My goal in this essay is to demonstrate the continuing relevance of Hegel’s theory of right for contemporary emancipatory politics. Specifically, my contention is that Hegel’s Philosophy of Right can and should be read as defending the possibility of principled, decisive side-taking in political struggles. By revisiting Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, I seek to demonstrate four interconnected theses: that the will’s freedom is both a) the fundamental principle upon which genuinely political change can be grounded, and b) essentially external to, (...) or subtractable from, any and all social alignments; but is nonetheless c) necessarily actualized in specifically political institutions, and finally d) only truly actualized through emancipatory reforms of such institutions. In combination, these four theses demonstrate that politics is the principled, decisive and emancipatory reform of existent political institutions through historically determined political movements. Having established these basic theses, I will examine how the philosophy and politics of ‘prescriptive reform’ operates in practice. (shrink)

I argue that Irigaray's recent work develops a theoretically cogent and politically radical form of realist essentialism. I suggest that she identifies sexual difference with a fundamental difference between the rhythms of percipient fluids constituting women's and men's bodies, supporting this with a philosophy of nature that she justifies phenomenologically and ethically. I explore the politics Irigaray derives from this philosophy, which affirms the sexes' rights to realize the possibilities of their rhythmically diverse bodies.

This article explores the implications of Hegel’s Philosophy of World History with respect to colonialism. For Hegel, freedom can be recognized and practised only in classical, Christian and modern Europe; therefore, the world’s other peoples can acquire freedom only if Europeans impose their civilization upon them. Although this imposition denies freedom to colonized peoples, this denial is legitimate for Hegel because it is the sole condition on which these peoples can gain freedom in the longer term. The article then considers (...) whether Hegel’s basic account of freedom can be extricated from his Eurocentric and pro-colonialist interpretation of the course of history. The article argues that matters are more complicated because that interpretation has significant connections with Hegel’s conception of freedom as self-determination. (shrink)

In this paper, we do two things: first, we offer a metaphysical account of what it is to be an individual person through Hegel’s understanding of the concrete universal; and second, we show how this account of an individual can help in thinking about love. The aim is to show that Hegel’s distinctive account of individuality and universality can do justice to two intuitions about love which appear to be in tension: on the one hand, that love can involve a (...) response to properties that an individual possesses; but on the other hand, what it is to love someone is not just to love their properties, but to love them as the distinct individual they are. We claim that Hegel’s conception of the relation between individuals and their properties, which relies on his account of the concrete universal, can resolve this tension and make sense of this aspect of love. (shrink)

In this paper, I will try to propose a general characterisation of the spirit in Hegel'sEncyclopaedia. This characterisation is based on the opposition between nature and spirit. More precisely, in my view the Hegelian spirit can be defined as the activity of bringing the natural exteriority back to a living totality.We know that for Hegel the notion of spirit takes so many shapes that their unity is difficult to find. For instance, what does the soul in the subjective spirit, property (...) in the objective spirit and the cult of the Greek gods in the absolute spirit have in common? Furthermore, when we consider property, for example, the problem is knowing if the spirit is here constituted by the owner, by the deeds of ownership or by the living relationship between the owner and the possessed goods.Moreover, the Hegelian spirit is a philosophical descendant of several different traditions. The question is, therefore, to know how these traditions are linked in the Hegelian notion. I will present these briefly before stating my general hypothesis about the definition of the spirit.First, the Hegelian spirit is connected to thenoûsof the Greek philosophers. Thenoûs— on the one hand, an immaterial entity leading the universe, and, on the other, a faculty of the soul — is most often distinguished by its separate and rational nature. For Hegel too, the spirit, as a non-perceptible entity, constitutes the freest and most rational stage in the development of the Idea. (shrink)

Résumé Dans cet article, je défends la signification contemporaine de la pensée de Hegel sur la subjectivité et la dialectique en impliquant Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel et Hans-Georg Gadamer dans un dialogue, puis en clarifiant les caractéristiques de l'esprit et du concept. La théorie de la subjectivité de Hegel et sa pensée sur la dialectique font face à de nombreuses critiques. L'un de ces critiques est Gadamer ; cependant, la philosophie de Gadamer est, en fait, assez proche de celle de (...) Hegel. Je prends la relation Hegel-Gadamer comme une illustration de la pertinence et de l'influence de Hegel. Je démontre ensuite l'importance contemporaine de Hegel en analysant les caractéristiques de l'esprit et du concept. Enfin, je propose que l'esprit absolu et le concept de Hegel restent significatifs. (shrink)

In his debate with Dreyfus McDowell defends the ‘pervasiveness thesis’, the thesis that rational mindedness pervades the lives of rational animals, their perceptual experiences and exercises of agency. To counter this idea, Dreyfus introduces the notion of ‘social standing’: the culturally inculcated yet non-conceptual sense of the appropriate distance that one should stand from another person. McDowell claims that social standing is not a counter-example to the pervasiveness thesis because it stands altogether outside of it. In this paper I argue (...) that this response is a misstep, that we should see social standing as fallingwithinthe pervasiveness thesis. While such phenomena do not normally fall within the scope of a subject's practical self- knowledge they are still pervaded by rational mindedness. They are because the dispositions and habits that comprise our second nature, although not the realization of an exercise of conceptual capacities, can be brought within the scope of a subject's practical self-knowledge and in fact changed, and this is enough to establish that they are pervaded by rational mindedness. I argue that we can find a picture like this in a Hegelian-pragmatist account of our habitual second nature. (shrink)

Several recent interpretations see Hegel's theory of the Concept as a form of conceptual realism, according to which finite reality is articulated by objectively existing concepts. More precisely, this theory has been interpreted as a version of natural kind essentialism, and it has been proposed that its function is to account for the possibility of genuine explanations. This suggests a promising way to reconstruct the argument that Hegel's theory of objective concepts is based on—an argument that shows that the possibility (...) of explanation rests on metaphysical preconditions and that natural kind essentialism gives the only adequate account of those preconditions. But in order for such a reconstruction to be successful, one needs to spell out the metaphysical features in virtue of which Hegelian natural kinds can account for the possibility of explanation. The article takes up this challenge. It offers the first detailed analysis of the modal fine-structure of Hegel's natural kind essentialism and shows how Hegel's position, thus understood, provides the details needed to complete the explanation-based argument. (shrink)

The absence of a common understanding of attention plagues current research on the topic. Combining the findings from three domains of research on attention, this paper presents a univocal account that fits normal use of the term as well as its many associated phenomena: attention is a process of mental selection that is within the control of the subject. The role of the subject is often excluded from naturalized accounts, but this paper will be an exception to that rule. The (...) paper aims to show how we might reinstate the subject into the act of attention, endorsing the ordinary notion that attention is a direction of the mind by the subject, rather than a mere occurrence or happening. To do so, it lays out the best work of phenomenology, psychology, and neuroscience on specifying the nature of attention and, in finding them individually wanting, combines them into a unified view that avoids the problems of each. (shrink)

According to Hegel, true freedom consists not just in arbitrariness, but in the free willing of right. Right in turn is fully realised in the laws and institutions of ethical life. The ethical subject, for Hegel, is a practical subject that acts in accordance with ethical laws; yet it is also a theoretical, cognitive subject that recognizes the laws and institutions of ethical life as embodiments of right. Such recognition can be self-conscious and reflective; but it can, and indeed must, (...) also be a felt recognition and as such it takes the form of trust. In Hegel’s view, therefore, the proper stance to adopt towards ethical institutions is that of trust; moreover, there is a distinctive freedom to be found in trust itself. Trust is appropriate, however, only when the institutions of ethical life are themselves worthy of it. Hegel is well aware that not all states and their institutions merit trust, but in his view a life without trust in institutions is a life without true freedom. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that Hegel criticizes Kant for failing to carry out a thorough critique of the categories of thought. In Hegel's view, Kant merely limits the validity of the categories to objects of possible experience, but he does not challenge the way in which the ‘understanding’ conceives of those categories and other concepts. Indeed, for Hegel, Kant's limitation of the validity of the categories itself presupposes the sharp distinctions, drawn by understanding, between concepts such as ‘form’ and (...) ‘matter’ or ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’. I note that Hegel does not do complete justice to Kant's concept of the ‘thing in itself’ or to his conception of ‘critique’, but I argue that his criticism of Kant is none the less correct. (shrink)

In the first section of this essay, I offer a brief overview of Hegel’s dozen or so mentions of dance in his Lectures on Aesthetics, focusing on the tension between Hegel’s denigration of dance as an “imperfect art” and his characterization of dance as a potential threat to the other arts. In the second section, I turn to an insightful essay from Hans-Christian Lucas on Hegel’s “Anthropology,” focusing on his argument that the Anthropology’s crucial final sections threaten to undermine Hegel’s (...) entire philosophy. And in the final section, I offer my own reading of the Anthropology, connecting the threads of my previous two sections. More specifically, I attempt to show that Hegel has in effect quarantined dance in what he terms “the dark regions” of madness in “The Feeling Soul.” Overall, I suggest that this quarantining is ultimately as problematic for Hegel as it has been for dance. Because without dance, complete with its associations with people disempowered in their embodiment, this crucial transitional section in the Anthropology remains burdened with a corporeal remainder that problematizes the entire system. Put simply, Hegel must – by his own logic – learn to dance gracefully with those he would rather shun. (shrink)

Hegel has a metacritical standpoint that can be related to but not reduced to the Herderian metacritique. Hegel’s philosophical language must not be understood in terms of the opposition between an ‘absolute’ and a ‘finite’ language; rather, it must be understood in terms of the opposition between abstract and concrete language. At a theoretical level, concrete language cannot be understood without assuming an organic function of memory. At the practical level, the difference between abstract and concrete language will be understood (...) as the difference between everyday language and a philosophical one. Hegel justifies this last difference by following Humboldtian standpoints.La posture hégélienne vis-à-vis du langage philosophique ne doit pas être assimilée d’emblée à la métacritique herderienne ni être comprise en termes d’opposition entre langage «absolu» et langage «fini». La métacritique hégélienne doit plutôt être comprise en termes d’une différence entre langage abstrait et langage concret. Le mode opératoire du langage concret de la philosophie se saisit en ayant recours à une fonction organique de la mémoire et en acceptant, au niveau pratique, une différence entre le langage quotidien et le langage philosophique. Je vais montrer que Hegel peut justifier cette posture en adoptant une perspective humboldtienne. (shrink)

Through a re-reading of Antigone, I offer a critique of Hegel's use of the story to illustrate the unity which emerges from the representation of sexual difference in ethical life. Using Hegel's own account of habits, as the mechanism by which the body becomes a sign of the self, I argue that the pretense of social unity assumes the proper construction and representation of one body only. This critique is brought to bear upon contemporary moves towards a post-Hegelian ethics of (...) difference. (shrink)

The most valuable political theoretical contribution made by Marx's idea of socialism is towards the resolution of the seeming opposition of mass democracy and rational government. Marx follows Hegel's redefinition of political rationalization as the actualization of the nascent self?consciousness of the existing ethical world when he uses socialism as a statement of those tendencies of bourgeois society that will create the perspectives of social awareness that allow mass democracy. This thesis is made against aspects of the interpretation of Marx's (...) relation to Hegel in Bolshevik political theory. I claim that the Bolshevik idea of socialism as the militant political intervention of the dictatorship of the proletariat develops, through Engels, a position taken with respect to Hegel's philosophy of right in Marx's Rhenish Journal articles. This idea is, however, pre?Hegelian in the sense that it is open to a democratic criticism based on the philosophy of right understood in an alternative fashion. In his writings after leaving the Rhenish Journal and up to the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts Marx makes this alternative available, and the notion of socialism he arrives at here turns on an awareness of the contradictions which make the militant political imposition of freedom impossible. Whereas for Bolshevism socialism is to be imposed on existing society, for Marx it is more the development within that society that makes possible mass democratic freedom. (shrink)

This paper argues that Hegel's depiction of knowledge, as presented in the Encyclopaedia philosophy of subjective Spirit, is founded on what he deems to be the practical interests of self-consciousness. More specifically, it highlights the significance of the will in Hegel's understanding of the cognitive process. I begin with a survey of the relation between category-formation and the notion of self-determining freedom in the Logic , and therewith draw attention to the unity of thinking and willing in the Concept. I (...) then indicate how Hegel's philosophy of subjective Spirit should be read as the applied logic of the Concept, according to which the socially constituted self-conscious I seeks to realise its claims to freedom through its theoretical cognitions of objects. As part of what could be called Hegel's integrative theory of the faculties, I finally argue that the will underscores both the determinate character of our theoretical cognitions and the reflexivity of knowledge in general. On this score, I maintain that Hegel, whose relation to Kant and Fichte I also consider, is of the view that it is with reference to willing that we can account for the self-referential nature of reason in toto as the actualised unity of theoretical-practical subjectivity. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWhile Hegel’s concept of second nature has now received substantial attention from commentators, relatively little has been said about the place of this concept in the Phenomenology of Spirit. This neglect is understandable, since Hegel does not explicitly use the phrase ‘second nature’ in this text. Nonetheless, several closely related phrases reveal the centrality of this concept to the Phenomenology’s structure. In this paper, I develop new interpretations of the figures ‘natural consciousness’, ‘natural notion’, and ‘inorganic nature’, in order to (...) elucidate the distinctive concept of second nature at work in the Phenomenology. I will argue that this concept of second nature supplements the ‘official’ version, developed in the Encyclopedia, with an ‘unofficial’ version that prefigures its use in critical theory. At the same time, this reconstruction will allow us to see how the Phenomenology essentially documents spirit’s acquisition of a ‘second nature’. (shrink)

Patriotism is not commonly associated with freedom. Even less so when Hegel is evoked. By reading Hegel’s concept of patriotism through the lens of revolutionary France, I present a notion of patriotism that is tied to the realization of freedom. This paper demonstrates what happens when Hegel’s philosophy of law is re-read through the political philosophy of the French Revolution itself. Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and its lectures are marked by tensions. The legacy it leaves traces it leaves behind can (...) be re-appropriated to explore the inconclusive hints left by the philosopher. The idea of patriotism is one of them, simply defined as an intersubjective link between the concrete individual and the state or as particular and general interests coinciding. This paper expands this analysis by introducing two elements: Hegel’s discussion on the character of the law and how it comes to be law; and the revolutionary phenomenon itself. The revolutionaries’ views on patriotism and its functions within a revolutionary moment can help us transform the mere traces left by Hegel into a wider vision that incorporates and promotes freedom. (shrink)

When Hegel first addresses moral responsibility in the Philosophy of Right, he presupposes that agents are only responsible for what they intended to do, but appears to offer little, if any, justification for this assumption. In this essay, I claim that the first part of the Philosophy of Right, “Abstract Right”, contains an implicit argument that legal or external responsibility (blame for what we have done) is conceptually dependent on moral responsibility proper (blame for what we have intended). This overlooked (...) argument satisfies the first half of a thesis Hegel applies to action in the Encyclopaedia Logic, namely, that the outer must be inner, and thus provides a necessary complement for his more explicit treatment of the second half of that thesis, that the inner must be outer. The claim that agents are only responsible for what they intended to do might appear, at first, to risk conflating legal and moral responsibility and to lack the necessary means to deal with the phenomenon of moral luck, but I argue that if it is properly situated within the whole of Hegel's philosophy of action it can be saved from both of these consequences and so take its place as an essential component of Hegel's full theory of moral responsibility. (shrink)

This study argues that the exploration of Hegel and Spinoza’s philosophies of material Nature yields a more compelling critique of Spinoza’s thought than either Hegel himself or commentators have recognised. Rather than attempting a full comparison of Hegel and Spinoza’s accounts of material Nature, this study focuses on elaborating a critique of the deficiencies found, from a Hegelian standpoint, in Spinoza’s account of extended Nature. This study argues that the Hegelian critique of Spinoza’s theory of extended Nature takes at least (...) two major interrelated forms. Firstly, this critique suggests that Spinoza does not adequately derive the necessity of Substance’s existence as Extension, as motion and rest, and as finite bodies. This is demonstrated in this study through an account of Hegel’s immanent development of Nature as such and its mechanical forms from the conclusion of the Science of Logic. Secondly, this critique suggests that Spinoza’s mechanical and quantitative conception of the broader picture of material Nature is inadequate. This is demonstrated through an account of Hegel’s critique of any purely mechanical conception of the natural world, arguing instead that Nature is necessarily driven through a series of qualitatively different stages including the chemical and organic. This study makes an original scholarly contribution through its investigation of the Hegel-Spinoza relationship in the specific context of their philosophies of material Nature, an aspect of this relationship previously unexplored. This study thereby makes the first step in the expansion of the scholarship of the Hegel-Spinoza relationship into this new area, opening a promising new avenue for future work on these great philosophers. (shrink)