Hegel's Gesture to Radical Cosmopolitanism (original) (raw)
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Hegel's Gesture Towards Radical Cosmopolitanism
Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, 2010
This is a preliminary argument of a much larger research project inquiring into the relation between Hegel's philosophical system and the project of emancipation in Critical International Relations Theory. Specifically, the paper examines how Hegel's theory of recognition gestures ...
A Brief Sketch of the Possibility of a Hegelian Cosmopolitanism
The following paper investigates the possibility of an account of cosmopolitan thought inspired by Hegel's treatment of Kant's ethical theory and his associated social concept of recognition. Cosmopolitanism requires the agent to recognize themself as a global agent participating in a shared community, but conventional political strategies do not possess the resources to satisfy this demand for self-understanding. Such a self-understanding is enabled by the objective freedom of a common shared humanity grounded in rational self-determination. The paper shows that it is possible to extrapolate Hegel's outline of the state in the Philosophy of Right (perhaps contrary to Hegel's own intuitions) to describe a global community coherent with such a subject.
Hegel's Reluctant Realism and the Transnationalisation of Civil Society
Qualifying a realist interpretation, this essay argues that the dialectical involvement of the state as an individual with its external relations exposes international politics as a matter of both anarchy and war, and mutual recognition and practical morality among states in Hegel's theory of international relations. With the absolute distinction between internal community and external anarchy removed, Hegel's account of civil society becomes relevant to his theory of international relations. Both as an analogy and concretely, it provides indications for a partial transcendence of sovereign statehood and international anarchy by institutionalised co-operation and political (self-)regulation in a transnationalising civil society.
Hegel's Nationalism or Two Hegelian Arguments Against Globalism
2021
The conflict between globalism and nationalism is arguably one of the most important political issues of our time. In this article, I argue that Hegel's mature political philosophy has convincing arguments for recognition-based, non-chauvinistic nationalism and against globalism. I lay out two reasons why Hegel is against dissolving national sovereignty and the establishment of a world state: First of all, he argues that the state provides the highest realization of human self-determination. Therefore, he believes that it is not rational for a people who form a sovereign nation to want to give up their political independence. Second of all, Hegel argues that the state must be conceived of as having individuality, which means that it has the ontological structure of an exclusory being-for-itself: In order for it to be an individual, it must stand in exclusory relations to others of the same kind. In addition to reconstructing Hegel's critique of globalism, I argue that his brand of nationalism is based on mutual recognition between states, which makes Hegel not a Hobbesian realist but someone who believes that the political sphere is inherently ethical.
Hegel's Social and Political Philosophy: Recent Debates
This article discusses three topics that have been the subject of debate in recent scholarship on Hegel's social and political philosophy: first, the relevance of Hegel's systematic metaphysics for interpreting Hegel's social and political writings; second, the relation between recognition (Anerkennung), social institutions, and rational agency; and third, the connection between the constellation of institutions and norms that Hegel calls "ethical life" (Sittlichkeit) and Hegel's theory of freedom. This article provides a critical overview of the positions in these three debates. In the case of the first debate, I clarify the conceptual terrain by distinguishing between several kinds of systematicity that are at issue. In the case of the second debate, I argue that the views of two of the major participants, Axel Honneth and Robert Pippin, are in fact compatible. In the case of the third debate, I seek to clarify the connection in Hegel between two different ideas of freedom in ethical life, each of which has been emphasized by different interpreters of Hegel: the idea of freedom as non-alienation and the idea of freedom as social freedom. I conclude with a discussion of the ways in which ethical life, for Hegel, enables the freedom of individuals. 1 | INTRODUCTION This article discusses recent work on Hegel's social and political philosophy. In Section 2, I introduce two basic concepts of Hegel's social and political thought, familiarity with which is presupposed in the rest of the discussion: Hegel's concept of recognition (Anerkennung) and his doctrine of ethical life (Sittlichkeit). The rest of the article is organized around three topics that have been both prominent and controversial in recent scholarship: first, the relation of Hegel's social and political philosophy to his philosophical system as a whole (Section 3) 1 ; second, the function of social and political institutions and institutionally-mediated recognition in Hegel's account of action and agency (Section 4); and third, Hegel's theory of social and political freedom and its relation to his theory of ethical life (Section 5).
Freedom and identity in Hegel's dialectic of recognition (2013)
Self-published
In the paper I reconstruct Hegel's account of the development of self-consciousness to mutual recognition from self-consciousness as an argument that an individual can be free only if those around him or her are free, and compare this argument with the argument to the same conclusion that Robert Pippin finds in Hegel's works.
Hegel in Contemporary Political Philosophy (chapter from Transcending Subjects)
Transcending Subjects: Augustine, Hegel, and Theology
The contemporary return to Hegel is dominated by two seemingly opposed expressions: one in the form of social self‐legislating practices resulting in inter‐subjective recognition, the other in the form of radical subjectivity persisting within the failure of the social reconciliation. The former focuses on the evolution of social normativity, and the latter on the revolution of radical subjectivity. The “normative Hegel” is best represented in the work of Robert Pippin; the “radical Hegel” by Slavoj Žižek. Interpreting the work of these two will orient us within the landscape of contemporary Hegelian studies and prepare for entrance into Hegel’s philosophical system.
This thesis is an original contribution to critical international relations theory. Responding to Hartmut Behr's call for the development of more universalistic trajectories of ontological inquiry for contemporary (global) politics and ethics, our original contribution is to establish a 'critical' approach to international theory on a more universalistic meta-theoretical foundation. Proceeding from a philosophical analysis of 'ontological' foundations in influential normative, meta-theoretical, and critical approaches to international theory, we argue for a shift from international theory’s reliance on a shallow ontology of 'things that exist' to a fuller ontology of being, and of human being in particular. After identifying with the left-Hegelian tradition of thought, and establishing that the most compelling and promising advocate of a 'critical' approach to international theory, that of Andrew Linklater, rests on a limited conception of human existence and a thin understanding of human freedom, we explore the implications of conceptions of human being and freedom in the work of Martin Heidegger and Georg W. F. Hegel for critical international theory. Offering an epistemological defence of our universalism through Hegel's phenomenological constructivist approach to knowledge, then demonstrating how this allows us to transcend the schism between foundationalist and anti-foundationalist approaches to normative theory, we premise our own emancipatory cosmopolitanism on a commitment to the human being conceived as 'singularity' rather than subject. Proceeding from a discussion of 'what it means to be' a free human being according to Heidegger and Hegel, we then foreground two aspects of human freedom that have hitherto been obscured in critical international theory and develop a praxeological emancipatory cosmopolitanism on this basis. Rather than rejecting Linklater's emancipatory cosmopolitanism, we call for its 'overcoming,' and demonstrate ways that our meta-theoretical argument can effect international practice by offering 'love' as a guide for ethical and emancipatory praxis and an evaluative tool for critical social theory.
The dialectic of recognition: A post-Hegelian approach
European Journal of Social Theory, 2018
This article aims to make two points. First, seeking and granting recognition is an ambivalent process that may lead to results completely the opposite from what was intended. Certain social pathologies, including reification, develop because of the way the desire for recognition is expressed and satisfied. Nevertheless, the concept of recognition remains central to critical theory. A normative concept of recognition is needed in order to identify these pathologies. Second, a critical theory of society that understands itself as praxis must justify the possibility of its 'reception' by members of society. The theory's addressees must 'recognize themselves' in the theory. They must recognize in it the conceptual expression of their own experience of society. Therefore, social theory must account for the emergence of a critical standpoint on society. These two main points are addressed by means of a 'dialectical' approach. The tensions and interactions between global society, states, and value-communities-the dialectic within and between these spheres-account for the diverse and conflicting meanings of the concept of recognition. At the same time, such a dialectic makes it possible to understand the emergence of a critical viewpoint on society. Keywords critical theory, dialectic, feeling of injustice, feeling of meaninglessness, recognition This article's aim is to make two connected points. First, recognition is not merely a response to social pathologies or disrespect, it is a process that generates its own pathologies. In particular, the search for recognition may paradoxically contribute to a process of reification. In order to make this point I will use the distinction between