Philosophy and the Logic of Modernity: Hegel's Dissatisfied Spirit 2009. (original) (raw)

Our time Comprehended in Thoughts—Hegel, Humanity, and Social Critique (academia.edu).pdf

In this article I argue that the currently ongoing epochal changes are bringing about a shift in concerns and saliences that are pushing Hegel-reception in a direction that can be characterized as anthropological or humanist. Three default assumptions making particular perspectives to Hegel more, or less, enticing are on the retreat: Kantian constructivism or subjectivism, historical or cultural relativism, and the “ethical abstinence” of liberal political thought. What will, or should, take their place are a rehabilitated realism, a rehabilitated universalism, and an urgent interest in philosophical means for evaluating and debating better and worse forms of human life across cultural and other differences. I will elaborate on three basic principles crucial to grasp for a Hegelian critical social philosophy fit for purpose in the new crisis-ridden era: multiplicity of levels of conceptual abstraction, realism about freedom, and the recognitive constitution of all human life as a “fundamental ethics”.

The Spirit of the Age: Hegel and the Fate of Thinking

Description ‘It belongs to the weakness of our time not to be able to bear the greatness, the immensity of the claims made by the human spirit, to feel crushed before them, and to flee from them faint-hearted.’ (Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy, v2, p. 10) Is it becoming more obvious today that the thinkers of the post-Hegelian era were/are not ‘able to bear the greatness, the immensity of the claims made by the human spirit’? Is our era the era of the ‘faint-hearted’ philosophy? Celebrating 200 years since the publication of The Phenomenology of Spirit this volume addresses these questions through a renewed encounter with Hegel’s thought. This book includes contributions from: H. S. Harris, John W. Burbidge, Paul Redding, Angelica Nuzzo, David Gray Carlson, Simon Lumsden, Karin de Boer, David Rose, Andrew Haas, Toula Nicolacopoulos, George Vassilacopoulos, Jorge Armando Reyes Escobar, Maria J. Binetti, Wendell Kisner, Paul Ashton and Robert Sinnerbrink. Authors, editors and contributors Paul Ashton NMIT and LaTrobe University Toula Nicolacopoulos LaTrobe University George Vassilacopoulos LaTrobe University

Why Turn to Hegel Today? An Introduction

Ethics in Progress, 2024

This brief introduction sets the stage for the central aim of this issue of Ethics in Progress devoted to Hegel: to underscore the enduring relevance of his thought, in particular his Philosophy of Nature and his Realphilosophie, in addressing contemporary challenges. While Hegel may appear to some as an abstract thinker, seemingly surpassed by the demands of our era, the core elements of his philosophy – particularly the dialectical method, his reflections on the complex relationship between Natur (nature) and Geist (spirit), and key concepts such as Anerkennung (recognition) and Wille (will) – continue to provide a vital conceptual framework for addressing pressing issues of our time. These include the environmental crisis and the evolving dynamics between humanity, nature, and emerging technologies like artificial intelligence. Consequently, this issue strives to approach Hegel through the lens of our contemporary experience, not to distort or “denaturalize” his thought, nor to fall into the trap of anachronism, but to breathe new life into the concept. By doing so, it invites the reader to listen anew to what Hegel’s philosophy might still teach us today.

Theological Implications of modernity and Post – Modernity: HEGEL

George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) is one of the greatest systematic thinkers in the history of Western philosophy. In addition to epitomizing German idealist philosophy, Hegel boldly claimed that his own system of philosophy represented an historical culmination of all previous philosophical thought. Hegel's overall encyclopaedic system is divided into the Science of Logic, the Philosophy of Nature, and the Philosophy of Spirit. Of most enduring interest are his views on history, society, and the state, which fall within the realm of Objective Spirit. For Hegel reason is more dynamic, because reason expresses itself through its journey in the historical process.

Hegelian Conscience as Reflective Equilibrium and the Organic Justification of Sittlichkeit

Hegel's Philosophy of Right: A Critical Guide, 2017

In this essay I analyze two of the major conceptions of justifi cation in the Philosophy of Right and unpack the relation between them. I argue that we should link Hegel's conception of conscience to the account of refl ective equilibrium introduced by John Rawls because Hegel's view of conscience contains the holism, as well as the back and forth between universal principles and individual judgments, that are central to the refl ective equilibrium account. In the transition from 'Morality' to ' Sittlichkeit ', Hegel switches the locus of justifi cation from the moral individual to the whole ensemble of social institutions of modern life. Th is system of institutions is justifi ed because of its organic, living structure characterized by the productive interplay of universal and particular ends. In contrasting these two models, my goal is to fi gure out just what Hegel thinks is wrong with the refl ective model and what is gained in the move to organic justifi cation. Th e main diff erence hinges on Hegel's orientation by action rather than by judgement , where the action-based organicism proves superior because it includes a public feedback process that supports a dynamic, self-correcting model of political justifi cation.

Hegel and the Quality of the Modern Individual v2

In Hegel’s “theory of spirit” – differentiated and institutionalized in our contemporary disciplinary fields as psychology, sociology and political science – the initial conceptual moment in the development of individuality, before the subject can determine or give itself specific cognitive and social content, the individual takes an initial simple but also abstract appearance of “being-for-self”. This essay explores the "emergence" of the modern individual in Hegel's work.

Hegel on Human Ways of Considering Nature

Ethics in Progress, 2024

In this article I aim to show the limits of certain "ways of considering" nature, as well as the intrinsic contradictions in their modus operandi, following Hegel's analysis in the Introductions to the Encyclopaedic Naturphilosophie and the Berlin Lectures on the Philosophy of Nature. After framing the problem within the broader theme - already explored in Jena - of the relationship between nature and spirit, I will show that both the practical and the theoretical, insofar as they are founded in an original separation between man and nature, result in a subjection of the natural being to man. In order for this to be redeemed from one-sided conduct towards it, it is necessary to access through living intuition a philosophical consideration – both of the living being and of nature as a whole –, the activity of which Hegel understands as a rediscovery of the rationality of nature and its "liberation”.

THE DIALECTICS OF SELF-CONSCIOUS LIFE AND THE CONSTITUTION OF SOCIAL PRACTICES IN HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY

Ethics&Politics, 2019

In this contribution I defend the thesis that Hegel's notion of species (Gattung) is not merely the name given to a group of self-reproducing living beings but rather it is at the basis of the Hegelian naturalistic conceptions of self-conscious life, sociality and world history. I maintain that self-reflection and self-referring negativity are the main characteristics of the self-conscious life and they determine the features of both the individual self-consciousness and the entire human species by shaping social practices and world history as acts of actualized freedom. Therefore, the definition of human species goes far beyond the description of its natural features and depends on the fact that self-consciousness is able to determine itself by negating external powers or conditioning. The main argument of this contribution is that human species and its historical evolution can be defined by means of this self-referring negativity and by self-consciousness' capacity to place the external reality under an order of values and concept autonomously yielded.