BRADY BOWMAN

Hegel and the Metaphysics of Absolute Negativity

Brady Bowman, Hegel and the Metaphysics of Absolute Negativity, Cambridge University Press, 2013, 280pp., $99.00 (hbk), ISBN
9781107033597.

Reviewed byDean Moyar, Johns Hopkins University

Readers of Hegel, especially those not content to remain within his own vocabulary, have long struggled
with how to make sense of the activity that he attributes to such terms as 'essence', 'spirit', and the
'Concept'. Here's a prominent example of Hegel's use of such an active term: "The true is the whole.
However, the whole is only the essence completing itself through its own development." [1] Hegel doesn't
exactly shy away from using theological terms, so there is a natural way to read the activities as the
workings of a neo-Platonic divine mind (the very need to capitalize Concept to mark its singularity
suggests a super-agent at work behind our ordinary concepts). A turning point against such
interpretations came with Robert Pippin's Hegel's Idealism,[2] which put at the forefront the Kantian
dimension of Hegel's theoretical philosophy and opened a way to reading Hegel's active verbs as part of
a logic in which the incompleteness of a certain concept generates new conditions, new concepts,
through an internal dynamic aimed at the determinacy of the objective world. On this reading Hegel
largely accepted Kant's critique of rationalist metaphysics, and thus couldn't possibly be a traditional
metaphysician himself. Pippin showed how Hegel's project of constituting the world through logic could
be read as an attempt to demonstrate that the conditions of the possibility of our thinking of objects are
the conditions of the possibility of the objects themselves.
The past decade has seen something of a counterrevolutionary wave of interpretive work seeking to push
back against the anti-metaphysical thrust of Pippin's reading. In part such readings are based on the
worry that without a metaphysical logic, set apart from the vagaries of ordinary judgment and the social
processes of recognition (a theme that Pippin has tied directly into his account of the idealism), the rigor
of Hegel's systematic thought is compromised. A more external ground for this counter-movement is that
the non-metaphysical reading seems to be driven by the assumption that Hegel would be more appealing
to mainstream analytically-oriented philosophy if his metaphysical commitments were minimized (on this
line Pippin is cast as doing for/to Hegel what P. F. Strawson did for/to Kant). Even if we assume that
making Hegel more plausible to a wider audience is one of our goals, that goal seems no longer to be
well-served by arguing against metaphysics. Analytic philosophy has become much more open to
metaphysics over the last two decades, giving a new impetus to interpretive work that highlights Hegel's
positive contribution to the metaphysical tradition.
Brady Bowman frames his account as part of this pro-metaphysical counter-wave (2-4, 258-59). His
excellent book represents a major contribution to the project of reestablishing Hegel's metaphysical
credentials, and it deserves close study by anyone engaged with Hegel's theoretical philosophy. It is part
of the boldness of Bowman's project that rather than shying away from the active logical concepts, he
builds his entire account around them. While taking Hegel's Kantianism seriously, Bowman's argument
pays equal attention to the agenda set by Spinoza, and by F. H. Jacobi's critical reading of Spinoza.
Bowman does not attempt to tame Hegel's thought for consumption by a wider audience, instead
emphasizing that "Hegel's own speculativemetaphysics is emphatically revisionary" (7). A major worry
with such a heavily metaphysical approach is that the account will remain too close to Hegel's
terminology to add anything philosophically new to our understanding of his texts. But Bowman brings a
rich constellation of extra-Hegelian concepts to the project and manages thereby to avoid the overly
textual brand of hermeticism. The ambition of the account, and its complexity, comes out in the following
description:
Prior to ontology is a deeper metaphysical account of negativity designed to explain both the
emergence of a finite cognitive mind that finds itself over against a categoriallystructured world of
finite things, and the specific limits finite cognition encounters in trying to render that world

intelligible to itself. Ultimately, the structure of the Concept and the dynamic of absolute negation
serve to integrate the two great models from which post-Kantian philosophers drew their
inspiration: Spinoza's monism and Kant's idealism. They do so by supporting a unified account of
the source of determinacy in nature and intentionality, that is, by identifying a single structure that
is at once the structure of being and the structure of thought. (23-24)
While structural readings of Hegel have become almost the norm (for metaphysical and nonmetaphysical readings), Bowman goes further in arguing for an original activity that accounts for the
structure of both nature and our thought. This argument leads to the conclusion that "knowledge of the
truth is necessitated by the truth" (240), an idea that he likens to David Armstrong's recent theory of
truth (240n2).
One of the great virtues of Bowman's book is that his interpretive agenda does not blind him to the
nuances and complications of Hegel's position. Even in his opposition to the "non-metaphysical" Hegel,
Bowman does not neglect those aspects of Hegel's view that clearly are directed against the
metaphysical tradition. Just when I would find myself thinking the interpretation was one-sided, he would
introduce complexities that demonstrate his grasp of the alternatives. Bowman is also keenly aware of
the communicative perils of Hegel interpretation ("Some reader are sure to find observations like this
akin to numerology and about as meaningful" (173); "One has to be very careful in expressing this
relation since at this level of abstraction it is easy to stray into nonsense." (209)), but he does not shy
away from difficulty. He builds on the work of previous commentators, but always discharges the burden
of making the points intelligible in his own voice.
There is no way I can do justice even in summary to Bowman's many complex arguments. In what follows
I will outline the main theses of four (out of seven) of Bowman's chapters, and then follow with some
lines of resistance to those theses.
In his opening chapter Bowman draws on the work of two preeminent German commentators on Hegel's
theoretical philosophy, Dieter Henrich and Rolf-Peter Horstmann, in order to establish the basic
parameters of Hegel's relational metaphysics. From Horstmann he adopts an understanding of the
Concept as a basic relational structure: "The unique character of the Concept lies in its being constituted
wholly by relationswhich themselves are metaphysically prior to any relata that might appear to realize
those relations" (37). While this suggests an inactive, perhaps overly formal structure, Bowman ties it
together with Henrich's analysis of negation in order to explain the active process that gives rise to that
structure. He writes that "the logic of absolute negativity" is "the generative dynamic that gives rise to
the structure of the Concept" (48). This is "autonomous negation" because Hegel "ceases to view it as
fundamentally standing in complementary correlation to affirmation" (50). According to this idea,
negation can be (indeed must be) applied to itself, and in the process it generates an internal structure
of identity and difference. In the following, Bowman describes a potential problem with this idea, and its
solution:
Qua self-relating negation, autonomous negation immediately gives rise to a positive term
(affirmation, being) to which it stands in an external relation, that is, a relation-to-other. . . . The
decisive move, therefore, in reconstructing Hegel's Grundoperation is to posit relation-to-other as a
moment wholly internal to the relation-to-self: the relation-to-other that emerges as an analytic
implication of autonomous negation has to be interpreted as, in truth, the relation of autonomous
negation to itself. (52)
Bowman is aware that many readers of Hegel will be much more familiar with "determinate negation"
than with this conception of "absolute negativity," and he therefore emphasizes that determinate
negation presupposes absolute negativity (55). Rather than determinate negation being the fundamental
tool, it is "the moment of relation-to-other when conceived as the result of self-referential negation" (55).
Absolute negativity takes a back seat for much of the next four chapters, as Bowman delves into the
specific criticisms of pre-Kantian metaphysics and the domains of "finite cognition." I pass over the
masterful Chapter Two account of Hegel's critique of the metaphysics of both the classical rationalists
and Kant himself. In Chapter Three Bowman examines Pippin's idealist reading and McDowell's more
realist interpretation, and offers a characterization of Hegel's metaphysical position as one that is

fundamentally skeptical about finite objects. Drawing on Robert Stern's work, Bowman notes that Pippin's
claim that Hegel denies "any sense to a mind-world dichotomy" (109) renders untenable Pippin's view
that self-consciousness is central to Hegel's project. The problem is that Pippin sometimes characterizes
his Kantian view as anti-realist, and thus he seems to view Hegel's philosophy to be "an exploration
of how we as self-conscious cognizers must take the world to be, not how the world really is" (109). While
Bowman admits that many of Hegel's criticisms of Kant are compatible with the idea that Hegel is
completing Kant's project, he ultimately thinks that the distance between Kant's fundamentally
epistemological critical project and Hegel's metaphysical project is too great for Pippin's view to be
correct. Bowman partially endorses McDowell's more realist appraisal of Hegel, but claims that McDowell
only appreciates half of Hegel's position on finite objects, namely the epistemological side. What
McDowell doesn't appreciate is:
Hegel's metaphysical idealism: the position that the whole sphere of categorically constituted,
finite objectivity is both independent of finite cognizers and radically dependent on
an infinite ground that does not itself in turn fall under the categories, but is the activity of which
they are manifestations. (115)
Thus McDowell and Pippin are both guilty of focusing on the reality of "determinate objects," a focus that
"makes thought beholden to a class of objects that are finite, merely phenomenal, and hence ultimately
unreal" (124). Bowman takes this to imply that Hegel is "a radical skeptic" (126) about what we ordinarily
call knowledge. In Chapter Four Bowman applies this skeptical interpretation to Hegel's understanding of
nature, and argues "that even items such as Galileo's law of free fall do not fully count as knowledge in
the sense relevant for Hegel" (136). He emphasizes the transformational and revisionary aspects of
Hegel's approach, whereby we come to see the objects of natural science, and natural science itself, as
incapable of full justification on their own terms.
The interpretation really comes to a head in Chapter 5, where Bowman argues that Jacobi's criticism of
Spinoza could be seen as a serious criticism of Hegel's relational metaphysics as well (I am leaving out
here Bowman's strikingly original use of Hegel's views on geometry to stage the argument). He does an
excellent job of showing that Hegel's own sympathy with Jacobi's critique (that Spinozism leads to a
formalism of relations that implies fatalism and nihilism) risks making his own position internally
contradictory. While repeating much of Jacobi's critique, Hegel "himself espouses a metaphysics that is
explicitly committed to theabsolutely relational view of finite things" (159). Here is Bowman on Jacobi's
criticism and the Hegelian position that seems to be guilty of the very same sins as Spinozism:
Jacobi alleges that (1) the essential role of tautologies ("identical propositions") in demonstrative
reasoning, (2) the primacy of relations over intrinsic properties or qualities, and (3) the closely
related primacy of the whole over the parts (semantic and especially metaphysical holism) are
what entail fatalism and nihilism. And excepting (1), these are among the most striking features of
Hegel's own system, which I think is best understood as a version of metaphysical structural
realism. The very concept of the Concept is that of a complex of nested relations that are
absolutely prior to any (by definition finite) relata. The concept of absolute negativity is that of a
self-referring procedure or process that originates the elements through whose relations it
manifests itself, thereby also individuating itself as the singulare tantum it is. And the Hegelian
absolute . . . is by definition the whole, while the various individualities populating Hegelian
science are moments that can claim neither determinateness nor existence outside that whole.
(166-67)
To show how Hegel escapes Jacobi's critique, Bowman analyzes a long passage in which Hegel accuses
Jacobi of viewing mediation and holism only from the perspective of finitude, and thus of opposing
immediacy to mediation in a dogmatic way. The question then is how to save the finite things on the
absolute relationally view, for Hegel clearly sympathizes with Jacobi's complaint against Spinoza that
finite individuals fall out of a systematic rationalist view. Bowman thus insists that Hegel does find a
place for the finite:

Finite cognition is a constitutive moment of the (infinite) cognition of the Idea, and reference to
finite, self-external, non-absolute objects of knowledge is thus an ineliminable, albeit subordinate
and by nature evanescent moment of the Idea's self-cognition. . . . Its constitutive character is to
be vanishing, not to be nothing. (189)
It is this moment of finitude that enables Hegel to answer Jacobi's formalism charge and thus to escape
the charge of "acosmism" that he levels against Spinoza.
The penultimate chapter argues for an interpretation of Hegel's conception of logical content, which
Bowman views as the answer to the fundamental problems that Hegel diagnosed in Spinoza and Kant.
Bowman views as "strictly analogous" (201) the problems of how to account for the relation between
Kant's transcendental I and the sensible manifold, on the one hand, and for Spinoza's relation between
substance and the finite modes of cognition, on the other. To sort out these problems and Hegel's unitary
solution, Bowman has recourse to a scholastic and Cartesian distinction, namely the distinction between
formal and objective reality. With the help of this distinction he attempts to make intelligible Hegel's goal
of uniting substance and subject. In Bowman's reconstruction substance stands for the formal reality of a
mind-independent world and objective reality stands for the intentional content of a subject's
representation of objects. The discussion here is difficult but illuminating, as Bowman guides us through
the dialectic of these two kinds of reality in their relation to each other. Pausing to take stock and reorient
the reader, Bowman describes Hegel's "metaphysics of knowing" as follows:
One helpful way of looking at Hegelian speculative science is to see it as starting with a certain
analysis of the "logic" of knowing (i.e. the "dialectical" identity of formal and objective reality
presented above), and then positing it as a structure/dynamic absolutely prior to the subjective
acts of knowing that make up finite cognition. (214)
Bowman thus aims to account for the reflexive dimension of Hegelian metaphysics, the way in which it
has to account for its own possibility as a form of knowing. The language of positing is also central in the
following conclusion: "all reality ("the true," "the absolute") depends on the emergence of a difference
between formal and objective reality such that formal reality exists just to the extent that it is posited in
and through its objective reality, in other words as an object of knowing" (218-19). The Hegel that
emerges on this reading thus clearly subscribes to idealism, though a "non-psychological" idealism that is
compatible with metaphysical structural realism.
I turn now to raise some questions about the argument. Bowman is surely right to identify negativity as
the central figure in Hegel's thought, but there is reason to doubt that absolute negativity is an
autonomous negation that constitutes an ultimate active ground. This is a complex issue, yet the
potential problem is clear enough from Hegel's statement about first principles in the famous Preface to
the Phenomenology of Spirit. As autonomous, it seems that absolute negativity is supposed to be a first
principle, a ground from which everything else flows. Yet Hegel's holism means that he is opposed to all
first principles:
It is only as a system that knowledge is actual and can be presented as science; and that any
further so-called fundamental proposition or first principle of philosophy, if it is true, is for this
reason alone also false just because it is a fundamental proposition or a principle. [3]
The absolute negativity of reflection may well be Hegel's primary methodological tool, but as such a tool
it does not seem to be autonomous in the sense of floating free from affirmation. As a principle of
mediation, absolute negativity's main function is to turn immediate affirmations into more
determinate affirmations.
Part of the point of Hegelian negation is the duality of the finite and infinite, the way in which they are
two sides of a single coin. Bowman thus seems to go too far in demoting the status of finite objects and
finite cognition when he writes that Hegel's position is "maximally strong version of skepticism" (102)
about knowledge of finite objects and that this is an "unmitigated skepticism" (128). It seems essential to
Hegel's view that his skepticism is moderate and indeed highly mitigated. The bulk of his writings
concern finite objects and finite cognition, and the arrival at the "Absolute Idea," when according to

Bowman we finally get beyond finite cognition, consists mainly of a discussion of the method by which
the forms of finite cognition have been interpreted to form a systematic whole.
Bowman's more detailed descriptions of his position on the finite show a more balanced view, for he
argues that the finite is transformed in our speculative knowledge of it (42). So the finite can be known
and does find a place within Hegel's ultimate account of reality, but the finite loses the immediacy and
independence that we naively attribute to it. The most direct admission of the positive role of the finite
comes in his answer to Jacobi's charge that relational metaphysics loses all grasp of the finite. In that
context, Bowman writes, "the perennial recurrence of a self-external, finite content . . . cannot vanish lest
the foundation crumble on which the higher-level self-relation of philosophical cognition is built" (189).
This seems basically right to me, except that it is rather confusing to call the finite the foundation of
cognition, especially after calling Hegel a radical skeptic of the finite. The view of the finite as the
"vanishing" also doesn't seem to capture the sense in which finite individuals can themselves be selfrelating and therefore simultaneously infinite in Hegel's sense.
A further concern, closely related to the previous two, is that Bowman's account is oriented too much by
Hegel's "Doctrine of Essence," and not enough by his "Doctrine of the Concept." There is reason to think
that the discussion of negativity at the beginning of "Doctrine of Essence," the torturous section that is
the basis of Henrich's view, is itself an abstraction from the genuinely reality-defining treatment of
cognition and objectivity in the "Doctrine of the Concept." In the latter Hegel gives an account of forms of
judgment followed by an account of forms of inference. The judgment-inference relation is perhaps the
key to making sense of how the infinite (the inference as the form of reason) is built on the "foundation"
of the finite (the judgment as the form of the understanding). [4] I also worry that by introducing formal
and objective reality, and putting so much weight on metaphysical necessitation, Bowman has confined
himself too much to concepts from the final section of the "Doctrine of Essence," at the expense of
dealing more fully not only with the inference, but with mechanism, teleology and life. The latter two
topics in particular would have helped show (along with the critical discussion of the geometric method)
how much Hegel departs in the end from Spinoza's rationalism.
Bowman certainly does make a good case for Hegel's difference from Spinoza, but it is one that raises a
number of further questions about the nature of Hegel's view. Answering the question of how Hegel
reconceived the problematic relation in Spinoza of substance and its attributes, Bowman writes,
On the Hegelian conception, by contrast, the original determinateness of substance just is the
existence of the intellect that finds itself outside (infinite) substance and therefore finite: in Hegel's
technical terms, the determinateness of substance is identical to the existence of
the understanding or finite cognition. (221)
The claim that the being (i.e., the "determinateness") of substance is finite cognition itself could be read
as overcoming the very project of metaphysics rather than as an argument for metaphysics. It could be
reformulated as the claim that the real is just what it can be known to be through finite cognition.
Perhaps one could make the case that only a metaphysical argument could get us to this claim about the
original determinacy of substance, but then I start wondering whether the self-negating character of such
an argument (practice metaphysics in order to undermine the metaphysical separation of being and
finite thought) is compatible with the kind of robust metaphysics that Bowman aims to establish. There is
a different sense of metaphysics that would align it closely with semantics, a sense in which metaphysics
is about ultimate intelligibility or sense-making. There are many points in Bowman's book where he does
seem to align Hegel with this rather moderate understanding of metaphysics, which would be fine,
except that such an understanding of Hegel is extremely close to Pippin's supposedly contrary Kantian
view that conditions of intelligibility are the conditions of objectivity.
The proximity of the Hegelian metaphysics that Bowman defends to the Kantian view can also be made
out through comparing the position to that of Fichte's Jena Wissenschaftslehre. There are several points
where Bowman acknowledges the tight relation of Fichte's and Hegel's projects (3, 46, 189, 226), though
he also notes several key differences. The project of a "metaphysics of knowing," in which one gives a
logic of knowing and then posits that logic as the basis of the real (see Bowman's description quoted

above from p. 214), seems quiteFichtean to me. Of course Hegel aimed to remove the
lingering psychologistic element from Fichte's view, thus giving the dialectic of thinking a more purely
conceptual expression, one that didn't have to insist on the priority of the subject against the real. Hegel
stressed that his negation is immanent rather than external, and he aimed to integrate thought within
nature by demonstrating nature's intelligibility, but Hegel's project still seems to be a closer cousin to
Fichte's than to anyone else's. This affinity would be even more pronounced if Bowman had tried to
account for the role of the practical at the end of Hegel's Science of Logic. Fichte ultimately relied on
practical grounds for overcoming Spinoza's metaphysics, and though Hegel thought that a more
immanent critique was possible, he too had recourse to the practical as essential to his very method.
But any well-focused book on Hegel has to leave many topics out of consideration. It is a mark of
Bowman's achievement that one finishes his dense, challenging book wanting to read more. [5]

[1] G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, translated by Terry Pinkard, 20. Gesammelte Werke(GW),

edited by the Academy of Sciences of Nordrhein-Westfalia (Hamburg: Meiner 1968- ), Vol. 9, p. 19.
[2] Robert Pippin, Hegel's Idealism: The Satisfactions of Self-consciousness. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1989.

[3] Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 24. GW 9, p. 24.
[4] I have in mind the following passage from The Science of Logic, where Hegel is answering the

question of what makes non-finite objects rational: "the infinite in them is not the empty abstraction from
the finite, is not a universality which is void of content and determination, but is the fulfilled universality .
. . Only in this way does reason rise above the finite, the conditioned, the sensuous, or however one
might define it, and is in this negativity essentially replete with content, for as unity it is the unity of
determinate extremes. And so the rational is nothing but the inference [Schlu]." G.W.F. Hegel, The
Science of Logic, translated by George di Giovanni. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, p.
589. GW 12, p. 91 (translation altered). Bowman comes close to thematizing Hegel's version of the
judgment-inference difference in a discussion of the "speculative sentence" (251-54).
[5] I would like to thank Yitzhak Melamed for helpful comments on a draft of this review.

Hegel y la Metafsica de absoluta negatividad

Brady Bowman, Hegel and the Metaphysics of Absolute Negativity, Cambridge University Press, 2013, 280pp., $99.00 (hbk), ISBN
9781107033597.

Los lectores de Hegel, especialmente los que no se contenta con permanecer dentro de
su propio vocabulario, han luchado durante mucho tiempo con la forma de dar sentido a
la actividad que l atribuye a trminos tales como "esencia", "espritu", y el "Concepto".
He aqu un ejemplo prominente de uso de Hegel de un trmino tan activa: "La verdad es
el todo Sin embargo, el conjunto es slo la esencia completarse a travs de su propio
desarrollo.". [1] Hegel no exactamente tmido lejos de usar trminos teolgicos , por lo
que es una forma natural de leer las actividades como el funcionamiento de una mente
divina neoplatnica (la propia necesidad de capitalizar Concepto para marcar su
singularidad sugiere un sper agente en el trabajo detrs de nuestros conceptos
ordinarios). Un punto de inflexin en contra de tales interpretaciones vino con el
idealismo de Robert Pippin Hegel, [2], que puso a la vanguardia de la dimensin
kantiana de la filosofa terica de Hegel y abri un camino a la lectura de los verbos
activos de Hegel como parte de una lgica en la que el carcter incompleto de un cierto

concepto genera nuevas condiciones, nuevos conceptos, a travs de una dinmica

interna dirigida a la determinacin del mundo objetivo. En esta lectura de Hegel en gran
parte aceptado la crtica kantiana de la metafsica racionalista, y por lo tanto no poda
ser un metafsico tradicional s mismo. Pippin mostr como proyecto de Hegel de que
constituye el mundo a travs de la lgica podra leerse como un intento de demostrar
que las condiciones de la posibilidad de que nuestra forma de pensar de los objetos son
las condiciones de posibilidad de los objetos mismos.
La ltima dcada ha visto algo de una ola contrarrevolucionaria de trabajo interpretativo
que busca hacer retroceder contra el empuje anti-metafsica de la lectura de Pippin. En
parte, estas lecturas se basan en la preocupacin de que sin una lgica metafsica,
apartada de los caprichos de juicio ordinario y los procesos sociales de reconocimiento
(un tema que Pippin ha atado directamente en su cuenta del idealismo), el rigor de
Hegel sistemtica pensamiento se ve comprometida. Un terreno ms externa de esta
contra-movimiento es que la lectura no metafsica parece estar impulsado por la
suposicin de que Hegel sera ms atractivo para la corriente principal de orientacin
analtica filosofa si se minimizaron sus compromisos metafsicos (en esta lnea Pippin
se presenta como hacerlo por / para Hegel lo hizo por Strawson / a Kant). Incluso si
asumimos que lo que Hegel ms plausible a un pblico ms amplio es uno de nuestros
objetivos, esa meta parece ya no estar bien comunicado por argumentando en contra de
la metafsica. La filosofa analtica se ha vuelto mucho ms abiertos a la metafsica en
las ltimas dos dcadas, dando un nuevo impulso al trabajo interpretativo que destaca la
contribucin positiva de Hegel a la tradicin metafsica.
Brady Bowman enmarca su cuenta como parte de este pro-metafsica contra-ola (2-4,
258-59). Su excelente libro representa una contribucin importante para el proyecto de
restablecer credenciales metafsicos de Hegel, y merece un estudio realizado por
cualquier persona dedicada a la filosofa terica de Hegel. Es parte de la audacia del
proyecto de Bowman que en vez de rehuir los conceptos lgicos activos, construye toda
su cuenta a su alrededor. Al tiempo que toma en serio el kantismo de Hegel, el
argumento de Bowman paga la misma atencin a la agenda establecida por Spinoza y
por la lectura crtica de FH Jacobi de Spinoza. Bowman no intenta dominar el
pensamiento de Hegel para el consumo de un pblico ms amplio, en vez haciendo
hincapi en que "propia metafsica especulativa de Hegel es enfticamente revisionista"
(7). Una preocupacin importante con un enfoque fuertemente metafsica es que la
cuenta permanecer demasiado cerca de la terminologa de Hegel aadir algo
filosficamente nuevo a nuestra comprensin de sus textos. Pero Bowman trae una rica
constelacin de conceptos extra-hegelianos al proyecto y gestiona as a evitar la marca
excesivamente textual de hermetismo. La ambicin de la cuenta y su complejidad, sale
en la siguiente descripcin:
Antes de la ontologa es una cuenta ms profunda metafsica de negatividad
diseado para explicar tanto la aparicin de una mente cognitiva finito que se
encuentra enfrente de un mundo categricamente estructurado de las cosas
finitas, y los lmites especficos encuentros cognicin finitos en tratar de hacer
que el mundo inteligible a s mismo . En ltima instancia, la estructura del
concepto y la dinmica de la negacin absoluta sirven para integrar las dos
grandes modelos de la que los filsofos post-kantianos sacaban su inspiracin: el
monismo de Spinoza y el idealismo de Kant. Lo hacen mediante el apoyo a una
cuenta unificada de la fuente de la determinacin de la naturaleza y la

intencionalidad, es decir, mediante la identificacin de una nica estructura que

es a la vez la estructura del ser y de la estructura del pensamiento. (23-24)
Mientras lecturas estructurales de Hegel han convertido casi en la norma (por lecturas
metafsicas y no metafsicos), Bowman va ms all en argumentar a favor de una
actividad original que representa la estructura de la naturaleza y de nuestro
pensamiento. Este argumento lleva a la conclusin de que "el conocimiento de la verdad
es necesaria por la verdad" (240), una idea que se asemeja a la reciente teora de la
verdad (240n2) de David Armstrong.
Una de las grandes virtudes del libro de Bowman es que su agenda interpretativa no le
ciegue a los matices y las complicaciones de la posicin de Hegel. Incluso en su
oposicin a la "no-metafsico" Hegel, Bowman no deja de lado los aspectos de vista de
Hegel de que claramente se dirige contra la tradicin metafsica. Justo cuando me
encontraba pensando la interpretacin fue de un solo lado, se introducira complejidades
que demuestren su comprensin de las alternativas. Bowman es tambin muy consciente
de los peligros comunicativas de interpretacin de Hegel ("Algunos lectores estn
seguro de encontrar observaciones como esta similar a la numerologa y tan
significativo" (173); "Uno tiene que ser muy cuidadoso al expresar esta relacin, ya que
en este nivel de abstraccin es fcil perderse en tonteras. "(209)), pero no se asusta de
dificultad. Se basa en el trabajo de los comentaristas anteriores, pero siempre descarga
la carga de hacer los puntos inteligible en su propia voz.
No hay manera de que pueda hacer justicia incluso en resumen para muchos argumentos
complejos de Bowman. En lo que sigue voy a esbozar las principales tesis de cuatro (de
siete) de los captulos de Bowman, y luego seguir con algunas lneas de resistencia a
esas tesis.
En su primer captulo Bowman se basa en el trabajo de dos comentaristas alemanes
preeminentes en la filosofa terica de Hegel, Dieter Henrich y Rolf-Peter Horstmann, a
fin de establecer los parmetros bsicos de la metafsica de Hegel relacionales. De
Horstmann adopta una comprensin del concepto como una estructura relacional bsica:
"El carcter nico del concepto radica en su ser constituido totalmente por las relaciones
que ellos mismos son metafsicamente antes de cualquier relata que pueda aparecer a
darse cuenta de esas relaciones" (37). Si bien esto sugiere una estructura inactiva, quiz
demasiado formal, Bowman ata junto con el anlisis de Henrich de la negacin con el
fin de explicar el proceso activo que da origen a esa estructura. Escribe que "la lgica de
la negatividad absoluta" es "la dinmica generativa que da origen a la estructura del
concepto" (48). Esta es "la negacin autnoma" porque Hegel "deje de verla como
fundamentalmente de pie en correlacin complementaria a la afirmacin" (50). De
acuerdo con esta idea, la negacin puede ser (de hecho debe ser) aplicado a s mismo, y
en el proceso que genera una estructura interna de identidad y diferencia. En lo que
sigue, Bowman describe un problema potencial con esta idea, y su solucin:
qua negacin auto-relacin, la negacin autnoma inmediatamente da lugar a
un trmino positivo (afirmacin, ser) a la que se encuentra en una relacin
externa, es decir, una relacin-al-otro. El movimiento decisivo, por lo tanto, en
la reconstruccin de Grundoperation de Hegel es postular relacin-a otro
como un momento puramente internas de la relacin consigo mismo: la otra
relacin-a-que surge como una implicacin analtica de la negacin autnoma

ha de interpretarse ya que, en verdad, la relacin de la negacin autnoma a s

mismo. (52)
Bowman es consciente de que muchos lectores de Hegel sern mucho ms
familiarizados con "negacin determinada" que con esta concepcin de la "negatividad
absoluta", y por lo tanto, hace hincapi en que la negacin determinada presupone
negatividad absoluta (55). En lugar de la negacin determinada siendo la herramienta
fundamental, que es "el momento de la relacin-a-s cuando concebido como el
resultado de la negacin autorreferencial" (55).
Negatividad absoluta tiene un asiento trasero de gran parte de los prximos cuatro
captulos, como Bowman profundiza en las crticas especficas de la metafsica prekantiana y los dominios de la "cognicin finito." Paso por alto la magistral Captulo Dos
en cuenta la crtica de Hegel de la metafsica de ambos los racionalistas clsicos y el
propio Kant. En el captulo tres Bowman examina lectura idealista de Pippin y ms
interpretacin realista de McDowell, y ofrece una caracterizacin de la posicin
metafsica de Hegel como una que es fundamentalmente escptica acerca de los objetos
finitos. Sobre la base de la obra de Robert Stern, Bowman seala que la alegacin de
Pippin que Hegel niega "ningn sentido para una dicotoma mente-mundo" (109) hace
que la vista insostenible de Pippin que la auto-conciencia es fundamental para el
proyecto de Hegel. El problema es que Pippin veces caracteriza su visin kantiana como
anti-realista, y por lo tanto parece que ver la filosofa de Hegel como "una exploracin
de cmo nosotros, como conocedores autoconscientes debe tener el mundo a ser, no
cmo el mundo realmente es" (109). Mientras Bowman admite que muchas de las
crticas de Hegel de Kant son compatibles con la idea de que Hegel est terminando el
proyecto de Kant, que en ltima instancia, piensa que la distancia entre el proyecto
crtico fundamentalmente epistemolgico de Kant y el proyecto metafsica de Hegel es
demasiado grande para que la opinin de Pippin sea correcta. Bowman respalda
parcialmente de McDowell ms valoracin realista de Hegel, pero afirma que slo se
aprecia McDowell medio de la posicin de Hegel en los objetos finitos, es decir, el lado
epistemolgico. Lo que McDowell no aprecia es:
Idealismo metafsico de Hegel: la posicin de que toda la esfera de manera
categrica constituido, objetividad finito es a la vez independiente de conocedores
finitos, dependiendo radicalmente de un terreno infinito que no es en s lo hace a
su vez, la cada en las categoras, pero es la actividad de la que son
manifestaciones. (115)
As McDowell y Pippin son ambos culpables de centrarse en la realidad de los "objetos
determinados", un enfoque que "hace que pens en deuda a una clase de objetos que son
finitos, simplemente fenomenal, y por lo tanto, en ltima instancia, irreal" (124).
Bowman lleva esto a entender que Hegel es "un escptico radical" (126) acerca de lo
que comnmente llamamos conocimiento. En el captulo cuatro Bowman aplica esta
interpretacin escptica a la comprensin hegeliana de la naturaleza, y sostiene "que los
artculos incluso como ley de Galileo de la cada libre no cuentan plenamente como
conocimiento en el sentido relevante para Hegel" (136). Se hace hincapi en los
aspectos de transformacin y revisionistas del enfoque de Hegel, por el que llegamos a
ver los objetos de las ciencias naturales, y la propia ciencia natural, tan incapaz de
justificacin plena en sus propios trminos.

La interpretacin de verdad viene a la cabeza en el captulo 5, donde Bowman

argumenta que la crtica de Jacobi de Spinoza podra ser visto como una crtica seria de
la metafsica relacionales de Hegel tambin (estoy dejando aqu el uso
sorprendentemente original de Bowman de puntos de vista de Hegel en la geometra
para organizar el argumento). l hace un trabajo excelente de mostrar que la simpata
propia de Hegel con la crtica de Jacobi (que spinozismo conduce a un formalismo de
las relaciones que implica el fatalismo y el nihilismo) corre el riesgo de hacer su propia
posicin internamente contradictoria. Mientras repetir gran parte de la crtica de Jacobi,
Hegel "a s mismo propugna una metafsica que se ha comprometido explcitamente a
theabsolutely vista relacional de las cosas finitas" (159). Aqu est Bowman en la crtica
de Jacobi y la posicin hegeliana que parece ser culpable de los mismos pecados como
spinozismo:
Jacobi alega que (1) el papel esencial de tautologas ("proposiciones idnticas") en
el razonamiento demostrativo, (2) la primaca de las relaciones ms propiedades
intrnsecas o cualidades, y (3) la primaca estrechamente relacionadas del todo
sobre las partes (semntica y el holismo especialmente metafsica) son lo que
implica el fatalismo y el nihilismo. Y a excepcin de (1), stas son algunas de las
caractersticas ms llamativas de sistema propio de Hegel, que creo que se
entiende mejor como una versin del realismo metafsico estructural. El concepto
mismo del concepto es el de un complejo de relaciones anidadas que son
absolutamente antes de cualquier (por definicin finita) relata. El concepto de la
negatividad absoluta es la de un procedimiento o proceso de auto-referencia que
origina los elementos a travs de cuyas relaciones se manifiesta, por lo tanto
tambin individuating s mismo como el tantum singulare que es. Y el hegeliano
absoluta. . . es por definicin el conjunto, mientras que las diversas
individualidades que pueblan la ciencia hegeliana son momentos que pueden
reclamar ni determinabilidad ni existencia fuera de ese conjunto. (166-67)
Para mostrar cmo Hegel escapa la crtica de Jacobi, Bowman analiza un largo pasaje
en el que acusa a Hegel Jacobi de ver la mediacin y el holismo slo desde la
perspectiva de la finitud, y por lo tanto de oponerse a la inmediatez a la mediacin de
una manera dogmtica. La pregunta entonces es cmo guardar las cosas finitas en la
visin absoluta relacional, para Hegel simpatiza claramente con la queja de Jacobi
contra Spinoza que los individuos finitos caen de una visin racionalista sistemtica.
Por lo tanto Bowman insiste en que Hegel hace encontrar un lugar para lo finito:
Cognicin finitos es un momento constitutivo de la (infinita) conocimiento de la
Idea, y la referencia a, por cuenta externa, objetos que no son absolutos finitos de
conocimiento es, pues, un momento evanescente ineliminable, aunque
subordinado y por la naturaleza de la auto-conocimiento de la Idea. . . . Su carcter
constitutivo es que se desvanece, por no ser nada. (189)
Es este momento de la finitud que permite a Hegel para responder cargo formalismo de
Jacobi y as escapar de la acusacin de "acosmismo" que l niveles contra Spinoza.
El penltimo captulo argumenta a favor de una interpretacin de la concepcin
hegeliana de contenido lgico, que considera Bowman como la respuesta a los
problemas fundamentales que Hegel diagnostica en Spinoza y Kant. Bowman ve como
"estrictamente anlogo" (201) los problemas de cmo dar cuenta de la relacin entre lo

trascendental de Kant y el colector sensible, por una parte, y por la relacin de Spinoza
entre sustancia y los modos finitos de la cognicin, por el otro. Para resolver estos
problemas y una solucin unitaria de Hegel, Bowman recurre a una distincin
escolstica y cartesiana, a saber, la distincin entre la realidad formal y objetiva. Con la
ayuda de esta distincin que intenta hacer inteligible objetivo de Hegel de unir a la
sustancia y el sujeto. En sustancia reconstruccin de Bowman representa la realidad
formal de un mundo independiente de la mente y la realidad objetiva representa el
contenido intencional de la representacin de un tema de los objetos. La discusin aqu
es difcil, pero esclarecedor, ya que nos gua Bowman a travs de la dialctica de estas
dos clases de realidad en su relacin con los dems. Haciendo una pausa para hacer un
balance y reorientar el lector, Bowman describe Hegel "metafsica del conocimiento" de
la siguiente manera:
Una forma til de ver la ciencia especulativa hegeliana es ver como a partir de un
cierto anlisis de la "lgica" de saber (es decir, la identidad "dialctica" de la
realidad formal y objetiva presentada anteriormente), y luego postular como una
estructura / dinmica absolutamente antes de los actos subjetivos de conocimiento
que conforman la cognicin finito. (214)
Por lo tanto Bowman pretende dar cuenta de la dimensin reflexiva de la metafsica
hegeliana, la forma en la que se tiene que dar cuenta de su propia posibilidad como una
forma de saberlo. El lenguaje de la postulacin es tambin central en la siguiente
conclusin: "toda la realidad (" la verdadera "," lo absoluto ") depende de la aparicin
de una diferencia entre la realidad formal y objetiva de tal manera que existe realidad
formal solo en la medida en que es postulada en ya travs de su realidad objetiva, es
decir, como objeto de conocimiento "(218-19). El Hegel que emerge en esta lectura as
claramente se suscribe al idealismo, aunque un idealismo "no-psicolgica" que es
compatible con el realismo metafsico estructural.
Paso ahora a plantear algunas preguntas sobre el argumento. Bowman es seguramente la
derecha para identificar la negatividad como la figura central en el pensamiento de
Hegel, pero no hay razn para dudar de que la negatividad absoluta es una negacin
autnoma que constituye un suelo activo final. Este es un tema complejo, sin embargo,
el problema potencial es lo suficientemente claro en la declaracin de Hegel sobre los
primeros principios en el famoso prefacio a la Fenomenologa del Espritu. Como
autnoma, parece que la negatividad absoluta se supone que es un primer principio, la
tierra de la cual fluye todo lo dems. Sin embargo, el holismo hegeliano significa que l
se opone a todos los primeros principios:
Es slo como un sistema que el conocimiento es real y puede ser presentado
como la ciencia; y que cualquier llamada proposicin fundamental o primer
principio de la filosofa an ms por lo que, si es cierto, es por esta razn
tambin es falso slo porque se trata de una proposicin fundamental o un
principio. [3]
La negatividad absoluta de reflexin tambin puede ser instrumento metodolgico
principal de Hegel, sino como una herramienta de este tipo no parece ser autnomo en
el sentido de la libre flotacin de la afirmacin. Como principio de la mediacin, la
funcin principal de la negatividad absoluta es convertir afirmaciones inmediatas en
ms afirmaciones determinadas.

Parte del punto de la negacin hegeliana es la dualidad de lo finito y lo infinito, la forma

en que son dos caras de una misma moneda. Por lo tanto Bowman parece ir demasiado
lejos en degradar el estado de los objetos finitos y la cognicin finita cuando escribe que
la posicin de Hegel es "mximamente fuerte versin de escepticismo" (102) sobre el
conocimiento de los objetos finitos y que este es un "escepticismo absoluto" (128 ).
Parece esencial para la visin de Hegel de que su escepticismo es moderado y de hecho
muy mitigado. La mayor parte de sus escritos se refieren a objetos finitos y la cognicin
finita, y la llegada de la "idea absoluta", cuando segn Bowman finalmente llegamos
ms all de la cognicin finito, se compone principalmente de una discusin sobre el
mtodo por el cual las formas de cognicin finitos han sido interpretado para formar un
todo sistemtico.
Descripciones ms detalladas de Bowman de su posicin en la serie finita una visin
ms equilibrada, porque l sostiene que lo finito se transforma en nuestro conocimiento
especulativo de la misma (42). As lo finito puede ser conocido y hace encontrar un
lugar dentro de la cuenta definitiva de Hegel de la realidad, pero lo finito pierde la
inmediatez y la independencia que ingenuamente atribuimos. La admisin ms directa
de la funcin positiva de lo finito viene en su respuesta a la acusacin de Jacobi que la
metafsica relacionales pierde toda comprensin de lo finito. En ese contexto, Bowman,
escribe, "la recurrencia perenne de un contenido finito auto-externa... No puede
desaparecer para que la fundacin se desmoronan en la que se construye el auto-relacin
de ms alto nivel de conocimiento filosfico" (189). Esto parece bsicamente bien para
m, excepto que es un poco confuso para llamar a lo finito de la fundacin de la
cognicin, sobre todo despus de llamar a Hegel un escptico radical de lo finito. El
punto de vista de lo finito como la "desaparicin" tambin no parece captar el sentido en
que las personas finitas pueden ellos mismos ser auto-referente y, por tanto, al mismo
tiempo infinito en el sentido de Hegel.
Otra preocupacin, estrechamente relacionado con los dos anteriores, es que la cuenta
de Bowman se orienta demasiado por Hegel de "Doctrina de la Esencia", y no lo
suficiente por su "Doctrina del concepto." Hay razones para pensar que la discusin de
la negatividad en el comienzo de la "Doctrina de la Esencia", la seccin tortuoso que es
la base de la opinin de Henrich, es en s misma una abstraccin de lo genuinamente
tratamiento realidad definitoria de la cognicin y la objetividad en la "Doctrina del
concepto ". En este ltimo Hegel da cuenta de formas de juicio seguido por un relato de
las formas de inferencia. La relacin juicio de inferencia es quizs la clave para hacer
sentido de cmo se construye el infinito (la inferencia como la forma de la razn) en la
"fundacin" de lo finito (la sentencia como la forma de la comprensin). [4] I Tambin
les preocupa que con la introduccin de la realidad formal y objetiva, y poner tanto peso
sobre necesitacin metafsico, Bowman se ha limitado a s mismo demasiado a los
conceptos de la seccin final de la "Doctrina de la Esencia", a costa de tratar ms a
fondo no slo con el inferencia, pero con el mecanismo, la teleologa y la vida. Los
ltimos dos temas en particular, habran ayudado espectculo (junto con la discusin
crtica del mtodo geomtrico) la cantidad de Hegel sale al final del racionalismo de
Spinoza.
Bowman sin duda hace que un buen caso para la diferencia de Hegel de Spinoza, pero
es una que plantea una serie de preguntas adicionales sobre la naturaleza de vista de

Hegel. Respondiendo a la pregunta de cmo Hegel reconcebida la relacin problemtica

en Spinoza de la sustancia y sus atributos, Bowman escribe:
En la concepcin hegeliana, por el contrario, la determinabilidad original de la
sustancia solo es la existencia de la inteligencia que se encuentra fuera de la
sustancia (infinita) y por tanto finito: en trminos tcnicos de Hegel, la
determinabilidad de la sustancia es idntica a la existencia del pacto o la cognicin
finito. (221)
La afirmacin de que el ser (es decir, el "determinabilidad") de la sustancia es en s
misma la cognicin finita podra leerse como la superacin del proyecto mismo de la
metafsica ms que como un argumento a favor de la metafsica. Podra ser reformulada
como la afirmacin de que lo real es slo lo que puede ser conocido por ser a travs del
conocimiento finito. Tal vez se podra hacer el caso que slo un argumento metafsico
podra llevarnos a esta afirmacin acerca de la determinacin original de la sustancia,
pero luego empezar a preguntarse si el carcter auto-negacin de tal argumento (la
metafsica prctica con el fin de socavar la separacin metafsica de ser y pensamiento
finito) es compatible con el tipo de metafsica robustas que Bowman pretende
establecer. Hay un sentido diferente de la metafsica que alinear de cerca con la
semntica, un sentido en el que la metafsica es sobre la inteligibilidad ltima o sentido
de decisiones. Hay muchos puntos en el libro de Bowman donde parece alinearse Hegel
con este entendimiento bastante moderado de la metafsica, que estara bien, excepto
que tal comprensin de Hegel est muy cerca de vista kantiano supuestamente contrario
de Pippin que las condiciones de inteligibilidad son las condiciones de objetividad.
La proximidad de la metafsica hegeliana de que Bowman defiende a la visin kantiana
tambin se puede hacer a travs de la comparacin de la posicin a la de la de Fichte
Jena Wissenschaftslehre. Hay varios puntos donde Bowman reconoce la estrecha
relacin de Fichte y proyectos de Hegel (3, 46, 189, 226), aunque tambin seala varias
diferencias clave. El proyecto de una "metafsica de saber", en la que uno da una lgica
de saber y luego postula que la lgica como la base de lo real (vase la descripcin de
Bowman citado ms arriba de la p. 214), parece quiteFichtean para m. Por supuesto
Hegel objetivo de eliminar el elemento psicologista persistente de la visin de Fichte,
dando as la dialctica del pensamiento una expresin ms puramente conceptual, uno
que no tiene que insistir en la prioridad del sujeto frente al real. Hegel subray que su
negacin es inmanente en lugar de externa, y l pretenda integrar pensamiento dentro
de la naturaleza mediante la demostracin de la inteligibilidad de la naturaleza, pero el
proyecto de Hegel todava parece ser un primo cercano a Fichte que a cualquier otra
persona. Esta afinidad sera an ms pronunciada si Bowman haba tratado de explicar
el papel de la prctica al final de la Ciencia de la Lgica de Hegel. Fichte confiado en
ltima instancia, por motivos prcticos para la superacin de la metafsica de Spinoza, y
aunque Hegel pensaba que una crtica ms inmanente era posible, l tambin recurri a
la prctica como algo esencial para su propio mtodo.
Pero ningn libro bien enfocado sobre Hegel tiene que dejar muchos temas fuera de
consideracin. Es una marca de logros de Bowman que uno termina su denso, libro
desafiante querer leer ms. [5]
[1] G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, translated by Terry Pinkard, 20. Gesammelte Werke(GW),

edited by the Academy of Sciences of Nordrhein-Westfalia (Hamburg: Meiner 1968- ), Vol. 9, p. 19.

[2] Robert Pippin, Hegel's Idealism: The Satisfactions of Self-consciousness. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1989.

[3] Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 24. GW 9, p. 24.
[4] I have in mind the following passage from The Science of Logic, where Hegel is answering the

question of what makes non-finite objects rational: "the infinite in them is not the empty abstraction from
the finite, is not a universality which is void of content and determination, but is the fulfilled universality .
. . Only in this way does reason rise above the finite, the conditioned, the sensuous, or however one
might define it, and is in this negativity essentially replete with content, for as unity it is the unity of
determinate extremes. And so the rational is nothing but the inference [Schlu]." G.W.F. Hegel, The
Science of Logic, translated by George di Giovanni. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, p.
589. GW 12, p. 91 (translation altered). Bowman comes close to thematizing Hegel's version of the
judgment-inference difference in a discussion of the "speculative sentence" (251-54).
[5] I would like to thank Yitzhak Melamed for helpful comments on a draft of this review.