“Coming to Understanding” is metaphysics without apology… “To explain reality in the most general and comprehensive way would be to say what it is and why it exists, to articulate its form or nature and to extract its purpose”—it is precisely these “antique, impassable questions” that Ammonius tackles in a sixty-page lucidly written essay.

“Coming to Understanding” is no “scholarly” work…[T]here is only one quote from a text of secondary literature: Walter Stace’s The Philosophy of Hegel. So, clearly, this is no engagement with the subtle distinguos of professional journal articles, and with the complex intellectual genealogies with often make those articles illegible to anyone other than a selected few. It is rather, in the grand tradition of The Meditations, The Critique of Pure Reason, and The World as Will and Representation, a self-standing piece of reflection which asks to be judged on its own merit.

Ermanno Bencivenga
University of California, Irvine