I begin by defending Heinrich Gustav Hotho’s foundational edition of the Lectures on Aesthetics (LA) contra Gethmann-Siebert and others who argue for a non-systematic view of Hegel’s aesthetics generally and music specifically. I defend Hegel against the common conceit that his comprehension of music was somehow deficient and introduce the Hegelian idea of absolute agency as performative in art and music. Reference to Kant’s transcendental aesthetics then allows us to grasp how, in Hegel, meaningful tones arise from the vibratory oscillation (...) between selfhood’s presiding unity and its temporal self-positing. I then trace back further elements of musical architecture, such as rhythm, harmony and melody to the temporal oscillation arising from within selfhood. The fundamental ambiguity within temporal oscillation is the source of meaningfulness in music, the feeling that its experience is meaningful without telling us exactly what that meaning is. Meaningfulness forms the absolute Ur-Ton of beautiful music, which arises as determinate tones within selfhood and resonates into the soul of the listener. The temporal vanishing of musical tones within a compositional framework is a pre-linguistic expression of meaning, performative of the ambiguous oscillation between the human and the divine. (shrink)

There exists a very particular grasp of the relation between language and objectivity in the work of G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831), one that rejects the idea of truth as the reflection between words and what they represent.Jeffrey Reid's Real ...

Great Philosophers tells the story of Western philosophy through the thought of its main protagonists, the great philosophers. The narrative begins with the Presocratic philosophers Heraclitus and Parmenides and ends in recent times, as each philosopher wrestles with the problems and solutions of his or her predecessors. Along the way, Jeffrey Reid provides an engaging introduction to many of the principal ideas of luminaries such as Plato, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche and Sartre. Great Philosophers not only provides (...) an ideal introduction to philosophical thought, but also an original understanding of the discipline of philosophy itself. The book aims not only to recount an important tradition, but also to reveal something about how it has affected who we are. (shrink)

Hegel uses the term Einsicht (‘insight’) throughout several key subsections of Chapter Six of the Phenomenology of Spirit (notably in ‘Faith and Pure Insight’ and ‘The Struggle of the Enlightenment with Superstition’). Nowhere else in his work does the term enjoy such a sustained treatment. Commentators generally accept Hegel’s use of the term in the Phenomenology as simply referring to the type of counter-religious reasoning found in the French Enlightenment. I show how Hegel derives the term, through the lens of (...) Kant’s essay, ‘What Does It Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking?’ from the Pantheismusstreit, the philosophical debate between Mendelssohn and Jacobi about knowledge of God. The Aufklärung provenance of Einsicht shows how a deep complicity between faith and reason, in the form of immediate knowing, leads beyond the Terror to a happier outcome in the Morality section. Finally, passing reference to Einsicht in the Vorbegriff of the Encyclopaedia Logic confirms its role in the ethical and political vocation of Hegel’s Science. (shrink)

Nostalgia, a sentimental longing for one’s past, can serve as a resource for individuals coping with discomforting experiences. The experience of bereavement poses psychological and physical risks....

The creation of the University of Berlin in 1810 was the result of interaction between the state and philosophy, two human expressions whose relationship, at least since Socrates' death and Aristotle's exile, has tended to be problematical. That university, which became an important model for North American institutions of higher learning, was from the outset a state university; it was designed and run by the state, as opposed to what was previously the rule: institutions dependent on the Church or princes. (...) The bind, of course, is that this idea of a modern university, defined by its independence with regard to ecclesiastical and private interests, must henceforth depend on the state to guarantee its independence. This dilemma is already apparent in the philosophical ideas at work in the University of Berlin's early evolution. (shrink)

In the Philosophy of Nature, Hegel describes at length and in detail the particular workings of animal digestion and excretion, referring to the empirical research of his day (Berzelius, Spallanzani, Traviranus). By becoming engaged in the scientific disputes and insights of the time—regarding, for example, the mechanical versus chemical nature of digestion, immediate digestive assimilation and the chemical composition of feces—Hegel arrives at the novel idea that what the animal excretes as superfluous is its own particular entanglement with inorganic otherness. (...) The animal’s subsequent feeling of triumph and satisfaction constitutes the affirmation of individual purposiveness, a form of immediate ideality that Hegel presents as animal subjectivity. (shrink)

Greek tragedy, in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, represents the performative realization of binary political difference, for example, “private versus public,” “man versus woman” or “nation versus state.” On the other hand, Roman comedy and French Revolutionary Terror, in Hegel, can be taken as radical expressions of political in-difference, defined as a state where all mediating structures of association and governance have collapsed into a world of “bread and circuses.” In examining the dialectical interplay between binary, tragic difference and comedic, terrible (...) in-difference, the paper arrives at hypothetical conclusions regarding how these political forms may be observed today. (shrink)

Both continental and analytic traditions have tended to associate Hegel’s idealism with metaphysics and therefore as divorced from and even pernicious to reality. Hence, contemporary Hegel studies have tended to concentrate on discrete elements of his philosophy while attempting to avoid its metaphysical dimensions and their systematic pretensions. I seek to show that rather than dwelling in abstraction, Hegel’s metaphysics, as presented in his Logics, recount the thought determinations through which being comes to be grounded and thus, scientifically knowable as (...) nature. Such categorical determining is essentially linguistic, taking place through the grammatical forms of judgment (Urteil) and their outcome in the syllogism. The centrality of these grammatical forms reveals the anthropological goal of Hegel’s metaphysics, where the fully determined copula of judgment presents itself as the object of natural science, for us. (shrink)

This paper deals with the problematic relationship between thought and nature in Hegel. This entails looking at the philosophy of nature and discovering to what extent it claims to incorporate natural otherness or contingency and how it does so. I briefly summarize other approaches to this question (Maker, Winfield, Braun, Wandschneider, Hoffheimer...) while putting forward my own solution. This is expressed in an argument articulated around the three Hegelian images (and their texts) in the paper’s title. We discover how the (...) relation between philosophy and nature is a dynamic one, mediated by the actual content of the positive natural sciences. In other words, thought and nature are mediated by the human activity of scientific knowing, within the systematic project of knowing all of nature. This raises the possibility of conceiving Hegel’s system as open to the future. (shrink)

Why does Hegel change “Dreaming Soul” to “Feeling Soul” in the 1830 edition of the Philosophy of Subjective Spirit? By tracing the content of the Dreaming Soul section, through Hegel’s 1794 manuscript on psychology, to sources such as C.P. Moritz’s Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde, the paper shows how the section embraces a late Enlightenment mission: combating supposedly supernatural expressions of spiritual enthrallment by explaining them as pathological conditions of the soul. Responding to perceived attacks on the 1827 edition of the Encyclopedia (...) by Schleiermacher, Hegel alters the section and its heading, thereby including the pastor’s religion of feeling in the pathology of Schwärmerei. (shrink)

Within Hegel's system of science, judgement(Urteil)is thought's original dividing from identity into difference. In the same context, judgement is also an act of predication where “subject” must be understood in both a grammatical and psychical sense. Thus, judgement expresses a language act that is a self-positing into the difference of being. This article looks at two examples where Hegel's ontological notion of judgement obtains, then finds, the roots of this notion in Hölderlin and Fichte.

In this paper, I explore the largely ignored ethical dimension in the first section of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, Sense-certainty, which tends to be understood exclusively as an epistemological critique of sense-data empiricism. I approach the ethical aspect of the chapter through Hegel’s analysis of language, there, as unable to refer to individual things. I then show that the position Hegel analyses is akin to the one presented by Thomas Hobbes in his Leviathan, as well as in his De Corpore, (...) and which serves to ground his naturalistic ethics. The linguistic juxtaposition consequently allows me to relate the ethics of sense-certainty to Hobbes, not only to his “shallow” empiricism, as Hegel puts it, but to the ethical vision Hobbes presents in his state of nature. (shrink)

The paper explores Hegel's theory of language, from the Subjective Spirit book of his Encyclopedia. Hegel distinguishes between linguistic signs, as arbitrary signifiers and words, which occur when the signs are filled with thought or meaning. Words have greater objectivity than signs. The words of the positive, empirical sciences are taken up into Hegelian Science (system), affording it greater objectivity, which it, reciprocally re-confers on its linguistic contents.

In three studies, we examined food as an elicitor of nostalgia. Study 1 participants visualised eating either a nostalgic or regularly consumed food. Study 2 participants visualised consuming 12 foods. Study 3 participants consumed 12 flavour samples. Following their food experiences, all participants responded to questions regarding the profile of food-evoked nostalgia (i.e. autobiographical relevance, arousal, familiarity, positive and negative emotions) and several psychological functions (i.e. positive affect, self-esteem, social connectedness, meaning in life). Study 2 and 3 participants also reported (...) their state nostalgia. Results revealed that food is a powerful elicitor of nostalgia. Food-evoked nostalgia has a similar contextual profile to previously examined elicitors, but is a predominantly positive emotional experience. Food-evoked nostalgia served multiple psychological functions and predicted greater state nostalgia. (shrink)

This paper examines the Hegelian moment of the for-another in its negative relation to the other moment of particularity: the for-itself. I identify the dissolving, fluidifying action of the for-another by examining figures within the Philosophy of Nature, particularly comets and moons, but also Hegel’s physics of light and sound. The dissolution of the lunar for-itself at the hands of the cometary for-another illustrates how the dynamic relation between the two moments of particularity participates in the presentation of essence, within (...) the Hegelian syllogism, i.e. as mediating between the universal and the singular. The dynamic action of cometary negativity occurs throughout the Philosophy of Nature and therefore should be pivotal to how the work is read. (shrink)

Mettre en rapport des textes de Hegel sur l’amour érotique avec quelques passages du penseur romantique Friedrich Schlegel permet de mettre en relief la méfiance hégélienne à l’égard du désir sexuel. Selon l’échelle hiérarchique de désirs chez Hegel, le désir érotique fait preuve d’un déséquilibre entre le sujet désirant et l’objet désiré, ce qui est typique d’un rapport purement naturel et non spirituel. C’est dire que la connaissance charnelle, avec son objet dénué de Soi propre, représente pour Hegel une forme (...) inférieure de savoir. L’inégalité sujet-objet propre à l’amour érotique n’est dépassée que par la participation à la substance éthique, ce qui exige la reconnaissance réciproque de consciences de soi égales. Dans ce contexte, il s’agit du mariage. Juxtaposing some of Hegel’s texts on erotic love with certain passages from the romantic thinker Friedrich Schlegel throws light on Hegel’s problematic relationship with sexual desire. According to his hierarchy of types of desire, erotic desire betrays an imbalance between the desiring subject and the object of desire, typical of a purely natural, non-spiritual relation. This means that carnal knowledge, with its self-less object, represents an inferior form of knowing. The inequality between subject and object, inherent in erotic love, is only surpassed through participation in the ethical substance, requiring the reciprocal recognition of equal self-consciousnesses. In the present context, this means marriage. (shrink)

Hegel's critique of Schleiermacher as the embodiment of two currents of romantic irony: empiricist skepticism (Schlegel) and feeling (Novalis), are explicitly presented as "absolute presupposition of our time". The article associates these "presuppositions" with features of postmodernity, as presented by Lyotard. Thus, the Hegelian critique of Schleiermacher might be read as a critique of postmodernity.

Hegel's critique of Solger's theory of irony, through his review of the latter's posthumous writings and correspondence, shows that while he distinguishes Solger's irony over that of Fr. Schlegel, the literary forms that Solger's work takes reveals the lack of mediation and content in his philosophical expression: the linguistic forms that Hegel associates with Spirit.

How is Hegel's scientific (systematic) language meant to be objective? Through an examination of Hegel's theory of language, as outlined in the Encyclopedia, we understand how thought inhabits signs to form words, gaining in objectivity. The words of the positive sciences of the understanding are then taken up (reflected upon) syllogistically, where the discourse of Science is informed by the relative objectivity of its linguistic contents. The Philosophy of Nature, for example, does not reflect directly on nature but rather gains (...) its truth and objectivity through reflection on the discourses of the natural sciences. (shrink)

The paper explores Hegel's earlier-than-supposed encounter with Kant's thought, at the Tuebingen Stift, where a reading group formed around the "radical" Kantian, C.I. Diez. The paper argues that Hegel avoided this group and its interpretation because its strictly anthropological interpretation of Kant and its eschewal of any reference to divine (absolute) revelation left it anchored in empirical understanding, leaving aside the speculative elements of Kantian philosophy, notably, the ideal agency of reason and the possibility of rational faith.

The paper examines the "Pleasure and Necessity" section of the Reason chapter in the Phenomenology of Spirit. The temporality of sexual pleasure and satisfaction is best iterated, for Hegel, in the Mozart's Don Giovanni, rather than in Goethe's early Faust fragment, as is usually supposed. In the figure of Don Giovanni, Hegel finds an expression of the futile punctuality of the pleasure-seeker's pursuits and his ultimate destiny in the uncompromising necessity of natural death.

L'objectivité dont s'occupe la science hégélienne n'est pas celle d'une réalité détachée, mue selon les lois dialectiques, et le discours scientifique n'est pas vrai et objectif parce qu'il serait la réflexion adéquate d'une telle réalité. L'objectivité scientifique chez Hegel doit être saisie comme le logos , c'est-à-dire le discours de la science elle-même dans son actualité existante. Il s'agit d'un discours qui est son objet et qui est l'objectivité véritable. Ce type de langage est seulement possible s'il est compris comme (...) le moyen terme entre l'être et le penser, c'est-à-dire en termes du syllogisme hégélien et non pas de la prédication. Concrètement, les objets de la science, ou les contenus de l' Encyclopédie , sont eux-mêmes des discours objectifs, c'est-à-dire existants et vrais. Ainsi, par exemple, c'est seulement comme discours que l'Etat peut constituer un objet/contenu de la science hégélienne.The objectivity that Hegelian science deals with is not a detached reality running on dialectical laws, and scientific discourse is not true and objective because it is the faithful reflection of such a reality. Scientific objectivity, in Hegel, should be understood as logos, as existing scientific discourse. It is a discourse that is its object and is true objectivity. This type of language is only possible if it is grasped as the middle term between mere being and thought, in terms of the Hegelian syllogism rather than predication. Concretely, the objects of science, or the contents of the Encyclopedia, are themselves existing, true discourses. Thus, for example, only as discourse does the State become an object/content of science. (shrink)

The paper examines the historiographic element in Hegel's philosophy of history, i.e. how the philosophy is constituted as a narrative whose objective truth is guaranteed through the incorporation of original accounts, which are reflected upon in secondary sources. It is these accounts that the philosophy of history further reflects upon and incorporates as the objective linguistic content of Science. Briefly, philosophy of history is a discourse that reflects upon other discourses and not on historical "events" themselves.

Over the past decade, support for reexamining and reconsidering the U.S. model of ethics review for protocols involving research with humans has grown, particularly for studies involving participants from multiple locales and organizations. The HMO Research Network received an infrastructure-building contract in 2004 that enabled us to evaluate issues in multi-institutional IRB review, examine possible changes, and propose a new model. We conducted key informant interviews and held meetings with IRB personnel, administrators, and researchers, eventually resulting in networkwide agreement to (...) pilot an alternative model of IRB review for minimal-risk, data-only studies that only entailed use of computerized data from our network sites. This article describes the organizational and interpersonal processes that led to the successful establishment of this alternative model, to inform other research consortia considering new multisite review models. (shrink)

Anticipated nostalgia is a new construct that has received limited empirical attention. It concerns the anticipation of having nostalgic feelings for one’s present and future experiences. In three...

ABSTRACT: Within Hegel’s system of science, judgement (Urteil) is thought’s original dividing from identity into difference. In the same context, judgement is also an act of predication where “subject” must be understood in both a grammatical and psychical sense. Thus, judgement expresses a language act that is a self-positing into the difference of being. This article looks at two examples where Hegel’s ontological notion of judgement obtains, then finds, the roots of this notion in Hölderlin and Fichte.RÉSUMÉ: Dans le système (...) scientifique hégélien, le jugement (Urteil) se présente comme une division originelle de l’esprit allant de l’identité à la différence. Dans le même contexte, le jugement est également un acte de prédication où «sujet» doit être compris dans un sens aussi bien grammatical que psychique. Ainsi, le jugement exprime un acte langagier qui consiste en une autoposition dans la différence de l’être. Cet article examine deux exemples où se trouve réalisée la notion ontologique du jugement hégélien, et ensuite retrace les racines de cette notion chez Hölderlin et Fichte. (shrink)

The ability to extrapolate essential gist through the analysis and synthesis of information, prediction of potential outcomes, abstraction of ideas, and integration of relationships with world knowledge is critical for higher-order learning. The present study investigated the efficacy of cognitive training to elicit improvements in gist-reasoning and fact recall ability in 556 public middle-school students (grades seven and eight), versus a sample of 357 middle school students who served as a comparison group, to determine if changes in gist-reasoning and fact (...) recall were demonstrated without cognitive training. The results showed that, in general, cognitive training increased gist-reasoning and fact recall abilities in students from families in poverty as well as students from families living above poverty. However, the magnitude of gains in gist-reasoning varied as a function of gender and grade-level. Our primary findings were that seventh and eighth grade girls and eighth grade boys showed significant increases in gist-reasoning after training regardless of socioeconomic status. There were no significant increases in gist-reasoning or fact recall ability for the 357 middle school students who served in the comparison group. We postulate that cognitive training in middle school is efficacious for improving gist-reasoning ability and fact recall in students from all socioeconomic levels. (shrink)

Comparative Political Theory and Cross-Cultural Philosophy explores new forms of philosophizing in the age of globalization by challenging the conventional border between the East and the West, as well as the traditional boundaries among different academic disciplines. This rich investigation demonstrates the importance of cross-cultural thinking in our reading of philosophical texts and explores how cross-cultural thinking transforms our understanding of the traditional philosophical paradigm.

How are we to understand Thomas Reid in relation to Bernard de Mandeville? I answer this question by considering two components of the assessment of Hume's theory of morals that Reid provides in his Essays on the Active Powers of Man: first, Reid's claim that Hume's system of morals cannot accommodate the Stoic conception of moral worth ; second, Reid's charge that Hume's account of morally meritorious action leads to an inflated and incoherent version of Epicurean (...) virtue theory. I thus determine the character of Reid's relation to Mandeville by examining the Stoic and anti-Epicurean assumptions involved in Reid's criticism of Hume's ethics. (shrink)

How are we to understand Thomas Reid in relation to Bernard de Mandeville? I answer this question by considering two components of the assessment of Hume's theory of morals that Reid provides in his Essays on the Active Powers of Man: first, Reid's claim that Hume's system of morals cannot accommodate the Stoic conception of moral worth (honestum); second, Reid's charge that Hume's account of morally meritorious action leads to an inflated and incoherent version of Epicurean (...) virtue theory. I thus determine the character of Reid's relation to Mandeville by examining the Stoic and anti-Epicurean assumptions involved in Reid's criticism of Hume's ethics. (shrink)

The three papers published in this number of the Owl of Minerva provide a series of reflections upon the theme of Bildung in Hegel's philosophy. The first, by Jeffrey Reid, explores two contrasting conceptions of Bildung involved in the founding and earliest years of the University of Berlin. The first conception, espoused and developed by Fichte, Humboldt, and Schleiermacher treats Bildung as a spontaneous, natural instinct toward self-development, visible above all in the form of genius, attributed to individuals (...) or to nations. Reid connects this notion of Bildung in significant measure with the Sturm und Drang movement. Hegel opposed to it a very different conception of Bildung resting ultimately upon his distinction between nature and spirit. In Hegel's usage, Bildung refers to the process of development whereby the merely natural individual is transcended, raised to the level of spirit as a member of a moral community, or citizen of an ethical state. As Reid points out, these two conceptions of Bildung have conflicting implications for the role of the university, especially in relation to the state, and the choice between them remains a significant one today. (shrink)

Should we make significant sacrifices to ever-so-slightly lower the chance of extremely bad outcomes, or to ever-so-slightly raise the chance of extremely good outcomes? *Fanaticism* says yes: for every bad outcome, there is a tiny chance of extreme disaster that is even worse, and for every good outcome, there is a tiny chance of an enormous good that is even better. I consider two related recent arguments for Fanaticism: Beckstead and Thomas's argument from *strange dependence on space and time*, and (...) Wilkinson's *Indology* argument. While both arguments are instructive, neither is persuasive. In fact, the general principles that underwrite the arguments (a *separability* principle in the first case, and a *reflection* principle in the second) are *inconsistent* with Fanaticism. In both cases, though, it is possible to rehabilitate arguments for Fanaticism based on restricted versions of those principles. The situation is unstable: plausible general principles tell *against* Fanaticism, but restrictions of those same principles (with strengthened auxiliary assumptions) *support* Fanaticism. All of the consistent views that emerge are very strange. (shrink)

Jeffrey E. Brower presents and explains the hylomorphic conception of the material world developed by Thomas Aquinas, according to which material objects are composed of both matter and form. In addition to presenting and explaining Aquinas's views, Brower seeks wherever possible to bring them into dialogue with the best recent literature on related topics. Along the way, he highlights the contribution that Aquinas's views make to a host of contemporary metaphysical debates, including the nature of change, composition, material constitution, (...) the ontology of stuff vs. things, the proper analysis of ordinary objects, the truthmakers for essential vs. accidental predication, and the metaphysics of property possession. (shrink)