In classical logic, the disjunctive syllogism is a syllogism of the form: ‘Either P or Q, not P—hence Q’. For Hegel, the disjunctive syllogism describes an ‘identity that differentiates itself and gathers itself into itself out of that difference’ (Science of Logic, trans. A. V. Miller, §1521). The Disjunctive Logic of the World puts this syllogism at the heart of a ‘systematic’ reading of Hegel’s concept of civil society. Drawing on the Science of Logic, the authors’ aim is to refute those who think that Hegel’s thought is too out-dated or too Eurocentric to be a useful tool for understanding the fast-changing realities of the globalized twenty-first century (24ff.). Thus, the book not only offers an interpretation of Hegel’s account of civil society that draws on his Logic—which is successful in illuminating various aspects that other readings tend to marginalize or leave unexplained—but also applies insights gained in the first step to today’s global civil society—which in my view is less clear and leaves open more questions.

The ambitious aims of the book, as well as the current debate about global civil society and how the book relates to it, are laid out with commendable clarity in the introduction, which also lays the ground for some reflections on non-Western traditions and how Hegel’s categories might relate to them. From there, the reader is taken on a long and detailed journey through current Hegel scholarship. Nicolacopoulos and Vassilacopoulos remain in constant dialogue with other Hegel scholars throughout the book, pointing out agreements and disagreements both in method and in substance. Carefully delineating their views from those of other Hegel scholars, Nicolacopoulos and Vassilacopoulos argue for what they call the ‘strict organization thesis’ (9), according to which Hegel’s Logic and its categories have to be used as interpretative keys for understanding the categories of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, and more specifically of his account of civil society. Whether or not one finds this thesis attractive is likely to determine whether or not one finds the book convincing. For those who are unsure about it, the book can serve as an opportunity to form an opinion about the fruitfulness of reading Hegel’s practical philosophy through the lens of his Logic. Nicolacopoulos and Vassilacopoulos claim that various interpretive questions—for example about the role of civil society as a moment of ethicality, or about the role of the corporations—can be answered in more convincing ways if one reads Hegel in this way (71).

Nicolacopoulos and Vassilacopoulos unfold their ‘systematic reading’ of Hegel’s account of civil society by arguing that the moments of particularity, individuality and universality are interrelated in civil society in ways that correspond to Hegel’s conception of the ‘hypothetical’ and ‘disjunctive’ syllogisms. The ‘hypothetical syllogism’ describes a relation in which particularity and universality appear as ‘immediate’, but are yet ‘mediating and mediated’ (85), and thus necessarily related. This is how the self-interested individual and the universal relate to one another in the ‘first appearance’ of civil society, in which they stand in an instrumental relation to one another, which is yet a necessary relation: a ‘relation as the lack of unity, as distinct from the lack of relation’ (93). This relation, the authors argue, is a necessary precondition for attaining the kind of freedom that civil society offers, and which explains why it must be a moment of the development of ethical life (cf. 107ff.).

Turning to contemporary global civil society, they argue that it should be understood as encompassing a wide variety of kinds of agents, which stand in this kind of relationship to one another, and which they also see as compatible with various non-Western traditions (ch. 5). However, Nicolacopoulos and Vassilacopoulos are interested in the logical relations more than in the concrete practices that are said to ensue from them; they do not discuss Hegel’s hints to phenomena such as fashion or professional education, although it might have been fascinating to see how these more concrete details would have borne their analysis out.

The second syllogism, the disjunctive syllogism, is said to explain the relation of various elements of Hegel’s civil society to one another. As the authors put it, these elements ‘are united as differentiated moments of the one actuality and their unity now emerges as that which effects their mediation and grounds their self-subsistent appearance’ (130). Against some recent readings that more or less equate ‘civil society’ with the ‘system of needs’, Nicolacopoulos and Vassilacopoulos convincingly argue that the other elements of civil society—the administration of justice, and the police and the corporations—are equally essential (135ff.). The core of their reconstruction seems to be that these three elements of civil society stand alongside each other, related as not-being-the-same, but each of them expressing a form of unity of particularity and universality. This, they argue, is also the situation in which global civil society finds itself at the moment (see esp. 144ff.).

The rest of the book spells out the logics of the different moments of Hegel’s civil society and discusses how they can be applied to today’s global civil society. It is a rich and insightful discussion, in which the authors engage with various other interpretations of details of Hegel’s account of civil society. Chapter 7 discusses Hegel’s account of the three estates as reiterating, en miniature as it were, the logical relations of civil society. This account is related to the fact that in today’s globalized world fully globalized labour markets co-exist with large areas of subsistence agriculture. This raises a question, however, as to how close the authors remain to Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Arguably, Hegel does not understand the agrarian estate as a subsistence economy because it also has to create a surplus that provides for the needs of the members of the other estates. Moreover, the relation between ‘the global’ and the ‘local’ is more complex in today’s world. For example, the increasingly globalized market seems to have created a renewed appreciation for locally grown food and local production more generally; many local ‘grass root’ movements are connected in world-wide alliances that also lead to reconfigurations of the relation between global and local. One wonders whether the interpretation of global civil society that Nicolacopoulos and Vassilacopoulos offer is broad enough to capture these varieties—but then they run the risk of being so broad as to be quite empty—or whether it is only one possible interpretation that stands alongside other possible interpretations.

Chapter 8 deals with Hegel’s account of the corporation, in which the relation between universality and particularity becomes explicit, albeit on a limited scale. Nicolacopoulos and Vassilacopoulos disconnect the discussion of the corporations from the relation to work, understanding them broadly as associations, and they discuss how such associations can be understood from various non-Western perspectives. Chapter 9 discusses the police, the welfare state, and institutions of global governance such as the United Nations and the World Trade Organization. One of the most interesting aspects of the discussion is the way in which the authors use Hegelian categories to point out the inherent limitations of these and of other elements of civil society. In the case of global governance institutions, they argue that for Hegel the logic of the police is that of an external authority, which can alleviate, but not address at a fundamental level, the problems caused by the system of needs.

The reader wonders, of course, where the logic of civil society would lead today—would it lead to a global state, by analogy to Hegel’s political state that forms the third stage of his discussion of ethical life? But in this regard the authors only give brief hints—which seem to indicate scepticism about a global state (e.g., 200)—and often refer the reader to their next planned volume, which will deal with the logical categories of the Hegelian State. In many places, the discussion of contemporary global civil society would have benefitted from more concrete examples. The authors briefly discuss the possibility of not-for-profit-enterprises and mention one example (164f.), but they say nothing about the prevalence of such enterprises, or about historical tendencies with regard to the relation between non-profit and for-profit players in today’s globalized world. One also wonders what follows from claims such as that ‘the non-place of the rabble … gives rise to the demand for a place for its members as individuals within the existing order’ (159), but the authors do not spell this out in more concrete terms. Nor do they discuss whether Hegel’s account of the rabble might end in a deeper aporia, because giving everyone such a place is somehow impossible, for example because of the positionality of income and wealth.

Nicolacopoulos and Vassilacopoulos shed light on various interesting aspects of contemporary global civil society, some of which seem to be supported specifically by the reference to Hegelian categories, and some of which one might also have discussed from a more general perspective. It is likely that readers will have mixed feelings about the question of whether or not the strategy implied by the ‘strict organization thesis’ pays off. It certainly inspires interesting discussions, but there are various grounds for scepticism. For example, given the fact that Hegel wrote at a time in which the class conflict between capital and labour was just about to begin, does it matter whether or not his account of civil society offers space for this distinction (cf. 153ff.)? Might it be the case that the categories that Hegel used to describe the civil society of his day are not the best conceptual tools for understanding later-day social realities? Could it be the case that the categories of the Hegelian Logic help us to understand some aspects of today’s reality, but not others? In thinking about such questions, a lot will depend on how one understands the status of Hegel’s categories: are they descriptive, normative, or ontological?

Nicolacopoulos and Vassilacopoulos opt for a normative reading of the Philosophy of Right, which in a sense deflects questions about the empirical adequateness of Hegel’s categories. The great advantage that they see in this approach is that it avoids ‘external’ normative claims, which might fall into the category of empty moral ‘oughts’ (cf. 25, 126). One wonders, however, whether the reality of global institutions and globally shared ideas, for example with regard to human rights, might already embody enough of these ideals to draw on them for developing ‘internal’ criteria when thinking about global civil society. Such an approach could also be ‘Hegelian’, because it would draw out the norms implicit in our lived practices, in contrast to an abstract ‘Kantian’ approach that starts from first ethical principles. Yet contrary to the form of Hegelianism proposed by Nicolacopoulos and Vassilacopoulos it would proceed relatively independently of the Science of Logic. Thus, it remains to be seen to what extent a Hegelian approach to global civil society must have recourse to the Science of Logic to make sense of today’s globalized social reality.