Hegelian Metaphysics, by Robert Stern.

Abstract

At first glance the title of Robert Stern's book, Hegelian Metaphysics, sounds rather bold. It gives rise to the expectation that what one will find here is an informed and unbiased assessment of what is contained in the ultimate formulation of Hegel's metaphysics, that is, his Science of Logic. And because this Science of Logic has proved to be one of the most inaccessible works in the philosophical literature, every effort to deal with it with the intention of elucidating its obscure (or perhaps only hidden) message has to be acknowledged as a bold enterprise. However, already a short look at the table of contents shows that the title Hegelian Metaphysics is misapprehended if read as meaning Hegel's Metaphysics. The title is meant to characterize a much more modest project. It is an endeavor to explore in the face of various criticisms the plausibility of a number of views Hegel allegedly held and to defend some of these views against certain contemporary and historical misconceptions. The views under discussion are indeed metaphysical in that they include Hegel's position with regard to the nature of individuality, the structure of reality, the ontological status of concepts, and the relation between thinking and being as well as his perspective on truth and rationality. This impressively broad spectrum of topics is dealt with in a relatively unconnected way which is presumably due to the fact that the book is a collection of essays all of which have already been published between 1993 and 2009. The book suffers a little from a defect which is quite characteristic of many collections of essays by one and the same author: it is a bit repetitive. This is not that surprising given the fact that the individual essays, though dealing with similar subjects, were written for different occasions. However, one wonders whether these repetitions are really necessary.