This clear, critical examination makes Hegels arguments fully accessible. Hegel 's system is considered as a whole and examines the wide range of problems that it was designed to solve.

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) is probably the most divisive philosopher of the twentieth century. He is considered by some to be greatest charlatan ever to claim the title of philosopher, an apologist for Nazism by others, and an acknowledged leader and central figure to many philosophers. Michael Inwood's lucid introduction steers a clear path through Heidegger's complex language and thought. This short, accessible guide to the existentialist thought of Heidegger focuses on his most important work, Being and Time, and its major (...) themes of existence in the world, inauthenticity, guilt, destiny, truth, and the nature of time. These themes are then reassessed in the light of Heideggers later work, together with the extent of his philosophical importance and influence. For anyone interested in philosophy, theology and literary theory, Heidegger is an invaluable guide to the complex and voluminous thought of a major twentieth-century existentialist philosopher. (shrink)

Solomon discusses at least three passages in which, he believes, Hegel criticizes theories of truth. The first is in the Preface to the Phenomenology of Mind, and concerns "historical truth". Historical truth, Solomon writes, "is the usual paradigm for the correspondence theory; against it, Hegel argues that we know a "naked fact" only insofar as we know "the reasons behind it." In other words, we need criteria of coherence as well as correspondence". But what Hegel says in this passage is (...) this: historical statements or beliefs are "true," but they are not true in the philosophical sense. This is because they deal with "the sphere of particular existence, with a content in its contingent and arbitrary aspects, features that have no necessity." Even these "truths" share some of the features of philosophical truth. Often, for example, we cannot know them without seeking evidence, and even if we perceive some event, and hence do not need evidence for its occurrence, our knowledge is of no true value unless we also know the "reasons behind it." That is, Hegel is not saying that historical truths appear to be true in a piecemeal correspondence way, but in fact are true in the philosophical sense. Rather, although evidence and reasons are relevant to their truth, this still isn't sufficient to make them philosophically true. Hegel is here criticizing historical truths, and not just a theory of truth. Philosophical truth is not just a theory of truth, but a special sort of truth which historical truths lack. (shrink)