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31/07/2023

Throughout the 20th century, quantum mechanics was celebrated as the ultimate proof that modern science is leaving behind deterministic mechanical materialism and admitted that it is dealing with non-material entities; moreover, the notion that our reality takes place through being observed opens up to a subjectivist denial of objective reality. Some quantum scientists themselves claimed that the only way to account for our entire universe is to presuppose a global external observer (i.e., God).

The text rejects not only this direct theological solution but also the traditional “realist” stance which secretly relies on a divine dimension (the divine status of natural laws). It proposes a reading of the ontological implications of quantum physics which opens up the way for a consequent materialism, even if, from a traditional reading, this may appear to be an odd materialism without matter.

Extract: "The passage from universal doubt through certitude to cogito ergo sum (as a res cogitans) is not as smooth as Descartes’ deduction implies. Anxiety arises when my trust in everyday reality breaks down, when I see that I cannot rely on any figure of the big Other, that the big Other is not just deceiving but deceived itself, inconsistent.

The paranoiac vision of a genie malin, a deceiving god which is a fantasy reaction to the true anxiety: it reestablishes the big Other who controls things, although in the evil form – the big shift happens here, my belief in a big Other who controls things is restored. Then comes the third moment, the proof that god cannot be a cheating deceiver but must be truthful. So the first form of certitude is not simply the certitude that I exist even if all objects of my thoughts are hallucinations; it is the negative certitude that I cannot rely on anything or anybody. This certitude “is the opposite of the certitude of being, it could rather be formulated in this way: I know (that the Other is inconsistent, that it can cheat me, and that, for this reason, my knowledge provides no solid ground), therefore I am not. We are dealing with the certitude of non-being.

Even before God enters, there is a subtle shift from “I doubt about everything” to “when I doubt, I think, know this, so I am”: at the high point of anxiety, when I am certain of my non-being, I am a pure void of a subject, because I am (as a subject) only insofar as the Other is inconsistent. “I am not” means that I am barred from being a subject – the moment I say “(I know that) I am,” I am no longer a subject, I transpose myself into the domain of objective reality where I am one among the existing things which are the object of science."

07/07/2023

Hegel for Social Movements by Andy Blunden is an introduction to the reading of Hegel intended for those already active in social movements. It introduces Hegel’s ideas in a way which will be useful for those fighting for social change, and while some familiarity with philosophy would be an advantage for the reader, the main pre-requisite is a commitment to the practical pursuit of ideal aims. The book covers the whole sweep of Hegel’s writing, but focuses particularly on the Logic and Hegel’s social theory – the Philosophy of Right. Blunden brings to his exposition an original interpretation of Hegel’s Logic as the logic of social change, utilizing his expertise in Vygotsky’s cultural psychology and Soviet Activity Theory.

Hegel for Social Movements by Andy Blunden is an introduction to the reading of Hegel intended for those already active in social movements. It introduces He...

02/07/2023

But when enemies start to speak the same language, it is a reliable sign that something is eluding them all. So what if something happens in Hegel, a break-through into a unique dimension of thought which was obliterated, rendered invisible, by the so-called post-metaphysical thought? What if the ridiculous image of Hegel as the absurd “absolute idealist” who “pretended to know everything” is an exemplary case of what Freud called Deck-Erinnerung (screen-memory), a fantasy-formation destined to cover up a traumatic truth? The task of the symposium was to unearth aspects of this traumatic truth.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel is the ultimate bête noire of the last two centuries of philosophy: proponents of Lebensphilosophie, existentialists from Kierk...

02/07/2023

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel is the ultimate bête noire of the last two centuries of philosophy: proponents of Lebensphilosophie, existentialists from Kierkegaard onwards, materialists, historicists, analytic philosophers and empiricists, Marxists, traditional liberals, religious moralists, deconstructionists and Deleuzians, they all define themselves through different modalities of rejecting Hegel.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel is the ultimate bête noire of the last two centuries of philosophy: proponents of Lebensphilosophie, existentialists from Kierk...

02/07/2023

The age of globalization confronts the observer with more ironies than certainties. It was once assumed that the growth of modern institutions – democracy, capitalism, science – would be attended by a series of mutually reinforcing social processes, most notably secularisation, rationalisation and disenchantment. Not only has the global spread of these institutions proved patchy and uneven, religious movements and belief systems have doggedly refused to assume the private status once thought to be their natural destiny.

In both the West and the wider world, religion continues to make competing claims on the public sphere and public morals. Developments like this have been accompanied by conceptual critique and innovation. Increasingly, traditional accounts of modernity are seen as Euro-centric and prescriptive, while there has been renewed interest in the question of political and civil religions and the more general relationship of the political and the theological.

The age of globalization confronts the observer with more ironies than certainties. It was once assumed that the growth of modern institutions – democracy, c...

01/07/2023

Facing global climate crisis, Karl Marx’s ecological critique of capitalism more clearly demonstrates its importance than ever.

This book explains why Marx’s ecology had to be marginalized and even suppressed by Marxists after his death throughout the twentieth century. Marx’s ecological critique of capitalism, however, revives in the Anthropocene against dominant productivism and monism. Investigating new materials published in the complete works of Marx and Engels (Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe), Saito offers a wholly novel idea of Marx’s alternative to capitalism that should be adequately characterized as degrowth communism.

This provocative interpretation of the late Marx sheds new lights on the recent debates on the relationship between society and nature and invites readers to envision a post-capitalist society without repeating the failure of the actually existing socialism of the twentieth century.

Facing global climate crisis, Karl Marx’s ecological critique of capitalism more clearly demonstrates its importance than ever. This book explains why Marx’s ecology had to be marginali…

29/06/2023

The term ‘Frankfurt School’ is used widely, but sometimes loosely, to describe both a group of intellectuals and a specific social theory. Focusing on the formative and most radical years of the Frankfurt School, during the 1930s, this study concentrates on the Frankfurt School’s most original contributions made to the work on a ‘critical theory of society’ by the philosophers Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse, the psychologist Erich Fromm, and the aesthetician Theodor W. Adorno.

Phil Slater traces the extent, and ultimate limits, of the Frankfurt School’s professed relation to the Marxian critique of political economy. In considering the extent of the relation to revolutionary praxis, he discusses the socio-economic and political history of Weimar Germany in its descent into fascism, and considers the work of such people as Karl Korsch, Wilhelm Reich, Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht, which directs a great deal of critical light on the Frankfurt School.

While pinpointing the ultimate limitations of the Frankfurt School’s frame of reference, Phil Slater also looks at the role their work played (largely against their wishes) in the emergence of the student anti-authoritarian movement in the 1960s. He shows that, in particular, the analysis of psychic and cultural manipulation was central to the young rebels’ theoretical armour, but that even here, the lack of economic class analysis seriously restricts the critical edge of the Frankfurt School’s theory. His conclusion is that the only way forward is to rescue the most radical roots of the Frankfurt School’s work, and to recast these in the context of a practical theory of economic and political emancipation.

The term ‘Frankfurt School’ is used widely, but sometimes loosely, to describe both a group of intellectuals and a specific social theory. Focusing on the formative and most radical yea…

29/06/2023

Published in 1821, Outlines of the Philosophy of Right is considered the definitive articulation of the legal, moral, social, and political philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel. However, shortly before its publication, Hegel delivered a series of lectures on the subject matter of the work at the University of Berlin. These lectures are unlike any others Hegel gave on the philosophy of Right in that they do not supplement a published text but rather give a full and independent presentation of his mature political thought. Yet, they are also unlike Hegel’s formal treatise in that they form a smooth and flowing discourse, much like Hegel’s lectures on the philosophy of history, philosophy of art, philosophy of religion, and history of philosophy. Substantively, these lectures contain more extensive discussions of poverty and the proletariat than are found in Hegel’s published text – discussions that carry out the retreat from optimism about the present age intimated in the preface to Outlines but nowhere evident in the text itself.

Translated with an introduction and notes by Alan Brudner, Hegel’s 1819/20 lectures on the philosophy of Right present his complete thoughts on law and the state in a manner that is more accessible and engaging than any other Hegelian text on these subjects.

20/06/2023

'The Dash' is organized around a pair of seemingly innocuous details. Hegel punctuates strangely. He ends the Phenomenology of Spirit with a dash, and he begins the Science of Logic with a dash. This distinctive punctuation reveals an ambiguity at the heart of absolute knowing. The dash combines hesitation and acceleration. Its orientation is simultaneously retrospective and prospective. It both holds back and propels. It severs and connects. It demurs and insists. It interrupts and prolongs. It generates nonsequiturs and produces explanations. It leads in all directions: continuation, deviation, meaningless termination. This challenges every cliché about the Hegelian dialectic as a machine of uninterrupted teleological progress. The dialectical movement is, rather, structured by intermittency, interruption, hesitation, blockage, abruption, and random, unpredictable change—a rhythm that displays all the vicissitudes of the Freudian drive.

This book sets out from a counterintuitive premise: the “mystical shell” of Hegel's system proves to be its most “rational kernel.” Hegel's radicalism is loc...

19/06/2023

I must apologize for the quality of today's reading being far worse than before, but this is due to multiple factors, including intense heat and personal problems. I still decided to upload the result.

I must apologise for the quality of today's reading being far worse than before, but this is due to multiple factors, including intense heat and personal pro...

18/06/2023

This book sets out from a counterintuitive premise: the “mystical shell” of Hegel's system proves to be its most “rational kernel.” Hegel's radicalism is located precisely at the point where his thought seems to regress most. Most current readings try to update Hegel's thought by pruning back his grandiose claims to “absolute knowing.” Comay and Ruda invert this deflationary gesture by inflating what seems to be most trivial: the absolute is grasped only in the minutiae of its most mundane appearances. Reading Hegel without presupposition, without eliminating anything in advance or making any decision about what is essential and what is inessential, what is living and what is dead, they explore his presentation of the absolute to the letter.

This book sets out from a counterintuitive premise: the “mystical shell” of Hegel's system proves to be its most “rational kernel.” Hegel's radicalism is loc...

09/06/2023

Mari Ruti has passed away on June 6, 2023. She was Distinguished Professor of critical theory and of gender and sexuality studies at the University of Toronto in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and an interdisciplinary scholar within the theoretical humanities working at the intersection of contemporary theory, continental philosophy, psychoanalytic theory, cultural studies, trauma theory, posthumanist ethics, and gender and sexuality studies.

‘The Singularity of Being’ presents a Lacanian vision of what makes each of us an inimitable and irreplaceable creature. It argues that, unlike the "subject"...

14/05/2023

This book strives to deal with Hegel’s thought by means of a thorough, unitarian and logical approach and to enforce the idea that philosophy is rigorous as far as it is able to consistently tackle the question of self-consciousness. It results that the logic underlying every philosophical interest traces back to the self-referring investigation about life in the mode of self-consciousness, by which social practices and their history can be grasped. Once we assess that self-consciousness is life through the concept, we would be able to realize the logical structure underlying its historical outcomes.

This book strives to deal with Hegel’s thought by means of a thorough, unitarian and logical approach and to enforce the idea that philosophy is rigorous as far as it is able to consistently …

14/05/2023

Anyone who does theology in the twenty-first century should have some understanding of the German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel, whose writings deeply influenced European thought on both the left and right. In this introduction to Hegel, Shao Kai (“Alex”) Tseng examines the events in Hegel’s life that shaped his work, shows the theological significance of his philosophy, and surveys the use of Hegelian methods in modern theology. Finally, he provides a fresh and insightful Reformed critique, underscoring the importance of an objective commitment to Scripture and to Christ.

14/05/2023

This book presents for the first time the correspondence during the years 1954 to 1978 between the Marxist-Humanist and feminist philosopher Raya Dunayevskaya (1910-87) and two other noted thinkers, the Hegelian Marxist philosopher and social theorist Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979) and the psychologist and social critic Erich Fromm (1900-80), both of the latter members of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory.

In their introduction, editors Kevin B. Anderson and Russell Rockwell focus on the theoretical and political dialogues in these letters, which cover topics such as dialectical social theory, Marxist economics, socialist humanism, the structure and contradictions of modern capitalism, the history of Marxism and of the Frankfurt School, feminism and revolution, developments in the USSR, Cuba, and China, and emergence of the New Left of the 1960s. The editors’ extensive explanatory notes offer helpful background information, definitions of theoretical concepts, and source references. Among the thinkers discussed in the correspondence—some of them quite critically—are Karl Marx, G. W. F. Hegel, Rosa Luxemburg, Georg Lukács, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, V. I. Lenin, Nikolai Bukharin, Sigmund Freud, Leon Trotsky, Mao Zedong, Daniel Bell, and Seymour Martin Lipset.

As a whole, this volume shows the deeply Marxist and humanist concerns of these thinkers, each of whom had a lifelong concern with rethinking Marx and Hegel as the foundation for an analysis of capitalist modernity and its forces of opposition.

06/05/2023

Praised by President Richard Nixon as his favorite read for 1987, The Search for Historical Meaning presents the postwar American conservative movement against a background of ideas with which it has only rarely been identified. This important book―updated with a new preface―examines the influence of Hegelian concepts on the historical attitudes and cultural judgments of prominent postwar conservatives who, because of their concern with personal freedom as a political and ontological value, denounced Hegel while ascribing their own Hegelian ideas to less offensive sources. Gottfried argues that the lack of a true historical perspective was a serious defect in the postwar American conservative movement, and it grew worse in the years that followed. Essential reading for conservative thinkers, political philosophers, and American political historians, The Search for Historical Meaning concludes with an incisive examination of the American conservative movement that has implications for today.

06/05/2023

This book focuses on the interpretations of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit that have proved influential over the past decades. Current readers of Hegel’s Phenomenology face an abundance of interpretive literature devoted to this difficult text and confront a plethora of different philosophical presuppositions, research strategies and hermeneutic efforts.To enable a better orientation within the interpretative landscape, the essays in this volume summarize, contextualize and critically comment on the issues and currents in contemporary Phenomenology scholarship. There is a common set of three questions that each of the contributions seeks to answer: (1) What kind of text is The Phenomenology of Spirit? (2) What do the different strategies of interpretation conceptually bring to the text? (3) How do different interpreters justify their verdict on whether the Phenomenology is still a viable project?

06/05/2023

Hegel’s philosophy has witnessed periods of revival and oblivion, at times considered to be an unrivalled and all-embracing system of thought, but often renounced with no less ardour. This book renews the dialogue with Hegel by looking at his legacy as a source of insight and judgement that helps us rethink contemporary economics. This book focuses on a concept of institution which is equally important for Hegel’s political philosophy and for economic theory to date.

The key contributions of this Hegelian perspective on economics lead us to the synthesis of traditional approaches and new ideas gained in economic experiments and advanced by neuroeconomists, sociologists and cognitive scientists. The proper account of contemporary ‘civil society’ involves comprehending it as a historically evolving totality of individual minds, ideas and intersubjective structures that are mutually dependent, tied by recognitive relations, and assert themselves as a whole in the ongoing performative movement of ‘objective spitit’. The ethics of recognition is paired with the ethics of associations that supports moral principles and gives them true, concrete universality.

This unusual constellation of seemingly remote fields suggests that Hegel, read in a pragmatist mode, anticipated the new theories and philosophies of extended mind, social cognition and performativity. By providing a new conceptual apparatus and reformulating the theory of institutions in the light of this new synthesis, this book claims to give new meaning both to Hegel as interpreted from today, and to the social sciences. Seen from this perspective, such phenomena as cooperation in games, personal identity or justice in the version of Amartya Sen’s ‘realization-focused comparisons’ are reinscribed into the logic of institutional theory. This ‘Hegel’ clearly goes beyond the limits of philosophical discussion and becomes a decisive reference for economists, sociologists, political scientists and other scholars who study the foundations and consequences of human sociality and try to explore and design the institutions necessary for a worthy common life.

06/05/2023

Hegel’s problem of identity is intimately linked to foundational choices concerning all their theological ramifications, of a truly speculative understanding of the principle of identity. In our published or submitted studies, we began to consistently open a set of configuration points for a speculative analysis of the problem of identity in the logic of Essence, especially in the subchapter Determinations of Reflection. The speculative principle of identity is the fundamental point of pure initium of any original mediation, be it meontological or otherwise. Our efforts have focused on the problem of the ontological difference in Hegel because this pure immediacy is the core of Hegel’s metaphysical ontology. Consequently, we found in the tripartite structure of the Science of Logic that culminates with the last part of the Concept, the fundamental reason for which in Hegelian philosophy takes place a transmutation of the center of gravity from Being to Essence...

06/05/2023

The essays collected in this volume were mostly written in the 1960’s, a time when the relationship of Marxism to its Hegelian origins was once more discussed at an intellectual level proper to the subject.

The essays collected in this volume were mostly written in the 1960’s, a time when the relationship of Marxism to its Hegelian origins was once more discussed at an intellectual level proper …

06/05/2023

Focusing on the self-negation and reflective forms of Hegel’s dialectics, and representing the spirit of nous and logos respectively, this volume explores core functions in the subjectivity, free spirit and practicality of Hegelian dialectics.

As the second volume of a three-volume set that gives insights into Hegel’s dialectics and thereby his overall philosophical thought, the book proposes and discusses the soul and form of Hegelian dialectics. As the soul of Hegel’s dialectics, which represents the spirit of nous, self-negation plays a fundamental role in Hegel’s philosophy, and all other dialectical laws derive from this core principle, with which the subjectivity and free spirit of Hegel’s dialectics take shape along with their essential practicality. The form of expression belonging to this negative dialectic as such is the reflective mode of thinking that represents the spirit of logos, and it is this reflective mode of thinking that follows the logical procedure of “reflecting on reflection,” rendering the progression of Hegel’s dialectical subject lawful, rational and logical.

Focusing on the self-negation and reflective forms of Hegel’s dialectics, and representing the spirit of nous and logos respectively, this volume explores core functions in the subjectivity, …

06/05/2023

This volume reinterprets Hegelian dialectics via an exploration of the two origins of dialectics and illuminates how they constitute the inner tension at the heart of the philosophical system, developing into the forms of thought that fashion the history of western philosophy.

As the first volume of a three-volume set that gives insights into Hegel’s dialectics and thereby his overall philosophical thought, the book considers the linguistics spirit of logos and the existentialist spirit of nous in Greek philosophy as the two origins of Hegelian dialectics. The author argues that the two spirits form a dialectical unity of opposites and constitute the inner tension at the heart of the belief system. Based on this tension, this volume explains Hegel’s problem of beginning that has the sense composed of both the starting point of logic and that of consciousness. Beginning in this twofold sense shapes dimensions of his methodology: immediacy and mediacy, the path of doubt and the path of truth, the linguistics lever and the existential lever.

05/05/2023

ABSTRACT: In the last decades, critiques of my reading of Buddhism abound – even those who are otherwise sympathetic to my general approach claim that I miss...

05/05/2023

ABSTRACT: In the last decades, critiques of my reading of Buddhism abound – even those who are otherwise sympathetic to my general approach claim that I miss...

05/05/2023

Table of Contents I. Unity and HierarchyII. Beyond Unity towards TotalityIII. Cognition and ActionIV. On some Transformations of the Concept of IdealV. Ethics instead “of the Dogmatic Dress& #…

05/05/2023

This book demonstrates how Hegel’s dialectic can be used in empirical research, and shows how one can do dialectical research in economics. It also shows how one can use dialectical thinking to interpret some personal or social or political problem and devise a possible solution.

This book demonstrates how Hegel’s dialectic can be used in empirical research, and shows how one can do dialectical research in economics. It also shows how one can use dialectical thinking …

05/05/2023

Robert Solomon, widely recognized as a leading authority of continental philosophy and respected as a philosopher in his own right, here brings together twelve of his published articles focusing on key issues in the writings of major continental philosophers including Hegel, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Sartre, and Camus. The essays not only shed light on the thought and interrelations of these writers, but also develop a set of provocative and forcefully argued original theses, and encapsulate some of the central ideas of Solomon’s most important books.

05/05/2023

Since its foundation in 1969, The Hegel Society of America has sponsored an ongoing series of biennial conferences which have provided a regular forum for some of the finest displays of scholarship ever directed toward the explication and development of Hegelianism.

The fourteen essays in this distinguished collection have been carefully selected from these biennial conferences. Each essay has been chosen for its profound scholarship, philosophical acumen, and literary excellence. All of the authors have attained international recognition for their studies of Hegel, with almost half having been, at one time or another, elected to the Presidency of the Hegel Society.

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