Reason and Revelation (original) (raw)
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The Beginning Before the Beginning: Hegel and the Activation of Philosophy
This paper suggests that it is not enough to simply account for the lsquo;beginningrsquo; in Hegelrsquo;s philosophy. To capture the speculative depth of Hegelrsquo;s thinking one must also account for the beginning of philosophy as such. That is, how or why the philosopher begins or lsquo;the beginning before the beginningrsquo;. The question of the activation of the philosophical project itself is explored through Hegelrsquo;s notion of the lsquo;need of philosophyrsquo; and the fundamental relation between the historical event of the French Revolution and philosophical thinking. This question is explored through a critical discussion of those thinkers who are also concerned with the philosophy/revolution relation but are critical of Hegelrsquo;s approach. It is suggested that these critical readings employ a thematic approach to both Hegel and philosophy more generally. This approach renders them unable to appreciate Hegelrsquo;s philosophy speculatively and as a consequence the relation between philosophy and freedom, via the revolution, is misconstrued. In contradistinction to these readings the question of how one encounters Hegelrsquo;s thought non-thematically is explored through an analysis of the willingness of the would-be philosopher to activate themselves into the philosophical project and dwell with Hegel in the lsquo;wersquo;. Rather than providing answers to the questions raised, this paper seeks to act as a provocation for a renewed encounter with Hegelrsquo;s philosophy
The John Hopkins Guide to Critical and Cultural Theory
There is no better way to characterize G.W.F Hegel (1770-1831) than as a philosopher of truth. Like most classical and early modern thinkers, Hegel believed that the task of philosophy was to furnish as comprehensive and true an account of reality as possible. As in Aristotle or Spinoza, truth as a category implied extreme rigor, a uniquely wide breadth of scope-ranging from physics and ontology to politics and logic-and a capacity both to reflect the world as it actually is and to express it in the form of a system. Systematicity was for Hegel proof of thoroughness and of the muscularity of reason, but it also mirrored formally an important aspect of reality itself: the latter, he argued, was also a kind of system-an organized, deeply interconnected, and (to some extent) living (or at least dynamic) whole. From a Hegelian standpoint, truth exists not just in the sense that it is possible, that it can be grasped, shared, and made actionable by humans (or perhaps other rational creatures), but that it is fundamentally thisworldly or immanent, rather than other-worldly or transcendent. Truth was not, as in Platonic Idealism, something that hovered over or preceded the world in the form of a static essence. Nor was it contained, ready-made, in the mind of God, an eternal logic or law that only had to be humbly recited by humans to be known. These ways of understanding truth, thought Hegel, reduced humans to passive instruments of a reality they had no hand in making themselves. Instead, truth was best understood as back-bendingly difficult work-a process that could be understood as simultaneously discovery (of something objectively there in the world) and invention (something we ourselves create and wilfully sustain). Despite Hegel's reputation in some circles as an austere theologian of eternity it is important to keep in mind the deeply existential dimension of Hegel's work, one that helps to explain why he was taken up so readily
DIALECTICS OF REASON, HISTORY AND FREEDOM IN HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY
For Hegel, History is with a purpose. The study of history and of the history of philosophy in particular transformed the whole conception of the problem of philosophy, as hitherto understood by himself and his contemporaries. Why he is one of the greatest lies in the fact that he saw the necessity for establishing his own philosophy or philosophical position, not by the reputation of the philosophical theories of the past, but by incorporating them within his own system. He sought to do so by giving logical continuity to what, in appearance, was mere historical sequence, and by showing that his own distinctive principle of synthesis was at once the presupposition, the outcome and the completion of the theories of his predecessors . This is an elaborate metaphysics, which provided a new basis for thinking about the very structure of reality and about its manifestations in morality, law, religion, art, history and above all, thought itself. Philosophy of History, for Hegel, is part of the philosophy of spirit and the problem which confronts its exponents; this is that of tracing the working of reason in particular. In this chapter, an exposition of Hegel’s thought and ideas on reason, history and freedom is done. Not only that, the connection that Hegel made to link the three will be analyzed so as to establish their relevance for this work.
The Substantial Subject: The Logic and Appearance of Freedom in Hegel
2024
While it is widely agreed that Hegel’s philosophy is a philosophy of freedom, the significance and scope of Hegel’s theory of freedom is disputed. Most scholarly work on this topic has been devoted to the socio-political philosophy of the Philosophy of Right. But Hegel also speaks of freedom in a way which extends beyond the concerns of his socio-political thought. This dissertation demonstrates how Hegel’s theory of freedom is more fully grasped when it is understood as a comprehensive philosophy which also involves an ontology (a logic of being) and a phenomenology (a direct experience of this logic). The free state which Hegel outlines in the Philosophy of Right is still only a limited manifestation of a freedom which also pervades other aspects of human experience. A way of thinking which is “free” (in the sense that it does not restrict itself by assuming false methodological limitations) is itself essential to our capacity for rational self-determination. Moreover, this “speculative” perspective has only been achieved through the gradual cultivation (Bildung) of the free personality throughout history. This dissertation therefore investigates why Hegel thinks that freedom is at issue in abstract philosophical thought (in his logical works) as well as in concrete historical phenomena (in the Phenomenology of Spirit). This logic and appearance of freedom explicates Hegel’s statement in the Preface of the Phenomenology that the absolute is not only substance, but also subject. Having shown that both the ancient freedom of the “social substance” and the modern freedom of the “pure I” are untenable on their own terms, Hegel advances a logical and phenomenological theory of freedom in which these one-sided truths are reconciled with each other. The “substantial subject” of Hegelian freedom more fully actualizes the purely subjective freedom of the Enlightenment, enabling true individual self-determination. Freedom appears not just as the right to make arbitrary choices, but as substantial thought and conviction.
Hegel's Fact of Reason: Life and Death in the Experience of Freedom
Argumenta, 2019
This paper shows how Hegel transforms Kant's Fact of Reason argument for freedom, and in particular how Hegel takes over the role of experience and death in Kant's "Gallows Man" illustration of the Fact. I reconstruct a central thread of the Phenomenology of Spirit in which Hegel develops his view of freedom and practical rationality through a series of life and death experiences undergone by "shapes of consciousness". While Hegel views his fact of reason as a result of a developmental process rather than as an immediate brute fact, the method of that development is itself deeply informed by Kant's argument that the moral law must be opposed to attachment to life in order to establish the reality of freedom. By contrast with Kant, Hegel begins with an immediate unity of life and selfconsciousness, and only through a painful trial is the subject of the Phenomenology educated to free obedience to reason. Hegel departs fundamentally from Kant both in uniting life and freedom and in simultaneously developing a world of freedom, a socially embodied fact of reason, through which individuals express their freedom in action.
“On Hegel’s Confrontation with the Sciences in ‘Observing Reason’: Notes for a Discussion”
The aim of this paper, delivered at the 2007 conference of the Hegel Society of Great Britain, is to contribute to the current debate about nature’s recalcitrance to full rational determination from the standpoint of its inexhaustibility, stressed in Hegel’s analysis of the scientific description and classification of natural things in the Phenomenology. It supports the claim that in “Observing Reason” Hegel reconstructs the genesis and functions of scientific theories within shapes of consciousness which are also necessary and irreplaceable advances toward the concept of absolute knowing, casting light on the presupposition of the systematic Philosophy of Nature. By referring to a series of examples drawn from Hegel’s treatment of mechanics, chemistry and electricity based on first-hand research in Jena libraries, and focusing on the investigation of the pure conditions of the empirical laws of nature, the paper points out the awareness of working scientists about experiments and documents Hegel’s view on the inversion of consciousness’s initial standpoint, which took experience and observation as the sole source of truth. It shows how it emerges for rational self-consciousness itself that the truth of the laws of nature lies in the concept, accounting for the explanatory completeness of the essential, inward and stable significance of the sensuous external transitory being of the natural things. The paper concludes that from the real to the ideal side in the course of the advancements in natural sciences we have experienced the transformation of the external (mind-independent) being of the immense realm of phenomena into a being-that-is-thought as their truth, whereas from the ideal to the real side modern scientific knowledge of nature have experienced the transformation of the internal (mind-dependent) thought from a formal way of reducing multiplicity to unities by abstraction and subsumption, into categorial thinking determining the true objectivity of the sensuous particulars.
The Impact of Idealism Volume 4: Religion (ed. Nicholas Adams, Cambridge: CUP, 2013, forthcoming), 2013
This essay has as its focus Hegel’s contribution to our contemporary thinking about the relation between theology and philosophy, through an engagement with two of his most fascinating discussions. The first is his account of ‘the Enlightenment struggle against superstition’ in the Phenomenology of Spirit; the second is his retrieval of Anselm’s ontological argument in the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. This discussion exhibits in some ways a curious lack of impact of idealism in contemporary thinking, in an area where Hegel has a distinctive and compelling – yet unfulfilled – contribution to make.
2005
In this book, Robert Wallace shows that the repeated pronouncements of the death of Hegel's philosophical system have been premature. Wallace brings to light unique arguments in Hegel for the reality of freedom, of God, and of knowledge-each of them understood as intimately connected to nature, but not as reducible to it-and for the irrationality of egoism. And Wallace systematically answers many of the major criticisms that have been leveled at Hegel's system, from Feuerbach, Kierkegaard, and Marx through Heidegger and Charles Taylor. The book provides detailed interpretations of the major works of Hegel's mature system-his entire Philosophy of Spirit, most of his indispensable Science of Logic, and key parts of his Philosophy of Nature and Philosophy of Right. With the exception of Chapters 4 and 5, which will particularly interest advanced students, Hegel's Philosophy of Reality, Freedom, and God is written for students of philosophy at all levels. Wallace explains Hegel's terminology thoroughly, analyzes many important passages from Hegel's works in detail, and outlines alternative approaches (Plato's, Hume's, and Kant's, among others), so that the distinctiveness of Hegel's solutions becomes apparent.