Hegel on Action, edited by ArtoLaitinen and ConstantineSandis. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, xv + 302 pp. ISBN 978-0-230-22908-2 hb £55 (original) (raw)
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This volume focuses on Hegel's philosophy of action in connection to current concerns. Including key papers by Charles Taylor, Alasdair MacIntyre, and John McDowell, as well as eleven especially commissioned contributions by leading scholars in the field, it aims to readdress the dialogue between Hegel and contemporary philosophy of action. Topics include: the nature of action, reasons and causes; explanation and justification of action; social and narrative aspects of agency; the inner and the outer; the relation between intention, planning, and purposeful behaviour; freedom and responsibility; and self-actualisation. This book will appeal alike to Hegel scholars and philosophers of action. List of Contributors: Katerina Deligiorgi, Stephen Houlgate, Dudley Knowles, Arto Laitinen, Alasdair Macintyre, John Mcdowell, Francesca Menegoni, Dean Moyar, Terry Pinkard, Robert B. Pippin, Michael Quante, Constantine Sandis, Hans-Christoph Schmidt Am Busch, Allen Speight, Charles Taylor, Allen W. Wood Contents: Preface and Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Abbreviations Introduction: Hegel and Contemporary Philosophy of Action; A.Laitinen & C.Sandis Hegel and the Philosophy of Action; C.Taylor Hegel on Actions, Reasons, and Causes; D.Knowles Hegel's Social Theory of Agency: The 'Inner-Outer' Problem; R.B.Pippin Towards a Reading of Hegel on Action in the 'Reason' Chapter of the Phenomenology; J.McDowell Doing without Agency: Hegel's Social Theory of Action; K.Deligiorgi Hegel on Responsibility for Actions and Consequences; A.W.Wood Freedom and the Lifeworld; T.Pinkard Action, Right, and Morality in Hegel's Philosophy of Right; S.Houlgate Hegel on Faces and Skulls; A.MacIntyre What Does it Mean 'to Make Oneself an Object'? In Defense of a Key Notion of Hegel's Theory of Action; H-C.Schmidt am Busch Hegel's Planning Theory of Agency; M.Quante Hegel, Narrative and Agency; A.Speight Action Between Conviction and Recognition in Hegel's Critique of the Moral Worldviews; F.Menegoni Hegel and Agent-Relative Reasons; D.Moyar Bibliography Index
Hegel and Contemporary Philosophy of Action
While preliminary steps towards fruitful dialogue between Hegel scholars and those working in the philosophy of action have been taken, many paths remain uncharted. This essay serves as both a summative document of past interaction and a promissory note of things to come. We begin with some general words regarding thephilosophy of action before singling out reasons for exploring Hegel’s thought in relation to it.We next present a brief overview of studies conducted to this day, followed by a thematic appraisal of the contributions appearing in the other essays in this volume, whose aim is to provide an in-depth account of Hegel’s writings on human action as they relate to contemporary concerns in the hope that it will encourage further dialogue.
Hegel and Analytic Philosophy of Action
A primary fault line in the analytic philosophy of action is the debate between causal/Davidsonian and interpretivist/Anscombian theories of action. The fundamental problem of the former is producing a criterion for distinguishing intentional from non-intentional causal chains; the fundamental problem of the latter is producing an account of the relation between reasons and actions that is represented by the ‘because’ in the claim that the agent acted because she had the reason. It is argued that Hegel’s conception of teleology can be used to develop the interpretivist position by solving both its and the causal theory’s fundamental problems.
My contribution to the Oxford Handbook of Hegel. It includes themes from my two books but extends them to characterize Hegel's multiple conceptions of agency as different bait-and-switch routines by which agents are motivated.
Arto Laitinen and Constantine Sandis, eds., Hegel on Action. Reviewed by
Philosophy in Review, 2012
Hegel's work on action has for a long time required serious attention, not least due to the feeling amongst Hegelians that, like the recent revival of interest in his social and political thought, the arguments offered and sketched could make a real contribution to ...
Hegel and Metaphysics: On Logic and Ontology in the System (Hegel-Jahrbuch Sonderband 7), ed. by Allegra de Laurentiis, 2016
My title implies two directions.F irst,i ti mplies that action as self-determination is keyt o understanding Hegel'sp ost-Kantian metaphysical project.S econd, it implies that ap hilosophical investigation of action oughttobeself-conscious of its contextwithin asystemstructured by this kind of metaphysics. It is the first step that shall concern us here.Iattempt to reconstruct stepsi nt he reverse direction in Herrmann-Sinai .
Hegel’s Concept of Action between Deflationary Approaches and The Science of Logic
Ethics in Progress, 2022
The research in this paper attempts to outline the connection between Hegel’s concept of action and the contemporary philosophy of action. Hegel’s concept of action has some features in common with the ideas of analytical philosophers, and might open unexpected integration of these different philosophical traditions, which would contribute to the development of both of them. A brief overview of ways to comprehend Hegel’s concept of action (from Taylor to Brandom) shows that the cause of ambiguous understandings of this concept lies in the complexity of Hegel’s approach. The following article highlights the tension between “deflationary” interpretations and the complexity of Hegel´s original approach. Further, by revisiting the Section “Teleology” in Hegel’s Science of Logic, the article illustrates how deflationary interpretations of human action can be improved, so that they are topical for both contemporary practical philosophy and the philosophy of action, beyond the unnecessary split between analytical vs. continental philosophy. Such concepts as “purpose” and “mediation” become crucial, as they have sociological and normative extensions in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, as discussed in the last Section of this article.