The Company of Words: Hegel, Language, and Systematic Philosophy (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 681 John McCumber. The Company of Words: Hegel, Language, and Systematic Philosophy. Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University PresS, 1993. Pp. xx + 442. Cloth, $59.95. Paper, $~.5 o. This is an ambitious book. It ventures a new interpretation of Hegel as a systematic philosopher and it also proposes that the Hegel thus intepreted constitutes a needed alternative for philosophy in our time. Additionally, it displays an impressively wide acquaintance with much of the enormous Hegel literature in German, English, and French--Professor McCumber rightly acknowledges that no one today could be in control of the entire literature on Hegelx--as well as an extensive familiarity with basic texts in the history of Western philosophy and in contemporary analytic philosophy. The last-mentioned area of competence is not at all extraneous m his work as a Hegel scholar, for it is his contention that Hegel, far from being the antipode of philosophy since the "linguistic turn," was actually the first to take this turn. Hence the arguments of Wittgenstein, Quine, and Davidson figure prominently in his discussion.' Important as this discussion is in McCumber's many-dimensional book, this brief review must focus upon his attempt to discern within Hegel's writings evidence for his argument that Hegel was, as a systematic philosopher, first and foremost a philosopher of language. It is only in fairly recent years that studies of Hegel have tended to break the habit of placing Hegel upon the Procrustean beds of theological absolutisms and the philosophy of history. For those to whom it still needed to be shown, McCumber has vigorously argued that there is a fundamental difference between "systematic dialectics" on the one hand and "historical dialectics" on the other, and that Hegel as a philosopher can only give place to the former. In a helpful appendix to this discussion (x48 ft.) he also comments upon the differences between the quasi-historical Phenomenoh~g) and the thoroughly systematic Encyclopedia. Within this reckoning the reader is given a much-improved orientation to assess the three currently viable alternatives for an understanding of Hegel's project. These are: (1) Hegel as a philosopher of consciousness and, more specifically, the philosopher who, like Fichte, attempted to complete the Kantian project;4 (~) Hegel as a philosopher of individuality (t0de u) and actual entity (ous/a), the philosopher who, like Aquinas and Leibniz, attempted to complete ' A recent database search, reported in the current issue of The Owl ofMinerva (XXV/1: 89), turned up 76 new books on Hegel for 199~alone. 9Readers interested in this newly emerged topic--Hegelian interpretations of recent AngloAmerican philosophy, especially of Davidson--will wishto consult the even more sustained discussion along these lines in Frank B. FarreU, Subjectivio,RealismandPostmodtmi.~: TheRecov~ ofthe Worldin RecentPhilosophy(Cambridge: CUP, 1994). sCountless writers have taken as their warrant for such reading~ Hegel's "famous" claim to expound "God before the creation of nature and finite Spirit" (Scienceof Log/~,tr. A. V. Miller [New York: Humanities Press, 1969], 50). In a delicious footnote, 351n.7~, McCumber traces this "unflagged citation" to Spinoza's On thelmpr0vetaentoftheIn~llect and draws apt conclusions. 4This line of interpretation has been pursued by many, including H. S. Harris, but by none more effectively than Robert B. Pippin, Hegel'sId~adism:TheSatisfactionsofSe~-Comciou.mt~(Cambridge : CUP, 1989). 682 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 32:4 OCTOBER t994 the Aristotelian project;5 and (3) Hegel as a philosopher of language, the philosopher who, anticipating Davidson's betterment of Quine's project, did that project better still. This third Hegel is McCumber's. To make his case, McCumber does not attempt what a thoroughgoing argument for his interpretation--clearly impossible in a book of this length--would entail: a consecutive study of the "moments" in Hegel's system. Instead he gives a sequence of four "analyses" of putatively Hegelian positions. They are: (t) "Truth as Systematicity," in which he cogendy argues that Hegel is not an "assertionist," that is, one for whom assertables, sentences or propositions, rather than, e.g., names, are the elementary units for systematizing; (2) "Dialectics," in which, deploying an elaborate symbolism for "moves" (that are...