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Westphal Kenneth R. (ed.). The Blackwell Guide to Hegel's 'Phenomenology of Spirit'. Oxford : Wiley-Blackwell , 2009. ISBN: 978-1-4051-3110-0 , pbk, £24.99. Pp. 325.
Reviews
Hegel's first magnum opus, the Phenomenology of Spirit, is one of western philosophy's richest and most complex intellectual treasure troves. Such is the breadth and depth of its material that there seems to be no end to the companions, guidebooks, guides, critical introductions, and commentaries on Hegel's most well-known and studied work. The apparent limitless series of scholarly treatments of the Phenomenology will lead some to regard the Phenomenology as a philosophical Hydra, in that just when one may think that it has been successfully understood by a number of monographs or edited collections, another monograph or edited collection springs up for the philosophical community to engage with. For others, though, the apparent limitless series of scholarly treatments of the Phenomenology is an explicit indication of the philosophical worth of Hegel's Jena period. Without doubt, the Blackwell Guide to Hegel's 'Phenomenology of Spirit' edited by Ken Westphal aims to showcase the profound value of the Phenomenology of Spirit. And, as is customary with Westphal, he hopes to achieve this with his refreshingly pugnacious and passionate approach to analytic post-Kantian idealist scholarship.
Though analytic philosophers have gradually softened their traditional contempt for all things Hegelian, when one reads Westphal's introduction one has the impression that Westphal still feels that the 'received wisdom' about Hegel's views has to be vanquished. As such, there may be concerns about the target of the edited collection: contemporary Hegel scholars and the more enlightened analytic philosophers in some parts of the Anglo-American community may worry that Westphal and the contributors are of the view that Hegel scholarship is still in an era of conflict with analytic philosophy. These philosophers might want to say to Westphal that the war is over and that there seems to be a fair amount of peace between mainstream analytic philosophy and Hegel scholarship. Given that the work of important Hegel commentators in conjunction with analytic philosophy's self-conscious rapprochement with the traditional bête noire of analytic philosophy have shown the inadequacies of traditional views on Hegel, Westphal's edited collection would be better...