This article discusses two topics, both commonly referred to using the label “the beginning of Hegel's Logic”: (1) Hegel's justification for the claim that a science of logic must begin by considering the concept of “pure being”. (2) Hegel's account of the concepts “being”, “nothing”, and “becoming” in the first chapter of his Logic. Discussing recent work on both of these topics, two primary claims are defended: Regarding (1): the strongest interpretations of Hegel's case for beginning a science of logic (...) with the concept of pure being are those which take him to argue that this concept must be necessarily both “immediate” and “mediated” at the same time. Regarding (2): The widespread tendency to take Hegel's treatment of the concepts of being, nothing, and becoming as an example with which to illustrate his “dialectical method” should be replaced with an interpretation of that chapter which understands it to rather make possible the kind of dialectical transitions which make up the rest of Hegel's Science of Logic. (shrink)

Both Hegel and the later Wittgenstein were concerned with the problem of how to begin speculation, or the problem of beginning. I argue that despite many differences, there are surprising similarities between their thinking about the beginning. They both consider different kinds of beginnings and combine them into complex analogies. The beginning has a subjective and an objective moment. The philosophizing subject has to begin with something, with an object. For Hegel, the objective moment is pure being. For Wittgenstein, the (...) objective moment is something that cannot be doubted. As regards the subjective moment, the philosophizing subject has to decide, without any reason, to conclude her quest for the presuppositionless beginning and finally begin at the beginning. The arational moment of this decision is echoed throughout any rational thought. Any application of a (rational) rule is, ultimately, a blind decision to apply this rule. (shrink)

This essay offers an account of Kierkegaard’s view of the limits of thought and of what makes this view distinctive. With primary reference to Philosophical Fragments, and its putative representation of Christianity as unthinkable, I situate Kierkegaard’s engagement with the problem of the limits of thought, especially with respect to the views of Kant and Hegel. I argue that Kierkegaard builds in this regard on Hegel’s critique of Kant but that, against Hegel, he develops a radical distinction between two types (...) of thinking and inquiry: the ‘aesthetic-intellectual’ and the ‘ethico-religious’. I clarify this distinction and show how it guides Kierkegaard’s conception of a form of philosophical practice that involves drawing limits to the proper sphere of disinterested contemplation. With reference to two rival interpretations of Kierkegaard’s approach to the limits of thought—which I call ‘bullet-biting’ and ‘relativizing’—I further show how my ‘disambiguating’ account can better explain how, and why, his work courts a form of self-referential incoherence, in which it appears that certain limits of thought are at once affirmed and violated. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is twofold: to establish that Kierkegaard's so‐called theory of the leap strongly anticipates a line of argument that is central to Wittgenstein's so‐called rule‐following considerations; and to begin to show how Kierkegaard's work has fruitful contributions of its own to make to on‐going discussions about rules and rule‐following. The paper focuses throughout on the question of how, if at all, human rule‐following can be distinguished from behaviour that is merely mechanical or instinctual. I identify a (...) central line of argument in Wittgenstein that problematizes this question by establishing the basis our ability to follow rules in our spontaneous responses. I argue that Kierkegaard not only strongly anticipates this line of argument but also offers a distinctive story about what, at bottom, makes the difference between human rule‐following and behaviour that is merely mechanical or instinctual. In a word, on Kierkegaard's story, what makes the difference is: anxiety. (shrink)

This paper aims to understand Hegel’s claim in the introduction to his Philosophy of Mind that mind is an actualization of the Idea and argues that this claim provides us with a novel and defensible way of understanding Hegel’s naturalism. I suggest that Hegel’s approach to naturalism should be understood as ‘formal’, and argue that Hegel’s Logic, particularly the section on the ‘Idea’, provides us with a method for this approach. In the first part of the paper, I present an (...) interpretation of Hegel’s method in which life plays a central role. In the second part of the paper, I develop Hegel’s method by providing a reading of Hegel’s Subjective Spirit, focusing on the sections ‘Anthropology’ and ‘Phenomenology’ in particular, arguing that they display the dialectic between life and cognition outlined by Hegel’s Idea. (shrink)