Time and being.--Summary of a seminar on the lecture "Time and being."--The end of philosophy and the task of thinking.--My way to phenomenology.

Hegel’s assertion that self-consciousness is desire in general stands at a critical point in the Phenomenology , but the concept of desire employed in this identification is obscure. I examine three ways in which Hegel’s concept of desire might be understood and conclude that this concept is closely related to Fichte’s notions of drive and longing. So understood, the concept plays an essential role in Hegel’s non-foundational, non-genetic account of the awareness that individual rational subjects have of themselves. This account, (...) I argue, is part of a larger concern with demonstrating the relation between theoretical and practical capacities of the subject. I also argue that my reading explains Hegel’s emphasis on the figure of the bondsman in “Lordship and Bondage.” The bondsman’s experience of itself and its world instantiates Hegel’s views on the integration of subjective capacities and the reality of objects of experience. (shrink)

In this analysis of one of the most difficult and neglected topics in Hegelian studies, Songsuk Susan Hahn tackles the status of contradiction in Hegel's ...

This paper develops a new interpretation of Heidegger's concept of conscience in order to show to what extent his thought establishes the possibility of civil disobedience. The origin of conscience lies in the self's appropriation of language as inviting a reciprocal response of the other (person). By developing the social dimension of dialogue, it is showsn that conscience reveals the self in its capacity for dissent, free speech, and civil disobedience. By developing the social roots of conscience, a completely new (...) light is cast on the political implications of Heidegger's thought. (shrink)

"Everything is contradictory," Hegel declares in Science of Logic. In this analysis of one of the most difficult and neglected topics in Hegelian studies, Songsuk Susan Hahn tackles the status of contradiction in Hegel's thought. Properly philosophical thinking in the Hegelian mode recognizes that contradiction pervades all organic forms of life. Contradiction in Motion presents Hegel's doctrine of contradiction, once widely dismissed, as one deserving serious consideration. The book argues that contradiction is not a sign of error or incoherence, but (...) rather plays an important role in the development of Hegel's system.The first part of the book sets up Hegel's logic of organic wholes in such a way as to motivate his claim that everything is contradictory. Hahn explores how Hegel tests his abstract logical and methodological apparatus against the more concrete, unmanageable aspects of empirical nature. The second and third parts of the book examine the extent to which Hegel's organic model informs his aesthetics and ethics. Hahn reveals the privileged role of art forms in expressing our consciousness of organic unity and shows how Hegel's organic-holistic conception of cognition and nature, with its distinctively contradictory stance, can be incorporated coherently into his ethics. (shrink)