Hegel congratulated himself on noticing that the German verb aufheben embodied a speculative dialectic in the interrelation of its multiple meanings. Translators have been hard put to find an equivalent English word. I think I have found a similar word in English, which, if not exactly a translation, still shows a similar interaction among the contrasting motions of its different meanings.

This book contains the unfinished manuscript and working notes of the book Merleau-Ponty was writing when he died.

A silver anniversary is the moment for a first backward look. Still too early for a recall of the past as past it nevertheless invites an initial reflection on a still uncompleted course. Rather than recapitulating our short past I decided to turn to Hegel’s own thoughts about remembering. Not much has appeared in The Owl about memory in Hegel’s philosophy, least of all about his early encounter with the idea in the romantic classicism of his friend Hölderlin. Yet memory (...) has occupied a central position in Hegel’s philosophy. It played a crucial role not only in the Tübingen fragments and the Jena Phenomenology, but still in the Berlin Philosophy of Spirit. This commemoration presents no occasion for a fundamental study of Hegel’s theory nor does The Owl’s anniversary issue offer the space for it. In the following pages I intend to do no more than evoke Hegel’s awakening to the idea of recollection and his development of it both in his discussion of the Greek religion of beauty in the Phenomenology and in the Encyclopedia section on the psychology of the subjective spirit. (shrink)

On-line English translation of these 40 short statements of doctrine, mostly concerning ethics.

In recent years, there has been a flurry of work on the metaphysics of race. While it is now widely accepted that races do not share robust, bio-behavioral essences, opinions differ over what, if anything, race is. Recent work has been divided between three apparently quite different answers. A variety of theorists argue for racial skepticism, the view that races do not exist at all.[iv] A second group defends racial constructionism, holding that races are in some way socially constructed.[v],[vi] And (...) a third group maintains racial population naturalism, the view that races may exist as biologically salient populations albeit ones that do not have the biologically determined social significance once imputed to them.[vii] The three groups thus seem to disagree fundamentally upon the metaphysical character of race. (shrink)

A perfectly matched layer (PML) absorbing material composed of a uniaxial anisotropic material is presented for the truncation of finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) lattices. It is shown that the uniaxial PML material formulation is mathematically equivalent to the perfectly matched layer method published by Berenger (see J. Computat. Phys., Oct. 1994). However, unlike Berenger's technique, the uniaxial PML absorbing medium presented in this paper is based on a Maxwellian formulation. Numerical examples demonstrate that the FDTD implementation of the uniaxial PML medium (...) is stable, equal in effectiveness as compared to Berenger's PML medium, while being more computationally efficient. (shrink)

Hegel’s philosophy is so extensive and comprehensive, so complex, in many respects so obscure and difficult, and so little understood, that any exposition offering fresh insight is to be welcomed. Professor Taylor’s has numerous merits. It is detailed, meticulous, painstaking and thorough and, is based, throughout, on an accurate understanding and clear grasp of Hegel’s meaning and aim.

In this paper I argue that the Hegelian philosophy offers insights that are particularly important for feminists: 1) a descriptive analysis of the historic family as a social system whose inherent oppressiveness needs to be transcended; and 2) a model of intrapsychic and social liberation and harmony as precisely the true path of emergence from and rational transformation of the family. Although a clear advocate of the traditional bourgeois family, Hegel, perhaps paradoxically, also took a critical posture toward the family, (...) identifying and formulating theoretically the nature of its oppressiveness and the - or, at least, a - route toward its transcendence. This paper offers, first, a new angle from which to view Hegel’s concepts of woman and the family, and, second, draws some implications for a contemporary understanding of women and the family from Hegel’s theory of human liberation as the transcendence of the unindividuated harmonious communities of the family and the Greek city. (shrink)