Petrified Intelligence offers the first comprehensive treatment of Hegel's Philosophy of Nature, exploring its central place within his system, including its relation to his Logic, Philosophy of Mind, and moral and political thought. It highlights the contemporary relevance of Hegel's approach to nature, particularly with respect to environmental issues. Challenging the standard view that Hegel devalues nature relative to mind and culture, Alison Stone reveals the deep concern to re-enchant the natural world that pervades his entire philosophical project. Written in clear and nontechnical language, the book also provides a critical introduction to Hegel's metaphysics.
Hegel's system of philosophy was not only the leading form of metaphysics during his lifetime, but it has taken on increasing significance in our own time. The main element in this compact collection of Hegel's thought is an eagerly awaited new translation of one of the most influential works of thought ever written, the "Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline." Also included is "Preface to the System of Philosophy" and "Solger's Posthumous Writings and Correspondence." (For other texts in German Philosophy, see vols. 5, 13, 23, 27, 40, 48, and 78)
Terry Pinkard draws on Hegel's central works as well as his lectures on aesthetics, the history of philosophy, and the philosophy of history in this deeply informed and original exploration of Hegel's naturalism. As Pinkard explains, Hegel's version of naturalism was in fact drawn from Aristotelian naturalism: Hegel fused Aristotle's conception of nature with his insistence that the origin and development of philosophy has empirical physics as its presupposition. As a result, Hegel found that, although modern nature must be understood as a whole to be non-purposive, there is nonetheless a place for Aristotelian purposiveness within such nature. Such a naturalism provides the framework for explaining how we are both natural organisms and also practically minded (self-determining, rationally responsive, reason-giving) beings. In arguing for this point, Hegel shows that the kind of self-division which is characteristic of human agency also provides human agents with an updated version of an Aristotelian final end of life. Pinkard treats this conception of the final end of "being at one with oneself" in two parts. The first part focuses on Hegel's account of agency in naturalist terms and how it is that agency requires such a self-division, while the second part explores how Hegel thinks a historical narration is essential for understanding what this kind of self-division has come to require of itself. In making his case, Hegel argues that both the antinomies of philosophical thought and the essential fragmentation of modern life are all not to be understood as overcome in a higher order unity in the "State." On the contrary, Hegel demonstrates that modern institutions do not resolve such tensions any more than a comprehensive philosophical account can resolve them theoretically. The job of modern practices and institutions (and at a reflective level the task of modern philosophy) is to help us understand and live with precisely the unresolvability of these oppositions. Therefore, Pinkard explains, Hegel is not the totality theorist he has been taken to be, nor is he an "identity thinker," à la Adorno. He is an anti-totality thinker.
Features original articles by some of the most distinguished contemporary scholars of Hegel's thought, The most comprehensive collection of Hegel scholarship available in one volume, Examines Hegel's writing in a chronological order, from his very first published works to his very last, Includes chapters on the newly edited lecture series Hegel conducted in the 1820s Book jacket.
Hegel's aim in this work is to interpret the varied phenomena of Nature from the standpoint of a dialectical logic. Those who still think of Hegel as a merely a priori philosopher will here find abundant evidence that he was keenly interested in and very well informed about empirical science.
