Encyclopedia Of Philosophical Sciences Research Articles

Meaning and Embodiment: Human Corporeity in Hegel’s Anthropology by Nicholas Mowad

Reviewed by: Meaning and Embodiment: Human Corporeity in Hegel’s Anthropology by Nicholas Mowad Elisa Magrì Nicholas Mowad. Meaning and Embodiment: Human Corporeity in Hegel’s Anthropology. Albany: SUNY Press, 2019. Pp. xxvi + 313. Cloth, $95.00. Readers of Hegel’s philosophy will welcome Nicholas Mowad’s interpretation of Hegel’s anthropology not just as a fundamental addition to Hegel scholarship, but also, and more fundamentally, as a necessary invitation to read Hegel in a new key. This entails paying attention to questions of embodiment, race, and gender that are intrinsic to Hegel’s philosophical anthropology. The book’s chief merit lies in the way Mowad convincingly shows that issues of race and gender cannot be avoided while reading Hegel, and that Hegel’s approach to such themes is firmly rooted in the experience of nature as a locus of transformation and critical distance from entrenched racial and gender disparities. Mowad concentrates on the sections of the Anthropology that form the first part of Hegel’s Philosophy of Subjective Spirit in his Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences in Outline (1830). Through a careful reading of Hegel’s annotations and the lecture notes of the winter semester of 1827–28, Mowad sheds light on the role of corporeity in Hegel’s thought as a necessary condition for the development of spirit and particularly for the constitution of social community. Most notably, Mowad argues that Hegel’s dimensions of embodiment (mechanical, chemical, and biological) involve cognitive relations to what is corporeal in a way that produces both unreflective absorption in natural life and the possibility of a critical distance from nature. Far from advocating a romantic disenchantment from nature, however, Hegel’s view of embodiment calls for normative assessment without alienating individuals from their natural foundation. [End Page 156] Mowad’s analysis is clearly articulated in the eight chapters of the book, which detail Hegel’s idea of the body, his view of spirit, the different aspects of embodiment that explicate spirit’s natural constitution (such as natural qualities and racial determination, sleep, self-feeling, habit, and mental illness), and the social dimension of embodiment. Mowad’s original and thought-provoking insight is that Hegel’s view of racial determination does not lead to either racial hierarchy or bioregionalism, for it is best understood in terms of a natural foundation of culture, which points to the abandonment of any normative racial or national identity. Similarly, with regard to the notion of gender, Mowad argues that Hegel’s account of self-knowledge in the Anthropology displays a characteristic tragic evolution, revealing the necessary failure of any determinate masculine character that posits itself as independent and sovereign with respect to the feminine character. Mowad’s analysis of Hegel’s theory of race and gender culminates in the final chapter, where Mowad argues that the social dimension made possible by human embodiment is not founded on the nation-state in the sheer sense of biological determinism. For Mowad, the possibility of a social community that is based on the rejection of both racism and sexism rests on the possibilities opened up by human embodiment, and specifically by human habit, once the latter becomes the vehicle for the aims of spirit’s self-determination. Indeed, one of the most interesting and fundamental implications of Mowad’s book is that his diagnosis of the social pathologies characterizing Western society calls for the use of habit as a form of therapy. Such a therapeutic process involves acknowledging the concrete causes of social derangement in order to liberate individuals and groups from cultural fixations, including, for instance, the assumption that one’s culture or society is superior to others. Since Mowad’s interpretation compels us to reconsider the foundational role of Hegel’s anthropology, a couple of aspects seem worthy of further discussion. On the one hand, Mowad argues that Hegel’s anthropology is neither descriptive nor normative in that it has no external object on which it can be applied, because it rather reflects spirit’s natural and spontaneous development. On the other hand, Mowad’s account of race and gender shows that some form of critical distance from nature is required in order to establish the social dimension...

Comunidade (Gemeinde) entre Lógica e Política nas Lições sobre a Filosofia da Religião de Hegel

This article aims to explain how the political project of State that Hegel outlines in the Philosophy of Right (1821) is recovered by the concept of “community” (Gemeinde) in the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (1821-1832) with the use of syllogisms of creation and redemption of world as they are presented in the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences (1830). Once the rational State is grounded on different dimensions of human life, it recognizes them as its own, materializing a viable collective project only when individual freedoms are warranted. According to Philosophy of Right, the effectiveness of the State occurs through the collecting of previous stages concerning the actualization of freedom. It is applied to the will, which paves the way for morality and ethical life. On the other hand, Hegel, in the classes that constitute the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, will focus on the concept of “community”. In the same way as the State, the community is also a social arrangement, with its own rites and rules, whose participants acquire a sense of belonging and unity. By evidencing similar purposes to the State, the community's goal is to maintain the group based on a constituted and collectively assimilated order. Whether the community has a political role, therefore, this aspect is best seen when Hegel's political theory is connected with the philosophy of religion in accordance with the elements "freedom", "finite", "infinite", "concept" and “truth" identified in Hegel’s logic.

Философия духа Гегеля в современном прочтении (размышление над книгой «Hegel’s Philosophy of Spirit: A Critical Guide»)

The article comprehends the features of Hegel’s philosophy of the late period, presented in the book “Hegel’s Philosophy of Spirit: A Critical Guide” edited by M.F. Bykova. The author analyses the key points of Hegel’s philosophical sys­tem and demonstrates that the combination of careful textual work and, on its ba­sis, the interpretation of philosophical ideas considered in the context of specific historical eras, plays an important role in conducting research in the field of Hegel studies. Since the philosophical works of Hegel are assessed as very diffi­cult for reading and interpretation, and the principles of building his philosophi­cal system and the development of the absolute spirit, as a result, are often mis­understood, it is not always possible to successfully accomplish such a task. The reviewed collective monograph serves as a good example of research work combining reliance on authorized text sources and grounded interpretations of Hegel’s philosophy within the framework of modern scientific and sociocultural knowledge. The articles collected in the book are devoted to various problems of Hegel’s philosophy of the spirit, presented mainly in the “Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences”, and reasonably show the relevance and importance of Hegel’s philosophy in our days.

Hegels Begriff der Gewohnheit

Abstract In his Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences, Hegel states that the essential characteristic of spirit is to exhibit the structure of manifestation. This paper argues that for Hegel the structure of manifestation is actualized in habituated bodily actions, which sheds light on Hegel’s understanding of the relation between body and soul. Furthermore, the paper shows that there is an intrinsic relation between Hegel’s theory of habit and his aesthetics. Insofar as it exemplifies the structure of manifestation, habit has an expressive dimension for Hegel, and is therefore essentially complemented by its portrayal in classical works of art by virtue of the specific relation between form and content that such works exhibit. According to the interpretation presented here, Hegel’s philosophy of mind and his philosophy of aesthetics mutually complement and illuminate each other.

O Conceito Hegeliano de Complexidade como Enciclopédia das Ciências Filosóficas

O objetivo do presente artigo é propor uma reavaliação do sistema da Enciclopédia das Ciências Filosóficas de Hegel, simultaneamente como Ciência da Complexidade e do Espírito como Liberdade. Segundo a hipótese proposta, as divisões da Filosofia da Natureza e da Filosofia do Espírito do sistema revelam preocupações com o concreto da manifestação do Absoluto que, na época contemporânea, só um termo como o de complexidade permite qualificar. A Lógica, por seu lado, representa as estruturas formais dos processos que as partes reais do sistema vão colocar a descoberto na sua diversidade não redutível, em contraste com os modelos fisicalistas. O método empregue foi o da análise semântico-conceptual, dentro da economia textual dos esboços de sistema de Hegel, anteriores a 1817, e da Enciclopédia.

The Times of Desire, Hope and Fear

The aim of this article is to show that the Philosophy of Subjective Spirit in Hegel’s mature Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences contains the outlines of a philosophically rich notion of the constitutive temporality of subjectivity. The temporality of the being of Hegel’s concrete subject is intimately connected with embodiment and sociality, and is thus an essential element of its fully detranscendentalized inner-worldly nature.

Hegel's Attempt to Forge a Logic for Spirit

If Hegel's philosophy were to be characterized by a phrase, it might be “The Dialectical System of Absolute Spirit.” The phrase would seem formidable to some but merely pretentious to others. There are recent signs of an exhumation of the systematic features of Hegel's philosophy in the English-speaking world, and it is to be hoped that the durable clichés of an earlier English period will not prevent a fresh look at Hegel's philosophy. There is, of course, no denying his systematic ambitions, nor any wish on my part to do so. It is just these that I find fascinating. He sought to bring within a comprehensive intellectual order the whole of reality—and a little more besides, say his detractors. In the Phenomenology of Spirit by a turbulent dialectic he scrabblesup to the top of Mount Parnassus in order to clutch the petticoats of the Absolute. In the Science of Logic and in the first part of the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences he lays out the logical paradigm of intellectual necessities which are subsequently exhibited in the philosophy of nature and of concrete spirit.