Abstract

Sally Sedgwick seems to be incapable of writing dull books, and she has once again given proof of this. She has written a short but very ambitious book, nominally on Hegel’s philosophy of history, but really about Hegel in general and how we should understand him. Her idea is that Hegel’s philosophy of history is a special entry point to Hegel’s thought as a whole so that instead of Hegel-the-philosopher-of-the-necessary-Absolute, we should see Hegel as fundamentally a philosopher of finitude, a proponent of the contingency and historical situatedness of all of our thoughts, who, as a philosopher of finite humility, did not think that we could ever assume the viewpoint of God as he is sometimes alleged to have tried to do.