The fundamental principles of modern dialectical philosophy derive from Hegel. He sums them up as follows. `Everything is inherently contradictory ... Contradiction is the root of all movement and vitality, it is only in so far as something has a contradiction within it that it moves, has an urge and activity' (Hegel 1969, 439). In Hegel's philosophy these ideas form part of an all-embracing id...

Last chapter we discussed the first two phases in Heidegger’s relationship with Hegel, the earlier critical rejection of Hegel in Being and Time and dialogical confrontation with Hegel on the problem of finitude, infinitude, and the ontological difference in the PhG. In this chapter, I turn to the third and final phase in Heidegger’s confrontation with Hegel: the “enveloping” appropriation whic...

Historians of philosophy writing in English typically construct their narratives as if the authors whom they are discussing were all taking part in a single argument -an argument that is conducted in terms of those problems that we now recognize to be relevant. This appears to leave no place for those who do not share our current assumptions regarding the nature of the issues — who lie outside ...

‘Abduction’ was the term Charles Sanders Peirce used in his later writings for a type of inference that he had earlier called ‘hypothesis’ and that is now commonly called ‘inference to the best explanation’. According to Peirce, abduction constituted, alongside induction, a distinct second form of nondemonstrative or probabilistic inference. Especially in his later work, Peirce conceived of abd...

1. right queer? T he terms of contemporary debates about marriage bear an uncanny resemblance to those outlined by G. F. W. Hegel in his Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, or Foundations of the Philosophy of Right, published in 1821.1 Unlike any other philosopher, Hegel triangulates marriage between love and contract in ways that still resonate today. As an agreement made by rational conse...

For Marx, work is the fundamental and central activity in human life and, potentially at least, a fulŽlling and liberating activity. Although this view is implicit throughout Marx’s work, there is little explicit explanation or defence of it. The fullest treatment is in the account of ‘estranged labour ’ [entfremdete Arbeit] in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts;1 but, even there, Marx ...

ion of the metaphysical concept of divine being is thus overcome, and the concrete unity of God as Spirit for Hegel, the trinitarian conception is ultimately embraced. What is thus advocated, and what emerges ultimately from this Calvary of absolute Spirit, is meant to be a deeper and purified conception of God. The result is that spiritual transcendence is no longer distinct from immanence, bu...

The Anglophone philosophical world is currently riding a swelling wave of enthusiasm for a big, dense, blockbuster of a book by the previously unknown Jena philosopher, Georg Hegel. His Phenomenology of Spirit, originally in German, now available also in English, picks up and weaves together in a surprising and wholly original way a large number of today’s most fashionable ideas. Although he ne...