Abstract

Explanation of and commentary on Hegel’s Logic in English is rare and much needed. The Logic has been given far less attention than the Phenomenology, and such treatment as it has had from such writers as Stace, Findlay, Kaufmann, and Taylor has not always been adequate and has at times been misguided. The expectant reader will, therefore, approach Professor Burbidge’s book with high hopes. These, however, are at once mitigated by his confession that he gives only fragments of a commentary, and, further, his approach is professedly and intentionally subjective and so one-sided. Nevertheless, a fresh look at the Logic is much to be welcomed if it can offer new insights and make Hegel more understandable and more acceptable. But, alas, this book hardly fulfills even the promise of its title. Fragmentary it certainly is, and not only in the sense intended by the author. The commentary is limited to the first major triad of each of the three main divisions of the Logic, omitting the second and the third triads in each case. This is singularly unfortunate because the very nature of the dialectic is such that the outcome always provides the explanatory principle of what precedes: the end is the explanation of the process, as well as the complete and adequate presentation of the prior, partial, and relatively obscure concepts which constitute its moments. Commentary restricted to the first portion of any section, therefore, is liable to miss the real significance of the whole doctrine.