Sedgwick on Pippin on Hegel
Over at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Sally Sedgwick has a Review of Robert B. Pippin’s Hegel on Ethics and Politics Here is a taste:
- This volume collects under a single cover eleven post-war essays by German philosophers on Hegel’s social and political philosophy. With the exception of the contribution of Friedrich Fulda, which is a much-shortened version of his 1963 monograph, each of the essays has been previously published. Nicolas Walker has produced the translations for this volume.
The collection is published as part of the Cambridge University Press series “The German Philosophical Tradition.” A blurb on the front piece announces that the aim of the series is to make available to the Anglo-American philosophical community “important recent work by German philosophers on major figures in the German philosophical tradition.” The editors have selected essays of top quality, some of which have had considerable impact on Hegel studies in Germany. They are, in general, quite technical – not suitable either for a general audience or for beginners in the subject. Some of the papers (by Fulda and Henrich, for instance) are pretty dense and heavy (dare I say “Germanic”?). But even those that try the reader’s patience are well worth careful study. I admit to being daunted by the task of trying to convey in so few words the interest of each of these essays. All I can do here is indicate something of their content and occasionally draw attention to strengths and weaknesses.