Harnischmacher, Iris. Der metaphysische Gehalt der Hegelschen Logik.

Pozzo, Riccardo

Spekulation und Erfahrung, Series 2, Vol. 46. Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 2001. 558 pp. Cloth, 121.00 [euro]--The present book was inspired by Hermann Schweppenhauser, one of the last direct pupils of T. W. Adorno and the coeditor of the critical edition of Walter Benjamin's works. Its goal is to show that the critique of metaphysics and its restitution are tied up in a "logical unity," which Hegel's Science of Logic has taken to its most extreme consequences (p. 9). Coming from one scholar that places herself in the lager of Frankfurter critical theory, this statement may surprise. It is nonetheless consequential to a trend that Jurgen Habermas has made out since 1985 (see "Ruckkehr zur Metaphysik: Eine Tendenz in der deutschen Philosophie," Merkur 439/440 [1985]: pp. 898-905) in the form of answers to questions such as how to compensate for the loss of sense in modernity or how to provide for the need of an interpretation of the self and of the world in the context of a cultural process of the development of science in which individuals are enabled to rely on situational truth and therefore have stopped looking for a permanent foundation (p. 8). Obviously, the metaphysical content of the Science of Logic transpires from the systematicity of Hegel's determinations of thought. Not only do the latter fulfill the metaphysical claim that truth is immanent, they also represent, in the view of Harnischmacher, the "increasing socialization of cognition" (die fortschreitende Vergesellschaftung des Wissens), which they actually push forward (p. 17), insofar as they mediate subjective and objective moments of thought by exhibiting the totality of the modes of their relations (p. 19). To give an idea of the structure of the book, be it indicated that chapter 1 deals with the systematicity of the subject and the subjective structure of Hegel's system (pp. 23-217), chapter 2 with the integration of thought to a system, that is, with the idea of a self-generating system (pp. 219-381), and chapter 3 with the coming together of freedom and necessity (pp. 383-520).

Harnischmacher's main thesis is that the distance between thought and thing can be overcome if and only if thought thinks consequently against itself. For that purpose, thought needs Hegel's logical system, which lets no susbstratum subsist and no principle to which thought itself may eventually relate. Hegel's system makes it clear that being is not disposable, but it does not express this in the way Kant did, namely, by showing the impossibility of our cognition of the noumenal object. It rather expresses it as a relation of thought to itself and yet to that which in itself is nondisposable. Harnischmacher's interpretation is thus based on the exact contrary of Hegel's own interpretation of his logic. While Hegel maintains that being in the Science of Logic is at the disposition of thought, the author shows instead that Hegel's logic proves beyond all doubt that being is not at the disposition of thought. Hegel's logical system actually makes one aware of the irreducible difference between thought and being (p. 520). The book is amazingly intricate and provides quite a sample of deeply speculative arguments. It not only recommends itself as a commentary to Hegel's Science of Logic, it also recommends itself as one of its most powerful and consequential recent interpretations.--Riccardo Pozzo, University of Verona.