BULLETIN OF THE HEGEL SOCIETY OF GREAT BRITAIN

figure in the history of philosophy, since one loses the mystery of his personality — a mystery
that is most evident in the many layers of meaning that are encapsulated in his dense prose.
Even though Pinkard admits that Hegel was contemplating a second edition of the
Phenomenology when he died, he uses the fact that Hegel's courses for his high-school students
in Nurnberg only used the shorter form of this discipline (later adopted by the Encyclopedia
Philosophy of Spirit) augmenting it with a philosophical psychology, to argue that Hegel
abandoned the Phenomenology as the introduction to his system. Such an argument ignores the
fact that the context of a classroom of adolescents within a public institution responsible to a
government ministry placed certain constraints on how Hegel could develop his material. When
we look, for example, at the logical discussions found in both the Science of Logic and the
Encyclopedia Logic, designed as a manual for his courses in Heidelberg and Berlin, we find that
Hegel regularly abbreviated and omitted material when writing for the classroom in the less
restricted context of the university, and then reincorporated or expanded it when he came to the
second edition of the larger "scientific" work. This suggests that we should not read too much
into the Niimberg texts.
These reservations, however, do not detract from Pinkard's achievement. He has sorted
through not only the known details of Hegel's life and his published material, but also material
about the intellectual and political climate in which he lived in immense detail. The result is a
more complete picture of the man than we have ever had in English. We are all in his debt.
John Burbidge
Trent University

Jonathan E. Pike, From Aristotle to Marx: Aristotelianism in Marxist Social Ontology

(Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999), pp. 195, ISBN 1-84014-309-6.

In recent years a number of writers have drawn attention to the influence of Aristotle on Marx
and have interpreted large areas of his work in Aristotelian terms. They have been mainly
concerned, as Jonathan Pike points out, with the source of Marx's views on morality and the
good life for human beings. The novelty Pike claims for his book lies in its focusing on the
relatively neglected subject of Marx's debt to Aristotle in matters of social ontology. The debt,
as depicted by Pike, consists in part in the use of certain categories; in particular, those of form
and matter, substance and accidents, potentiality and actuality, essence and appearance, change
and decay. It also involves some substantive theses, such as, for instance, Marx's position on the
status of universals and his commitment to methodological holism. These claims are pursued by
Pike in a genial, self-assured and energetic way. His sense of the vital importance of ontological
questions for an understanding of Marx's social theory is surely salutary. On some particular
issues, such as the nature of 'abstract labour', he has fresh and interesting things to say.
Moreover, the body of thought Marx has bequeathed to us seems sufficiently complex and
robust to sustain a variety of approaches, and this in itself must encourage a welcoming attitude
 68
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BULLETIN OF THE HEGEL SOCIETY OF GREAT BRITAIN

labour, productive activity, to be the fundamental category of Marx's social ontology. The fact
that Aristotle's outstanding weakness, in Marx's eyes, as a social ontologist is precisely in the
area of what Pike regards as fundamental need not be fatal to his general case. It would have
benefited, however, from showing how that fact is to be accommodated.
A large part of Pike's case rests on Marx's reliance on the categories listed earlier.
Though this reliance is impossible to deny it may be less significant and revealing than Pike
supposes. For one thing he seems simply to overlook the extent to which Aristotle has provided,
with these categories, the working tools of the entire tradition of Western metaphysics. It would
be hard to pursue the ontological concerns of any important thinker within that tradition without
stumbling over 'substance', 'essence' and the rest. If one wished to insist on some more
intelligibly specific and substantial link in the case of Marx, a richer, less abstract, view of the
relationships involved than Pike offers might be needed. It might be necessary to fill in some
historical mediations between the two poles of Aristotle and Marx. Most obviously, perhaps,
Pike might have taken a lead from another champion of an Aristotelian Marx, one who was,
incidentally, the supervisor of the Ph.D. thesis from which his book emerged. In Essentialism in
the Thought of Karl Marx, a work Pike cites, Scott Meikle remarks that Hegel's philosophy is
'informed by Aristotelian categories from the outset', and that, in their application to history and
society, he does not think it much exaggerated to say that 'Hegel did not leave Marx with a great
deal to do' (p. 31). It might, however, be especially difficult for Pike to do justice to this aspect
of the intellectual background, for the treatment of Hegel is perhaps the least satisfactory
element of his book.
This is due in part to the unthinking acceptance of old prejudices. It is surely late in the
day for a serious writer to assert flatly that Hegel 'rejects the "ought" as unrealised for the "is"
of the Prussian state, conceived of as the realisation of reason' (p. 28). Even worse is the, again
unargued, endorsement of David Depew's claim that Hegel's world is one in which 'men are
isolated Cartesian egos' (pp. 53-4). At this point readers of the Bulletin may need to lie down
quietly while intoning 'An "I" that is "We" and "We" that is "I"'. In addition to Pike's recycling
of myths there is the tension caused by the forensic style of argument referred to earlier. Thus,
he tends to see the situation in terms of an abstract opposition of either an Aristotelian or a
Hegelian Marx, and his own aim is to counteract the 'conventional interpretations' which stress
the influence of Hegel (pp. 149-50). Even if one sets aside Meikle's verdict on the provenance of
the categories Marx uses, the extent to which this aim is misconceived may be suggested more
directly on the basis of Pike's own discussion. A substantive thesis on which he lays great
weight is Marx's acceptance of an Aristotelian view of universals. As one might expect, Hegel is
credited by contrast with 'a metaphysical scheme where, in Platonic fashion, universals are prior
to particulars' (p. 173). As one might expect also, no evidence is cited for this claim, and so one
is led to ask what the evidence does actually tell us. Consider the following, wholly
representative, passage from the Encyclopaedia:

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BULLETIN OF THE HEGEL SOCIETY OF GREAT BRITAIN

The universal as such cannot be shown, but is always something determinate. The
animal does not exist, but is the universal nature of the individual animals, and
every existing animal is something much more concretely determinate, a particular.
(§ 24, Zusatz 1)

What could be plainer, or more plainly hostile to the view that 'universals are prior to
particulars'? What could be more plainly Aristotelian?
It seems hard not to conclude that the lesson to be drawn from Pike's account is different
from the one he intends. His discussion is, however, sufficiently thorough and scholarly to
suggest that where it has failed no other conceived on the same lines is likely to succeed. Hence,
we seem to be thrown back from false dichotomies on to the 'conventional interpretations'
which must inescapably be in some measure Aristotelian interpretations also. We may well also
be brought up sharply against a sense of their inadequacy, the factor that opens a space for such
projects as that undertaken by Pike. For we possess no truly satisfactory and convincing version
of them, no systematic reading that is compellingly grounded in argument and evidence. The
Hegel-Marx relationship remains, for all the attention it has received, one of the murkiest topics
in intellectual history.'
Joseph McCarney
South Bank University

David MacGregor, Hegel and Marx after the Fall of Communism (Cardiff: University of
Wales Press, 1998), pp. xvii + 246, pb £12.95 ISBN 0-7083-1430-9, hb £25.00 ISBN 0-7083-
1429; Sean Sayers, Marxism and Human Nature (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. ix + 203,
hb £45 ISBN 0-415-19147-5.

The relationship between Hegel and Marx is interesting and significant, though it is often
misunderstood by its reduction to argument about the superiority of either Hegel or Marx. Marx
himself offered cursory and enigmatic accounts of the relationship. The Economic and
Philosophical Manuscripts (1844) and his Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (1843)
rehearse the bases of Marx's persisting standpoint, namely that Hegel maintained abstract ideas
to be the supreme, rational causal agents of historical and social material reality, and in so doing
underplayed actual refractory aspects of social life. Many subsequent Marxists have taken
Marx's standpoint as a cue to sever all links with Hegel. Callinicos (Marxist Theory, 1989) has
adverted to the links between Althusser's structuralist Marxism and analytical Marxism that
arise out of a common disparagement of Hegel and the Hegelian provenance of Marxism.
Hegelian theorists and scholars have tended to ignore Marx. They disavow, either expressly or
implicitly the relevance of Marx and Marxism to a philosophical reading of Hegel.

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