Logic and Existence

Jean Hyppolite (1907–1968) was a professor at Strasbourg and then the Sorbonne as well as serving as Director of the Ecole Normale Superieure. He is the author of Genesis and Structure of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit; Introduction to Hegel's Philosophy of History; and Studies on Marx and Hegel. Leonard Lawlor is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Memphis and is the author of Imagination and Chance: The Difference Between the Thought of Ricoeur and Derrida also published by SUNY Press. Amit Sen is a doctoral student at the University of Memphis.

• Translator's Preface Translator's Note List of Abbreviations PART 1. LANGUAGE AND LOGIC Introduction 1. The Ineffable2. Sense and Sensible3. Philosophical Dialectic, Poetry and Mathematical Symbolism PART 2. SPECULATIVE THOUGHT AND REFLECTION 1. The Transformation of Metaphysics into Logic2. Reflection and Reflections3. Absolute Knowledge as Identity and Contradiction: Logos, Nature, Spirit4. Empirical Negation and Speculative Negation PART 3. THE CATEGORIES OF THE ABSOLUTE 1. Empirical Proposition and Speculative Proposition2. The Categories as Catagories of the Absolute3. The Organization of the Logic: Being, Essence, Concept Conclusion. Logic and Existence Appendix. Review of Jean Hyppolite, Logique et existence, by Gilles Deleuze Index

His interpretation of the relation between the phenomenology and the logic has the result of marking a rupture in French thought. Not only does Logic and Existence effectively end the humanistic reading of Hegel popularized by Koje've in France before World War II, but also it initiates the great anti-Hegelianism of French philosophy in the sixties. Hyppolite's work displays the originality of Hegel's thought in a new way, and sets up the means by which to escape from it. If the phrase "the philosophy of difference" defines French anti-Hegelianism, then we have to say that there would be no philosophy of difference without Logic and Existence. Derrida's notion of differance, Deleuze's logic of sense, and Foucault's reconception of history all stem from this book. This first English translation of the virtually unknown Logic and Existence is essential for the understanding of the development of French thought in this century.