Online research in philosophy

Hegel's discussion of the concept of “habit” appears at a crucial point in his Encyclopedia system, namely, in the transition from the topic of “nature” to the topic of “spirit” (Geist): it is through habit that the subject both distinguishes itself from its various sensory states as an absolute unity (the I) and, at the same time, preserves those sensory states as the content of sensory consciousness. By calling habit a “second nature,” Hegel highlights the fact that incipient spirit retains a “moment” of the natural that marks a limitation compared to “pure thought” but that also makes perceptual consciousness possible. This makes Hegel's account analogous in important respects to John McDowell's “naturalism of second nature.” But Hegel's account of habit can be seen as a version of a Kantian synthesis of the productive imagination—and hence presupposes a given material that can become one's own by means of habit. This does not mean that Hegel falls into the Myth of the Given, but it does suggest that an appropriate account of second nature might be committed to something McDowell wants to deny: that nonconceptual states of consciousness play a role (even if not a justificatory role) in perception.

God is said to be Spirit, but the language of spirit is ignored in contemporary philosophy of religion. As well as exploring the notion of spirit in Hegel, Romanticism and Kierkegaard, participants explore the view that God is a spirit without a body, and the relations between "spirit" and "truth.".

Paper given at the 20th Biennial Meeting of the Hegel Society of America, University of South Carolina, October 24-26, 2008 forthcoming in the Conference Proceedings, "Essays on Hegel’s Philosophy of Subjective Spirit", SUNY Press

The local problem of the soul-body relation can be grasped only against the global background of the relation between Nature and Spirit. This relates to Hegel's naturalism: the idea that there is one single reality - living reality - and different levels of description of it. This implies, moreover, that it is possible to ascribe some form of naturality also to the social body of institutionalized ethical life. Hegel’s position can thus be characterised as a kind of aristotelian social naturalism: this, at bottom, is the combined meaning of the Hegelian theses that soul is the substance of Spirit, and habit its universal form.

Many feminist and other interpreters of the Phenomenology of Spirit have misconstrued the motive behind Hegel’s representation of ethical life and his assessment of Antigone’s agency in its downfall. Upon developing an alternative interpretation, based on Hegel’s challenge of ethical life’s purportedly immediate reading of the meaning of sexual difference, this paper assesses several prominent feminist interpretations in its light. Hegel’s critique of the unstable and unsustainable relationship between nature and law, or sexual difference and legal identification, is shown to constitute a valuable resource for contemporary feminist and legal approaches to the politically volatile negotiation of nature and culture and the critique and elaboration of law.

My thesis addresses a puzzle concerning Hegel's notion of the value of beauty. On the one hand, the contemplation of beauty, in particular artistic beauty, has the same status for Hegel as philosophical knowledge, since through both, we come to grasp the absolute truth: the unity of spirit and nature, or of the human individual and the world it lives in. On the other hand, Hegel thinks that the aesthetic unity of spirit and nature is in some way deficient, when compared to the unity we come to grasp through philosophical knowledge. Thus Hegel claims that philosophy and art have the same content, while philosophy is higher than art. I suggest that this puzzle can be dissolved if we consider that beautiful art, for Hegel, is associated with a form of life, in which the aesthetic unity of spirit and nature becomes social and political reality: the ancient Greek polis. Since the social and political structure of the polis inevitably leads to tragic collisions, Hegel concludes that the value of beauty provides no ground for establishing an ultimate unity of the human individual and the world it lives in. In Hegel's view, it is only philosophical reflection, and the social and political institutions which emerge from such reflection, which can provide an adequate ground for ultimate reconciliation. Nevertheless, I argue, the contemplation of beauty remains a perfectly adequate way of grasping, if not establishing, this unity. Hence according to the interpretation I propose, philosophy is higher than art in a twofold sense for Hegel. On the one hand, it serves a critical function with respect to the value of beauty: it points out the limits of beauty, in particular the fact that beauty is incapable of making the unity of spirit and nature concrete and real, by turning it into social and political reality. On the other hand, philosophy redeems the promise which is left unfulfilled by beauty: to establish an ultimate unity of spirit and nature, of human individual and the world it lives in.

Paper given at the 20th Biennial Meeting of the Hegel Society of America, University of South Carolina, October 24-26, 2008 forthcoming in the Conference Proceedings, "Essays on Hegel’s Philosophy of Subjective Spirit", SUNY Press

The local problem of the soul-body relation can be grasped only against the global background of the relation between Nature and Spirit. This relates to Hegel's naturalism: the idea that there is one single reality - living reality - and different levels of description of it. This implies, moreover, that it is possible to ascribe some form of naturality also to the social body of institutionalized ethical life. Hegel’s position can thus be characterised as a kind of aristotelian social naturalism: this, at bottom, is the combined meaning of the Hegelian theses that soul is the substance of Spirit, and habit its universal form.

Stanley Hauerwas is representative of contemporary theologians in that he describes human personhood in terms of the realization of agency and spirituality. This essay argues that, despite Hauerwas's use of the concepts of character and narrative in order to affirm that human personhood has an involuntary aspect as well as a voluntary aspect, or that human persons have a nature aspect as well as a spirit aspect, his conceptualization of agency leads to the following results: (1) The human spirit is seen as invulnerable to the effects of the nature aspect in a way that the nature aspect is not invulnerable to spirit. (2) The nature aspect of human persons is described primarily as a limit to the full realization of human spirituality. This essay argues that Karl Rahner's concept of the permanent concupiscence of human persons, in contrast to Hauerwas's concept of an inalienable agency, enables him to affirm the radical openness and vulnerability of human spirituality to the involuntary events of external and internal nature. The concept of permanent concupiscence also enables Rahner to present the nature aspect of human personhood, not only as a limit to human spirituality, but as an aspect of God's good creation that has meaning and value in its own right.

This paper concerns Hegel’s much-neglected discussion of the rational observation of nature in the first part of the chapter on reason in the Phenomenology of Spirit. The paper focuses, in particular, on the themes of nature’s inexhaustibilit y, animal life’s holistic character, and the earth’s individual distinctiveness insofar as Hegel appeals to them to challenge a certain kind of self-understanding of what it means to observe nature rationally. In addition to examining the significance and trenchancy of this challenge, the paper inquires whether these same themes have implications for Hegel’s own philosophical understanding of reason as spirit.

Preface to the Irving Singer library edition -- Preface to the Johns Hopkins edition -- Preface -- Introduction: Our human predicament -- The meaning of life : rephrasing questions -- The meaning of death -- The creation of meaning -- Lives of meaning and significance -- Conclusion: The love of life.