Search

Hegel's Science of Logic weds a deduction of (broadly Kantian) categories with a vindication of unconditional self-determination. Motivating his project is the challenge of nihilism implicit in Spinoza's rationalism-cum-naturalism. Section one of this paper examines Spinozist 'substance' and Hegel's revision of the principle omnis determinatio est negatio . Section two analyzes the concept 'being-for-self' in relation to Kantian apperception and the Hegelian idea of sublation. Section three presents a novel view of Hegel's infamous identification of being and nothing at the opening of the Logic . The notions of unconditional self-determination, original synthetic unity, and absolute negativity are shown to govern Hegel's dual reception of Spinoza and Kant.

For a variety of reasons, Hegel's theory of the estates remains an unexpected and unappreciated feature of his practical philosophy. In fact, it is the key element of his social philosophy, which grounds his more properly political philosophy. Most fundamentally, it plays this role because the estates provide the forms of visibility required by Hegel's distinctive theory of self-determination, and so the estates constitute conditions for the possibility of human agency as such. With respect to political agency in particular, this ramifies into the view that the estates are social preconditions for legal and political practices, forms of political participation in their own right, and conditions of possibility of moderate government (three functions also attributed to the estates by Montesquieu).

terence irwin’s monumental three-volume The Development of Ethics is a masterful reconstruction and assessment of figures, traditions, and ideas in the history of ethics in the Western tradition from Socrates through John rawls. 1, 2 The three volumes weigh in at over 11 pounds and span 96 substantial chapters and over 2,700 densely formatted pages (large pages, small margins, and small font). The Development of Ethics covers not only familiar figures, such as Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Aquinas, Hobbes, Locke, Hutcheson, Butler, Hume, Smith, reid, kant, Hegel, Mill, Green, and Sidgwick, but also a rich variety of ancient sources (including the Cynics, Cyrenaics, Skeptics, and Church Fathers, including Augustine), medieval, renaissance, and reformation sources (including Scotus, Ockham, and Machiavelli), sources for natural law (including Hooker, vasquez, Suarez, Grotius, Pufendorf, and Barbeyrac), continental rationalists (including Spinoza and Leibniz), British moralists (including Cumberland, Cudworth, Shaftesbury, Clarke, Balguy, and Price), post-kantians (including Marx, Schopenhauer, kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Heidegger) and twentieth-century English-language sources (including Moore, ross, Stevenson, Ayer, Lewis, and Hare). This is just a sampling of the more familiar historical sources that irwin

In all phases of his career, Hegel makes reference to the Eleusinian Mysteries, most prominently in the unpublished early poem "Eleusis: To Holderlin" and again in the Phenomenology's opening section, "Sense Certainty." This paper demonstrates the link in Hegel's thought between the Eleusis motif and his critical interpretation of Spinozism as a form of pantheism. Attention to this link leads opens a new perspective on the opening arguments of the Phenomenology and their place in the work as a whole. I argue that the influential approach to "Sense Certainty" in terms of singular demonstrative reference must be revised to accommodate Hegel's metaphysical premises.

This article challenges the prevailing interpretations of Hegel's account of the concept "contradiction" in the Science of Logic by arguing that it is concerned with the principle of Hegel's method rather than with the classical law of non-contradiction. I first consider Hegel's Doctrine of Essence in view of Kant's discussion of the concepts of reflection in the first Critique . On this basis, I examine Hegel's account of the logical principles based on the concepts "identity," "opposition," and "contradiction." Finally, I point out how the principle Hegel derives from the concept of contradiction actually informs his own method.

of the world of finite modes had a lasting influence on the perception of Spinoza since Hegel’s time. In this article, I take these claims of Hegel to task and evaluate their validity. Although Hegel’s official argument for the unreality of modes in Spinoza’s system will turn out to be unsound, I do believe there is one crucial line in Spinoza’s system—Spinoza’s rather weak and functional conception of individuality—which provides some support for Hegel’s reading of Spinoza. But in the final account, I will argue, even Spinoza’s weak criterion for individuation does not justify the Hegelian charge of “acosmism.” Hegel was clearly a sympathetic reader of Spinoza, yet it seems that on the issue of the reality of finite things, Hegel’s reading of Spinoza was not sensitive to the nuances of the latter’s position. Hegel used a broad-brush characterization of Spinoza against which he could better present his own view.

Hegel’s assertion that self-consciousness is desire in general stands at a critical point in the Phenomenology , but the concept of desire employed in this identification is obscure. I examine three ways in which Hegel’s concept of desire might be understood and conclude that this concept is closely related to Fichte’s notions of drive and longing. So understood, the concept plays an essential role in Hegel’s non-foundational, non-genetic account of the awareness that individual rational subjects have of themselves. This account, I argue, is part of a larger concern with demonstrating the relation between theoretical and practical capacities of the subject. I also argue that my reading explains Hegel’s emphasis on the figure of the bondsman in “Lordship and Bondage.” The bondsman’s experience of itself and its world instantiates Hegel’s views on the integration of subjective capacities and the reality of objects of experience.

From 1882 to 1903, Dewey explicitly espoused a Hegelian philosophy. Until recently, scholars agreed that he broke from Hegel no later than 1903, but never adequately accounted for what he called the "permanent deposit" that Hegel left in his mature thought. I argue that Dewey never made a clean break from Hegel. Instead, he drew on the work of the St. Louis Hegelians to fashion a non-metaphysical reading of Hegel, similar to that championed by Klaus Hartmann and other Hegel scholars since the 1970s. This reading of Hegel is remarkably consistent with Dewey's mature philosophy. Although Dewey abruptly repudiated Hegel during World War I, I contend this reflected the exigencies of war rather than philosophical concerns.

This paper offers a distinctive interpretation of Hegel's Doppelsatz from the Preface to the Philosophy of Right: 'What is rational is actual; and what is actual is rational'. This has usually been interpreted either conservatively (as claiming that everything that is, is right or good) or progressively (that if the world were actual, it would be right or good, but that there is a distinction that can be drawn between existence and actuality). My aim in this paper is to argue against both interpretations, so that the position I offer is neutral between the two. My claim is that when Hegel identifies what is actual with what is rational in the Doppelsatz, his intention is not to offer a normative assessment of what is actual; rather, it is to suggest that genuine philosophy must be committed to reason in its methods of inquiry, if it is to properly undertake an investigation into the "spiritual universe" as well as the "natural" one. The Doppelsatz is thus a defence of philosophical rationalism, rather than a normative claim about "was ist wirklich".

This paper has two, interrelated aims. The first is to clarify Sartre's theory of intersubjectivity. Sartre's discussion of the Other has a puzzling way of going in and out of focus, seeming at one moment to provide a remarkably original solution to the problem of other minds and at the next to wholly miss the point of the skeptical challenge. The nature of his argument is equally uncertain: at some points it looks like an attempt to mount a transcendental argument, a kind of Refutation of Idealism regarding the existence of others, at others, to be a defence of direct realism; yet again, it can seem to propose a dissolution of the problem closely analogous to Wittgenstein. I will argue (Section 1) that none of these provides quite the right model for understanding Sartre, which requires one to take seriously his method of resolving epistemological issues into matters of ontology. I argue further (Section 2) that Sartre's theory becomes fully coherent only if we make explicit its implicit presupposition of a conception of intersubjectivity articulated by Fichte. My second aim is to pursue the connection opened up of Sartre with German idealism. To the extent that commentators attempt to relate Sartre systematically to German idealism, it is almost always Hegel who provides the other term of comparison.1 What I try to show (Section 3) is that the usual comparison of Sartre with Hegel, which is largely negative, is distracting, and that Sartre's closer philosophical [End Page 325] relations are to Fichte and Schelling.2 This supplies, I argue, an important correction to the tendency of anglophone discussion of Sartre to isolate his claims from historical considerations, or to restrict Sartre's historical frame of reference to Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger: Sartre's philosophy, I suggest, is viewed fruitfully in the context of philosophical debates pursued in early German idealism. Sartre's ethics, I argue (Section 4), provide supporting evidence for this view. I propose tentatively in conclusion (Section 5) a corresponding view of existential phenomenology as a whole.

The aims of this article is to expound and defend Hegel's theory of the tragic and to clarify his concept of reconciliation. These two aims are Related in that a widespread but misleading conception of the tragic and a common, but mistaken, understanding of Hegel' s concept of reconciliation can seem to offer mutual support. I argue that once these are properly understood we can better understand Hegel's curious readings of the Antigone by Sophocles and the Eumenides by Aeschylus. I show that the latter rather than the former better exemplifies Hegel's theory, of which I offer a qualified defense.

L'A. defend la these selon laquelle le chapitre sur la perception de la «Phenomenologie de l'esprit» de Hegel constitue une critique de la section du «Traite de la nature humaine» de Hume consacree au scepticisme a l'egard des sens. Partageant l'approche empirique-conceptuelle du concept de l'identite d'une chose perceptible, l'A. montre que les deux philosophes parviennent a des conclusions opposees: alors que le premier se resout a des perspectives, le second reinterprete les deux theses fondamentales de l'empirisme concernant les concepts quantitatifs de l'unite et de la pluralite (tout/partie), d'une part, et la conception de la perception humaine comme reception passive de sensations, d'autre part

Au-dela de la differance de leur philosophie de la presence, l'A. mesure la proximite de Hegel et Derrida en ce qui concerne leur economie de la mort, en general, et de cette mort particuliere qu'est la perte du sens dans l'absence d'esprit, c'est-a-dire l'activite mecanique du mental illustree par la memoire mecanique

L'A. examine un aspect assez peu etudie de la pensee politique de Hegel: sa theorie des relations etats-nations. Comparant «Les Principes de la philosophie du droit» et «L'Encyclopedie» sur cette question, il montre le caractere transitoire de la seconde incarnation de l'esprit dans le monde. A cette etape, l'esprit se trouve disperse avant qu'il ne rassemble ses forces pour la synthese finale de la contemplation religieuse et scientifique. L'A. soutient que cette «seconde nature» de l'esprit est en contradiction avec la logique meme de Hegel, et que les problemes de politique internationale ne sont pas regles dans la sphere superieure en laquelle l'esprit est totalement realise