Showing papers in "Hegel Bulletin in 2017"
TL;DR: In this paper, it is shown that Honneth underestimates the implications of Hegel's thoughts about the theme, method and systematic form of philosophy, which leads, on the other hand, to a different construction of the social within philosophy.
Abstract: Contemporary philosophy of recognition represents probably the most prominent direction that presently claims to introduce an updated version of classical German idealism into ongoing debates, including the debate on the nature of sociality. In particular, studies of Axel Honneth offer triggering contributions in Frankfurt School fashion while at the same time rejuvenating Hegel’s philosophy in terms of a philosophy of recognition. According to Honneth, this attempt at a rejuvenation also involves substantial modification of Hegelian doctrines. It is shown that Honneth underestimates the implications of Hegel’s thoughts about the theme, method and systematic form of philosophy. As a consequence, Honneth’s social philosophy is, on the one hand, in need of a plausible foundation. This leads, on the other hand, to a different construction of the social within philosophy than Honneth offers.
17 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that even in moments of profound social alienation, Spirit (Geist) remains, and that the desiring, affective subject is not absorbed in the 'they' (das Man) but is, instead, the negativity that constantly transforms culture and the structure of social selfhood.
Abstract: Abstract This article argues that Hegel’s dialectic of wealth and power in the stage of social development called ‘culture’ (Bildung) reveals that even in moments of profound social alienation, Spirit (Geist)—the labour of constructing identity and freedom—remains. This stands in sharp contrast to Heidegger’s theory of alienation and Dasein’s ‘publicity’ (Offentlichkeit), which paints modern social existence as a profound threat to the very ‘Being’ and ‘possibilities’ of human life. The supposed threats of inauthenticity and mass existence are, from a Hegelian perspective, failures of adequate social phenomenology. The desiring, affective subject is not absorbed in the ‘they’ (das Man) but is, instead, the negativity that constantly transforms culture and the structure of social selfhood.
11 citations
TL;DR: This paper argued that Kant, Hegel and Husserl are phenomenologists, or again phenomenological thinkers, and that they can be understood through their different reactions to Kantian phenomenology.
Abstract: The widespread tendency to understand phenomenology on a Husserlian model makes it incomparable with other views. I will use the term ‘phenomenology’ in a wider sense to refer to approaches to cognition based on phenomena. From the latter angle of vision, ’phenomenology’ includes not only Husserl and the Husserlians but also a wider selection of thinkers stretching back to early Greece. Although this will enlarge the scope of what counts as phenomenology, I will not be claiming that everyone is a phenomenologist. I will, however, be arguing that Kant, Hegel and Husserl are phenomenologists, or again phenomenological thinkers, and that Hegel and Husserl can be understood through their different reactions to Kantian phenomenology.
10 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine Husserl's notion of teleology through the lens of necessity and argue that there are two senses of teleologies at work in the task of phenomenology, especially as they come to conceive it in the Crisis.
Abstract: The paper examines Husserl’s notion of teleology through the lens of necessity and argues that there are two senses of teleology—historical and transcendental—at work in the task of phenomenology, especially as Husserl comes to conceive it in the Crisis. To understand not only how these two senses are related but also how their relationship shapes Husserl’s notions of normativity, reason, and progress, I argue that we must look closely at phenomenology as a distinctive form of critique, namely critique ‘from within’. What emerges is a philosophical stance that is fundamentally ambiguous: at once historical and transcendental-eidetic. This productive notion of ambiguity, I contend, differentiates Husserl’s conceptions of normativity, reason and progress from their Enlightenment guises.
7 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that the accounts of social freedom offered by G. W. F. Hegel and Axel Honneth are empirically inadequate and that they neglect the normative demands on schools to contribute to individual moral and intellectual development.
Abstract: The accounts of social freedom offered by G. W. F. Hegel and Axel Honneth identify the normative demands on social institutions and explain how individual freedom is realized through rational participation in such institutions. While both offer normative reconstructions of the market economy, public sphere and family, they both derive the norms of educational institutions from education’s role in preparing people for participation in other institutions. We argue that this represents a significant defect in their accounts of social freedom because they both fail to account for the distinctive aims and norms of education. Only educational institutions bring individuals into a both shared and autonomous standpoint necessary for participation in social life. We thus argue both that Hegel’s and Honneth’s accounts are empirically inadequate and that they neglect the normative demands on schools to contribute to individual moral and intellectual development.
6 citations
TL;DR: In this article it is argued that the conceptions of embodied meaning and of intuition that Hegel appeals to in the Aesthetics anticipate some of Merleau-Ponty's insights concerning the distinctive character of pre-conceptual, sensuous forms of meaning.
Abstract: Abstract In this paper it is argued that the conceptions of embodied meaning and of intuition that Hegel appeals to in the Aesthetics anticipate some of Merleau-Ponty’s insights concerning the distinctive character of pre-conceptual, sensuous forms of meaning. It is argued that, for Hegel, our aesthetic experience of the beautiful is such that we cannot readily differentiate in it the purportedly distinct roles that sensation and thought play, and so that the account of sensuous intuition operative here differs from the one appealed to in more familiar, ‘intellectualist’ conceptions that are premised upon our being able to make such a distinction. Some of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological insights are brought to bear to help support and illuminate some of the implications of Hegel’s conception of such sensuously embodied meaning.
5 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on the relation between the habitual body and memory in Hegel's philosophy of subjective spirit and Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception.
Abstract: In this paper, I shall focus on the relation between habitual body and memory in Hegel’s Philosophy of Subjective Spirit and Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception. Both Hegel and Merleau-Ponty defend a view of the self that is centred on the role of habituality as embodied activity situated in a context. However, both philosophers avoid committing to what Edward Casey has defined habitual body memory, i.e., an active immanence of the past in the body that informs present bodily actions in an efficacious, orienting and regular manner. I shall explore the reasons why neither Hegel nor Merleau-Ponty develops an explicit account of habitual body memory. This will shed light not only on Hegel’s account of lived experience, but also on Hegel and Merleau-Ponty’s common concern with the habitual body.
5 citations
TL;DR: This article explored the differential reception of Hegel by German critical thinkers on both sides of the Iron Curtain after 1945 and argued that ultimately Bloch and Adorno were united in their reception of the Hegel by a shared understanding that the goal of critical theory, namely the transformation of the social totality, could not be achieved without utopian speculation.
Abstract: This article challenges the restrictive association of critical theory with the Frankfurt School by exploring the differential reception of Hegel by German critical thinkers on both sides of the Iron Curtain after 1945. In the West, Theodor Adorno held Hegelian ‘identity thinking’ partly responsible for the atrocities of National Socialism. Meanwhile in the East, Ernst Bloch turned Hegel into a weapon against the communist regime. The difference between Adorno and Bloch’s positions is shown to turn on the relationship between speculation, dialectics and critique. Whereas for Adorno Hegelian speculation was the root of dangerous identity thinking, Bloch saw the repression of speculative thought as a cornerstone of totalitarianism. However, it is argued that ultimately Bloch and Adorno were united in their reception of Hegel by a shared understanding that the goal of critical theory, namely the transformation of the social totality, could not be achieved without utopian speculation.
3 citations
TL;DR: Adorno's Drei Studien zu Hegel (Hegel: Three Studies, 1963) offers his most focused treatment of what he took to be the core principles of Hegelian dialectic.
Abstract: Adorno’s Drei Studien zu Hegel (Hegel: Three Studies, 1963) offers his most focused treatment of what he took to be the core principles of Hegelian dialectic. Moreover, the book professes the central importance of Hegel for Adorno’s own development. As such, it is a pivotal document that simultaneously looks back towards Adorno’s most sustained personal work, Minima Moralia (1951), and ahead to what he took to be his most important systematic work, Negative Dialectics (1966). Adorno’s interpretation of Hegel is critical and unique in both its tone and substance. Although there are many cross-cutting lines of argumentation, the one that stands out is Adorno’s understanding of determinate negation in Hegel and his own suggestion for improving that concept. This paper reconstructs Adorno’s main arguments in this domain, assesses them as interpretations of Hegel and investigates their importance for Adorno’s emerging conception of ‘negative dialectics’.
3 citations
TL;DR: The world we live in proves best understood as a cultural world as discussed by the authors, with the help of Hegel and Husserl, and the ethical realm is characterized by a tension between ethical conscience and cultural norms.
Abstract: The world we live in proves best understood as a cultural world. Cultural worlds are examined in this article regarding their aesthetic and ethical dimensions, with the help of Hegel and Husserl. The ethical realm is characterized by a tension between ethical conscience and cultural norms. Even Hegel, who is often conceived as a philosopher of customs, explores the significance of conscience in a detailed phenomenology. Husserl provides a curious perspective on ethics when he, under the heading of a renewal (Japanese Kaizo) of reason, provides an account of a vaguely dialectical development of reason as logos which goes beyond the division between the ‘descriptive’ and ‘ethical’. In the wider sense of ethics, it is also ‘good’ to write about the world we live in. Literature (Hermann, Wallace) will be treated here as an exemplary art-form that stands in close proximity to philosophy since both strive to capture in language the world we live in.
3 citations
TL;DR: The authors defend the view of post-Kantian Hegelians that Kant's synthetic unity of apperception is central to free thinking in the Jena Phenomenology of Spirit.
Abstract: This paper offers a limited defence of two seemingly disparate interpretive approaches to free thought in Hegel’s Jena Phenomenology of Spirit. On the one hand, I defend the view of so-called post-Kantian Hegelians, that Kant’s synthetic unity of apperception is central to Hegel’s account of free thinking in the Phenomenology. On the other hand, I argue that the notions of das Offene in Heidegger’s Vom Wesen der Wahrheit and Ab-Losung in his 1930/31 lectures on Hegel’s Phenomenology are no less crucial to an understanding of free thought in Hegel’s work. I show that absolution is a condition for the possibility of das Offene, which is a condition for the possibility of apperception in its reflexive capacity.
TL;DR: The authors compare and contrast Hegel and Husserl on the subjectivity and ego in the Phenomenology of Spirit and the Philosophy of Subjective Spirit in the Encyclopaedia, and argue that a latent, functioning subjectivity which forms an unconscious ground is to be kept distinct from the several activities of a wakeful and selfconscious mind.
Abstract: Modern philosophy tends to conflate subjectivity and ego (I-think, cogito, and the like). One lesson we can draw from Hegel is that the I emerges out of a natural and habitual state in the form of a return to itself through an opposition between self and world. In turn, Husserl has an interesting take on the anonymity of an ego-less subjectivity submerged in an affective and initially passive life out of which an ego-pole first constitutes itself. In both, a latent, functioning subjectivity which forms an unconscious ground is to be kept distinct from the several activities of a wakeful and self-conscious mind. I wish to compare and contrast Hegel and Husserl on this theme. The primary texts for my examination will be Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit and the Philosophy of Subjective Spirit in the Encyclopaedia, and Husserl’s Ideas I, Ideas II, Cartesian Meditations and Experience and Judgment.
TL;DR: Merleau-Ponty's course notes from the Collège de France as discussed by the authors show that the whole history of twentieth-century phenomenology is clearly indebted to Hegel's thought in significant ways.
Abstract: ‘Reaction against Hegel—which leads back to Hegel. How?’, we read in MerleauPonty’s course notes from the Collège de France (Merleau-Ponty [1954–55] 2010: 63). This interrogative marks the whole history of twentieth-century phenomenology, which is clearly indebted to Hegel’s thought in significant ways. Husserl’s concern with the historical and cultural life-world in the Crisis of European Sciences; Heidegger’s ontological interpretation of logic and concern with the historicization of human existence; Merleau-Ponty’s dialectic of the visible and invisible— all involve an implicit return to Hegelian themes and strategies. Surprisingly, however, such affinity was not acknowledged by most of the representatives of the phenomenological movement. At the dawn of the phenomenological movement both Husserl and Heidegger were deeply influenced by Franz Brentano, who was virulently antiHegelian. In his Four Phases of Philosophy of 1895, Brentano theorized that philosophy progressed in four phases, including alternating phases of abundance and different stages of decline. Brentano diagnosed his own age as one of decline, hence he advocated a renewal of philosophy as rigorous science. According to his periodization, all great periods of growth in philosophy are characterized by the preponderance of the purely theoretical interest and develop a method proper to the subject matter (Brentano 1968: 9). In this first stage philosophy is pursued as a theoretical science. After a while, theoretical activity inevitably weakens and practical interests begin to dominate, e.g., the Stoics and Epicureans in the post-Aristotelian period. This applied phase is followed by a third phase when scepticism grows, counterbalanced by the construction of sects and dogmatic philosophies (among which he included Kant). Finally, in a fourth phase, mysticism, intuitionism and irrationalist world views, ‘pseudo-philosophy’, and religious Schwärmerei proliferate (e.g., Plotinus; Schelling and Hegel in recent times), leading to moral and intellectual collapse (Brentano 1968: 58). Hegel, then, was seen by Brentano as a Romantic mystic who betrayed the true spirit of scientific philosophy. Husserl rarely refers to Hegel. In the 1900 Prolegomena to his 1901 Logical Investigations he repeats the common prejudice against Hegel that he rejected the Principle of Non-Contradiction (Husserl 1975: §40). The early Husserl in his doi:10.1017/hgl.2016.72 Hegel Bulletin, 38/1, 1–6 © The Hegel Society of Great Britain 2017
TL;DR: In this paper it is shown that the being that fails to come to presence, but also does not simply remain in absence is what is merely implied, an implication, from the Greeks to Heidegger.
Abstract: What is being? This is, from the Greeks to Hegel (according to Heidegger), the guiding question of ontology and the history of philosophy as metaphysics. And the answer is presence: ‘being’ means ‘being present’, ‘presencing’; ‘to be’ means ‘to be present’. By clarifying the limit of this philosophy of presence, however, it is possible to go beyond it, to a thinking of being as presence and absence—for both coming-to-presence and going-out-into-absence are ways in which beings are, and being happens. And yet, are presence and absence the only ways to think being? On the contrary—there is a third. From the Greeks (through Hegel) to Heidegger, the being that fails to come to presence, but also does not simply remain in absence—this is what is merely implied, an implication. But then what does it mean to think being as implied? Being as implying? As an implication?
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors propose that what is needed is to double down on the idealism of Critical Theory by taking seriously the sophisticated structure of agency developed in Hegel's own account of freedom as self-determination.
Abstract: When it comes to social criticism of the economy, Critical Theory has thus far failed to discover specific immanent norms in that sphere of activity In response, we propose that what is needed is to double down on the idealism of Critical Theory by taking seriously the sophisticated structure of agency developed in Hegel’s own account of freedom as self-determination When we do so, we will see that the anti-metaphysical gestures of recent Critical Theory work in opposition to its attempts to develop immanent critique In this paper we first briefly reconsider Axel Honneth’s project as it concerns economic institutions and then respond by returning to the problem of freedom and articulating a view according to which the problem of individual self-determination and the problem of social production are the same problem seen from different angles Then we present briefly Hegel’s own social theory from this perspective before moving on to trace the outlines of such a critical theory of contemporary capitalism