Picturing Hegel: An Illustrated Guide to Hegel’s

Encyclopaedia Logic (review)

James A. Dunson III

Journal of the History of Philosophy, Volume 48, Number 4, October 2010,

pp. 536-538 (Review)

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/hph.2010.0004

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/398665

Access provided by Australian National University (8 Jul 2018 16:42 GMT)

536 journal of the history of philosophy 48:4 october 2010
consciousness demands outer bodily representations in Kant, and bracketing his abstraction
from the body, self-identical persons must necessarily be construed as embodied. Finally,
contra the rationalists, intellectual marshaling action is neither material nor separable
from material reality, and our capacity for such action relates immediately to the capacity
of material things to affect us.
The problem with this argument, which Melnick admits Kant himself never articulated,
is that at key moments, it is neither a comprehensive interpretation of Kant (especially
since Melnick relies principally on the first Critique, but not exhaustively so: for instance,
he does not discuss the important distinction between the analytic and synthetic unity of
apperception, etc.), nor a stand-alone first-person account of the self.
First, Melnick’s use of several Kant-independent spatial analogies to explain crucial
mental concepts is disconcerting: to some extent, self as “marshaling” action, conscious-
ness as “awning” that envelops affection from outside, and (most obscurely) self-conscious
subjects ostensibly require reflection to “mirror” a thought into a verbal report (56–57),
but it remains unclear what mirroring into involves.
Second, Melnick uncritically accepts Kant’s obscure equation of the unities of act and
consciousness (7–8, 97), and hence sidesteps the thorny problem of relating/distinguishing
activity and consciousness. Since he categorically interprets self as activity, Melnick appears
to presuppose the priority of activity over consciousness. But this needs justification, which,
in turn, requires further investigating the relationship between attention, consciousness,
and intellectual marshaling action.
Finally, although Kant never says this, Melnick offers a two-step argument that we possess
a capacity for personhood, which seems rather unconvincing. The first step is a disjunctive
syllogism: being a person is either an activity or a capacity; it cannot be an activity because
persons undergo periods of inactivity (sleep, etc.); hence it must be a capacity (142). But
the initial premise here is questionable, because Melnick does not separately establish that
personhood must necessarily be described in terms of the activity-capacity framework. Then
we get the following argument: if I can detect continuity in the outer world after episodes of
inactivity, then I am continuous even during periods of inactivity; I can detect such continu-
ity, and I am not active during periods of inactivity; therefore, I must be a capacity (155).
The problem here is that detection of worldly continuity could just as easily be attributed
to psychological continuity of some sort (particular mental features, etc.), and so it does
not necessarily show that personhood is a capacity. Hence, despite criticizing psychological
continuity theories of personhood (142–48), Melnick provides no non-arbitrary grounds
for preferring his capacity theory to psychological continuity theories.
Despite these difficulties, Melnick’s clear writing and rigorous phenomenological
interpretation of the Kantian self as activity in the context of relevant contemporary Kant
scholarship and philosophy of mind make this text essential reading for Kant interpreters,
phenomenologists, and philosophers of mind.
Apaar Kumar
Oxford College of Emory University

Julie E. Maybee. Picturing Hegel: An Illustrated Guide to Hegel’s Encyclopaedia Logic. Lanham,
MD: Lexington Books, 2009. Pp. xxvii + 639. Paper, $56.95.

If Hegel were alive to read an illustrated guide to his Encyclopaedia Logic, he might not im-
mediately appreciate the project. Not only did he consider “picture-thinking” deficient in
comparison to conceptual thinking, but he regarded the Encyclopaedia Logic as a text suitable
for German students. In her recent book, Picturing Hegel, Julie Maybee acknowledges these
ironies and proceeds to guide those of us who need a little extra help in understanding
Hegel’s speculative logic.
What results is a significant contribution to the literature, a step-by-step commentary
 book reviews 537
through one of Hegel’s most underappreciated works. Using diagrams to cut through the
often-difficult prose proves to be an excellent strategy. Maybee’s exquisitely detailed and
admirably clear exposition makes her a suitable Virgil to guide us through the Inferno of
Hegel’s logic.
Maybee’s task is to show how Hegel’s logic is, actually, logical, and not, as she puts it,
“A jumble of random moves from one step to the next” (xiii). She distinguishes Hegel’s
speculative logic from the logic we teach nowadays by emphasizing Hegel’s concern to
generate and develop the concepts he employs. That is, he is concerned not merely with
the rules connecting the logical terms (i.e. syntax), but also the meanings of the terms
themselves (i.e. semantics).
As one might expect, these concepts are developed dialectically: two elements that are
ordinarily opposed to one another are revealed to be mutually defining and interdepen-
dent. Readers already familiar with Hegel’s work will appreciate the way in which Maybee
explains complicated ideas like “Actuality” and “spurious infinity.” Maybee has a talent for
inventive examples, some of which she carefully carries through the entire work. Also, she
has an eye for Hegel’s own examples (see, for instance, the comparison of the Absolute
Idea and an old man on 580–82).
One of the chief merits of her detailed account is its balanced approach. Instead of
perpetuating prevalent but superficial interpretations, she explains the different senses in
which something is true. For instance, she distinguishes the different meanings of idealism
and shows how Hegel retains some materialist elements in his logic (302). Her knowledge of
the history of philosophy helps her to put Hegel’s logic in its proper context. The asides to
the Pre-Socratic philosophers and the repeated references to Kant are especially useful.
Maybee’s approach to the logic, especially the way in which she frames Hegel’s project,
raises interesting philosophical questions. She portrays Hegel as attempting to overcome
Kant’s skepticism regarding the unity of thought and being. The question is whether reality
is fundamentally accessible to reason, or whether the categories we employ to understand
the world are limited to our phenomenal experience.
But if Hegel’s logic is supposed to refute the Kantian “thing-in-itself,” we can ask whether
this is an intelligible philosophical goal. First, Maybee points out that critics like Nietzsche
would ask whether we have to be “committed to logical or conceptual necessity” (130).
Perhaps Hegel exhibits a rather typical philosophical bias toward conceptual stability and
even necessity. Second, any investigation into logical semantics that is biased in this way in-
evitably opens Pandora’s Box. Determining the meaning of logical terms is a messy business,
and Hegel sometimes seems to stipulate meanings instead of genuinely deriving them. For
instance, as Maybee writes, a crucial part of Hegel’s definition of existence is that something
is “capable of being experienced” (204). But this simply begs the question against Kant’s
“thing-in-itself,” since clearly Kant does not think it exists in this way.
Third, given that Maybee points out Hegel’s anthropocentric language, we can ask
whether his casual and frequent references to human experience are innocent or self-
undermining. For instance, what are we to make of Hegel’s use of ethical examples to
explain logical concepts like actuality, necessity, and possibility? A Kantian might question
whether Hegel’s anthropocentric language reveals his inability to transcend the limits of our
conceptual categories. A Nietzschean would certainly point out that this language reveals
the “human, all-too-human” character of Hegel’s project.
It is necessary to note that, while the illustrations are helpful, there is no magic potion
for understanding Hegel’s speculative logic. New and experienced readers alike still have
to struggle through the complex language of his logic, and the pictures themselves often
require considerable interpretation. This is especially true of the Doctrine of Essence,
where the development of the argument (and its corresponding illustrations) is very
complicated.
Perhaps it is a Herculean task to convince readers not especially interested in Hegel to
take his logic seriously. Still, it is possible that Maybee’s account will provoke the reader to
538 journal of the history of philosophy 48:4 october 2010
rethink what counts as logic. Even if we do not teach speculative logic in our introductory
classes, Maybee’s patient and persistent explanation of this difficult text is a rewarding
read.
James A. Dunson III
Xavier University of Louisiana

Ben Wempe. T.H. Green’s Theory of Positive Freedom: From Metaphysics to Political Theory. Char-
lottesville: Imprint Academic, 2004. Pp. ix + 240. Cloth, $49.90.

Although T. H. Green is primarily remembered today as a moral and political philosopher,

many of his philosophical concerns owe their origins to the Victorian crisis of faith in which
a widespread belief in the literal truth of Scripture confronted seemingly incompatible
scientific theories. Green attributed this crisis to the inability of science and religion to find
accommodation in the popular version of empiricism widely accepted by educated men
and women of his day. In his 371-page introduction to Hume’s Treatise, Green argued that
this philosophy was unacceptable, even on its own terms, and that it needed to be replaced
with a new philosophy of life, one recognizing that both knowledge and human action are
made possible by a nonnatural spiritual principle. Green thus found a resolution for the
Victorian crisis of faith in a new metaphysics, one that provided a framework for the moral
and political dimensions of human action that Green’s religion of morality demanded.
The aim of Ben Wempe’s book is to interpret Green’s best known contribution to political
theory, his conception of positive freedom, against the background of Green’s metaphysical
system and to reassess criticisms of positive freedom in light of this interpretation. This is
not a straightforward undertaking. Green introduced his conception of positive freedom
in a lecture he delivered to a liberal association, and his early death prevented him from
incorporating it into his political theory. His metaphysical system was likewise not finished
at the time of his death, and the only part of it to appear in print, the opening chapters of
Prolegomena to Ethics, contain significant lacunae. Wempe meets these difficulties by relying
on Green’s unpublished manuscripts to reconstruct his philosophical development from his
youthful enthusiasm for Hegel to his more independent, mature system. In doing so, Wempe
relies on a central concept present throughout Green’s work, that of “the self-assertion of
reason.” This phrase refers to Hegel’s idea that both theoretical and practical reason pro-
gressively determine their own objects. Wempe argues that Green encountered this idea
in the only one of Hegel’s works that he translated, the Propädeutik, and that it underpins
the overall argument of Green’s major work, Prolegomena to Ethics. Here Green argues that
acts of knowing and willing have objects only by virtue of a rational and spiritual principle,
and that moral and political duties result from the progressive expression of this principle
through acts of willing. This occurs, Green thinks, because over time reason combines
objects of desire into coherent wholes. This occurs both on a personal level, as individuals
form systematic ideas of their own permanent goods, and on the social level, as their ideas
of their individual goods come to include that of a common good. The idea of a common
good requires recognizing others as rational beings and respecting their acts of willing as
means of reaching the common good. This in turn is made possible by the laws of a state.
The freedom that these laws guarantee as conditions for reaching the common good is the
basis for rights of restraint or negative freedoms. Once these rights are guaranteed by the
state, however, there are still obstacles to achieving the common good, because individuals
may lack the minimum conditions of material well-being that would enable them to achieve
it. When these conditions are satisfied, individuals have what Green, in his “Lecture on
‘Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Contract,’” called “positive freedom,” the “power or
capacity of doing or enjoying something worth doing or enjoying, … something that we
enjoy in common with others” (112). Wempe thus uses the concept of the self-assertion of
reason to link Green’s metaphysics with his account of positive freedom.