Friedrich von Hayek has had perhaps the most profound impact of any political theorist in the last half-century. John Gray's book is a superb analysis of his ideas. Where other studies can be confusing or convoluted, Gray's always maintains its ability to lucidly recreate Hayek's arguments from their intellectual roots upwards.

Understanding the intellectual foundations of Hayek's work, can be a minefield of inaccessible terms and confusing statements. Thanks to John Gray, however, these matters are clearly and intelligently explained. The result is that the reader is provided with a rich insight into how Hayek's political economy functions. More than just a critique of socialism, Hayek's thought is also a profound intellectual statement combining the epistemological insights of Hume with Kant's categorical imperative. An understanding of its philosophical basis allows a fertile gaze into the prism that is Hayek's thought. Only Gray explains these aspects of his writngs clearly.

"Hayek on Liberty" is, moreover, refreshingly objective, despite the controversy which Hayek's ideas generate. Gray seeks to explain rather than to refute or praise. The reader can therefore take the insights Gray offers in a number of directions. Although Gray clearly admires Hayek, he does not feel the need to indulge in the monotonous hero-worship to which we have become accustomed. There is much to be found here for Hayek's critics too. Especially since it is doubtful that Hayek's use of Hume does not undermine many of his more positive political statements.

Gray's work is thus an invaluable guide to one of the Twentieth Century's intellectual icons. One only has to observe the saint-like worship Hayek has received in recent months, surrounding the centenery of his birth, to appreciate that his legacy is an ongoing phenomenon of global proportions. Academic, student, and interested observer will find Gray's study immensely helpful as a platform for approaching more general disussions of Hayek's ideas, of which many fine examples now exist. Anyone attempting a detailed appreciation of Hayek should thus keep Gray beside them at all times.

Zweifel's book is an excellent example of a real contribution to the public understanding and awareness of Health Economics principles and practicalities.
I specially recommend this book to all readers interested in exploring the subject in a bid to get a tool for the betterment of the decision making process in resource allocation in the health care sector.

Hegel is notoriously difficult to understand. When an exposition of his philosophy, entitled "The Secret of Hegel", was published in the 19th century, a critic accused its author of "keeping the secret." Charles Taylor, by contrast, without academic arrogance--in fact, with characteristic humility--makes brilliantly accessible this abstruse philosopher. Taylor eloquently extracts the essence and logic of Hegel's arguments; and shows the relationships between Hegel's metaphysics and social philosophy; thereby revealing to the reader the whole system of Hegel's philosophy, rather than its isolated components. Along the way, he dispels many of the false myths that surround Hegel's often quoted but rarely read philosophies. And not only does Taylor make sense of Hegel in the philosopher's own historical and intellectual contexts, but, as the title of the book implies, Taylor shows the relevance that Hegel's ideas still hold today. This is a gem of a book for people studying Hegel, for people studying philosophy, political science, or history. Highly recommended.

Once again, Professor Houlgate has provided us with a text which is both critical and expansive. His incisive and compelling introduction unfolds with a thoughtful eye to those elements of the work which are too often passed over as obvious or irrelevant. This contribution to the literature is essential for any responsible reader of Hegel.

This fascinating book addresses, and counters, the many false interpretations of Hegel that have grown up from the start of his system to the present day. To be sure, these defenses, in the midst of much 'setting the record straight', might be challenged as partisan or excessively one-sided themselves, yet the fact remains that many attacks on Hegel have failed to grasp the nature of his thinking. This is not even a 'pro-Hegel' statement, being of equal relevance to those critics of Hegel who end up thrashing in the labyrinthine subtleties of his influence, and dialectical logic.
This works both ways, as Hegel is pressed into the service of ideology by his friends. Worth the price of the book twice over is the series and expose on the 'end of history' mythology now liberal propaganda a la Fukuyama. This material arriving via Koyre and Kojeve with assistant packaging by Alan Bloom constitutes the core Hegel phantom in State Department piece de resistance that graced the end of the Cold War. It is a good example of the Hegel you thought you knew, but definitely didn't.

Very well laid out selections of Hegels concepts

This book is complementary introduction to Hegel¡¯s ¡®Phenomenology of the Mind¡¯. It follows through Hegel¡¯s thought chapter by chapter. Primarily, this book is the commentary and recapturing of the book chapter by chapter. But it is not simple exegesis. It recaptures the nub of each chapter not in simple briefing, but in the way to place Hegel against other philosophers like Descartes, Locke, Kant, Husserl, Ayer, Wittgenstein and so forth. In that way, we can capture Hegel¡¯s line with more ease. But don¡¯t afraid. You don¡¯t have to know other philosophers. They are mobilized to bring out Hegel in contrast to other philosophers. So the author does not present them in detail, but to the point in relation to Hegel¡¯s line, in the way not requiring some knowledge on the philosopher.
For other complementary material, I recommend Werner Marx¡¯s ¡®Hegel¡¯s Phenomenology of the Mind¡¯. though it¡¯s confined to the preface and introduction, the author tactically captures the essence of the book. W. Marx¡¯s book is about some vocabulary in preface and introduction. He explains them in relation to the tradition of German idealism. If you are familiar with Kant, it must be helpful. Some recommend Jean Hyppolite¡¯s ¡®Genesis and Structure of Hegel¡¯s ¡°Phenomenology of the Mind¡±¡¯. But in my view, it¡¯s more difficult to follow than Hegel¡¯s own book.

a pox upon thee sir dove! thou art the devil's swine who swallows naught but the murkiest poison of pretentiousness and vomits forth the juiciest jargon a man of such improvident lackwitedness can muster! but afterall, you've completed a behemoth of a book and deserve a well-rounded review, sir. and here it is (pax, not pox): i found your book to be filled with many bug words, many of which i didn't understand. the big words undoubtedly reflected big ideas, most of which i don't understand. by the time i was at page 4 i was already highly impressed with the big words, and felt as small as the big words were big. but sadly, your big words echoed the struggling strains of a tired twitterbird, whose once soaring renditions of mozart's requieum inflated men's hearts like the bloated hotairbag of the hindenburg, but now putters out with the faint rumble of a cough.

The reputation of Hegel has been so besmirched in the minds of many by the perils of statism gone awry that it is remarkable to see a book actually rescue him from charges of these evils, and others, and actually make some sense of his political philosophy. I think, however, that getting Hegel right is one thing in theory, and another in practice, and the chaotification of this seven course Hegelian dinner in its Marxist version has been tragic. We cannot simply say that all these people got Hegel wrong and issue a new 'the real Hegel', for such things rarely get second chances. But it behooves any Marxist to consider the scrambled version of this going on unconsciously, in some Feuerbachian pidgin translation. Brought out into the light, the full scope of Hegel's view are eloquent, rich, and powerful, as this book illustrates very easily. That does not mean one should agree. But if anything this formal challenge to the natural rights tradition can illuminate the limits of the mechanized political liberalism of the first stage of the modernist social revolution. After this exceptionally clear, and reasonably short, survey of all the issues, one realizes that the problem was not really Hegel, but the inexorably arising misinterpretations of his decidedly difficult works.
One should note that such a clear exposition as this can actually make one think this is an easy subject and Hegel's views here are the object of many controversies and has many critics, consider Isaiah Berlin's Freedom and Its Betrayal, or Tucker's Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx.
One might also be sure to start at square one and consider the views Hegel reacts against, among them Kant's, cf. Patrick O'Reilly's Kant's Political Philosophy.

An outstanding achievement. This book has been profoundly influential in contemporary Hegel scholarship, outlining a new and exciting strategy for defending the Hegelian project against its many critics.

Pippin's main interpretive contribution is to take seriously Hegel's claim that his philosophy is properly conceived of as a completion of the Kantian Critical project: the attempt to defend substantive metaphysical conclusions without dogmatism. In so doing, Pippin seeks to put to rest the age old accusation that Hegel's philosophy marks a return the pre-Kantian (or "pre-Critical") metaphysics which Kant justifiably criticizes in the Critique of Pure Reason.

In the course of developing this interpretive line, Pippin backs off strong claims for the necessity of dialectical transitions and develops a somewhat 'deflationary' interpretation of the so-called "absolute knowledge" which is supposedly legitimated at the end of the dialectic. Instead of understanding the result of the dialectical argument as a Table of Categories (a la Kant), Pippin argues that what gets "absolutized" is the dialectical method itself. I.e., Pippin argues that the dialectic of the Phenomenology defends an account of the necessary conditions for the possibility of account giving, not an account of the necessary conditions for the possibility of experience. In so doing, Pippin also reinterprets the significance of Hegel's famous End of History claim: what has come to an end is not the history of different models of experience or reality, but the history of how it is that we seek to these models.

Pippin's book is composed of three sections: the first traces the development of Hegel's philosophy out of trends and difficulties implicit within the Kantian and post-Kantian German Idealist tradition; the second develops a sophisticated interpretation of Hegel's most influential work, The Phenomenology of Spirit; and the third shows how the philosophical approach which Hegel develop in the Phenomenology informs his mature science (e.g., the Encyclopedia and the Science of Logic).

Pippin's book proceeds at a high level of philosophical sophistication and demands a lot from the "lay reader"; but its rewards are equal to the labors it demands. It is of relevance to anyone interested in German Idealism, phenomenology, the history of European philosophy, questions about the limits of reason, the philosophy of the subject, or the modern/post-modern debate.