Hegel's Philosophy of Nature

Marina F. Bykova is Professor of Philosophy at North Carolina State University. She has most recently edited Hegel's Philosophy of Spirit: A Critical Guide (2019), The German Idealism Reader: Ideas, Responses and Legacies (2019), The Bloomsbury Handbook of Fichte (2020), and The Palgrave Hegel Handbook (coedited with K. Westphal, 2020).

'This volume fully fulfills its dual function of introducing both the Hegelian philosophy of nature and the most recent state of its interpretation, by offering both general historical and systematic overviews … studies on the major moments in the development of nature … and reflections on the possible actualizations of the Hegelian attempt.' Victor Béguin, Archives de philosophie

• Hegel's philosophy of nature: its origins, development, and contemporary relevance introduction Marina F. Bykova; Part I. Hegel's Philosophy of Nature in the Historical and Systematic Context: 1. The feebleness of the concept in nature: a challenge to conceptual realism? Robert Stern and Leonard Weiss; 2. Nature and its limits: Hegel's idealist critique of physicalism, naturalism, and essentialism Sebastian Stein; 3. Naturphilosophie and the problem of clean hands: Hegel and Alexander von Humboldt on nature Elizabeth Millán Brusslan; 4. On Hegel's account of nature and its philosophical investigation Marina F. Bykova; 5. The logic of nature – Nature as the 'Idea in the Form of Otherness' Angelica Nuzzo; Part II. Cosmology, Mechanics, and Physics: 6. Hegel's dissertation on the orbits of the planets: Plato, Kepler and Newton as cosmologists Paul Redding; 7. Hegel's syllogism of analogy and organic conception of cosmic life: a Speculative Kantian legacy in his absolute mechanics? Cinzia Ferrini; 8. Hegel's mechanics as a system of steps from space and time to celestial motion Ralph M. Kaufmann; 9. Logic and physics in Hegel's philosophy of nature Stephen Houlgate; Part III. Organics: 10. Hegel's theory of animal embodiment Christopher Yeomans; 11. A past without history and the conditions of life. Hegel on the terrestrial organism Ansgar Lyssy; 12. Human beings as the 'Perfect Animals': Hegel on the difference between animal life and human spirit Nicolás García Mills; Part IV. On Contemporary Challenges for the Philosophy of Nature: 13. The prospects for an idealist natural philosophy: logic and nature Terry Pinkard; 14. Is there a future for the philosophy of nature? John W. Burbidge; Bibliography.