Life, Self-Consciousness, Negativity: Understanding Hegel's Speculative Identity Thesis, in The Freedom of Life, ed. Thomas Khurana (2013) (original) (raw)
What Is a Logical Concept of Life? Reply to Critics, Hegel Bulletin (2021)
I am very grateful to Karen Koch and Sebastian Rand for their generous and thoughtful engagement with some of the core arguments of my book. Whereas Koch raises a number of questions concerning the purposiveness theme and Hegel's relation to Kant, Rand's questions revolve around the interpretation of Hegel's Science of Logic, asking after the status of the a priori, singularity, and death in relation to the logical concept of life. Their critical questions provide an opportunity for me to both clarify and defend one of the central claims of my book, namely, that there is a distinctly logical concept of life at work in Hegel's philosophy that is key for understanding his philosophical method. In the book, I argue that this concept, operative in Hegel's writings from the Differenzschrift through the Phenomenology to his Science of Logic, is primarily inherited from Kant, specifically from problems surrounding the concept of inner purposiveness developed in the Critique of Judgement. I will begin by replying to Koch, followed by a response to Rand. I. Inheriting the Purposiveness Theme: Reply to Koch Although I draw on the work of a number of Hegel's contemporaries-including Fichte, Schelling and Hölderlin-in order to understand how a logical concept of life functions in his philosophical system, my point of departure is the concept and problem of purposiveness in Kant's philosophy, and I argue that the core tenets of Hegel's philosophy can be understood through the purposiveness theme. I set up this theme in a number of different ways. First, I show that the problem posed by purposiveness for judgement can already be discerned in the first Critique, suggesting that this concept plays a larger role in Kant's own philosophy than is generally acknowledged. Second, I argue that Hegel's early account of method and the subject-object relation can be understood as inheriting Kant's problem of the relationship between purposiveness and judgement, recast in part as the relationship between life and self-consciousness. Third, I argue that Hegel's Subjective Logic is best understood as putting forward his version of a critique of judgement, in so far as the form and activity of judgement is ultimately shown to be grounded
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.
Hegel's Living Logic -- Research in Phenomenology 43 (2013), pg. 243–264
For Hegel, logic does not essentially consist of formal categories used to think about non-logical content. Rather, it consists of formal categories which are also themselves the content of logic. The idea that logic is its own form and its own content means that forms are used to think through other forms such that the same logical determination is a form in one context and a content in another. The generation of form and content out of one another-which precludes the need for the importation of external content into logic-is part of Hegel's definition of the logical category of 'life' in his Science of Logic. A living logic is a logic that accounts for its own self by means of its own self. Through contrasting this idea of logic with formal logic, and logical life with natural life, this essay provides a snapshot of how Hegel views the activity of living, self-determining logic.
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.
Life and the Space of Reasons: On Hegel's Subjective Logic, Hegel Bulletin (2019)
This paper defends Hegel's positive contribution in the Subjective Logic and argues that it can be understood as presenting a compelling account of the space of reasons as a form of second nature. Taking Hegel's praise of Kant's conception of internal purposiveness and its connection to what he calls the Idea as a point of departure, I argue that Hegel's theory of the Idea that concludes the Logic must be understood in direct reference to Kant's argument in the third Critique that purposiveness defines the space of judgement's power. I take up two arguments that help to understand Hegel's appropriation and transformation of Kant's purposiveness thesis: first, Hegel's contention that internal purposiveness must have primacy over external purposiveness when considered in relation to judgement; and second, Hegel's presentation of a logical concept of life as the immediate form of the Idea.
The Idea of Life as the First Form of Truth and Freedom
Studia Hegeliana
In Hegel’s philosophy, both truth and genuine freedom belong to the domain of the Idea. Life, as it is categorized in the Science of Logic, is the first form and stage of the Idea, and is therefore essential for a comprehension of truth and self-determination. In this paper, I explore why and to what extent Life is self-determining and true. Considering what Hegel considers to be the three fundamental features of all life, I explain how life is self-determining with respect to its organic unity, relationship with the other, and reproductive process. I explicate how the living individual develops and sustains the collective unity of its objectivity, distinguishes itself from its other, yet sustains and regenerates itself through it, and how it raises its universal identity beyond its particular existence through reproduction.
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
Argumenta, 2019
For two hundred years, people have been trying to make sense of Hegel's so-called "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.
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.
AUTOPOIESIS AND LIFE IN HEGEL'S SCIENCE OF LOGIC
Science et Esprit, 2023
In this paper, I address the issue of Hegel’s Science of Logic as a self-producing system of thought developing itself through a process of self-contradiction and reconciliation. Such a process can be understood in a certain way as an anticipation of the notion of autopoiesis later developed by the biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela. The processualism and self-development of the concept through the progressive determination of logical categories, from the most abstract (or indeterminate) determinations of Being and Nothingness to the most concrete form of the concept should thus be read as the narrative of thought’s self-development as a form of life. Looking at Hegel’s logic through the lens of autopoiesis allows us to grasp the central importance of the ‘Life’ chapter of the Science of Logic as a hermeneutical device for the understanding of the logical process within the Logic.
Logic and metaphysics in Hegel: rethinking the identity principle
Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2020
...when Hegel speaks of the speculative proposition, he posits a horizon of realization and of efficacy where there is a boundless and absolute identity that pervades all differences because they are differences in themselves and, as such, differences are immediate modes of the actualization of the unbegun immediacy. Moreover, being called “the philosopher of the negative” not by mistake or caprice, what one finds in the very heart of the Hegelian system is the absolute coincidence between one and the other, between absolute identity and absolute difference, absolute affirmation and absolute negation etc.. In this, if Hegelian thought is correct, we would have the perfect intelligible and effective instrument of transfiguring any thought and of bypassing almost any type of limit. In this respect the present work has undertaken the burden of a short research in the configuration and occurrence of one of the most basic aspects of the Hegelian system: his ground postulates and fundamental developments of the concept of identity. In this endeavor, we approached Hegel’s Science of Logic where we were concerned with the author’s treatment of this concept.
Hegel's Metaphysics of Rational Life: Overcoming the Pippin-Houlgate Dispute
Hegel Bulletin, 2023
In the past decade, the meaning of Hegel’s idea of a ‘science of logic’ has become a matter of intense philosophical debate. This article examines the two most influential yet opposed contemporary readings of the Science of Logic—often referred to as the ‘meta- physical’ and ‘non-metaphysical’ interpretations. I argue that this debate should be reframed as a contest between logic as ontology (LAO) and logic as metaphysics (LAM). According to Stephen Houlgate’s interpretation of logic as ontology, the science of logic is a progressively explicit unfolding of the categories of thought, which is at the same time the process by which being itself determines what it is to be. A second inter- pretation has been pursued by Sebastian Rödl and Robert Pippin, who read Hegel’s logic as metaphysics. On this reading, the science of logic is a progressively coherent unfolding of the categories of thought, which articulate all that it could intelligibly mean to be. This article intervenes in this debate in three key ways. First, I argue that Houlgate’s ontological approach undermines his attempt to establish the objective validity of the categories. Second, I show that the LAM emphasis on the crucial idea of apperception enables it to succeed where Houlgate fails by doing justice to the rational necessity with which the Logic unfolds. Third, I argue that, despite this success, the LAM program remains unrealized because of its neglect of Hegel’s understanding of cognition as a form of life. While LAM has compellingly unfolded the ‘thought of being’, it has ignored the inverse question of the ‘being of thought’. I attempt to fulfil the LAM program by elab- orating Hegel’s account of what it means to be a thinker.
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.
Commentary on Hegel's Logic 1: Prefaces and Introduction
Phenomenology of spirit. Although I cannot proclaim to be nearly as good a Hegel-scholar as Harris is, I still thought it worth the effort to express my thoughts and interpretations of Science of logic in a study analysing each paragraph and then explaining it in more detail, as best as I could.