Why hegel now

What this means is that the sections or concepts unfurled in the Philosophy of Spirit can be understood to strictly relate to categories developed in the Science of Logic. There is however great dispute on how these categories line up. This is essentially a narrative or the unfolding of the individual subject from its blind undifferentiated constitution, who gradually develops phenomenological consciousness and self-consciousness and ultimately sheds its merely formal constitution and becomes a self-mediating unity: a self that contains its opposite.

It is a historically and-as history is philosophy-philosophically achieved position. Right is where the right to property and commodity exchange, and dispute resolution is discussed. This passes over to morality where essentially the right to desire becomes the focus. It is an inward morality where the will is the source of its own principle. This has the effect of rendering the moral will as infinitely self related object to itself and therefore unsubstantiated and abstract.

Ethical life discusses the moments of the individual in society; from the immediate ethical unity of the family through the realm of difference and caprice in civil society to the differentiated unity of the state.

The undifferentiated unity of the family is broken by the emergence of particular individuals which go forth into the sphere of civil society which is little more than a plurality of particulars and sheer differentiation. This mode is continuos with the current mode of existence in capitalist society, where the individual is a solitary player in the market who exchanges their labour power for other goods and services.

The shallowness of this existence is partially overcome by Hegel in that individuals should form unions-what he refers to as corporations-to protect themselves from the animal like character of the open market. However, the family and civil society are for Hegel merely one-sided and inadequate concepts or moments of the state itself.

The state is the genuine differentiated unity of the universal and the particular; it is the unity of unity and difference. The state is not some totalitarian universal that sits over and against the members of society, but rather it exists in and through them.

It elevates and substantiates their particularity. When it comes to actual states Hegel is far less optimistic:. The state is not a work of art; it exists in the world, hence in the sphere of arbitrariness, contingency and error, and bad behaviour may disfigure it in many respects. But the ugliest man, the criminal, the invalid, or the cripple is still a living human being; the affirmative aspect-life-survives [ besteht ] in spite of such deficiencies, and it is with this affirmative aspect that we are here concerned.

Hegel does not believe that it is the responsibility of the philosopher to do such things, he does however believe that such duties and rules will to some extent become obvious with the articulation of the truth of social interaction. The triad of the state ends with a discussion of history which I shall turn to shortly. Universal history completes objective spirit and we pass over to absolute spirit which consists of a discussion of art, religion and philosophy, our discussion of this will unfortunately have to be left to another time.

This partial outline of the system is fairly straight forward in itself, however, the problem begins when one tries to conceive of it outside of its ahistorical idealistic terms. To be sure, Hegel does not see the system as a temporal development, however, he does simultaneously develop it in history in the sense that the notion or spirit appears to become aware of itself somehow in time and in-and-through the world as such. How exactly do the temporal, existential and logical developments of the idea interact, and how are they related to the practice of speculative awareness?

That is, it is a stage in the ongoing development of thought through the history of philosophy. The history of philosophy must be understood as the gradual concretion of the idea of absolute freedom and as speculative to the extent that it represents the highest development of thought thinking itself.

To be sure, it is man, through his possession of thought, that draws closer to his own freedom of self-determination and hence spirit to its determination.

In short world history is the process of spirit coming to the self-conscious awareness of itself as free. It this sense modernity is the moment in world history where spirit first cognizes its freedom as its truth. In this way modernity is both a historical period and the concept that reveals itself to be the truth of history per se.

That is, in spirit realizing its goal history ends; as history is merely the unfurling of the idea of the freedom of spirit. In the system the true mode of being of the world is abstractly realized or is known and history in this sense stops. The task ahead is perhaps not aptly described as history because the result of history is already known-freedom in solidarity. Hegel suggests that speculative awareness provides the possibility of knowing, in a cognitive or non-empirical way, the true mode of being and purpose of the world.

That is, it allows us to work through the aforementioned philosophical process. For Hegel the speculative realm is a uniquely modern one, in that it is only through the ontological opening that is created in modernity that the modern thinker finds themselves in this position. What is interesting here is that for Hegel this type of awareness emerges out of the totally alienated existence that is characteristic of the current period. Hegel says as much in the foundational Difference essay:.

Richard Rorty - - Journal of Philosophy 69 19 Why Hegel Now? Richard J. Bernstein - - Review of Metaphysics 31 1 - I—Sebastian Gardner: German Idealism. Getting the Measure of Murdoch's Good. Hegel, Norms and Ontology. Joe Saunders - - History of Philosophy Quarterly 36 3 Critical Theology: Why Hegel Now? Added to PP index Total views 67 , of 2,, Recent downloads 6 months 5 , of 2,, How can I increase my downloads?

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Configure custom resolver. Why Hegel Now — and in What Form? The Phenomenology of Democracy. Scott Davis - - Journal of Religious Ethics 48 1 Hegelian Resources for Contemporary Thought.

Introductory Essay. Critical Theology: Why Hegel Now? Hegel: A Collection of Critical Essays. Alasdair C. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. Bernstein, Richard J.. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, Bernstein R. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press; Copy to clipboard. Log in Register. Philosophical Profiles.