Hegel's Theory Research Articles

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.

Entre o cosmopolitismo e o realismo político: Habermas, Honneth e a Escola Inglesa das Relações Internacionais

Este artigo reformula a discussão do cosmopolitismo na teoria crítica de Habermas e Honneth, a partir da noção de “patriotismo constitucional” elaborada pelo primeiro e de uma problemática teoria do reconhecimento entre Estados no segundo, recorrendo a algumas premissas da Escola Inglesa das Relações Internacionais, com ênfase na interlocução entre pluralismo e solidariedade, a fim de se avançar no debate cosmopolita para além de uma proposta normativamente eurocêntrica e como alternativa a modelos utópicos e estatais. Partindo de uma constatação conjuntural de uma realidade política que se dirige ao cosmopolitismo, Habermas utiliza-se da questão identitária e da respectiva consciência da sociedade enquanto capaz de se autorregular como elemento sine qua non da legitimidade de uma prática política supranacional. Contudo, ao apresentar seu panorama, o filósofo de Sternberg pode ser acusado de cair em um ocidentalismo normativo. Honneth mostra-se cético quanto à ideia de estender sua teoria do reconhecimento às relações interestatais ou como algo a ser intuitivamente inferido de uma filosofia robusta do direito, como a que ele mesmo buscou reatualizar pela reconstrução normativa da teoria hegeliana do direito. Acreditamos que a Escola Inglesa pode viabilizar novos encaminhamentos em relação a uma realidade pós-nacional em que seja possível vigorar princípios como justiça global e direitos humanos, ao mesmo tempo em que são respeitadas as clivagens normativas entre povos em vias de não suprimir valorações morais e culturais distintas.

Collective Rationality and Creative Synthesis in Corporate Governance

In this article, we explain the potential benefits of implementing Hegelian notions of collective rationality and synthesis in corporate governance and suggest strategies for achieving this. Changes to corporate structures over the past fifty years—such as the declining importance of the dyadic principal-agent relationship and the increasing importance of networks—simultaneously raise the stakes in intra- and inter-firm conflicts and make these conflicts more difficult to resolve. Whereas corporate responses to conflicts have typically relied on individual rationality, we argue that Hegelian theory’s attunement to social organization offers greater promise. Of contemporary theories of corporate governance, our Hegelian theory most closely resembles paradox theory. It goes beyond paradox theory in elaborating two novel strategies for resolving apparent paradoxes: collective rationality and creative synthesis. After discussing the basis of our theory of corporate governance in Hegelian thought, set forth our strategies and contrast them with other approaches to corporate governance. Next, we illustrate how our strategies may be applied. Finally, we offer propositions and discuss opportunities for future research.

Marx, Engels, Lenin, and the Right of Peoples to Self-Determination in International Law

This chapter proceeds in three parts. First, I begin by considering recent orthodox accounts of self-determination in international law, which generally seek to downplay the importance and content of the right of peoples to self-determination. I pay particularly close attention to the role of Marx and Lenin — and also, paradoxically, the Soviet Union — in propagating the concept of self-determination and related political programmes. I also pay close attention to the success of the Soviet Union and other ‘socialist’ states in making self-determination a core element of international law after the Second World War. Second, I turn to the mid-life conversion of Marx and Engels to support national self-determination in the cases of Poland and Ireland, and the vexed question of whether this simply amounted to a rehearsal of the Hegelian (and Eurocentric) theory of historical and non-historical nations. Engels borrowed the concept of non-historical peoples from Hegel, who had identified nationhood with a tradition of statehood. Third, I examine Lenin’s principled support of the right of nations to self-determination, his return to Marx’s position, and his decisive role in placing the right at the centre of early Soviet policy and constitutionalism. Finally, I trace the role of the Soviet Union in helping to bring about a revolution in international law, and at the same time securing its own downfall.

Спекулятивный подход к истине в философии Г.В.Ф. Гегеля

The study considers the problematic of speculativity of Hegel's philosophy that is relevant to the history of philosophy as well as to the natural history. The concept of truth is considered from the standpoint of the correspondence of knowledge of reality, which correlates with the classical understanding of truth, realized in Hegel's philosophy. A comparative analysis of Hegel's knowledge theory and Kant's knowledge theory allows identifying aspects of speculativity that contain a development potential for religious studies since philosophy's form of truth cognition has been established in the vein of religion. Negativity implements through predicativity and is a core part of a dialectic. A key factor is predicativity. It is the predicate that reveals the subject, shows its nature, reveals a specific objective content that undergoes as it becomes recognized. The main property of a predicate is to provide difference between a subject and other subjects.

Dialectical Shades of Noir: The Case of Ignacio Padilla’s Espiral de artillería

This article analyzes the dialectical tension of the noir genre as it appears in Ignacio Padilla’s Espiral de artillería (2003). Within the noir dialectic, the protagonist’s very efforts to establish himself as subject, render him a prisoner of his own scheming. Such dialectic movement, according to Hegelian theory, allows the anti-hero to encounter traces of himself within the outside world. Though such an encounter typically has tragic implications in most noir works, within the context of the Mexican Crack, it reflects the author’s desire to affirm globality and World Literature.

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.
 
 

Reciprocal Self-consciousness as an Antidote to the Fixity of Categorical Borders in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West

This study incorporates insights from the cognitive approach to literature into postcolonial studies for the purpose of investigating the potential of the ongoing dialogue between these two fields. It analyzes the cognitive process of categorization intricate in the classification of people according to race, colour and culture, revealing how Fanon’s idea of reciprocal consciousness challenges the fixity of borders between categories and goes with the nature of the human mind that is capable of adapting to and realizing the changeability and adjustability of categorical schemas. Thus, the activation of reciprocal self-consciousness generates intercategorical coexistence, pointing out the obsoleteness of colonially categorical mentality sustained by xenophobia. According to the resilient nature of the human mind, this paper proves that categories of cultures and race are overlapping and fuzzy, so artificial borders between them are inconsistent and penetrable allowing mobility and change in terms of membership and belonging. This study tackles Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West (2017) in the light of Fanon’s treatment of the Hegelian theory of reciprocal self-consciousness, exploring possible forms of intersubjectivity, cultural fusion, acculturation and means of transcendental self-representation as illustrated in characters who are capable of penetrating the categorical fixity of cultural difference or the self and the other.

ОБРІЇ СВОБОДИ ЛЮДИНИ В ГЕҐЕЛЕВІЙ ТЕОРІЇ ДЕРЖАВИ

A lapidary reconstruction of the boundaries of human freedom is underway in Hegel's state theory. It is argued that the three forms of coexistence of the individual and the common are identified: the common society, the state, and civil society - exist in both consistent, historical, time, and organic unity, here and now, complement each other. In each of these forms, freedom has its own autonomous horizons, which depend on tradition, human consciousness, acquired external or internal boundaries of freedom. In combining these spheres into a single community, the limits of freedom depend on the synthesis of the social foundations and reasonable practices of owners and citizens, the moral strength of civil society, the norms of state law, and the level of personal reasonableness of those in power. But a key role in ensuring the freedom and consolidation of individuals, corporations and the general should be played by an ethical state, in the bosom of which every person is fully self-fulfilling, since it focuses on "the spirit of the people – customs, laws – which is the dominant source. Here, a person is recognized and treated as a rational being, as a person, ... in a state, a citizen receives due honor by his position, by the profession he has and by his other work activity ”[19, p. 243]. However, all the opportunities and autonomous horizons of freedom a citizen can gain only by realizing himself to be a slave of a state that is the master of absolute freedom. Thus, through law and bureaucratic levers, the Hegel State guarantees a certain level of freedom and guarantees a new order of the general. In fact, individual freedom does not extend to the political plane and does not guarantee democratic rights. The state provides and supports only private and economic freedom, the freedom of corporations to decide social rights, and exists separately - in the plane of a bureaucratic hierarchy headed by a monarch. In the process of resolving the outlined question, Hegel gives the essential rational features of the state and the ideal principles of its existence. These signs are a contradictory synthesis of liberalconservative ideas and metaphysical-utilitarian positions. So the state is: 1) totally deified, the moral community of the people - the manifestation of its essence in history. This perception of the state gives it true sovereignty – the state of the most powerful lord or God on earth, which is the highest manifestation of the freedom of the objective spirit; 2) a universal-rational idea – a common goal that gives meaning to life and direction of development both general and individual; 3) the nation-state, because in its historical course it absorbs the customs, traditions, social foundations and the level of reason of the people, that is, it embodies the self-determination of the universal will; 4) morally reasonable substance. This principle is necessary in the sense of E. Weil notes that "neither is the law of the stronger nor the law of benevolence, the" natural nobility ", but the law of reason in which any intelligent being can learn of his own reasonable will" [20, p. . 93]; 5) legal substance, which is "the mind that has taken the form of law, not a mystical and transcendental law, but its law, its general rule of private action, is a mindset that has devoted itself to the pure development of the principles of free existence" [20, p. 96] and free self-development of man, and therefore must form specific legal spaces of all possible forms of freedom (formal, external, internal, etc.); 6) the public sphere for affirmation of an open level of freedom, which encourages individuals to achieve full political identity with the state, to attain a higher public position, namely a patriot; 7) the guarantor of security, protection of private property and growth of economic power in all areas of the general.

The interpretation of Locke’s Two Treatises in Britain, 1778–1956

ABSTRACTThis paper describes how Locke’s Two Treatises of Government was read in Britain from Josiah Tucker to Peter Laslett. It focuses in particular upon how Locke’s readers responded to his detailed and lengthy engagement with the patriarchalist political thought of Sir Robert Filmer. In the second half of the eighteenth century, the debate between Locke and Filmer continued to provide the framework within which political obligation was discussed. A hundred years later that had changed, to the point where Locke’s readers found it unintelligible that he argued against Filmer and not Hobbes. I explain this in terms of the development in nineteenth-century Britain of a new conception of the history of political philosophy, the product of interest in the Hegelian theory of the state. The story told here is offered as one example of how understandings of the history of philosophy are shaped by understandings of philosophy itself.

Digital communication in and beyond organizations: unintended consequences of new freedom

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to address the following question: In times of permanent connectivity, what forms of freedom need to be considered to prevent permanent availability as an unintended consequence? By using the Hegelian perspective on freedom, the paper categorizes three forms of freedom to transfer them to a common, contemporary understanding of freedom relating it to freedom through human-to-human digital communication. The aim is to show that freedom is not only about independence and realizing choices but also about embedding and committing oneself.Design/methodology/approachThis mainly conceptual paper derives implications based on the Hegelian theory. This is supplemented by an interdisciplinary approach, whereby categories of other philosophers, ethicists, economists and sociologists are applied. The analysis of the contemporary perspective on freedom is enriched by referencing empirical studies.FindingsDigital communication offers new freedom such as working with fewer restrictions from time and space, especially for knowledge workers. It is theoretically possible to work 24 h per day from anywhere (independence), as well as to decide on the final location and timing of one’s work (realizing choices). When solely focusing on these – seemingly advantageous – forms of freedom in times of permanent connectivity, unintended consequences such as the expectation of permanent availability develop. The key message of the paper is that considering one’s temporal and social dependencies (embeddedness) is an indispensable part of actual freedom to avoid unintended consequences.Practical implicationsOrganizations need to invest in moral discernment to understand unintended consequences, as well as to cope with them.Originality/valueApplying the Hegelian theory on freedom based on digital communication to better understand social dynamics of digital communication is a largely unexplored avenue in the existing scientific literature. The decision to undertake this venture resulted from the identified necessity of understanding freedom better. It is often not clear what is meant by freedom through digital communication. Although freedom is a complex construct, it is often reduced to independence/having a choice and realizing choices. When solely focusing on independence and realizing choices, unintended consequences such as permanent availability often go unnoticed. It is exactly because of these issues that this paper endeavors to examine the (deep) meaning of the powerful, yet complex, term of freedom.

A dialectical vision of mathematical models of complex systems

Purpose Mathematical models are constructed at the interface between practice, experience and theories. The function of models puts us on guard against the privilege granted to what is accepted as abstract and formal, and at the same time puts us on guard against a static and phenomenological conception of knowledge. The epistemology of models does not suppress in any way the objectives of science: only, a dogmatic conception concerning truth is removed, and dynamic and dialectical aspects of monitoring are stressed to establish the most viable model. The purpose of this paper is to examine hybrid methodologies (inductive-deductive) that may either propose hypothetical causal relations and seek support for them in field data or detect causal relations in field data and propose hypotheses for the relations detected. Design/methodology/approach The authors follow a dialectical analysis for a type of inductive-deductive model. Findings In this work, the authors present an inductive-deductive methodology whose practical result satisfies the Hegelian dialectic. The consequent implication of their mutual reciprocal integration produces abstractions from the concrete that enable thought. The real problem in this case is a given ontological system or reality. Originality/value The essential elements of the models – variables, equations, simulation and feedback – are studied using a dialectic Hegelian theory.

Taking the System Seriously: Nicholson’s Overturning Orthodoxy About Hegel and Punishment

Hegel and British Idealists made important contributions to our understanding of crime and punishment. Many commentators neglect the systematic nature of Hegelian philosophies - and, in turn, their contributions have been fundamentally misunderstood. Peter Nicholson's ground breaking research is among the first to focus on the systematic structure of Hegel's argumentation in the Philosophy of Right and how this reveals a reading of Hegel's theory of punishment at odds with more conventional, non-systematic readings. Nicholson’s further pioneering work in single-handedly resurrecting interest in British Idealism highlights additional figures who defended similar, but more developed views like Hegel’s.

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.

Normatividade lógica em Hegel e Brandom

The research is articulated in three moments. Initially, the position of Brandom is presented, explaining the pragmatic-semantic normativity, that is, the pragmatic-semantic theory of Brandom’s linguistic reason. What is the difference between the inferential semantics of the Brandomian theory of language and the relational semantics of the Hegelian theory of thinking? After that, normativity is debated in Hegel’s logic, that is, his theory of the alienation of the thought of itself in the circularity and the contradiction in the logic of the essence, having as background the norm of truth exposed in the logic of the concept. Finally, to the idealistic realism of the concept, in which Brandom and Hegel coincide, is opposed philosophical realism as its permanent challenge. Keywords : pragmatics, semantics, normativity, idealism, realism.

Hegel on Addiction

AbstractThe aim of this paper is to show how certain distinctive elements of Hegel's theory of action can provide a fresh philosophical perspective on the phenomenon of addiction. What motivates the turn to Hegel is a set of puzzles that arise out of contemporary medical and philosophical discussions of addiction. Starting with questions concerning ongoing attempts to define addiction, the paper examines the resources needed for addiction to be classed as a disorder, as it commonly is. Provisionally settling with the notion of akrasia, the paper turns to Hegel for a theory of agency that fills in the gaps of the account of akrasia used in the contemporary literature on addiction and helps resolve the puzzles that occasioned the paper.

Hegel and Right. A Study of the Philosophy of Right by Philip J. Kain

Reviewed by: Hegel and Right. A Study of the Philosophy of Right by Philip J. Kain Mark Tunick Philip J. Kain. Hegel and Right. A Study of the Philosophy of Right. Albany: SUNY Press, 2018. Pp. x + 243. Cloth, $90. There are many studies of Hegel's Philosophy of Right. Philip Kain does not break new ground in Hegel and Right. Nor does he deal with the German scholarship that did, by posing the possibility of an esoteric Hegel belying the exoteric author caving to censorship pressure. Still, he has provided us a worthwhile book that touches on some controversial issues. Kain professes to be a Marxian and social democrat who opposes capital punishment and supports same-sex marriage and, perhaps not coincidentally, his Hegel is open to at least the latter three positions. Some scholars of Hegel may be dismayed that there is little reference to Hegel's Logic, though they should appreciate Kain emphasizing how the Absolute is the final stage in Philosophy of Right, and connecting the Phenomenology and Philosophy of Right in claiming that the former work proves the Absolute, a proof Hegel is said to take for granted in the latter work (32–38). While Kain's review of Abstract Right, Morality, and Ethical Life may not uncover anything new, he does offer several illuminating ways of understanding key elements of Hegel's work. His discussion of corporations is quite helpful. Kain emphasizes how Hegel wants the corporations back after they had been "abandoned," to fulfill a function similar to labor unions in helping address the problem of poverty (122–24). In explaining how Hegel finds Kant's formula of universal law lacking in content, Kain supposes I pocket an apple from a fruit stand: "How do I tell whether [that] was an act of theft?" It depends on if I live in a market or communist society. Kain's simple example powerfully and effectively makes his point: we must have a world with content to know what is right (60). Kain's discussions can illuminate, but not always. I will focus on what he says about Hegel's theory of punishment. Kain says that Hegel's justification of punishment "fails" and that he gives a valuable argument against punishment despite himself (43). He quotes Hegel echoing Kant, that in committing the crime the criminal lays down a principle and we punish him by universalizing that principle and turning it back on the criminal. Kain finds that view unsatisfying: "If the criminal's principle is a crime for the criminal, if it is wrong for the criminal, if it is irrational for the criminal, how can it flip into being right, just, and rational for us?" (44–45). But I think he has misunderstood Hegel. For Hegel, we punish to vindicate right: if we did not punish in some way, it is as if what the criminal did was not wrong (and Kain is aware of this justification, 50–51). Hegel also says the criminal's will is split: the thief's particular will is to steal, but his implicit will is the universal—to respect property. The criminal, after all, does not want someone else to steal what he illicitly took and now possesses. Hegel's argument is not that we should universalize the principle that theft is right, as Kain says. Rather, it is that in committing the crime, the criminal goes against his implicit will: the criminal, insofar as he is rational, knows that respecting property is right, and punishment is merely turning the universal will, which is the criminal's implicitly, [End Page 355] back on himself. Kain then says we do not need to establish a right to punish because there is a right of self-defense: we can exclude the criminal, rather than impose what he calls "San Quentin" punishment (48–49). Yet punishment is not essentially that. For Hegel it annuls crime and vindicates right, and how we inflict it depends on custom and objectives like deterrence and reform. Hegel may well criticize "San Quentin" punishment in a stable society, but not punishment per se. Perhaps the biggest challenge in interpreting the Rechtsphilosophie is explaining Hegel's account...

Moderne finance and human freedom. Money and debt between Hegelian dialectic and game theory

Moderne finance and human freedom. Money and debt between Hegelian dialectic and game theory

Patheticness and the Mundane Phenomenalisation of Transcendence according to Kierkegaard

Abstract Referring to the Platonic division between the transcendent and the immanent world as but a manifestation of the former, Søren Kierkegaard grasped the phenomenal character of the earthly world. According to Kierkegaard, in Transcendence, God is, and the transcendent Ideas exist as patterns of beings given to us in temporality, the fontal phenomenal character of which (as manifestations) intertwines with the real mundane ontological character. Kierkegaard argued against the Hegelian theory of dialectics, as well as the pathos theory, presenting dialecticity and patheticness as two ways in which the existing subject refers to the immanent world of temporality and the spiritual realm of Transcendence. The process of phenomenalisation, accomplished along with the existence of all earthly beings, is accompanied by a singular, subjective response of each individual to the immanent world. This response assumes the form of a dialectical balanced reaction, or a pathetic, hyperbolic, in the aesthetic, ethical and religious stages of individual existence (in the religious stage, it is a response to the world of Transcendence). The paper is dedicated to discussing the relations of the process of the phenomenalisation of Transcendence to its individual, religious responses, particularly the relations to the pathetic type of religious response, as indicated by Kierkegaard.

“Love is only between living beings who are equal in power”: On what is alive (and what is dead) in Hegel's account of marriage

AbstractThe paper develops a conception of marital love as a complex recognitive relation, which I articulate by juxtaposing it against other recognitive relations that figure in Hegel's theory of modern civil society (i.e., respect and esteem). Drawing on Hegel's early writings, I argue that, if love is to provide its unique sort of recognition, it must obtain between “living beings who are equal in power”—a peculiar form of equality that I name (drawing on Stanley Cavell's work) “dynamic equality.” I conclude that it is by Hegel's own lights that we should reject his notorious conception of the sexual difference. However, I also offer reasons why, from Hegel's early 19th century perspective, he could consider the following two conditions as compatible: (1) equality within marriage and (2) sexual hierarchy outside marriage, namely, in civil society.