Abstract

Professor Plant has presented a briefer treatment of Hegel’s philosophical development than did H. S. Harris in Towards the Sunlight, and a considerably more historical, epistemological and metaphysical treatment than is presented in Pelcynski’s Hegel; Political Philosophy and not so exhaustive an account of the political and social philosophy as appears in Avineri’s Hegel’s Philosophy of the Modern State. These four books taken together testify to the importance of Hegel on the contemporary philosophic scene. Plant’s volume is perhaps the best in that it pulls together the various philosophical, political, and social strains in brief compass, for he demonstrates quite convincingly, as did Avineri and Harris, that the political and metaphysical writings of Hegel are closely interconnected and that the interpretation of art and religion flow from his considered interpretation of his contemporary cultural situation. Plant, with Marx, Engels, Kierkegaard, Baur, Feuerbach et al. and against Findlay and Bergman, argues that there is a Christian theological residue in Hegel’s system, but surprisingly, the fruit of the system is clarification not mystification. Only with that residue is the system and totality really explicable. An altogether welcome book.—R.L.P.