Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} Hegel is often considered as obscure author. This means that for him, reason speaks differently than it thinks. It is at stake, first of all, the Hegelian terminology and the invocation of Heraclitus. It is interesting that Hegel himself had spoken out against an obscure terminology and against (...) the abuse of abstractions. Initially, as a professor, he was not taken very seriously. He was a bad story-teller, although an exceptional thinker. He could not narrate, however, he could explain. But, people would eventually understand, since Hegel was one obsessed with method. For him, the method had a far greater significance than the system. In the present text, I will focus on these things, trying to see whether Hegel was, indeed, obscure and if, for him, reason really does speak differently than it thought. For this, I have chosen a few fragments that I believed to be exemplary from Hegelian philosophy. The purpose is to show that Hegel is not, however, as Papini maliciously named him, a philosopher of the incomprehensible. On the contrary! And the considerations on Hegelian ethics do not come to help, as an application of the theme that I assumed as starting point for the present text. (shrink)

This volume contains the proceedings of the symposium held at Wofford College in 1968, in celebration of the Bi-centennial of the birth of Hegel. Hegelian philosophy has strong roots in America, and for the past one hundred and fifty years it has offered a major philosophical perspective from which to interpret religious concepts and phenomena. Its immediate dialectical relationship to phenomenology and existentialism made it almost inevitable that the strength of this position would receive fresh attention as more recent (...) moods subsided. Consequently this book undoubtedly heralds a rebirth of Hegel scholarship and a renewed concern with Hegelian philosophy of religion after the serious criticism by Kierkegaardians and Marxists which has dominated recent philosophy of religion. The main papers include "Some Historical Presuppositions of Hegel's System" ; "The Young Hegel and the Postulates of Practical Reason" ; "Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind as a Development of Kant's Basic Ontology" ; "Hegel's 'Unhappy Consciousness' and Nietzsche's 'Slave Morality'" ; "Hegel's Reinterpretation of the Doctrine of Spirit and the Religious Community" ; "Hegel and the Marxist-Leninist Critique of Religion" ; "'Authenticity' and 'Warranted Belief' in Hegel's Dialectic of Religion" ; "Hegel on The Identity of Content in Religion and Philosophy". The volume suggests the possibility of initiating dialogue with analytic philosophers regarding the Hegelian claim that "language is spirit," but such dialogue is never developed. In addition to bringing to light an interpretation of new source material for the study of the development of Hegel's position, there is also a unique interpretation of historical method. Henrich attempts to immerse his study more thoroughly in the immediate setting, biblical, theological, social and philosophical than did either R. Kroner or W. Dilthey in their classic studies of Hegel. At the same time the analysis of Hegel's relationship to Hölderlin is clarified with fresh interest for those who have been made conscious of Hölderlin through Heidegger. A number of the essays devote special attention to the Kant-Hegel relationship, analyzing with great care the Kantian atmosphere at the University of Tübingen and Hegel's place in this setting. If it is the case that secular theology is fundamentally a version of Hegelian immanence, then some of these essays can be seen as a restoration of the Hegelian doctrine of spirit in response to such secularization. On the other hand, if it is the case that the Kierkegaardian critique was a criticism of this very doctrine of immanence in the name of an "infinite gap" and that such Kierkegaardianism dominated philosophy of religion in the first half of this century, it is striking that so little direct confrontation of Hegel and Kierkegaard is attempted in these essays. It is time for Hegelianism to receive such renewed attention; but its dialogue with analysis, Kierkegaard, and phenomenology is still to be undertaken. We may be entering a period of genuine pluralism in contemporary philosophy where this very discussion can occur, and for this conversation these essays offer an excellent starting point.--H. A. D. (shrink)

In this article I seek to explain Hegel’s significance to contemporary meta-ethics, in particular to Kantian constructivism. I argue that in the master–slave dialectic in the Phenomenology of Spirit , Hegel shows that self-consciousness and intersubjectivity arise at the same time. This point, I argue, shows that there is no problem with taking other people’s reasons to motivate us since reflection on our aims is necessarily also reflection on the needs of those around us. I further explore (...) class='Hi'>Hegel’s contribution to the debate about internal and external reasons. I end by arguing that we should understand reasons as historically constructed in the sense that who counts as an intrinsic bearer of value changes over time. I thus argue that the struggle for recognition is in fact the beginning of the long march toward the idea of recognition and the Kantian kingdom of ends. This march, however, is driven by the need to overcome injustice as it is instantiated at the beginning of history by the master’s absolute domination of the slave. (shrink)

Hegel’s Social Ethics offers a fresh and accessible interpretation of G. W. F. Hegel’s most famous book, the Phenomenology of Spirit. Drawing on important recent work on the social dimensions of Hegel’s theory of knowledge, Molly Farneth shows how his account of how we know rests on his account of how we ought to live. Farneth argues that Hegel views conflict as an unavoidable part of living together, and that his social ethics involves relationships and social (...) practices that allow people to cope with conflict and sustain hope for reconciliation. Communities create, contest, and transform their norms through these relationships and practices, and Hegel’s model for them are often the interactions and rituals of the members of religious communities. The book’s close readings reveal the ethical implications of Hegel’s discussions of slavery, Greek tragedy, early modern culture wars, and confession and forgiveness. The book also illuminates how contemporary democratic thought and practice can benefit from Hegelian insights. Through its sustained engagement with Hegel’s ideas about conflict and reconciliation, Hegel’s Social Ethics makes an important contribution to debates about how to live well with religious and ethical disagreement. (shrink)

In this article I seek to explain Hegel’s significance to contemporary meta-ethics, in particular to Kantian constructivism. I argue that in the master–slave dialectic in the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel shows that self-consciousness and intersubjectivity arise at the same time. This point, I argue, shows that there is no problem with taking other people’s reasons to motivate us since reflection on our aims is necessarily also reflection on the needs of those around us. I further explore Hegel’s (...) contribution to the debate about internal and external reasons. I end by arguing that we should understand reasons as historically constructed in the sense that who counts as an intrinsic bearer of value changes over time. I thus argue that the struggle for recognition is in fact the beginning of the long march toward the idea of recognition and the Kantian kingdom of ends. This march, however, is driven by the need to overcome injustice as it is instantiated at the beginning of history by the master’s absolute domination of the slave. (shrink)

Few thinkers are more controversial in the history of philosophy than Hegel. He has been dismissed as a charlatan and obscurantist, but also praised as one of the greatest thinkers in modern philosophy. No one interested in philosophy can afford to ignore him. This volume considers all the major aspects of Hegel's work: epistemology, logic, ethics, political philosophy, aesthetics, philosophy of history, philosophy of religion. Special attention is devoted to problems in the interpretation of Hegel: the unity (...) of the Phenomenology of Spirit; the value of the dialectical method; the status of his logic; the nature of his politics. A final group of chapters treats Hegel's complex historical legacy: the development of Hegelianism and its growth into a left and right-wing school; the relation of Hegel and Marx; and the subtle connections between Hegel and contemporary analytic philosophy. (shrink)

Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, first published in 1807, is a work with few equals in systematic integrity, philosophical originality and historical influence. This collection of essays, contributed by leading Hegel scholars, examines all aspects of the work, from its argumentative strategies to its continuing relevance to philosophical debates. The collection combines close analysis with wide-ranging coverage of the text, and also traces connections with debates extending beyond Hegel scholarship, including issues in the philosophy of language, philosophy of (...) mind, philosophy of action, ethics, and philosophy of religion. In showing clearly that we have not yet exhausted the Phenomenology's insights, it demonstrates the need for contemporary philosophers to engage with Hegel. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A Spirit of Trust: A Reading of Hegel’s Phenomenology by Robert B. BrandomJacob L. GoodsonA Spirit of Trust: A Reading of Hegel’s Phenomenology. By Robert B. Brandom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019. 856 pp. $50.00 hardcover.What a feat: an interpretation of G. F. W. Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit that is longer than the Phenomenology of Spirit itself! With 757 pages of text, and reportedly (...) a work that took Robert B. Brandom over 40 years to write, A Spirit of Trust accomplishes much and offers an interpretation of Hegel’s Phenomenology that mixes epistemology, ethics, and the philosophy of mind.Hegel scholars will be discontent with Brandom’s heavily analytic interpretation of Hegel’s Phenomenology. Analytic philosophers will be discontent with attributing to Hegel arguments and insights often attributed to Frege (this happens so often one reviewer says of Brandom’s book that he should call Hegel Fregel—a mix of Frege and Hegel). Scholars of American Philosophy might be the most excited by reading Brandom’s A Spirit of Trust because he goes out of his way to put Hegel in conversation with Donald Davidson, W. V. O. Quine, Wilfred Sellars, and others who are part of the American philosophical tradition.Such excitement, however, might eventually be tempered when one realizes that Brandom is no defender of philosophical naturalism in A Spirit of Trust. Indeed, waiting until page 499, Brandom claims that the remainder of the book (another 250 pages) involves telling the story of how Hegel connects alienation with reductive naturalism. Brandom’s story involves developing a “nonreductive account of how we should understand the place of norms in the natural world” (499). Once we understand norms in a way that avoids or eschews naturalism, then we overcome the problem of alienation. Whereas Karl Marx blames alienation on capitalism, Brandom blames alienation on naturalism.In addition to the adjective “reductive,” Brandom offers three other adjectives for naturalism: “disenchanted” (see 263), “normative” (see 558), and “scientific” [End Page 97] (see 661–65). According to Brandom, the dominance of scientific naturalism is one of the reasons his interpretation of Hegel’s Phenomenology is required right now. Brandom thinks scientific naturalism has a stronghold on contemporary philosophy, and Hegel’s Phenomenology offers a corrective to this mistake in contemporary philosophy. Let us take each of these naturalisms in turn.1. Disenchanted Naturalism. Situating Hegel’s Phenomenology in relation to the problems Hegel wanted to address in his own day, Brandom claims: “Another strand of the early modern tradition that Hegel takes up and develops is the disenchanting naturalism about norms”—which is “most evident in the British sentimentalists... who give explanatory pride of place to practical attitudes of normative assessment, of reflective approval or disapproval by a distinctive moral faculty, which they see as... rooted in a characteristic sentiment, typically... benevolence” (263). Brandom admits that Kant also repairs the tradition of British sentimentalism, but one of the themes of Brandom’s A Spirit of Trust involves how Kant’s emphasis on autonomy itself gets repaired by Hegel’s focus on recognition. Hence Kant’s repair of disenchanted naturalism remains necessary but insufficient. On Brandom’s interpretation, Hegel’s theory of recognition properly repairs both disenchanted naturalism and Kant’s theory of autonomy.2. Normative Naturalism. Staying with Hegel’s repair of Kant’s philosophy, Brandom finds a version of naturalism in Kant’s thinking as well. This version is normative naturalism, which attempts to “integrate reasons and causes” (558). Brandom claims, “This project, broadly construed, is to provide a response to Kant’s Third Antimony—the challenge to integrate reasons and causes. A significant proportion of Hegel’s claim... should be seen as deriving from his response to this issue of normative naturalism. So the stakes are very high” (558). Brandom’s rhetoric here reflects one of the annoyances of the book: every problem driving Hegel’s Phenomenology is the most important problem driving Hegel’s Phenomenology. The stakes are always high, and Brandom does not signal to the reader any way to rank the problems Hegel addresses in Phenomenology.According to Brandom, Hegel repairs Kant’s normative naturalism by separating reasons... (shrink)

G.W.F. Hegel focuses his treatment of Sophocles' drama, Antigone , in the Phenomenology of Spirit, on the ideal of mutual recognition. Antigone was punished with death for performing the burial ritual honoring her brother, Polyneices, to whose irreplaceability she attests in her well-known speech of defiance. Hegel argues that Antigone's loss of Polyneices was the irreparable loss of reciprocal recognition. Only in the brother sister relation, Hegel thought, could there be equality in mutual recognition. I argue that (...) this equality cannot be found in a marriage union with a husband or in the public sphere of civil society. Situating Hegel's account of marriage in the Philosophy of Right within the history of marriage and historical literature on the emerging market economy of Hegel's time, I demonstrate that Hegel's perception of equality in the reciprocal recognition of the brother sister relation was a function of both economic realities and his relationship with his sister, Christiane. I show desire in the Phenomenology to be the desire for dominance, and I show the brother sister relation to be free of desire. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to analyse the critical interpretation of Greek art and religion provided by Hegel in the “Religion in the form of art” section of Chapter VII of his Phenomenology of the Spirit. The study will, thus, commence with an overview of the role played by art in the religion of ancient Greece, and then examine the reasons for the historical decline of this special phenomenon and the rise of Christianity, a religion referred to by (...) Hegel as a “visible religion” as it is required to “disclose” and manifest its contents: the spirit. Having focused special attention on the relationship between the people of ancient Greece and their gods and the role played by the concept of the ethical life, the paper will then proceed to investigate the relationship between the individual, the population and the ancient polis or Greek State as illustrated in the early works of Hegel and in the Phenomenology of the Spirit, in which Hegel develops his theory of ethical relations in ancient Greece as exemplified in the model of sibling relations within the family. The paper continues with an examination of Hegel’s criticism of Greek rituals and the inability of the modern world to understand such practices from the perspective of the life of the time, concluding, in line with Hegel, that our experience is now an external process as we no longer embrace the interiority of the ethical life of the past. Indeed, as Hegel considers the “spirit of destiny offered by those [ancient] works of art” to go beyond the ethical life of a nation, the fact that those works of art are no more considered useful and important is a tragic event, even though this destiny has shown us the spirit within them, and thanks to this tragic end, we have finally been able to reunite all the Greek gods in a single Pantheon in which “the spirit is conscious of itself as a spirit”. (shrink)

Hegel's _Phenomenology of Spirit_, his first major work, is one of the classics of Western philosophy. Although previous translations, in whole or in part, have made the text available in English, they are for various reasons not fully adequate, especially for use in teaching undergraduates. Howard Kainz has therefore undertaken to provide his own translation of major selections from the work, which are tied together by summaries of the parts not translated so as to provide the reader with a (...) sense of the whole. The translated selections include the Introduction, Chapter I on Sensory-Certainty, the sections from Chapter IV on Self-Consciousness, the Master-Slave dialectic, and the Unhappy Consciousness, the introductory section to Chapter V on Reason, the sections in Chapter VI on Ethical Action, Absolute Liberty, and Shiftiness and the central argument of Chapter VIII on Absolute Knowledge. The translation is based on the 1980 "Akademie" edition of the _Phänomenologie des Geistes_, edited by Wolfgang Bonsiepen and Reinhard Heede, and the German original is printed alongside the English translation in parallel columns. This edition includes some of the editorial devices used by De Negri in his Italian translation and Hippolyte in his French translation—namely, the use of editorial subdivisions and subtitles to indicate major transitions in the text, plus commentary and cross-references by way of footnotes. (shrink)

Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit is a careful description of the progressive unfolding of Spirit. Its dialectic is the education of consciousness. There are three stages of unhappy consciousness: external beyond, changing individual, and achieved reconciliation. Being aware of its own mutability, the self yearns for reconciliation, which can only come from the external beyond, from the unchanging. The quest of unhappy consciousness for reconciliation is characterized by the three stages of devotion, sacramental desire and labour, and self-mortification. The self, (...) constituted by what is other, is never able to achieve lasting satisfaction; it desires the unity of self-consciousness. Through the experience of itself, the self comes to a clearer self-awareness and transgresses its own limits. (shrink)

Hegel came to maturity as a philosopher during the first years of the nineteenth century, developing through prodigious intellectual struggles a highly original conception of dialectic as a method for rationally comprehending traumatic historical change. At the same time, he continued a process begun earlier, of critical engagement with the Christian gospel and its historical ethos. Hegel spent much of his youth reacting against this drama and its cultural expression. By the time he published his early masterpiece, the (...) _Phenomenology of Spirit_, he had found an ingenious way of reconstructing it in counterpoint with his new dialectical understanding of historical experience. _Dialectic and Gospel in the Development of Hegel's Thinking_ tells the story of this interplay as it develops in Hegel's thinking. It culminates in a fresh interpretation of the _Phenomenology of Spirit_ and a detailed commentary on larger portions of the text relevant to that story. Crites's reading of the masterpiece is contextualized by three substantial chapters detailing the course of Hegel's reflections on Christian themes through the first thirty-five years of his life. These chapters are both biographical and textual, treating not only the philosopher’s personal and intellectual development but also the major cultural influences that informed it. Hegel is seen to have begun as a child of the Enlightenment powerfully, affected by the Romantic reaction to the Enlightenment, who finds his way to his own position as a founding genius of German Idealism and its historical dialectic. His development is thus interpreted as an epitome of a major transformation in European intellectual history. (shrink)

Hegel’s detailed analysis of subjective religion and his forceful rejection of the movement in his own political environment to deny civil liberties to Jewish citizens give us the conceptual tools to respond to our contemporary cases of religious extremism without violating the value of the autonomy and inherent worth of the thinking person that fanaticism tramples. This paper first addresses Hegel’s analysis of fanaticism, demonstrating that its rejection of the order of existing structures in favor of an abstract (...) ideal entails the Hegelian concept of spirit. When spirit’s implications are explored, it is evident that immediate religious certainty has the potential to elevate its adherents to thinking consciousness and therefore have the potential to follow its internal dialectics to the point where its convictions correspond with the major ethical principles upheld by modern states. Given the political freedom to explore their own latent truths and inconsistencies, subjective, even fanatical, religious consciousness can strengthen the state by its independent verification of the ideals embodied in the political community. In the meantime, autonomous reflection should be encouraged through free religious expression, including of religious views that run counter to the objective order of the state. However, any destructive attacks on this order must be confronted and stopped. These principles allow us to respond to the current Syrian refugee crisis, the controversy regarding municipal bans on burkinis in France, and violent, religiously-inspired terrorist attacks with clarity and consistency. (shrink)

Few philosophers can induce as much puzzlement among students as Hegel. His works are notoriously dense and make very few concessions for a readership unfamiliar with his systematic view of the world. Allen Speight's introduction to Hegel's philosophy takes a chronological perspective on the development of Hegel's system. In this way, some of the most important questions in Hegelian scholarship are illuminated by examining in their respective contexts works such as the "Phenomenology and the Logic". Speight begins (...) with the young Hegel and his writings prior to the "Phenomenology" focusing on the notion of positivity and how Hegel's social, economic and religious concerns became linked to systematic and logical ones. He then examines the "Phenomenology" in detail, including its treatment of scepticism, the problem of immediacy, the transition from "consciousness" to "self-consciousness", and the emergence of the social and historical category of "Spirit". The following chapter explores the Logic, paying particular attention to a number of vexed issues associated with Hegel's claims to systematicity and the relation between the categories of Hegel's logic and nature or spirit . The final chapters discuss Hegel's ethical and political thought and the three elements of his notion of "absolute spirit": art, religion and philosophy, as well as the importance of history to his philosophical approach as a whole. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Religion, Modernity, and Politics in Hegel by Thomas A. LewisVincent LloydReligion, Modernity, and Politics in Hegel THOMAS A. LEWIS Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. 277 pp. $135Religion, Modernity, and Politics in Hegel explicates Hegel’s account of religion and contends that Hegel offers important insights for contemporary conversations in religious studies. Specifically, Thomas Lewis argues in this book that Hegel’s thought enriches discussions (...) regarding the relationship between philosophy and religion, religious pluralism, the meaning of tradition, and the concept of religion itself.Lewis is careful and reasonable in his explication of Hegelian texts, cognizant of recent scholarship on Hegel in both English and German, but also attentive [End Page 226] to Hegel’s location in German political history and the history of ideas. The young Hegel, we learn, was primarily a social theorist and not a philosopher. Concerned with social fragmentation in the context of the late Holy Roman Empire, Hegel saw religion as a means to unify. He understood civil religion (not just philosophy or natural religion) as capable of engaging the imagination in a way that motivates people to act in line with reason and so to act morally. In Hegel’s mature thought, religion is integrated into his broader philosophical system; it is an entry point into the dialectical movement beyond immediacy. Yet Hegel continues to think that religion inculcates crucial intuitions about what matters most to us as we live together. While some philosophers have recently emphasized Hegel’s deep debt to Kant, others hold that Hegel’s account of religion demonstrates his distance from Kant. For Lewis, Hegel’s account of religion, as the entwined beliefs and practices representing a community’s sensibilities, demonstrates his close relation to Kant and his continuing struggle to bring together sensibility and understanding, worldly objects, and human thoughts.Lewis occasionally ventures beyond the explication of Hegel, although these forays sometimes feel brief and thin. Like Alasdair MacIntyre, Stanley Hauerwas, and Jeffrey Stout, Lewis presents Hegel’s view of religion as essentially mixing—or synthesizing—history, narrative, community, and identity. Lewis understands Stout to be in agreement with Hegel, extending Hegel’s account of religious tradition to include the broader array of traditions that we encounter in the contemporary world. He suggests that Hauerwas could learn to better appreciate religion’s conceptual aspect from Hegel. Hegel and MacIntyre share what might seem to be a Christian triumphalism, but Lewis reads this more sympathetically as a self-awareness that rejects relativism. They both argue that (certain versions of) Christianity can account for the insights of other worldviews and can address contradictions in those other worldviews. But MacIntyre requires that such judgments be based on deep knowledge of two traditions in a comparison; Hegel paints non-Protestant traditions with very broad strokes. Indeed, this is the point where Lewis himself is the most critical of Hegel. He charges that Hegel’s attempt to survey all major world religions (in his account of “determinate religion”) is overly ambitious, and he argues that Hegel would be more successful had he detached this survey from his argument for Christianity’s status as the “consummate religion.” Hegel’s conception of consummate religion should be understood more broadly, Lewis argues, to include nonreligious beliefs and practices, such as civic education, that reflect the spirit of a community.Lewis claims that Hegel complicates the supposed Protestant bias of religious studies scholarship with its focus on belief at the expense of practice. Although unequivocally Protestant, Hegel’s approach to religion emphasizes the inextricability of practice and belief. But what was Hegel’s approach? Was it an [End Page 227] alternative Protestant tradition? Was it a theological movement or simply a philosophical one? Further, it is unclear whether Lewis’s Hegel would find any use for religious ethics other than as an idiom for ethical reflection suited to those who are not capable of advancing to philosophical heights.Vincent LloydSyracuse UniversityCopyright © 2014 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Betrayal of Substance: Death, Literature, and Sexual Difference in Hegel’s “Phenomenology of Spirit” by Mary C. RawlinsonShannon Hoff (bio)Mary C. Rawlinson, The Betrayal of Substance: Death, Literature, and Sexual Difference in Hegel’s “Phenomenology of Spirit” New York: University Press, 2021, 215 pp. ISBN 978-0-231-19905-6Mary rawlinson shows that to be genuinely receptive to a philosophical text one must be creative, and she brings the Phenomenology of (...) Spirit to life with her reading. It speaks of and to experience, and she makes it resound as such, matching its aptitude with her own rich descriptions of the character of experience. The reader is bound to learn a lot from her careful and vivid analyses of consciousness, self-consciousness, reason, and spirit, where she displays her power to digest a text that is almost impossibly unwieldy. Both students and scholars of Hegel’s philosophy will find satisfaction here: her book will spark understanding and excitement in inexperienced readers and hone approaches to complex issues of interpretation in experienced ones.Rawlinson opens The Betrayal of Substance with the provocative thesis that Hegel “writes with both hands” (xv). On the one hand, he affirms the abundance of difference in life by insisting on the material realization of the abstract concept, on the life of the singleton (her translation of das Einzelne) as the site of this realization, and on the difference intrinsic to identities (xiii). On the other hand, she says, he aims at a science of logic beyond phenomenology, where singularity has been erased and difference comprehended, such that “nothing is other to it”; this is “an unrelenting insistence on an absolute [End Page 225] detachment from life” (53). Rawlinson tracks this severance of concept and life throughout the Phenomenology: in the abandonment of sensuousness in sense-certainty; in the thing’s dissolution in perception; in “the ‘loss of reality’ of the play of forces”; in the struggle to the death, where self-consciousness “risks life absolutely” (66); in stoicism and skepticism, which “install an absolute difference between life and thought” (47). The life of the singleton is severed from the concept by the production (on the part of the unhappy consciousness) of “ethics, culture, morality, and religion as institutional infrastructures sustaining the self-transcendence of the singleton in the ‘we’ of a community” (66); by reason’s erasure of singularity in its accomplishment of a universal consciousness (68); by perpetual reference to the Bacchanalian revel, that “frenzy of the group that survives [the singleton’s] collapse” (xxx). (Indeed, one of the book’s contributions is its illumination of the prevalence of the image of the revel in Hegel’s text.)In response, Rawlinson asserts the need for a double reading of this double writing: (1) to affirm the capacious narrative that dislodges “ready-made abstractions” and engages the “thick richness of life,” because that is where the truth lies (xxix–xxx); and (2) to oppose Hegel’s “completion” of the phenomenological project and the departure from it to logic, and with it the erasure of the singleton. The book reflects the style of this double reading at each turn, in turns rebellious and appreciative, at ease with its own ambiguity toward Hegel. Rawlinson produces three central pieces of evidence for her critique, three “dangling threads [that] refuse to be woven into the completed fabric of absolute knowing[:] sexual difference, the mortality of the singleton,... and the differences of style in art and literature” (xv). Her critique of Hegel’s abandonment of life sets in relief the critical centrality of Hegel’s identification of maternal love as “the most dangerous force with which the state must contend” (68): this love is a clear instance of affirmation of the singleton over the “we” in which it is submerged. Finally, Rawlinson opposes the idea that truth is “the fully realized series of shapes of knowing and figures of truth” in which “science will have been the truth of phenomenology” with the hypothesis instead that “phenomenology will prove to have been the truth of science” (xliv).Itself beginning several times, The Betrayal of Substance thematizes Hegel’s multiple beginnings and the insight ref lected thereby... (shrink)

From the first words of this book we are informed that if we want to understand Hegel’s philosophy we should study his lecture notes, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, and that if we desire to understand Hegel’s view of Christianity, we should make the effort to comprehend the intellectual and social history of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Williamson then tells us that he has divided his work into three parts. In Part I we are (...) given the necessary background material that allows us to deal intelligently with Hegel’s early religious thought. In Part II the problem of religion is integrated into the broader philosophical problems that were developed in the Phenomenology of Spirit: the dialectical process in and through which the mind evolves from consciousness to self-consciousness and, finally, to reason. Anchored in this section is the assumption that Christianity was the truth of philosophy and “that without the Christian religion, philosophy would be without true content and direction”. Part III is the speculative section where Hegel’s position is discussed from the different perspectives of atheism, pantheism, and what our author considers the more substantial position, panentheism. Williamson defines this position as “the belief that the Being of God includes and penetrates the whole universe, so that every part of it exists in Him, but that His Being is more than, and is not exhausted by, the universe”. The use of this term to describe Hegel’s position seemed appropriate because it mediated between the dualism of theism and the static identity of pantheism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Dialectic and Gospel in the Development of Hegel’s Thinking by Stephen CritesLawrence S. StepelevichStephen Crites. Dialectic and Gospel in the Development of Hegel’s Thinking. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998. Pp. xvii + 572. Cloth, $65.00Unlike either Wittgenstein or Heidegger, or his contemporary, Schelling, there is really no “Early” or “Later” Hegel. The fundamentals of his system were, if not always fully articulated, nevertheless (...) present from the very beginning of his career. There is, in Hegel, a remarkable consistency in the development of his thought, in which the elements that comprised his final system can be detected in his earliest efforts—and it is only in this sense that one can speak of an “Early” or a “Later” Hegel. That his final expression was indeed the result of an effort, a struggle to fuse and clarify seemingly disparate elements, is the thesis of Professor Crites. In this case, the specific disparate elements that are considered are those which confronted Hegel from his earliest days as a student of theology, those elements expressed in the “Christian Drama.” Crites sets out the eight revered acts of this drama: the creation, the fall, God’s covenant with Israel, the incarnation, the death and resurrection of Christ, the Holy Spirit, the mission of the Church, and the last judgment. It is his contention that Hegel “critically engaged the claims of this mythos and the social practices associated with it.” And so, the essence of Crites’s well-written and well-researched study is to set out how this drama served as a “template that affected the way he framed other topics in the ever-widening range of his philosophical inquiry.” It is to his credit that Crites does not consider his own explication of Hegel’s preoccupation with the gospels as some sort of a “secret” key that could unlock the full meaning of Hegel’s philosophy, but nevertheless, as he rightly stresses, this preoccupation cannot be ignored—for it ultimately exercised a crucial role in the formation of that which is now taken as Hegel’s mature thought.Unlike most studies of Hegel’s development—and there are more than a few—Crites avoids taking a retrospective posture, a concluding a priori stance which would allow him to point out where and why this or that particular element was rejected or retained by Hegel, His method is historical, intent upon following Hegel’s own sometimes tortured development, until, finally in this course, we reach a point where we suddenly see that Hegel “shows clear signs of becoming what we can only call a Hegelian—or better still, he shows signs of being Hegel!”The source of this inner development begins, and is traced from, Hegel’s initial appearance as “The Model Pupil of Stuttgart” to that moment in when he stands revealed as embodying that Absolute Knowledge which concludes the Phenomenology. This path from Stuttgart to Jena, which Hegel himself might have had in mind when he spoke of the philosophical “highway of despair” is detailed by Crites with a sure hand. Every stumbling block is noted, and every new resolution ıs marked, from those first essays composed during the bitter days as Hauslehrer, through the steady advances [End Page 540] of “the Jena ‘Philosophy’ ” until the passage completes itself in the Phenomenology and its termination in the “Recollection and the Golgotha of Absolute Spirit.”More than half of Crites’ extensive study is devoted to explicating how the subject of religion is dealtwith in the course of the Phenomenology. In this survey of Hegel’s most well-known work, its fundamental leitmotif emerges clearly into focus: the identification of the “portentous power of the negative” with the Death of God. This death, which is philosophically reflected in dialectical negativity, is the central moment of the gospel drama. In this act, Absolute Spirit must itself suffer and die, for “Not only the Christian God incarnate, but the absolute spirit suffers, suffers its Golgotha and dies.” It is only from this sacrifice that new life can arise—for out of it comes “the resurrection of a new human-divine totality.” What Hegel has retained of the gospel... (shrink)

Hegel indicates toward the end of his Phenomenology of Spirit that there would be a parallelism in the categories of his later system to the various configurations of consciousness in the Phenomenology. Some general correspondences have been indicated by Otto Pöggeler and suggested by Robert Grant McRae, but I argue in this paper that there are at least four important and more specific parallels, bringing out simultaneously a similarity of content and a difference of approach and methodology in the (...) two works: 1) in the philosophical construal of “categories”; 2) in the conceptualization of a “phenomenology”; 3) in the analysis of the dialectical relationship of religion and art; and 4) in the relationship of the history of philosophy to the Absolute. (shrink)

This brilliant study of the stages in the mind's necessary progress from immediate sense-consciousness to the position of a scientific philosophy includes an introductory essay and a paragraph-by-paragraph analysis of the text to help the reader understand this most difficult and most influential of Hegel's works.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Cynthia Willett HEGEL, ANTIGONE, AND THE POSSIBILITY OF ECSTATIC DIALOGUE In his lectures on aesthetics, Hegel argues that drama is the highest form of art. Only drama can resolve, or sublate (auflieben), an opposition between objective and subjective poles ofaesthetic experience.1 This opposition takes its penultimate form in the difference between epic and lyric poetry. Subjective feelings expressed in lyric and the objective representation ofevents in epic (...) are sublated in classical drama as ethical character and action. In this article I will examine both what Hegel does and does not say about the structure and function ofclassical drama in order to determine its role in the education of humanity, or what Hegel calls the "phenomenology of spirit." As it turns out, drama is not only a climactic moment in the development of spirit. The structure ofdrama also traces a paradigm and an historical origin for Hegel's dialectic. The ironic reversals and discoveries that emplot tragic drama also constitute dialectic. An immediate consequence of this parallel is mat, in accordance with Aristode's definition of tragic drama, dialectic demands the catharsis, or purging, of emotion from educated spirit.2 After establishing the analogy between dialectic and cathartic drama, I turn to the exemplary role that is played by Sophocles' Antigone in the Phenomenology ofSpirit. A reinterpretation of the play suggests that Hegel fails to see that emotional engagement, or the unsublated subjective feeling relegated to die lower art of lyric, in fact orients the dramatic action of Antigone. The resemblance between drama and dialectic suggests that desire can no more be purged from dialectic than from classical tragedy. As a consequence, Hegelian dialectic should be reconceived in terms of a notion of tragedy that is not cathartic but ecstatic. Philosophy and Literature, © 1990, 14: 268-283 Cynthia Willett269 In the AesUietks, Hegel places drama after epic and lyric as the third and final moment of the highest stage of art. Drama presents actions that are ethical and thus differs from the lyrical expression of feelings as well as the adventures narrated in epic (A, pp. 1158; 474). Hegel's definition of epic in terms of narration and description suggests that the language of epic functions as representation. Representational language externalizes, or objectifies, spirit's movement in a series ofevents which are related by the epic poet. This narration functions without the mediation ofa subject, which is to say without an "agent's inner will and character" (A, pp. 1160; 476). Lyric poetry, on the other hand, concerns feelings or "the inner life alone" (A, pp. 984; 254). In accordance with its subject matter, the language oflyric is not representational but expressive. Drama presents actions before an audience, such actions occurring primarily in the mode of speech (A, pp. 1159; 475). What we can characterize as the "speech-acts" performed in drama carry out intentions of, or ends soughtby, the main character. Drama advances dialectic because, as Hegel writes, "drama does not fall apart into a lyric inner life and an external sphere as its opposite, but displays an inner life and its external realization" (A, pp. 1 160; 476). First, events which occur episodically in epic attain the unity of a single action that comprises dramatic plot. Secondly, a "cleaned-up" version ofthe "chaotic" feelings expressed in lyric poetry develops into the intention of a character to adher to a universal ethical principle. It is important to emphasize that, according to Hegel, drama should not draw any of its effect from subjective emotions. Drama sublates lyrical feeling into ethical law. Only thus does drama bring together the epic-making events and lyrical subjectivity, notby wayofa mechanical synthesis, but in a metamorphosis enabling elements initially opposed to give rise to an original whole. The proximity ofdrama to dialectical thought appears in the contrast Hegel draws between dramatic action and action which is prosaic, or philosophically insignificant (A, pp. 1159; 475). Dramatic action, Hegel explains, "is notconfined to the simple and undisturbed accomplishment ofa specific aim; on the contrary, it rests entirely on collisions ofcircumstances, passions, and characters... which in turn necessitate a resolution of the conflict and discord" (A, pp. 1159; 475). On the other hand, a prosaic, or ordinary... (shrink)

Hegel’s approach to ancient scepticism is often discussed only in the context of epistemological questions. But it is also of crucial importance for his practical philosophy. Hegel draws on central figures of Pyrrhonian scepticism in order to subject Kant’s antinomies – i. e., Kant’s cosmology – to a fundamental revision. He radicalises Kant’s sceptical method to “self-completing scepticism”. At the same time he gives Kant’s concept of the world a practical twist: In Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, world (...) means an inhabited sphere in which powers and counter-powers are in conflict with each other. In doing so, he opens up the tradition of negativist thinking in political philosophy, which ranges from Marx and Adorno to the current theories of radical democracy. When Hegel calls Pyrrhonian skepticism a “negative dialectic”, he thereby marks what he views as a deficit: the inferiority of Pyrrhonian skepticism to speculative philosophy. However, it is precisely the practical dimension of Hegel’s dialectic that suggests that the sceptical motives of his thinking should be given great weight. This can be seen most clearly in Hegel’s concept of Bildung, which defines emancipation processes as the reactivation of open power relations in static conditions of domination. (shrink)

Hegel and the myth of reason -- Hegel's phenomenology as a systematic fragment -- The architectonic of Hegel's Phenomenology of spirit -- Points of contact in the philosophy of religion of Hegel and Schopenhauer -- Kierkegaard's criticism of the absence of ethics in Hegel's system -- Kierkegaard's criticism of abstraction and his proposed solution : appropriation -- Kierkegaard's recurring criticism of Hegel's The good and conscience-- Hegel and Nietzsche on the death of tragedy (...) and Greek ethical life -- Existentialist ethics -- Merleau-Ponty's criticisms of Sartre's theory of freedom -- Sartre and Merleau-Ponty on consciousness and bad faith. (shrink)

This work focuses on Hegel’s development concerning his philosophy of religion, beginning with his school days at Stuttgart, and ending with the publication of the Phenomenology of Spirit. The first half of the book is devoted to Hegel’s thought prior to the composition of the Phenomenology of Spirit, and the second half is devoted to a reading and interpretation of those chapters in the Phenomenology which concern religion. Unlike other interpreters of Hegel’s development, Crites is concerned principally (...) with understanding Hegel’s views and arguments on Christianity. He tells us, for instance, “I am concerned in this study with shedding light on the interpretation of Christianity in the works of the mature Hegel”. By “mature” he means Hegel’s Jena writings; there is only passing discussion of the post-Jena writings. For those scholars of Hegel who are interested in a solid introduction to Hegel’s religious thinking during his early period, this is an important volume. The chapters on the Bern and Frankfurt periods are especially enlightening. Crites does an excellent job especially in chapter 2, “The Problem of the Positivity of the Gospel in Hegel’s Early Writings,” and I found his discussion on the difference in Hegel’s thought between Folk Religion and Private Religion very insightful. (shrink)

I present Hegel’s position that beauty and moral agency cannot be paired in any productive way, demonstrating this as a culminating claim of the sixth chapter of The Phenomenology of Spirit. In this, we learn that for Hegel, beauty claims an ambiguous position, always eviscerated yet never fully put to rest. This dialectical tension requires that we attend to the place of beauty as it appears in Hegel’s thoughts on morality and marks a departure from a long-standing (...) tradition – exemplified in the work of such thinkers as Plato, Immanuel Kant, the ‘Beautiful Souls’ of 18th-century German Romanticism and Elaine Scary – that matches moral goodness with beauty. (shrink)

The present work aims to analyse the dynamics between the concepts at stake within the transition from morality to ethical life in Hegel’s “Philosophy of Objective Spirit”. Our hermeneutical and conceptual resource consists in the complementary readings of the dialectical movements of “morality” in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and in his Phenomenology of Spirit. First of all, we will examine the concepts of abstract good and conscience that appear in the Philosophy of Right. Secondly, we will examine the (...) meaning of such concepts in the Phenomenology of Spirit as complementary concepts. Finally, we offer a formulation and analysis of the meaning of the overall transition from morality to ethical life, starting from the dialectic articulation of both concepts, and the emergence of ethical freedom as an overcoming of moral freedom. (shrink)

The dissertation makes two principal claims. First, it offers a variation of what has recently been called the "non-metaphysical" interpretation of Hegel's philosophy. I argue that Hegel's theory as a whole is not a monistic ontology of the world-substance called "spirit." Rather, Hegel's "philosophy of spirit" is an account of "cultural formations" in the same sense as Cassirer's philosophy of culture is a theory of "symbolic forms," and Foucault's archeology is a theory of "discursive formations." The "cultural (...) formations" in Hegel include social institutions such as family and civil society, and cultural practices such as science, art, and religion. Cultural formations come into existence as products of human activity in the course of history. Hegel's philosophical theory consequently can be interpreted as a philosophy of culture. Hegel maintains that human being is essentially a cultural being and is essentially determined by its In-der-Kultur-Sein rather than simply and "abstractly" by its In-der-Welt-Sein . ;The second principal claim concerns Hegel's "dialectical" method. I argue that Hegel develops a non-essentialist, non-universalistic, and non-foundationalist philosophical method, that can still distinguish between truth and falsity, good and bad. The method, which Hegel called "speculative," can in modern philosophical terms be most properly called "phenomenological." It is phenomenological in the sense that it proceeds from the givenness of experience, and that it describes the structures of this experience. The difference between Hegel and Husserl lies in the fact that Hegel does not restrict the subject of experience exclusively to the consciousness of a single human individual. The subject of experience in Hegel can be a social group, such as family, estate, or a nation, but also a group of agents involved in a particular social practice, as for example in Hindu religion, or in Ancient Greek craftsmanship. This feature enables Hegel to widen significantly the scope of the phenomenological research and to apply it to communal, historically and culturally determined experience. (shrink)

Hegel's System of Ethical Life An Interpretation by H. S. Harris I. THE CHARACTER OF THE MANUSCRIPT. The untitled manuscript among Hegel's Jena papers, ...

This chapter contains sections titled: References.

Hegel's "highway of despair," introduced in his _Phenomenology of Spirit_, represents the tortured path traveled by "natural consciousness" on its way to freedom. Despair, the passionate residue of Hegelian critique, also indicates fugitive opportunities for freedom and preserves the principle of hope against all hope. Analyzing the works of an eclectic cast of thinkers, Robyn Marasco considers the dynamism of despair as a critical passion, reckoning with the forms of historical life forged along Hegel's highway. _The Highway of (...) Despair_ follows Theodor Adorno, Georges Bataille, and Frantz Fanon as they each read, resist, and reconfigure a strand of thought in Hegel's _Phenomenology of Spirit_. Confronting the twentieth-century collapse of a certain revolutionary dialectic, these thinkers struggle to revalue critical philosophy and recast Left Hegelianism within the contexts of genocidal racism, world war, and colonial domination. Each thinker also re-centers the role of passion in critique. Arguing against more recent trends in critical theory that promise an escape from despair, Marasco shows how passion frustrates the resolutions of reason and faith. Embracing the extremism of what Marx, in the spirit of Hegel, called the "ruthless critique of everything existing," she affirms the contemporary purchase of radical critical theory, resulting in a passionate approach to political thought. (shrink)

The liberal enlightenment as well as the more radical left have both traditionally opposed religion as a reactionary force in politics, a view culminating in an identification of the politics of religion as fundamentalist theocracy. But recently a number of thinkers—Agamben, Badiou, Tabues and in particular Simon Critchley—have begun to explore a more productive engagement of the religious and the political in which religion features as a possible or even necessary form of human emancipation. The papers in this collection, deriving (...) from a workshop held on and with Simon Critchley at the University of Texas at San Antonio in February 2010, take up the ways in which religion’s encounter with politics transforms not only politics but also religion itself, molding it into various religions of politics, including not just heretical religious metaphysics, but also what Critchley describes as non-metaphysical religion, the faith of the faithless. Starting from Critchley’s own genealogy of Pauline faith, the articles in this collection explore and defend some of the religions of politics and their implications. Costica Bradatan teases out the implications of Critchley’s substitution of humor for tragedy as the vehicle for the minimal self-distancing required for any politics. Jill Stauffer compares Critchley’s non-metaphysical religiosity with Charles Taylor’s account of Christianity. Alistair Welchman unpacks the political theology of the border in terms of god’s timeless act of creation. Anne O’Byrne explores the subtle dialectic between mores and morality in Rousseau’s political ethics. Roland Champagne sees a kind non-metaphysical religion in Arendt’s category of the political pariah. Davide Panagia presents Critchley’s ethics of exposure as the basis for a non-metaphysical political bond. Philip Quadrio wonders about the political ramifications of Critchley’s own ‘mystical anarchism’ and Tina Chanter re-reads the primal site in the Western tradition at which the political and the religious intersect, the Antigone story, side-stepping philosophical interpretations of the story (dominated by Hegel’s reading) by means of a series of post-colonial re-imaginings of the play. The collection concludes with an interview with Simon Critchley taking up the themes of the workshop in the light of more recent political events: the Arab Spring and the rise and fall of the Occupy movement. (shrink)

Reading Hegel's 1827 Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion alongside his Phenomenology of Spirit, I argue that his vision for becoming a self-conscious subject-or seeing (oneself as) "spirit"-requires taking responsibility for the insight that every act of reason expresses an experience of sexual difference. It entails working to bring into being communities whose conceptions of gender and the absolute realize this idea.

A present-day continuation of the philosophical narrative presented in G.W.F. Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit that confronts every major post-Hegelian philosophical position and arrives at an original reconception of the purpose of dialectical phenomenology.

Since Hegel, philosophy cannot stop thinking its end. The violent transformations which Hegel's philosophy has uncovered and caused in the structure of philosophical terms and in the terms under which philosophy is possible is Hamacher's topic. Starting from Hegel's commentaries on biblical scripture, Hamacher traces the genealogy and unfolding of Hegel's thought into his mature works--the Phenomenology of Spirit, the Encyclopedia, the Philosophy of History--focusing throughout on the limits and borders, the limitations and extremities of its (...) conceptual and textual movements. Because the concept for Hegel is the end of the thing--the point where it peaks--because it occurs by severance from its representational content, the trace of this splitting appears imprinted into its discursive articulation. The Hegelian text is punctuated by a series of terms and topics that operate according to the logic of the turning point: one function activating its opposite, they serve as pores between mutually exclusive experiences and establish their unity. This dialectical procedure falters, its unity dissolves, the pores turn into aporias, wherever conceptual exigencies surpass the reality they have instilled. Hamacher shows that dialectics, proceeding by way of aporias, remains unable to account for its own movement. Hegel's system must be read from the point where its rupture fails to converge with its end. Analyzing both the historical and the systematic aspects of Hegel's philosophy, addressing Kant and religious fetishism, Nietzsche and the impossible repetition of the same, Marx and the aroma of religion, Freud and the hysterical body, Hamacher's argument is directed toward what in Hegel's philosophy of spirit resists spiritualization and defeats philosophy. Aspiring to be the last philosophy, speculative idealism has to incorporate all previous systems and spiritualize its incorporation. Its logic of ingestion must, however, reject with repulsion and nausea everything that resists appropriation. Emphasizing Hegel's claim to present the political theology of modern society, Hamacher shows that the mechanism of nausea meant to keep the system intact is in fact itself a mechanism foreign to its body; it averts the promised incorporation, defeats idealization, leaves the body politic disintegrated, and voids the claim of the most powerful ontology of modern society to mark the end, the completion and plenitude--the pleroma--of philosophy and history. What remains--the indigestible, the unreadable, the nondiscursive--demands yet another kind of discourse and another practical gesture: toward a pleroma other than Hegel's. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Hegel on Pseudo-Philosophy: Reading the Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit by Andrew Alexander DavisPaul T. WilfordDAVIS, Andrew Alexander. Hegel on Pseudo-Philosophy: Reading the Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit. London: Bloomsbury, 2023. ix + 214 pp. Cloth, $125In Hegel on Pseudo-Philosophy, Andrew Davis makes a convincing argument that just as the problem of how to distinguish sophistry from philosophy is a recurrent theme of (...) Plato's dialogues, so too is the problem of sophistry or "pseudo-philosophy" central to the preface to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Indeed, the problem of how to recognize and guard against pseudo-philosophy is the common theme linking the prefaces to the Phenomenology of Spirit, the Science of Logic, the Encyclopedia, and the Philosophy of Right, each of which endeavors "to reveal something about the essence of philosophy... by highlighting the ways pseudo-philosophy fails to do justice to philosophical content." Such an undertaking is especially important to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, however, because the subject matter [End Page 543] of the work is nothing but the logos of the appearances of spirit. To arrive at knowledge of spirit requires attending to all the various ways in which spirit (or Geist) can appear, but, as Davis remarks, "like life, Geist may be thought as a source of appearances, but not as an appearance itself. It is always 'behind' what appears." As a result, the Phenomenology is an exercise in trying "to grasp what does not appear through appearances alone." Thus, just as the Phenomenology approaches the truth of spirit by considering spirit's partial, abstract, and one-sided modes of appearing, so too does the preface to the Phenomenology approach the truth of philosophy by investigating forms of pseudo-philosophy.As Hegel himself states, there are two principal tasks pursued in the preface: (1) to offer a preliminary sketch of what it would mean for "the cognition of absolute actuality to become perfectly lucid about its own nature;" and (2) to eliminate some "habitually accepted forms of thought" that prove obstacles to philosophic cognition. While most commentators take their bearings from the former, Davis's approach to the preface is unique (to my knowledge) in foregrounding the latter. Yet, as his book unfolds, it becomes clear that the latter is the route into the former. Indeed, one of the central lessons of the book is that, although the elimination of erroneous habits of thought may seem to be merely negative and therefore principally propaedeutic to the positive task of leading the reader toward "absolute knowing," the examination of error is an integral component of grasping the true. If the Phenomenology as a whole is a "highway of despair"—a comprehensive refutation of natural consciousness's pretensions to knowledge that is simultaneously a dialectical ascent to conceptually comprehending knowing (begreifende Wissen)—the preface initiates the reader into the via negativa that philosophic cognition must travel to attain self-knowledge.Davis's book is structured around seven forms of pseudo-philosophy, each of which is treated as a discrete, distinguishable problem in its own right and also as emblematic of the common failure to recognize that the form of philosophy is inseparable from the content of philosophy. As Davis argues, this failure lies at the root of the attempt (common to much of modern philosophy since Descartes) to establish a priori a universal method for thinking (what Leibniz called a mathesis universalis) that will secure certain and indubitable knowledge. But this effort proves self-undermining, always ultimately engendering the very skepticism it seeks to master. Through observing the aporiai generated by forms of pseudo-philosophy, we learn that "the method of philosophy is inseparable from the subject matter of philosophy. Method cannot be isolated and discussed on its own. Philosophy is thinking (form) about thinking (content)."Davis thus gradually discloses Hegel's positive answer to the question "what is philosophy?" through a series of determinate negations of philosophy's imitations. We learn that philosophy is the recollective, self-comprehending, self-moving thinking of thinking by attending to a set of tendencies that impede philosophy: "a tendency to explain rather than [End Page 544] present (chapter 1), a... (shrink)

The article examines how Hegel’s negative view of Byzantium is different from the Enlightenment’s critique and especially from Voltaire’s criticism of medieval history. In order to account for the Hegelian specificity of interpretation an effort is made to translate the chapter on Byzantium from the Philosophy of History in terms of the analysis of the Phenomenology of the Spirit and, more precisely, on the basis of the chapters on sensible certitude and on the domination and servitude. Considering that for (...) Hegel every philosophical school possesses an autonomous value, one has to wonder why the Byzantine moment of the Spirit is destined to stagnation. The question about Hegel’s Neoplatonism, especially his affiliation with Proclus’s system, shows how the distance separating the Hegelian system from the Proclusian one explains the inadequacy of the latter as to drawing the consequences from the Byzantine spiritual stagnation. (shrink)

This article endeavors to draw out and explicate some of the normative tensions that animate the imaginary and practice of solidarity. It begins by examining the account of solidarity set forth in the writings of Jürgen Habermas. It then considers Axel Honneth’s recognition-theoretic conception of the solidaristic attitude. While remaining sympathetic to the left-Hegelian intersubjectivism of Habermas’ discourse-ethic, Honneth seeks to redress the “cognitive-centric” limitations of the latter thinker’s conception of solidarity. In this context, particular emphasis is placed on Honneth’s (...) engagement with the idea of Sittlichkeit, or shared form of ethical life, discussed in Hegel’s early “Jena period” work, as well as in his later Elements of the Philosophy of Right. To Honneth, while these writings can contribute significantly to a recognition-theoretic understanding of solidarity, they must be distinguished from the philosophy of consciousness that circumscribes the famous recognition struggle between master and slave in The Phenomenology of Spirit. In conclusion, the paper questions the capacity of Honneth’s approach to criticize ideological forms of solidaristic recognition, offering a qualified defense of Habermas’ contravening perspective. (shrink)

Philosophy is a discipline characterized throughout its history by certain problems that seem to resist solution. How one is to begin a philosophical inquiry is one such problem. I examine this problem as it arises in Plato's Meno and Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. My thesis is that this problem, which suggests that there is no way to proceed, conceals within itself its own solution. There is no way to proceed because this problem marks the site where philosophical inquiry is (...) to flourish. I call this flourishing activity dialectics. ;In my exposition of Plato's Meno I endeavor to show that when read within the context of the dialogue Meno's presentation of the problem of inquiry, which means to stifle all inquiry, really is nothing more than a recollection of what Meno has just experienced. Not knowing that the true end of the discussion has been to reveal to Meno the nature of his own ignorance, Meno is unable to recognize this end when he comes to it. A philosophical inquiry is prevented from proceeding because its true task is to recollect what first remains concealed as the unfounded assumptions from which it begins. In this dissertation I attempt to elucidate such an understanding of inquiry. ;With my exposition of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit I observe that we readers begin with an unexplained and unexamined ability to attend to the dialectic of natural consciousness. I then attempt to explain why this need not beg questions about how one is to begin a philosophical inquiry. I contend that the true task of a philosophical inquiry is not to grasp the truth but to comprehend those truths that we already possess. Thus our task as readers is to comprehend this dialectic which guides our reading. My thesis is that the Phenomenology of Spirit is about the reader. It is our experience as readers along the path of the exposition that is recollected with the presentation of each natural consciousness in turn. The exposition comes to an end when we are able to recollect in Absolute Knowing the entire course of our own knowing. (shrink)

A close reading of the final chapter of Hegel's Phenomenology, with special attention to dialectical method, to the relation of ch.s 6c on Objective Spirit and 7c on Revealed Religion to ch. 8 on Absolute Spirit, and to the relations of the absolute standpoint to time and to history.

The book reconstructs the history of Western ethics. The approach chosen focuses the endless dialectic of moral codes, or different kinds of ethos, moral doctrines that are preached in order to bring about a reform of existing ethos, and ethical theories that have taken shape in the context of controversies about the ethos and moral doctrines as means of justifying or reforming moral doctrines. Such dialectic is what is meant here by the phrase ‘moral traditions’, taken as a name for (...) threads of moral discourse, made in turn of other interwoven threads, including transmission of shared codes, appeals to reform of prevailing custom, rational argument about the justification of some precept on the basis of some shared general teaching or principle, and rational argument about the ultimate basis for principles and justification of authoritative teaching. That is, the approach adopted to the reading of ethical texts depends on a firm belief in the fact that philosophers hardly created any ethical doctrine out of nothing. The main point this book tries to highlight is how different philosophical theories emerged and followed each other as a result of attempts at accounting for what was going on in the world of moral traditions. Changes were propelled by controversies between different schools, and highly abstract arguments were the unintended effects of moves made by controversialists forced to transform (and occasionally to turn upside down) their own doctrines in order to face the challenge posed by other arguments. This is the reason why the book examines not only texts that already enjoy pride of place in the history of philosophy (Aristotle, Kant, Hegel), but also other texts usually treated in the histories of religions (the Bible, the Talmud, the Quran), and others considered to be much less philosophical (Plutarchus, Pufendorf). -/- 1. Plato and a response to ethical scepticism. Two different traditions of morality in VI-V century Greece are described. The birth of philosophical questioning of traditional morality and temporal and spatial variation of custom is described within the context of the v century crisis, the demise of traditional aristocratic and tyrannical rule and the birth of democracy. Two conflicting answers to the challenge are reconstructed, namely conventionalist or immoralist theories formulated by the Sophists and the eudemonist and intellectualist Socratic theory. Plato’s own reformulation of Socrates answer to the Sophists is reconstructed. His psychological views, his classification of the four cardinal virtues and his political theory are described as parts of a unitary system, culminating in an extremely realist moral ontology identifying the idea of the good with the essence of the (moral and extra-moral) world itself. -/- 2. Aristotle and the invention of practical philosophy. Aristotle’s invention of practical philosophy as a field separated from first philosophy is shown to be an implication of his break with Plato moral ultra-realism. Aristotle’s agenda in his moral works is arguably dependent on a polemical intention, namely dismantling Socratic intellectualism. The semi-inductive or virtuously circular method of practical philosophy is illustrated, starting with the received opinions of the better and wiser individuals and trying dialectically to sift what is left of mistake and inconsistence in such opinions, finally trying to correct mistakes and make the overall practical science more consistent. The chapter illustrates then the relationship of individual ethics, or ‘monastics’, with the art and the science of the pater familias, or ‘economics’, and the science of the ruler and citizen, or politics. The nature of virtues, or better, excellences of character, is discussed, highlighting the basic role of hexis, or ‘disposition’. Prudence, or better practical wisdom, is the focus of the chapter. Its relationship with bouleusis or deliberation is examined, and its autonomous status vis-à-vis theoretical knowledge is stressed. -/- 3. Diogenes and philosophy as a way of life. The chapter provides an overview of Hellenistic ethics, which almost amounts to Hellenistic schools of philosophy, in so far as ‘philosophy’ became in these centuries primarily the name for a way of life. The typical character of the Cynical movement is highlighted, that of a school of life, not a school aimed at providing any kind of intellectual training was to be provided. -/- 4. Epicurus and ethics as self-care. The peculiar character of the Epicurean school is described, a combination of a science of well-being aiming, more than at pleasure as in the popular view, at reduction of useless suffering, of unnecessary needs, and at a balanced selection of pleasures of the best and most durable kind. -/- 5. Epictetus and ethics as therapy of the passions. The various phases of Stoicism are described, and the shifting place given to ethics in the Stoic system of idea, culminating in the paradoxical view of ethics, its impossibility in principle notwithstanding, as the only truly significant and necessary part of philosophy. Cicero is treated, showing how his own synthesis of various Hellenistic trends is as a truly philosophical enterprise, deserving serious consideration after one or two centuries when he was confined to the role of literate. Epictetus is chosen as the best example of what the Stoic tradition could yield, an art of living based on sophisticated introspection, in turn aimed at making a kind of cognitive therapy possible, dismantling obnoxious passions at their root by systematically correcting false representations. -/- 6. Philo and the reconciliation of Torah and Platonism. A reconstruction of basic ideas from a few books of the Hebrew Bible is provided, starting with the Prophetic tradition and the focus on God’s mercy as the source of motivation and standard for human behaviour. Then a comparative analysis is undertaken of a parallel tradition, namely the three codifications of the Torā (Law or, better, Instruction), highlighting how a core of moral ideas may be recognized as a basis and preamble of codification of civil law, cultural practice, and regulation of ritual purity. The importance of Leviticus is stressed as the turning point when emphasis mercy, typical of the Prophetic tradition, is combined with the legal tradition, yielding the change in sensibility of the Second Temple time. Philo of Alexandria is described as one of the three leading figures – together with Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Yeshua – at the apex the emergence of the mentioned new sensibility, gradually including mercy as an essential part of justice and establishing the starting point of both the Rabbinic and the Christian tradition. This consists precisely in the precept of one’s neighbour’s love or of the golden rule, two eventually identical precepts whose meaning is arguably more sober and sensible than the long-lasting Christian tradition deriving from John and Augustine has made us believe and no novelty vis-à-vis so-called Ancient-Testament teachings. -/- 7. Augustine and Christianity as Neo-Platonism. The first section examines the moral doctrines of so-called 'ethical Treaties' from the Talmud, a group of treaties, among which the best known is Pirqé Avot, that were left out of the six "orders" of the canon as they did not fit in any of the six groups of issues ritual or legal on which the division was based. According to Maimonides, their peculiar theme is provided by the Deòt, 'opinions', i.e., mental dispositions, that is, the translation of the Greek term hexeis and Arab akhlak (in turn providing in this language the name for ethics as such). The three topics I reconstruct are: i) the notion of Torah: The Torah is understood as the world order itself, or as the ‘Wisdom’ that existed even before creation and was ‘the tool by which the world was built’; however, the Torah is an earthly and human entity, as it was "received" by humans, and from that very moment belongs to them; ii) the relationship between love of God and love of neighbour; the treaties require us to study and practice the Torah ‘for its own sake’, that is, require us to act out of love, not out of fear or hope of reward; iii) the idea of sanctification of daily life: having disappeared with the destruction of the Temple the possibility of any conflict between liturgical service and everyday life, the latter is assumed to be in itself divine service: to give food to the poor has the same value as sacrifices in the Temple, and as an implication, the insistence become recurrent on the goodness of created things in themselves along with a polemic against ascetic currents. The conclusions drawn are: i) the moral teachings of the Talmud and those of Yeshua are, rather than similar, virtually identical; one may safely say that the precept of love and the golden rule are central ones for all Talmudic rabbis, that mercy plays an indispensable role alongside with justice, and the latter is not a different thing from one’s neighbour’s love; ii) a peculiarity of Talmud rabbis facing Yeshua is the idea of study as worship, and knowledge as a source of justice; but this is an idea of Judaism after the Temple's destruction that cannot be attributed to the Pharisees of Yeshua’s time; iii) the relation of study and practice in the Talmud parallels that between faith and deeds in Paul's epistles, that is, respectively faith or learning are a necessary and sufficient condition to be recognized as righteous , but deeds are the inevitable effect of either faith or learning. The sayings ascribed to Yeshua are examined first, yielding the conclusion that a close equivalent may be found for every saying in Talmudic literature and yet the whole is ascribed to one rabbi, with rather consistent stress on God’s mercy and unconditional forgiving as the mark of true imitation of God. Thus, Yeshua’s teaching is pure Judaism. The third section describes briefly the galaxy of Gnostic currents and Manichaeism, trying to sketch the profile of moral teachings resulting from an encounter of Asian spiritual traditions, Hellenistic lore and sparks of teachings from apocalyptic Jewish currents. The last section summarizes the turbulent history of several encounters between Christian currents and Hellenistic philosophical schools. The first one was with late Cynicism. Recent, rather controversial, literature discovered the jargon and a few topics from the Stoic-Cynical popular philosophy in a few books from the New Testament itself. This, far from proving that Rabbi Yeshua had been influenced by cynic preachers, is a proof of the necessity felt by Christian preachers to translate the original ‘Christian’ teaching into a Greek lexicon deeply impregnated with cynic terminology. The second was with Platonism, yielding the mild and temperate moral teaching of Clemens of Alexandria, teaching the sanctity of nature and the human body, the joy of moderate fruition of ‘natural’ kinds of pleasures, and the beauty of the marital life – in short, the opposite of the standard picture of Medieval Christianity. Ambrose of Milan brings about a different kind of synthesis, namely with Middle Platonism, where Stoic themes prevail. The most shocking case is Augustine, where an early Manichean education is overcome in a former phase by a synthesis of Plotinian Neo-Platonism and Christian preaching, yielding a sustained polemic with the Manicheans and rather optimistic views on life and Creation, the body and sexuality, and Hebrew-Judaic tradition not far from Clemens of Alexandria. In a later phase, occasioned by controversy on the opposite front, with such Christian currents as the Pelagians and Donatists, Augustine comes back to heavily anti-Judaic and world-denying ascetic attitudes where is earlier Manichean upbringing seems to emerge again. The tragedy of medieval Christianity will be the later Augustine’s overwhelming influence. A final section is dedicated to the monastic tradition where a curious mixture of world-denying asceticism with an astonishingly penetrating ‘science’ of introspection emerges. -/- 8. Al Farabi and the reconciliation of Islam and Platonism. The Qurān and the qadit, that is, collections of sayings ascribed to the prophet Muhammad contain a wealth of precepts and catalogues of virtues mirroring moral contents from the Jewish and the Christian traditions, among them the basic notion of imitation of the Deity, where mercy is assumed to be its basic trait. An important tradition within Islam, namely Sufism, stressed to the utmost degree the role of mercy, turning Islam into a mystic doctrine centred on retreat from the world, abandonment to God’s will, and a peaceful and fraternal attitude to our fellow-beings. A secular literary tradition originating in the Sassanid Empire, the literature of advice to the Prince had for a time a widespread influence in the newly constituted Arabic-Islamic commonwealth. In a later phase, the legacy of Hellenic philosophy made its way into the intellectual elite of the Islamic world. The first important legacy was Platonic, and the Republic became the main text for Islamic Platonism. Al-Farabi wrote an enjoyable remake of the Platonic Republic, arguing that the citizen’s virtues were the basis on which the political building needs to rest. The secular lawgiver is enlightened by the light of reason in his everyday practice of governance, but room is made for the Prophet as the voice of revealed truth that confirms and completes the rational truth that philosophy may afford. In a second phase also Aristotelian and Stoic influence were assimilated. Miskawayh’s treatise was the masterwork at the time Arabic philosophy reached its Zenith. It is a treatment of the soul’s diseases and their remedies, combining the Aristotelian doctrine of the golden mean with the Stoic doctrine of the passions and elements of Galenic medicine. Towards the eleventh-twelve centuries a war raged among theologians and philosophers, finally won by the former with disappearance of philosophy as such. The newly established mainstream, yet, was no kind of intolerant fanaticism. It drew from the work of mystic theologian Al-Ghazālī, the best heir of Sufism, teaching a tolerant and peaceful attitude to our fellow-beings and a passive attitude to destiny as an expression of the Divine will. -/- 9. Moshe ben Maimon and the reconciliation of Torah and Aristotelian ethics. The encounter between the Talmudic tradition and Hellenic philosophy had taken place a first time in Alexandria at the time of Philo but the two traditions had parted way again. In fact, the kind of Platonic Judaism founded by Philo survived only within Christianity, in the fourth Gospel and then in writings by Clemens of Alexandria. The Talmudic literature had absorbed just less striking traits from the Hellenic Philosophy, namely an idea of ethics as care of the self and a role for the education of character as propaedeutic to theoretical knowledge. In the Arabic-Islamic world, a second round started when Jewish authors writing in Arabic undertook the task to prove the full compatibility of the tradition deriving from Torah and Platonic philosophy. The culmination of this attempt is provided by Moshe ben Maimon who tried to use Aristotelian ethics as a language into which the teaching from the Pirké Avot could be translated. -/- 10. Thomas Aquinas and the reconciliation of Christian morality and Aristotelian ethics. In the first section the fresh start is described of philosophical ethics in Latin Europe at the turn of the Millennium. In a first phase, Anselm and Peter Abelard built on a Platonic and Augustinian legacy. In this phase. remarkable innovations are introduced, including Abelard’s claim of the obliging character of erring consciousness. In a second phase, the rediscovery of Nicomachean Ethics thanks to Latin translation of Arabic versions gives birth to a new wave of ethical studies, recovering the very idea of Aristotelian practical philosophy, with the potential implication of full legitimization of natural morality, i.e. ethics without Revelation. Aquinas’s ethics is a theological ethics out of which it would be vain to try to extract a self-contained philosophical ethics. His treatment of topics in philosophical ethics, yet, does not boil down to repetition of Aristotelian arguments but is rather a creative reshaping of such arguments. For example, he introduces also in the practical philosophy a first principle parallel to the principle of non-contradiction; and he also carries out a synthesis of Aristotelianism, Stoicism, and neo-Platonism. Even though it is essentially moral theology, Aquinas’s doctrine - unlike Augustine – grants full citizenship to "natural" morality, firstly by rejecting the claim that the corruption of human nature due to the original sin is so radical as to leave "pure nature" incapable of moral goodness. The doctrine is presented in a more sophisticated formulation in a few of the Quaestiones, such as De Malo and De Veritate, in the Summa contra Gentes and in the commentaries to Aristotle than in the famous Summa Theologica, but the latter work includes the only or the largest exposition of some decisive part of the theory. Thus, the Summa Theologica should be read for what it is more than criticized for not being what it was not meant to be. It was not meant to be the brilliant synthesis of all that Reason he had been able to produce with what Revelation had added about which the Neo-Thomists used to dream, but rather a manual for the training of preachers and confessors, where theoretical claims are not too demanding and a few serious tensions are left. Besides a jump between the Prima Secundae and the Secunda Secundae, being the former an essay in virtue theory and the latter a handbook for confessors, the most serious tension is perhaps the one between the ethics of right reason presented in most of Ia-IIae and the eudemonistic ethics developed in quaestiones 1-5 of the same part; the alternative ethical theory which also may be found in Augustine, the Stoic view of a cosmic reason eventually coincident with the moral law, was believed by Anselm (followed by John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham) to be incompatible with eudemonism. It is questionable whether Thomas could reduce the tension proving that it is just an apparent tension, in so far as the right reason and bliss derived from knowledge of God tend to coincide, but this is just a conjecture. Thomas’s ethics is a virtue ethic, not a law-based one, and moral judgment focuses on the virtues, particularly charity, not on the commandments and even less on absolute prohibitions; Thomas, however, would not have considered a drastic alternative between law and the virtues such as the one which has been advanced in late twentieth-century philosophy to be justified. Nonetheless, when it discusses ‘special’ virtues, it ceases to be an ethics of virtue and becomes a disappointing and often contradictory discussion of legal and illegal acts. Such a discussion takes most of the time ‘reasonable’ middle positions on controversial issues but not the alternative approach that Aristotelianism would have made possible; even when some occasional Aristotelian claim shows up, such as money’s barrenness as a reason against usury, this seems to be made by an author who apparently ignores the Aristotelian Thomas of the Prima Secundae. It is an ethic of human autonomy which recognizes the binding character of the individual conscience and, potentially, even a duty to disobey unjust laws. It is true that what Thomas writes in his discussion of death penalty and persecution of heretics is simply disgusting, and yet we should blame Thomas the man, not Thomist ethical theory. Finally, Thomas’s ethics is not ethical ‘absolutism’, as both traditionalist Catholic theologians and secularist enemies of dogmatic morality tend to believe. It is instead an ethic of prudential judgment. Exceptions to this approach – or better results of logical fallacies – are such claims as the absolute character of negative precepts and of the existence of "intrinsically evil acts", claims that simply cease to make sense in the light of Thomas’s own distinction between human act and natural act, carrying consequences Thomas did not live long enough to draw or was not consistent enough to dare to draw. -/- 11. Francisco de Vitoria and casuistry. The first topic illustrated is the discussion about the notion of pura natura, namely the human condition after the original sin and before divine revelation. The core notion was already there in Aquinas but was later developed by Caietanus (Thomas de Vio) with a number of interesting implications: firstly a view of human nature as such much more positive than Augustine’s and his followers’ view, including both Calvinists and Jansenists; secondly, the implication that the philosopher’s morality, as opposed to the Christian’s morality, is a quite respectable kind of morality; thirdly, that theocracy and prosecution of the unfaithful lacked justification, with more far-fetching consequences than Aquinas himself had dared to draw. The second topic is casuistry, a new name for a comparatively older way of thinking, which was already there in late Stoicism and Cicero as well as in the Talmudic literature. This is an approach aimed at yielding probable enough solutions for doubtful cases even in absence of completely safe staring points. The genre developed from medieval reference books for confessors and became by the sixteenth-century a sophisticated tool-box for dealing with various fields of applied ethics. Francisco Vitoria, the main authority of Baroque Scholasticism, was a controversial figure, among the proponents of the new discipline of casuistry and a consistent proponent of more separation between the religious and the civil authority, stricter limits to the legitimacy of war, innate rights of non-Christian nations in the New World based on the notion of pura natura, providing a standard of ‘natural’ goodness, previous to revelation, on which the Indian nations were judged to live in a naturally good condition, provided with the institutions of family, justice, and religion had accordingly a right to full respect by Christian sovereigns. Bartolomé de Las Casas, arguing along similar lines, was the leader of a historical battle in defence of the rights of the Indios. -/- 12. Michel de Montaigne and the art of living. A short description of one of the Renaissance Phyrronism, one of the classical philosophies revived in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Montaigne combines the sceptical epistemology with an understanding of ethics – indeed of philosophy as a whole – in terms of an art of living inspired by two basic ideas, sagesse, that is, practical wisdom as the only kind of rationality available after theology, science, and tradition have declared bankrupt, and an aesthetic ideal of self-transformation through the art of writing and introspection. -/- 13. Pierre Nicole and neo-Augustinianism. The chapter illustrates first the vicissitudes of Augustinianism newly born after the late medieval triumph of Thomist Aristotelianism in the alternative Protestant and Catholic versions processed by the Calvinists and the Jansenists. Then it illustrates the doctrines of Pierre Nicole, Blaise Pascal’s best disciple, on the impossibility of introspection, on the ubiquity of self-deception, on the incurably evil character of the passion of love, and on the two moralities, the one of the man of the world, the morality of honesty which is indispensable for granting peace and order but devoid of any true value for eternal salvation, since the same external behaviour may be prompted by opposite motivations, and the morality of charity, the only true one but also useless to society. The third topic is Pierre Malebranche’s view of self-deception as a ubiquitous phenomenon accounting for human action and responsibility and his reformulated theory of self-love, no less ubiquitous than for Nicole and yet not as incurably evil, given the distinction between morally indifferent and even necessary amour de soi and vicious amour proper, a distinction on which the whole of Rousseau’s moral and political theory rests. -/- 14. Samuel von Pufendorf and the new science of morality. The chapter is dedicated to the discovery of the idea of a ‘new moral science’. Hugo Grotius is discussed first highlighting the real character of his project, much closer to the Thomist idea of a natural law accessible to non-corrupted human reason when human beings are living in a state of pura natura. Then Hobbes’s combination of scepticism, voluntarism, and conventionalism is described and both the continuity with Grotius’s new science, in the search for non-revealed rational morality, and the break with him, in the adoption of voluntarism and refusal of an intellectualist view of natural law, are illustrated. Pufendorf’s work is illustrated as a synthesis of the two previous attempts and the – up to Schneewind underestimated – paradigmatic example of the new science of morality. -/- 15. Richard Cumberland and consequentialist voluntarism. The chapter gives an overview of eighteenth-century Anglican ethics, noticing how the Cambridge tradition gave special weight to natural theology as opposed to positive or revealed theology – and how two Cambridge fellows, John Gay and Thomas Brown, elaborated on Cumberland’s (and Malebranche’s, as well as Leibniz’s) strategy for finding a third way between intellectualist view and voluntarist view of the laws of nature. The result of their elaboration was a kind of a rational-choice account of the origins of natural laws, where a law-giver God chooses among a number possible sets of laws on a maximizing criterion, and God’s maximandum is happiness for his creatures. The chapter notices also how such a solution aimed at solving at once the problem of evil and that of the foundation of moral obligation by proving how God’s choice was justified as far as it was the one minimising the amount of suffering in the world. 16. Richard Price and intuitionism. The chapter describes first the doctrines of the Cambridge Platonists, an example of hyper-rationalist reaction to Calvinism. Secondly it describes the sophisticated and universally ignored – from Sidgwick to Anscombe –version of what was later labelled ‘ethical intuitionism’ – showing how it escapes familiar objections and misrepresentations of intuitionism – from Mill to Rawls – in grounding its argument on transcendental arguments while carefully avoiding recourse to introspection and psychological evidence, which has been taken as a too easy target by critics of intuitionism. Thirdly, the chapter discusses Whewell’s ‘philosophy of morality’, as opposed to ‘systematic morality’, not unlike Kant’s distinction between a pure and an empirical moral philosophy. Whewell worked out a systematization of traditional normative ethics as a first step before its rational justification; he believed that the point in the philosophy of morality is justifying a few rational truths about the structure of morality such as to rule hedonism, eudemonism, and consequentialism; yet a system of positive morality cannot be derived solely from such rational truths but requires consideration of the ongoing dialectics between idea and fact in historically given moralities. Whewell’s intuitionism turns out closer to Kantian ethics than commentators have made us believe until now, and quite different from what Sidgwick meant by intuitionism. -/- 17. Adam Smith and the morality of role-switch. The chapter describes first, Hutcheson’s attempt at basing the ‘new science’ of natural law on different bedrock than Pufendorf and the English Platonists, namely a moral sense, a faculty whose existence is assumed to be proved on an empirical basis. The second step is a reconstruction of Hume’s rejoinder in terms of a new science of man including morality on an ‘experimental’ basis, that is, a ‘Newtonian’ hypothetical-deductive approach, distinguished from Hutcheson’s allegedly uncritical descriptive approach to human nature. The third step is a reconstruction of Adam Smith theory of morality understood as emerging from a spontaneous interplay of exchanges of situations (the most basic meaning of the word ‘sympathy’ as construed by this author). -/- 18. Jeremy Bentham and utilitarianism. The bulk of the chapter is dedicated to the doctrines of Jeremy Bentham. The Enlightenment spirit that suggested the idea of a new morality, free from religion, is illustrated. The notion of utility is illustrated as well as the subsequent formulations of the principle of utility. The idea of felicific calculus is discussed, showing how its inner difficulties prompted several reformulations of the principle of utility in order to avoid undesirable implications of proposed formulations. The role of the thesis of spontaneous convergence between interest and duty is discussed, showing how it left numberless questions open, and the distinction between the virtues of prudence, justice and beneficence is described as a way out of the deadlocks of classical utilitarianism. After Bentham, Mill’s reformed utilitarianism is reconstructed, showing how it is a kind of mixed system – as closer to common sense as it gives up Bentham’s claims to consistency and simplicity – resulting as unintended consequences from the controversies in which Mill was too keen to engage. The hidden agenda of the controversy between Utilitarianism and Intuitionism, going beyond the image of the battle between Prejudice and Reason, is described, showing how both competing philosophical outlooks turn out to be more research programs than self-contained doctrinal bodies, and such programs appear to be implemented, and indeed radically transformed while in progress thanks to their enemies no less than to their supporters. -/- 19. Immanuel Kant, practical reason and judgment. The chapter argues that Kant took from Moses Mendelssohn the idea of a distinction between geometry of morals and a practical ethic. He was drastically misunderstood by his followers precisely on this point. He had learned from the sceptics and the Jansenists the lesson that men are prompted to act by deceptive ends, and he was aware that human actions are also empirical phenomena, where laws like the laws of Nature may be detected. His practical ethics made room for judgment as a holistic procedure for assessing the saliency of relevant moral qualities in one given situation; this procedure yields the same results as the geometry of morals does for abstract cases but does so immediately and without balancing conflicting duties with each other, since what makes for the salient quality of a situation is perceived from the very beginning. Kant's practical philosophy is richer than the received image, making room for an ‘empirical moral philosophy’ or moral anthropology including treatment of commerce, needs, value and price, happiness and well-being; the overall social theory and philosophy of history is less different from Adam Smith's than the received image makes believe; the paradox of happiness is central to Kant's philosophy; a distinction between happiness and well-being is clearly drawn; the distinction plays a basic role in establishing a link between the economic and the moral life. -/- 20. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the critique of abstract universalism. The chapter describes first the Romantic movement and the implications some of its concerns, rescuing passions, community, tradition, the individual as the bearer of a unique destiny, and the longing for organic unity between the individual, mankind and nature. Hegel’s contribution is discussed then, highlighting how, on the one hand, he shared a number of these concerns and on the other he had more rationalist leanings. The notion of morality is the pivotal point of the reconstruction, highlighting how Hegel construes this notion as a key to his own diagnosis of the malaise of modernity – the separation of individual and Gemeinschaft – and how his attack on Kant turns around this very idea. -/- 21. Friedrich Nietzsche against Christianity and the Enlightenment. The chapter illustrates first the idea of deconstruction of the back-world of values. Nietzsche claims to be legitimate heir of the French moralists, Leibniz, Kant and Hegel, in so far as he allegedly carries out to its deepest implications their discovery of what lies behind traditional naïve belief in the existence of an objective realm of values just waiting for description by the philosopher. The two exemplars form which genealogy draws inspiration are the classical philologist’s historical reconstructions of lost meanings and the chemist’s decomposition of elements. Then the genealogy of the notions of good and evil carried out in the first dissertation of Genealogy of morals is illustrated with its paradoxical conclusion that will to power is in fact the only ‘genuine’ kind of goodness. The third point illustrated is the dialectic of ascetism and self-realization with its ambiguous outcome. The suggested interpretation of such outcome is that Nietzsche’s normative ethics is a kind of virtue ethics taking an aesthetic ideal as a normative standard -/- 22. George Edward Moore and ideal utilitarianism. The chapter discusses the ideas of common sense and common-sense morality in Sidgwick. I argue that, far from aiming at overcoming common-sense morality, Sidgwick aimed purposely at grounding a consist code of morality by methods allegedly taken from the natural sciences to reach, also in ethics, the same kind of “mature” knowledge as in the natural sciences. His whole polemics with intuitionism was vitiated by the a priori assumption that the widespread ethos of the educated part of humankind, not the theories of the intuitionist philosophers, was what was worth considering as the expression of intuitionist ethics. In spite of a naïve positivist starting-point, Sidgwick was encouraged by his own approach in exploring the fruitfulness of coherentist methods for normative ethics. Thus, Sidgwick left an ambivalent legacy to twentieth-century ethics: the dogmatic idea of a “new” morality of a consequentialist kind, and the fruitful idea that we can argue rationally in normative ethics albeit without shared foundations. Then it reconstructs the background of ideas, concerns and intentions out of which Moore’s early essays, the preliminary version, and then the final version of Principia Ethica originated. I stress the role of religious concerns, as well as that of the Idealist legacy. I argue that PE is more a patchwork of rather diverging contributions than a unitary work, not to say the paradigm of a new school in Ethics. I add a comparison with Rashdall’s almost contemporary ethical work, suggesting that the latter defends the same general claims in a different way, one that manages to pave decisive objections in a more plausible way. I end by suggesting that the emergence of Analytic Ethics was a more ambiguous phenomenon than the received view would make us believe, and that the wheat (or some other gluten-free grain) of this tradition, that is, what logic can do for philosophy, should be separated from the chaff, that is, the confused and mutually incompatible legacies of Utilitarianism and Idealism. -/- 23. Edmund Husserl and the a-priori of action. The chapter illustrates first the idea of phenomenology and the Husserl’s project of a phenomenological ethic as illustrated in his 1908-1914 lectures. The key idea is dismissing psychology and trying to ground a new science of the a priori of action, within which a more restricted field of inquiry will be the science of right actions. Then the chapter illustrates the criticism of modern moral philosophy carried out in the 1920 lectures, where the main target is naturalism, understood in the Kantian meaning of primacy of common sense. The third point illustrate is Adolph Reinach’s theory of social acts as a key the grounding of norms, a view that basically sketches the very ideas ‘discovered’ later by Clarence I. Lewis, John Searle, Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas. A final section is dedicated to Nicolai Hartman, who always refused to define himself a phenomenologist and yet developed a more articulated and detailed theory of ‘values’ – with surprising affinities with George E. Moore - than philosophers such as Max Scheler who claimed to Husserl’s legitimate heirs. -/- 24. Bertrand Russell and non-cognitivism. The chapter reconstructs first the discussion after Moore. The naturalistic-fallacy argument was widely accepted but twisted to prove instead that the intuitive character of the definition of ‘good’, its non-cognitive meaning, in a first phase identified with ‘emotive’ meaning. Alfred Julius Ayer is indicated as a typical proponent of such non-cognitivist meta-ethics. More detailed discussion is dedicated to Bertrand Russell’s ethics, a more nuanced and sophisticated doctrine, arguing that non-cognitivism does not condemn morality to arbitrariness and that the project of a rational normative ethics is still possible, heading finally to the justification of a kind of non-hedonist utilitarianism. Stevenson’s theory, another moderate version of emotivism is discussed at some length, showing how the author comes close to the discovery of the role of a pragmatic dimension of language as a basis for ethical argument. Last of all, the discussion from the Forties about Hume’s law is described, mentioning Karl Popper’s argument and Richard Hare’s early non-cognitivist but non-emotivist doctrine named prescriptivism. -/- 25. Elizabeth Anscombe and the revival of virtue ethics. The chapter discusses the three theses defended by Anscombe in 'Modern Moral Philosophy'. I argue that: a) her answer to the question "why should I be moral?" requires a solution of the problem of theodicy, and ignores any attempts to save the moral point of view without recourse to divine retribution; b) her notion of divine law is an odd one more neo-Augustinian than Biblical or Scholastic; c) her image of Kantian ethics and intuitionism is the impoverished image manufactured by consequentialist opponents for polemical purposes and that she seems strangely accept it; d) the difficulty of identifying the "relevant descriptions" of acts is not an argument in favour of an ethics of virtue and against consequentialism or Kantian ethics, and indeed the role of judgment in the latter is a response to the difficulties raised by the case of judgment concerning future action. A short look at further developments in the neo-naturalist current is given trough a reconstruction of Philippa Foot’s and Peter Geach’s critiques to the naturalist-fallacy argument and Alasdair MacIntyre’s grand reconstruction of the origins and allegedly unavoidable failure of the Enlightenment project of an autonomous ethic. -/- 26. Richard Hare and neo-Utilitarianism. The chapter addresses the issue of the complex process of self-transformation Utilitarianism underwent after Sidgwick’s and Moore’s fatal criticism and the unexpected Phoenix-like process of rebirth of a doctrine definitely refuted. A glimpse at this uproarious process is given through two examples. The first is Roy Harrod Wittgensteinian transformation of Utilitarianism in pure normative ethics depurated from hedonism as well as from whatsoever theory of the good. This results in preference utilitarianism combined with a ‘Kantian’ version of rule utilitarianism. The second is Richard Hare’s two-level preference utilitarianism where act utilitarianism plays the function of eventual rational justification of moral judgments and rule-utilitarianism that of action-guiding practical device. -/- 27. Hans-Georg Gadamer and rehabilitation of practical philosophy. The post-war rediscovery of ethics by many German thinkers and its culmination in the Sixties in the movement named ‘Rehabilitation of practical philosophy’ is described. Among the actors of such rehabilitation there were a few of Heidegger’s most brilliant disciples, and Hans-Georg Gadamer is chosen as a paradigmatic example. His reading of Aristotle’s lesson I reconstructed, starting with Heidegger’s lesson but then subtly subverting its outcome thanks to the recovery of the central role of the notion of phronesis. -/- 28. Karl-Otto Apel and the revival of Kantian ethics. Parallel to the neo-Aristotelian trend, there was in the Rehabilitation of practical philosophy a Kantian current. This started, instead than the rehabilitation of prudence, with the discovery of the pragmatic dimension of language carried out by Charles Peirce and the Oxford linguistic philosophy. On this basis, Karl-Otto Apel singled out as the decisive proponent of the linguistic and Kantian turn in German-speaking ethics, worked out the performative-contradiction argument while claiming that this was able to provide a new rational and universal basis for normative ethics. An examination of his argument is some detail is offered, followed by a more cursory reconstruction of Jürgen Habermas’s elaboration on Apel’s theory. -/- 29. John Rawls and public ethics as applied ethics. Rawls’s distinction between a “political” and a “metaphysical” approach to one central part of ethical theory, namely the theory of justice, is interpreted as a formulation of the same basic idea at the root of both the principles approach and neo-casuistry, both discussed in the following chapter, namely that it is possible to reach an agreement concerning positive moral judgments even though the discussion is still open – and in Rawls’ view never will be close – on the basic criteria for judgment. -/- 30. Beauchamp and Childress and bioethics as applied ethics. The chapter presents the revolution of applied ethics while stressing its methodological novelty, exemplified primarily by Beauchamp and Childress principles approach and then by Jonsen and Toulmin’s new casuistry. -/- . (shrink)

In this paper I consider the contribution that Hegel’s discussion of ethicality makes to his account of recognition in the Phenomenology of Spirit. While the famous relation of lord and bondsman might prompt us to think of all failures of recognition as failures of reciprocity, Hegel’s account of ethicality shows that it is possible for forms of social life to be structured so that no one is recognized. This failure of recognition is unique since its source does not (...) lie in a lack of reciprocity between individuals but in the absence of an explicit and shared conception of the “self.” In conclusion I point to the importance of the idea of the self to Hegel’s account of reciprocal intersubjective recognition in the text and contrast it with Pippin’s recent interpretation. (shrink)

IN THIS PAPER I shall try to exhibit certain interconnections within and between the "dialectical stages" of self-consciousness and active reason which appear not to have been noticed by Hegel scholars. I take as my text Hegel's remark, in a letter to Schelling dated May 1, 1807, that "the whole" of the Phenomenology is "by its nature" an "interlocking hither and thither." The more closely one studies the Phenomenology, the more clearly one can see that its parts--even those (...) which are widely separated--do indeed "interlock.". (shrink)

Why I thought it useful to offer an explanation of Hegel’s doctrine on the Incarnation was so that the reader may be empowered to identify Hegel’s influence in modern accounts of this mystery. Even if, in my view, Hegel’s interpretation of revealed religion differs greatly from Catholic Doctrine, it is not surprising to find the presence of some of his concepts in modern theology. In truth, what matters is not the theologian’s self-identification as Hegelian or as non-Hegelian, (...) but whether or not the theologian adopts Hegel’s concepts. This paper offers an explanation of the internal dynamism of Hegelian concepts and their relation to Christian doctrine in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. This research may help to show in what way it is possible to explain Christian religious doctrine with a philosophy other than the Thomistic one and how, at least in Hegel’s case, religious doctrine is changed and reduced to an erroneous philosophical content. Also, an attempt is made to show the internal “coherence” of this Hegelian re-reading of Christianity so that theologians may become more cautious about accepting an explanation of Christian doctrine simply because the Christian language is preserved in that explanation. (shrink)

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)

In this paper I consider the contribution that Hegel’s discussion of ethicality makes to his account of recognition in the Phenomenology of Spirit. While the famous relation of lord and bondsman might prompt us to think of all failures of recognition as failures of reciprocity, Hegel’s account of ethicality shows that it is possible for forms of social life to be structured so that no one is recognized. This failure of recognition is unique since its source does not (...) lie in a lack of reciprocity between individuals but in the absence of an explicit and shared conception of the “self.” In conclusion I point to the importance of the idea of the self to Hegel’s account of reciprocal intersubjective recognition in the text and contrast it with Pippin’s recent interpretation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hegel and Herder on Art, History, and ReasonKristin GjesdalThe introduction of a historical perspective in aesthetics is usually traced back to Hegel's 1820 lectures on fine art. Given at the University of Berlin, these lectures were amongst Hegel's most successful and best attended.1 By then a recognized intellectual figure, Hegel sets out to salvage art from its subjectivization in Kantian and romantic aesthetics, but ends (...) up declaring that art, considered in its highest vocation, is a thing of the past. This judgment on art—that its greatness is a thing of the past—follows from Hegel's attempt to combine a notion of art's historicity with a conception of its absolute essence. Hegel, however, was not the first to think systematically about the historicity of art. For this aspect of art—and, indeed, of reason too—was explored philosophically a good sixty years before Hegel's Berlin lectures by a young and aspiring student of Kant's, namely Johann Gottfried Herder. In a series of essays and fragments, Herder develops an advanced and elaborate alternative to Hegel's conception, a fundamentally non-essentialist approach to art, history, and reason.Over the past twenty years or so, Hegel's attempt to combine an essentialist and an historicist approach to art has been revitalized, with increasing force and sophistication, by Arthur Danto.2 The attempts to rehabilitate Herder's aesthetics, however, have been few and far between.3 This is the aim of the present essay, which seeks to contrast the young Herder's non-essentialist understanding of the historicity of art with Hegel's essentialist views on the artwork's historicity, pleading for a rehabilitation of the former.4 I approach this task from three different directions. First, I offer a brief account of Herder's and Hegel's views on reason, history, and art. Second, I look closer at their conceptions of classical tragedy and sculpture, which, due to Winckelmann's studies, [End Page 17] were perceived at the time as the gateway to a historically sensitive conception of culture as such. Finally, I round off by looking at some of the hermeneutic implications of Herder's non-essentialist standpoint.IAccording to Hegel, a phenomenologically mature and accountable philosophy is distinguished by its readiness to reflect on its own, historical presuppositions. It must acknowledge the critical commitments of modern thinking, but also take into account how these commitments are the result of spirit's laborious journey through history. Only by combining the perspective of modernity with the resources of tradition may philosophy inhabit a place where systematicity and historicity concur. Reality may now be exhausted in the form of a speculative logic. This, according to Hegel, is the end of history, but as the end of history, it is also the dawn of a new era, that of free and self-determining spirit.Hegel's notion of the end of history testifies to a formidable optimism about the power of critical thought. In modernity, Hegel claims, art and religion no longer emerge as adequate media of self-reflection. It is philosophy that has taken on this task. Considered from the standpoint of modernity, religion and art are no longer appropriate forms of expression; now only the conceptual optics of philosophy adequately reflects our deepest truths and values.5Artistically speaking, this moment may well emerge as a loss. For even though Hegel never claims that art, as such, will no longer be produced,6 he reckons it will not be produced in the same spirit as before. No longer expressive of a shared, ethical and political commitment, art is not brought forth by necessity. Intellectually speaking, however, the end of art triggers a different response. Not only does the end of art represent another step towards the conceptual self-determination of spirit. It also follows that only when a phenomenon such as art has finally fulfilled its historical possibilities can it be brought to philosophical clarity about itself. Only after art can we know conceptually what art is. Aesthetics can only begin at the point when art, considered in its highest vocation, no longer holds a historical future.IIAs a young and... (shrink)