Absolute Idealism Research Articles

The Exteriority of Thinking: Hegel and Heidegger

AbstractIn The Culmination, Robert Pippin offers a stunning reassessment of the achievements of absolute idealism. Having developed some of the most persuasive defenses of Hegel's absolute idealism to date, Pippin now argues that Heidegger's trenchant critique of Hegel has revealed a dogmatism at the very heart of absolute idealism: an unwarranted identification of what is with what is discursively knowable. This dogmatic identification leads to a distorted understanding of the meaning of Being, a reifying account of beings, and a neglect of our own finitude. In this article, I defend Hegel against these charges. The upshot of this discussion is twofold. Rather than evading the question of the exteriority of being, I argue, Hegel in fact aims to reveal that this exteriority is internal to thinking itself. And rather than identifying the meaning of being with discursive knowability, Hegel shows that the meaning of being resides in a form of freedom that goes beyond the self‐transparency of knowing.

Intersektionalität in Fortbildungen pädagogischer Fachkräfte. Reflexionen zu Bildungsimpulsen und Lernsettings in Angeboten zu geschlechtlicher und sexueller Vielfalt

Educational professionals often enroll in training courses focused on social difference and diversity to stay updated and enhance their competencies in this area. This article examines the didactic use of intersection-ality in training programmes for educational professionals on gender and sexual diversity, the educational impetus and learning arrangements in this regard and the challenges that exist. The data evaluated using participant observation and methods of grounded theory and situation analysis reveal qualitative differences in how the content of intersectionality is conveyed as a concept and how the dimensions of the triad of race, class, gender, the intertwining of different power relations and the de-essentialising critique of identity, which are given with the concept of intersectionality, are taken up and implemented.

Foundations For Constructing Social Values in Quranic Stories

The narrative in the Holy Qur’an constitutes a wonderful ink for every researcher and explorer and an inexhaustible ammunition for everyone who seeks help and absolute idealism. The research points to identify the foundations of building social values in Quranic stories. Therefore, we direct our attempts to clarify the most important of these foundations, which are the belief foundation, the scientific foundation, and the human foundation. Moreover, the penal basis is valuable in developing social values and affirming them in the souls of young people. Knowing these foundations characterizes an important necessity for everyone interested in value studies. Whatever method is used, the foundations of moral formation remain the determining factor for the consequences that we aspire to achieve.

Josiah Royce's Absolute Semiotics: Pragmatism, Phenomenology, and Error

Abstract: Scholars often argue that Charles Sanders Peirce was responsible for Josiah Royce's semiotic turn in The Problem of Christianity of 1913. Thus scholars tend to assume that a Roycean approach to semiotics was a later development and derives almost entirely from Peirce's semiotics. Far from a later development, Royce probably read Peirce much earlier. Indeed, even before Royce had read Peirce, the kernel of a Rocyean approach to semiotics is found in the dissertation of 1878. Thus the present essay will prove that a Roycean approach to semiotics did not have a basis in Peirce's semiotics, whether early or later, but rather grew out of Royce's earliest writings. The first part will reconstruct the early pragmatism in the dissertation of 1878 and find that the kernal of a Roycean approach to semiotics was the idea of a mediating third . The second part will show how the disseration's pragmatism develops into a phenomenology of time that contains Royce's earliest semiosic insights. The third part will explain how the early pragmatism and phenomenology come together in the argument on the possibility of error from Royce's The Religious Aspect of Philosophy of 1885. The possibility of error is Royce's original argument for absolute idealism, so the essay will conclude that a Roycean approach to semiotics entails a semiotics of the absolute.

Philosophy of J. Wahl as an independent phenomenon and as an interpretation of Hegel’s philosophy

The article is aimed at comprehending the perception of J. Wahl’s philosophy in Russia. The central role is assigned to the notion of “unhappy consciousness” in Hegel’s “The Phenomenology of Spirit” and to the interpretation of this notion in J. Wahl’s philosophy. The analysis of Russian–language studies dealing with his philosophy allows to outline two primary strands of engagement with it: within the framework of “French Neo–Hegelianism”, and within the framework of existentialism. Th e need to renounce this established characteristic of his philosophy is shown. Two arguments are stated in favour of this, conceptual and substantial. As for the former, the restriction of J. Wahl’s philosophy to the two aforementioned frameworks narrows the real horizons of his research. For the latter, the “unhappy consciousness” in J. Wahl’s philosophy besides the tragic–religious interpretation of Hegel’s ideas also contains pluralistic criticism of Hegel’s “monism” as a part of J. Wahl’s own philosophical project of “metaphysical empiricism”. It is argued that treating the entire corpus of J. Wahl’s writings will allow for a more thorough insight into the history of 20th century French philosophy, in particular “French Neo–Hegelianism” and the Franco-German debates concerning phenomenology and existentialism.

On the eve of the “Philosophy of Symbolic Forms”: Cassirer and Hegel

AbstractThis paper aims at focusing on Cassirer's relationship with Hegel during the crucial period when Cassirer is outlining and completing the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms in the early 1920s. The main thesis is that Cassirer has never abandoned his original Neo‐Kantian approach, despite the fact that it has been enriched within the perspective of a philosophy of culture indebted to some extent also to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. However, Cassirer maintains that Kant's critical idealism must be contrasted with Hegel's absolute idealism, keeping thereby open the process of the spirit that cannot close itself in a definitive logical structure. This critical stance is shared by some contemporaries of Cassirer such as Dilthey, Windelband, and above all Natorp. We have thus to read Cassirer's project against the historical backdrop of the ‘Hegel‐Renaissance’ in Germany, a circumstance that, according to the author, can contribute to a more adequate understanding of Cassirer's opus magnum.

Raya Dunayevskaya: Hegel ve Marx Arasındaki Diyalektik Sınırlar

This article aims to discuss the dialectical relationship between Hegel and Marx, based on the Marxist-humanist thought of which Raya Dunayevskaya is the founder, through the concept of "alienated labor", which is one of the fundamental phenomena of Marxism. For Dunayevskaya, Marx's emphasis on humanism in Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, is directly linked to his discovery of the revolutionary aspect of the dialectics of negativity, which was at the heart of Hegel's absolute idealism. Thus, from the moment when workers' movements discover the dialectic of absolute negativity, they are transformed into freedom struggles capable of human self-determination. Thus, the dialectical law formulated by Hegel as the ‘negation of the negation’ is read by Marx as the first negative, the sublate of alienated labor. For Dunayevskaya, Marx is the only one who, unlike traditional Marxism, can save the Hegelian dialectic from its mystic aura by transforming it into a philosophy of liberation. For Dunayevskaya, the dialectical boundaries between Marx and Hegel are determined by the absolute negativity/ dialectic of negativity that Marx thinks he depts to Hegel. Keywords: Raya Dunayevskaya, Karl Marx, Hegelian Dialectics, Alienated Labor, Marxist- Humanism.

‘From Time Into Eternity’: Schelling on Intellectual Intuition

AbstractThroughout his career, Schelling assigns knowledge of the absolute first principle of philosophy to intellectual intuition. Schelling's doctrine of intellectual intuition raises two important questions for interpreters. First, given that his doctrine undergoes several changes before and after his identity philosophy, to what extent can he be said to “hold onto” the same “sense” of it by the 1830s, as he claims? Second, given that his doctrine of intellectual intuition restricts absolute idealism to what he calls a “science of reason”, which he says cannot prove the absolute’s existence, what other doctrine does he require in order to prove this? I will answer these questions by tracing the shifts in Schelling’s doctrine of intellectual intuition from the 1790s to the 1830s and drawing out its evolving methodological role within his science of intelligibility.

‘In retrospect’: Object Lessons forum

Our contribution takes shape as reflections on Object Lessons (Wiegman, 2012) from the perspective of three scholars of race, gender and sexuality who were also graduate students of Robyn Wiegman in the mid-2000s at Duke University. All three of us took Introduction to Feminist Theory with her and all three of us received graduate certificates in Feminist Studies. Our educational and career trajectories also share this similarity: we received PhDs in the disciplines (English, Comparative Literature and French), but went on to jobs that are either completely or partially housed in departments invested in studying what Wiegman calls ‘identity knowledges' (namely, African American Studies and Gender Studies). In these essays, we reflect on how Wiegman's course helped shaped our approaches to academic knowledge production and how her reflexive pedagogy animates not only Object Lessons but also our own critiques of identity’s institutionalized forms.

Ideal Realism—Real Idealism

The paper discusses three talks, which were given at the meetings of the Philosophical Society of Berlin (Philosophische Gesellschaft zu Berlin) in the mid-1870s. In these talks, the principles of some main movements in contemporary philosophy (realism, absolute idealism, critical idealism) were elaborated and contrasted to each other. The paper focuses on the concepts of real-idealism and ideal-realism. All the discussants, Friedrich Frederichs, C. L. Michelet and J. H. von Kirchmann, introduce these concepts. Frederichs, an adherent of critical idealism, argues only for the standpoint of real-idealism. Michelet, G. W. F. Hegel’s personal student and an adherent of absolute idealism, takes real-idealism and ideal-realism to be the two sides of the one coin. Kirchmann, an advocate of realism, regards real-idealism as an objective, and he is skeptical about the possibility to achieve it

ГЕГЕЛЬ КРИТИКУЕТ КАНТА (И ПРЕОДОЛЕВАЕТ ЕГО?)

The article considers the alleged – or actual – philosophical victory of Hegel’s absolute idealism over the subjective idealism and agnosticism of Kant. These great philosophers, who were at the same time great scientists, have three essential features in com-mon: they are idealists, rationalists, and dialecticians. However, they have many differences: in particular, Kant’s philosophy is closer to science, Hegel’s system is closer to religion; at the same time, Hegelian dialectics wins in consistency and completeness; Hegel portrayed the picture of the world historical and philosophical process much better, etc. In our time, Kantianism is more popular, which can be explained, first, by the influence of positivism and postmodernism as its cultural background, both based on Kant, and secondly, by the collapse of Marxism which was essentially founded by Hegelianism. Hegel’s philosophy is therefore in need of a new reappraisal and, in a certain sense, rehabilitation. The article touches upon the comparative evaluation of the laws of nature, the two-stage division of thinking and the consideration of the functions of experience by both classics.

Hegel’s vanity. Schelling’s early critique of absolute idealism

ABSTRACT In this article, we present for the first time Schelling’s early critique of absolute idealism within his middle metaphysics (1804–1820), which has great relevance and influence on the subsequent course of German philosophy, and, more broadly considered, on later systematic thinking about the categories of unity and duality. We aim to show how Schelling defends a form of metaphysical duality, from 1804 onwards, without relapsing into a stronger Kantian dualism. In this sense, our author rejects both the dualism between nature and spirit, necessity and freedom, as well as the monist-immanent metaphysical stance later associated with Hegelian panlogism. Against Hegel, Schelling increasingly vindicates the reality of the finite and degrades the infinite to mere ideality in a movement that resembles later existentialism. Furthermore, we defend Schelling against the accusation of irrationalism that sections of Hegelianism formulated against him and present the concept of infinity without the notion of totality, which he thinks of, much like Fichte, in the light of the concept of an ‘infinite task’. Schelling’s later criticisms of Hegel are shown to be influenced by his early idealist critique of the period at hand.

Is Existence Intelligible?

Is Existence Intelligible? Taylor Carman Half a century ago, the word “existentialism” referred to an intellectual trend that crossed genre boundaries as it crossed national borders, finding expression in not just philosophy and psychology but also literature, art and popular culture. More recently, philosophers have begun reclaiming the term for their own purposes. A 2017 collection of essays purports to broaden the humanistic reach of cognitive science, ushering in what the editors call “Third-Wave Existentialism” under the rubric, which is the title of the book, Neuroexistentialism (Caruso and Flanagan). Around the same time, Markus Gabriel, who wrote a vigorously critical review of that book, published an essay of his own entitled Neo-Existentialism, in which he invokes the term in support of his own version of Hegelian idealism (Gabriel). Neither attempt to appropriate the label is very convincing, in my view, but what Gabriel and the neuroexistentialists have in common, in spite of their differences, is that both are attempts to invoke the spirit of existentialism in the name of what I shall call “reconciling projects,” borrowing a phrase from David Hume. Neuroexistentialism tries to bridge cognitive neuroscience and the humanities. Neoexistentialism aspires to assimilate large swaths of contemporary philosophy into the grand vision of absolute idealism. A different but related attempt to combine rationalist and existentialist conceptions of human existence can be found in Martin Hägglund’s This Life, which is not explicitly an interpretation of either Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel or Martin Heidegger but appeals to both throughout, if only tacitly, [End Page 931] in its construction of a philosophical reconciliation of freedom and nature, secularism and faith, social theory and theology.1 Here I want to make a case against all such reconciling projects in the name of existentialism. My plea on behalf of what might be called “good old-fashioned existentialism”—or perhaps paleoexistentialism—rests on a reading of existential philosophy as a philosophy of incommensurability and a vision of philosophy itself as concrete, realistic and antisystematic, in contrast to the abstraction, idealism and systematicity of traditional philosophy.2 Another way to put this is to say that existentialism is kind of antirationalism. By “rationalism” I mean the idea, traceable back to Parmenides, that being and thought are somehow identical or coincide. Rationalism defined in that way can also be called idealism—but more the absolute idealism of Hegel’s Logic than the transcendental idealism of Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, which at least draws a boundary between what he called “things in themselves” and our concepts.3 Robert Pippin has rightly characterized Hegelian absolute idealism as a reiteration of “the founding principle of Greek rationalism,” namely, “that to be is to be intelligible,” that “there is nothing in principle unintelligible” (168). If there is a single idea uniting the existential tradition, not just in philosophy, it is the denial of that claim. Although Søren Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Jean-Paul Sartre have interestingly different conceptions of existence, they are united in denying that it is transparent to reason or that it is identical or coincident with intelligibility. 1. That-Being as Facticity One way to understand the rationalist equation of thinking and being—or reason and existence—is to see that intelligibility, at least since Plato, has been understood in terms of the “whatness” or essence (essentia) of things, in contrast to their “thatness” or existence (existentia). [End Page 932] What something is is specified by the concept or category under which it falls. That it is is without determinate content of its own but functions simply as either a kind of volume knob or a mere on/off switch. Plato was not alone among the ancients in supposing that there are degrees of being—in his jargon, degrees to which a thing can be said to “participate” in a form or idea. To many in modern thought, by contrast, it has come to seem self-evident that being is an all-or-nothing affair: either a thing exists or it doesn’t. In either case, the existence of the thing to which a form, idea, concept or predicate (take your pick) applies is a matter of indifference to that form...

Hegel and Formal Idealism

Abstract I offer a new reconstruction of Hegel's criticism of Kant's idealism. Kant held that we impose categorial form on experience, while sensation provides its matter. Hegel argues that the matter we receive cannot guide our imposition of form on it. Contra recent interpretations, Hegel's argument does not depend on a conceptualist account of perception or a view of the categories as empirically conditioned. His objection is that, given Kant's dualistic metaphysics, the categories cannot have material conditions for correct application. This leads to subjectivism in the content of experience: the subject is given an implausibly strong role in determining what is the case. Hegel's own absolute idealism solves this problem.

Contributors

Contributors

Remarks on the Conceptions of Philosophical Method of Schelling, Hegel, and Krause

“The A2 is Light,” Schelling explains to us in the Presentation of My System of Philosophy (1801) (SW 4, 151). Is such a statement meaningful, so that its truth value can be asked? Is it an empirical statement, which can be tested and possibly confirmed through observations? Or is it a synthetic a priori judgment independent of observations? Such questions are not easy to answer, and they are related to the logical status of Schelling’s theory as a whole.
 That such questions became important stems from the peculiarity of the philosophical systems that were developed in Jena after 1800. They were called “systems of absolute idealism,” but it is not clear what this means. These systems include not only Schelling’s but also Hegel’s and Krause’s. In the following, some commonalities, as well as specific particularities, of these systems will be examined in more detail from the standpoint of methodology.

Gilroy’s Black Atlantic, Hegelian Aufhebung, and the culture of reparation

ABSTRACT This article argues that within Paul Gilroy’s notion of the ‘changing same’ and his more famous articulation of the ‘Black Atlantic’ there is a culture, an education, that can be retrieved by way of recent re-readings of the Hegelian Aufhebung by Gillian Rose and Nigel Tubbs. The piece begins with an exploration of these ideas in Gilroy’s work, noting in particular the ways in which they speak of both complicity in, and moving beyond, eternal repetitions and reproductions of existing power relations and existing notions of identity. This is then taken to Rose’s Hegelian critique of identity and of the postmodern critiques of identity. Finally, these two contributions are reworked as cultures in a logic of education found in Tubbs. This commends reading the changing same and the Black Atlantic as self-educating and re-forming experiences, expressing the deeper significance of current culture wars, including as a lived experience of the tensions constituting the challenge presented by the idea of reparation.

ОПЫТ КРИТИКИ ПРАВОСЛАВНОЙ МОРАЛЬНОЙ МЕТАФИЗИКОЙ НРАВСТВЕННО-АНТРОПОЛОГИЧЕСКИХ ИДЕЙ НЕМЕЦКОЙ ФИЛОСОФИИ КОНЦА XVIII – ПЕРВОЙ ПОЛОВИНЫ XIX ВЕКА

The attitude of Orthodox academic theists to the moral-philosophical constructions of representatives of German classical idealism is revealed. The idea of a significant influence of the ideas of I. Kant and I.G. Fichte on the formation of the spiritualacademic moral metaphysics is substantiated. The attempts of Orthodox theists to identify the «religious potential» of the philosophical constructions of Jacobi and Schelling are shown. The main points of the «moral-philosophical» criticism of Hegel's absolute idealism by Orthodox theists are outlined.

Безосновность как конститутивная проблема «большой науки»

The article deals with the problem of the groundlessness of modern scientific knowledge. This problem is investigated in a broad historical and philosophical context: starting from the transcendentalist philosophy of I. Kant, which establishes a fixed boundary between the cognizable object and the cognizing subject, then through the absolute idealism of G. Hegel dialectically removing the line between the finite forms of human thinking and the infinite being of the absolute spirit, and up to the phenomenology of E. Husserl, looking for a solid support of rational knowledge in the a priori structures of human consciousness. The authors also pay attention to other philosophical attempts to solve the problem of the foundation of knowledge. The authors refer to the ontological epistemologies developed by M. Heidegger and S.L. Frank. The researchers emphasize that the principle of transrational unity of opposites developed by Frank allows him to overcome the long-standing epistemological dualism of intuitively irrational and rational principles and not detract from the importance of private scientific knowledge. The article reflects the authors' opinion, that the combination of holistic and personalistic methodological approaches opens up a theoretical possibility not to dissolve a free and creative human personality in the whole being. Raising the question of the correlation of scientific knowledge and religious-metaphysical experience, the only one capable of giving science a solid foundation, the authors turn to the project of "sacred" science by R. Guenon, in which science finds its grounds in a metaphysical doctrine containing absolute intuitively comprehended principles. The concept of "spiritual science" by Guenon is compared with the concept of "living experience" of cognition, developed in the space of the Russian religious-metaphysical paradigm. The essential difference between the two concepts is seen in the interpretation of intellectual intuition. As evidence of the deep crisis of the modern scientific paradigm, which has lost its religious and metaphysical basis, the authors turn to the meta-scientific discourse of modern Western scientists, which is a kind of hybrid of science and theology. It is concluded that nothing else can save the scientific mind from groundlessness, but faith in the revealed Truth, which is not justified by reason.

Kritiese ekologiese kuns en Hegel se raaiselagtige uitspraak dat kuns moet sterf

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), een van die belangrikste figure in die ontwikkeling van Duitse idealisme, se filosofie staan as "absolute idealisme" bekend, aangesien hy die idee, of gees (verstand) as die eintlike werklikheid beskou - in teenstelling met 'n materialistiese denker soos Karl Marx, wat materie (stof) as primêre werklikheid aanwys. Hegel was die eerste Westerse denker wat die geskiedenis ernstig opgeneem het; volgens hom is alles, spesifiek menslike kulturele aktiwiteite, onderworpe aan historiese ontwikkeling, en beskryf hy hierdie ontwikkeling op verskeie vlakke, insluitende dié wat hy "absolute gees" noem. Op hierdie vlak word wêreldgeskiedenis aan die hand van 'n "dialektiese" ontwikkeling vanaf "subjektiewe" gees (individuele menslike passies en bedoelinge) via "objektiewe" gees (staatstrukture en wette) tot "absolute gees" voorgestel. In hierdie artikel word daar aandag gegee aan wat volgens Hegel op laasgenoemde vlak gebeur, spesifiek met betrekking tot sy raaiselagtige stelling, dat die kuns as "hoogste uitdrukking" van die gees "moet sterf", om plek te maak vir religie en filosofie as manifestasies daarvan op meer gevorderde vlakke. 'n Mens kan tereg wonder wat Hegel daarmee bedoel het in die lig van die voortdurende beoefening van kuns tot vandag toe. Die antwoord is geleë in die frase, "hoogste uitdrukking", wat daarop dui dat hy aan kuns in historiese ontwikkelingsterme dink - met ander woorde, kuns is die draer van die absolute gees tot op 'n bepaalde tydstip, waarna dit plek moet maak vir ander sodanige uitdrukkingsvorme, te wete godsdiens en filosofie. Bowendien is kuns self ook onderworpe aan interne ontwikkeling; vir Hegel is die vroegste kuns simbolies van aard, (met Egiptiese kuns as voorbeeld), gevolg deur klassieke kuns (onder die antieke Grieke) en laastens romantiese kuns (in sy eie tyd). Die verskille tussen hierdie drie kunsvorms word bepaal deur die verhouding tussen idee en materie; in simboliese kuns domineer materie oor die idee in kunswerke, sodat die betekenis daarvan slegs vaagweg gepeil kan word (dink maar aan die Sfinks, as die "simbool van die simboliese"), terwyl daar 'n volmaakte balans tussen idee en materie bestaan in klassieke Griekse kuns, sodat geeneen van die twee dominant is nie (soos in die geval van beeldhouwerke wat die god Apollo voorstel). In romantiese kuns (byvoorbeeld die romantiese skilderkuns van Gericault) vind 'n mens die teenoorgestelde van simboliese kuns, met die idee wat dermate oor die materie heers dat dit byna daarin slaag om in denkbeeldige vorm daarvan los te breek. Hierdie is volgens Hegel die "hoogste" ontwikkelingspunt wat kuns as draer van die gees kan bereik, voordat dit plek maak vir religie as "beelddenke" en uiteindelik filosofie, waar die gees as idee suiwer, sonder enige stoflike oorblyfsel, tot uitdrukking kom. Hier voltooi die absolute gees die ontwikkelingstrajek daarvan, wat by die objektiewe vergestalting daarvan begin en via subjektiewe beliggaming uiteindelik in absolute "selfkennis" kulmineer. Vir die doeleindes van hierdie artikel is dit egter tematies betekenisvol dat Hegel ook melding maak van die voortbestaan van kuns ná die punt waar dit afstand doen van die titel van "hoogste" manifestasie van die gees of idee, naamlik in die gewaad van "kritiese", polemiese kuns, wat vry geword het van spesifieke wêreldbeskouings. 'n Mens kan in die moderne kunsbewegings van die vroeë 20ste eeu - insluitende kubisme, abstrakte ekspressionisme, konseptualisme en futurisme - die beliggaming van hierdie verwagting by Hegel bespeur, waar hierdie soort kuns telkens die ontologiese aanspraak maak dat dit die ware werklikheid blootlê. As besonder treffende tydgenootlike uitdrukking van sodanige (radikale) kritiese kuns word Andy Goldsworthy se ekologiese kuns ten slotte onder die loep geplaas.