Hegel's philosophy depends on the answer to a fundamental question: why assume that the abstract structures and necessities of pure thought reveal anything at all about the varied and mutable realm of real life experience? In her study of Hegel's Phenomenology, Ardis Collins examines the way Hegel interprets the Phenomenology of Spirit as an answer to this question and in the process invents a proof procedure that does not depend on unquestioned philosophical principles, cherished social norms, or established prejudices for (...) or against certain ways of thinking or acting. Employing close readings and innovative analysis, this groundbreaking study challenges current interpretations of the Phenomenology. Collins demonstrates that the way Hegel interprets the role of the Phenomenology remains consistent throughout his career, that he claims for the demonstration developed in it the strict necessity of a proof, and that the beginning of philosophy cannot be justified without this proof. In the process, she sheds light on the way Hegel examines the structures and truth expectations of experience to show that the human spirit is involved in a shared project of culture and history that challenges us to become engaged in conscientious causes. Skilfully argued and persuasive, this study of Hegel's Phenomenology explores the concreteness of human experience and shows how Hegel finds in it evidence that the whole domain of human experience belongs to the logical spirit investigated by philosophy. (shrink)

RésuméCet article étudie lafaçon dont Hegel élabore sa conception des rapports entre la pensée et la nature dans la Phénoménologie de l'esprit. L'examen montre que 1) Hegel étend le concept de raison pour y inclure i'indépendance de la nature à l'endroit de la pensée rationnelle, 2) cette indépendance se révèle dans le donné contingent de l'empiricité, 3) le concept étendu de raison détermine et justifie les présuppositions de la logique hégélienne, et 4) ce même concept limite le rôle de la (...) logique dans la philosophie hégélienne prise comme un tout, de telle manière que la philosophie y dépend de la science empirique en quelque chose d'essentiel pour sa connaissance de la vérité. En étayant ces thèses, l'article analyse la procédure de preuve utilisée par Hegel, expose le rôle qu'y joue la contradiction, et discute les explications phénoménologiques qu'il propose de la perception, de l'entendement, du stoïcisme, de l'idéalisme, de la biologie, du monde moral kantien, de la religion révélée, et du savoir absolu. (shrink)

This essay focuses on how we embody the language we speak: how an audience "reads" the body of a speaker as it both constructs the positionality of that speaking subject and construes that subject's discursive authority. Building on the work of Linda Brodkey and Michelle Fine, I explore what is at stake when university students harass a faculty member by accusing that teacher of not embodying authority in the proper form (body).

_This book relates Hegel to later philosophers and philosophies._.

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to explain cross-cultural differences in online self-disclosure between Indonesians, who live in a highly collectivist culture, and Poles – a hierarchical individualist culture. Various psychological factors have been taken into consideration, such as the need for popularity, the need to belong and self-esteem. Design/methodology/approach – This study was designed as a quantitative study. First, a one-way ANOVA was performed to compare online SD and specific behaviours online between Indonesians and Poles. Second, correlational (...) analysis between online SD and other psychological factors was conducted. Findings – Indonesians were more likely than Poles to disclose information on Facebook. On the other hand, Poles showed a tendency to disclose more positive content than Indonesians. It was also found that SE was significantly correlated with positive content of online SD for both countries. Furthermore, online SD on Facebook is more closely associated with NfP than NtB. Research limitations/implications – This study possesses several limitations in regard to the lack of generalization; this is due to the choice in scales and the sampling procedure. Thereby, further studies must take into consideration the proportion of genders, the differences in the construction of the “self” between individualist and collectivist cultures and the interpretation of culture orientation based on the primary data. Furthermore, several results related to the online SD would need to be verified by further studies to get a holistic explanation. Originality/value – The current research is for all means and purposes original, as it investigates the differences of online behaviours between cultures – Polish and Indonesian – basing on the premise that there are crucial differences between collectivist and individualist cultures. No prior articles attempted the comparison between those nationalities in online behaviour. (shrink)

This article on fuzziness in medieval language use is the second part of a three-part contribution to the Common Knowledge symposium “Fuzzy Studies: On the Consequence of Blur.” Each part corresponds broadly to Clifford Geertz's trifold instances of blur as involving “face-to-face interaction” (“life as game”), “collective intensities” (“life as stage”), and “imaginative forms” (“life as text”). Part 2 discusses “collective intensities” by means of some of the key examples of diplomatic negotiations in the Hundred Years War. The main focus (...) of interest is the Treaty of Brétigny, the funeral of Jean II, and the Treaty of Leulinghen. The article asks how English and French negotiators worked collectively through language to create, identify, and maintain borderlines in their public, political relationships. (shrink)

Critics of Hegel's social philosophy usually focus their objections on Hegel's account of the relation between civil society and the state. Herbert Marcuse provides the best example of the standard Marxist objection. According to Marcuse, Hegel recognizes the inevitable destructiveness of competing individual interests and handles the problem by giving the state strong political powers. The state imposes restraints on the free play of individuality in the workplace while upholding and protecting the rights of individual freedom. Marcuse objects to this (...) structure because in his judgment the restraints imposed by the state are external to the free individuality they control. The dynamic of competing individual interests cannot produce a common interest and hence cannot establish a basis for real social unity. The rule of the state must stand above this competitiveness, not be involved in it, if the state is to overcome the divisiveness of free individuality. Hence, the law, which embodies the rule of the state, treats every individual as the same, guarantees to each and all the same rights, and imposes on all the same restrictions. But this sameness is an abstraction. Individuals exist with real differences and opposing interests. They live their freedom in competition with the freedom of others and some lose. The law escapes from this inequality and divisiveness by detaching itself from the realities of social living. (shrink)

The Pennsylvania State University, University Park Campus, served as host for the meeting, which began Friday afternoon, October 2, and continued until Sunday midday, October 4, 1992. Approximately seventy members and friends of the Hegel Society attended. The topic was Hegel on the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.

Hegel’s Phenomenology, Part II, which begins with the section on spirit, completes a study begun in an earlier publication, Hegel’s Phenomenology, Part I. The study is divided into analysis and commentary, and these run parallel to each other. The commentary takes the form of notes separated from the main text. These notes identify historical, literary, religious, and philosophical influences, compare the issues Hegel is dealing with to similar issues identified by other philosophers, give cross references to other parts of the (...) Phenomenology, and suggest certain ramifications and broader applications of the experiences Hegel is describing. Kainz’s commentary is rich with suggestive ideas for filling in the historical context and appreciating the perennial significance of the Phenomenology. But it is not a continuous, coherent response to Hegel’s text. For this we must look to the analysis part of the study. (shrink)

Vernacular language use in England throughout the later Middle Ages was a complex negotiation between English and French; that is, between the languages of English and French and the political identities of two peoples engaged in a long war. Clifford Geertz's famous analysis of “blurred genres” is used to think through the fuzzy properties of this period's bilingualism and to argue that to understand the boundaries between English and French as blurred is revealing of the linguistic and social tensions that (...) were the product of conflict between two closely intertwined cultures. This article is the first of a three-part contribution to the Common Knowledge symposium on “blur,” each part corresponding broadly to Geertz's trifold instances of blur as involving “face-to-face interaction”, “collective intensities”, and “imaginative forms”. This first part takes as its main example a duel described by Jean Froissart in his Chroniques, in which a French knight is punished by his own king, Charles V, for fighting and injuring an English knight on the outskirts of Calais in 1383. (shrink)

This is the final part of a three-part essay on fuzziness in medieval literary language. Each part corresponds broadly to Clifford Geertz's trifold instances of blur as involving “face-to-face interaction” (“life as game”), “collective intensities” (“life as stage”), and “imaginative forms” (“life as text”). Part 3 considers what Geertz might mean by describing text as a “dangerously unfocused term,” through discussing how bilingualism is negotiated in poetry. Three areas of vagueness are explored: the linguistic boundaries in a bilingual poem, the (...) definition of a poem in the trilingual culture of insular medieval writing, and the relationship between literary and ordinary language. Examples are taken from a fifteenth-century bilingual carol, an early fourteenth-century trilingual poem, a bilingual sermon, a passage of love-writing discovered in the midst of a fifteenth-century legal roll, and finally a pair of French poems about the death of the English commander, Thomas Montagu, fourth earl of Salisbury, at the English siege of Orléans in 1428, contrasted with some English translations of poems by Charles d'Orléans. The essay argues that blurriness in medieval bilingualism gives us a fresh way of approaching primary questions about poetry and the literary. (shrink)

With this issue, The Owl of Minerva begins its life under a new administration. This change will bring with it some changes in the journal’s policies, its design, the constitution of its Boards. Readers of The Owl, however, will understand why a journal dedicated to the study of Hegel’s thought must acknowledge the moment of transition. They will know, too, that transitions have two moments: one that looks back to the previous life-form and discerns in it the seeds of a (...) new spirit; one that rethinks the old life in a new form. In what follows, we will do both. Section I looks back to what we owe Larry Stepelevich and his staff. Section II describes the new form this legacy will take under the new administration. (shrink)

CHAPTER ONE THE SEARCH FOR GOD He who separates the study of philosophy from holy religion errs no less than the man who would separate the pursuit of ...