This is an impressive book. It provides an informative introduction to Hegel’s system and to the history of Hegelianism from its very beginning to most recent times with a particular eye on Britain and North America. It is also a thoroughly original work, and I may stress this aspect, given that today too many colleagues apparently cannot resist the temptation to collect their previously published essays and publish them in volumes with a doubtful internal unit y. Acting in opposition to such a sign of academic decadence, Ferrini subjected the manuscript of a course she gave in Naples (at the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofi ci in the Spring Term of 1999) to a line-by-line revision, with the eventual aim of publishing it in the present form. Again, a proof of Ferrini’s virtuosity may be found in the fact that hers is exactly the procedure that Edmund Husserl adopted for the publication of his Einführung in die Philosophie (which he eventually, however, did not consider worthy of publication) and of his Formale und transzendentale Logik (which he did consider worthy of publication). In the Preface (pp. 7–17), Ferrini makes her start from the question, “Why Hegel? Why Now?” in the self-proclaimed epoch of difference and postmodernism that was proposed by the editors of the Winter 2000 special issue of Dialogue. She considers Robert Pippin’s remark that at the end of the century, scholars fi nd themselves on a dividing line between contemporary post-analytic philosophy and Heideggerian hermeneutics. The crucial point is Hegel’s notion of the meaning and the intelligibilit y of experience that spirit has of itself, as the result of human practices guided by norms or anchored by rules and that tie together the members of a communit y.1 On the basis of William Maker’s suggestions about “Rethinking Hegel,”2 Ferrini discusses the following: fi rst, the appreciation (by Richard Rort y, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Jürgen Habermas) of Hegel’s critique of all subject-based epistemologies that advance foundational claims; second, the recognition (by Gadamer, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Rort y) of the role played by the history of philosophy in the understanding of philosophy; third, the re-proposal of aspects of Hegel’s holism by MacIntyre, Habermas, Rort y, and Paul K. Feyerabend; and fi nally, Paul Redding’s interpretation of Hegel as a postmodernist thinker with whom one can discuss post-Wittgensteinian problems such as the ones centered around the ties between intellect, language, and social praxis (pp. 14–15).3 170 The Owl of Minerva 38:1–2 (2006–07) Ferrini opens chapter 1 (pp. 23–68) with an analysis of the fi rst encyclopedia article on Hegel (which appeared in 1824 and was presumably authored by J. A. Wendt), a document whose importance had been pointed out by Henry S. Harris in his Hegel’s Ladder.4 For her part, Ferrini points out that the author (and Hegel himself, who participated in its writing) strongly underlines Hegel’s double competence as a philosopher with a serious background in natural and exact sciences, linking this characteristic feature to his constant effort to distance himself from the formalism of Schelling’s (presupposed) notion of the absolute identit y of being and thought. In this way, Ferrini aims at integrating methodologically Hegel’s phenomenological recognition of the absolute identit y in the path of science (through the concept itself) with his philosophy of nature, against the background of his notion of the whole of science as logical and dialectical exposition of the Idea (pp. 25–27). Referring also to Terry Pinkard’s reconstruction of Hegel’s Berlin years,5 and to Toews’ reconstruction of Hegelianism in the fi rst decade after Hegel’s death, Ferrini delves into the origins of Hegel’s own group of disciples who promoted the fi rst edition of his works. While focusing on the philosophy of nature, she provides a careful analysis of Karl Ludwig Michelet’s Preface to the 1841 edition of Hegel’s Naturphilosophie. From the standpoint of the history of the interpretations, she argues that, contrary to Hegel’s effort to distance himself from Schelling, Michelet, by emphasizing their harmony in the Jena period, gave rise to an endless stream of confusion and ambiguit y in the appreciation of Hegel’s relationship between spirit and nature (pp. 38–50). In particular, she concentrates on the issue of how to treat fi nite things by means of fi nite predicates, i.e. of how the objects of the natural sciences receive intellectual determinations that are posited from the exterior and are fi xed, i.e. that cannot wholly partake of the dialectical development (p. 61). Chapter 2 (pp. 71–115) is dedicated to the cluster of problems related to the “form of consciousness” as exposed by Hegel in section 439, the very last, of the Encyclopedia version of the “Phenomenology.” Ferrini critiques positions such as those of M. H. Miller, Jr., and Robert Stern6 based on an English rendering of Hegel’s Erfahren—according to which sense-certaint y “grasps” and “fi nds” in experience both its apparent realit y and its one-sideness, thus “learning” from it. Within this framework she refers to Kenneth Westphal’s recent interpretation of sense-certaint y’s dialectic against the background of the tragically cathartic path of Creon.7 She maintains, however, that natural consciousness is not endowed with a self-critical awareness and that Book Reviews 171 sense-certaint y is unable either to grasp or to fi nd anything of what actually happens within its range of experience (p. 85). Therefore, she argues, it does not know any progress within itself and is not capable of further accepting what it excludes. For Ferrini, then, the phenomenological experience should not be taken as a liberation of natural consciousness itself. Rather, the phenomenological experience marks our liberation from natural consciousness through the work of the concept. What is at the reach of sense-certaint y is rather that the object appears as something external, extraneous, and rough. In fact, sense-certaint y is always mere phenomenon (p. 97), and always restarts its own movement afresh (p. 90). Chapter 3 (pp. 119–59) considers the development of Hegel’s idea and provides an analysis of the celebrated three syllogisms at the end of the Encyclopedia. Ferrini gives special attention to the transition from logic to the philosophy of nature. She notes that Übergang has two different senses. In fact, on the one side, Hegel states that within nature there can be no passage, because absolute freedom excludes any movement of the idea. On the other side, however, Hegel mentions several examples of transitions that do not involve a relation between absolute idea and nature—e.g. the transition from the subjective notion in its totalit y to Objectivit y, as well as the transition from the subjective fi nalit y of Teleology to the Life of the Idea (p. 155–56). Chapter 4 (pp. 163–98) takes up the charge made against Hegel, fi rst by Trendelenburg, Feuerbach, Marx, and Helmholtz, and then in more recent years by Wolfgang Neuser and Alan White8 according to which Hegel allegedly left the concrete diversit y of nature “outside” by reducing it to the Self (p. 163). Ferrini remarks that Hegel’s Entlassung has, again, a twofold sense. There is the sense of a necessary Entlassung, which is the most common sense. There is also, however, the sense of a free Entlassung. This latter sense is much less common, but it is nonetheless important, for it refers to a movement that acknowledges a right to Verschiedenheit, a right to distinction and alterit y insofar as it agrees with the realistic approach of common experience, i.e., it agrees with what consciousness knows of its internal and external worlds (p. 177). The Appendix (pp. 201–34) addresses methodological issues in the research on Hegel by identifying paradigmatic obstacles to inquiries. Ferrini examines a series of crucial cases, all related to the comparison established by Hegel in various stages of his development between Kepler’s and Newton’s proofs of the laws of celestial mechanics. Mauro Nasti De Vincentis’s 172 The Owl of Minerva 38:1–2 (2006–07) Afterword (pp. 237–54) also returns to the vexed question of Hegel’s Newtonianism. Ferrini’s important work embraces a threefold perspective. First, it accounts for the rationalit y of the author, i.e. it accounts for consistency and coherence of Hegel’s texts. Ferrini goes beyond the texts on which she comments and considers other writings by Hegel or by the interpreters, whenever this helps the understanding of the former. The passages related to Hegel’s philosophy of nature require an especially careful critical assessment, for the kind of mathematical sophistication present in Hegel’s notations is representative of then-contemporary physics in its proper form. Second, Ferrini accounts for all of Hegel’s sources, from the textbooks he adopted for his courses to the works he read for his own research. Without doubt, Hegel belongs to the group of those mathematical laypeople who were able to master the details of, say, Newton’s determinations of elliptic, parabolic, and hyperbolic orbits, Leibniz’s integration of mathematical formulas, or Euler’s mathematic-mechanical analyses of the movements of solid or fl uid bodies. In sum, Hegel was neither a Newtonian, nor a Leibnizian, nor an Eulerian. He rather found his stance according to his systematical interests. The good thing, though, is that, notwithstanding the (at times) Byzantine differences among the renditions with which he was acquainted, Hegel was able to maintain a consistent and coherent stance. This brings up the third perspective of Ferrini’s work, namely, Hegel’s intention to reply to his immediate contemporaries. To name just one example, it is true that Hegel wrote very little on the logics of the particular use of the understanding. If, however, one considers his work from the point of view of the particularit y of its objects, it is easy to see that each argument either contains or can itself be seen as a contribution to a “particular logic” (as opposed to “general,” formal logic). Referring cognition to the subject’s own world is obviously epistemic in origin. For instance, the introduction of “Determination” in Book 1, chapter 1, Section A, Sub-section (a) of the Lehre vom Seyn is epistemic, in a context that presupposes the Aristotelian haplos, simpliciter, and ek’ prostheseos, secundum quid distinction of the Posterior Analytics I, 38 (49a12–49b33). The secundum quid, the modus considerandi, results from the positing of the knowing subject. This, I think, is an interesting perspective, and one is thankful to Ferrini’s book for its suggestiveness.
Cinzia Ferrini, Dai primi hegeliani a Hegel (Napoli: Città del Sole, 1993)
POZZO, Riccardo
2007-01-01
Abstract
This is an impressive book. It provides an informative introduction to Hegel’s system and to the history of Hegelianism from its very beginning to most recent times with a particular eye on Britain and North America. It is also a thoroughly original work, and I may stress this aspect, given that today too many colleagues apparently cannot resist the temptation to collect their previously published essays and publish them in volumes with a doubtful internal unit y. Acting in opposition to such a sign of academic decadence, Ferrini subjected the manuscript of a course she gave in Naples (at the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofi ci in the Spring Term of 1999) to a line-by-line revision, with the eventual aim of publishing it in the present form. Again, a proof of Ferrini’s virtuosity may be found in the fact that hers is exactly the procedure that Edmund Husserl adopted for the publication of his Einführung in die Philosophie (which he eventually, however, did not consider worthy of publication) and of his Formale und transzendentale Logik (which he did consider worthy of publication). In the Preface (pp. 7–17), Ferrini makes her start from the question, “Why Hegel? Why Now?” in the self-proclaimed epoch of difference and postmodernism that was proposed by the editors of the Winter 2000 special issue of Dialogue. She considers Robert Pippin’s remark that at the end of the century, scholars fi nd themselves on a dividing line between contemporary post-analytic philosophy and Heideggerian hermeneutics. The crucial point is Hegel’s notion of the meaning and the intelligibilit y of experience that spirit has of itself, as the result of human practices guided by norms or anchored by rules and that tie together the members of a communit y.1 On the basis of William Maker’s suggestions about “Rethinking Hegel,”2 Ferrini discusses the following: fi rst, the appreciation (by Richard Rort y, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Jürgen Habermas) of Hegel’s critique of all subject-based epistemologies that advance foundational claims; second, the recognition (by Gadamer, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Rort y) of the role played by the history of philosophy in the understanding of philosophy; third, the re-proposal of aspects of Hegel’s holism by MacIntyre, Habermas, Rort y, and Paul K. Feyerabend; and fi nally, Paul Redding’s interpretation of Hegel as a postmodernist thinker with whom one can discuss post-Wittgensteinian problems such as the ones centered around the ties between intellect, language, and social praxis (pp. 14–15).3 170 The Owl of Minerva 38:1–2 (2006–07) Ferrini opens chapter 1 (pp. 23–68) with an analysis of the fi rst encyclopedia article on Hegel (which appeared in 1824 and was presumably authored by J. A. Wendt), a document whose importance had been pointed out by Henry S. Harris in his Hegel’s Ladder.4 For her part, Ferrini points out that the author (and Hegel himself, who participated in its writing) strongly underlines Hegel’s double competence as a philosopher with a serious background in natural and exact sciences, linking this characteristic feature to his constant effort to distance himself from the formalism of Schelling’s (presupposed) notion of the absolute identit y of being and thought. In this way, Ferrini aims at integrating methodologically Hegel’s phenomenological recognition of the absolute identit y in the path of science (through the concept itself) with his philosophy of nature, against the background of his notion of the whole of science as logical and dialectical exposition of the Idea (pp. 25–27). Referring also to Terry Pinkard’s reconstruction of Hegel’s Berlin years,5 and to Toews’ reconstruction of Hegelianism in the fi rst decade after Hegel’s death, Ferrini delves into the origins of Hegel’s own group of disciples who promoted the fi rst edition of his works. While focusing on the philosophy of nature, she provides a careful analysis of Karl Ludwig Michelet’s Preface to the 1841 edition of Hegel’s Naturphilosophie. From the standpoint of the history of the interpretations, she argues that, contrary to Hegel’s effort to distance himself from Schelling, Michelet, by emphasizing their harmony in the Jena period, gave rise to an endless stream of confusion and ambiguit y in the appreciation of Hegel’s relationship between spirit and nature (pp. 38–50). In particular, she concentrates on the issue of how to treat fi nite things by means of fi nite predicates, i.e. of how the objects of the natural sciences receive intellectual determinations that are posited from the exterior and are fi xed, i.e. that cannot wholly partake of the dialectical development (p. 61). Chapter 2 (pp. 71–115) is dedicated to the cluster of problems related to the “form of consciousness” as exposed by Hegel in section 439, the very last, of the Encyclopedia version of the “Phenomenology.” Ferrini critiques positions such as those of M. H. Miller, Jr., and Robert Stern6 based on an English rendering of Hegel’s Erfahren—according to which sense-certaint y “grasps” and “fi nds” in experience both its apparent realit y and its one-sideness, thus “learning” from it. Within this framework she refers to Kenneth Westphal’s recent interpretation of sense-certaint y’s dialectic against the background of the tragically cathartic path of Creon.7 She maintains, however, that natural consciousness is not endowed with a self-critical awareness and that Book Reviews 171 sense-certaint y is unable either to grasp or to fi nd anything of what actually happens within its range of experience (p. 85). Therefore, she argues, it does not know any progress within itself and is not capable of further accepting what it excludes. For Ferrini, then, the phenomenological experience should not be taken as a liberation of natural consciousness itself. Rather, the phenomenological experience marks our liberation from natural consciousness through the work of the concept. What is at the reach of sense-certaint y is rather that the object appears as something external, extraneous, and rough. In fact, sense-certaint y is always mere phenomenon (p. 97), and always restarts its own movement afresh (p. 90). Chapter 3 (pp. 119–59) considers the development of Hegel’s idea and provides an analysis of the celebrated three syllogisms at the end of the Encyclopedia. Ferrini gives special attention to the transition from logic to the philosophy of nature. She notes that Übergang has two different senses. In fact, on the one side, Hegel states that within nature there can be no passage, because absolute freedom excludes any movement of the idea. On the other side, however, Hegel mentions several examples of transitions that do not involve a relation between absolute idea and nature—e.g. the transition from the subjective notion in its totalit y to Objectivit y, as well as the transition from the subjective fi nalit y of Teleology to the Life of the Idea (p. 155–56). Chapter 4 (pp. 163–98) takes up the charge made against Hegel, fi rst by Trendelenburg, Feuerbach, Marx, and Helmholtz, and then in more recent years by Wolfgang Neuser and Alan White8 according to which Hegel allegedly left the concrete diversit y of nature “outside” by reducing it to the Self (p. 163). Ferrini remarks that Hegel’s Entlassung has, again, a twofold sense. There is the sense of a necessary Entlassung, which is the most common sense. There is also, however, the sense of a free Entlassung. This latter sense is much less common, but it is nonetheless important, for it refers to a movement that acknowledges a right to Verschiedenheit, a right to distinction and alterit y insofar as it agrees with the realistic approach of common experience, i.e., it agrees with what consciousness knows of its internal and external worlds (p. 177). The Appendix (pp. 201–34) addresses methodological issues in the research on Hegel by identifying paradigmatic obstacles to inquiries. Ferrini examines a series of crucial cases, all related to the comparison established by Hegel in various stages of his development between Kepler’s and Newton’s proofs of the laws of celestial mechanics. Mauro Nasti De Vincentis’s 172 The Owl of Minerva 38:1–2 (2006–07) Afterword (pp. 237–54) also returns to the vexed question of Hegel’s Newtonianism. Ferrini’s important work embraces a threefold perspective. First, it accounts for the rationalit y of the author, i.e. it accounts for consistency and coherence of Hegel’s texts. Ferrini goes beyond the texts on which she comments and considers other writings by Hegel or by the interpreters, whenever this helps the understanding of the former. The passages related to Hegel’s philosophy of nature require an especially careful critical assessment, for the kind of mathematical sophistication present in Hegel’s notations is representative of then-contemporary physics in its proper form. Second, Ferrini accounts for all of Hegel’s sources, from the textbooks he adopted for his courses to the works he read for his own research. Without doubt, Hegel belongs to the group of those mathematical laypeople who were able to master the details of, say, Newton’s determinations of elliptic, parabolic, and hyperbolic orbits, Leibniz’s integration of mathematical formulas, or Euler’s mathematic-mechanical analyses of the movements of solid or fl uid bodies. In sum, Hegel was neither a Newtonian, nor a Leibnizian, nor an Eulerian. He rather found his stance according to his systematical interests. The good thing, though, is that, notwithstanding the (at times) Byzantine differences among the renditions with which he was acquainted, Hegel was able to maintain a consistent and coherent stance. This brings up the third perspective of Ferrini’s work, namely, Hegel’s intention to reply to his immediate contemporaries. To name just one example, it is true that Hegel wrote very little on the logics of the particular use of the understanding. If, however, one considers his work from the point of view of the particularit y of its objects, it is easy to see that each argument either contains or can itself be seen as a contribution to a “particular logic” (as opposed to “general,” formal logic). Referring cognition to the subject’s own world is obviously epistemic in origin. For instance, the introduction of “Determination” in Book 1, chapter 1, Section A, Sub-section (a) of the Lehre vom Seyn is epistemic, in a context that presupposes the Aristotelian haplos, simpliciter, and ek’ prostheseos, secundum quid distinction of the Posterior Analytics I, 38 (49a12–49b33). The secundum quid, the modus considerandi, results from the positing of the knowing subject. This, I think, is an interesting perspective, and one is thankful to Ferrini’s book for its suggestiveness.
I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
