Robert Sinnerbrink

This book is especially lucid before the chapters seven (Between existentialism and Marxism: Sartre, de Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty) and eight (Deconstructing Hegelianism: Deleuze, Derrida and the question of difference). After that, it became exceptionally difficult for me to follow what the author was trying to convey. I especially do not understand the antipathy that Derrida and Deleuze seem to have had toward philosophy as Hegelian dialectic nor do I understand why they think Hegel is insufficiently aware of the ontology of difference. It seems like these later French appropriations of Hegel emphasize one aspect of his logic at the expense of the others. Hegel seemed to be giving an account of how human discourse can and does meaningfully progress, but these later thinkers seem to regard this as the wrong project for philosophy... I just don't get it. I wish the author would have slowed down and fleshed out the details about why exactly these thinkers opposed Hegel's dialectic as a model for philosophical progress. The Further Reading chapter is exquisite and invaluable for setting down a to-read list for autodidactism.… (mehr)