John Russon, <\/b>Infinite Phenomenology: The Lessons of Hegel\u2019s Phenomenology of Experience<\/i><\/b>.<\/b> Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2016; xxx + 392 pages. ISBN: 978-0810131910.<\/b><\/p>\n
Reviewed by Timothy L. Brownlee, Xavier University<\/i><\/p>\n
This is John Russon\u2019s third book on Hegel\u2019s Phenomenology of Spirit<\/i>. All three have aimed to present a comprehensive account of the work\u2019s overall aims\u2014presenting the science of the experience of consciousness\u2014by means of close readings of significant portions of the text. One might worry that this third book would have little to add to the insightful and challenging accounts that Russon has offered in the previous two. However, as Russon observes early on in his \u201cIntroduction,\u201d Hegel\u2019s book is a \u201crevolutionary book of philosophy,\u201d one that inaugurates a new form of philosophical writing, and that rewards continued study. (xiii-xiv) Infinite Phenomenology <\/i>is a testament to the truth of this claim. Throughout, Russon presents careful and well-grounded \u201creadings\u201d of Hegel\u2019s text (the book\u2019s subtitle is \u201cThe Lessons of Hegel\u2019s Phenomenology of Experience,\u201d and Russon claims throughout to be offering us \u201cle\u00e7ons<\/i>\u201d) in ways that illuminate both the phenomena they concern and the overall project of Hegel\u2019s text. (xviii)<\/p>\n
Russon argues that readings of the Phenomenology of Spirit<\/i> should follow three principles. First, they must consider the specific discussions in the text in light of Hegel\u2019s general intention to provide a science of the experience of consciousness. Second, they must take seriously Hegel\u2019s claim to be providing a \u201cphenomenology\u201d of experience, which Russon understands to be a project of \u201cphenomenological description.\u201d (xv) By consequence, reading Hegel\u2019s text requires attending to one\u2019s own experiences and to the concrete phenomena the book considers. Finally, reading Hegel\u2019s text requires recognizing a \u201cdemand of participation<\/i>\u201d placed on the reader to \u201cenact the experience under discussion.\u201d (xvi) Each principle contributes to the unique approach and result of Russon\u2019s study. First, while each reading takes as its primary focus a particular discussion within the text, in reading particular discussions in light of Hegel\u2019s overall aims, Russon uncovers often-surprising connections between seemingly disparate parts. Second, Russon\u2019s account illuminates valuable connections between Hegel\u2019s project and twentieth-century phenomenology. While Russon frequently situates Hegel\u2019s views in relation to Kant and other post-Kantian idealists, he characterizes Hegel\u2019s project in terms that are more familiar from the phenomenology that came to ascendancy with Husserl in the twentieth century. Throughout, he draws links between Hegel and figures in the Continental tradition, including Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze and Guattari, Foucault, and Derrida, and the book concludes with an account of Hegel\u2019s reception in twentieth century French philosophy. These readings eschew anachronism and instead show how Hegel can be productively read in dialogue with these figures, whom we might otherwise be inclined to consider merely as critics of Hegel. Third, the participatory demand on the reader requires a direct consideration of the particular phenomena Hegel describes. In satisfying this requirement, Russon presents phenomenological descriptions of a diverse range of phenomena that, while fitting Hegel\u2019s aims in the text, themselves constitute original contributions to phenomenology.<\/p>\n
Substantively, Russon argues that Hegel\u2019s Phenomenology <\/i>is centrally concerned with the idea of infinity. On Russon\u2019s account, our finite experience entails the confrontation with the infinite, indeed with plural \u201cinfinites\u201d whose relation to one another is not a placid harmony, but instead one of \u201ccontestation\u201d: \u201cEach of these infinites contests with the other for the claim of ultimacy.\u201d (13) Russon argues that Hegel identifies four such infinites: the infinity of objective reality, the infinity of the singular subject, the infinity of other subjects, and the infinity of \u201cthe Other,\u201d of \u201cthe Good as such,\u201d \u201cthe divine.\u201d (19) While he contends that we find this dynamic right from the opening dialectic of the Phenomenology<\/i>, in sense certainty\u2019s discovery that the now is itself infinite, exceeding by its very nature this particular now, Russon traces this tension between finitude and infinity, and between plural infinites throughout the Phenomenology <\/i>and into Hegel\u2019s systematic philosophy.<\/p>\n
Russon\u2019s account of freedom presents one instance of this dynamic, and it is an appropriate one to consider with more care given the centrality of political questions to his book. On the one hand, Russon stresses that freedom involves the infinity of the subject, a sort of indeterminacy, a negative capacity not to be determined by anything external. On the other hand, this freedom is \u201ca reality\u201d only insofar as it comes to be \u201ca fixed identity,\u201d or to become a determinacy through engagement with the concrete institutions of what Hegel calls \u201cethicality.\u201d (181\u20132) But the realization of freedom in a finite determinacy does not eliminate its infinitude, so that the experience of freedom is always one of the inadequacy of any fixed identity or institution. Russon argues that no theoretical \u201creconciliation\u201d of this opposition is possible, and that we rather experience the demand for reconciliation as \u201ca lived imperative.\u201d (23) In the political case, the experience of freedom entails a demand for \u201cmulticultural dialogue,\u201d for \u201ca stance of infinite openness to the other,\u201d in particular to the institutions that structure the social life of other peoples. (188) Russon\u2019s Hegel, then, is ultimately a thinker of openness, not closure, and he contends that the practical and philosophical stances with which the text resolves, conscience and absolute knowing, both involve a practical commitment to reconcile the ineliminable but one-sided knowledge of the subject with \u201can infinity that exceeds us and claims us.\u201d (21)<\/p>\n
Readers of Russon\u2019s previous works will find much here that is new. While Russon has consistently portrayed Hegel as a phenomenological philosopher, that approach is even more prominent here. This book seamlessly brings together his past work on Hegel with his more recent \u201cpositive\u201d contributions to phenomenology in productive, illuminating fashion. While the Phenomenology <\/i>is the central object of Russon\u2019s investigations, he does more here to relate that early text to Hegel\u2019s systematic philosophy than in previous books. Perhaps most notably, Russon\u2019s accounts of the political significance of Hegel\u2019s text draw out additional themes that were down-played in his prior work.<\/p>\n
Taken as a whole Infinite Phenomenology <\/i>is an entirely welcome original piece of scholarship on Hegel\u2019s text and contribution to phenomenology. Scholarly writing on Hegel and German idealism is subject to a range of pathologies, from historiological and unphilosophical rehashes of figures and works in light of common themes, to impenetrable restatements of already-difficult ideas, to the questionable assumption of continuity in the interests and questions animating this important period and the present day. Russon\u2019s admirable book falls victim to none of them. He presents careful accounts of the primary text without losing sight of the distinctive philosophical interest that animates it. He presents Hegel\u2019s arguments in terms of familiar experiences without leveling off the vital significances he wants to show that they express. And his account of Hegel\u2019s phenomenology is ultimately justified by his own success in making explicit continuities and discontinuities between the text and subsequent developments in European philosophy. Infinite Phenomenology <\/i>should prove to be equally a helpful guide to those reading Hegel\u2019s text for the first time, and a lively interlocutor for more advanced students of Hegel, German idealism, and European philosophy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
John Russon, Infinite Phenomenology: The Lessons of Hegel\u2019s Phenomenology of Experience. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2016; xxx + 392 pages. ISBN: 978-0810131910. Reviewed by Timothy L. Brownlee, Xavier University This is John Russon\u2019s third book on Hegel\u2019s Phenomenology of Spirit. All three have aimed to present a comprehensive account of the work\u2019s overall aims\u2014presenting the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[19,38,123],"class_list":["post-5005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-hegel","tag-phenomenology","tag-political-philosophy","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-16 23:27:19","action":"Draft","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category"},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5005"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5005\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6972,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5005\/revisions\/6972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}