Hegel's Actuality Chapter of the Science of Logic: A Commentary

(Hardback)

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This book explores Hegels theory of modality (actuality, possibility, necessity, contingency) through extremely close textual analysis of the Actuality chapter of Hegels Science of Logic. The Actuality chapter is the equivalence of Aristotles momentous Metaphysics book 9. Because of this, Hegels chapter deserves the same thorough investigation into its complex insights and argumentation. This book situates Hegels insights about possibility and necessity within historical and contemporary debates about metaphysics, while analyzing some of the most controversial themes of Hegels theory, such as the question of the ontological status of unactualized possibilities, the relationship between contradiction and possibility, and the claim that necessity leads to freedom. This book also contributes to an ongoing philosophical inquiry into the nature of dialectics by articulating Hegels Actuality chapter as a coherent argument divided into twenty-seven premises.

Reviews

In this book, Nahum Brown not only offers a focused, thorough and unique explication of one of the most notoriously difficult chapters of Hegel's Greater Logic, but along the way develops provocative connections between Hegel's account of modality and the work of thinkers as diverse as Leibniz, Saussure and Agamben. The results will be as interesting to scholars who have long debated the intricacies of these pages, as they will be helpful to those working through Hegel's masterpiece for the first time. -- Jim Vernon, York University
This book delivers a close interpretation of Hegel's notoriously difficult chapter on Actuality in the Science of Logic, in a brilliant reading that situates Hegel's argument in relation to Aristotle's metaphysics and Kant's critique of reason, and gives a thought-provoking exposition of Hegel's categories of multiplicity, contingency, possibility, and potentiality. Brown not only explains the rationality of Hegel's method, he develops an original interpretation of the Logic that focuses on "immanent conditions" of thinking, different from but akin to Stephen Houlgate's important work on "presuppositionless" thinking. Highly recommended to scholars of Hegel but also to undergraduate and graduate students, especially those with interests in logic, history of philosophy, notably Leibniz and Descartes, and in contemporary philosophy, from Heidegger and phenomenology to structuralism and poststructuralism, notably Deleuze. -- Emilia Angelova, Concordia University

Author Bio

Nahum Brown is research fellow in the Philosophy Department at Sun-yat Sen University.