William Desmond is Professor in the Philosophy Department at Loyola College. He is the author of Art and the Absolute: A Study of Hegel's Aesthetics; Philosophy and Its Others: Ways of Being and Mind, and editor of Hegel and His Critics, all published by SUNY Press; and the author of Desire, Dialectic, and Otherness.

"I find the book utterly fascinating to read. It is fresh and challenging." — Merold Westphal"It is highly original and well written. It is free of all Hegelian, Scholastic jargon and as a result the reader is drawn into the narrative and thinks along with the author. It takes a fresh look at Hegel." — Donald Verene

• Preface Introduction 1. Speculation and Historicism: Between Hegel and Eternity Speculative Mind and the Middle: Between Time and Its OtherSpeculation after Hegel: Modern and Postmodern HistoricismRadical and Moderate HistoricismHistoricism and the Instrumentalization of Speculative MindHeideggerian Historicism and Speculative PhilosophySpeculative Timeliness: Untimely ThoughtSpeculative Logic and World-HistoryWorld-History and the Logic of Dialectical Self-mediationThe Dialectical Reduction of the Double Vision 2. Speculation and Cult: On Hegel's Strange Saying: Philosophy is God-service Philosophy, Cult, and the Instrumentalization of MindPhilosophy and Cult: The Return of the Repressed?Cult and Community: The Manifested Otherness of the SacredThe God-service of the Unhappy ConsciousnessThe Return of the DoublePhilosophical Cult and the Idolatries of ThoughtThe Double in Philosophy: Against Making an Idol of Self-thinking ThoughtIs Hegelian God-service an Absolution? - On Speculative Abandon and Release 3. Speculation and Representation: The Masks of Philosophy and Its Religious Double Speculation and RepresentationRepresentation and Religious DoublenessReligion and Philosophy: A Double in Discordant Mutuality?Philosophy and Religion: The Convergence of the Double?Why Could Kierkegaard not Forgive Hegel? - Discordant Mutuality and the Masks of PhilosophyHegel and the Double Mediation of RepresentationThe Left Hegelian Reduction of the Religious DoubleCan Religion Deal with Its Own Double?Representation and the Thought of the Unrepresentable 4. Dialectic and Evil: On the Idiocy of the Monstrous Speculation and EvilThree Strains of Evil: Existential, Logicist, World-HistoricistEvil and Onto-Logical NecessityRepresentation and the FallEvil, Inwardness, and the World-Historical TeleologyWorld-History and the Idiocy of EvilRadical EvilThe Idiocy of the MonstrousMeontological Perplexity and Evil: A Negative Other than Negativity 5. Comedy and the Failure of Logos: On Dialectic, Deconstruction, and the Mockery of Philosophy Philosophy and the Mockery of LogosDeconstruction and the Mockery of PhilosophyDeconstruction and Laughing at Hegel's FailureOn the Debunking of the Philosophical Tradition: Who Laughs Last?Logos and the Comedy of FailureThe Phenomenology and the Logic: Masks of Philosophical Comedy?Dialectic and Deconstruction as Masks of the ComicWhat Breaks Through [in] the Mask of Comedy? 6. Can Philosophy Laugh at Itself? On Hegel and Aristophanes—With a Bow to Plato Between the Professor and the Comic PoetHegel and the Comic Acme: Between the Aristophanic and Socratic End of AntiquityWho Laughs Last?—Between Hegelian Self-Certainty and Plato's Silence NotesIndex