Brady Bowman. Hegel and the Metaphysics of Absolute Negativity. Modern European Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Cloth. 280 p. ISBN 9781107033597. This volume is a convincing attempt at a general understanding of Hegel’s systematic philosophy. Bowman rightly assumes that the novelty of Hegel’s speculative logic is due to the fact that its main tenets were unavailable to the tradition prior to Hegel, which tenets all turn around a notion of “absolute negativity that can both explain and overcome the aporiae that arise in the philosophical application of the traditional categories and so-called laws of thought” (p. 2). Hegel introduces his own unique set of concepts: first two fundamental concepts, namely, the concept of the Concept itself and the concept of absolute negativity, second a number of operative concepts such as determination, determinate negation, sublation, thought-determinations, indifference, Conceptual movement, realization, reflection, and the Idea, which are in fact modifications of the Concept and absolute negativity. The interesting point is that diversely from Robert Pippin, Terry Pinkard, and Robert Brandom (to whom goes the immense merit of having reintroduced Hegel as a serious thinker to mainstream Anglophone philosophy) Bowman makes it explicit that Hegel is a metaphysician and that his metaphysics can be summed up in the “thesis that mind and reality as a whole are of essentially the same structure,” with the caveat that we are talking of a “metaphysics without ontology.” For Hegel’s philosophy is both “systematic critique and overcoming of traditional ontological (categorical) thought in service of an alternative, revisionary metaphysics,” to whom Hegel gives the name of “speculative science” (p. 5), whose task Bowman defines as the “task of analyzing the structure of objective reality (basically: intentionality and representational content) and explaining the possibility and the nature of the relation in which it stands to formal reality (intrinsic being), where that relation is constitutive of what is called truth” (p. 18). Looking at dictionary entries on determination and reflection from the Greeks to Spinoza one cannot fail to mention Aristotle’s description of the role played by prósthesis in Analytica posteriora Alpha 27 in the passage “from the unity, which is a substance without position, to the point, which is a unity with a position: this passage is the result of a determination” (87a34-36). But it is Spinoza’s connection of determination and reflection with negation—omnis determinatio negatio est—that attracts Bowman’s attention, because negation is an essentially relational operation, which implies that “to be determinate is to stand in a relation to other” (p. 39). Thus, every position of a new note to the list of intensions, i.e., every position of the list of properties contained by a concept implies (in accordance with the theorem of Port-Royal about the inverse proportionality of the intension and extension of a concept), that in consequence of a determination the concept is negated of some of the extensions, i.e., of some of the objects of which it used to be affirmed. In the Ethica, Spinoza introduces determination in terms of causal efficiency (a Deo determinatur, E1 P27-28), while whatever we conceive to be in the power of God (a Deo concipitur) necessarily exists (E1 P35). Bowman re-emphasizes that the formal reality of thinking also requires a difference over against its objective reality, and that difference must show up for it as a difference (p. 209), namely, “the difference that constitutes thinking and all determinateness” (p. 226). In conclusion, Bowman has made quite clearly his point that the notion of “absolute negativity, and the completely altered view of logic associated with it, has a fourfold significance in Hegel’s philosophy: “metaphysical, methodological, critical, and existential” (p. 255). It is a good start for new research. (Riccardo Pozzo, Italian National Research Council)

Review of Brady Bowman

POZZO, Riccardo
2014-01-01

Abstract

Brady Bowman. Hegel and the Metaphysics of Absolute Negativity. Modern European Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Cloth. 280 p. ISBN 9781107033597. This volume is a convincing attempt at a general understanding of Hegel’s systematic philosophy. Bowman rightly assumes that the novelty of Hegel’s speculative logic is due to the fact that its main tenets were unavailable to the tradition prior to Hegel, which tenets all turn around a notion of “absolute negativity that can both explain and overcome the aporiae that arise in the philosophical application of the traditional categories and so-called laws of thought” (p. 2). Hegel introduces his own unique set of concepts: first two fundamental concepts, namely, the concept of the Concept itself and the concept of absolute negativity, second a number of operative concepts such as determination, determinate negation, sublation, thought-determinations, indifference, Conceptual movement, realization, reflection, and the Idea, which are in fact modifications of the Concept and absolute negativity. The interesting point is that diversely from Robert Pippin, Terry Pinkard, and Robert Brandom (to whom goes the immense merit of having reintroduced Hegel as a serious thinker to mainstream Anglophone philosophy) Bowman makes it explicit that Hegel is a metaphysician and that his metaphysics can be summed up in the “thesis that mind and reality as a whole are of essentially the same structure,” with the caveat that we are talking of a “metaphysics without ontology.” For Hegel’s philosophy is both “systematic critique and overcoming of traditional ontological (categorical) thought in service of an alternative, revisionary metaphysics,” to whom Hegel gives the name of “speculative science” (p. 5), whose task Bowman defines as the “task of analyzing the structure of objective reality (basically: intentionality and representational content) and explaining the possibility and the nature of the relation in which it stands to formal reality (intrinsic being), where that relation is constitutive of what is called truth” (p. 18). Looking at dictionary entries on determination and reflection from the Greeks to Spinoza one cannot fail to mention Aristotle’s description of the role played by prósthesis in Analytica posteriora Alpha 27 in the passage “from the unity, which is a substance without position, to the point, which is a unity with a position: this passage is the result of a determination” (87a34-36). But it is Spinoza’s connection of determination and reflection with negation—omnis determinatio negatio est—that attracts Bowman’s attention, because negation is an essentially relational operation, which implies that “to be determinate is to stand in a relation to other” (p. 39). Thus, every position of a new note to the list of intensions, i.e., every position of the list of properties contained by a concept implies (in accordance with the theorem of Port-Royal about the inverse proportionality of the intension and extension of a concept), that in consequence of a determination the concept is negated of some of the extensions, i.e., of some of the objects of which it used to be affirmed. In the Ethica, Spinoza introduces determination in terms of causal efficiency (a Deo determinatur, E1 P27-28), while whatever we conceive to be in the power of God (a Deo concipitur) necessarily exists (E1 P35). Bowman re-emphasizes that the formal reality of thinking also requires a difference over against its objective reality, and that difference must show up for it as a difference (p. 209), namely, “the difference that constitutes thinking and all determinateness” (p. 226). In conclusion, Bowman has made quite clearly his point that the notion of “absolute negativity, and the completely altered view of logic associated with it, has a fourfold significance in Hegel’s philosophy: “metaphysical, methodological, critical, and existential” (p. 255). It is a good start for new research. (Riccardo Pozzo, Italian National Research Council)
2014
9781107033597
Hegel; metafisica; negatività
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11562/773161
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