It is by now well known that Gödel first advocated the philosophy of Leibniz and then, since 1959, that of Husserl. This raises three questions:1.How is this turn to Husserl to be interpreted? Is it a dismissal of the Leibnizian philosophy, or a different way to achieve similar goals?2.Why did Gödel turn specifically to the later Husserl's transcendental idealism?3.Is there any detectable influence from Husserl on Gödel's writings?Regarding the first question, Wang [96, p.165] reports that Gödel ‘[saw] in Husserl's work (...) a method of refining and consolidating Leibniz' monadology’. But what does this mean? In what for Gödel relevant sense is Husserl's work a refinement and consolidation of Leibniz' monadology?The second question is particularly pressing, given that Gödel was, by his own admission, a realist in mathematics since 1925. Wouldn't the uncompromising realism of the early Husserl's Logical investigations have been a more obvious choice for a Platonist like Gödel?The third question can only be approached when an answer to the second has been given, and we want to suggest that the answer to the first question follows from the answer to the second. We begin, therefore, with a closer look at the actual turn towards phenomenology.Some 30 years before his serious study of Husserl began, Gödel was well aware of the existence of phenomenology. Apart from its likely appearance in the philosophy courses that Gödel took, it reached him from various directions. (shrink)

My topic is the materialist appropriation of empiricism – as conveyed in the ‘minimal credo’ nihil est in intellectu quod non fuerit in sensu (which interestingly is not just a phrase repeated from Hobbes and Locke to Diderot, but is also a medical phrase, used by Harvey, Mandeville and others). That is, canonical empiricists like Locke go out of their way to state that their project to investigate and articulate the ‘logic of ideas’ is not a scientific project: “I shall (...) not at present meddle with the Physical consideration of the Mind” (Essay, I.i.2, in Locke 1975; which Kant gets exactly wrong in his reading of Locke, in the Preface to the A edition of the first Critique). Indeed, I have suggested elsewhere, contrary to a prevalent reading of Locke, that the Essay is not the extension to the study of the mind of the methods of natural philosophy; that he is actually not the “underlabourer” of Newton and Boyle he claims politely to be in the Epistle to the Reader (Wolfe and Salter 2009, Wolfe 2010). Rather, Locke says quite directly if we pay heed to such passages, “Our Business here is not to know all things, but those which concern our Conduct” (Essay, I.i.6). There would be more to say here about what this implies for our understanding of empiricism (see Norton 1981 and Gaukroger 2005), but instead I shall focus on a different aspect of this episode: how a non-naturalistic claim which falls under what we now call epistemology (a claim about the senses as the source of knowledge) becomes an ontology – materialism. That is, how an empiricist claim could shift from being about the sources of knowledge to being about the nature of reality (and/or the mind, in which case it needs, as David Hartley saw and Denis Diderot proclaimed more overtly, an account of the relation between mental processes and the brain). (David Armstrong, for one, denied that there could be an identification between empiricism and materialism on this point: eighteenth-century history of science seems to prove him wrong: see Armstrong 1968 and 1978.) Put differently, I want to examine the shift from the logic of ideas in the seventeenth century (Locke) to an eighteenth-century focus on what kind of ‘world’ the senses give us (Condillac), to an assertion that there is only one substance in the universe (Diderot, giving a materialist cast to Spinozism), and that we need an account of the material substrate of mental life. This is neither a ‘scientific empiricism’ nor a linear developmental process from philosophical empiricism to natural science, but something else again: the unpredictable emergence of an ontology on empiricist grounds. (shrink)

Can compensation repair the moral harm of a previous wrongful act? On the one hand, some define the very function of compensation as one of restoring the moral balance. On the other hand, the dominant view on compensation is that it is insufficient to fully repair moral harm unless accompanied by an act of punishment or apology. In this paper, I seek to investigate the maximal potential of compensation. Central to my argument is a distinction between apologetic compensation and non-apologetic (...) compensation. Apologetic compensation, I argue, is an act that expresses regret and apology by means of some offer of money, goods, or services. Non-apologetic compensation is an act that seeks to restore loss or harm without expressing regret or apology. In the paper, I defend the view that acts of compensation can be apologetic and argue that such apologetic compensation is sufficient for moral repair. (shrink)

Husserl envisages transcendental phenomenology as a radically founding science that lays bare the higher-order experiences whereby logic and a theory of science become constituted. On the other hand, according to a usual presentation of Hegel’s philosophy, phenomenology is “logic’s precondition,” and science presents itself as its “result.” This alleged precedence of Hegel’s phenomenology (with its experiential and historical horizons) regarding logic may be a motif behind the current affinities recently traced between Hegelian and Husserlian notions of phenomenology that highlight their (...) views on experience, history, and the lifeworld. This paper offers instead a reconsideration of aspects of their philosophies mostly challenged or dismissed since the rise of positivism: a reappraisal of their views on the relationship between phenomenology, logic, and philosophy as an “absolute” system of sciences. The argument is made that the irreconcilable difference between their projects ultimately stands on the radical contrast between Hegel’s speculative-conceptual method and system of sciences and Husserl’s foundational science and method as experiential-phenomenological all the way through. Despite this methodological abyss, this paper vindicates their affinities in their refusal to segregate science from life, and their attempts to overcome modernity’s inherited fragmentation of culture by providing an all-unifying approach to philosophy. (shrink)

Against the background of recent developments in neuroscience, the paper shows how, for Hegel, the theoretical, practical and evaluative functions of the mind are grounded in something like a natural normativity, based on the interaction of the body's inner world with the outer world. These forms of organic homeostasis are the basis for further kinds and levels of norms, and deviations from these norms, which result in mental pathologies, provide insights into the complexity of spirit.

In the unfolding debate on the prospects, challenges and viability of the imminent transition towards a ‘Bio-Based Society’ or ‘Bio-based Economy’—i.e. the replacement of fossil fuels by biomass as a basic resource for the production of energy, materials and food, ‘big’ concepts tend to play an important role, such as, for instance, ‘sustainability’, ‘global justice’ and ‘naturalness’. The latter concept is, perhaps, the most challenging and intriguing one. In public debates concerning biotechnological interactions with the natural environment, the use of (...) terms such as ‘nature’ and ‘naturalness’ is both inevitable and hazardous . Indeed, various conflicting interpretations of naturalness play a role on both sides of the current debate. This paper aims to analyse and critically assess the role of ‘nature-speak’ in the BBS transition. We will begin with a concise overview of the vicissitudes of the nature-concept so far, focussing on how modern science and technology have challenged and affected our understanding of what nature is. Subsequently, we describe how ‘naturalness’ functions in the unfolding BBS debate. Finally, we will focus on a particular case study, namely the production of rubber with the help of natural latex coming from dandelion plants rather than from rubber trees. On the one hand, this is presented as a more natural and nature-friendly way of producing rubber. On the other hand, it is a sophisticated process, involving high technology and primarily focussed on competitiveness on the global market. To what extent or in what sense can dandelion latex be regarded as more natural? And what can we learn from this case study when it comes to addressing naturalness in the broader conceptual and bio-political arena? (shrink)

In which sense can human beings be conceived as social animals? To elucidate this question, the present paper distinguishes the logical sociality of all living beings from the material sociality of social animals and the political sociality of self-conscious social animals. The self-conscious political sociality that characterises the human genus-being requires a complex interplay of first and second person through which alone we can participate in our form of life and determine its content. The human form of life thus constituted (...) is characterised by a particularly open, and at the same time precarious, membership which involves specific forms of vulnerability and power. Against this background, forms of objective spirit are necessary which grant us a generalized recognition and relieve us from the contingency of each particular second-personal recognition, without abandoning the openness of the sociality of the human form of life. This double requirement has led to paradoxical institutions in modern society which strive to protect and ensure the sociality of the human form of life precisely by naturalising and individualising our access to it. (shrink)

This paper investigates the compatibility of Hegel’s analyses of the mechanization of work in industrial society with Hegel’s notion of freedom as rational self-determination. Work as such is for Hegel a crucial moment on the way to a more complete realization of human freedom, but, as I maintain with Adorno, the technological developments of the last two centuries raise the question of whether the nature of work itself has changed since the industrial revolution. In his Jena lectures, Hegel recognized significant (...) problems that the mechanization of work poses for human freedom that—on my assessment—his later, mature thought does not sufficiently address. One finds, however, a more comprehensive depiction of the same worries that Hegel mentioned in his Jena lectures in Adorno’s critique of the dominant forms of labor in contemporary society and his understanding of technological rationality, which according to Adorno, dominates the contemporary world. I suggest, furthermore, that juxtaposing Hegel’s and Adorno’s thoughts on technology and the mechanization of work reveals Adorno’s philosophy of technology to be an extension, rather than a critique, of the spirit of Hegel’s own philosophical project as immanent critique of the necessary entailments of any given concept. (shrink)

The article deals with the history of Russian Spinozism in the20th century, focusing attention on three interpretations of Spinoza's philosophy – by Varvara Polovtsova, Lev Vygotsky,and Evald Ilyenkov. Polovtsova profoundly explored Spinoza'slogical method and contributed an excellent translation of histreatise De intellectus emendatione. Later Vygotsky andIlyenkov applied Spinoza's method to create activity theory,an explanation of the laws and genesis of the human mind.

A dialectical contradiction can be appropriately described within the framework of classical formal logic. It is in harmony with the law of noncontradiction. According to our definition, two theories make up a dialectical contradiction if each of them is consistent and their union is inconsistent. It can happen that each of these two theories has an intended model. Plenty of examples are to be found in the history of science.

Hegel's philosophy of religion is characterized by what seems to be a deep tension. On the one hand, Hegel claims to be a Christian thinker, viewing religion, and in particular Christianity, as a manifestation of the absolute. On the other hand, however, he seems to view modernity as largely secular, devoid of authoritative claims to transcendence. Modernity is secular in the political sense of requiring the state to be neutral when it comes to matters of religion. However, it is also (...) secular in the sense of there being no recourse to authoritative representations of a transcendent God. Drawing on Charles Taylor's view of secularization, the article focuses on the second strand of his religious thinking, exploring how Hegel can be thought of as a theorist of secularization. It is claimed that his dialectic of religious development describes a process of secularization. Ultimately, Hegel's system offers a view of the absolute as immanent, suggesting that an adequate account of religion will necessarily have to accept secularization as the end-point of spirit's development. This is how the tension between religion and secularization can be resolved. (shrink)

Life and “good” are interchangeable, I think. Life is good, goodness life. Michael Thompson has recovered the understanding of life as goodness for contemporary philosophy. However, he errs in thinking that our life, human life, is a certain kind of life. And so he errs in conceiving the idea of the good by which we live as that of a certain kind of life. The idea of the good by which we live is not an idea, but the idea. This (...) shows that our life is not a life, but the life. This essay develops a series of forms through which “good” is thought: external purpose, organism, external process, generic process. It transpires that they are all incapable of thinking the good which is thought and known in practical thought. This is life beyond the generic process, no natural life, but the life of the spirit. (shrink)

Contrary to the widespread view that Hegel excluded Africa from what he called world history proper, the specifically African element of Egypt was indispensable to his account of the pivotal dialectical moment that saw spirit's release from its immersion in nature. Hegel's racist caricature of Africans in the early part of the lectures was not gratuitous, something that commentators can leave to one side. It was integral to his dialectical account of world history because it served to generate the contradiction (...) that saw the Persian Empire give way to Greece. This understanding is confirmed by the newly completed four-volume edition of Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of World History in the Gesammelte Werke. These new volumes also enable us to gain critical insight into how the editors of the first two published versions of the lectures, Eduard Gans and Karl Hegel, sought in their different ways to shape the reception of Hegel's lectures. (shrink)

This paper approximates a definitional distinction between philosophical problems and scientific problems. It defends the claim that philosophical problems can be defined as certain inconsistent sets ???? of propositions. This set is characterised by its minimality, the plausibility of its individual propositions, the non-empirical character of some of these propositions, and by the fact that a discursive context exists within which some of ????’s non-mathematical non-empirical assumptions are rejected by argument. In particular, this extrinsic and pragmatic criterion constitutes the novel (...) character of the definition presented. Starting from the concept of philosophical problem, a classification of philosophy as an academic and intellectual discipline is presented. The last part of the paper deals with the question whether such an analytical understanding of philosophy is to be understood exclusively, or whether other kinds of philosophy should still be considered possible. (shrink)

The notion of identity is investigated through Aristotle and Hegel as supporters of two different ontological conceptions: pluralism of substances and relational holism. Through Aristotle, I examine both the thesis according to which the identity of an object is constituted by its properties and the difficulties which this thesis encounters. Aristotle easily defines the identity in species, in genus, and in number; some problems arise regarding the identity of individuals: for these, it is not enough to indicate the definition and (...) the proper qualities, but matter is needed. Matter cannot, however, be a criterion for identifying duplicate objects: in this case, it plays at most the role of a “weak individuator.” A weak individuator involves relations with other entities. The use of relations in determining the identity of an entity is extensively treated by Hegel, according to whom, in order to define the identity of an object a multiplicity of particular objects is required and, therefore, relations among entities. I conclude by proposing a notion of the object understood not as an independent, separate, and autonomous item, but as a portion of the world, which is given in a phenomenological context and identifies a dialectical context. (shrink)

According to so-called transformative theories of rationality, human nature is of a fundamentally different kind than the nature of non-human animals, because it is transformed by the possession of rational capacities. This is assumed tobe reflected in the fact that human nature and non-human nature require two fundamentally different forms of explanation: reason-based explanations on the one hand, explanations with reference to natural laws on the other. There is no continuity between these two forms of explanation, i.e. a transition from (...) one to the other is not intelligible. In this paper, I will draw on Hegel to sketch a counter-position to this kind of “continuity skepticism” (Dorit Bar-On, 2013). The central thesis is that Hegel’s project in his anthropology is to make the transition from one order of explanation to another intelligible by outlining an intermediate realm in which the phenomena under investigation are no longer entirely outside, and not yet entirely inside, the rational order of explanation. (shrink)

Drawing on Hegel’s anthropology, this paper reconstructs ‘madness’ as an essential stage in the formation of the subject by developing the dialectical character of madness. This goes along with resituating the negativity of spirit as arising on an intermediary stage between nature and developed spirit as second nature. Hegel determines the freedom of spirit as “absolute negativity”. Madness shows a moment of radical negativity that is not viable as such. The formation of subjectivity is thus threatened by that which makes (...) it possible. The art of spirit is to over-come this form of abstract negativity, though not to lose the radicality of negativity, but to deepen it. ‘Absolute negativity’ is Hegel’s term for this successful sublation and simultaneous deepening of negativity. (shrink)

Transformative theories of what distinguishes human beings from animals face the problem of conceptually managing the transition from animal to human. This paper will show that this transition contains logical problems that are more rhetorically glossed over than logically solved by the concept of second nature. In the first part, I develop two main concepts of transformative theories, namely that of Hinzutreten (additive capacities occurring in humans) and that of Verwandeltsein (humans already being of a different kind), before outlining in (...) the second part Helmuth Plessner’s anthropological approach as one that elaborates not a transformation, but a holistic difference in the structure of human life as well as a non-metaphysical process of nature’s self-differentiation in human beings as opposed to animals. (shrink)

In recent work, Amie Thomasson has sought to develop a new approach to the philosophy of the categories which is metaphysically neutral between traditional realist and conceptualist approaches, and which has its roots in the ‘correlationalist’ approach to categories put forward in Husserl’s writings in the 1900s–1910s and systematically charted over the past few decades by David Woodruff Smith in his studies of Husserl’s philosophy. Here the author aims to provide a recontextualization and critical assessment of correlationalism in a Husserlian (...) vein. To this end, the author presents, first, the reasons why, later in his life, Husserl himself found his earlier treatment of categories philosophically naive, and why he increasingly advocated for a more genetic-teleological account. The author then draws upon arguments made a century earlier by Schelling and Hegel, in criticism of Fichte, to point up what might remain philosophically unsatisfying about even the post-correlationalist genetic position of the later Husserl, in light of the pronounced trend in Husserl’s own development, on the questions of reason and spirit, toward absolute idealism. (shrink)

This essay seeks to make a case for deconstruction as a kind of critical intervention for responding to and dealing with the opportunities and challenges of the 21st century and beyond. Toward this end, it proceeds in three steps or movements. (1) The first part will deconstruct deconstruction, deliberately employing what will be revealed as an inaccurate vernacular understanding of the term in order to extract a more precise and technical characterization of the concept. (2) The second part will investigate (...) the constitutive elements of deconstruction, focusing attention on its two-step procedure, which has been deliberately designed to be a kind of distortion of Hegelian dialectics. (3) Finally, the third part will examine the opportunities and the challenges of the theory and practice of deconstruction indicating how and why it can be considered a critical intervention, albeit one that is not without its own potential problems and vulnerabilities. ------------------------- Received: 29/10/2022. Reviewed: 13/12/2022. Accepted: 23/12/2022. (shrink)

I deal with the relation between phenomenology and realism while examining Ingarden’s critique towards Husserl. I exhibit the empiricist nucleus of Husserl’s phenomenology, according to which the real is what can be sensuously experienced. On this basis, I argue that Husserl’s phenomenology is not idealistic, in opposition to the realistic phenomenology, according to which reality consists in entities which cannot be sensuously experienced and are thus ideal. Finally I attempt to show that the idealistic elements of Husserl’s thinking do not (...) originate from the transcendental turn, but from a remainder of psychologism that contradicts his empiricism. (shrink)

This paper investigates Hegel’s thesis that we are, in our practical relation to the world, inherently committed to certain aspects of idealistic metaphysics. For Hegel, our practical attitude is fundamentally at odds with a naïve realism that would take the world to consist ultimately of self-contained, self-sufficient individuals whose relations to one another are fundamentally external to their identities. Hegel contends that our practical attitude is premised upon an overcoming of this mutual externality, and especially the externality which is supposed (...) to hold between individual agent and world. It is shown that his argument hinges on conceiving of external things as inadequately individuated, as compared to living agents, and that it is precisely this ontological deficiency that conditions and motivates our action. Hegel’s discussions of morality and property ownership are appealed to in order to illustrate how we might better understand the nature and practical role of this purported deficiency. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophy of recognition represents probably the most prominent direction that presently claims to introduce an updated version of classical German idealism into ongoing debates, including the debate on the nature of sociality. In particular, studies of Axel Honneth offer triggering contributions in Frankfurt School fashion while at the same time rejuvenating Hegel’s philosophy in terms of a philosophy of recognition. According to Honneth, this attempt at a rejuvenation also involves substantial modification of Hegelian doctrines. It is shown that Honneth (...) underestimates the implications of Hegel’s thoughts about the theme, method and systematic form of philosophy. As a consequence, Honneth’s social philosophy is, on the one hand, in need of a plausible foundation. This leads, on the other hand, to a different construction of the social within philosophy than Honneth offers. (shrink)

The sources of Kant’s term Gesinnung and a review of the problems of its translation into English were presented in the first part of this article; the second part examines the novel features that Kant brings to the interpretation of this concept in the critical period. In the Critique of Practical Reason these include the questions of manifestation of Gesinnung in the world, apprehended through the senses, the method of establishing and the culture of truly moral Gesinnung, as well as (...) the problem of the immutability of Gesinnung in the progress towards the good. The new theses that appear in Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason are Gesinnung as the internal subjective principle of maxims, on virtue as evidence of the presence of Gesinnung, on act as a manifestation of Gesinnung, on the unintelligibility of Gesinnung in its noumenal, suprasensible character, on the innateness of Gesinnung in the sense that it exists not in time, but in the form of its acceptance by free expression of the will, on the singleness of Gesinnung and its indivisibility into periods, on revolution in Gesinnung as distinct from empirical reform, on the creation of the new human being as distinct from the ancient one as a result of the revolution of Gesinnung, on the link between the revolution in Gesinnung and “conversion” or second birth. After discussing the problem of distinguishing the terms Gesinnung and Denkungsart in translation as well as a review of all the existing variants of translating Kant’s concept of Gesinnung into Russian, the author comes to the conclusion that the uniform variant umonastroenie is best suited for Russian translations of Kant’s works. (shrink)

RESUMEN Hablar de la organización sistemática de la filosofía en Hegel significa hablar del método que la filosofía se da a sí misma para poder comprender su objeto, así como para comprenderse a sí misma. A través de algunos significativos pasajes de la Ciencia de la Lógica y de la Enciclopedia de las ciencias filosóficas, veremos el desarrollo del pensamiento lógico, su relación con las ciencias particulares y sus consecuencias para el propio estatuto de la filosofía. Asimismo, intentaremos proponer, a (...) partir de las pautas hegelianas, algunos elementos metafilosóficos para un renovado ejercicio de la filosofía hoy. ABSTRACT To speak of the systematic organization of philosophy in Hegel means to speak of the method that philosophy gives itself to be able to understand its object, as well as to understand itself. Through some significant passages of the Science of Logic and of the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, we will see the development of logical thought, its relation with the particular sciences and their consequences for the own status of philosophy. We will also try to propose, from the Hegelian guidelines, some metaphilosophical elements for a renewed exercise of philosophy today. (shrink)

Students of the Hegelian school must acknowledge an abiding debt to Ernst Barnikol. Upon his death in 1968, he left uncompleted a voluminous manuscript on Bruno Bauer, representing over forty years of research. Of this manuscript, conserved at the International Institute for Social History, Amsterdam, only a fraction has been published, but even this fraction, in its almost six hundred pages, continues to set standards in the field for meticulous scholarship, rigorous analysis, and balanced criticism. Barnikol's interests were primarily theological, (...) though he recognised clearly that Bauer's religious critique was politically motivated. Barnikol also discovered, but did not publish, Bauer's 1829 Latin manuscript on Kant's aesthetics. This text, adjudicated by Hegel and awarded the Prussian royal prize in philosophy, had been deposited among Hegel's correspondence in the archives of the Humboldt-Universität, Berlin. It was first published in 1996, in the original Latin, with German translation and commentary. In referring to his discovery, Barnikol made a substantive claim which must be disputed here, that Bauer's early text remained without influence on his subsequent work. Focusing on Bauer's depiction of art, and on the relation of art and religion as manifestations of spirit, we can trace lines of continuity and development in his thought, from his 1829 manuscript to his writings of 1841-42. The central idea of the early manuscript, a Hegelian conception of the unity of thought and being, is the key to deciphering the complex and elusive meaning of Bauer's critical theory in the Vormdrz. (shrink)

Článek poukazuje na problém, do jaké míry je smysluplné rozlišovat přírodní vědy, sociální vědy a humanitní vědy, respektive co mají tyto vědy společného potud, pokud je lze skutečně nazývat vědou. Jde o následující otázky: Jaký je rozdíl mezi humanitními a sociálními vědami? Je možné vést ostrou demarkační linii mezi humanitními a přírodními vědami a jejich metodami? Co vlastně opravňuje dotyčný systém výpovědí k tomu nazývat se vědou? Je osudem humanitních věd "kvantitativní smrt" či je naopak možné vedle hi-tech úspěšných exaktních (...) věd považovat humanitní vědy za nepostradatelné know-how pro přežití lidské společnosti? Odpovědi na tyto otázky se budou opírat o definici sociální vědy Maxe Webera, požadavek autonomie metod humanitních věd klasické hermeneutiky, univerzální hermeneutiku Hans-Georga Gadamera, scientistický návrh novopozitivismu a v neposlední řadě o řešení problému hodnotové neutrality vědy Hanse Alberta. (shrink)

RESUMEN Este paper intenta dar cuenta del concepto de filosofía elaborado por Hegel, en los primeros años de Jena, como instancia más acabada de reconciliación de las escisiones propias de la cultura moderna. Se intenta mostrar que, a pesar de las diferencias existentes entre el Hegel jenense y el Hegel sucesivo a la Fenomenología del espíritu, la idea de la filosofía como lugar de conciliación se mantiene, lo que no implica, un pactar con la realidad ni un pensar la actividad (...) intelectual como refugio incontaminado, sino como lugar de transfiguración unitaria del mundo efectivamente existente. ABSTRACT This paper aims to highlight the Hegelian concept of philosophy, in the early years of his stay in Jena, as the most fulfilled instance of reconciliation of the splits of to modern culture. It tries to show that, despite the existing differences between this period of Hegelian production and the period following the Phenomenology of Spirit, the idea of philosophy as an instance of reconciliation is maintained, which does not imply, for Hegel, either pacting with reality or thinking intellectual activity as an uncontaminated refuge. Thought is instead an operation of unitary transfiguration of the effectively existing world. (shrink)

Abordaremos a crítica marxiana à noção hegeliana de "ser" , mostrando que a historicidade e a objetividade, em verdade, são determinações desta . Deste modo, intentamos mostrar que analogias entre a lógica hegeliana e a teoria marxiana podem eclipsar aspectos centrais à abordagem materialista proposta pelo autor de "O capital". Apontando a inversão hegeliana entre sujeito e predicado, Marx trata da apreensão do real que, muito embora seja traçada em diálogo com a dialética hegeliana, é também sua antítese direta . (...) We will deal with the Marxian criticism to the Hegelian notion of "being". It will be shown that historicity and objectivity are determinations of this category . So, the analogy between the Hegelian logic and the Marxian theory may, sometimes, hide essential aspects of the materialist comprehension of history. Here, we intend to prove that, by questioning the treatment dispensed to the matter of being by Hegel, Marx criticizes the Hegelian inversion between subject and predicate in a way that, although dialoguing with Hegel, his conception is the exact opposite at the same time. (shrink)

Hegel’s account of rational willing has recently been misrepresented by both critics and supporters who argue that the content of willing is externally received from history, social context, practices of recognition, etc. This contradicts the conceptual structure of Hegel’s notion of rational action as free individuality, according to which the difference between the willing subject and the content of willing is an internal relation of identity. Since this ‘difference within identity’ can only be grasped by speculative thinking and not through (...) understanding and reflection, the interpreters can be charged with employing the wrong method. Although reliance on the speculative method opens Hegel to the charge of unintelligibility, it helps explain the frequent misrepresentations of his account of freedom and why methodologically uninformed comparisons between Hegel and other thinkers run the risk of being counterproductive. (shrink)

Several years ago Guglielmo Carchedi (2008; 2012) published in S&S two interesting pieces on Marx’s dialectics and mathematics. His basic aim was to discover whether Marx’s Mathematical Manuscripts provide a new insight into Marx’s dialectics. The reading he suggested was addressed to Marx alone, i.e., without Hegel and Engels. This, he argued, is the only way to grasp Marx’s dialectics if one wants to understand Marx in his own terms. Since Marx never explicated his notion of dialectics, we ought to (...) derive it from Marx’s own work. To this end, Carchedi first defined “dialectics as a method of social research” (Carchedi, 2008, 416), and then listed three principles of dialectics: 1) “all phenomena are always both realized and potential”; 2) “they are always both determinant and determined”; 3) they are “always subject to movement and change” (ibid.). Later he added a fourth principle: 4) “social phenomena’s movement (change) is tendential” (Carchedi, 2012, 547). He emphasized that these principles are limited to society and not to be confused with nature, because society, unlike nature, necessarily involves “human volition and consciousness” (ibid.). For this reason, “Engels’ dialectics of nature cannot be applied to society” (ibid.), a claim he also asserted in his book Behind the Crisis (2011, 37–8). (shrink)

El presente trabajo se propone estudiar la recepción que Hegel realiza de la apercepción trascendental kantiana. Tal estudio nos permitirá comprender tanto las críticas que Hegel presenta contra el tratamiento kantiano de la apercepción, como la manera en que Hegel se apropia de ella y la utiliza para impulsar una crítica contra la lógica trascendental. Sostendremos que el tratamiento hegeliano de la apercepción consiste en diversos puntos: en primer lugar, revelar el verdadero significado filosófico que Kant no habría advertido en (...) su descubrimiento de la apercepción; en segundo lugar, mostrar que la lógica trascendental posee una concepción incompleta de las categorías puras y del pensar puro; en tercer lugar, nos proponemos mostrar que el estudio del tratamiento hegeliano de la apercepción trascendental como crítica a la lógica trascendental permite comprender la propia lógica especulativa hegeliana como una reelaboración de los límites epistemológicos del pensar puro y de la concepción del objeto de conocimiento. (shrink)

For decades, the question of whether dialectics applies to nature has been a hotly debated topic in the Marxian literature. A number of authors have claimed that the Marxist outlook on nature and natural sciences has been for-mulated by Engels alone. According to this view, Marx, unlike Engels, was concerned not with trans-historical laws governing the universe but with some particular laws of society. This anti-Engels camp, so to speak, mainly tended to draw bold lines between Marx and Engels, and (...) charged Engels with dis-torting Marxʼs original ideas of dialectics by some kind of reductionism, sci-entism and positivism that might also end up in an obsolete idealism. Engels was „following Hegelʼs mistaken lead“ by extending „the method to apply also to nature“. However, dialectics was „limited ... to the realms of history and society“.2 Some others objected to this view, and characterized any at-tempt to sharply contrast Engels with Marx as concealed mysticism and idealism. For the pro-Engels camp, Engelsʼs conception of nature was „in full conformity“ with Marxʼs materialist philosophy.4 Dialectics of nature was „no invention of Engels“. On the contrary, „it was worked out in collaboration with Marx and had his full agreement. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungIn diesem Artikel diskutieren wir Michel Foucaults Hauptwerke zum Thema „Wahnsinn und Psychiatrie“ von den Frühschriften bis in die siebziger Jahre. Zum einen rekonstruieren wir die globale theoretische und methodologische Entwicklung seiner Positionen im Lauf der verschiedenen Werkperioden. Zum anderen arbeiten wir Foucaults philosophische Überlegungen zum Gegenstand seiner Untersuchungen heraus. Nach der einleitenden Problemstellung zeigen wir entsprechend der neueren Forschung, inwiefern Foucaults frühe Positionen von 1954 (in der Einführung zu Binswangers Traum und Existenz sowie in Geisteskrankheit und Persönlichkeit) das spätere (...) Werk durch eine phänomenologische Deskription des Gegenstands und einen historisch-kritischen Anspruch vorbereitete. Davon ausgehend thematisieren wir die zentralen inhaltlichen und methodologischen Prämissen in Foucaults Wahnsinn und Gesellschaft von 1961. Seine Thesen zur „Abwesenheit des Wahnsinns“ in der Moderne verstehen wir als einen in sich widersprüchlichen Versuch, den Gegenstand der Untersuchung von gängigen Vorannahmen zu befreien. Anschließend situieren wir Foucaults Vorlesungen Die Macht der Psychiatrie von 1973/74 im Kontext seiner machtanalytischen Werkphase und betonen seinen erneuten Standpunktwechsel in den Annahmen zur „Produktivität“ des Wahnsinns als Machteffekt. Abschließend resümieren wir unsere Kritik im Zusammenhang mit der Rezeptionsgeschichte der dargestellten Studien und fragen nach der möglichen Bedeutung dieser Werke für die philosophische und historische Reflexion des psychiatrischen Gegenstandsfeldes. (shrink)

Many ways there are to articulate the objective conditions of human subjectivity. If poetry is regarded as one way, philosophy ought to be regarded as another. Whereas young Danish poet Theis Ørntoft in his Poems 2014invokes a host of metaphors inorder to stage and address the fluctuating and at most semi-stable foundations of human being, American philosopher Graham Harman in his The Quadruple Objectexpounds the structural components of a metaphysics that uncovers the ontological relativity of the objectively secured stability of (...) human subjectivity. The implications of Harman's so-called 'object-oriented ontology' for the ethically significant construal of the relation between nature and freedom will be spelled out towards the end of my article. (shrink)