What role is attributed to geological knowledge within the broader whole of the Encyclopaedia? Which perspective is adequate to make philosophical sense of geological knowledge? This chapter’s response to these questions consists in a three-step argument. First, for Hegel, geohistory is irrelevant to philosophy but not the particular ways in which geological regularities are determined. Second, it argues that geology is important for Hegel as it develops the emergence of formations and structures that do not have a strict precedent in the domains of mechanical physics and chemistry, even if they arise from them. These formations and structures have a unique unity of composition and appearance, they form a dynamical but stable entity. Hereby geological notions serve to develop a particular notion of instantiation and self-determination that mediates inanimate matter with organic life. Third, it argues that by means of said emergence of formations and structures and their global arrangement, geology provides us with the basic notion of environment that serves as a precondition for the emergence of organic life. Hereby geology for Hegel mediates inorganic matter with the purposiveness of organisms.

We asked in the introduction whether Freud was a philosopher rather than a scientist. The answer must now be “yes,” despite Freud’s many protests to the contrary. Frank Sulloway describes Freudian psychoanalysis as a cryptobiology, meaning that it is a biological theory presented in the form of psychology. It should be added that this cryptobiology is even more profoundly a cryptophilosophy, a speculative philosophy of nature built from evolutionary postulates borrowed from the biology of the time and placed on clinical material in an entirely a priori way to guarantee the internal coherence of the system Freud was building.

Marco Segala argues that the tight seal Schopenhauer wanted to maintain between ordinary experience along with its investigation in the natural sciences on the one hand, and metaphysics on the other, is more porous than Schopenhauer can acknowledge in WWR 1. Segala proposes a rethinking of Schopenhauer’s philosophy of nature, conceiving it less as an “explanation” of science and more as a conceptual space in which metaphysics (Ideas) and science (natural forces) can interact. But ultimately, he argues, Schopenhauer abandoned the Ideas completely as having any role in scientific explanation, supplementing his philosophy of nature with a philosophy of natural science that anticipates modern approaches.

Especially in the Zusätze and the 1827/8 Lectures on the Philosophy of Spirit, Hegel notes that cultivation is associated with minimizing the effects of natural determinations on one’s body. Insofar as nature is associated with particularity and reason with universality, idiosyncratic embodiments may seem incompatible with the kind of mastery of the body Hegel envisions. However, given that the “Anthropology” focuses on development of the soul rather than on the body, various compatible bodily possibilities may exist. This raises the question of how much the body’s comportment ought to correspond to an ideal, and of the implications for those whose embodiment marks them out (in Hegel’s system) as closer to nature. Since coming to own our natural determinations is an ongoing process throughout a lifetime, despite the location of the “Anthropology” in the Encyclopedia, it is important to consider the role of our free decision-making in the transformation of our body. Attending to the story of the body within the “Anthropology” helps us appreciate it more fully as a crucial link between the Philosophy of Nature and the rest of the Philosophy of Spirit.

Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature is interesting for three primary reasons: (1) its theory of space and time; (2) its theory of physical mechanics; and (3) reconstruction of biological categories. With respect to (1), the primary interest is its connection (a) to intuition and thus to Kant and prior theories of space and time; and (b) to the mathematical categories of the Science of Logic. With respect to (2), the primary interest is (a) the relation to important predecessors, particularly Leibniz and Newton, and (b) the relevance of Hegel’s comments on mechanical explanation for contemporary practice. With respect to (3), the primary interest is (a) the relation of Hegel’s account to past conceptions of organism in Leibniz and Aristotle and (b) the tenability of Hegel’s theory in the light of contemporary biology and Deleuze’s criticisms of the Aristotelian and Hegelian theories of organic life. A further question on the relation of mechanical and organicist explanation is whether the relation between the two supports Kreines’s influential reading of Hegel’s metaphysics as distinguishing between two orders of explanation and therefore of phenomena and dependence relations.

This monograph is the first study to assess in its entirety the fourth-century CE Latin translation of and commentary on Plato's Timaeus by the otherwise unknown Calcidius.The first part examines the authorial voice of the commentator and the overall purpose of the work; the second part provides an overview of the key themes; and the third part reassesses the commentary's relation to Stoicism, Aristotle, potential sources, and the Christian tradition.

This chapter examines the principles of Calcidius’ commentary (and to a lesser extent of the translation); he adopts a sequential reading of the Timaeus itself, in contrast to the mode preferred by the Neo-Platonists, and reads the Timaeus as a sequel to Plato’s Republic and a prequel to the Parmenides.