In the introduction to his book on Hegel, Frederick Beiser points out quite clearly the dilemma that arises from any attempt to reconstruct an author's thought in the present: either ‘we treat him as if he were a virtual contemporary, as a participant in present conversations’, or we treat him ‘as an historical figure’ and tie down his reflections rather strictly to a certain context and time period (cf. Beiser Reference Beiser2005: 1-2). Beiser states that each of these cases implies a different risk: when we focus on the author's current relevance we end up casting our own contemporary problems and concepts on his initial reflections, distorting the proposal that was originally meant to be reconstructed (this is the anachronism Beiser attributes to Anglo-Saxon non-metaphysical readings of Hegel); on the other hand, when we insist on a particular cultural-historical context, the relationship and continuity between the author and our own present is forgotten (antiquarianism inevitably characterizes some of Hegel's most traditional hermeneutic reconstructions).

If this can be said about every philosophical-historical study in general, when it comes to the case of an author like Hegel, the dilemma becomes almost paradoxical: if he stands out from other authors belonging to modern Western tradition, it is because of the fact that he made his own thought's historicity one of his philosophy's most explicit subjects. In this sense, any attempt to grasp his thought necessarily turns out to be a historical approach; simultaneously, the historical comprehension of his thought inevitably ends up confronting our own historicity and the way we understand it. It is in this sense that one might have to disagree with Beiser: rather than having to make a decision regarding both ways to carry out a history of thought, Hegel's case must be approached by both of them. It is not possible to speak about Hegel in the present without making his own historical present speak, but neither is it possible to make his historical present speak through his thought without introducing questions and rich reflections regarding our own times. Any introduction to Hegel's thought must be set, to the extent possible, in the crossroads of these two perspectives.

However, this task is especially complex in the case of Hegel, who sought to turn his philosophical reflections into an organic whole in which each of the system's moments presumes and is presumed by all the other moments. With this in mind, one must stop to wonder if every attempt to introduce Hegel's thought is not already condemned to failure. Nonetheless, there are many good examples that would help discard such a statement. We just need to recall, in the context of English secondary literature, Charles Taylor's Hegel, first published in Reference Taylor1975, and the already mentioned Frederick Beiser's Hegel (2005). Stephen Houlgate's 1991 book, Freedom, Truth and History: an Introduction to Hegel's Philosophy, revised and published in a second edition in 2005, is also worth mentioning in this context. The existence of these books presupposes however an additional task for whoever attempts to write a new introduction to Hegelian thought: it is hard to think of a reason why a new introduction to Hegel might still be necessary. Consequently, the task is multiple: to prove that there is still a need to overcome a deficiency that will justify once more, at least when it comes to English literature, an introduction to Hegel's thought; an introduction that should simultaneously seek to dodge, in the extent possible, the difficulties that were previously mentioned. This is the task faced by three recent introductions to Hegel, and each of them does it in its very own way.

Speight's The Philosophy of Hegel (2008) aims to show the crucial aspects of Hegel's thought that have influenced the different interpretative traditions, classic as well as contemporary, of the German author. While favouring interpretations by authors like Pinkard and Pippin, Speight skillfully manages to present, not only the most important aspects of Hegel's thought as a whole, but also the most decisive debates these aspects have impelled between their interpreters, focusing especially on issues that are prominent in contemporary literature. Therefore, Speight's book quickly answers the question about the relevance of another introduction to Hegel's thought: in fact, if one is familiar with Hegel's work, or with other introductions that have been written so far, The Philosophy of Hegel adds an important element to these studies as it offers its readers a surprisingly complete survey – considering its spatial limitations – of the current state of debates concerning Hegelian philosophy's most central subjects (among others: agency and sociality, normativity and freedom, the role of scepticism and its relations to epistemology, the status of history and its relationship to rationality, the thesis on the so-called end of art, and the well-known question about Hegelian system's either openness or closure). In this sense, the book is especially ideal for those seeking to thoroughly begin studying any aspect of his thought.

However, this doesn't oppose the work's goal, nor the goal of the Continental European Philosophy series it is a part of, which is ‘to provide for the first-time reader a tool for a middle path into Hegel's works as a whole’ (7); the book actually manages to present the depth of today's interpretations of Hegel's thought with the clarity needed to make them accessible to an average reader. It is therefore not only useful and complete, but also reader friendly: Speight proves to have a special skill as he approaches Hegel's language in depth without reproducing its darkness. This is one admirable element in Speight's work, especially when compared to one like James’ that produces precisely the opposite effect.

This element fits right in place with Speight's decision to go over Hegel's work chronologically. He uses the first chapter to show how Hegel first came to the questions and problems that from then on would influence his philosophical quest. Speight here discusses four works from the Jena period and shows how in each of them Hegel addresses, for the first time, the questions that will run across his late work: the approach, in the Difference essay, to speculative philosophy as a reaction against the limits of the philosophy of reflection; the role of scepticism in philosophy, in the essay that is called just like that, and its role in the creation of subsequent Hegelian dialectics; the formulation in Faith and Knowledge – by way of and against Kant – of an ‘intuitive understanding’ that would take the possibilities of rational comprehension beyond the analytical divisions imposed by the faculty of understanding; and the creation of a notion of ‘ethical life’ that, since the Natural Law essay, would guide all of Hegel's later ethico-political reflections. The quality, clarity and smart way in which Speight structures this opening chapter definitely helps guarantee the entire book's success; an aspect that both the books of James (dramatically) and Matarrese (to a lesser extent) lack.

Speight's skillful introduction of the main subjects allows one to see how they all become different faces of a single system, a system that is reconstructed in the other chapters. Chapters 2 and 3 deal with the Phenomenology and the Logic as well as with the discussions on the different roles these two works play in the system's introduction. It then turns to the philosophy of law and the philosophy of history (chapters 4 and 5), introducing, in some detail, different current interpretations of the ethico-political Hegelian stances, his theory of action, and the criticism (by, among others, Fukuyama and Arendt) of the status of historical rationality in Hegel's work. It finally examines the lectures on aesthetics and Hegel's approach to religion (chapters 6 and 7). Here Speight deals with questions regarding the presence or absence of hierarchy in the different moments of absolute spirit, also addressing discussions on art's crucial role, and the problematic relationship between religion and absolute knowledge. Of all the chapters, the weakest is curiously the one dedicated to the Phenomenology, especially if one has in mind the wonderful work Speight himself has done in this regard in other places (cf. Speight Reference Speight2001).

Speight's introductory study successfully reaches the difficult crossroads between an analytical and a hermeneutical reading; it adequately presents the enduring pertinence of Hegel's thought and simultaneously demonstrates that its current pertinence is better understood when it is related to the historical, philosophical, and cultural context he initially responded to. Nonetheless, the reader might finally get a clearer picture of the former than of the latter. This unbalance may be due to the fact that Speight does not really make explicit what philosophy meant to Hegel, and which role it played in his historical present.

Matarrese's study focuses precisely on this issue, making it a very interesting, though not unproblematic, introduction to Hegelian philosophy. The author insists on the fact that philosophy, for Hegel, is a particular type of attitude that begins from common sense and allows reality to discover its internal contradictions and limitations. Philosophy is presented as a reflection that is ‘particularly good at articulating whatever it is that matters most to a society's sense of itself, and, in the face of major ruptures, reframing the basic values and questions with an eye towards the whole, “the absolute”‘ (35). Throughout the book, Matarrese shows how contemporary problems can still be confronted by drawing on Hegel's philosophy. This does not mean, however, that he discards the specificities of Hegel's own answers. On the contrary, he focuses precisely on Hegel's own efforts to overcome the challenges of modern society through a project that poses a characteristically modern conception of ethical life.

Unlike Speight's book, Starting with Hegel is directed explicitly ‘to those who are new to philosophy as a discipline’ (25), in particular to first year undergraduate students. Besides Matarrese's problematic decision to not quote Hegel in his own words (with the exception of quotes that sometimes appear as an epilogue to each of the chapters), one might question the appropriateness of the examples he uses in order to clarify Hegel's thought to his intended readers, such as the comparison of speculative thought to a game of chess (cf. 16 ff.) or of Hegel's notion of freedom in the Philosophy of Right to Coleman's higher-order reflection on jazz (chapter 5). However, I must acknowledge that his strategy has its merits, for it is not difficult to imagine a student who, having finished the book, ends up with a clear and rigorous idea of Hegelian philosophy's general purposes. Even though the book's pedagogical tone reveals the limits of an approach of this nature, Matarrese's study is the result of a serious effort to provide an alternative outlook not only on Hegel's thought, but also on how to teach philosophy.

Contrary to Matarese's and Speight's introductions, James’ Hegel, a Guide for the Perplexed never specifies the type of reader it is directed at, and one gets the impression that this wasn't clear to the author either. What appears to be an attempt to present Hegel's thought from a global perspective (responding, perhaps, to the needs of readers approaching the subject for the first time) is combined with a language that occasionally becomes excessively technical. Focusing mostly on the problem of freedom, the book deals with subjective spirit (chapter 1), objective spirit (chapter 2), and absolute spirit (chapter 3), in order to finally approach the system by means of a discussion of speculative logic (chapter 4). Thus, instead of tracing the paths that led Hegel to seek his system, James in each chapter refers to works that belong to different stages of Hegel's philosophy.

Part of the book's explicit goal is to prove that Hegel's ‘theory of subjective spirit, objective spirit, and, to a lesser extent, his theory of absolute spirit can be understood in isolation from his speculative logic’ (3, cf. 142). While James successfully shows how all of spirit's stages can be understood in light of a philosophical quest that is animated by the question of freedom, it is regrettable that he focuses much more on Hegel's political and social philosophy than on other aspects of his thought, including the metaphysical characteristics of Hegelian philosophy. Rather than providing the reader with the basic tools to understand the different stages of spirit, the meaning of such a division, and the logic that governs it, the book almost immediately focuses on each of spirit's stages. It is only at the end, when James traces a circle in the last chapter, that the way in which each chapter relates to the preceding one can finally be understood. For this reason, the book can hardly count as a general introduction to Hegel.

This is also the case because, from the first chapter onward, James chooses to focus on discussions more likely to be found in scholarly literature than in an introductory guide. Thus, the author dedicates a great number of pages to the claim that Hegel's universal self-consciousness is nothing but a ‘restatement of Fichte's position at the end of the philosophy of right’ (28). There is no doubt that this is a fascinating discussion, but it is precisely this kind of discussions, combined with the use of technical language, that makes it impossible to identify the kind of reader James’ book is aimed at. Other examples of this problem are the emphasis on Hegel's criticism of the Enlightenment's understanding of religion (105 ff.), as well as the discussion of Spinoza's theory of substance (120 ff.).

However, James’ propensity to read the whole of Hegel's system in a political and social key, focusing especially on his theory of recognition and on a philosophy of intersubjectivity, makes Hegel. A Guide for the Perplexed an interesting example of the kind of work that authors like A. Honneth, R. Williams and F. Neuhouser have prompted. Among the three books it is nevertheless the one that responds less clearly to the need for another introduction to Hegelian philosophy. While Matarrese introduces the reader to philosophy in general in the light of Hegel's thought, Speight provides a significant introduction to those who, already familiar with philosophy, want to study Hegel in depth. James’ book will perhaps catch the eye of those who wish to approach Hegel's political and social thinking from a contemporary perspective.