Angelica Nuzzo’s Approaching Hegel’s Logic, Obliquely is an audacious philosophical endeavor that stakes its ground on re-reading Hegel’s Logic as a “logic of transformation” and a “logic of action.” This is not a conventional explication of Hegel’s famously opaque work, nor is it content with philosophical abstraction. Instead, Nuzzo seeks to vivify Hegel’s thought by bringing it into active dialogue with literary texts, using examples from Melville’s Billy Budd, Molière’s Tartuffe, Beckett’s Endgame, as well as selections from poetry and history. These works become mirrors and extensions of Hegel’s thinking, revealing the intimate relationship between philosophical concepts and the drama of human existence. In doing so, Nuzzo challenges the two-century-long tradition of Hegel scholarship, daring to question unresolved issues in the interpretation of Logic and inviting readers into a philosophical project that not only grapples with abstraction but aims to address the urgent demands of our contemporary world in crisis.
Nuzzo’s central thesis — that Hegel’s Logic should be read as a logic of transformation — reframes this complex text as fundamentally concerned with movement, change, and action. For Nuzzo, Hegel’s Logic is not just an intellectual exercise that contemplates static concepts; rather, it actively participates in the flux of reality, mirroring the dynamic processes it seeks to understand. This approach draws the reader into a deeper investigation of the nature of thought itself: how thought must transform to grasp the realities of an ever-changing world, and how, in doing so, it becomes a practice of action. Thought, in Hegel’s terms, is never passive, and Nuzzo highlights this by presenting Logic as not only a method for understanding transformation but as itself a transformative force. Hegel’s work, according to Nuzzo, demands a philosophical engagement that is as much about praxis as it is about theory, blending these elements to show how transformation in thought and transformation in reality are inseparable.
To illuminate this interpretation, Nuzzo turns to literature and history as models of Hegelian processes of thought. Her reading of Melville’s Billy Budd is perhaps the boldest and most revelatory example. Nuzzo identifies Billy Budd’s speech impediment, his stutter, as an emblem of the very first, inarticulate movement of Hegel’s Logic: the enigmatic, pure Being that is indistinguishable from Nothing. This connection between Billy Budd’s inability to speak clearly and the puzzling beginning of the Logic illustrates the abstract movement of thinking in a tangible, embodied form. The sudden act of violence that strikes Claggart dead — a violent rupture that seems irrational and immediate — becomes, in Nuzzo’s reading, a reflection of the violent negation found at the heart of Hegel’s dialectical movement. Melville’s novella, then, is not only a literary work but an instantiation of Hegel’s abstract logic, where the contradictions inherent in thought and action find their most potent expression.
Similarly, Nuzzo finds in Molière’s Tartuffe a fertile ground for exploring the refusal of progress and the nature of hypocrisy and fanaticism. In Hegelian terms, Tartuffe’s dissimulation and refusal to advance reflect the challenges inherent in the dialectical process, where thought can become mired in static forms, unable to move forward. By connecting these literary examples to Hegel’s Logic, Nuzzo is able to articulate a vision of thought that is always in motion, always confronting the risk of stagnation, and always requiring action to overcome its internal contradictions.
Nuzzo’s engagement with Beckett’s Endgame offers another layer to her analysis of Hegelian endings. Beckett’s stark, desolate play becomes a meditation on the end as a concept, where the sheer indifference of existence is laid bare. In Beckett’s universe, endings are not resolutions but barren, empty continuations of a process that never truly completes itself. This aligns with Hegel’s notion of the end as a stage in the process of dialectical progression, where the movement never ceases but transforms into a new beginning. Beckett’s characters, stuck in their repetitive, cyclical routines, thus offer an existential lens through which we can comprehend the culmination of Hegel’s Logic — the end that is simultaneously a new beginning, a renewal that carries the weight of everything that came before but looks toward the future.
Through these literary examples, Nuzzo demonstrates how Hegel’s abstract categories — Being, Essence, and the Concept — can be understood as figures of action. Each of these stages in the Logic is not simply a logical step but a form of beginning, advancing, and ending that finds its reflection in real human actions and experiences. For instance, Nuzzo explores the notion of violence as a “beginning” in Melville’s Billy Budd, showing how violence acts as the existential counterpart to the movement from pure Being to Nothing. Likewise, hypocrisy and fanaticism, as seen in Tartuffe, serve as embodiments of the refusal to advance, a paralysis of thought that mirrors the struggles within the dialectical process.
Nuzzo also argues that Hegel’s Logic provides an indispensable tool for understanding the present historical moment. In times of crisis, where the world seems to be caught in a continuous cycle of transformation — environmental, political, financial — Hegel’s dialectic offers a method for comprehending change. But more than that, Nuzzo suggests that the Logic is not merely a passive tool for interpretation; it is also a guide for action, helping us to navigate the turbulence of modern life and to act within it. Her reading thus transforms Hegel’s work into a living, breathing method for engaging with the world, one that is capable of grasping the inner logic of the historical changes we witness and participate in.
Approaching Hegel’s Logic, Obliquely invites readers into an interpretive space where philosophy and literature intersect, where Hegel’s abstract concepts are made concrete through the lens of art, and where the dialectical process of transformation becomes an active force in shaping both thought and action. Nuzzo’s engagement with Hegelian thought not only revitalizes Hegel’s relevance for contemporary philosophical discourse but also provides a compelling framework for understanding our own historical moment, marked as it is by crisis and transformation. This book is an invitation to rethink Hegel in light of the present, to see his Logic as both a reflection of the transformations we face and a catalyst for the transformative actions we must undertake.
Simon Gros 
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