Papers delivered at the joint meeting of the Hegel Society of America and the Hegel Society of Great Britain held at Merton College, Oxford, Sept. 1-4, 1981, to mark the 150th anniversary of Hegel's death. Includes bibliographical references and index.

The recent profusion of studies directed to uncovering the “Young Marx” has also provoked some renewed interest in his contemporary, Johann Caspar Schmidt, better known as Max Stirner. With a few exceptions, the most important being William Brazill’s The Young Hegelians, Stirner has been retained in his traditional role as Marx’s first critic, the harried “Sankt Max” of The German Ideology. This perspective, established firmly by Sidney Hook and continued by David McLellen, does cast light upon Marx’s development, but (...) it cannot be expected to do justice to Stirner, who is more than a mere anti-Marxist. (shrink)

The Editor of The Owl and the Treasurer of the Hegel Society of America share the same residence, i.e., the body of Lawrence S. Stepelevich. The Treasurer insists upon having a few words to say. These will be followed by a few from the Editor.

In defining the Wise Man, the Man of absolute Knowledge, as perfectly self‐conscious – i. e., omniscient, at least potentially – Hegel nevertheless had the unheard‐of audacity to assert that he realized Wisdom in his own person.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Dialectic and Gospel in the Development of Hegel’s Thinking by Stephen CritesLawrence S. StepelevichStephen Crites. Dialectic and Gospel in the Development of Hegel’s Thinking. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998. Pp. xvii + 572. Cloth, $65.00Unlike either Wittgenstein or Heidegger, or his contemporary, Schelling, there is really no “Early” or “Later” Hegel. The fundamentals of his system were, if not always fully articulated, nevertheless present from the (...) very beginning of his career. There is, in Hegel, a remarkable consistency in the development of his thought, in which the elements that comprised his final system can be detected in his earliest efforts—and it is only in this sense that one can speak of an “Early” or a “Later” Hegel. That his final expression was indeed the result of an effort, a struggle to fuse and clarify seemingly disparate elements, is the thesis of Professor Crites. In this case, the specific disparate elements that are considered are those which confronted Hegel from his earliest days as a student of theology, those elements expressed in the “Christian Drama.” Crites sets out the eight revered acts of this drama: the creation, the fall, God’s covenant with Israel, the incarnation, the death and resurrection of Christ, the Holy Spirit, the mission of the Church, and the last judgment. It is his contention that Hegel “critically engaged the claims of this mythos and the social practices associated with it.” And so, the essence of Crites’s well-written and well-researched study is to set out how this drama served as a “template that affected the way he framed other topics in the ever-widening range of his philosophical inquiry.” It is to his credit that Crites does not consider his own explication of Hegel’s preoccupation with the gospels as some sort of a “secret” key that could unlock the full meaning of Hegel’s philosophy, but nevertheless, as he rightly stresses, this preoccupation cannot be ignored—for it ultimately exercised a crucial role in the formation of that which is now taken as Hegel’s mature thought.Unlike most studies of Hegel’s development—and there are more than a few—Crites avoids taking a retrospective posture, a concluding a priori stance which would allow him to point out where and why this or that particular element was rejected or retained by Hegel, His method is historical, intent upon following Hegel’s own sometimes tortured development, until, finally in this course, we reach a point where we suddenly see that Hegel “shows clear signs of becoming what we can only call a Hegelian—or better still, he shows signs of being Hegel!”The source of this inner development begins, and is traced from, Hegel’s initial appearance as “The Model Pupil of Stuttgart” to that moment in when he stands revealed as embodying that Absolute Knowledge which concludes the Phenomenology. This path from Stuttgart to Jena, which Hegel himself might have had in mind when he spoke of the philosophical “highway of despair” is detailed by Crites with a sure hand. Every stumbling block is noted, and every new resolution ıs marked, from those first essays composed during the bitter days as Hauslehrer, through the steady advances [End Page 540] of “the Jena ‘Philosophy’ ” until the passage completes itself in the Phenomenology and its termination in the “Recollection and the Golgotha of Absolute Spirit.”More than half of Crites’ extensive study is devoted to explicating how the subject of religion is dealtwith in the course of the Phenomenology. In this survey of Hegel’s most well-known work, its fundamental leitmotif emerges clearly into focus: the identification of the “portentous power of the negative” with the Death of God. This death, which is philosophically reflected in dialectical negativity, is the central moment of the gospel drama. In this act, Absolute Spirit must itself suffer and die, for “Not only the Christian God incarnate, but the absolute spirit suffers, suffers its Golgotha and dies.” It is only from this sacrifice that new life can arise—for out of it comes “the resurrection of a new human-divine totality.” What Hegel has retained of the gospel... (shrink)

From its first appearance in 1844, Max Stirner’s major work, Der Einzige und sein Eigentum ,[1] has produced little agreement among its many interpreters. The very first of these interpreters was Friedrich Engels, who suggested that Stirner’s doctrines would be quite compatible with Benthamite utilitarianism, which he then admired, and even saw in these doctrines the potential of benefiting communism.[2] Marx, in short order, corrected this optimistic deviation, and then—with a surely repentant Engels—set forth the orthodox gospel for all future (...) generations of communists: Stirner, or “Sankt Max,” was but the speculative spokesman for the petty bourgeois, a decadent Hegelian boasting over the unrestraint of his self inflated ego.[3] Sidney Hook echoed Marx when he condemned Stirner’s work as but the “social defense mechanism of a petty bourgeois soul.”[4] Others, unsatisfied with this “petty” status, elevate him to that of the Grand Bourgeois, or Fascist.[5] Still others, taking an opposite stance, see in Stirner the most articulate defender of individual liberty.[6] In between, he has been called a nihilist, an anarchist, an existentialist, a solipsist, an anti Benthamite, an intemperate capitalist, or—as we might now suspect—an anti capitalist.[7] At least two commentators, lost in the confusion, have managed to escape the need to classify Stirner within the ongoing political and ethical categories and simply declare him to be insane.[8] In short, the list of radically diverse interpretations.. (shrink)

The Heythrop Journal, Volume 63, Issue 4, Page 817-827, July 2022.

The topic of this conference, directed toward exploring the relationships between Hegel’s Naturphilosophie and his conception of spirit, drew a total of about 300 registrants, with about 140 papers being presented. Although sixteen countries were represented, well over half of the participants came from German universities. Next in the number of participants were those from Yugoslavia and Poland. There were five North Americans listed on the printed program, but only three attended: H.S. Harris, Leo Rauch, and this writer. Among the (...) welcome and familar faces in the audience were those of Howard P. Kainz, James Wilkinson, and Shlomo Avineri. Those of us who recalled the fine paper which Professor Avineri had presented at the 1986 Zürich conference were unhappy to learn that he had chosen not to present one at this time. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Hegel’s Ladder, Volume I: The Pilgrimage of Reason by Henry Silton HarrisLawrence S. StepelevichHenry Silton Harris. Hegel’s Ladder, Volume I: The Pilgrimage of Reason. Pp. xvi+ 658. Volume II: The Odyssey of Spirit. Pp. xiii + 909. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997. Cloth, $150.00, the set.This commentary upon Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit is the concentrated result of over three decades of sustained study by one of the most (...) renowned of contemporary Hegelian scholars.The Phenomenology stands in the course of philosophic history as (depending upon one’s point of view) either an opportunity or an obstacle—an unavoidable Sphinx. Both admirers and detractors of this famous work will often assign themselves or, more readily, their students, the task of reading it as a introduction to Hegel’s philosophy. However, what occurs is not usually what is intended. After a short perusal, the reader finds that the Phenomenology itself needs an introduction. This need has not been lost on scholars, and their various introductory observations, when expanded and duly annotated, are entered into the ever-growing list of commentaries upon the Phenomenology. Needless to say, given the hundreds of studies which, either in whole or in part, are devoted to commenting upon this work, there are some grand failures, as Lowenberg’s elegantly vapid Dialogues on the Phenomenology, or Heidegger’s inconclusive “critical debate with Hegel.” There are also a few successes, such as Jean Hyppolite’s Genesis and Structure. Without doubt, Harris’s commentary is a success, and surely the most successful of all Anglophone commentaries upon the Phenomenology. [End Page 473]Hegel’s Ladder, which assumes a learned readership, embarks upon the same long and tortured path facing any reader of the Phenomenology. It is no small thing to follow where one thinks Hegel leads, as he had a somewhat perverse tendency to avoid both clarifying examples and a tendency to, as J. N. Findlay described it, “wanton obscurity.” To make matters worse, there is also the complex ordering of the text itself, a palimpsest character which has led more than a few commentators to take the work as a disorderly juvenalia, best left ignored in favor of the more lucid Encyclopaedia. And finally, there is also the extratextual matter of whether or not one “buys into” Hegel’s thought—which Harris does. In any case, a superficial reading will not do, and readers will be reminded of Hegel’s own “path of despair” when they follow the course of Harris’s 1,500-page commentary. It is not an “easy read,” nor could it be.Professor Harris is well aware of the problems confronting any commentator, but addresses them in an way which would assure the reader that the commentary is directly linked to the text, and does not simply follow “paths of one’s own, offering variations, elaborations, and applications instead of faithful analysis” (xii). To this end, a “logical commentary” is developed, one which follows a serial paragraph-by-paragraph analysis of the text. Each paragraph-analysis is referenced to the Phenomenology, which allows the reader a direct reference to Hegel’s own words. These “safe” and constrained analytic paragraphs are each followed by an extensive and free-ranging commentary. The intention of this procedure is not only to assure the reader that Harris’s commentary is textually grounded, but to convince the reader that Harris’s contention regarding the nature of the Phenomenology is correct—that it is a profoundly cohesive and extended logical argument. In short, for Harris, the Phenomenology is exactly what what Hegel claimed it to be: a science of experience. Most commentators have not accepted this claim of either the unity or the logical course of the text, but this “received view” is, for Harris, the “view that I want to challenge and, if possible, to overthrow. If I am right, an acceptably continuous chain of argument, paragraph by paragraph, ought to be discoverable in the text” (xii).In the total context of Hegel’s philosophy, Harris understands the Phenomenology to be the “necessary preamble to speculative logic.” Once this is accepted, then “we ought to know at once, by the simplest of... (shrink)

Max Stirner (1806–1856) has been named as “The Last Hegelian,” which is usually taken to mean only that he was the final major figure among the so-called “Young Hegelians.” However, an argument can be made that he was not only the last in a historical sense, but that he was also the logical heir of Hegel’s philosophy. In short, Stirner concluded what Hegel had proposed as the “task” of philosophy: to supersede “fixed and determinate thoughts.” This lead Stirner to express (...) a distinctive form of egoism in which the indefinable individual, der Einziger, could neither be comprehended under any general idea, nor would need to act in accord with any ideals whatsoever. This set him in radical opposition to all of the other Young Hegelians, such as Karl Marx, Ludwig Feuerbach, or Bruno Bauer—all of whom sought to revise Hegel’s philosophy to accord with their own humanistic ideals. (shrink)

The course of Western philosophy has been profoundly altered by the philosophy of Hegel. The first of those who set about the transforming and revisioning of the world according to Hegel's dialectical theory were called "The Young Hegelians." Today, the most recognized names among them are Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, but in their own age each of the Young Hegelians shared an equal notoriety. Each in turn, from Strauss with his reduction of the historical jesus into a Messianic myth, (...) to Stirner with his uncompromising egoism, shocked every cultural convention of their age. The aftershocks of their unrestrained criticism have forever altered the topography of our own. The Young Hegelians retrieves some of the central writings of that troubling generation. (shrink)

In August of 1978, the XVI World Congress of Philosophy convened in Düsseldorf. As the European Hegel societies were then unable to prepare a common program, it first appeared as if Hegel would be left unrepresented in this most important of philosophical gatherings. As this seemed not right, the Hegel Society of America took the initiative, at the last moment, to prepare a special section. The result proved, not unexpectedly, to be a great success. The special program featured two of (...) the finest Hegel scholars, Professors John N. Findlay and Errol E. Harris. The papers they delivered at that time, before a large and appreciative audience, were subsequently published in the Owl. (shrink)

I hope that the readers will forgive the length and personal character of these final words, but as this issue marks the end of my 19–year tenure as Editor of The Owl, I thought I could get away with it. This year also marks my retirement from university teaching. I’ve been at that for 37 years—with the last 32 years being spent at Villanova.

Since its foundation in 1969, The Hegel Society of America has sponsored an ongoing series of biennial conferences which have provided a regular forum for some of the finest displays of scholarship ever directed toward the explication and development of Hegelianism. The fourteen essays in this distinguished collection have been carefully selected from these biennial conferences. Each essay has been chosen for its profound scholarship, philosophical acumen, and literary excellence. All of the authors have attained international recognition for their studies (...) of Hegel, with almost half having been, at one time or another, elected to the Presidency of the Hegel Society. (shrink)

A neglected Young Hegelian, Cieszkowski published prolifically in economics and philosophy, but the work most influential on the Hegelians was his Prolegomena Zur Historiosophie . Rejecting the conservative interpretation of Hegel, it denied that the end of history had been reached, celebrated the will as transcending thought, and anticipated a future in which being and thinking would find their syntheses in praxis. At once a critique of Hegel and a development of Hegelianism, his work is most notable for its millennial (...) optimism. (shrink)

The ideological via dolorosa connecting Hegel and Marx has been traversed so often and so heavily that it seems destined to sink into a philosophical rut. And so, understandably, the mere title of Colletti’s book was almost enough to warn off this reviewer. A title threatening yet another heavy helping of the Young Marx and other Young Hegelians. But - and here the worn phrase “pleasantly surprised” seems irreplaceable - Colletti’s work turned out to be a quite refreshing collection of (...) arguments encouraging the rethinking of Marxism by means of a deeper appreciation of Hegel in particular and traditional philosophy in general. Now, the net results of Colletti’s efforts might be termed and “restored” Marxism, a Marxism more Hegelian, and so more reconciled with the philosophic enterprise than the politicized, exiled Marxism of Lukács or Lenin. (shrink)

This is the first volume of a projected series of translations intended to acquaint the English-language reader with a representative survey of some of the better articles and reviews appearing in recent German journals. It will also feature original articles by German authors as well as reviews and opinions by international scholars concerned with German thought.

We present a rendering of some common grammatical formalisms in terms of evolving algebras. Though our main concern in this paper is on constraint-based formalisms, we also discuss the more basic case of context-free grammars. Our aim throughout is to highlight the use of evolving algebras as a specification tool to obtain grammar formalisms.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 485 consent to suffer or die? Consent, contractual obligations, and free acts of commitment certainly have a place in a complete ethical theory. But do they have the only place? If Wolff has consigned certain of Kant's central theses to the deep, he also has managed to salvage and restore others. In The Right and the Good, for instance, Ross argues that it is logically absurd to (...) suppose that we ought to act from a sense of duty. But Wolff argues convincinglythat "what Kant actually says is that our acts have moral worth only insofar as they are done from a certain motive (namely, respect for the law). Their rightness is quite independent of their motive. We have, according to Kant, an obligation to do what is right. We do not have an obligation to perform morally meritorious acts" (p. 81). Wolff also manages to shed light on Kant's analysis of rational agency and the nature of will. He enables us to see more clearly than Kant himself does that "will" does not name a faculty but rather has a home in such phrases as "to have a will" which, in turn, "simply means to be capable of being moved by reason rather than by natural causes.... To be free is simply to be moved by reason" (p. 216). Despite its flaws as a commentary, The Autonomy of Reason contributes significantly to our understanding of Kant and the problems he addresses. Wolff's critique is especially valuable because it attempts to relate Kant's ethics to his metaphysics and epistemology in more than a superficial manner. If it does not always succeed, it never ceases to be provocative, imaginative, and well-argued. The Autonomy of Reason offers us a flesh opportunity not only to grapple with the central problems of Kantian ethics but to face the central issues of contemporary ethics as well. HANS OBERDIEK Swarthmore College Philosophic als System bei Fichte Schelling und Hegel. By Adolf Schurr. (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Friedrich Frommann, 1974, Pp. 192. DM 58) Fichte and Schelling often seem to have existed merely to serve as a bridge between the genius of Kant and Hegel. Whether or not they deserve better can here be left unanswered, but in any case Schurr's study has supported this common conception. It begins with a "Kantian" Fichte, passes through a confused Schelling, and ends with a young and confident Hegel. The particular topic developed by Schurr is the attempts made by Fichte and Schelling to forge a unitary system from the brilliant yet fundamentally unresolved conceptions of the Kantian legacy. The study was initiallyprepared as Schurr's Habilitationschrift at Regensburg University, and it evidences all of the virtues and vices of these advanced forms of doctoral dissertations: it is orderly and firmly documented, virtues that when pressed pass into the vices of a deadening style and an uninspired recital of textual references. Perhaps the best single term encompassing these virtues and vices is "conscientiousness." The study should arouse neither speculative enthusiasm nor scholarly disdain, being principally a direct and uncomplicated exposition of some central principles found in the philosophy of Fichte, the thought of young Schelling, and a single text of Hegel. It covers the brief historical period from Fichte's review of Schulze's Aenesidemus in 1794 to the appearance of Hegel's 1801 study Differenz des Fichteschen und Sehellingsehen Systems der Philosophic. The work, then, is naturally divided into three chapters of uneven length. Were the reader to rely upon pagination alone to determine importance, Fichte leads by far, and Hegel is the least, being granted only nineteen pages. Insofar as each philosopher is confined to his chapter, the length allowed seems more than usually significant. In this regard, as the final chapter on Hegel can hardly be said to touch directly upon Hegel's own conception of a system, the title of Schurr's work could be misleading to anyone more closely interested in Hegel. 486 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY The work lacks both a general introduction and a conclusion, not only as separate sections but in any form whatsoever. Certainly the reader is prepared, for whatever unspoken necessity, to surrender such amenities... (shrink)

Knowing that this work developed out of a doctoral dissertation presented to the history department at Harvard in 1973, no reader should then be surprised to find Hegelianism treated principally as a sociohistorical epiphenomenon, and taken more as a creation of the Zeitgeist than as a logical expression of Hegel's philosophy. Indeed, as the title of the first chapter reveals, Toews will establish a hermeneutic somewhere between Freud and Marx. But, in any case, the study will eschew any overt philosophical (...) viewpoint, and there will be no "judgment of Hegelian thought according to allegedly objective criteria of rational coherence and empirical verifiability". (shrink)

There are two major exegetical problems facing the student of Hegel: the precise formal role to be played by the 1807 Phenomenology of Mind within the total system, and the aging content of the second part of the Encyclopaedia, the Philosophy of Nature. There is no doubt as to the role of the Naturphilosophie, it is the exposition of the Absolute Idea in the moment of its self-diremption [[sic]]. But in setting forth the course of this natural moment, Hegel was (...) compelled to rely upon the terminology and data provided by the empirical sciences of the early nineteenth century. This necessary reliance upon what was, in Hegel's day, the "state of the art," has left his present-day followers with the particularly difficult task of not only discerning what Hegel said and meant, but of determining what--in the face of the steady advance of contemporary physical science--yet retains its factual value within that system. This sort of exegesis requires a double expertise, a knowledge of Hegelianism and modern physics. There is, in addition, a danger. The inquisitive Hegelian who would follow Hegel's own dictum regarding the fundamental identity of form and content might well be led to the slippery conclusion that a revision in the empirical content of the Naturphilosophie would necessitate a transformation of the system itself. (shrink)

This brief introduction to Hegel’s system is intended to lead the reader to “an immediate gestalt of the whole system, for the elements of the system only make sense in the context of its totality”. But immediately the focus expands beyond the system to encompass its methodology, and so the question to be answered is, “How are we to grasp the sweep of the dialectic and the system?” To this end, the author selects what he considers to be a readily (...) available paradigm, or “microcosm” which can serve as “the first rung of the ‘ladder’ into the system,” and this “critical portion or moment of the dialectic” is taken to be the “dialectic of the finite and infinite.”. (shrink)

One of the main difficulties facing the scholarly exegetist in regard to Hegel is that Hegel was in the habit, so appropriate to the philosopher and so frustrating to the exegetist, of continually and more or less subtly revising his thought and writings. In most cases, the scholarly damage inflicted upon his work by this philosophical "bad habit" is easily contained within academic groves, as only academicians in the main are concerned with explicating such topics as his logic or his (...) aesthetic theory. But the case is different when Hegel's social and political philosophy, his Rechtsphilosophie, is brought onto the scene, for there can be little question but that his work in this area shares, along with Hobbes's Leviathan and Rousseau's Du Contrat Social, a constant and pervasive influence upon the actual course and conduct of political praxis and moral history. In this case, the exact presentation of Hegel's theory in the face of his own philosophical development becomes a more pressing and practical matter. (shrink)

For half a century, Ernest Fortin's scholarship has charmed and educated theologians and philosophers with its intellectual search for the best way to live. Written by friends, colleagues, and students of Fortin, this book pays tribute to a remarkable thinker in a series of essays that bear eloquent testimony to Fortin's influence and his legacy. A formidable commentator on Catholic philosophical and political thought, Ernest Fortin inspired others with his restless inquiries beyond the boundaries of conventional scholarship. With essays on (...) subjects ranging across philosophy, political science, literature, and theology Gladly to Learn and Gladly to Teach reflects the astonishing depth and breadth of Fortin's contribution to contemporary thought. (shrink)