John Macmurray’s Early Milieu

This post reproduces Stephen Cowley's article in the John Macmurray Fellowship Newsletter 24 (2009). The article relates some central ideas of the personalist philosopher John Macmurray (1891-1976) to those of his British Idealist teachers in Glasgow (see photo above, from Kelvingrove Park) and Oxford. The Idealist movement flourished in Victorian and early 20th century Britain, seeking to develop ideas drawn from Kant and Hegel by way of a critique of contemporary empiricist and scientific thought on society and the nature of the mind.

The John Macmurray Fellowship website can be found here.

Hegel in Bamberg

There follows an account of Hegel's time in Bamberg as editor of the Bamberger Zeitung, drawn from Karl Rosenkranz's Life of Hegel (1844), followed by Rosenkranz's analysis of Hegel's essay on The German Constitution in the subsequent chapter, which later commentators state that he misdates to this period and which certainly has a less mature style than he attained in the Phenomenology and Critical Journal articles.

Hegel in Jena (Part Two)

This post covers the remainder of Hegel's time in Jena, drawn from chapters 7-14 of Hegels Leben (1844) by Karl Rosenkranz, down to publication of the Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) and the fleeting encounter with Napoleon.

Hegel In Jena (Part One)

This post summarises chapters 1-7 of the middle book of Hegels Leben (1844) by Karl Rosenkranz that cover Hegel's time in Jena, including publication of the Critical Journal of Philosophy. This middle book as a whole starts with Hegel's arrival in Jena in 1801 and takes us up to his departure from Heidelberg for Berlin in 1818.

Hegel's early views of Religion

Here is a further summary of my reading of Karl Rosenkranz's Life of Hegel (1844), the first biography of Hegel from whom later biographers draw extensively. This post covers the end of Part One and briefly describes Hegel's system of ethical life and philosophy of religion prior to publication of the Phenomenology of Spirit in 1807.

The early Logic, Metaphysics and Philosophy of Nature

Here is a further summary of my reading of Karl Rosenkranz's Life of Hegel (1844), the first biography of Hegel from whom later biographers draw extensively. This post covers the start of chapter 19 of Part One, by far the longest chapter in the book describing Hegel's philosophical system and philosophy of nature prior to publication of the Phenomenology of Spirit in 1807.

The Owl of Minerva and Cencrastus

In a blast from the past, I added a brief review of Michael Rosen's Hegel's Dialectic and its Criticism (1985) to Amazon. You may wish to improve on my memories, as at present what follows is the only review: