Life: The Double Nature of Sittlichkeit, in: Zweite Natur. Stuttgarter Hegel-Kongress 2017, eds. J. Christ, A. Honneth (Frankfurt/M.: Klosterman, 2021) (original) (raw)
Related papers
In this paper, I reply to the critics of my book, Hegel's Concept of Life, by taking up the question of how a science of pure thought thinking itself arrives at the conclusion that it must determine itself as life. In particular, I consider how the logical concept of life informs Hegel's understanding of subjects, objects, and ground, and I also take up the relationship between logic and Realphilosophie in Hegel's system. Throughout, I aim to clarify and elaborate on one of the central arguments from my book, namely, that for Hegel, life is the primitive or original form of judgment. In a book rife with obscure philosophical puzzles, one of the most difficult puzzles to emerge in reading the Science of Logic is the following: why does the science of pure thinking, a science of thought thinking itself, arrive at the conclusion that it must determine itself as life? Why must the self-comprehension of pure thought ultimately comprehend its own essential activity as the activity of life? Immediately, one is struck by the sheer difficulty of bringing together two intuitively distinct modes of engagement: the austerity, formality, and abstraction required by the pursuit of pure thinking and logic on the one hand, and the vitality, dynamism, and concreteness of the phenomenon of life on the other. Although readers of Hegel are no strangers to the bringing together of opposites, this particular case poses special problems, not least because the Logic provides the method and central categories (the "thought-determinations") that are operative throughout the remainder of Hegel's philosophical system. In what follows, I will try to respond to this puzzle by clarifying one of the central lines of argument from my book, namely, that for Hegel, life is the primitive or original form of judgment. I am immensely grateful to my critics for providing an occasion for me to do so, and for the generous, thoughtful engagement that one always hopes for in philosophical debate. Responding to their critical questions concerning how life figures in Hegel's understanding of subjectivity, objectivity, and ground, as well as how we can best understand the relation between logic and Realphilosophie, will hopefully help to resolve the problem of how pure thinking and life are connected in Hegel's system.
Some Limits to Hegel’s Appeal to Life [Special Issue]
2019
For two hundred years, people have been trying to make sense of Hegel’s socalled “dialectical method”. Helpfully, Hegel frequently compares this method with the idea of life, or the organic (cf., e.g., PhG 2, 34, 56). This comparison has become very popular in the literature (in, e.g., Pippin, Beiser, and Ng). Typically, scholars who invoke the idea of life also note that the comparison has limits and that no organic analogy can completely explain the nature of the dialectical method. To my knowledge, however, no scholar has attempted to explain exactly where or why the organic analogy falls short. In this paper, I propose to remedy this lack by exploring in depth two different organic models. In brief, I argue that both versions of the organic model require an appeal to something external to the organism, and no such appeal can be made sense of within the dialectical method.
The Truth of Life: Hegel on Mind-Life Continuity
2017
This contribution deals with the recent interest of the Hegelian studies around Hegel’s so-called naturalism and maintains that mind is possible by virtue of the relationship mind-life and that life and mind are mutually dependent. In order to understand the continuity mind-life the contribution accounts for both the Hegelian theory of self-consciousness and the chapter on life in the Science of Logic. Hegel’s peculiarity consists in investigating concrete issues such as life, nature, desires and subjective purposiveness by deploying a logical and formal analysis in order to attain a general comprehension of them. The result is that Hegel does not explain the mind as separate from nature but rather as the outcome of a crossed stratification between nature and spirit. The contribution also gives an account of the interdisciplinary aspects connected with Hegel’s naturalism and his proposal about the continuity life-mind.
European Journal of Philosophy, 2021
In this paper, I discuss Karen Ng's reconstruction of Hegel's concept of life. On Ng's account, Hegel's conception of life has a remarkable double role to play: Life is both the proper object of judgment as well as a fundamental characterization of the activity of the judging subject. In a first step, I highlight the insight that Ng's account sheds on the internal connection of life and self-consciousness and the peculiar normativity of life. In a second step, I raise three concerns about Ng's strong focus on the logical notion of life which she characterizes as non-empirical and a priori. I argue that in order to uncover the full significance of the notion of life for Hegel we have to turn to his Philosophy of Nature and Spirit.
Life and Mind in Hegel's Logic and Subjective Spirit, Hegel Bulletin (2018)
This paper aims to understand Hegel's claim in the introduction to his Philosophy of Mind that mind is an actualization of the Idea and argues that this claim provides us with a novel and defensible way of understanding Hegel's naturalism. I suggest that Hegel's approach to naturalism should be understood as 'formal', and argue that Hegel's Logic, particularly the section on the 'Idea', provides us with a method for this approach. In the first part of the paper, I present an interpretation of Hegel's method in which life plays a central role. In the second part of the paper, I develop Hegel's method by providing a reading of Hegel's Subjective Spirit, focusing on the sections 'Anthropology' and 'Phenomenology' in particular, arguing that they display the dialectic between life and cognition outlined by Hegel's Idea.
The Freedom of Life: Hegelian Perspectives. Freiheit und Gesetz III, Berlin: August Verlag, 2013
For post-Kantian philosophy, “life” is a transitory concept that relates the realm of nature to the realm of freedom. From this vantage point, the living seems to have the double character of being both already and not yet free: Compared with the external necessity of dead nature, the living already seems to exhibit a basic type of spontaneity and normativity that on the other hand still has to be superseded on the path to the freedom and normativity of spirit. The contributions in the third volume of the series Freedom and Law take their departure from Hegel in order to investigate the extent to which we need figures and concepts of the living to understand the genesis and structure of theoretical and practical self-determination. In these analyses, Hegel’s philosophy reveals itself as a thinking not restricted to a mere opposition between the determinations of life and the freedom of spirit, but rather conceives of a freedom that realizes itself in and through life: a freedom of life.
Hegel and Jonas on the Ethical and Onto-Theological Implications of Life
Plí, Warwick Journal of Philosophy, 2019
The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! 1 5 Ha J a , Mor ali and Morali : A Search for he Good Af er A sch i , ed. La e ce V ge (Ch cag , IL: N h e e U e P e , 1996), . 84. He eaf e , MM.