In this essay, I argue that F.H. Bradley’s controversial theory of “degrees of truth and reality” is the logical development of Hegel’s own theory of truth when it is placed within the metaphysical system of the Science of Logic. Despite Bradley’s own claim that with regards to the theory of degrees of truth and reality he is indebted even more than anywhere else to Hegel, this connection has been little examined in the secondary literature. Through a careful examination of both Bradley’s works and the structure of Hegel’s logic, it will become clear that Bradley’s development of the theory is the only logical conclusion that the consistent Hegelian can make. This essay has clear ramifications for our understanding of Bradley’s philosophy and, through uncovering the logical connections that led Bradley to develop the theory, I reveal an important implication of Hegel’s thought that has been entirely overlooked.

Despite her emphasis on politics, Hannah Arendt’s account of the existential grounds of action in The Human Condition culminates in a discussion of Jesus of Nazareth that emphasizes the significance of forgiveness for grasping the radicality of human freedom. This essay investigates Jesus’s role in Arendt’s thought by excavating and explicating the premises that undergird her account of Jesus’s political significance. It argues that Arendt’s innovative approach to politics is complemented by a comparably innovative conception of human agency and shows how Arendt’s defense of the autonomy of the political rests on a novel metaphysics of action—a ‘Kantian existentialism’—that underlies and explains her account of Jesus’s political significance.

This paper examines the development of the modern concept of substance from Leibniz to Hegel. I will focus primarily on the problem of the inner and outer nature of substance. I will show that if one considers Hegel’s discussion of substance against the background of the controversy between Leibniz and Kant about the inner and outer nature of substance, it becomes clear that for Hegel both Leibniz and Kant grasped the whole concept of substance only partially and in its abstract moments. This is because they both concentrate on one aspect of substance and absolutize it. Hegel, on the other hand, not only overcomes the fundamental difference between the inner and outer of substance, but also develops the connection between the different moments of substance, causality and interaction from the rationalist concept of substance itself.