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Kevin Thompson. Hegel's Theory of Normativity: The Systematic Foundations of the Philosophical Science of Right. Evanston IL: Northwestern University Press, 2019. ISBN 978-0-81013993-0 (hbk). ISBN 978-0-81013992-3 (pbk). ISBN 978-0-81013994-7 (ebk). Pp. 117. $99.95 (hbk). $34.95 (pbk). $34.95 (ebk).

Kevin Thompson’s book is a remarkably clear and precise contribution to Hegelian studies. The main aim of the text is to analyse Hegel’s philosophy of right in the light of its systematic framework, dwelling mostly on the paragraphs of the ‘Introduction’ to the Elements of the Philosophy of the Right and the pages of the 1817 Encyclopaedia that provide their systematic background. Even though this is an old problem, in recent years it has been treated only selectively; Thompson, by contrast, analyses the issue in a philologically meticulous and theoretically competent way, providing arguments with which future works on Hegel’s philosophy of right must necessarily deal. Given its purpose, the work focuses mainly on methodological and structural problems. Thompson’s intention is to examine ‘the science of right’s method of justification and the categories that govern its specific claims and theories’ (3). The book is composed of three chapters, respectively titled ‘Method’, ‘Freedom’, and ‘Right’. The chapters are preceded by an introduction where Thompson clarifies what he means by ‘normativity’, namely the ‘feature of institutions, principles, practices, and states of affairs that provides us with reasons to comply with what they command’ (4). In light of this, he proposes two main theses: (i) in so far as Hegel’s philosophy of right questions the status, source and justification of this binding force, it is a theory of normativity; (ii) this theory is articulated in a systematic rather than representational form. ‘Representation’, Thompson recalls, denotes for Hegel a form of knowledge that takes its method and objects as unproblematized givens. The systematic form, on the other hand, subjects itself and its contents to a continuous work of self-justification, which thus leaves no room for presuppositions. One of the most interesting aspects of these introductory pages—and actually of the whole book—is that Thompson uses this distinction in reference not only to Hegel’s philosophy of right, but also to its interpretations: for him, all ‘nonsystematic’ readings, i.e. those that separate the philosophy of right from the overall systematic framework, and ‘nonmetaphysical’ readings, i.e. those that separate the doi:10.1017/hgl.2021.14 Hegel Bulletin, 43/1, 149–152 © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Hegel Society of Great Britain