Abstract

Proposing a new interpretation of Being or, which amounts to the same, of the history of philosophy, is among the most difficult tasks a philosopher can set for himself. It is much easier to describe a particular philosopher’s understanding of Being or a theme in a particular epoch in the history of philosophy, because other established interpretations are available upon which one may rely to justify his own contribution, if only by contrasting it to others. This, after all, is what distinguishes a philosopher from a professor of philosophy and, again, a thinker from an academic: while the latter is anxious to describe as clearly as possible, the former is interested in shedding new light.Although Lee Braver’s text seems to belong to the latter category, it actually fits into the former, as the ordering of the title and the subtitle of his work indicates. If this order were reversed, the text itself would, perhaps, be poorer, in that it would indicate a simple reconstruction of the history of continental anti-realism; although such history is also one of Braver’s objectives, it is not the most significant feature of his book. Braver’s main contribution lies in analyzing “in a newly created vocabulary” (i.e. the vocabulary of Hegel