Hegel's Concept of Life

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Ng
Keyword(s):  
Critique Of Judgment ◽  
Phenomenology Of Spirit ◽  
Original Activity ◽  
Subjective Logic ◽  
Science Of Logic ◽  
Key Innovation ◽  
Logical Concept ◽  
System P ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
Objective Context

This book defends a new interpretation of Hegel’s idealism as oriented by a philosophical and logical concept of life, focusing on Hegel’s Science of Logic. Beginning with the influence of Kant’s Critique of Judgment, Karen Ng argues that Hegel’s key philosophical contributions concerning self-consciousness, freedom, and logic all develop around the idea of internal purposiveness, which Hegel views as “Kant’s great service to philosophy.” Ng charts the development of the purposiveness theme in Kant and argues that its key innovation is the claim that the purposiveness of nature enables the operation of the power of judgment. Situating Hegel among contemporaries such as Fichte and Schelling, she further argues that this innovation is key for understanding Hegel’s philosophical method in the Differenzschrift (1801) and Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), in which the theory of self-consciousness plays a central role. In her new interpretation of Hegel’s Logic, Ng argues that the Subjective Logic can be understood as Hegel’s critique of judgment, where he defends the view that life opens up the possibility of intelligibility as such. She argues that Hegel’s theory of judgment is modeled on reflective, teleological judgments, in which something’s species or kind provides the objective context for predication. The Subjective Logic culminates in the argument that life is a primitive or original activity of judgment, the necessary presupposition for the actualization of self-conscious cognition. Ng demonstrates that absolute method is best interpreted as the ongoing dialectic between life and self-conscious cognition, providing a new way for understanding Hegel’s philosophical system.

Subjectivity in Hegel’s Logic

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rocío Zambrana
Keyword(s):  
First Person ◽  
Phenomenology Of Spirit ◽  
Subjective Logic ◽  
Science Of Logic ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
The Status ◽  
First Person Perspective ◽  
Locus Classicus

Hegel famously argues that everything hinges on understanding substance as subject. This formulation, which appears in the Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit, is the locus classicus for specifying the status of Hegel’s idealism. Yet Hegel repeats this claim in the transition from the Objective Logic to the Subjective Logic in his Science of Logic. This chapter provides a reading of the Preface to the Subjective Logic, “On the Concept in General,” and the first section of the Doctrine of the Concept, “Subjectivity.” It argues that key to Hegel’s transformation of Kant’s notions of subjectivity, objectivity, and the idea is Hegel’s move away from the first-person perspective of Kantian epistemic or moral subjectivity toward understanding subjectivity as the rationality of ‘matters themselves’. Tracing the notion of concrete universality in these chapters, it further clarifies Hegel’s notion of subjectivity, thereby providing a rubric for specifying the status of Hegel’s idealism.

Absolute Knowledge and the Ethical Conclusion of the Phenomenology

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dean Moyar
Keyword(s):  
Phenomenology Of Spirit ◽  
Science Of Logic ◽  
Absolute Knowledge

Hegel wrote in The Science of Logic that the deduction of the concept of science was accomplished at the end of the Phenomenology of Spirit in ‘Absolute Knowledge.’ This chapter links the deduction claim to the metaphor of a ladder to science that Hegel discusses in the Phenomenology Preface, and to the sublation of the form of objectivity that is the focus of ‘Absolute Knowledge.’ It argues that this reconciliation of self-consciousness with objectivity coincides with the task of unifying the theoretical and practical domains. Once one appreciates that Hegel’s goal is such a unification, one can see why he holds that the agent of conscience is already quite close to possessing absolute knowledge. The agent’s knowledge in deliberation, together with the agent’s relation to other agents in the process of recognizing action on conscience, has the same conceptual form as the complete theoretical object, the expanded version of the Concept, or inferential objectivity.

Hegel’s Speculative Identity Thesis

2020 ◽  
pp. 65-122
Author(s):  
Karen Ng
Keyword(s):  
Three Dimensional ◽  
The Self ◽  
Transcendental Argument ◽  
Philosophical Method ◽  
Phenomenology Of Spirit ◽  
Science Of Logic ◽  
Early Presentation ◽  
Identity Thesis ◽  
Refutation Of Idealism ◽  
Dimensional Argument

This chapter explores Hegel’s speculative identity thesis, defending the importance of Schelling for Hegel’s appropriation of Kant’s purposiveness theme. It provides an interpretation of Hegel’s first published text, the Differenzschrift, and analyzes the relation between “subjective subject-objects” and “objective subject-objects” as an early presentation of Hegel’s philosophical method. In addition to defending the contribution of Schelling, this chapter provides an interpretation of Fichte’s contribution via his notion of the self-positing activity of the I. It then turns to a reading of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, demonstrating that the notion of “negativity” can be understood along the lines of speculative identity. The chapter argues that Hegel presents life as constitutive for self-consciousness by way of a three-dimensional argument: the employment of an analogy; a transcendental argument; and a refutation of idealism argument. It concludes by briefly outlining how the speculative identity thesis is carried forward in the Science of Logic.

The Oxford Handbook of Hegel

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
German Idealism ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Phenomenology Of Spirit ◽  
Science Of Logic ◽  
The Past ◽  
Philosophical Movement ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many ◽  
Systematic Importance

The Oxford Handbook of Hegel is a comprehensive guide to the philosophy of G. W. F. Hegel, the last major thinker in the philosophical movement known as German Idealism. Beginning with chapters on his first published writings, the authors draw out Hegel’s debts to his predecessors and highlight the themes and arguments that have proven the most influential over the past two centuries. There are six chapters each on the Phenomenology of Spirit and The Science of Logic, and in-depth analyses of the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences. Five chapters cover Hegel’s philosophy of law, action, and the ethical and political philosophy presented in his Philosophy of Right. Several chapters cover the many recently edited lecture series from the 1820s, bringing new clarity to Hegel’s conception of aesthetics, the philosophy of religion, and the history of philosophy. The concluding part focuses on Hegel’s legacy, from his role in the formation of Marx’s philosophy to his importance for contemporary liberal political philosophy. The Handbook includes many essays from younger scholars who have brought new perspectives and rigor to the study of Hegel’s thought. The essays are marked by close engagement with Hegel’s difficult texts and by a concern with highlighting the ongoing systematic importance of Hegel’s philosophy.

Hegel: Force and Understanding

1971 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 163-173
Author(s):  
David Murray
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Phenomenology Of Spirit ◽  
Science Of Logic ◽  
Speculative Philosophy ◽  
The Third

‘Force and Understanding’ is the title, or part of the title, of the third section of Hegel's Phänomenologie des Geistes, his ‘phenomenology of spirit’. That was his first book; it was published in 1807 as Volume One of his System of Science. A second volume, he announced, would contain ‘the system of Logic as speculative philosophy, and of the other two parts of philosophy, the sciences of Nature and Spirit’. But no such volume appeared: although in 1812 his Science of Logic was published as ‘the first sequel to the Phenomenology of Spirit in an expanded arrangement of the system’, Hegel added to the 1831 edition a note explaining that since then he had brought out his Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences ‘in place of the projected second part’.

scholarly journals Notes on the Unity of Logic and Materialism

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorgen Sandemose
Keyword(s):  
Broad Context ◽  
The Political ◽  
Logical Investigation ◽  
Subjective Logic ◽  
Science Of Logic ◽  
The Third ◽  
Adequate Understanding ◽  
General Criticism ◽  
The Way

<p>In the course of the first section, I make an attempt to define the most important actual implications of the theme that the anthology in question sets out to explore. In the next, I give a sketch of the three different modes of movement of logical thought present in Hegel’s <em>Science of Logic</em>, of their interrelation, and make a general criticism of the way that theme is handled in the book. In the third section, I stress the importance of an adequate understanding of the structure of the categories with which Hegel’s logical investigation takes its beginning. In the course of the two following sections, the interrelation between the themes of Hegel’s subjective logic and Marx’s commodity analysis are put into focus. The concluding section limits itself to giving an overview of the quality of the book in question, adding some words on the political significance of such literature in a broad context.</p>

Hegel’s Subjective Logic as a Logic for (Hegel’s) Philosophy of Mind

2016 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Redding
Keyword(s):  
Modal Logic ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Continental Philosophy ◽  
Symbolic Logic ◽  
Arthur Prior ◽  
Subjective Logic ◽  
Science Of Logic ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Josiah Royce

AbstractIn the 1930s, C. I. Lewis, who was responsible for the revival of modal logic in the era of modern symbolic logic, characterized ‘intensional’ approaches to logic as typical of post-Leibnizian ‘continental philosophy’, in contrast to the ‘extensionalist’ approaches dominant in the British tradition. Indeed Lewis’s own work in this area had been inspired by the logic of his teacher, the American ‘Absolute Idealist’, Josiah Royce. Hegel’s ‘Subjective Logic’ in Book III of hisScience of Logic, can, I suggest, be considered as an intensional modal logic, and this paper explores parallels between it and a later variety of modal logic—tenselogic, as developed by Arthur Prior in the 1950s and 60s. Like Lewis, Prior too had been influenced in this area by a teacher with strong Hegelian leanings—John N. Findlay. Treated as anintensional(with an ‘s’) logic, Hegel’s subjective logic can be used as a framework for addressing issues ofintentionality(with a ‘t’)—the mind’s capacity to be intentionally directed to objects. In this way, I suggest that the structures of his subjective logic can clarify what is at issue in the ‘Psychology’ section of theEncyclopaediaPhilosophy of Subjective Spirit.

Commentary on a Passage from Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Wahl
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Phenomenology Of Spirit ◽  
Science Of Logic ◽  
Dialectical Method ◽  
The Third ◽  
French Study

In this, the third chapter from the work that began the twentieth-century Hegel renaissance in France, Wahl’s 1929 Le Malheur de la conscience dans la philosophie de Hegel, he relates the chapter on “the Unhappy Consciousness” to earlier and later chapters of the Phenomenology (“Master and Slave,” “Stoicism and Scepticism,” “Culture,” “Revealed Religion,” “Absolute Knowing”) as well as Hegel’s lectures on the philosophy of religion and the philosophy of history. Wahl’s was the first major French study of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), marking a turn away from Hegel’s Science of Logic to the affective and experiential basis of Hegel’s dialectical method.

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