Bernard Mabille has left his mark on Hegelian studies in France and abroad. The tragic loss of this great philosopher leaves a deep void. Before passing away Mabille was preparing a collection of already published articles and unpublished studies. His colleagues and friends, Gilles Marmasse and Gilbert Gérard, edited this material, with the exception of one article about Nicholas of Cusa, which was not developed enough. However, the result is not merely a posthumous compendium of short studies. The texts are coherent in that they revolve around the philosophical investigation into first principles that was at the centre of Mabille’s thought.

The book’s main guiding thread is the issue of limit. According to Mabille, the limited and the unlimited (peras/apeiron) do not refer to two mutually exclusive terms, but to a plastic relation that allows us to overcome the sterility of fixed representations. As can be learned from Plato’s Philebus, drawing a limit is a way of determining a contingent reality and thus giving it meaning.

Mabille’s idea is that the first principle is not a category, but a relation—the terms of which do not exist outside this relation. He treats this issue by confronting Hegel’s philosophy with that of other thinkers through more or less fictive encounters. In the introduction, Mabille depicts this strategy as one midway between internal and external readings. The aim of what he calls a ‘diaporetic’ reading is to clarify Hegel’s thoughts on the relationship between the limited and the unlimited (peras/apeiron) by staging encounters between Hegel and Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Proclus, Saint John, Leibniz, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Heidegger, Bergson, Gadamer and Joyce.

As regards past philosophers, Mabille praises Plato and Neo-Platonists for introducing the idea of a dialectical development of the thing-in-itself. In the opening study, Mabille distinguishes between natural, spiritual and logical life and compares Hegel’s conception of the latter with Neo-Platonism. In the second essay, he draws parallels between Hegel’s account of determinate being (Dasein) and Aristotle’s concept of tode ti. Furthermore, Mabille sketches how the dialectic of the limited and the unlimited informs Greek philosophy up to Neo-Platonism. In this context, he also discusses the idea of productive negativity that Hegel shares with Neo-Platonism (Chapter 4).

The diaporetic reading of the history of philosophy is further pursued through discussions of Hegel in relation to Leibniz (Chapter 5) and Kant (Chapter 6). The first of these Chapters argues that Hegelian idealism is not based on the contemplation of an abstract idea but on the ideality of the finite. This means that the finite has its signification in something that is beyond its actual state. This allows us to pass from a suite of representations to a dialectical process in which negation plays a major role. Discussing Kant and Jacobi, Mabille shows that some elements of dialectical reason haunt the understanding (Chapter 7). According to him, these ‘ghosts’ represent not so much the despair of finding an indubitable ground of our cognition as the risk of falling back on immediate feeling and thereby becoming the hostage of contingent and arbitrary outpourings.

The question of contingency plays an important role in Chapter 8. Mabille here recalls that Hegelian philosophy is not grounded in a logic of necessity, but in a logic of freedom. Hegel’s logic introduces a new type of science, namely one that interlaces ontology and epistemology in order to liberate philosophy from fixed determinations.

As regards twentieth-century philosophy, Mabille compares Hegel and Heidegger’s understandings of nothingness (Chapter 10). In his diaporetic reading of Heidegger interpreting Hegel, Mabille distinguishes three ‘gestures’ concerning nothingness. The first one, the attitude of a mere denial, is rejected by both Hegel and Heidegger. The second one, endorsed by Hegel, considers nothingness as negativity—that is to say as the ‘limit’ through which the indeterminate becomes determinate. The third attitude is the one endorsed by Heidegger: nothingness is beyond any determination and only approachable through the experience of dread.

Both authors criticise traditional logic. However, while Heidegger rejects logic, Hegel tries to transform it. Mabille characterises Hegelian logic as a criticism of fixed representations (Chapter 9). According to Mabille, the aim of Hegelian logic is to elaborate a processual thought characterized by the notion of fluidity (211–31). Concerning this latter point, Mabille draws interesting parallels between Hegel and Bergson. Drawing on Gadamer’s notion of the game, the author then pursues the way in which thinking is informed or constituted by language (Chapter 12).

In Chapter 13, Mabille stages a somewhat surprising encounter between Hegel and Joyce. He aims here to show how Hegel’s aesthetics seeks to liberate meaning from fixed representations. It is up to us to invent meanings by means of an artistic approach. As Mabille puts it:

What Mabille invites us to do in the end is to conceive of a first philosophy, with Hegel, as a means of liberating meaning from actual situations and past traditions, and of creating meaning that does not ignore the contingencies of life. Mabille aims not only to rethink Hegel, but also to renew first philosophy, or metaphysics, by establishing modes of rationality that are covered over by the so-called overcoming of metaphysics. Thus, Mabille replaces the idea of a unique principle with the idea of relation.

In my opinion, Mabille’s renewal of first philosophy in terms of relationality calls for a more extensive development. It might have been interesting to discuss Bradley’s debates on the topic of relation (Bradley Reference Bradley1897, Reference Bradley1914, Reference Bradley1935) or take into account the concept of ‘transaction’ put forward by Bentley and Dewey (Reference Bentley and Dewey1949). It is curious that the author foregrounds the concept of relation but does not discuss the traditional accounts of the topic. In addition to this, he does not systematically treat Hegel’s explicit discussions of the subject, such as those in the chapters of the Science of Logic on the essential relation (wesentliche Verhältnis) and the absolute relation (absolute Verhältnis). Finally, he does not seem to take into account the difference Hegel makes between Verhältnis and Beziehung.

Notwithstanding these omissions, Mabille’s book is rich, original and thought-provoking. It not only presents in nuce new perspectives on Hegel and first philosophy but also stages suggestive encounters between Hegel and some of the leading intellectual icons of the Western tradition.