Hegel's Analysis Research Articles

Colonial Slavery, the Lord-Bondsman Dialectic, and the St Louis Hegelians

AbstractHegel's lord-bondsman dialectic has been of especially great interest to progressive and radical Hegelians—broadly speaking, politically left-leaning interpreters of Hegel who object to certain social hierarchies and demand their abolition. They read Hegel as giving an account of how ‘lordship’ over others is an inherently unstable and unsatisfying social formation, even for its supposed beneficiaries. Marxists, feminists and post-colonial theorists have all found inspiration in Hegel's analysis of the lord and bondsman by applying it to concrete relations of oppression, such as capitalism, patriarchy, or racism. In contrast, recent scholarship on Hegel's views on race and colonialism has cast doubt on whether his systematic political philosophy and philosophy of history can be of similar use to progressives. Hegel was undeniably a Eurocentric thinker, but philosophers like Robert Bernasconi and Alison Stone have convincingly shown that he was also a racist and a defender of colonialism. Crucially, however, few of the scholars who write on Hegel's pro-colonialism have analysed this feature of Hegel's thought in connection with the lord-bondsman dialectic. In this article, I argue for two connected theses. First, I argue that contrary to the hopes of some progressive defenders of Hegel, we cannot easily separate the lord-bondsman dialectic from Hegel's pro-colonialism. This is because Hegel himself appealed to the lord-bondsman dialectic to argue that colonial slavery educated its victims, and could therefore be temporarily justified. Second, I argue that this pro-colonial reading of the dialectic, though largely ignored by contemporary interpreters, was in fact recognized and embraced by a group of Hegelians in North America known as the St Louis Hegelians. They used the lord-bondsman dialectic as a basis for a qualified defence of pre-Civil War American slavery.

A Critical Reflection on James Kreines's Interpretation of Hegel's Account of ‘Mechanism’

Abstract James Kreines's Reason in the World (2015) offers an engaging and thought-provoking examination of Hegel's ambitions in the Science of Logic. However, it has gone unnoticed that there are two fundamental misinterpretations in his account of ‘Mechanism’ from the Logic. First, Kreines interprets the chapter as beginning with a ‘pure mechanism’ hypothesis that investigates the coherence of a purely mechanistic explanation of the world that makes no appeal to the immanent concept of things. Thus, according to Kreines, the Concept is absent from the beginning of ‘Mechanism’ and only appears in the final section of the chapter, in ‘C. Absolute Mechanism’ in the subsection on the law, what Kreines conceptualizes as ‘reasonable mechanism’. Second, within his overall interpretation of ‘Mechanism’ as the development from the ‘pure mechanism’ hypothesis to ‘reasonable mechanism’ Kreines claims that there are logical moments that are explanatorily relevant and some that are not. Thus, Kreines will want to claim that Hegel's analysis of ‘pure mechanism’ reveals that ‘pure mechanism’ fails to be explanatorily relevant because, a) the logical moments do not have a concept immanent to them, and b) have ‘indifference’. It is only in the law that mechanistic explanations become explanatorily relevant because of the appearance of the Concept and the disappearance of ‘indifference’. I argue against both these positions. First, I think that there is no textual support for the idea that ‘Mechanism’ begins without the Concept immanent to it. Second, I think that Kreines is mistaken to equate ‘indifference’ with explanatory irrelevance and the absence of the Concept. My approach in this paper is to give my own analysis of the relevant passages from ‘Mechanism’ and, in doing so, to both show the misgivings of Kreines's interpretation and to offer an alternative way of reading the chapter.

Hegel, Beck and the reconceptualization of ecological risk: The example of Australian agriculture

Abstract Ecological risk is challenging the modern societal development approach that has dominated thought and practice for centuries. Due to incomplete assumptions about the ecological risk inherent to modern systems, the very nature of societal actions and reactions are being brought into question, such that the dominant development heuristic is no longer sustainable. Hegel's dialectical analysis has strongly influenced conceptions of development. He stated that societies progress through actions that correspond to theses about how humanity should best live and produce, and correct or mediate any limitations or crises by formulating antitheses, which eventually lead to syntheses or alternatives, which in turn become the new norm. That process has never fully incorporated all environmental constraints and as a result, risk is destabilizing modernity, including the agricultural systems that focus this paper. As a remedy to a First modernity that generates intractable risks as a necessary companion to development, Beck framed the concept of an alternative Reflexive modernity, where multiple, simultaneous cosmopolitan paths generate sophisticated, sustainable development forms. Contemporary knowledge of the importance of nature for societal development have shown that risk can be incorporated into decision-making at local, national and global scales to allow an ecological dialectic to account for the externalities of modernity. In this review, Australian agriculture exemplifies how risk has been generated through an inappropriate development path and how an antithesis is beginning to enable a reconceptualization of risk. To learn to anticipate and respond to risk, agricultural communities could be supported to engage with the best available knowledge on future risk and assisted through research, training, mutual learning and policy settings to adapt effectively. To generate a response of sufficient scale in a timely manner, the theoretical Hegelian development framework must evolve to include key ecological principles to order to present a comprehensive, critical antithesis to all modern societal systems.

Hegel's Analysis of Egyptian Art and Architecture as a Form of Philosophical Anthropology

In his different analyses of ancient Egypt, Hegel underscores the marked absence of writings by the Egyptians. Unlike the Chinese with the I Ching or the Shoo king, the Indians with the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, the Persians with the Avesta, the Jews with the Old Testament, and the Greeks with the poems of Homer and Hesiod, the Egyptians, despite their developed system of hieroglyphic writing, left behind no great canonical text. Instead, he claims, they left their mark by means of the architecture and art. This paper explores Hegel’s analysis of the Egyptians’ obelisks, pyramids, sphinxes, etc. in order to understand why he believes that these are so important for understanding the Egyptian spirit. This analysis illustrates Hegel’s use of history and culture in the service of philosophical anthropology.

Hegel's Analysis of Egyptian Art and Architecture as a Form of Philosophical Anthropology in advance

Hegel's Analysis of Egyptian Art and Architecture as a Form of Philosophical Anthropology in advance

Hegel's analysis of the civil society and his justification of its public regulation

Hegel's analysis of the civil society and his justification of its public regulation

Consideramus in speculo – fragments of a Hegelian mirror in dialectical theology

AbstractThe article re-examines Karl Barth's claim that his 1931 book on Anselm of Canterbury's proof of the existence of God from Proslogion 2–4, the Fides Quaerens Intellectum, provides a ‘vital key’ for understanding the rationality of his later theology. The article takes up the question of what ‘dialectics’ denotes in Barth's theology. Re-engaging the issue of dialectics in Karl Barth's theology, particularly in light of the developments of his thought, leads to a critical revision of Bruce McCormack's influential interpretation of Barth's dialectical theology.Through a close reading of the section, ‘The manner of theology’, from the first of the two parts of Fides Quaerens Intellectum the article sheds light on how Barth envisions the construction of the theoretical concepts of theology in light of his concrete exegetical praxis. By focusing on the relationship between theory and praxis, an understanding of Barth's dialectical theology as a form of ‘speculative reading’ emerges. This notion of dialectics as developing in light of a practice of speculative reading allows us to compare certain aspects of concept-formation in the theology of Karl Barth and the dialectical philosophy of the German Idealist, G. W. F. Hegel. Drawing explicitly on Hegel's analysis of infinite judgement from the second volume of his 1812 Science of Logic, Barth's use of the tautology ‘God is God’ in his second commentary on Romans from 1922 is shown to provide important insight into the structure of Barth's dialectical thinking. This explicitly relates to the important issue of the relationship between faith and reason in Karl Barth's theology, which sheds a new light on how his understanding of the rational basis of the theory and praxis of theology developed from his second Romans commentary onwards.Finally, Barth's use of dialectics and his account of the rationality of theology as a form of ‘speculative reading’ permits some final reflections on the significance of pneumatology for constructive theology by underscoring how Barth insists on the priority of praxis over theory. To understand Barth's theology and the way it changes over the years is to understand the rationality of its concrete praxis.

Mobilizing Hegel's Master-Slave Analysis in The Phenomenology of Spirit to Illuminate New Possibilities in Ambedkar's Annihilation of Caste

Mobilizing Hegel's Master-Slave Analysis in The Phenomenology of Spirit to Illuminate New Possibilities in Ambedkar's Annihilation of Caste

Hegel, Imperialism, and Universal History

Abstract A growing body of scholarship has addressed Hegel's analysis of the social question and of European expansionism. An equally significant literature has focused on his philosophy of history, discussing its Eurocentrism or even his racist distortions. Study of the link between Hegel's political economy and his philosophy of history reveals the centrality of labor and of historical evolution in his work. This permitted Hegel to overcome, in part, the naturalizing approach of the classical economists and to identify some contradictions of the system. As he also ended up by naturalizing it, however, Hegel promoted European expansionism on the basis of a Eurocentric vision that clashes with the universalist perspective of the Philosophy of Right.

Freedom and necessity: the transition to the logic of the concept in Hegel's Science of Logic

Whether freedom and causal necessity can coexist in the same world remains a contested question. In this article, I seek to show that Hegel's analysis of the category of causality, which concludes in the transition from the logic of essence to the logic of the concept, can help to elucidate this question itself. Starting with a short characterization of the positions in Kant's account of the ‘antinomy of freedom’ in his Critique of Pure Reason, I reconstruct the main sections of Hegel's account of causality in his Science of Logic. Holding the two accounts together shows that both proponent and opponent in the ‘antinomy of freedom’ are misled in that there are not two different kinds of causality at issue but rather two intrinsically connected moments of causality as such.

The “Myth of the Given”: The Hegelian Meditations of Wilfrid Sellars

The “Myth of the Given”: The Hegelian Meditations of Wilfrid Sellars

Jane Austen on Love and Pedagogical Power

This essay notes initially recent prominence of theories of pedagogy that attempt to "de-mystify" it and reveal troubling power relations, and their subsequent contention that love is impossible in the student-teacher relationship. "Pedagogical" interpretations of Jane Austen's fiction, however, see pedagogy as essential to love. I argue that this is so precisely because of the power dynamics involved; drawing on Jessica Benjamin's psychoanalytic interpretation of G. W. F. Hegel's analysis of the "Lord-Bondsman," I suggest that Austen portrays the loving relationship as inherently involving the occupation and subsequent exchange of roles as superior and inferior, incarnated as "teacher" and "student."

Metropolis and post-modern metropolis as a critical field of modern mimicry

Hegel's analysis and definition of the work of art in the Esthetic foretold transformation in visual communication and perception of arts in the advertising age. During the transformative period of economy into money economy fundamental social and cultural ruptures introduced new methods of transgression in forms expression and conception of meaning in arts, and by implication, in architecture. Aesthetic radically departed from the norms of figuration in the classical art into symbolic reading. These exigencies in style and conception reflected the new consciousness that was impinged on by the age of sciences and mechanical reproduction.

Hegel's Hyperbolic Formalism

The Science of Logic is perhaps Hegel's most notoriously impenetrable work. Despite well over a century of commentaries as well as the recent proliferation of scholarship, there exists little agreement concerning the text, whether with regard to particular details or the project of speculative logic in general. Nonetheless, the Logic has often been regarded as exemplifying totalizing metaphysics at its worst. Contemporary philosophers concerned with overcoming metaphysics have thus sought to show not only the incoherence of speculative logic but also the perils of Hegel's supposedly totalizing philosophy.In contrast, showing the continuity between Kant and Hegel has been the strategy for establishing a ‘non-metaphysical’ view of Hegel's speculative logic. Against readings of Hegel as a metaphysical monist who defends the reality of the Absolute Idea developing in nature and spirit, speculative logic is presented as the absolute-idealist successor to Kantian transcendental logic. Hegel's speculative logic is an ‘idealist logic’, since it aims at expounding the conditions necessary for the determinacy of any possible object of thought. Speculative logic thus clarities that experience is dependent on non-empirical concepts and, ultimately, on selfconsciousness. Along this interpretative line, Hegel's Science of Logic offers an account of thinking as a norm-based activity, and of concepts as rules for fixing determinacy. The great insight of Hegel's Logic is, on this view, twofold. First, Hegel's notion of the concept [der Begriff] is understood as a holistic-inferential system of logical concepts, since it provides an account of conceptual content as determined by every other possible content. Second, Hegel's analysis of the actualization of the concept — of the concept that has ‘made itself the foundation’, in Hegel's obscure phrasing — provides an account of the fundamental role of authority involved in the process of fixing determinacy. To be bound to a rule is to acknowledge it as having authority over us and at the same time to institute it as authoritative over the states of affairs that we seek to determine. That Hegel spoke of the freedom of the concept is, therefore, crucial. It suggests that determinacy is ultimately a matter of the authorization of reason, of establishing one way of fixing intelligibility over against others.

Hermann Lotze’s Gestalt Metaphysics in Light of the Schelling and Hegel Renaissance (1838–1841)

Situating Lotze in School of Speculative Theology, I use debates about Schelling's critique of Hegel—then and now—to understand Lotze's critique of Hegel. Lotze's early metaphysics seems to employ a version of Hegel's dialectical analysis of being, phenomena, and mind emphasizing the interconnection of things. One can equally argue that he proceeds in an analytic style of reviewing and testing alternative theories. My tentative conclusion is that he assumes existence of reality (the Absolute) like Schelling, and makes cognition a process subordinate to that reality. In this respect, he goes beyond his Kantian mentors J. F. Fries and E. F. Apelt. From all these sources came a radically original Gestalt metaphysics. For example, he reverses Kant's of intuition (Anschauung) into forms of intuitability(Anschaulichkeit), including relational categories of space, time, motion, mechanism, organism, law, and event. He then makes categories into ethical levels of a teleological idealism. In this way he overcomes his Herbartian teachers' separation of metaphysics from ethics, evincing his center Hegelian roots.

Self annulment of space

This paper is an attempt of appliance Hegel's aesthetic scheme to modern painting. Hegel's analysis of historical development of arts has been based upon principle of, so to say, self annulment of space. From architecture sculpture, painting, to music and poetry, Hegel recognizes principle of self annulment of space as key model of change an progress from material to spiritual. The author of this text has tried to analyze modern painting in the same terms, in Hegel's terms of self annulment of space, putting an emphasis upon what is alive today in Hegel's philosophy of art.

Hegel and What is Actual

This article consists of three chapters in a work on Hegel's Science of Logic. The three chapters cover Hegel's analysis of actuality. What is actual for Hegel is that things pass away. Everything else is an illusory being or an appearance. When an appearance of essence shows itself to be finite and false, it passes away and becomes actual, since its destiny is to pass away. This leads directly to Hegel's theory of subjectivity. For Hegel, substance is subject. And what is subject is the continuance of being across the process of the disappearance or dissolution of appearances.

Hegel, war and the tragedy of imperialism

This article contextualises Hegel's writings on international order, especially those concerning war and imperialism. The recurring theme is the tragic nature of the struggles for recognition which are instantiated by these phenomena. Section one examines Hegel's analysis of the Holy Roman Empire in the context of French incursions into German territories, as that analysis was developed in his early essay on ‘The German Constitution’ (1798–1802). The significance of his distinction between the political and civil spheres is explored, with particular attention being paid to its implications for Hegel's theory of nationalism. The second section examines Hegel's development of the latter theory in The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), stressing the tragic interpenetration of ‘culture’ and intersubjective recognition. A recurring theme here is the influence of this theory on Hegel's interpretation of Napoleon's World-Historic mission, as that was revealed in his contemporaneous letters. Section three traces the tragic dynamic underlying the discussion of war between civilised states in The Philosophy of Right (1821). Section four examines three other types of imperial action in Hegel's mature writings, particularly The Philosophy of History (1832). These are relations between civilised states and culturally developed yet politically immature societies; colonial expansion motivated by capitalist under-consumption; and conflict between civilised states and barbarous peoples. It is concluded that it is misleading to claim that Hegel glorified conflict and war, and that he did not see domination by ‘civilised states’ as the ‘final stage’ of World History.

Does God Exist?: Hegel and Things

This paper addresses God's existence, according to Hegel. Does God exist? For Hegel, the question does not make sense, because existence (basically the symbolic realm of language and thought - the realm of things) is inadequate to God's concept. People who ask the question, Does God exist? are in search of a proof or a ground in which to assure the questioner that God does or does not exist. Hegel argues, however, that any such ground is by definition finite. What Hegel does is to attack the question Does God exist? on the side of existence. Since existence implies finite things, any adduced ground of God is a finite thing that must waft away, like all other finite things. The paper analysis the middle chapters of essence in Hegel's monumental Science of Logic. It is the fifth nstallment of the author's attempt to explicate this neglected work with a pictographic system that illustrates every logical step Hegel makes in his master work. The middle chapters of essence analyze the nature of things and show them to be finite. The import of Hegel's analysis upon the metaphysics is that any purported ground of God - some specific proof - is itself a thing that is finite and must waft away. Only when the deck is cleared of all finite things can God (in its infinitude) be appreciated in its true notion. The paper defers, however, for a later day, Hegel's ultimate ontological proof of God which exceeds the mediocre realm of mere existence.

Unnatural Rights: Hegel and Intellectual Property

Many proponents of intellectual property law seek refuge in a personality theory of property associated with G.W.F. Hegel. This theory seems to protect intellectual property from potential attacks by a utilitarian analysis that would recognizes property only contingently insofar as it furthers society's goals of utility or wealth maximization. Personality theory, in contrast, supposedly offers a principled argument that intellectual property right must be recognized by a just state, regardless of efficiency considerations. Personality theory also seems to protect intellectual property from assault by critics who maintain that it is not a form of property at all. Finally, personality theory has also been used to support an argument for heightened protection of intellectual property beyond that given to other forms of property - the Continental right of artists in their creations is an example. Unfortunately, references to Hegel by personality theorists are almost always incorrect. Prof. Schroeder seeks to save Hegel from the misperceptions of his well-meaning proponents. It is true that Hegel thinks that a modern constitutional state should establish a minimal private property regime because property plays a role in the constitution of personality. It is not true, however, that Hegel thought that society is required to respect any specific type of property or any specific claim of ownership. It is also true that Hegel thought that intellectual property could be analyzed as a form of property and not as a sui generis right that is merely analogous to property. However, it is not true that Hegel ascribes any special role to intellectual property. As such, Hegel's theory can not be used to support the proposition that the state must recognize intellectual property claims, only that it may do so. Moreover, the Continental moral right of artists is inconsistent with an Hegelian analysis of property. In contrast to a widespread misconception, Hegel completely rejects any concept of law generally, and any right of property, specifically. Indeed, Hegel considers the expression natural to be an oxymoron. To Hegel, nature is unfree and rights are artificial constructs created as a means of actualizing freedom by escaping the causal chains of nature. Consequently, rights are not merely not natural, they are unnatural. Having no recourse to nature, Hegel justifies the concept of property on purely functional grounds - the role it plays in the modern state. Specifically, property is necessary for the development of one limited aspect of personality that I call legal subjectivity. Legal subjectivity is the mere capacity to respect the rule of law - nothing more. This is a precondition to the liberal state which is supposed to be governed by the rule of law, not the rule of men, as the feudal state was. Hegel's property analysis does not directly relate to any other aspect of personality - and certainly not to what Margaret Jane Radin calls human flourishing. Hegel calls this regime of property and contract right precisely because, it is a necessary but insufficient part of modern society. The subjectivity created by abstract right only provides the form of personality. Content is only added to personality through more complex interrelationships among people at the higher levels of morality and ethical life. It follows from the fact that the subjectivity created by abstract right is purely formal, that it is only the form of property, and not its content that is relevant to Hegel's analysis. This means that if copyright can serve property's function in the production of subjectivity, it is not because of any affirmative, concrete content that the creator pours into the object she creates. Hegel argues that copyright can serve as property because of its formal characteristics, despite its unique content. A Hegelian property analysis has two important implications for intellectual property law. First, if society decides to adopt an intellectual property law regime, then it is logically coherent to analyze the regime as a form of property. Indeed, Prof. Schroeder shows that a Hegelian understanding of property solves many of the problems of intellectual property doctrine that seem baffling from a traditional property analysis. Consequently, a Hegelian property analysis can aid legislators and judges in formulating a more internally consistent and predictable positive law. But, unfortunately for most personality theory proponents, Hegel's logic has absolutely nothing to say on the issue as to whether society should adopt a positive law of intellectual property. The question as to what positive laws society should adopt is purely a matter of practical reasoning.