Abstract

In the "Preface" to this English translation of a book first published in German a decade ago, the author notes a change in recent philosophical culture bearing on the project he had undertaken in it. When he had first started working on the book there had been little if any interest in Hegel among analytic philosophers (including German speaking ones), while orthodox Hegel scholars had generally thought that there was little to be gained by utilizing analytic approaches in their attempt to clarify and evaluate Hegel's claims. Quante's project, which relates Hegel's account of action to the sorts of analyses found in the influential approaches of analytic philosophers such as Elizabeth Anscombe and Donald Davidson, must have initially seemed a rather lonely one. Now, however, things must seem considerably brighter. In the year of its original publication, 1994, there appeared works by Robert Brandom Making It Explicit ) and John McDowell Mind and World ) which seemed to be concerned with opening up, from the English speaking analytic side of the divide, the type of dialogue that Quante himself was calling for from the side of German Hegel scholarship. Given the widespread interest excited by those two books, Quante might now feel decidedly optimistic about finding a receptive audience.