Hegel's Concept of Life: Self-Consciousness, Freedom, Logic by Karen Ng (review)

Abstract

(Berlin: De Gruyter, 1966–71), but with a closer focus on Kant’s arguments. On the other hand, Proops presents the book as driven by a thesis, outlined in the introduction and conclusion, that certain doctrines of previous metaphysics survive the “fiery test” of critique. It is often unclear how the commentaries in the book’s three main parts should contribute to the book’s overall thesis. Here, I found myself wishing that Proops had engaged in more detail with the most important recent book on his topic, Marcus Willaschek’s Kant on the Sources of Metaphysics: The Dialectic of Pure Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). Proops only refers to Willaschek in three footnotes on relatively marginal topics. It would have been helpful to see comparisons with Willaschek’s position when Proops discusses the sources of transcendental illusion (42–58, 130–34). More generally, though, an engagement with Willaschek’s highly systematic interpretation could have clarified how the two implicit tasks of Proops’s book fit together. After his careful attention to Kant’s various arguments, readers would like to know whether Proops considers Kant to definitively possess his philosophical “nuggets”: whether, for Proops, Kant has convincingly defended the positive doctrines said to result from the critical test. S t e p h e n H o w a r d KU Leuven