Hegel on Reason and History: A Contemporary Interpretation (review)

236 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY he has provided us with a "vision" of embodied subjectivity, finding expression in the forms of social existence, and discovering itself in relation to nature and history (p. 571). His ontological vision, however, can no longer be ours. In my view, the vision that Taylor says is "ours" is a vanishingbyproduct of an overexpansive phase of capitalism, which is destined to be superseded. In the happier, stabler centuries of the future, ontological syntheses like Hegel's may well become our ideological foundations. I am, however, as little an authoritative forecaster as Taylor, and I can end only by saying that I have found his book on Hegel illuminating and a proof that Hegel can interest thinkers with wholly different backgrounds. J. N. FINDLAY Boston University Hegel on Reason and History: A Contemporary Interpretation. By George Dennis O'Brien. (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1975. Pp. 188. $8.50) By this time, it is evident that the anticipated "Hegel Renaissance" is upon us. One certain sign, besides the conferences, articles, and books focused upon his philosophy, is the appearance of new English translations of his major works. Even now, through the recent competition of A. V. Miller and M. J. Petry, several equally excellent translations of the same work have been made available. Unhappily, this sudden embarras du choix has not extended to the most widely read of Hegel's works, Reason in History. Two translations are available, J. Sibree's of 1899 and R. Hartman's of 1953. Both, for different reasons, are unsatisfactory. Being relatively clear, brief, and touching upon such provocative topics as "the world-historical individual," the essay has served to introduce Hegel to countless undergraduates, historians, political scientists , and philosophers. Considering its wide influence as an introduction to Hegel, it is surprising not only that the text itself is less than satisfactory from a scholarly standpoint, but that--until O'Brien's present study--no adequate commentary upon it had ever been published . O' Brien's study is now not only the first but could well remain one of the best attempts to explicate this popular work. As every critical commentator on Reason in History must soon discover, a myriad of difficulties, both textual and exegetical, will be forced upon him. The trouble begins immediately with the title of the work: it is an editorial creation, being merely the introduction to Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of History. Hartman's translation, as a translation, is a good one; but it was not based upon the preferred 1953 edition of Johannes Hoffmeister. O'Brien is consequently pressed continually to balance the popular Hartman translation against Hoffmeister's edition. He is, of course, well aware of the problem and at the outset of his commentary observes that since one strategy of my work is to lay out an ordered argument in the text, someone aware of the way in which Die Vernunft in der Geschichte came to be might consider the whole project bizarre. How can one claim that there is a connected and developing series of reflections in a text pasted together by a century and a half of editors? Yet, a commentary is needed, and it is evidently O'Brien's fear that any deep entry into the textual morass surrounding Reason in History would prove to be both exhausting and philosophically worthless. And so, "this commentary is intended to be a philosophical rather than a philological commentary on the text." Considering the present need for even a mere running commentary upon this work, it is difficult to fault O'Brien's decision to advance without any further textual delays and philological diversions. The general path through this "territory so nettled over with confusion" is charted by following the general philosophical directions laid down by Hegel in his other works, with particular reliance on the omnipresent dialectic. Further, the attempt is to be guided by BOOK REVIEWS 237 Koj~ve's interpretive perspective, although in this O'Brien excises the Marxist and existentialist themes for the sake of a more analytically-mindedreadership. In sum, then, I have attempted to "fill in" the sketchy character of the text of...