Editor's Preface
The essays collected in this volume were presented at the Seventh Biennial Meeting of the Hegel Society of America, held at Clemson University, from October 7-9, 1982. The society expresses its appreciation to the university for its hospitality and to Professor William Maker for serving as local arrangements chairman. Thanks are also due him for influencing the officers of the Thomas A. Roe Foundation to create a handsome prize for the best paper on the topic, "Hegel on Economics and Freedom." The prize-winning paper appears as chapter 10 of this volume. The presidential address, by Quentin Lauer, and the Roe prize paper, by Richard Dien Winfield, complement each otherthe former an essay on how to read Hegel and the latter a controversial reading of Hegel.

The theme of the volume is Hegel's philosophy of history, a subject on which he never published a major work but which nevertheless informs all his writing. With the possible exceptions of Augustine and Vico, no philosopher before him had such a deep sense of the mutual penetration of history and philosophy as did Hegel. Historical reflection influenced his reading of other philosophers, and philosophical reason penetrated his views of past events and eras. Other thinkers attempted to apply Hegel's way of thinking to problems he did not address. These insights are characterized by the thematic papers by Walsh, Avineri, and Westphal.

The four succeeding papers are a constructive effort to assess the relation of Hegel's views of history to the System: to the concept of Absolute Spirit, to the history of freedom, to dialectic, and to art. Jaeschke, Winfield, Ahlers, and Desmond struggle with these wider systematic struggles.

Finally, di Giovanni raises some difficult questions about the whole Hegelian project and about the intellectual propriety of the efforts of the several authors in this collection.

I wish to express my appreciation to those who helped in the selection of the papers. Also, a word of thanks must go to those who submitted papers that we could not include, as well as to the commentators, who contributed so much to the direction of the discussion.


ROBERT L. PERKINS