westphal

4 Spirit as the “Unconditioned” 91
Terry Pinkard

Part III Logic 109

5 Thinking Being: Method in Hegel’s Logic of Being 111
Angelica Nuzzo

6 Essence, Refl exion, and Immediacy in Hegel’s Science of Logic 139
Stephen Houlgate

7 Conceiving 159
John W. Burbidge

Part IV Philosophy of Nature 175

8 Hegel and the Sciences 177
Thomas Posch

9 The Transition to Organics: Hegel’s Idea of Life 203
Cinzia Ferrini

Part V Philosophy of Subjective Spirit 225

10 Hegel’s Solution to the Mind-Body Problem 227
Richard Dien Winfield

11 Hegel’s Philosophy of Language: The Unwritten Volume 243
Jere O’Neill Surber

Part VI Philosophy of Right 263

12 Hegel on the Empty Formalism of Kant’s Categorical Imperative 265
Sally Sedgwick

13 The Idea of a Hegelian ‘Science’ of Society 281
Frederick Neuhouser

14 Hegel’s Political Philosophy 297
Allen W. Wood

Part VII Philosophy of History 313

15 “The Ruling Categories of the World”: The Trinity in Hegel’s Philosophy of History and The Rise and Fall of Peoples 315
Robert Bernasconi

16 Hegel and Ranke: A Re-examination 332
Frederick C. Beiser

Part VIII Aesthetics 351

17 Hegel and the “Historical Deduction” of the Concept of Art 353
Allen Speight

18 Soundings: Hegel on Music 369
John Sallis

Part IX Philosophy of Religion 385

19 Love, Recognition, Spirit: Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion 387
Robert R. Williams

20 Hegel’s Proofs of the Existence of God 414
Peter C. Hodgson

Part X History of Philosophy 431

21 Hegel’s Aristotle: Philosophy and Its Time 433
Alfredo Ferrarin

22 From Kant’s Highest Good to Hegel’s Absolute Knowing 452
Michael Baur

Part XI Hegel and Post-Hegelian Thought 475

23 Hegel and Marx 477
Andrew Chitty

24 Kierkegaard and Hegel on Faith and Knowledge 501
Jon Stewart

25 Thinking of Nothing: Heidegger’s Criticism of Hegel’s Conception of Negativity 519
Daniel O. Dahlstrom

26 Adorno’s Reconception of the Dialectic 537
Brian O’Connor

27 Hegel and Pragmatism 556
Robert Stern

28 The Analytic Neo-Hegelianism of John McDowell and Robert Brandom 576
Paul Redding

29 Différance as Negativity: The Hegelian Remains of Derrida’s Philosophy 594
Karin de Boer

30 You Be My Body for Me: Body, Shape, and Plasticity in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit 611
Catherine Malabou and Judith Butler

Index 641

“Comprising well written essays by internationally acclaimed Hegel scholars (although many are from North America), this volume makes an excellent and accessible reference both to scholars and students of Hegel and Hegelianism.” (Religious Studies Review, 1 September 2012)

"This superb study brings together Hegel scholars who have penned uniformly excellent articles on all aspects of Hegel's career ... Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through researchers/faculty." (Choice, 1 November 2011)

Stephen Houlgate is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick. He is the author of Hegel, Nietzsche and the Criticism of Metaphysics (1986), An Introduction to Hegel: Freedom, Truth and History (1991, 2005) and The Opening of Hegel’s Logic: From Being to Infinity (2006), and his edited volumes include Hegel and the Philosophy of Nature (1998), The Hegel Reader (1998), and G.W.F. Hegel: Outlines of the Philosophy of Right (2008). He has served as Vice President and President of the Hegel Society of America and is a former editor of the Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain.

Michael Baur is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University in New York City, and Adjunct Professor of Law at Fordham Law School. He is Secretary of the Hegel Society of America and has published widely on phenomenology, critical theory, philosophy of law, and nineteenth-century continental philosophy, and on thinkers including Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Aristotle, and Aquinas.

G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) is one of the most important and sophisticated modern thinkers, but only now are his substantial contributions to metaphysics, epistemology, political philosophy, aesthetics, philosophy of history, and philosophy of religion gaining the recognition they deserve.

This companion is the first collection of essays to do justice to the extraordinary richness and diversity of Hegel's philosophy. Specially commissioned essays from international scholars cover all the main areas of Hegel's mature thought, as well as his influence on significant thinkers, such as Heidegger, Adorno, Derrida, and McDowell. More than just an overview of Hegel's work, the essays in this volume draw on the most up-to-date research to offer new perspectives on his thought.

With insights for students and specialists alike, A Companion to Hegel provides a valuable understanding of the work of a subtle and challenging philosopher of the natural and the human world.

"Hegel is now recognized once again as having not only historical but contemporary importance. This collection of high-quality essays by some of the world's finest Hegel scholars provides a rich variety of perspectives from which to survey his philosophy and its impact."
—Paul Franks, University of Toronto

"Apart from his two central works – the Phenomenology of Spirit and the Science of Logic – Hegel's philosophy covers a vast range: political philosophy; aesthetics; the philosophy of history; and the philosophy of religion. Apart from these, any student of Hegel will want to understand his relation Marx, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Adorno, Derrida, pragmatism, contemporary analytic philosophy, and his conception of embodiment. The thirty essays in Houlgate and Baur's Companion provide a veritable feast, covering all these topics and more. Every serious student of Hegel will want this volume on their bookshelf. "
—J.M. Bernstein, New School for Social Research