More than any other author, Robert Pippin has contributed to an understanding of the central role of Aristotelian act or “actuality” (energeia ) in orienting the thought of Hegel. (For general background on what is at stake here, see Actuality, Existence; Is and Ought in Actuality).

Hegel is the first modern philosopher to explicitly engage with Aristotle in a constructive way, and he does so informed by a broadly Kantian perspective. Though he is occasionally unfair to each of them, Kant and Aristotle are his two principal inspirations, and he very seriously aims to combine their respective insights. In the ways that Aristotle and Kant have been respectively stereotyped, this might seem a quixotic enterprise, but I think the past year’s posts here have provided ample indications that on the contrary, it may be exactly what philosophy needs.

In his book Hegel’s Practical Philosophy: Rational Agency as Ethical Life (2008), Pippin particularly develops an ethical dimension of Hegelian Wirklichkeit or actuality — which Hegel identifies with Aristotelian energeia — as the counterbalance to our subjective impulses and our unreflective, immediate sense of self (see Actualization of Freedom; Hegel on Willing). This in itself does not yet capture all the teleological dimensions of act pointed out by Gwenaëlle Aubry in her analysis of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, but it accurately captures and sustains Aristotle’s own point that a person’s deeds are a more reliable indicator of character than her words.

In Hegel’s Realm of Shadows (2019), Pippin greatly expands the scope of his treatment of Hegelian actuality, based on a groundbreaking in-depth analysis of the marriage of Aristotle and Kant achieved in Hegel’s Logic.

On the Kantian side, Pippin emphasizes the fundamental orienting role of reflective judgment in Hegel’s view of “logic” (see More on Reflection; Reflection, Apperception, Narrative Identity; Reflection, Judgment, Process; Hegel on Reflection; Reflection and Dialectic; Apperceptive Judgment.)

What is actual for Hegel is always a matter of Kantian reflective judgment, and never a simple matter of putative facts. Kant and Hegel more explicitly develop the role of reflective judgment than Aristotle does, but we have seen that a kind of reflective judgment can reasonably be said to be the more specific ground of Aristotelian wisdom.

On the explicitly Aristotelian side, Pippin in an exemplary way points out the many ways in which Hegel uses Aristotle to help resolve Kantian problems. Especially important for this is Hegel’s removal of the qualifications in Kant’s endorsement of internal teleology, and his explicit return to a more full-bloodedly Aristotelian way of treating it (see Hegel’s Union of Kant and Aristotle; Essence and Explanation; “The” Concept?; Unconditioned Knowledge?; Life: A Necessary Concept?; The Logic’s Ending).

Internal teleology has nothing supernatural about it, but it represents an alternative to mechanistic or reductionistic styles of explanation. As Aristotle puts it, it is about explanation in terms of “that for the sake of which”, which allows for a deeper and more rounded understanding of the why of things, which is what explanation for both Aristotle and Hegel is about, first and foremost. And act or actuality is the key orienting term in Aristotle’s teleology.