Review

Author(s): William Maker

Review by: William Maker
Source: The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 61, No. 3 (Mar., 2008), pp. 671-673
Published by: Philosophy Education Society Inc.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20131017
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 AND COMMENTS
SUMMARIES 671

intuitions. When moral beliefs are added in the process of reflection,

some beliefs are still retained as considered and concrete moral judg
ments.
The phenomenological justification process Thomas endorses ap
peals to a "neutral" conception of experience and perception (p. 212).
Moral perception appeals not to a special faculty, but only to an "appro
priately trained judger" who has capacities for moral imagination, sym
pathy, and emotions. Thus conflicts can be resolved into reasonable
disagreements that do not foreclose on continued inquiry toward agree
ments.
Thomas admits that cognitivism, like noncognitivism, has difficulty
explaining moral error. His contextualism, after all, assumes that one
always has a moral "location" (p. 48) and is "already in possession of
considerable amounts of moral knowledge" (p. 250). But he points out
that much moral error involves errors not of judgment but of fact. More
over, some moral error stems from a lack of appropriate moral emo
tions, such as anger.
The virtues of the text are many, though a reader not familiar with
many intricacies of some of the figures which Thomas engages will of
ten need to consult their arguments elsewhere. But Thomas's vast array
of references leaves some particular details so scant as to be misleading.
For example, in chapter 1 he claims that he will discuss Habermas's ar
guments in detail in later chapters of the book, but ends up doing noth
ing of the kind. This failure might explain Thomas's strikingly odd claim
that Habermas opposes moral cognitivism (p. 130). Actually, Haber
mas's discourse ethics is a form of moral cognitivism particularly sensi
tive to intersubjective and discursively grasped context.
Thomas presents a dense thicket of metaethical analysis, though for
the most part devoid of any illuminating examples. So one could criti
cize him not for the argumentational support he gives his contextual
principles but only for his failure to account for any problematic practi
cal consequences that might arise from adopting his thoroughgoing con
textualist stance.?James Swindal, Duquesne University.

WINFIELD, Richard Dien. From Concept to Objectivity: Thinking Through

Hegel's Subjective Logic. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company,
2006. x + 150 pp. Cloth, $79.95.?Hegel's logic remains among the most
problematic of philosophical texts. How itmay be located among more
familiar treatments of logic, whether it presents a comprehensible argu
ment as opposed to a tour de force, and thus whether it constitutes a
logic in any meaningful sense of the term are among the most serious of
several disputed questions. Winfield begins by tackling them head on,
first of all explaining what Hegel's general conception of logical science
is and how it addresses fundamental flaws in both formal and transcen
dental logic. In so doing he reconstructs the key metalogical problems
that Hegel addresses and reveals the argumentative backbone of

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672 JEREME HUDSON AND STAFF

Hegelian logic. This involves showing that and how itmeets logic's re
quirement to be a thinking about thinking whose rigor demands that nei
ther its content nor method be presupposed. These demands raise a
host of questions about how a thinking which proceeds without any
given subject matter or form can operate coherently at all, never mind
display argumentative rigor. Winfield clearly shows how Hegel's notion
of the emergence of self-determination out of indeterminacy meets
these requirements. In laying this out he accomplishes the not insignifi
cant feat of showing that and how Hegel's logic works, making this book
a work of historical interpretation which is at the same time a philo
sophical argument in its own right. In addition, his clarification of what
is required for a genuine and thoroughgoing se{f-determining to take
place involves showing that this logic cannot already contain explicit or
implicit reference to a given thinking subject or a given world of ob
jects, as either, or both would be unfounded external determiners void
ing the necessary autonomy of self-determination. By showing that He
gel's logic abjures such indefensible foundational grounding, Winfield
brings its non-descriptive, normative dimension to the fore. And be
cause transcendental and formal logics presuppose these references to
given structures of subjectivity and objectivity, properly presenting He
gel's logic as altogether outside this framework also helps to undermine
the persistent misunderstanding of Hegel as an absolute idealist, since
idealist metaphysics remain inextricably tied to a presupposed differen
tiation of subject and object. As Winfield cogently points out, just be
cause all thinking is undertaken by embodied subjects inhabiting a given
world and speaking particular languages in some given historical con
texts, none of these factors can differentiate correct from incorrect
thinking, which must be philosophical logic's fundamental concern.
Hence foundational reference to them has no place in it.
Although two thirds of this book concentrates on the frequently ne
glected treatment of the concept in the second division of the logic, Win
field nonetheless provides a thorough, if schematic, treatment of the key
theoretical and textual matters which an understanding of the subjec
tive logic presuppose. He does this by guiding us through the crucial
features of what precedes the subjective logic in the logics of being and
essence, reconstructing the argumentative framework of the logic as a
whole. What makes his treatment throughout especially worthwhile is
that he combines his attention to the specifics of Hegel's logical argu
ments with repeated attention to larger issues about logic and philoso
phy, So while this exegesis and commentary provides illuminating ac
cess into features of Hegel's logical texts, its depth and range extend
beyond the confines of Hegel scholarship, showing us why Hegel needs
to be recognized as a logical heavyweight in the same league as Aristotle
and Kant.
The most challenging part of Winfield's reconstruction is his detailed
treatment of the subjective logic proper. It is here that we reach the
consummation of self-determination, and Winfield carefully details how
the subjective logic emerges from the objective logic, and how, as the
self-determination of self-determination, it operates in a different fash
ion from the preceding logics of being and essence. It is here that the
overall concision and terseness of Winfield's interpretive style works

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 AND COMMENTS
SUMMARIES 673

against readier comprehension. The level of abstraction in the subjec

tive logic, combined with the counter-intuitive nature of thinking out
side of the frame of reference which holds determinacy fixed by locat
ing it as about some already given determinacy means that we are
moving in a very unfamiliar world. One wishes that a tour guide as
adept and experienced as Winfield had used more text to make us at
home. In this respect his fine book would have been better by being
longer.?William Maker, Clemson University.

WIERCINSKI, Andrzej. Inspired Metaphysics? Gustav Siewerth's Herme

neutic Reading of the Onto-Theological Tradition. International Insti
tute for Hermeneutics, vol. 2. Toronto: The Hermeneutic Press, 2003. x
+ 223 pp. Paper, $35.00?Despite his influence on the thought of Hans
Urs von Balthasar, the German philosopher and educator Gustav Siew
erth (1903-1963) remains virtually unknown both in North America and
in Europe. Siewerth was both a Thomist of an original sort and a stu
dent of Heidegger; he sought to show the relevance of the Thomistic
metaphysics of esse for a proper understanding of Heideggerian "onto
logical difference."
Since Siewerth is both a Thomistic and a Continental thinker all at
once, his hermeneutic ontology has great potential to further dialogue
between thinkers of both traditions. Dedicated as it is to furthering
such a dialogue, by means of introducing Siewerth's ontology of differ
ence to a wider readership, Andrzej Wierci?ski's Inspired Metaphysics
is a book that is both timely and worthy of note. Inspired Metaphysics
is actually the second of a series of volumes currently being published
by the International Institute for Hermeneutics, of which Wiercinski is
the founder.
Wiercinski carries out his analsysis of Siewerth's ontology of differ
ence fully cognizant of the fact that almost all of the valorization of dif
ference that takes place in contemporary Continental philosophy occurs
under the hermeneutical rubric of suspicion with respect to both an
cient and medieval ontology. The tragic result of this hermeneutic of
suspicion is almost total ignorance of the Thomistic metaphysics of esse
that Siewerth attempts to reappropriate in light of Hegel and Heidegger.
Wiercinski shows how Siewerth recognizes in St. Thomas's metaphys
ics of esse that which he so admires in Heidegger's understanding of Be
ing: the determining role played by difference interior to Being, which
makes possible all at once both the unity of Being per se and the diver
sity that obtains within the transcendentality of that same unity.
Wiercinski clarifies for the reader the sense in which Siewerth is able to
understand Thomistic metaphysics as an "identity-system" in which Be
ing is understood as an eminent or analogically excessive "identity of
identity and difference." It is on this basis that Siewerth can understand
Hegel's concept to be similar to Thomistic esse, even as esse shows itself

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