Politique du jeune Hegel: Iéna 1801-1806, and: Hegel's Philosophy of Politics: Idealism, Identity, and Modernity (review)

BOOK REVIEWS $15 a place for what moral philosophers now call "supererogation," even if he conceives it somewhat differendy from most of our contemporaries. Thus in Kant's theory the fact that an act involves special self-sacrifice has no special weight in determining whether it is supererogatory. Moreover, despite Kant's notorious reputation for rigorism, Hill argues that he regards the essential worth of persons (their dignity) as quite independent of the moral worth of their actions or the virtuousness or viciousness of their characters. And although Kant's theory of punishment is certainly retributivist, his conception of penal law is primarily concerned with the function of punishment in deterring wrong external acts and is not concerned at all with apportioning happiness to moral desert. This book will be useful to beginning students of the Groundwork as well as to Kant specialists. Perhaps because the essays in this book represent work done over a period of two decades, Hill's grasp of Kant's theory is firm, and his thinking about both it and moral philosophy generally is supple; he sees clearly where it will be easy for us to misunderstand Kant, and he is lucid in showing us how to avoid the misunderstandings . He writes as a Kantian moral philosopher, though not a dogmatic or even a crusading one. Where he sees error or theoretical limitation, or even something problematic or counterintuitive in Kant's position, he is quick to point it out. Essay 4, for example, focuses on Kant's "utopianism"--his tendency to infer from what perfect agents would do in an ideal world to what we imperfect agents should do in the real one--and some of the shortcomings incurred by Kant's theory on this account. For all the Kant exegesis in this book, you never get the feeling that you are reading solely, or even mainly, about Kant. Rather, the subject is moral philosophy, and Kant's thought is being studied merely because it is as good a guide to the territory as there is. I am sure this is the way Kant himself would want to be read. ALLEN W. WOOD CorneU Universi0 Myriam Bienenstock. Politique dejeune Hegel: l~a ~8o1-18o6. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1992. Pp. 278. Paper, FF t96. Harry Brod. Hegel'sPhilosophyofPolitics:Idealism,Identity, and Modernity. Boulder: Westview Press, 1992. Pp. viii + 216. Cloth, $45.oo. Paper, $15.95. With Hegel's political philosophy resurfacing as a "communitarian" resource against liberal individualism, two new studies should further the impetus by delving into Hegel's fundamental category of ethical community. Myriam Bienenstock meticulously reconstructs the emergence of Hegel's philosophy at Jena, 18oi-18o6, while Harry Brod expounds the major issues of Hegel's Philosophy of Right 0820). Together they demonstrate the complexity and vitality of Hegel's notion. Bienenstock analyzes Hegel's Jena period as a creative struggle with philosophical "tradition"--in particular, the ideas of Aristotle and Spinoza--and with the contemporary German "context" (3o) or, more precisely, a congeries of such contexts: the political collapse of Germany; the Pantheism Controversy; the debate over Kantian "ideal- 316 .JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 39:2 APRIL 1994 ism"; the Romantic theory of language; the debate between the historical and natural theorists of law; and the impact of "political economy" (the Scottish Enlightenment). Bienenstock stresses the centrality of the debate over the religious and ethical implications of Spinoza's "fatalism." Like Herder, Hegel denied that Spinoza was a "fatalist," but he found Herder's defense of that stance unsatisfactory. Hence he resorted to Aristotle's notion of the polis as a community logically prior to its members to formulate more adequately a notion of totality ("substance") which was also creative and dynamic ("subject"). Hegel's work in Jena repudiated contemporary "philosophy of consciousness" as well as "practical philosophy" for their propensity to introduce "abstract" divisions (empirical/transcendental, subject/object, morality/politics) which could not be resolved . Superseding any division between morality and politics, Hegel insisted upon totality, a "whole world view" (route une vision du monde, 46). His solution was the concept Geist (spirit). Bienenstock demonstrates the emergence of the notion as Hegel's resolution or integration...