Rockmore's _Hegel's Circular Epistemology_ is a perfectly decent little book--fairly typical of the Hegel scholarship of the 1980s.

Winfield's Lectures on the SL that came out fairly recently takes Hegel scholarship to a whole other level beyond Rockmore's modest book. And there have been a number of other works on the SL, such as by Bob W., that are far advanced over the works of the 1980s.

Pippin's book from the 1980s was at the cutting edge of Hegel scholarship of that time--although the book is completely outdated now. But Pippin is coming out with a new book on the SL at the end of this month. I look forward to seeing what sort of advance he has made in 30 years time!

But back to Rockmore, I have to say, first, that his book on Heidegger greatly offended me. He does, though, make something of a joke in its introduction. For years about all that was available on Heidegger was a hard-bound version of _Being and Time_. Then his lectures on Nietzsche came out in four little hard-bound books. Then, all of a sudden, a great effort was made to publish ALL of Heidegger--including every lecture. Rockmore was upset that the world was being flooded with books by Heidegger at the expense of Hegel and everyone else one could mention.

I have to say that I have read about 20 volumes of Heidegger. Of course he is no Hegel, but his books and lectures are really quite good. They are like philosophical potato-chips--once you get started reading them, it is hard to quit.

But I have just read the review of Rockmore's new book on Marx. It sounds quite interesting. His goal is one I very much approve. I believe there is much of great interest in Marx--if he can be separated from the Marxists and socialists. Just as the rehabilitation of Hegel has been an important work going on for the past 30 or more years, I think a similar rehabilitation of Marx would be a very good thing.

I notice Winfield has a new book--a very long book--on Marx. And I recently read a very good book on Marx which argued that Dante's Inferno provided the underlying structure of the first volume of Capital. Just documenting that Marx was an avid reader of Dante alone does much to humanize the man.

At any rate, I saw the best minds of my generation sucked into endless computer programming for endless retail outlets. It would be nice if some of that now available brain-power could be now returned to all the endless work that needs to be done in philosophy.

John