The myth of Aufheben: A comment on Matthieu Renault’s Hegelian myth of counter-violence

Matthieu Renault argues in a recent issue of Radical Philosophy (RP 2.10, Summer 2021) that justifications for the counter-violence of the oppressed which draw on Hegel’s master-slave relation are based on a myth originating from Kojève’s Paris lectures (1933-9). The Kojève myth is that history begins with the violence of the master over the slave […]
Graffiti which reads, 'Dissolve the illusion...'

All that Hegel allows

Reivew of Robert Pippin, Filmed Thought
Robert Pippin, Filmed Thought: Cinema as Reflective Form (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019). 312pp., £79.00 hb., £28.00 pb., 978 022667 1 956 hb., 978 022667 2 007 pb. The course of the relationship between philosophy and film studies never did run smooth. The encounter of these two disciplines, while producing both influential and exciting […]

The revival of Hegelian Marxism: On Martin Hägglund’s This Life

When a notable philosopher, having established a reputation for rigorous argumentation and scholarship, directs a major new book toward a popular audience, a certain skepticism may be forgiven among those familiar with the earlier work. However welcome an accessible style may be, popular address too often gives way to the popularisation of philosophical concepts and […]

Hegel’s racism for radicals

Contemporary societies are not the first to confuse their desires not to be racist with their desires to minimise the scope of race. A few years ago, for instance, the University of California Humanities Research Institute summer workshop, ‘Archives of the Non-Racial’ (2014), noted that by the nineteenth century, the ‘non-racial’ emerged as an intellectual, […]

Not German enough?

Reivew of Tom Bunyard, Guy Debord, Time and Spectacle
Tom Bunyard, Debord, Time and Spectacle: Hegelian Marxism and Situationist Theory (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2018). 430pp., £123.00 hb., 978 9 00435 602 3 Amid the copious notes taken by Guy Debord on the philosophy of Hegel, the following extract from the preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit appears repeatedly: ‘By the little which satisfies […]

Between subject and citizen: On Étienne Balibar’s Foundations for Philosophical Anthropology

‘All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.’ Spinoza’s maxim, the last sentence of The Ethics, serves as a fitting observation with which to begin a discussion of Étienne Balibar’s Citizen Subject: Foundations for Philosophical Anthropology, given the difficulty proper to the excellence of his text. Its difficulty is not, or not only, […]

The wrong couple

Reivew of Gregor Moder, Hegel and Spinoza
Gregor Moder, Hegel and Spinoza: Substance and Negativity (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2017). 200pp., £110.00 hb., £37.50 pb., 978 0 81013 542 0 hb., 978 0 81013 541 3 pb. Gregor Moder’s work contributes to a recent trend in continental philosophy: the reconciliation of Spinoza and Hegel. For generations, the continental field has been […]

Gillian Rose, 1947-1995

NEWS Gillian Rose, 1947-1995 Gillian Rose died on the evening of 9 December 1995 after a long and courageous struggle with cancer. The hour of her death coincided with the closing moments of a conference dedicated to her work at Warwick University. Although her rapidly deteriorating health prevented her from attending as planned, the conference […]

41 Reviews

REVIEWS Young Hegels H.S. Harris, Hegel’s Development, Volume 11: Night Thoughts (Jena 1.801-6), Oxford University Press, 1983, £35 hb, lxx + 627pp Robert C. Solomon, In the Spirit of Hegel, Oxford University Press, New York, 1983, £25 hb, xxiv + 646pp M.J. Inwood, Hegel, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983, £24 hb, xv + 582pp In […]