Hegel's Writings Research Articles

What Is a Logical Concept of Life? Reply to Critics

I am very grateful to Karen Koch and Sebastian Rand for their generous and thoughtful engagement with some of the core arguments of my book. Whereas Koch raises a number of questions concerning the purposiveness theme and Hegel's relation to Kant, Rand's questions revolve around the interpretation of Hegel's Science of Logic, asking after the status of the a priori, singularity, and death in relation to the logical concept of life. Their critical questions provide an opportunity for me to both clarify and defend one of the central claims of my book, namely, that there is a distinctly logical concept of life at work in Hegel's philosophy that is key for understanding his philosophical method. In the book, I argue that this concept, operative in Hegel's writings from the Differenzschrift through the Phenomenology to his Science of Logic, is primarily inherited from Kant, specifically from problems surrounding the concept of inner purposiveness developed in the Critique of Judgement. I will begin by replying to Koch, followed by a response to Rand.

Natural Sciences and Narrative Imagination—A Review of Ian Duncan, Human Forms: The Novel in the Age of Evolution

This review-article discusses Ian Duncan's groundbreaking book, which examines nineteenth-century narrative fiction in the light of natural science's approach to the origins of the human species and its place in the world. As Duncan explains, after Linneus and Buffon systematically classified all living species in the eighteenth century, Lamarck and Darwin focused on the specific processes involved in the biological transformation, diversification, and evolution of these species. Similarly, while David Hume and Immanuel Kant described what they assumed to be universal features of humanity, Herder and Hegel's writings emphasized the diversity of human cultures and the progressive movement of history. As Duncan shows, nineteenth-century authors looked beyond general human qualities in literature as well, turning their attention to the striking differences between historical periods, to the multiple links, harmonious or monstrous, between human beings and the organization of society, and to the impact of robust, independent individuals on societal development. Illuminating analyses of novels by Walter Scott, Victor Hugo, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot show the intimate convergence between nineteenth-century biological and historical theories of evolution and the rise of the realist novel.

Irony and Dialectic: On a Critique of Romanticism in Kierkegaard and Hegel's Philosophy

Irony and Dialectic:On a Critique of Romanticism in Kierkegaard and Hegel's Philosophy Lore Hühn1 I. Kierkegaard's University thesis of 1841, On the Concept of Irony, with Continual Reference to Socrates, has from its first literary reception been analyzed in view of its position on Hegel and Hegel's own critique of the form of irony in romanticism (cf. Pivčević 45-48; vom Hofe 134-136; and Stewart, Kierkegaard's 135f.). Kierkegaard's intellectual affinity with Hegel and his consistent borrowings from Hegel's terminology are indisputable, yet in their meaning highly contentious. The discussion revolves to the present day around two alternatives: On the one hand, Kierkegaard's work on irony is placed within the domain of Hegel's philosophy, even in its criticism of the latter, and is valued at most as an anticipation of the themes that take hold in the authorship proper, beginning with Either/Or (cf. e.g. Himmelstrup 32-60). The consequence of this interpretation is that the essay is thus detached from the main corpus of Kierkegaard's writings,2 insofar as an anti-Hegelian standpoint otherwise sets the scene for later works; [End Page 1061] a standpoint which is frequently scathing. There is little doubt that Kierkegaard's work on irony borrows from Hegel's own writing, at times word for word, sometimes paraphrasing important passages, be it from Hegel's Lectures on Aesthetics, published by Hotho, from the Lectures on the Histor y of Philosophy, or from the Philosophy of Right.3 Furthermore, Kierkegaard at times even sides with Hegel's crushingly critical judgment on the Fichte-inspired notion in romantic philosophy of art of a subjectivity that oversteps its boundaries. If there were a "citation index" of Kierkegaard's work The Concept of Irony, Hegel's writings would appear at the top, indeed with a considerable gap to the next author. But there is also little doubt that quantitative results of this type tell us little, especially since Kierkegaard's philologically verifiable interest in Hegel's criticism of romanticism ought to have much deeper roots than can be shown by any reconstruction of influences that merely remains at the text's surface. It is certainly not a bad thing that, for now, this superficial approach in reconstructing influences has come to a halt. The fact that an interpretation of this type, i.e. one that is not conscious of any kind of shortcoming and which completely misses the core of Kierkegaard's interpretation of Hegel, was upheld and persisted for such a long time in academic research may well have to do with Kierkegaard's own retrospective view of his earlier work. Kierkegaard's own comments gave this type of interpretation an authoritative hold; this type of interpretation became popular through a passage written by Johannes Climacus, which had been crossed out prior to publication: "In his dissertation, Mag. Kierkegaard was concerned with discovering what is Socratic, but he did not, as far as can be said, understand it, probably because, with the aid of Hegelian philosophy, he had become super clever and objective and positive…" (Papirer VI B35, 24; trans. David Carus. Cf. Schwab, "Zwischen" 136, as well as Stewart, "Hegel" 173). Kierkegaard openly states that his project was addressed in various ways at Hegel, initially with an open though ambivalent attitude towards him, yet latterly with a distinctly dismissive tone. The later Kierkegaard makes no secret of what he—ironically enough—sees as a type of youthful indiscretion, let us say, a sin. He frequently asserts that he created his own misgiving in The Concept of Irony by applying Hegelian ideas, ideas which he latterly considered scandalous [End Page 1062] and only mentions with scathing criticism. This is the historical and Hegelian context in which Kierkegaard had compared the elements of the Socratic concept of irony with the romantic concept of irony as an existential form of negative freedom and ultimately had them confront each other as manifestations of a potentiating relationship to self (cf. esp. Kierkegaard, Om Begrebet Ironi 281-284 / The Concept of Irony 241-245).4 He had done this by basing the relationship between them on a concept of...

The owl of Minerva only flies at dusk, but to where? A reply to critics

The quote that inspires a part of my title will be familiar to most readers. In the concluding paragraphs of the Preface to his Philosophy of Right , Hegel examines the role of philosophy in prescribing principles on how the world ought to be. ‘When philosophy paints its grey in grey’, Hegel writes, citing a part of Goethe’s Faust, 'A shape of life has grown old, and it cannot be rejuvenated, but only recognized by the grey in grey of philosophy; the owl of Minerva begins its flight only when the shadows of night are gathering.' (Published: 4 July 2013) Citation: Ethics & Global Politics, Vol. 6 , No. 2, 2013, pp. 117-134. http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/egp.v6i2.21628

Hegel, Habermas, and Community: The Public in the New Media Era

New media technologies with their networking capabilities have raised age-old questions about the nature of the public implicit in Enlightenment and about the role of public relations industries in democracies. This article reviews conflicting representational and deliberative notions of public dominant in the 20th century, the implications of late 20th century alternatives, and what Hegel's writings might suggest for a 21st century concept of public. The article offers a reconceptualization of public as process—a constantly evolving conflict of the particular with the universal rather than as either a stable essence or as a consensus-building discourse.

Hegel and Lukács on the Novel

That Hegel was a significant influence on the young Georg Lukács' Theory of the Novel is a point few would dispute. Lukács himself insisted that the first part of TN represented his own transition from Kantian to Hegelian theory, and most critics have subsequently affirmed the importance of Hegel to Lukács' pre- (or, depending on one's view, proto-) Marxist argument in TN. Yet the two are in some ways strange to take together in the context of novelistic theory. Despite the profusion of novelistic literature in his own time and his own significant appropriation of it for the limning of essential moments of the development of the world-historical spirit, Hegel's official Aesthetics hardly presents what one could claim to be an especially worked-out theory of the novel. The Aesthetics takes up literature in general primarily under the rubric of providing a theory of the genres of poetry — epic, lyric and dramatic — and what relatively few words Hegel actually devotes to the novel and prose literature in the lectures are tucked in corners: at the end of the discussion of the development of the epic, in the discussion of the historical form of the romantic, and in scattered comments elsewhere. As for TN, despite the strong connections some have drawn between Hegel and Lukács — Peter Demetz said that Lukács was ‘in a certain sense … the last Hegelian in the grand style’ (Demetz 1967: 215) — others have questioned whether Lukács' work should be regarded primarily as making a contribution to the philosophy of literature in the tradition from which Hegel writes.

Feminism and Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit: ‘Lordship and Bondage’ and ‘Ethical Action’

In quest of an authoritative text for determining the relationship between Hegel and feminism, nearly all writers on the subject have turned to his interpretation of Antigone in chapter six of the Phenomenology of Spirit. There are at least two compelling reasons for this. In the first place, as the comprehensive introduction to Hegel's writings, the Phenomenology of Spirit is the obvious place to begin in exploring Hegel's arguments on the subject (compare Forster 1998: 13-14). Because the description of gender relations in the world of ancient Greece in chapter six is Hegel's only extended discussion on the topic, this obviously recommends that discussion as a starting point for study. In the second place, Hegel refers back to the division of gender roles in that chapter in some of his discussions concerning gender and women in subsequent ethical writings, most notably in the Elements of the Philosophy of Right. This would suggest that Hegel himself took the discussion there as authoritative on matters of gender.Despite general agreement that Hegel's account of Antigone in the Phenomenology of Spirit is significant, scholars differ on how best to interpret that significance. Kelly Oliver argues that Hegel's restriction of women to traditional family roles in chapter six prevents them from participating in later stages of the dialectic, a fact that ‘undermines Hegel's entire project in the Phenomenology’ (Oliver 1996: 69). Patricia Jagentowicz Mills claims that ‘Hegel's interpretation of Sophocles’ play Antigone is central to an understanding of woman's role in the Hegelian system' (Mills 1996: 59), but goes on to argue that Hegel uses a distortion of the play ‘to represent woman in the family in transhistorical terms’ (Mills 1996: 78).

Culture and Identity: Historicity in German Literature and Thought 1770-1815 by Maike OergelNationalism versus Cosmopolitanism in German Thought and Culture 1789-1914: Essays on the Emergence of Europe by Mary Anne Perkins, Martin Liebscher

MLR, I03.2, 2008 58I Culture and Identity: Historicity inGerman Literature and Thought I770-I8I5. By MAIKE OERGEL. Berlin: de Gruyter. 2006. viii + 300 pp. ?78. ISBN 978-3-I OI8933 -9. Nationalism versus Cosmopolitanism inGerman Thought and Culture 1789-I9I4: Es says on theEmergence ofEurope. Ed. byMARY ANNE PERKINS and MARTIN LIEB SCHER. Lampeter: Mellen. 2oo6. 320 pp. ?24.95. ISBN 978-o-7734-5523-8. The period covered inMaike Oergel's study coincides largelywith what Reinhart Koselleck has termed the Sattelzeit. In the context of transition indicated by this designation, Oergel draws particular attention to the central aspect of the emergence of a universal consciousness of thehistoricity of all human existence, as expressed in such seminal textsasHerder's Briefwechsel ziber Ossian, Schiller's Uber die dsthetische Erziehung desMenschen and Uber naive und sentimentalischeDichtung, as well as in several of the Schlegel brothers', Fichte's, Schelling's, and Hegel's writings. Oergel traces how, in literary theory, the awareness of thepassing of time as constitutive for thehuman condition arose out of thenecessity to define the relationship between the ancients and themoderns, and within themodern period between contemporaries and their forerunners (such as Shakespeare). The desire to abstract general laws on thedirection of history from theanalysis of literaryhistory (from the alleged ideality of ancient 'origins' to a potential recreation of the ideal on a higher level in the future) produced a general sense of historicity thatwas to become one of the intellectual signatures of the 'historicist' nineteenth century. In her study,Oergel also reconstructs themanifestations of a historicist consciousness in thephilosophy of Idealism, in the more nationalistic applications of the early nineteenth century (ofFichte and others), and in Goethe's WilhelmMeistersLehrjahre and Faust I. The choice ofGoethe's works is quite original considering that-in contrast to Schiller's historical dramas-they have not been studied as exhaustively asmanifestations of a historicist consciousness. The investigativemethod adopted here, namely a very focused and detailed close reading of thepertinent texts,yields concrete insights into the reasoning thatproduced thisepoch-defining sense of historicity.Regrettably, however, itprevents Oergel from relating her findings towider historical, social, and cultural (literary) contexts. A sizeable body of scholarlywork on the intellectual environment of these issues (on the development of historiography, forexample) has accumulated in recent times,but it is not engaged with here. Neither are explanations offered for the upsurge inhistorical awareness at thisvery point in time (such as the impact of theFrench Revolution that forced thinkers to redefine their role as historical subjects or agents; such as the ge neral 'secularization' ofworld-views in thewake of theEnlightenment). Significantly, one of thepremisses ofOergel's approach is toemphasize the intellectual unity of the epoch in question when the differentmaterials analysed and the differentpositions adopted still contributed to a common current-that of defining human experience inhistorical categories. Unfortunately, however, the insistence on literary-historical categories (Sturm undDrang, Classicism, and Romanticism) somewhat distracts from this important ambition of thebook. None the less, the study allows the reader to trace in considerable detail the development of 'historicist' thought before the establish ment of 'Historicism' as a leading paradigm of thenineteenth century, including the emergence of central concepts on thehistoric mission of theGermans as Stammvolk Europas and Kulturnation during the firstdecades of thenineteenth century. This isprecisely the juncture where the second volume connects to the first. That the collective German self-definition in history which Oergel identifies became in creasingly tainted by nationalistic sentiment is the central assumption of the volume edited byMary Anne Perkins andMartin Liebscher. In the 'longnineteenth century', however, German nationalism constituted itself in a rapidly 'internationalizing' (or 'Europeanizing') world. The dialectics of this tension demand a differentiating ap 582 Reviews proach that acknowledges an ambivalent (as opposed to an unequivocally hostile or exclusive) relationship between German and non-German (here primarily Euro pean) culture. Such differentiation isnot always present. For example, the firstessay attempts to postulate 'cosmopolitan' continuities between Kant's 'weltbiirgerliche Absicht' and Goethe's concept of 'Weltliteratur'; yet implicit inboth notions was an assumption of superiority, namely in the claim that theGermans were destined to be the avant-garde of any prospective 'Volkerbund' and that their language should form the vessel of 'Weltliteratur'. Further contributions to...

Revolutions in Time: Chateaubriand on the Antiquity of the Earth

Revolutions in TimeChateaubriand on the Antiquity of the Earth Katia Sainson In his Philosophy of History, Hegel writes of the French Revolution as a key moment in the intellectual history of civilization that effected a major shift in the human race's epistemological perspective of the world and its ability to shape that world. In his attempt to convey the magnitude of this "glorious mental dawn,"1 Hegel refers to an earlier intellectual breakthrough, which similarly caused humans to reevaluate their place in the universe. He writes: Never since the sun had stood in the firmament and the planets revolved around it had it been perceived that man's existence centers in his head, that is, in thought, inspired by which he builds up the world of reality.2 With this comparison to the Copernican Revolution, which interestingly enough evokes both the astronomical acceptation of revolution as a cyclical orbit in order to describe the more modern connotation of revolution as a radical change that marks a clear and perhaps even destructive break with the past, Hegel equates the French Revolution with what was not only a key moment in the history of science but perhaps more importantly an intellectual shift that marked "the rise of the world-view of modern European culture."3 Another epistemological shift had also developed over the course of the eighteenth century, one that, like Hegel's "mental dawn," prompted questions about human kind's perspective on history. As Paolo Rossi has pointed out in his work The Dark Abyss of Time, when Robert Hooke studied those "figured stones" that we now call fossils at the beginning of the eighteenth century it was commonly accepted that the Earth's past, as was evidenced by the Scriptures, spanned only six thousand years, whereas by the end of the century, contemporaries of the French Revolution could look back on a past that was by then [End Page 47] regarded as consisting not of thousands but rather of millions of years. This shift was no less comparable to the establishment of the heliocentric heavens: The difference lies not only between living at the center or at the margins of the universe, but also between living in a present relatively close to the origins (and having at hand, what is more, a text that narrates the entire history of the world) or living instead in a present behind which stretches the "dark abyss" (the term is Buffon's) of an infinite time.4 This shift in the conceptualization of the natural world is a direct consequence of what has been dubbed the "discovery of time," in other words, the understanding of the temporal dimension of natural processes that meant that Nature—which was now perceived as having a history—was "no longer opposed, as the reign of the immutable, to history, which [was] the reign of becoming and change."5 In this article I will examine how René de Chateaubriand, one of the most important literary figures of the post-Revolutionary era, dealt with the "discovery of time" in his reflections on history. It is clear from the amount of space devoted to the subject of the antiquity of the earth in such early works as L'Essai sur les révolutions and Le Génie du christianisme that Chateaubriand was struggling with the issues raised by new geological evidence. But perhaps more importantly, notwithstanding his position on the age of the earth, Chateaubriand's historical vision, much like the great naturalists of his time, portrays a universe in which the evidence of multiple past revolutions only proves that European man does not stand at the center of the historical system but rather as a diminished figure on history's margins. It is in this sense that Chateaubriand, who so staunchly argues against the antiquity of the earth, seems to have felt the shock waves not only of political revolution but also of his era's new Copernican revolution. Before discussing the place of this epistemological revolution in Chateaubriand's historiography let us first briefly examine some of the works that formed the backdrop to Chateaubriand's writing on this subject. This survey includes the works of the...

Liberal Despotism: Population Planning, Subjectivity, and Government in Contemporary China

My title, Liberal Despotism, is a trope for oriental despotism. The image of oriental is a familiar one. As Hegel writes of oriental forms of government, the nations of the East knew only that one is free--that is, the sovereign. All others are subjects of sovereign power who must be governed through force and coercion. The hallmark of in this instance is that one is governed by others and not by oneself. The subject is at the mercy of caprice and not self-will. Whether for reasons of geography, culture, race, or a combination thereof, these subjects are considered to be either lacking the qualities for the practice of freedom or subject to oppression that inhibits the realization of that freedom. Indeed, it is possible that both situations may coexist; that is, due to oppression a subject may have no possible recourse to develop the capacity for freedom, but given appropriate opportunity, education, and training is nonetheless capable of becoming free (that is, an autonomous and rational individual) at some later point in time. Yet the notion of despotism appears oxymoronic. How can a doctrine that claims to uphold individual liberty and freedom possibly be construed as despotic? Recent studies that take as their point of departure Michel Foucault's notion of have argued that this duality (that is, the bifurcation of the population into subjects who govern themselves and those who are governed by others) within liberal reasoning is neither contradictory nor hypocritical. (1) Rather, they argue that the process of compartmentalizing populations into those that are expected to govern themselves and those that require some form of tutelage or coercion is constitutive of liberal reasoning itself. This article examines how governmentality studies and recent analyses of authoritarian modes of government both within liberal and nonliberal societies might relate to the study of the arts of government in contemporary China. The article takes as its primary focus of analysis recent developments in China's population-planning program. This program is an exemplary instance of the complexities of government and subjectivity in China insofar as it highlights how important aspects of the relationship between the state and the population have been conceived within Chinese governmental reasoning during the Maoist and Dengist eras and how, in the new circumstances of the market economy, that relationship is undergoing a process of conceptual and institutional reconfiguration. Since the early 1980s, the Chinese state itself has accorded the population-planning program the status of a fundamental state policy (jiben guoce) and regards the tasks of the program as crucial to the overall realization of development strategy for China. Given also that it touches upon the reproductive and familial lives of almost every subject in China, the population-planning program is well worthy of consideration as an instance of how Chinese subjects are both governed and resist being governed in the contemporary period. Furthermore, as the policy emphasis is explicitly placed upon rural China, the population-planning campaign also offers an opportunity to examine the crucial question of party/people relations (dangqun guanxi), (2) which goes to the heart of government concerns with maintaining social stability. The population-planning program has been the subject of much controversy primarily because it is seen as an imposition of state will upon target subjects without their consent. In so doing, critics of the population policy would seem to concur with Hegel's assessment that the central problem in this instance is the absence of self-determination upon the part of the target subject. The use of the term subject in this article carries two connotations. The first is the subject in the sense of one who is under the dominion or rule of a sovereign. (3) The second refers to the self-determining subject. …

The unbearable proximity of the Orient: Political religion, multiculturalism and the retrieval of South Asian identities

The phenomenon of religion -- specifically its recent return as 'political religion', and its seeming incompatibility with the demands of multiculturalism -- continues to be a vexed issue in attempts to rethink retrievals of South Asian identity beyond a neo-colonial imaginary. This move 'beyond' has routinely followed a deconstruction of the 'religious effects' of Orientalism whose conceptual matrix, some argue, can be located in Hegel's writings on history and religion. Taking its cue from Derrida's enigmatic remark -- 'what if religio remained untranslatable?' -- this paper re-examines Hegel's writings on India, revealing the workings of an ontotheological matrix which underpins not only the recent resurgences of religious nationalism or political religion in South Asia and the South Asian diaspora, but also, paradoxically, the secular frameworks of contemporary multiculturalism and anti-imperialist critique. Despite sharing the same onto-theological matrix, these bastions of secular modernity still refuse to recognise that retrievals of religious identity might constitute a significant reorientation of the political, instead continuing to put into play a series of well rehearsed distancing techniques which serve merely to sanitize the 'religious effects' of the Orient.

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.

The Relationship between Religion and State in Hegel's Thought

To say that Hegel's position on the relationship between religion and state is not easy to categorise would be a vast understatement. Eluding comfortable labels, his ideas on the subject diverge from historically prevalent conceptions, which together are often thought to be exhaustive. On the one hand, Hegel's position contrasts sharply with theocratic doctrines that propose a simple identity of political and religious institutions, or subjugate the former to the latter. Almost equally distant from Hegel's position, however, are liberal and Enlightenment views that urge the complete separation of religion from secular authority and mundane politics.This tension is characteristic of many of Hegel's writings on the subject, from the earliest to die most mature. On numerous occasions, Hegel voices his vehement opposition to the notion of a radical split between religion and the ‘ethical’ (sittlich) institutions of political power. In an early fragment from 1798 he writes, ‘if the principle of the state is a complete totality, then church and state cannot possibly be unrelated’, and similar sentiments are voiced in many other writings, including Hegel's very last lectures on the Philosophy of Religion from 1831. Yet, at other junctures he contends, rather, that only ‘in despotism church and state are one’. Of all Hegel's extended discussions of the subject, one — in the Remark and Addition to §270 of the Philosophy of Right — lays emphasis on the cleft between church and state; others — in §552 of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences (Third Edition), the aforementioned 1831 Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, and the final sections of the Philosophy of History — seem, on the contrary, to stress the essential and eventual unity of religious and political life. To reconcile such seemingly contradictory views within a coherent position (even a dialectically coherent one) and salvage Hegel's position from the muddle of apparent contradictions and oblique formulations is therefore a challenge.

Making History for Stalin: The Story of the Belomor Canal by Cynthia A. Ruder (review)

MLR, 96. I, 200I MLR, 96. I, 200I secondarymaterialon Bakhtinshows that this issue has not been made the focus of sustained study, although the claim on thejacket that it is the 'firstto examine the influence of Christianity'on Bakhtin'swork is certainly an overstatement. Coates presents a cogent reading of Christian motifs in Bakhtin, particularlyfocusing on the ideas of God, the Fall, Incarnation and Love. The strategy is particularly successfulin drawingour attention to the Christianresonancesin Bakhtin's'Author and Hero in AestheticActivity'of the mid-I92os, and a good case ismade in tracing the development of these themes in Bakhtin'slater work,when theological imagery becomes less apparent. Coates's argument, from which the book's title derives, is that the figure of the author has directlytheological connotations, but the figure is 'exiled' in the workfrom the end of the 1920s, only able to articulatehis or her own perspective through the interaction of the voices of characters.This is the kenotic incarnationof God in the modern world. One of the book's strengthsis the way Bakhtin'swork is shown to develop and change. However, in concentrating solely on Christian aspects Coates fails to examine how Bakhtin draws on German idealist philosophy, some of it Jewish (Cohen and Cassirer), in which many of the same features are found without a Christian gloss. Religion had a specific place in most idealist philosophy of the period (Simmel, Scheler, Natorp) on which Bakhtindrew, which is not considered here. Although this is clearly not Coates's area of expertise, the fact that there is even no consideration of the extent to which Bakhtin used religious terms in the absence of an establishedRussianphilosophical discoursemakes the applicationof theology to Bakhtin'sworkrathertoo direct in many cases. The weakestpart of the book is the 'strawman' argument of the chapter 'WasBakhtin a Marxist?'which draws superficial points of contrast between the works of Bakhtin and that of Voloshinovand Medvedev. The latteraretreatedas orthodoxMarxists.The section which contrasts Bakhtin's notion of dialogue with dialectics without reference to any of Marx or Hegel's writings is unsatisfactory. Nevertheless, with these reservations, Coates presents a well-written and reasoned analysis of Christian motifsthat is a realcontributionto burgeoningBakhtinscholarship. UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD CRAIG BRANDIST Making Histoy for Stalin: The Story of the Belomor Canal. By CYNTHIAA. RUDER. Gainesville:UniversityPressof Florida. I998. xvi + 248 pp. $49.95. The White Sea Canal was built with slave labour in appalling conditions, without proper equipment and without any reference to cost and efficiency, or even need. Solzhenitsynreasonablystatesthatsome I00,000 slavelabourersdiedwhileworking on the project in the firstwinter. Affidavitspresented by Viktor Kravchenkowhen conducting, and winning, a lawsuitagainstthe FrenchCommunistpaper, LesLettres Franfaises,corroborate the basic picture: ferocious treatment of slave labourers, miserable conditions and heavy loss of life. Comparisons with the building of the Panama and Suez Canals are, therefore, preposterous and odious. Notions of perekovka, the reforging of prisoners, were intended for the gullible, especially Westernintellectualsand the well-heeled literati,who duringthe I930Smade their many pilgrimages,courtesyof the Soviet state, to pay homage to Stalin'sPotemkin villages.Nothing publishedin theglasnost period in any way contradictsthe case for the prosecution which was alreadywell establishedbefore I987. So while one can welcome any attemptto fillin the lacunae, thebasicpictureof a slave-labourproject with huge lossof life remainsintact. secondarymaterialon Bakhtinshows that this issue has not been made the focus of sustained study, although the claim on thejacket that it is the 'firstto examine the influence of Christianity'on Bakhtin'swork is certainly an overstatement. Coates presents a cogent reading of Christian motifs in Bakhtin, particularlyfocusing on the ideas of God, the Fall, Incarnation and Love. The strategy is particularly successfulin drawingour attention to the Christianresonancesin Bakhtin's'Author and Hero in AestheticActivity'of the mid-I92os, and a good case ismade in tracing the development of these themes in Bakhtin'slater work,when theological imagery becomes less apparent. Coates's argument, from which the book's title derives, is that the figure of the author has directlytheological connotations, but the figure is 'exiled' in the workfrom the end of the 1920s, only able to articulatehis or her own perspective through the interaction of the voices of characters.This is the kenotic incarnationof God in the modern world...

Elemental Passions and the Nature of Love

And why should night and day be so radically divided? Is there anyone for whom loving and thinking are lived as different beginnings? Luce Irigaray, Elemental Passions Philosophers have always been suspicious of erotic love. Some have viewed as unworthy of philosophical consideration; while others have condemned because challenges the order of reason and gives us over to our lower passional selves. Plato is an exception, for in the Symposium and in the Phaedrus he celebrates as the power which first pulls us out of ourselves and makes us yearn for that which is eternal and divine. But even here, is only the means to an end. The final goal of erotic longing is the rapt contemplation of the Good. And Plato's ideal is Socrates who has achieved self-sufficiency and who no longer needs to in the ordinary way, since to would be an expression of his own inadequacy and need. After Plato, there is no sustained and systematic treatment of erotic until we come to Hegel, and his discussions in The Phenomenology of Spirit and The Philosophy of Right. Hegel responds to the rise of romantic in the modern age, when first became a popular theme. But Hegel seeks to constrain and appropriate romantic passion to the order of civil society itself. Given the accepted division of labor, where men must go out and be active in the realm of civic life, a woman's place is in the home, as mother and helpmate and organizer ofthe domestic economy. And hence follows that for a woman, must be experienced as a civic duty; is a requirement of her station in life and a labor of the the ethical household, Hegel writes, it is not a question of this particular husband, this particular child, but simply of husband and children generally; the relationships of women are based, not on feeling, but on the universal. By contrast, a man's is viewed as a permissible lapse into immediacy, from which he must nevertheless recover himself in order to return to the serious business of life.1 Hegel's discussion remains significant, because even if the civic order which he presupposes has changed, still continues to exist as a psychical residue in the minds of women and men. Thus, as Nietzsche, de Beauvoir, and others have pointed out, love means something quite different and occupies a very different place in the psychical economy of women as opposed to men. Given the civic reality that Hegel describes and its reflection into the unconscious, follows that woman's whole nature, and her personal fulfillment, would seem to consist in loving. Likewise, for a woman, is still understood as a duty; and even if academic or professional opportunities are available to her, she will often experience the desire for personal fulfillment and the need to take care of her husband and children as a conflict that is finally disenabling. But for a man, romantic remains only one facet of a fulfilled existence; and more often than not, is the order of the home and the of a woman that allows him to return to the public or commercial life that claims his most strenuous efforts. In all of this, the public activity of men is viewed as the most important thing. A woman's and domestic care is also very worthy and important, but only insofar as this allows public and professional life to continue. In recent years, feminist thinkers have sought to respond to this account. They have suggested at least three different strategies that might promote female equality and a more universal liberation of women and men. First, given that women are traditionally confined to the immediacy of love, the sphere of the domestic, and all the chores of everyday life, would seem important to encourage women to achieve the same transcendence from the natural order that men have already achieved for themselves. As Simone de Beauvoir writes, It is man's good fortune in adulthood as in early childhood. …

The Dissemination of Development

In this paper I consider the ways in which discourses of development enframe postcolonial Africa. The dissemination of development is discussed in three principal ways. First, constructions of national identities and of the nation-state and their dissemination through development discourse is considered. Second, the textual dissemination of meaning through the process of writing development is explored with specific reference to Hegel's writings on the principle of development. Third, the dissemination of historical and geographical worlds through discourses of development is considered with the continued durability of the idea of three worlds as the key focal point of discussion. I formulate an antidevelopment incite which attempts to disrupt the enframing of postcolonial Africa through ‘Western’ discourses of development. The paper concludes with a discussion of how the worlds of development have proven so persistent, and of the implications for a more radical ‘post-colonial’ development geography.

Against Vanishing: Winnicott and the Modern Poetry of Nothing

Against Vanishing: Winnicott and the Modern Poetry of Nothing Lee Zimmerman How often our major voices boldly assert and embrace their own nothingness. At the center of what has been called the “most celebrated moment of transcendence in American letters” (Hughes, 157), Emerson tells us “all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all” (6). Less transcendentally, Yeats picks up the theme: “Talk to me of originality and I will turn on you with rage. I am a crowd, I am a lonely man, I am nothing” (Essays, 522). Such boldness, perhaps, reflects a more diffident precursor. In a crowd, Keats writes, “the identity of every one in the room begins to press upon me that I am in a very little time annihilated”; his kind of poetical character “is not itself—it has no self—it is everything and nothing” (279–80). Nothingness, apparently, is a condition much to be admired. Indeed, as Anthony Libby argues, “the poetry of this post-Christian age . . . tends to define what it seeks as nothing: in Wallace Stevens’s words [from “The Snow Man”], ‘the nothing that is’” (1). One might think of T. S. Eliot in Four Quartets seeking descent into “that which is not world, / Internal darkness, deprivation / And destitution of all property, / Desiccation of the world of sense, / Evacuation of the world of fancy, / Inoperancy of the world of spirit” (120–21); or saying to his soul, “be still, and let the dark come upon you” as, “when an underground train . . . stops too long between stations / . . . And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen / Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about; / Or when, under ether, the mind is conscious but conscious of nothing” (126). In a more contemporary mode, W. S. Merwin hears each of the dead proclaim, “I know nothing / learn of me” (51), and his translation of Antonio Porchia is also self-disclosure: “It is when I assent to nothing that I assent to all” (16). At the bottom of such a tendency lies [End Page 81] the mystical revelation that, as Hegel writes, “pure Being and pure Nothing are . . . one and the same” (quoted in Heidegger, 377). 1 So it is that, laying claim to nothingness, Keats, Yeats, and Emerson declare: my character “is everything”; “I am a crowd”; “I see all.” I wonder, though, if this way of conjuring something—or everything—from nothing tells only half the story (or not even half). Libby’s claim that modern poetry seeks “the nothing that is” may minimize the extent to which nothingness is a fearful condition. After all, in Stevens’s poem, actually finding the nothing that is means having a “mind of winter”—being dead, or something like dead, having suffered the end of the mind’s lively interplay with the external world that for Stevens virtually defines the sacred (and, to glance ahead, defines for Winnicott the playful basis of the capacity for experience itself). Like Emerson, the snow man sees all (that is there) but is (and thus can imagine) nothing. 2 Nothingness, thus, makes for a highly problematic goal, here, as elsewhere in Stevens. In Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction, Canon Aspirin approaches a nothing beyond “normal things,” but retreats, for “The nothingness was a nakedness, a point, // Beyond which fact could not progress as fact” and “thought could not progress as thought” (229). Again, nothingness defines the end of the mind’s collaboration with the world (the collapse of Winnicott’s “potential space”)—not the goal of poetry but the denial of what makes it possible. Earlier in Notes we see Nanzio Nunzio’s desire for nothingness/nakedness thus undermined by Ozymandias: “the spouse, the bride / Is never naked. A fictive covering / Weaves always glistening from the heart and mind” (222)—a fictive covering which is poetry itself. Thus, in one of the most prominent of post-Stevensian supreme fictions, James Merrill thinks back past the zero point of his own being, back “Forty years, fifty, past the flailing seed / To incoherence, blackout” (495), but finally stops short of such nothingness, as Maria (echoing the Canon Aspirin canto above?) admonishes him...

The Spirit and Its Letter: Traces of Rhetoric in Hegel's Philosophy of Bildung (review)

Reviews169 goal of theoretical heterogeneity. Not only do all the articles reveal a similar approach, but their endnotes often cite the same critical sources, and the overwhelming impression is a validation of Anglo-American Women's Studies, informed by European semiotic sophistication. However, while it was not the editors' intent that their chosen articles should seem uniform, this is not really a defect in the book. In fact, the reader (particularly, perhaps, the woman reader) is left with the sensation of having participated in the articulation of a powerful shared experience. The similarity of the pieces, finally, grows out of a generation of scholarly feminists coming to terms with the effects of paternal authority—familial, intellectual, and academic—in their own lives and work. Whitman CollegeRoberta Davidson The Spirit and Its Letter: Traces ofRhetoric in Hegel's Philosophy o/Bildung, byJohn H. Smith; xii & 283 pp. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988, $35.75. A process offormative education stands between us and Hegel's philosophical writings. The great merit ofthis book is that it illuminates the rhetorical training which permeates them. Hegel's education lay in the rhetorical practices of an earlier age. He worked to master classical languages through the rhetorical and stylistic exercises he practiced. Smith's thesis is that Hegel's early writings and the PL·nomenology itself are colored by this formative educative process. The central concept is that of Bildung, the process by which individuality is formed out of the common materials of culture. Hegel's task is to deal with the philosophical positions arrayed before him without becoming simply one alongside the others. His solution is to accomplish for philosophy the traditional goal of classical rhetoric, to forge a style of one's own out of an identification and transcendence of traditional forms. Smith's analysis puts the PL·nomenology in a new light: Hegel's accomplishment is as much rhetorical as philosophical. Now we can see clearly the strategy and tactics behind Hegel's use of metaphor, trope, and rhetorical device to catch the unwary consciousness and propel it beyond itself. Each stage in the development is a rhetorical exercitatio; taking up, varying, and translating the traditional or customary forms and expressions of spirit. The collapse of each paradigm of truth and reality in the Phenomenology is, at the same time, the forging of an individual. The schoolboy outgrows the mechanical work of acquiring the grammar of dead languages, as he later outgrows those imitative exercises which once took up so much time. Similarly, 170Philosophy and Literature both Hegel and Spirit come into self-conscious being through a process of overcoming otherness in past forms. Through this process Hegel's philosopher is to come into possession of a purely conceptual prose medium in which the richness of the Absolute Idea is exhaustively displayed. The organic metaphors used to describe the dialectic actually cover up its rhetorical origin. Hegel uses rhetorical devices while playing down their use. Not only do individual metaphors and tropes inhabit the Phenomenology, but its very structure is tropical. The cognitive configurations of Spirit are also onesided allegiances to favored tropes: metaphor, metonymy, synecdochy, and irony. Dialectic is the movement generated by die breakdown of each trope in turn as it discovers itself unable to bear the burden of Absolute Knowledge. If we follow the traces left by classical rhetoric, many sections of the PL·nomenology acquire a new life, and the movement of Hegel's dialectic takes on the rhythm of changing tropes. Spirit takes up a successively metaphorical, metonymical and synecdochical relation to reality. Metaphor stands for the stage of naive identification; metonymy for contiguous relations and alterity; and synecdochy for what reminds us of the whole. Finally, irony turns the tables on any position which accounts itself stable before the permutations and combinations of Spirit have been fully worked out. This book pioneers a rhetorical analysis ofHegel's early texts. Though limited by its subject matter, many of the issues raised have relevance to philosophy ofmind and education far beyond a merely academic study of Hegel's writings. I recommend it for the light it sheds both on Hegel's early works, and on the function of rhetoric in...

The Origins of Hegel's Knowledge of English

A detailed and full-scale study of “Hegel and the ‘Gelstesleben’ of Great Britain” is still lacking. What we have, Instead, are either rough sketches for a later painting, or individual pieces for a mosaic, of which plenty of stones have not yet been produced. It has become clear, however, that any full-scale study would Involve at least five major areas:a) Hegel's interest in and reaction to the political life of Great Britain, from the allusion to Pitt's politics of the 1790s to the Reform Bill article of 1831;b) Hegel's indebtedness to Scottish political economy and theory of civil society (Ferguson, Hume, Steuart, Smith);c) Hegel's assessment of British works of art (e.g. Shakespeare, Milton, Scott) and aesthetic theories (Shaftesbury, Kames);d) Hegel's discussion of British philosophers in the History of Philosophy (Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Berkely, Hume, Scottish School);e) Hegel's study of British historians (Gibbon, Hume) and his description of England's role in world history.For the extent and dates of Hegel's contacts with these British sources, and to compare and identify them with certain passages from Hegel's writings, ths question of his knowledge of English is of considerable importance, rather than being a matter of mere biographical curiosity. However, before raising expectations too high, it must be emphasized that the present article does not provide, nor indeed pretend to provide, an ultimate answer to this question: a watertight proof has not yet come to light. What is hoped to be achieved is, firstly, to bring together the available direct and indirect evidence on the issue. Secondly, to draw some conclusions from the admittedly inconclusive material. These conclusions should be seen as first hypotheses which any scholar can scrutinize on the basis of the evidenoe presented. The greatest reward for the present attempt would be to spark off further research which eventually might result in finding further evidence.

XIII.—Hegel and the Metaphysics of the Fluxional Calculus

It is now many years since Dr Whewell drew the attention of the Cambridge Philosophical Society to the courageous, if somewhat Quixotic, attempts of Hegel to cast discredit on Newton's law of gravitation, and on the mathematical demonstrations of Kepler's laws given in the “Principia.” At the time when Whewell wrote, it would probably have been difficult to find in Britain any one ready to maintain the cause of Hegel in this matter, or even to hint that the astounding arguments of the Naturphilosophie flowed from any deeper source than self-complacent ignorance.The present state of matters is different. The philosophy of Hegel is now for the first time beginning to have a direct and powerful influence on British speculation. Men are beginning to study Hegel; and an author whose works confessedly demand the labour of years, if they are to be fully understood, can hardly be studied at all except by devoted disciples. A man whose determination to master Hegel's philosophy survives the repelling impression which the obscurity and arrogance of the philosopher are sure to produce at first, is very likely to be carried away by the calm assumption of omniscience which runs through Hegel's writings. It is not, therefore, surprising that Dr Stirling extends his admiration to Hegel's physical positions; and if he does not venture to say that Hegel's proof of Kepler's laws is right, at least feels sure that it would repay the attention of mathematicians.