Karin de Boer's On Hegel: The Sway of the Negative offers an incisive interpretation and critique of Hegel's philosophy, from which the author draws the framework for her own philosophical position. De Boer's interpretation of Hegel stands out in the literature in a number of ways. First, her methodology flouts traditional interpretive strategies in that it consists neither in trying to uncover what Hegel ‘really’ wanted to say, nor in trying to reconstruct a ‘better’ version of Hegel by ridding his philosophical system of potential tensions or contradictions. Rather, de Boer attempts to ‘think the unthought’ in Hegel by locating a fundamental tension that, she argues, exists prior to the system, makes the system possible, and is nonetheless inexpressible from within the system. This strategy simultaneously offers a comprehensive and incisive new perspective on the Hegelian philosophy and paves the way for de Boer's articulation of a new philosophical position in its own right.

De Boer's study constitutes an important contribution to the renewed interest in Hegel that has recently risen both west and east of the Atlantic, and is conversant with both ‘analytic’ and ‘continental’ readings of Hegel. In terms of its content, the work can be aligned with recent interpretations that highlight the non-totalizing strands in Hegel's thought (e.g., Nancy and Malabou), yet it stands out by the fact that de Boer neither argues that Hegel's thought is ‘in truth’ not totalizing, nor that Hegel can be ‘saved’ from his totalizing tendencies, but rather acknowledges the totalizing order of the Hegelian system while showing that this order presupposes a tension that both makes the system possible and constantly threatens to unravel it. De Boer thus does not deny the totalizing strands in Hegel but rather shows their ineluctable fragility from within the totality. On Hegel: The Sway of the Negative should be of great interest to experts and students of Hegel, and de Boer's application of her interpretation to a philosophical analysis of modernity broadens the scope of the book far beyond issues of Hegelian interpretation. One of the most impressive dimensions of de Boer's study is its achievement of a careful balance between expert textual interpretation and original philosophical work.

De Boer's approach to the interpretation of Hegel is critical in a Hegelian sense: she develops a fundamental tension internal to Hegel's philosophy, shows it to be irresolvable within the confines of Hegel's system, and develops a new philosophical position on the basis of this tension. Drawing heavily from some of Hegel's early works (especially the Essay on Natural Law and the Jena System Drafts), de Boer argues that there is a ‘tragic strand’ in the Hegelian philosophy that is covered over in, but remains essential to, Hegel's mature system. The book opens with arguments for de Boer's thesis that Hegel developed his mature dialectical method through reflection on tragedy and the logic of tragic conflicts. But the mature dialectical method, already operative in Hegel's account of tragedy in the Phenomenology, occluded a key component of his early reflections on tragedy in the Essay on Natural Law. The key difference between the two accounts of tragedy has to do with the way in which Hegel conceives of how the opposing principles involved in a tragic conflict are related to each other before their opposition emerges, and of how the opposition is resolved in the end.

In the early account, the opposing principles are initially ‘entangled,’ meaning that each principle requires the other (each depends on the other for its own meaning), and either principle's separation from the other threatens mutual destruction for both principles. Tragic conflict develops as each principle attempts to disentangle itself from the other and establish itself as absolute. The resolution of conflict is achieved when one principle is finally able to subjugate the other. Hegel conceives of the resolution as necessary insofar as he judges that the subjugated principle was never truly independent, but was rather always implicitly only a dependent moment of the victorious principle. Yet de Boer argues that this retroactive conceptualization of the resolution as necessary is somewhat of a tour de force, for there is no principled philosophical reason to think that the opposition was not one between two independent principles, or two equally strong determinations of one principle, such that neither could have become dominant in the end. Hegel's later analysis of tragedy in the Phenomenology forestalls this possibility by replacing the initial entanglement of opposite principles with a primal ‘unity,’ whose self-differentiation into two opposing and mutually dependent principles gives rise to tragic conflict. The conflict is resolved when both opposing principles give up their claim to independence and are subsumed under a third principle that synthesizes them, which principle just is a more mediated (self-conscious) version of the original unity. With this new account, Hegel rules out the threat of an asymmetrical and undecidable conflict that loomed large in the early account, where the principles were ‘entangled’ without being mere moments of a third principle.

The ‘logic’ that governs Hegel's later account corresponds to his conception of absolute negativity, which always begins with an original unity from which conflicts develop but are always finally resolved under a higher unity. However, de Boer detects a different ‘logic’ in the early account, which she terms the ‘logic of entanglement’ and sees as governed by ‘tragic’ (rather than absolute) negativity. De Boer's chief goal in the book is to argue that Hegel's account of absolute negativity, which came to define his mature method, simultaneously presupposes and covers over tragic negativity. Accordingly, de Boer sets out to disclose the role of tragic negativity ‘behind the back’ of Hegel's system, and to develop it into a philosophical principle on its own right. The overall structure of the book is an application of Hegel's own method of immanent critique, which aims to meet a philosophical position always in the position's own terms and to use only resources internal to the position in order to push it to its limits and into a more adequate position. Accordingly, de Boer's employs only resources internal to the Hegelian philosophy in order to show the limits of the system's driving principle—absolute negativity—and to move beyond it.

In order to locate traces of tragic negativity ‘behind’ the Hegelian system, de Boer first focuses on the logical structure of Hegel's Science of Logic, where the full force of absolute negativity is deployed at the level of pure concepts, and she then turns to Hegel's system as a whole. The chapters on the Logic (2, 3, 4, and 8) argue that the Logic contains a basic presupposition, already operative at the beginning of the book, which is taken for granted as absolute, although it is in fact only one strand in an original entanglement that is not itself thematized in the book. But if this entanglement is a hidden presupposition of the Logic, and since the Logic is presupposed by the other parts of the system—the philosophies of nature and spirit—the initial entanglement is a presupposition of each part of the system and of the system as a whole. The chapters on the philosophies of nature and spirit (5, 6, and 7) flesh out the nature of the fundamental entanglement allegedly necessary for, but covered over by, the Hegelian system.

The chapters on the Logic contain some of the most fascinating and original moments in de Boer's text. De Boer argues that the notion of absolute negativity, on which the systematic achievement of Hegel's philosophy hinges, presupposes ‘the concept as such’—that is, ‘the principle of the objectifying activity that produces the pure concepts constitutive of both knowledge and the objects of knowledge’ (De Boer 2010: 52). For Hegel, it is the self-determination of the concept through the development of internal oppositions that makes the empirical world possible as a world of knowable objects. And yet it is the fact that these determinations are all mere moments of the concept as such that allows philosophy to reconstruct the unity of the concept and reach ‘absolute knowing’ at the end of the Logic—that is, knowledge of the concept as a self-determining activity that makes any and all knowledge of objects possible, and that also determines the objects themselves. So, the movement of conceptual oppositions in the Logic, and their necessary culmination in absolute knowing, presuppose the initial unity of the concept as a whole, as well as the idea that this unity gives way through its self-determination to the conceptual oppositions that are developed in the text. But the oppositions remain moments of the original unity of the concept, and this ensures that absolute knowing is ultimately achieved through a self-conscious reconstruction of the original unity. The original unity of the concept is thus presupposed by the Logic as a whole.

Yet, de Boer argues with expert textual analysis and philosophical acuity, the presupposition of ‘the concept’ with which the Logic begins covers over something more fundamental. To show this, de Boer engages in a detailed and novel interpretation of the logical structure internal to the three divisions of the Logic (corresponding to the realms of ‘being’, ‘essence’, and ‘the concept’) and of the relation between these divisions. She argues that each of these spheres is governed internally by a different form of negativity. The sphere of being is governed by abstract negativity, by which the negation of a concept simply results in the surrender of that concept and its replacement by its contrary. The sphere of essence, on the other hand, is governed by what de Boer terms contradictory negativity, which does not merely negate a concept and surrender it to its contrary, but rather considers both concepts as defined by their opposition and insurmountable entanglement, and is thus a remnant of the ‘tragic negativity’ in Hegel's early accounts of tragedy. But this kind of negativity cannot dissolve completely the alleged independence of contrary determinations, which is why for Hegel the sphere of essence must give way to the sphere of the concept. This last sphere is governed by absolute negativity, which considers concepts that have already achieved the unity of contrary determinations in the history of thought, and also defines the methodical principle of the Logic as a whole.

On the basis of this account of the three spheres of the Logic, de Boer builds a intricate account of how they come together to form the system of pure concepts as a unified whole. The aim of the account is to show that the macro-structure of the system presupposes not only the original unity of the concept, but, behind this unity, an original entanglement and attempt at disentanglement. The unity of the system presupposes that the concept is a primordial unity that divides itself into the subordinate spheres of ‘being’ and ‘essence.’ The concept first separates from itself the subordinate sphere of abstract negativity, thus opening up the sphere of ‘being,’ because this negativity is needed to give rise to the one-sided concepts necessary for ordering sense perceptions into knowledge of empirical objects, and thus for thinking anything at all. The beginning of the Logic presupposes and ‘deliberately repeats the retreat of the concept as such—or its self-limitation—that Hegel considers to have originated the actual history of thought’ (De Boer 2010: 79). Yet the one-sided concepts of the sphere of being cannot determine reality as such, and they therefore give way to the ‘contradictory negativity’ of the sphere of essence, which begins to annul the one-sided opposition of concepts by considering them, rather, as entangled in irresolvable oppositions such as appearance and essence, cause and effect, etc. Since Hegel thinks that this sphere is also inadequate to determine reality as such, he subsumes it in the end to the sway of the absolute negativity of the concept. But de Boer's main points are (1) that we should reconstruct the relation between the different spheres in Hegel as presupposing, in the history of thought, a primordial unity of the concept, which primordial unity divides itself off (disentangles its constitutive strands) into the spheres of being and essence in order to give rise to the possibility of knowledge, and then returns to the unity of the concept in absolute knowing through the reconstruction of how opposing determinations constitute only moments of the concept; and consequently (2) that we must understand the Logic as itself repeating the act of the concept's self-diremption into being and essence (even though the act itself is not explicitly thematized but only assumed), and then self-consciously reconstructing the movement by which being and essence return to the unity that the concept was always already.

This interpretation is an attempt to look at what happens behind the explicit content of Hegel's text and first makes the starting point of the Logic possible. De Boer's interpretation is at odds with a common reading that views the progression from each sphere of the Logic to the next as moving forward linearly, so that the sphere of being is negated by the sphere of essence, and then the latter is in turn negated by the sphere of the concept. Rather, if de Boer is right, there is a different logic behind this linear progression, according to which being and essence begin as entangled in the concept, and the movement of conceptual determinations recounted in the Logic is fueled by both spheres’ attempt to disentangle themselves from the other. As de Boer sees it, the first division of the Logic recounts the attempt of the sphere of being to disentangle itself and establish itself as absolute (as fully and independently determining reality as such), but it fails, and then the sphere of essence attempts to establish itself as absolute but equally fails. In the end, both being and essence turn out to have been all along mere ‘moments’ of the concept, and the absolute negativity of the concept is alone able to establish itself as absolute. De Boer thus does not see the sphere of being as asymmetrically subsumed to essence, but rather as symmetrically entangled with essence. This reading of the structure of the Logic is rigorous, rich in detail, original, and deeply consequential for the interpretation of Hegel, for, if the relation between the spheres of being and essence is conceived as symmetrical and as following the ‘tragic logic’ of entanglement, then the presupposition that this entanglement results from the initial, primordial unity of the concept comes to the fore as the essential presupposition by which the Logic is held together, and, once this presupposition is isolated, it becomes possible to focus on it and call it into question.

And this is precisely what de Boer goes on to do. She proposes that we can read the explicit content of the Logic as expounding the second and third stages of the logic of tragic conflicts: the stage at which opposing determinations attempt to disentangle themselves from each other and establish themselves as absolute, and then the stage at which one determination establishes itself as absolute over the other. But then the first stage of tragic logic—that is, the original ‘entanglement’ of opposite determinations—is presupposed by, and yet invisible in, the text. In fact, de Boer makes the stronger point that the tragic logic deployed in the Logic requires the ‘effacement’ of the fundamental, initial entanglement.

To look more deeply into the original entanglement, de Boer turns to the philosophies of nature and spirit, and argues that they presuppose an initial entanglement between (1) the concept and time, as well as between (2) the concept and the externality of language. With respect to time, de Boer points out that Hegel's discussion of the relation between the concept and time changes from his early to his later writings: whereas the Encyclopaedia discusses nature (and so also space and time) only as self-determinations of the concept, the Jena Drafts also reconstruct the emergence of human consciousness from nature, which begins with the internalization of space and time as forms of pure intuition. The ego arises only when perceptions can become representations for consciousness, and this requires the internalization of time as an abstract negativity that differentiates between different perceptions, as well as between representations, on the one hand, and the faculty of representation, on the other. Since the emergence of self-consciousness is necessary for self-consciousness's reconstruction of the concept—that is, for absolute knowing—absolute knowing itself presupposes the abstract negativity of time, and is thus not simply independent but rather ‘entangled’ with time. Moreover, the internalization of time is not enough for the emergence of self-consciousness: language is still needed, without which representations are just ‘empty dreaming’ (De Boer 2010: 144). Although Hegel conceived of pure concepts as independent from the ‘externality’ of language, and so language as a vehicle that does not affect the ‘purity’ of pure concepts, de Boer argues that language, because it is actually required for self-consciousness and so ultimately for absolute knowing, cannot be fully external to the concept but rather ‘seems to belong to a twilight zone between nature and spirit that defies the threefold structure of the speculative system’ (De Boer 2010: 250). If this analysis is correct, it entails that the absolute negativity that defines the concept and allows it to develop into Hegel's system is not absolute and independent but is rather irrevocably entangled with the externalities of time and language, which are in Hegel defined by abstract negativity. Behind the seemingly innocent presupposition of the primal unity of the concept—the basic presupposition operative behind the system—is hidden a fundamental and irrevocable entanglement between absolute and abstract negativity, an entanglement that de Boer argues is (1) necessary for the movement of disentanglement by which absolute negativity attempts to establish itself as absolute, which movement sets the Hegelian system in motion, and yet is (2) necessarily ‘effaced’ within the system. De Boer in fact endorses the stronger conclusion that not only the Hegelian system but the history of philosophy in general is the history of pure thought's attempt to establish itself as absolute and extricate itself from an original entanglement with language and time, and she says moreover that the history of philosophy requires ‘the effacement’ of the original entanglement (De Boer 2010: 156).

Returning to her analysis of the Logic, de Boer conducts an immanent critique of Hegel's concept of teleology and argues that its interpretation in terms of absolute negativity covers over an initial entanglement. More specifically, she argues that Hegel's distinction between external and internal purposiveness does not ultimately hold because it originates from a struggle between two externalities where each seeks to establish itself as end and the other as a subordinate means. Whereas Hegel argues that the end-relation ultimately necessarily subsumes the means as a moment of itself, de Boer argues that the victory of either determination to establish itself as end (and the other as means) is never guaranteed. For de Boer, the collision between means and ends is tragic rather than absolute, so its result is undecidable (De Boer 2010: 175).

De Boer's analyses of the concept's initial entanglement with time, language, and the struggle between means and ends in the end-relation all point to the idea that the principle that defines Hegel's view of the concept—absolute negativity—is not fully independent, but rather entangled with the principle that defines time, language, and the struggle between means and ends, which Hegel reduces to abstract negativity but de Boer reinterprets in terms of the ‘tragic negativity’ characteristic of the ‘logic of entanglement.’ Mere ‘abstract’ negativity is a product of the attempt by absolute negativity to reduce its other (i.e., tragic negativity) to a mere dependent moment of itself. The conclusion to de Boer's critical study of Hegel, then, is that the very principle by which the ‘system’ is built, the principle of absolute negativity, both presupposes and conceals a primordial entanglement with tragic negativity. She claims moreover that Hegel's absolute negativity results from the attempt to disentangle itself from tragic negativity and to reduce the latter to a mere moment of itself, to abstract negativity (De Boer 2010: 179). This effort takes place on the history of thought, and in fact de Boer sees the asymmetrical opposition between absolute and abstract negativity to be a presupposition of philosophy since Greek thought, and to be grounded in the attempt of absolute negativity to reduce tragic negativity to a mere abstract moment (De Boer 2010: 179).

In the last chapter, de Boer employs the notion of tragic negativity she has developed in order to provide a concrete analysis of modernity. She argues that the socio-political ‘collisions’ of modernity are best understood in light of tragic negativity. De Boer argues both that Hegel's conception of modernity contains a tragic strand worth rescuing (though in the end Hegel subsumes it to absolute negativity), and that Hegel's overall view of history as driven by absolute negativity is ultimately one-sided; a more encompassing view, and one that can better account for the socio-political collisions of modernity, must also take tragic negativity into account. In particular, de Boer looks at Hegel's view on the problems of poverty, the ability of the state to harmonize the universal and individual wills, and how Hegel's view of the conflict between particularity and universality applies to modern intercultural conflicts in ‘advanced’ liberal societies. She argues that Hegel is not certain that these collisions can be resolved, and she claims that the logic of entanglement can better explain why these collisions are becoming ever more polarized rather than reconciled, and why, against the more optimistic Hegelian view, the outcome of these conflicts is in principle undecidable.

On Hegel: The Sway of the Negative is most impressive in its theoretical analysis of Hegel, and specifically in the masterful way by which de Boer applies a Hegelian-style of immanent criticism to the Hegelian system as a whole. Still, the impact of de Boer's criticism on the Hegelian system—that is, exactly how the criticism transforms the system—remains unclear at the end of the book. Although de Boer wants to develop a new philosophical position on the basis of the tension that the author discovers in Hegel, de Boer maintains that her position is not a dialectical resolution [Aufhebung] of the ‘contradiction’ that she develops within the system (i.e., the fundamental conflict between absolute and tragic negativity). Rather, she claims that her own position neither refutes nor dialectically transforms the Hegelian system into a ‘higher’ absolute philosophical position, but rather adds a new strand to it: the notion of tragic negativity does not replace absolute negativity but belongs alongside it; each is on its own one-sided and insufficient, and must rather be understood as ineluctably entangled with the other (De Boer 2010: 202). ‘On this view, the space of reasons is not delimited by the sway of absolute negativity alone. The logic of entanglement rather entails that the space which allows human life to interpret itself is delimited by the irresolvable tension between tragic and absolute negativity’ (De Boer 2010: 207).

It remains however unclear under what guise absolute negativity survives this contextualization. Consider that de Boer's view seems to be that Hegel's system is the result of the attempt by absolute negativity to disentangle itself from tragic negativity, and to establish itself as supreme over the latter. This means that the entire Hegelian system (driven by absolute negativity) becomes a one-sided position that exists in opposition to another position (i.e. to tragic negativity). But this entails that the Hegelian system, and its driving ‘negativity,’ are not absolute. If absolute negativity exists in an ‘irresolvable tension’ with another form of negativity, then the ‘absoluteness’ of absolute negativity is unmasked as delusive, indeed, as false—the ‘absolute negativity’ of the system is shown not to be really ‘absolute’. To say that the negativity that drives the system forward is absolute is to say that all one-sided positions of consciousness or thought succumb to it, and that it itself cannot be negated. But, then, to say that there is a determination (tragic negativity) that absolute negativity presupposes but cannot encompass, entails that ‘absolute negativity’ is not absolute, and, similarly, that the Hegelian system is not absolute. Thus the very idea that absolute negativity is not the full story seems necessarily to annihilate Hegel's conception of absolute negativity, rather than merely to add a new dimension or context to it.

Moreover, de Boer argues that the relation between absolute and tragic negativity is one of irrevocable ‘entanglement.’ But the ‘logic of entanglement’ is itself defined by tragic negativity. So, if the overarching relation between absolute and tragic negativity is defined by entanglement—that is, by tragic negativity—then, it would seem, absolute negativity is ultimately subsumed under tragic negativity, rather than merely limited by being set in a relation of ‘irrevocable tension’ with tragic negativity. The point can be put as follows: For any two elements, if they are ‘entangled,’ then their relation is defined by tragic negativity. It follows that, if tragic and absolute negativity are ‘entangled,’ their relation is defined by tragic negativity. Tragic negativity entails that neither element can ‘reduce its contrary to a subordinate moment’ (De Boer 2010: 126). This means, in turn, that absolute negativity cannot reduce its contrary to a subordinate moment. Therefore, absolute negativity is not, in fact, absolute—its claims to be capable of reducing all opposing principles to a subordinate moment is false. But then, all we are left with is tragic negativity as itself an absolute principle. There are two reasons why this is a problematic result. First, it is an aporetic result, since the very meaning of tragic negativity is that it relates two principles that are such that neither can become absolute over the other, which entails that it itself cannot be absolute. Second, if tragic negativity is interpreted as superseding absolute negativity, then in a sense we simply fall back inside the Hegelian system, at least insofar as a final positive and all-encompassing position emerges as supreme in the end. De Boer clearly wants to forestall this possibility, but it is unclear that she can do so. If entanglement characterizes the fundamental relation between tragic and absolute negativity, then it seems to follow (1) that tragic negativity subsumes absolute negativity under it as one of its proper moments, and (2) that absolute negativity turns out in the end not to be truly ‘absolute.’ To preclude these conclusions, one would have to say that the tragic negativity that defines ‘entanglement’ does not characterize and encompass the fundamental relation of tragic and absolute negativity; that tragic negativity does not apply at this fundamental level. But then we are left in need of both an explanation of why tragic negativity does not apply here, and an account of the relation that does apply.

The issue, in the end, is that the relation of ‘entanglement’ and the way in which it connects absolute and tragic negativity remains in need of more fleshing out. In general, the meaning and philosophical significance of de Boer's notion of ‘entanglement,’ though extremely thought provoking and philosophically promising, is not entirely perspicuous. Recall that de Boer takes the ‘logic of entanglement’ to illuminate an aspect of philosophical issues that has traditionally gone unseen. For instance, the fact that ‘pure thought’ is initially entangled with ‘the externality of language’ is supposed to explain something fundamental about the history of philosophy: that this history ‘requires’ the ‘effacement’ of the original entanglement (De Boer 2010: 156), and that, however, because of the logic of entanglement, pure thought cannot in the end establish itself as ‘absolute’ over the externality (objectifying tendency) of language. But what is it about the original relation of entanglement that gives impetus to the development of a struggle for disentanglement? Is this process of disentanglement necessary for the determinations to acquire a determinate identity, or not? For example, is the disentanglement necessary for absolute negativity to be what it is in Hegel, or in the history of philosophy in general? And why does disentanglement require an ‘effacement’ or ‘forgetting’ of the initial entanglement?

Finally, the fruitfulness of de Boer's notion of disentanglement remains, to my mind, also unclear. De Boer suggests that the notion helps to explain the impossibility, or perhaps just the strong unlikelihood, of finding resolutions for fundamental conflicts (so, for instance, the initial entanglement between language and pure thought allegedly explains why the objectifying tendency in language cannot be overcome in philosophy, and the notion of entanglement is also supposed to explain the exacerbation of various socio-political collisions characteristic of modernity). But, for the notion of entanglement to do explanatory work here, we need an account of why principles that are ‘entangled’ cannot become independent, or tend not to become independent from each other.

Chapter 1 says that the logic of entanglement conceives of contrary determinations as dependent on each other and such that the attempt of one to establish itself over the other threatens both with ‘destruction’ (De Boer 2010: 26). Presumably, the dependence at issue would help explain both why full domination of one contrary over the other would destroy both determinations, and why the struggle for disentanglement is not, or tends not to be, successful. But de Boer does not explain in what sense the contrary determinations ‘depend’ on each other. This dependence must not be so fundamental as to be tied to the identity conditions of the contrary determinations, since de Boer insists that it remains possible for one determination to win out over the other (hence tragic conflicts remain until the end undecidable). A determination can maintain its identity even if it really does establish itself as absolute over the other, which means that the determination's identity does not involve the determination's dependence on its contrary determination. But, then, in what sense exactly is each determination dependent on the other?

As far as I can see, the book does not clarify why the logic of entanglement helps explain the inability of contrary determinations’ becoming independent, nor the reason why, in their dependence (of whatever kind), each determination is strongly unlikely to succeed in establishing itself over the other. De Boer does not deny that the collision between entangled contraries may be resolvable; she stresses only that the outcome is ‘by right, undecidable’ (De Boer 2010: 206). Yet, somehow, the logic of entanglement is supposed to explain why conflicts between entangled contrary determinations tend to become more and more polarized and not to reach a resolution. But if all we get by way of explanation is the assertion of necessary undecidability, it is not clear that we get an explanation at all.

Finally, I should add a word about de Boer's application of the logic of entanglement to the socio-political conflicts of modernity. Tragic negativity certainly provides an interesting framework for thinking about the intransigence of these conflicts at a variety of levels. However, I am not sure that the framework provides any new insights. Consider de Boer's analysis of intercultural conflicts. De Boer argues that the logic of entanglement explains why the attempt by minority groups, or by the majority culture of advanced liberal states, to impose itself on the other actually radicalizes both sides and makes their opposition more hostile. ‘The logic of entanglement entails, first, that we always tend to efface rather than face the entanglement of contrary determinations and, second, that this effacement induces their polarization rather than their reconciliation’ (De Boer 2010: 201). Still, de Boer says that we should ‘try to resist processes of polarization by all means’ (ibid.). I take it this entails that the polarization is not necessitated by the fact of entanglement. Yet it is caused or in some sense driven by the logic of entanglement. But what exactly is it about the relation of entanglement that leads to polarization, or causes a strong tendency toward polarization? It seems to me that, unless this more fine-grained question is answered, the notion of entanglement does not actually help us understand why conflicts tend (but need not) become polarized, which is essential for understanding how to go about resisting polarization. But perhaps de Boer's framework does not seek to answer this kind of question, and should rather be seen as a way of framing social phenomena, in particular modern social conflicts, in a way that accounts for some of their most puzzling characteristics—their seeming intransigence, the growing polarization of opposite sides, etc.

As I said at the beginning, Karin de Boer's book carefully combines philosophical interpretation and critique of Hegel with the development of an independent philosophical position based on the logic of entanglement. Both elements are full of originality and acuity. The interpretation and critique of Hegel are rigorous and well developed, and certain to engage anyone interested in Hegel. The original position that de Boer develops on the basis of her critique of Hegel, on the other hand, is not fully developed in this book, but it abounds in intriguing, thought-provoking, and philosophically exciting possibilities.