I seek to interpret the work of Walter Benjamin in light of the "system programme" of German Idealism, in order to confront an antinomy of contemporary radical thought. Benjamin has been regarded as an anti-Hegelian thinker of the exception. Reading him against the grain, I draw out a concept of counter-tradition that eschews the opposition of intra-historical progress and extra-historical exception. The philological inspiration is a book by Franz Joseph Molitor, student of Schelling and "teacher" of Benjamin: The Philosophy of (...) History, or, On Tradition. (shrink)

This article explores Axel Honneth’s attempts to reconnect the struggles of workers with the normative content of modernity through Hegel’s intersubjective account of recognition. The importance of Honneth’s writings lies in his attempt to extend Habermas’ account of normative self-constitution to labor via the morally motivated struggles of workers to correct the modern maldistribution of social worth. To this extent, the expansion of ethical life is predicated on the struggles of excluded participants to gain inclusion within the normative content of (...) modernity. From this perspective Habermas’ attempt to legitimate the exclusion of labor (by the system) from the normative content of modernity appears unjust and unjustified. Unfortunately, Honneth shares with Habermas a tendency to locate the economic system beyond the (culturally defined) limits of ethical life. He thereby fails to acknowledge the extent to which workers play a major role in re-moralizing the former via the de-reification of the latter. (shrink)

To explain Paulin J. Hountondji’s intellectual trajectory, I offer a critical account of his conception of the relationship between science and philosophy. Mapping the shift from his well-known critical writings on ethnophilosophy to his later work on scientific dependency is possible only if we recognize that Hountondji conceives of philosophy as essentially a theory of science (Wissenschaftslehre). Adequately characterizing Hountondji’s metaphilosophical orientation, however, requires greater specificity. The two most influential philosophers on Hountondji’s conception of the relationship between science and philosophy, (...) Edmund Husserl and Louis Althusser, would both have assented to the claim that philosophy is fundamentally a Wissenschaftslehre. However, they each adhered to different (and indeed contradictory) understandings of this claim. While Hountondji explicitly recognizes the dual influence of Husserl and Althusser on his conception of philosophy as a theory of science, he does not attempt to resolve the contradictions between Husserl’s understanding of the relationship between philosophy and science and Althusser’s conception of that relationship. By examining Hountondji’s relatively neglected later writings on scientific dependency, it becomes clear that his emphasis on the significance of the history and sociology of science points toward an Althusserian conception of philosophy qua theory of science rather than a Husserlian conception of what it is for philosophy to be a Wissenschaftslehre. (shrink)

I argue that the reception of Hegel in the sub-field of history and philosophy of science has been in part impeded by a misunderstanding of his mature metaphilosophical views. I take Alan Richardson’s influential account of the rise of scientific philosophy as an illustration of such misunderstanding, I argue that the mature Hegel’s metaphilosophical views place him much closer to the philosophers who are commonly taken as paradigms of scientific philosophy than it is commonly thought. Hegel is commonly presented as (...) someone who conceived of philosophy as a science that relied on the solitary genius of the individual thinker, and as a science whose propositions could not and should not be made accessible to “the common people”. Against this view, I argue that Hegel in fact thought that philosophy was a thoroughly anti-individualistic activity, and that he emphasized the importance of the intersubjective accessibility of philosophical discourse. I argue that when we carefully reconstruct Hegel’s reasons for his break with Schelling, and if we pay close attention to his explicit metaphilosophical pronouncements, we can see that he in fact adhered to what I call a “proto-modernist” conception of philosophy as a science. I conclude by pointing out how the mischaracterization of Hegel has served to obscure the existence of a strand of scientific philosophy that emerged by way of an immanent critique of Hegel, namely Marxist philosophy. (shrink)

Hegels Phänomenologie des Geistes und seine Wissenschaft der Logik sowie Marx Kapital sind, so wird im ersten Teil gezeigt, jeweils Ausdruck einer Verlegenheit. Alle drei stehen nämlich vor der Herausforderung, in Geist, Logik und Kapital letztlich eine Methode darstellen zu müssen, und sie müssen darüber auch noch die Möglichkeit der Darstellung ebendieser Methode einholen und begründen. Diese Übereinkunft zwischen der Methode der Darstellung mit dem Methodischen aufseiten des dargestellten Geistes, der Logik und des Kapitals gelingt, so die These des zweiten (...) Teils, durch die Technik des Maßes. Maß und Messung konstituieren bereits in der Naturwissenschaft Objektivität im neuzeitlichen Sinne: Gehalten an und gebrochen durch ihre eigenen Maß, werden die Verhältnisse der Natur durch die ermittelten Werte wie ein selbständiger Gegenstand objektiv bestimmbar und im Wissen subjektiv aufgehoben. Dagegen zeigen Geist, Logik und Kapital jeweils, dass die Technik des Maßes nicht nur Objektivität im neuzeitlichen Sinne konstituiert, sondern die gesamte neuzeitliche Form der Gegenständlichkeit von Objektivität und Subjektivität, Bewusstsein und Gegenstand. In Hegels Phänomenologie und seiner Logik sowie in Marx Kapital eröffnet das Maß diese Gegenständlichkeit, indem jeweils eine Objektivität konstituiert wird, die einem Subjekt buchstäblich zu denken gegeben wird. Es ist allerdings unmittelbar die Objektivität der Subjektivität selbst, die jeweils gegeben wird: phänomenologisch wird durch das Maß die Objektivität der Subjektivität des Geistes gegeben, rein logisch wird die Objektivität des Seins durch die Subjektivität des Begriffs gegeben, und der kapitalistischen Gesellschaft ist durch quantitative Werte die eigene Objektivität gegeben, und zwar gegeben durch ein Geld, das dadurch zu einer überindividuellen, automatischen Subjektivität wird. Für das Maß steht in der Phänomenologie das Selbstbewusstsein, in der Logik der Begriff des Seins und im Kapital das Geld. Die Technik dieses Maßes erschließt sich jeweils bereits durch die Art und Weise, wie überhaupt ein Maß gegeben wird im starken Sinne einer ursprünglichen, anonymen und einseitigen Gabe, und diese geben eines Maßes in allen drei Werken der Einstieg in die Entwicklung des Geistes, der Logik und des Kapitals. (shrink)

Sketching the current division within receptions of Hegel, this article argues for Hegel as a philosophical theologian in a way that is not covered by the recent investigations into Hegel's theological project. Examining in particular the early work on Jesus Christ, the article analyses the changes in this work and how these changes in his understanding of Christology enabled Hegel to appreciate the logic of the Logos. This logic of the Logos is the basis for all his subsequent philosophy. It (...) is a logic that is made possible in his philosophical theology of mediation, incarnation, and reconciliation. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWhile Hegel’s concept of second nature has now received substantial attention from commentators, relatively little has been said about the place of this concept in the Phenomenology of Spirit. This neglect is understandable, since Hegel does not explicitly use the phrase ‘second nature’ in this text. Nonetheless, several closely related phrases reveal the centrality of this concept to the Phenomenology’s structure. In this paper, I develop new interpretations of the figures ‘natural consciousness’, ‘natural notion’, and ‘inorganic nature’, in order to (...) elucidate the distinctive concept of second nature at work in the Phenomenology. I will argue that this concept of second nature supplements the ‘official’ version, developed in the Encyclopedia, with an ‘unofficial’ version that prefigures its use in critical theory. At the same time, this reconstruction will allow us to see how the Phenomenology essentially documents spirit’s acquisition of a ‘second nature’. (shrink)

In “Violence and Metaphysics” Jacques Derrida suggests that “the only effective position to take in order not to be enveloped by Hegel would seem to be…to consider false-infinity…irreducible.” Inversely, refuting the charge of logocentrism associated with Hegelian true infinity ( wahrhafte Unendlichkeit ) would involve showing that Hegel’s speculative logic does not establish the infinity of being exempt from the negativity of the finite. This paper takes up Derrida’s challenge, and argues that true infinity is crucial to Hegel’s understanding of (...) ideality as a question of normative authority, which does not fall prey to logocentrism. Through an exposition of the dialectic of the finite and the infinite in Hegel’s Science of Logic , I argue that true infinity is not an ontological category that eliminates division, but rather refers to the metalogical standpoint involved in a philosophical account of determinacy. Although fully achieved at the end of the Logic , the metalogical standpoint that Hegel elaborates in the Seinslogik under the banner of the true infinite already clarifies that determinacy is a product of normative authority that is itself precarious. (shrink)