Hegel And Aristotle

Hegel is, arguably, the most difficult of all philosophers. To find a way into his thought interpreters have usually approached him as though he were developing Kantian and Fichtean themes. This book demonstrates in a systematic way that it makes much more sense to view Hegel's idealism in relation to the metaphysical and epistemological tradition stemming from Aristotle. The book offers an account of Hegel's idealism in light of his interpretation, discussion, assimilation and critique of Aristotle's philosophy. There are explorations of Hegelian and Aristotelian views of system and history; being, metaphysics, logic, and truth; nature and subjectivity; spirit, knowledge, and self-knowledge; ethics and politics. No serious student of Hegel can afford to ignore this major interpretation. It will also be of interest in such fields as political science and the history of ideas.

At opposite ends of over two millenia Hegel and Aristotle, virtually alone of the great European thinkers, consciously attempted to criticize and develop the thought of their predecessors into systems of their own. Both were thus committed in principle to the view that philosophy in each age of civilization is at once a product, a criticism, and a recon struction of the values and insights of its own past; that the fertile mind can only beget anew when it has acknowledged and understood a line of ancestors which has led to its begetting; that the thinker as little as the artist can start with a clean slate and a blankly open-minded atti tude to the world which he finds within him and before him. Man is by definition rational; philosophy is his continuous impulse to grasp and appraise a single universe of which he finds himself a part; philosophy therefore contains its history as a constituent element of its own nature, and the developmental character of philosophy must - unless human reason is, unthinkably and unarguably, a mere delusion - in some sense reflect, or even be in some sense identical with, an essentially develop mental universe - that is roughly the common creed of Aristotle and Hegel. Both of them further believed, as Plato had believed, that what is most real and intelligible in that universe is eo ipso most good.

Hegel’s debts to ancient philosophy are widely acknowledged by scholars, and by the philosopher himself. Roughly half of his Lectures on the History of Philosophy is devoted to ancient philosophy, and throughout his work Hegel frequently frames his positions in relation to the thinkers and movements of antiquity. This volume presents original essays from leading scholars dealing with Hegel’s debts to ancient thinkers, as well as his own, often problematic readings of ancient philosophy. While around half of the chapters discuss Hegel’s treatment of Aristotle—a topic that has long been at the forefront of scholarship—the other half explore his relationship to such ancient figures as Xenophanes, Anaxagoras, Socrates, Plato, Sextus Empiricus, and the Stoics. The essays challenge a number of longstanding scholarly assumptions regarding, for example, Hegel’s denigration of the "mythical," his developmentalist approach to ancient thought, his conception of the state in relation to the Greek polis, his "hermeneutic" of the Platonic dialogues, and his use of Aristotelian concepts in arguments concerning the psyche, the body, and their unity and distinction.​

This book defies the reigning dismissal of the philosophy of nature by turning to what Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel have had to say about nature and critically thinking through their arguments to reconstruct a comprehensive account of the universe. Aided by the contributions of more recent thinkers, such as Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Michael B. Foster, and Hans Jonas, Conceiving Nature shows how the mechanics of matter in motion, the physics of electromagnetism, and chemical process provide all that is needed for life to emerge and give rise to rational animals capable of knowing nature in truth. The work contains detailed discussions of much of Aristotle’s writing on nature, of Kant’s Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, and of Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature.

The Hegel Reader is the most comprehensive collection of Hegel's writings currently available in English.

Syllogism is a form of logical argument allowing one to deduce a consistent conclusion based on a pair of premises having a common term. Although Aristotle was the first to conceive and develop this way of reasoning, he left open a lot of conceptual space for further modifications, improvements and systematizations with regards to his original syllogistic theory. From its creation until modern times, syllogism has remained a powerful and compelling device of deduction and argument, used by a variety of figures and assuming a variety of forms throughout history. The Aftermath of Syllogism investigates the key developments in the history of this peculiar pattern of inference, from Avicenna to Hegel. Taking as its focus the longue durée of development between the Middle Ages and the nineteenth century, this book looks at the huge reworking scientific syllogism underwent over the centuries, as some of the finest philosophical minds brought it to an unprecedented height of logical sharpness and sophistication. Bringing together a group of major international experts in the Aristotelian tradition, The Aftermath of Syllogism provides a detailed, up to date and critical evaluation of the history of syllogistic deduction.

This book offers an alternative analysis of Hegel's famous 'end of history', detailing an alternative reading of Hegel on history.