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GillesMarmasse.Penserlerel:Hegel,la natureetl'esprit.Paris:ditionsKim,2007. ISBN9762841744657(pbk).Pp.496.35.

MartinThibodeau
HegelBulletin/Volume34/Issue01/May2013,pp120123 DOI:10.1017/hgl.2013.5,Publishedonline:17April2013

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doi:10.1017/hgl.2013.5 r The Hegel Society of Great Britain, 2013

Hegel Bulletin, 34/1, 120123

Review
ditions el: Hegel, la nature et lesprit. Paris: E Gilles Marmasse. Penser le re Kime , 2007. ISBN 9762841744657 (pbk). Pp. 496. 35 h. Gilles Marmasses book is both a voluminous and an ambitious work. Throughout its 460-plus pages, Marmasse offers a detailed analysis of two of the three parts of Hegels system of philosophy, namely the philosophy of nature and the philosophy of spirit, or what Hegel calls the real sciences (die realen Wissenschaften). Marmasses central hypothesis is that Hegel understands nature and spirit as opposed but nevertheless closely interconnected entities, and that the latter strives to solve the aporias implied by the former (10). In Marmasses own words, Hegels notion of spirit is to be conceived as nothing but the subject who both theoretically and practically engages with nature considered as a manifold and contradictory given (10). Although Marmasse often refers to the Phenomenology of Spirit, and to a lesser extent to Hegels earlier philosophical writings, his concern is essentially with Hegels latest systematic works, namely Science of Logic, Elements of Philosophy of Right, the Heidelberg and Berlin Lectures and, of course, the different versions of the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences. Yet Marmasse does not examine the content and issues inherent in Hegels argument as they systematically unfold in the second and third section of the Encyclopedia. Instead, he chooses to focus on particular themes, which in one way or the other are aspects of Hegels understanding of the relationship between nature and spirit. This approach allows him to shed light on some key notions by which Hegel conceptualizes this relationship, such as negation and sublation, and furthermore to revisit a certain number of controversial issues, which in many ways continue to be at the centre of the debates surrounding Hegels philosophy as a whole. It is by briey outlining two such controversial issues that I wish to illustrate the position defended by Marmasse throughout his book. First of all, in chapter 6, Marmasse challenges the common view of the notorious habilitation thesis on the orbit of the planets that Hegel wrote in 1801 as he was attempting to secure a position at the University of Jena. Hegel is generally thought to have erroneously condemned the discovery by Johann Tietz in 1766, and published by Johann Bode in 1772, of the mathematical equation that allowed the calculation of the distance between the planets of the solar system. Hegel is furthermore accused of having simply ignored Giuseppe Piazzis important discovery of the planet Ceres
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while he was writing his habilitation thesis. However, as Marmasses detailed analysis demonstrates, such accusations prove to be unfounded. Hegel, Marmasse argues, did not ignore Piazzis discovery. Instead, he was being cautious about what, at the time, was still an unconrmed hypothesis. As for Tietzs and Bodes mathematical conjecture, Hegel, in line with Newtonian physics, was resolutely sceptical about the possibility that, in the elds of physics and astronomy, mathematics and geometry could successfully replace experience and observation. What is signicant here, beyond the sole episode of the Dissertationschrift, is the common reproach that Hegel simply omits, and even goes against, factual truths of the natural sciences and common empirical experience. According to many authors, Hegels philosophy is a more or less extravagant intellectual enterprise which forces empirical reality into the procrustean bed of pure, a priori thought. For Marmasse, this reproach is based on a misunderstanding of Hegels conception of the relationship between philosophy and the empirical sciences. Hegel, Marmasse argues, insists that empirical reality, experience in general, or whatever is given as external world or nature is nothing but the starting point or the presupposition of philosophy. For Hegel, philosophical investigation begins with what rst presents itself as an immediate, irrational, empirical and factual given. Hegel does not conceive of philosophy as a discipline competing with the empirical sciences, nor does he consider its task to consist in the elucidation of the foundations of such sciences. Rather, Marmasse argues, Hegels view is that philosophy differs from empirical sciences in that it does not extrapolate or generalize on the basis of the multifarious aspects of empirical reality. Instead, philosophy is concerned with what Hegel calls the concept of such reality, with its internal logic or principle. For Marmasse, this conception of philosophy is best described as a process of idealization, which is essentially a process by which reason, for its own sake, establishes and generates the immanent unifying principle governing the manifold of empirical reality. As Marmasse writes: Philosophy does not undertake to know the world as it initially is, but rather transgures it according to its own requirements. When one says that philosophy has to do with concepts, this means that it does not refer to the objects as they are given, but rather to the thoughts of those objects that it forges (45). It is in this sense that philosophy, unlike the empirical sciences, is autonomous and legislative rather than dependent upon reality. The second controversial issue concerns Hegels system of philosophy as such. In Chapters 3, 5 and 12 Marmasse challenges the common objection that Hegels system purports to conceptualize the complex, manifold and more or less unpredictable life of a given object, a given gure or a given moment of spirit,
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but actually obeys a deterministic, necessary and/or teleological logic. According to Marmasse, such a criticism fails to take into account the logic that rules the transition from one section, or one moment, of Hegels system to another. As Marmasse indicates, the key notions to understand the developmental process of Hegels system are negation and sublation. Each moment of the system can be said to develop by means of a process of negation and sublation: every analysis begins with an immediately given which is then negated, and in turn, negated and sublated into a higher unifying principle. This procedure entails, Marmasse argues, that each moment relates to all other momentsor, to use Hegels vocabulary, is meditated by the otherbut without being positively conditioned by it. In other words, the relationship between the moments within the system is by no means to be understood in positive terms, as the deterministic and especially the teleological models suggest. Although Hegel often describes the systematic process in terms of development (Entwicklung), progression (Fortgang) or actualization (Verwicklichung), such vocabulary is not intended to describe a process by which, for example, a possibility contained within a specic moment is simply being actualized in the following one. Instead, what is being actualized is the result of a negation and sublation of what in the preceding stage came to be perceived as inadequate, insufcient or one-sided. As Marmasse puts it: insofar as the moments mutually negate each other, the Aristotelian scheme according to which a form realizes itself within matter is inadequate to describe the becoming of an Hegelian cycle (131). Marmasse claries this by using an example drawn from Hegels philosophy of history, according to which the modern world is not the result of an inherent possibility allegedly contained in what Hegel calls the oriental world. Admittedly, Hegel considers the notion of freedom to have been present already in the oriental world. Yet, in the course of history leading from the oriental to the modern world, the initial determination of freedom necessarily comes to be considered as inadequate to its own concept and is therefore being negated and sublated time and again. For Marmasse, negation and sublation are to be understood as referring not to a simple process of actualization, but rather to a transformation that deeply changes both form and content. As a result, the modern notion of freedom cannot in any way be considered as being simply the actualization of what was formally and potentially present within the oriental world. This being said, Marmasse does not limit himself to an analysis and defence of Hegels philosophy, but also explores the ambiguities and difculties in the development of Hegels argument. By doing so he identies a certain number of themes and issues, which, in his view, have lost their relevance for us. As he straightforwardly states in his concluding remarks: in a certain way, Hegelianism belongs to the past by its themes of investigation, its presuppositions and method. Today, Hegelianism essentially is not an object of debate but of history (405).
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Does Marmasses book live up to its ambitions? In many ways it does so with great success. Indeed, throughout its fourteen chapters Penser le re el provides numerous extremely valuable insights into Hegels philosophy of nature and spirit as well as many insights into his logic. Moreover, Marmasse convincingly responds to both the recurrent criticism mentioned above and other pervasive criticisms of Hegels systematic philosophy. In particular, Marmasse, in my view, accurately challenges Karl Lo withs view that Hegels philosophy of history is nothing but a philosophical transposition of the Christian, eschatological, conception of the end of history. According to Marmasse, this reading disregards the fact that, for Hegel, history is not divine, but unfolds, so to speak, within the element of human nitude and mortality. Therefore, Hegels famous thesis on the end of history is not to be understood as a ight out of history, but rather as an immanent process that is affected by nitude and realizes itself only partially. Furthermore, Marmasse also accurately defends Hegel against Heideggers claim that Hegels philosophy is the accomplishment of metaphysics understood as onto-theology. In Marmasses view, the ultimate element in the Encyclopedia is not a being, but rather an activity of idealization of being (79). Nevertheless, Marmasses thematic approach entails that his examination of the various texts that Hegel devoted to these subjects is rather fragmented and lacks the in-depth analysis that each of them would require. More often than not, Marmasse refers to different aspects of Hegels philosophies of nature and spirit not for their own sake, but in order to illustrate how Hegel conceives of the relationship between logic, nature and spirit. Evidently, dealing with so many complex issues within a single work is a very challenging task. As I see it, Marmasses book would have beneted from reducing the number of issues discussed in relation to both Hegels philosophy of nature and spirit. First and foremost intended for students and scholars working in the elds of Hegel studies, German idealism and post-Kantian philosophy, Marmasses work will surely be appealing to anyone interested either in specic aspects of Hegels philosophy of nature or of spirit or in Hegels philosophy as whole. Although dealing with extremely complex issues, Marmasses style is simple and precise, and his explanations are instructive and illuminating. Moreover, he develops a nuanced position that is likely to convince many readers. For these reasons, this book offers a signicant contribution to the study of Hegels mature system of philosophy. Martin Thibodeau St. Paul University (Ottawa, Canada) martinthibodeau8@gmail.com

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