Hegelian System Research Articles

Os Descaminhos da Dialética Hegeliana entre Lógica e Natureza

The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between Logic and Nature within the Hegelian system. Our focus lies on the status of the categories of nature: are they merely a redoubling of the equivalent logical categories or is there a substantial difference between them? First, we analyze the secondary literature on the subject and conclude that it falls short of the complexity of the problem. Secondly, we make a detailed comparison between the Philosophy of Nature and the Science of Logic and hypothesize that the natural categories presuppose logic as a standard, that is, a kind of ruler that determines what the ideal development would be; however, as nature fails to faithfully reproduce this standard, its categories deviate considerably from the logical categories.

Hegel and the Theory of International Relations: General Paradigm of the Hegelian System

Hegel and the Theory of International Relations: General Paradigm of the Hegelian System

Existence Within and Beyond the Bounds of Mere Reason: The Confrontation Between Schelling and Hegel

In the multi-faceted trajectory of post-Kantian thought, Schelling—both the person and his philosophy—has always been a controversial figure. Popular historical accounts focus on his precocious interventions as part of the ‘Jena set’, initially building on Fichte's philosophy of the ‘I’, but quickly coming to challenge his predecessor's philosophical dominance. In the crucial period of the late 1790s, Schelling's most notable intervention was to develop a philosophy of nature alongside the Kantian and Fichtean theories of transcendental subjectivity, which caught the attention of Goethe and led to his appointment, at the age of twenty-three, as professor of philosophy at the University of Jena. But Schelling's life and philosophical work continued well beyond this well-documented period, culminating in a late system in which he developed key ideas surrounding freedom, existence, modality and the history of human consciousness that all revolved around a distinction between what he called negative and positive philosophy. This distinction, and his insistence on the need for the development of the latter mode of philosophy, came to challenge some of the core assumptions of the largely rationalist German idealist project and it remains, to this day, perhaps the most powerful alternative to the Hegelian system that rose to dominance already within Schelling's own lifetime, but also well beyond it.

The Death of God as Source of the Creativity of Humans

Although declarations of the death of God seem to be provocations announcing the end of the era of theology, this announcement is actually central to the Christian revelation in its most classic forms, as well as to its reworkings in contemporary religious thought. Indeed provocative new possibilities for thinking theologically open up precisely in the wake of the death of God. Already Hegel envisaged a revolutionary new realization of divinity emerging in and with the secular world through its establishment of a total order of immanence. However, in postmodern times this comprehensive order aspired to by modern secularism implodes or cracks open towards the wholly Other. A hitherto repressed demand for the absolute difference of the religious, or for “transcendence”, returns with a vengeance. Th is difference is what could not be stated in terms of the Hegelian System, for reasons that poststructuralist writers particularly have insisted on: all representations of God are indeed dead. Yet this does not mean that they cannot still be powerful, but only that they cannot assign God any stable identity. Nietzsche’s sense of foreboding concerning the death of God is coupled with his intimations of the demise of representation and “grammar” as epistemologically bankrupt, but also with his vision of a positive potential for creating value in the wake of this collapse of all linguistically articulated culture. He points the way towards the emergence of a post-secular religious thinking of what exceeds thought and representation.

Hegel Against Hegel and His Lumbering of Reason on the African Race

One of the scholars that made sustained contributions to the development of philosophy of history is Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel offers a dialectical conception of history in which the absolute spirit moves towards self-actualization. However, Hegel’s idea of history appears prejudiced and misguided because he not only derided and battered Africans using his imprudent racial schemes, he even excluded Africa from historical considerations in his uncouth racial agenda. This paper uses the critical analytic model to deleted ultimately show that not only was Hegel uninformed to comment on the ontology of Africa and Africans, but that even the system was self-defeating. That is, it was a case of Hegel against Hegel. This is the novelty of this paper since a Hegelian system that is against itself cannot muster the necessary guts and logic to lampoon and destroy another system, worse still, thoughtlessly and irrationally too. The paper also argued that the disposition to colour-brand people using racial scheme is uncritical and inhumane.

Semiotics of spirit: philosophical and psychological discourse

The article provides a comparative study of the Hegelian philosophical system of the spirit and the Jungian collective unconscious psychology. The basic conceptual courses of the Hegelian dialectic are compared with the fundamental concepts of Jungian school, such as the collective unconscious, personality, individuation, selfhood, projection. Despite Jung's pronounced negative attitude towards the Hegelian system, the psychologist's school has numerous parallels with Hegel's philosophy of spirit. The article reveals contradiction between Jung's commitment to the Kantian metaphysics and the abundance of the Hegelian motives in his psychological theory.

The Drama of History: Ibsen, Hegel, Nietzsche

The Drama of History: Ibsen, Hegel, Nietzsche

Do subjetivo ao absoluto: a lógica-dialética enquanto condutora do espírito em Hegel

This word aims to reconstruct Hegel´s methodology, where the dialectics emerges as the central point. Within Hegelian system, I point that the Logic is the axis which the dialectics is better understood. Therefore, dialectics itself is a logical form, I argue, defending a logical-dialectical method. Regarding this comprehension about dialectics, incluind the speculative and metaphysical character defended by Hegel, the argument here is that Logics is the hermeneutical key to understand Hegel´s Philosophy of Spirit, from the subjective to the absolute.

Essence and Representation as Moments of Mediation in the Hegelian System: a Comparison between the Logic and the Psychology of the Subjective Spirit

The aim of this contribution is to point out the parallelism between the three moments of the Hegelian Logic (Being, Essence and Concept) and the three moments of his Encyclopedia Psychology (intuition, representation and thought), focusing especially on the role of mediation enacted by the second moments, Essence and representation. In line with the general Hegelian assumption of the identity between logic and reality, the complex functioning of the movement of the Essence can be regarded, in fact, as the foundation of the movement of representation. Thanks to the same dual constitution they share, Essence and representation both offer a mediation within themselves and between their respective extremes: representation splits itself in itself and stands as a middle ground between the immediacy of intuition and the rational synthesis of thought; in a similar way Essence is characterized by constant internal oppositions and possesses both elements of Being and of Concept. The paper will therefore explore at first the doctrine of the Essence as reported in the Science of Logic. In this section three important aspects will be highlighted: the internalization movement of the Erinnerung, which appears in the transition from Being to Essence; the primary dynamic of the Essence in its specific working, that is reflection; and lastly the peculiar “median role” that Essence embodies in its linking of Being and Concept together. In the second part of the paper the form of representation in the psychology of the Subjective Spirit will be analyzed in order to retrace these same elements observed in the Logic and present them as representation’s own mechanism of mediation. The main focus will be the articulation of the section of imagination and phantasy, in which the element of the symbol is contained. In conclusion the circular character of the mediation inside the totality of the system will be briefly addressed alongside the importance of the negative moment of difference that Essence and representation enact in the development of the dialectics.

The concept of freedom in Hegel’s ​ Logic

Although it is fully developed in ​ Philosophy of the Spirit, more precisely in the ​ Philosophy of Right, the concept of freedom is rooted in the ​ Science of Logic, namely, in the very core of the Hegelian system. And it could be no different, since Logic finds its high point in the Doctrine of Concept and Concept is conceived as the “realm of subjectivity or of freedom” (GW, v.11, p.409). Disagreeing with the contemporary attempts at thematizing the concept of freedom disconnected from Hegel’s metaphysics, as in Honneth (2001, p.12,; 2013, p.17), or in Pippin (2008), the resent article seeks to examine the meaning taken on in the heart of the Hegelian system, to evaluate its potentials and its limits.

Lo público y lo privado en la filosofía de Hegel. Las escisiones del mundo moderno

El artículo explora la relación entre lo público y lo privado en el mundo moderno tal como queda comprendida en la filosofía del Hegel maduro, fundamentalmente en su Filosofía del Derecho. El propósito es dar cuenta de la centralidad de estas dos categorías en la comprensión hegeliana sobre la conformación del Estado en la modernidad y el movimiento dialéctico de la Historia. Frente a la etapa de juventud, el filósofo alemán acaba aceptando la irrenunciabiliad del principio de particularidad y de la propiedad privada .Si bien, la aparición de la sociedad civil, como nueva esfera intermedia, dedicada a los intereses económicos, plantea serios obstáculos que el sistema hegeliano no parece capaz de integrar.

The tension between the autonomy of reason and nature in Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature

This article discusses the relationship between the externality of nature and the autonomy of reason, one of the most vexed problems in Hegel’s philosophy. Simply, it focuses on the question of how the compatibility of the logical structure of reason and factual reality is solved in Hegelian system. It is asserted here that Hegel finds the answers given before him in modern philosophy of nature inadequate, so he refuses both realist and idealist approaches. For him, nature is neither wholly compatible nor distinct from reason. Since he repudiates the two options, asking whether Hegel’s philosophy of nature is a priori style or not becomes irrelevant. After reviewing the literature, a new interpretation beyond this dichotomy is suggested. On the basis of an analysis of the first pages of Philosophy of Nature I will show that, according to Hegel, nature and metaphysics are two different language games: the essential issue is a problem of translation. Although Idea serves as a metalanguage holding together these two language games, no exact transition is possible.

Human and the State before the Alternative Kantian or Hegelian Idea of Law

The political and legal institutions of the modern Western world received their justification and justification in the idea of law, which is embedded in the philosophical systems of Kant and Hegel. Both of these thinkers are unanimous in that freedom is the regulatory principle of law, but it is interpreted in significantly different ways. In the Kantian version, freedom is the basis of the individual’s rights, which is reflected in the legal system of Western societies, in the theory of “natural rights” and in the political principles of liberalism. In the Hegelian system, freedom is predominantly a public domain, personified by the state in its specific forms of realization of the common good. It is Hegel who gives the systemic justification of the state-centric model of society. The Western world went mainly along the path of implementing the Kantian idea of law, during which it achieved high perfection in regulating civil relations. At the same time, this model encountered fundamental difficulties in regulating the relations of social (religious, ethnic and other) communities and groups, including the relations of nation states. The Hegelian philosophy of law was to a large extent perceived by Russian legal theorists as corresponding to the political traditions of imperial Russia. However, the problem with this model is that, in its apology of centralization, it creates bureaucratization of state life and eliminates developed forms of self- government. The political history of Russia is indicative of the fact that in it the clash of the Kantian, in essence, idea of sovereign human rights and the Hegelian idea of the sovereign rights of the state gave rise to specific political and legal (constitutional) insolubility. In theoretical and methodological terms, the way out is the need to establish a mediating link between the private and the universal, between man and the state. It is this link that sees the idea of civil (civilian) property, which is justified by the theory of civilism.

The Absolute as the Meeting Point Between Speculation and Fiction

Abstract The article investigates Meillassoux’s notion of the absolute in relationship with the Kantian and Hegelian philosophical systems. The absolute, as independent of subjective consciousness, is showcased as the meeting point of speculation and fiction. By looking into Meillassoux’s notions of speculation and some works of weird fiction, it is argued that the significant role of imagination as well as a deferred temporality is what facilitates the discussion of both speculation and fiction as faculties able to transcend the limitations that are projected by the correlationist mind. Through a reading of Lovecraftian fiction, both the strong and weak points of Meillassoux’s argumentation in After Finitude and Science Fiction and Extro-Science Fiction are identified, proving the latter to be a less successful way of grasping the chaotic real.

HEGEL E A RELIGIÃO COMO O SEGUNDO MOMENTO DA MARCHA DO ESPÍRITO

Estas reflexões têm como objetivo principal ressaltar a concepção hegeliana da religião no que diz respeito, mais especificamente, à religião como o segundo momento da marcha do Espírito Absoluto. Como se sabe, tanto o sistema hegeliano como um todo, quanto a sua concepção da religião em particular são por demais amplos, nuançados e suscetíveis das mais diversas interpretações, dada a própria evolução e as transformações pelas quais passou o seu pensamento. Esta é razão pela qual, considerando os limites formais deste artigo, nós nos ativemos a tão somente fazer relevar, de maneira descritiva e analítica, a questão da religião tal como Hegel a apresenta na Fenomenologia do Espírito.

Delito y pena en la teoría de la imputación según Hegel

La necesidad de volver a poner en discusión el modelo de imputación de Hegel viene de la mano del desarrollo de nuevos modelos de comprensión cuyos conceptos se acercan a la filosofía por él desarrollada. Objeto del presente trabajo será analizar algunos aspectos sobresalientes de la teoría hegeliana de la imputación, haciendo énfasis en aquellas cuestiones que singuen siendo son objeto de debate y, a su vez, trazar la relación sinalagmática entre delito, imputación y pena pues abordar estos conceptos de manera aislada, conllevan una visión parcial y sesgada del sistema hegeliano de imputación.
 
 

Meta-Encyclopaedic Reflections on the Beginning of Philosophy

AbstractSince in Hegel's view the end of philosophy coincides with its beginning, it is reasonable to expect that the end of the Encyclopaedia sheds some light on the Science of Logic. The Encyclopaedia concludes with three syllogisms in which logic, nature and spirit are related to each other in three different ways. This article analyses these three final syllogisms with an eye to how they can contribute to our understanding of the logical movement that starts from pure being. Trendelenburg and Schelling, like many others after them, think that Hegel's project in the Science of Logic is doomed from the start, because there can be no such thing as a non-temporal, purely logical movement. I argue that the three final syllogisms contain Hegel's response to this challenge. I call them ‘meta-encyclopaedic reflections’ in the sense that they take the whole encyclopaedic presentation of the Hegelian system as an object of critical inquiry and identify its limitations. The core of my approach is to examine how each one of these syllogisms situate us, namely the philosophizing subjects, vis-à-vis the world as disclosed by them. They demand that we shift from a third-person to a first-person perspective towards the world. The logical categories initially appear to move of their own accord only due to the limitations of the third-person perspective of the encyclopaedic presentation, which is to be sublated in a higher, first-person perspective. Hence, Hegel would happily admit that a purely logical movement is a mere appearance, but he would also claim that his philosophy can immanently explain the necessity of this appearance in the beginning of philosophy, and explain it better than his critics.

On the 250 th anniversary of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Two and a half centuries since the birth of Hegel give reason to try to understand why he, like other great philosophers irrelevant of how many centuries ago they were born, should not be forgotten. The first part of the article deals with the content of the central and most difficult part of Hegel’s Science of logic — the doctrine of essence. This particular work illustrates that its creator successfully passed between the Scylla of realism, which insists on the immediacy of knowledge, and the Charybdis of constructivism, which advocates its mediation. Hegel curbs the claims of mediation and immediacy to exclusivity revealing their concrete identity. The second part of the article explores the perspective of the theoretical and scientific knowledge of the spirit, discovered by Hegel, which makes it possible to avoid the extremes of historicism and essentialism that prevailed after Hegel in the sciences of the spirit. Historicism dissolves the unified essence of various spiritual phenomena in the flow of history, which it considers a purposeless element of change. Essentialism asserts the existence of this essence, but leaves it undefined. Hegel logically determines what is historical in the existence of the spirit, an what transcends history as its absolute goal. The last part of the article indicates the reason for the obvious underestimation of Hegel’s achievements by figures of modern philosophical culture. The place of the Hegelian system in the historical development of philosophy and its actual significance for modernity as a model of philosophical knowledge of truth, nature and spirit, without which the history of philosophy is not complete and cannot be understood as a whole, is determined.

Theodoros Karoussos’ Interpretation of Hellenism: A Case of National Philosophy

A native of Kefalonia, Theodoros Karoussos (1808–1876) is known as a classical scholar and a teacher, a political personality and a distinguished philosopher. Μostly an autodidact, he was part of the Argostoli intellectual circle of Ioannis Menayas, a follower of the Hegelian system. The perspective of Hegelian theories influenced Karoussos’ opinions on the questions of Hellenism and its legacy. The particularity of his intellectual shift towards Hegelianism became apparent when he sought to use contemporary philosophical ideas in order to justify the term “Helleno-Christian”, as developed by Spyridon Zambelios, and to revisit Konstantinos Paparrigopoulos’ crucial theories.

A marcha do Estado racional hegeliano: uma reflexão sobre os múltiplos momentos da unidade do espírito

O objetivo deste texto é refletir sobre o conceito hegeliano de Estado, analisando seus principais elementos ou momentos, não sem observar a peculiaridade do sistema de Hegel, o caráter racional do Estado. Um leitor atento poderá notar em Hegel uma preocupação permanente com o paradoxo que já sacudia Parmênides, a saber o do uno e o múltiplo. Pois bem, o Estado hegeliano tem por objetivo conciliar a multiplicidade das particularidades, em sua subjetividade, com a unidade objetiva da ordem comunitária. Sendo um pensador moderno, Hegel enfatiza a importância da particularidade na composição do todo orgânico do Estado; mas, por outro lado, resgatando bastante dos conceitos antigos, tanto de Platão quanto de Aristóteles, Hegel não deixa de exigir que a disposição destas particularidades seja voltada para a universalidade do corpo orgânico objetivo.