This paper concerns a surprisingly sharp disagreement about the nature of ancient Pyrrhonism which first emerges clearly in Kant and Hegel, but which continues in contemporary interpretations. The paper begins by explaining the character of this disagreement, then attempts to adjudicate it in the light of the ancient texts.

In defining the Wise Man, the Man of absolute Knowledge, as perfectly self‐conscious – i. e., omniscient, at least potentially – Hegel nevertheless had the unheard‐of audacity to assert that he realized Wisdom in his own person.

The goal of the present text is to analyze some aspects of Husserl’s own phenomenology against the backdrop of the quite famous or infamous critique of the “Myth of the Given” proposed by the American philosopher Wilfrid Sellars in his Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind. Indeed, whereas Sellars’ volume is usually deemed the source of what has been recently referred to as the “Hegelian Renaissance” characterizing analytic philosophy, Husserl and his transcendental phenomenology are on the contrary seen as the (...) very expression of a new “form” of “Cartesianism.” Now, after a quick discussion of Sellars’ “diagnosis” of the Myth of the Given, the present essay elaborates on the general “Hegelian” character of his argumentations ; finally, an analysis of Husserl’s alleged Cartesianism in the late text known as Cartesian Meditations will be provided bearing upon the notions of “evidence” and “synthesis.” As we firmly believe, our remarks will show not only that Husserl does not at all fall prey to the “Myth,” but also that his understanding of the concept of reason can help us avoid some of the implications directly flowing from Sellars’ position. (shrink)

The article presents a theoretical analysis of the extramural polemic between Slavoj Žižek and Evald Ilyenkov, undertaken in the context of the search for the foundational underpinnings of the two philosophers’ perspectives on the limit-logical definitions of being. It shows how this apparently “abstract” search grows out of the socio-historical circumstances of the thinkers’ lives, which are inscribed in the dramatic conditions of existence of the political events of the twentieth century. The active life-political position of the follower of Marx’s (...) ideas, figuratively expressed in the text by Lenin’s term “tactics of social democracy” (Lenin 1962), is justified by one or another cognitive position: the unified attitude “not to explain but to transform the world” breaks down into various “tactics” precisely in the attempt to solve the problem of radical negativity (as Žižek formulates it). This is expressed in the division of Marxism into “Western” and “Eastern”. This article analyzes the legitimacy of such a division and shows the conditions for a disintegration of the divide. The relation of Ilyenkov and Žižek to Hegel’s works turns out to be the key to understanding this division, and consequently to the essential difference in socio-political attitudes and “tactics”, of which they are creative representatives. The analysis leads to the formulation of the “germ cell” of disagreement between Ilyenkov and Žižek—the problem of the universal—which unfolds in the difference between the thinkers’ positions on certain theoretical points. The limitation of Ilyenkov’s position, established under the fire of Žižek’s criticism, is removed, according to the author, by the development of a new category of “fractality”, which acts as a counterpart to the main dialectical category of “totality” and provides a concrete (in the Hegelian sense) solution to the problem of radical negativity in the spirit of the classical philosophical tradition. (shrink)

Professor Crites comes to his task with deep personal sympathy for and philosophic commitment to each of the protagonists in his volume. The subject of Crites’ work is not the tension of faith and history with which we are familiar in the works of Strauss, Baur, Feuerbach, Renan, and M. Arnold, but rather the tension of Christianity and culture. Crites chooses for his departure the notion and analogy of "domesticity," the accommodation, or lack thereof, of the gospel and the world. (...) With a fairness that is singularly unique among Hegelian critics of Kierkegaard, Crites argues that the issue between Kierkegaard and Hegel was the problem of the positivity of the Christian religion. For Hegel, the development of the notion of Christianity as the absolute religion solved the problem raised by the problem of positivity and Lessing’s essay "On the Proof of the Power and the Spirit." For Kierkegaard such a solution was a sellout, for it eliminated faith. Crites argues well the logic of both Kierkegaard’s and Hegel’s positions. Though the author has a few judicious things to say about Kierkegaard’s epistemology, his treatment would have profited by a more extended analysis of the epistemology of both Hegel and Kierkegaard, and by some indications regarding the importance and use of the modal categories in his author’s appraisal of both faith and history—R. L. P. (shrink)

A Hegelian reading of good and bad luck -- In Shakespearean drama (phen. of spirit, King Lear, Othello, Hamlet, a Midsummer night's dream) -- Tearing the fabric: Hegel's Antigone, Shakespeare's Coriolanus, and kinship-state conflict (phen. of spirit c. 6, Judith Butler's Antigone, Coriolanus) -- Aufhebung and anti-aufhebung: geist and ghosts in Hamlet (phen. of spirit, Hamlet) -- The problem of genius in King Lear: Hegel on the feeling soul and the tragedy of wonder (anthropology and psychology in the encyclopaedia, Philosophy (...) of mind, King Lear) -- Richard II's mirror and the alienation of the Universal Will (of the I that is a We) (Richard II, phen. of spirit c. 5) -- Falstaff and the politics of wit: negative infinite judgment in a culture of alienation (Henry IV parts I & II, phen. of spirit c. 6, philosophy of right) -- Henry V's unchangeableness: his rejection of wit and his posture of virtue reinterpreted in the light of Hegel's theory of virtue (philosophy of right, Henry V) -- Hegel's theory of crime and evil: (re)tracing the rights of the sovereign self (aesthetics, phen. of spirit, phil. of right, Richard II through to Henry V) -- Richard III, Hamlet, Macbeth and Henry V: conscience, hypocrisy, self-deceit and the tragedy of ethical life (phil. of right, Richard III, Hamlet, Macbeth, Henry V) -- Negation of the negative infinite judgment versus sublation of it: punishment vs. pardon (phil. of right, phen. of spirit c. 6 and Henry VIII) -- Universal wit : the absolute theater of identity (phen. of spirit c. 6 and 8, Pericles, the Tempest) -- Absolute infections and their cure (phen. of spirit c. 6, the Winter's tale). (shrink)

This book offers a critical introduction to the work of American philosopher D. G. Leahy (1937-2014). Leahy's fundamental thinking can be characterized as an absolute creativity in which all creating is 'live' -- a happening occurring now that manifests a supersaturated polyontological actuality that is essentially created by the logic that characterizes it. Leahy leaves behind the categorial presuppositions of modern thought, eclipsing both Cartesian and Hegelian subjectivities and introducing instead an essentially new form of thinking founded in a nondual (...) logic of creation. The new thinking delineates the absolute unicity of existence as a creative interactivity beyond all traditional dichotomies (such as one vs. many, unity vs. plurality, identity vs. change): a fully "digitized" actuality that is nothing but newness, which inherently implies nothing but change. Through this new form of thinking, change itself is revealed to be the very essence of reality and mind. Any reader looking for a quantum leap beyond the thrall of modern and postmodern fixations is invited to hear and apprehend this new thinking that refuses to be conditioned by paradigms, categories, species, genera, walls, bridges, boundaries, or abstractions: an essentially free thinking that embodies creative novelty itself. (shrink)

This paper proposes an alternative perspective on the question of the relationship between German Idealism and American Pragmatism through attention to the philosophy of Josiah Royce. Despite being seen as a Hegelian, Royce declared himself a pragmatist. However, he also called his position Absolute Voluntarism. This paper suggests that the real issue between Idealism and Pragmatism is Intellectualism vs. Voluntarism. This distinction both parallels and cuts across the traditions of German Idealism and American Pragmatism, and promises to open up a (...) view broader than the traditional accounts of the qualified appreciation of Hegel seen in Peirce and Dewey, or the outright antipathy of James. With Peirce, we see that his continual call for Royce to study logic includes, or complements, his criticisms that Royce neglects Secondness. Regarding James, we see his influence on Royce is mediated also in their mutual study of Wundt’s voluntaristic psychology, which has its own roots in the pre-Kantian German Idealism of Leibniz. As for Dewey, he acknowledges Royce’s voluntarism, but rejects Royce’s claim that his Absolute Pragmatism/Voluntarism is pragmatism at all. Nonetheless, even if Royce failed to fuse his idealism and pragmatism, the very effort suggests he saw them as distinct enough to need fusion. (shrink)

The philosophic moment of Marx : Marx's transformation of the Hegelian dialectic -- Preface to the Iranian edition of Marx's humanist essays -- The theory of alienation : Marx's debt to Hegel -- The todayness of Marx's humanism -- A 1981 view of Marx's 1841 dialectic -- The inseparability of Marx's economics, humanism, and dialectic -- Capitalist development and Marx's capital, 1863-1883 -- Today's epigones who try to truncate Marx's capital -- Letter to Herbert Marcuse on automation -- Marx's grundrisse (...) and the dialectic in life and in thought -- Capitalist production/alienated labor -- Marx's critique of culture -- Post-Marx marxism and the battle of ideas -- Post-Marx marxism as a category -- Hobsbawm and Rubel on the Marx centenary, but where is Marx? -- Marx's philosophy of revolution vs. non-marxist scholar-careerists in "marxism" -- Paul Mattick : economism vs. Marx's humanism -- Bertell Ollman : pitting "human nature" against Marx's humanism -- The dialectic of labor in Marx and "critical thought" -- Gramsci's "philosophy of praxis" -- Rosdolsky's methodology and Lange's revisionism -- Adorno, Kosik, and the movement from practice -- Marx as philosopher of revolution in permanence-reading Marx for today -- Section A: Marxist-humanism -- Introduction to philosophic notes -- The emergence of a new movement from practice that is itself a form of theory -- New stage of production, new stage of cognition, new kind of organization -- The dialectic of absolute idea as new beginning -- Section B: Black liberation and internationalism -- Abolitionism and the American roots of marxism -- Marx and the two-way road between the U.S. and Africa -- Black intellectuals in dilemma -- Women's liberation and the dialectics of revolution -- Marx's "new humanism" and the dialectics of women's liberation in "primitive" and modern societies -- Marx's and Engels' studies contrasted : relationship of philosophy and revolution to women's liberation -- Letter to adrienne rich on women's liberation, gay liberation, and the dialectic -- Dialectics of organization and philosophy -- Spontaneity, organization, philosophy (dialectics) -- Philosopher of permanent revolution and organization man -- A post-World War II view of Marx's humanism, 1843-1883 : marxist humanism, 1950s-1980s -- Appendices -- Bibliography -- Index. (shrink)

The title of this edition is quite misleading and the edition is disappointing. The Dietz Verlag edition of Marx's Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie is over a thousand pages long. Virtually unavailable until recently, it is considered by many to be among Marx's most interesting and important works. It consists primarily of Marx's unpublished writings from 1857-1858. A serious study of the Grundrisse must be made for a full understanding of Marx. It places the discussion of the 'young' vs. (...) the 'old' Marx on a new level of sophistication because here is a work written by the mature Marx that is pervaded with Hegelian themes. It contains highly interesting speculations about the Asiatic mode of production, the theory of surplus value, and the possibility of the development of a middle class, which is not available in Marx's other writings. McLellan, Nicolaus, Marcuse, Lichtheim, and others have noted the importance of the Grundrisse for gaining new insight into Marx's thought. Unfortunately, McLellan has translated what amounts to about one tenth of this work in a manner which while it whets one's intellectual appetite is not very useful for pursuing or pinning down Marx's reflections in the Grundrisse. These bits and fragments will have to do until we have a full translation of the Grundrisse.--R. J. B. (shrink)

Simmel never finished his book on Hegel. Simmel rarely mentions Hegel throughout his collected works. But when he does, it is often with praise. However, Simmel explicitly distances himself from Hegel in those places where, as readers, we find Hegelian traits. What should we make of this complex relationship? With the aim of contributing to understanding Simmel’s systematic thought, I assess the extent to which Simmel was and was not influenced by Hegel. I refer to two lesser-known writings, in which (...) Simmel addresses Hegel’s philosophy at length, along with some of the more incidental mentions of Hegel that Simmel makes throughout his oeuvre. I show that Simmel adopts Hegel’s conception of philosophy while rejecting its system building. I then argue that what most scholars consider to be Hegelian in Simmel’s philosophy, namely dialectics, in fact represents his weakest, or most general, form of Hegelianism. Moreover, I show that given Simmel’s aesthetic focus, he may have been more influenced by Schiller than by Hegel in this regard. Finally, among other Hegelian features that are often overlooked, I consider Simmel’s conceptual relationality of individual–society as well as his critique of Kantian ethics. (shrink)

1. In both Benedetto Croce's and Hegel's own terminology, dialectics can be understood as dottrina degli opposti (the doctrine of the opposites – Lehre der Gegensätze).1 In the dialectical process,...

This paper argues for a comprehensive conception of empathy as comprising epistemic, affective, and motivational elements and introduces the ancient Stoic theory of attachment (Greek,oikeiōsis) as a model for describing the embodied, emotional response to others that we take to be distinctive of empathy. Our argument entails that in order to provide a suitable conceptual framework for the interdisciplinary study of empathy one must extend the scope of recent “simulationalist” and “enactivist” accounts of empathy in two important respects. First, against (...) the enactivist assumption that human mindreading capacities primarily rely on an immediate, quasi-perceptual understanding of other’s intentional states, we draw on Alfred Schutz’ analysis of social understanding to argue that reflective types of understanding play a distinct, but equally fundamental role in empathic engagements. Second, we insist that empathy also involves an affective response toward the other and their situation (as the empathizer perceives this). We suggest analyzing this response in terms of the Stoic concepts of attachment, concern, and a fundamental type of prosocial motivation, that can best be described as an “extended partiality.” By way of conclusion, we integrate the above concepts into a comprehensive conceptual framework for the study of empathy and briefly relate them to current debates about empathic perception and prosocial motivation. The result, we argue, is an account that stays neutral with regard to the exact nature of the processes involved in producing empathy and can therefore accommodate discussion across theoretical divides—e.g., those between enactivist, simulationalist, and so-called theory-theorist approaches. (shrink)

This theoretical paper explores the application of Hegelian inferentialism combined with contemporary quantitative methods to enhance decision-making in healthcare leadership. It proposes a novel conceptual framework that integrates Hegel’s inferentialism with Bayesian analysis and epistemic justice indices to offer a new approach for understanding complex decision processes in healthcare settings. The paper develops theoretical constructs such as the Decision Quality Index (DQI) and the Epistemic Justice Quotient (EJQ), which aim to quantitatively assess leadership effectiveness and ethical considerations in decision-making processes. (...) The discussion includes mathematical proofs for these proposed indices and examines the potential practical implications of this integrated approach, emphasizing its theoretical potential to improve healthcare leadership through more inclusive and evidence-based practices. This work provides a conceptual foundation for future empirical research in healthcare leadership and decision-making. (shrink)

A formalism is developed that treats a robot as a subject that can interpret its own experience rather than an object that is interpreted within our experience. A regulative definition of a meaningful experience in robots is proposed in which the present sensible experience is considered meaningful to the agent, as the subject of the experience, if it can be related to the agent's temporal horizons. This definition is validated by demonstrating that such an experience in evolutionary autonomous agents is (...) embodied, contextual and normative, as is required for the maintenance of phenomenological accuracy. With this formalism it is shown how a dialectic similar to that described in Hegelian phenomenology can emerge in the robotic experience and why the presence of such a dialectic can serve as a constraint in the further development of cognitive agents. (shrink)

In this article I will discuss some systematic issues of Arthur Danto's philosophy of art and art history from a Hegelian perspective. Belonging to "Absolute Spirit," art can be called a "spiritual kind." Since spiritual kinds are reflective and self-determining, they are not susceptible to philosophical definition. Nevertheless, elements of essentialism can be maintained when describing art's historicity and conceptual structure. To this end, "art" can be interpreted as a two-tier concept: in inherently reflecting its concept, it projects its own (...) conditions into the past, co-opting "prehistorical" artworks as predecessors and classical examples. Hegel's view of art as conceptually structured in itself can have disenfranchising or reenfranchising consequences: either reducing art to minor philosophy, or acknowledging its privileged access to its own essence. After Danto's detachment of the philosophy of art from aesthetics, Hegel would himself be deprived of the possibility to "define" art by intuition . Even if the spirit consists of essential kinds, philosophy is not in a privileged position to establish the essence of art and thus the difference between art and philosophy. Rather, philosophy must acknowledge art as a neighbor and as partner in a dialogue. (shrink)

Hegel’s practical philosophy has important insights for understanding the ethical role of the firm in modern society. From a broadly Hegelian perspective, the firm’s role in society is to facilitate freedom, that is, the concrete realization of rational agency. It does this by providing the institutional structures, norms, practices, and modes of discourse necessary for individuals to link their subjective aims with objectively valid societal aims, embodied in the firm’s purpose. Accordingly, I first present a Hegelian account of the link (...) between action and social structure, before arguing that the firm, when it functions properly, enables individuals to express their capacity for rational agency within concrete social contexts. I then draw upon Paul Adler’s Marxist analysis of the development of organizational structures and processes to support the viability of a broadly Hegelian account of the firm within a contemporary economic context. I conclude by outlining a number of practical implications of this account, before explaining its implications for two prominent theories of business ethics, the MacIntyrean perspective, and the Market Failures Approach. (shrink)

Though Wilfrid Sellars portrayed himself as a latter-day Kantian, I argue here that he was at least as much a Hegelian. Several themes Sellars shares with Hegel are investigated: the sociality and normativity of the intentional, categorial change, the rejection of the given, and especially their denial of an unknowable thing-in-itself. They are also united by an emphasis on the unity of things—the belief that things do ‘‘hang together.’’ Hegel’s unity is idealist; Sellars’ is physicalist; the differences are substantial, but (...) so are the resonances. (shrink)

In his article “Hegelian Identity,” Trisokkas examines the dialectic of identity and difference in the second chapter of Section One of Book Two of Hegel’s Science of Logic, “The Determinations of Reflection.” Trisokkas initially shows that Hegel understands identity as having its truth in contradiction. He then explains that Hegel understands contradiction in two ways. Ordinarily, a contradiction occurs when a quality or quantity (F) and its contradictory (not F) are predicated of the same thing (A). However, for Hegel, contradiction (...) has a more fundamental sense. It is a structure where the very thing (A) is in its own minimal self continuously both affirmed (A) and denied (not A). It is thereby shown that Hegelian identity is not merely the thing’s distinguishing from another thing but also, and more fundamentally, a process of self-negation and self-unification within the thing itself. As such a process, the identity of a thing is equally its non-identity. (shrink)

Semën [Simon] Liudvigovich Frank was born in Moscow, the son of a doctor. He studied law at Moscow University, joined a student Marxist group headed by P.B. Struve, and as a result was barred by the Russian authorities from living in any of the Russian “university cities.” He continued his university education at the Universities of Berlin and Munich. His first published work was a critique of Marx’s theory of value. Between 1902 and 1905 he divided his time among Berlin, (...) Munich, and Moscow. In 1902 he published his first philosophical essay, on Nietzsche’s doctrine of Fernstenliebe. He was a contributor—along with Nicolas Berdyaev, S.N. Bulgakov, and Struve—to three influential symposium volumes: Problemy idealizma [Problems of idealism], Vekhi [Signposts], and Iz glubiny [De profundis]. This last work was printed but its release was blocked by Soviet censorship. All of these works were originally published in Moscow; all of them have, in the past three or four years, been republished in Moscow, but for more than seventy years they were banned in the Soviet Union and could be reprinted only abroad. (shrink)

If we think of recognition as the practical relation consciously enacted by concerned individual subjects as social actors, which allows them to fulfil their intersubjectively valid social roles, this by no means exhausts the significance that recognition is accorded by Hegel. In fact the problem of recognition is central to the understanding and evaluation of Hegel’s metaphysical system. Thus a close scrutiny of the presentation of self-consciousness in Phenomenology of Spirit and the interpretative difficulties it poses leads on to the (...) question of the subject and Hegel’s distinction between finite, accidental individuals and the true subject in his system: the concept of Spirit, understood not as a separate entity but as a system of relations, objectified in the historical forms of the Absolute Spirit. But what is the price of Hegel’s metaphysics of subjectivity? Hegelian recognition signifies the recognition by individuals of recognition in its truth, that is, the self-recognition by finite individuals that they participate in Spirit as the true universal subject to the degree that they recognize their shared world of actions as the world of their own making. Modernity is therefore defined for Hegel as the recognition and realization of ‘conscious freedom’, whose telos lies in the actualization of universal reciprocal recognition that brings the unfreedom of history to an end. The idea of freedom and the thesis of the ‘end of history’ remain, however, the preserve of the thinking few. Hegelian recognition and with it Hegel’s whole metaphysical system founders on the rock of finitude, on the unfreedom of finite human beings. (shrink)

Hegel has long been considered a major thinker of progress. This paper extends Hegel’s philosophy of progress into an outline of a philosophy of technology. It does this not by directly reading the little Hegel wrote on the subject, but by introducing six central Hegelian ideas that bear on the technological thought. It argues that, for Hegel, (1) mankind is destined to change its destiny; (2) that true change involved qualitative change; (3) that true change is conceptual, and not material, (...) change; (4) that history progresses immanently according to its own laws; (5) that history progresses towards ever greater artificiality; and that (6) artificiality is closely linked to freedom. These ideas cohere into a Hegelian metaphysics of technology, which is supportive of the technological enterprise. This paper is meant both to sketch a metaphysical understanding of the technological enterprise, and to trace the intellectual roots of contemporary technological utopianism. (shrink)

This study aims to critique the concept of active learning in childhood education based on Hegelian Bildung. We have defined childhood education from the perspective of Hegel’s Bildung in The Phenomenology of Spirit. We describe childhood education as a ‘primary Bildung’ having the aim of ‘entering into the conceptual world’. This aim indicates that children can and are required to express their experiences in conceptual language. Finally, we critique the conceptual components of active learning from the Hegelian point of view (...) and suggest three alternative components: ‘child-educator interaction’, ‘understanding historical knowledge’, and ‘addressing concrete-abstract affairs.’ We suggest that the concept of active learning needs to be replaced by ‘Communicative-Interactive Learning (CIL)’. CIL takes both objectivity and subjectivity into account during the process of knowledge formation in education. (shrink)

Sartrean ontological intersubjectivity is often understood to be hostile and conflictive, and Sartrean dialectics is repeatedly interpreted through the lenses of the Hegelian master-slave dyad, translating into a conflictive theory of practical ensembles. Building on this, critics in the aftermath of 9/11 argued that 'terror' and 'revolutionary violence' introduced in Critique of Dialectical Reason as the anti-thesis of oppression underscored his anti-colonial writings and this gives us justification to think that Sartre might consider terrorism a form of revolutionary violence.With this (...) in mind, this paper does not deal with the bigger issue of Sartre's political position, but only aims to question the basis of reading Hegelian dialectics in Sartre's ontology of intersubjectivity and social ensembles. Revisiting the role of dialectics in his Search for a Method and Critique of Dialectical Reason, it reveals a Sartre who is critical of Hegelian dialectics, and establishes his intersubjectivity as more compatible with Heidegger's being-with-others rather than Hegel's being-for-others. (shrink)

While much has been written in recent years about the significance of Hegel’s Logic for Marx’s method in Capital, less attention has been given to the relevance of Hegel’s method for understanding Marx’s outlook on rights. The dominant view among political theorists across the Anglo-American, Marxist and critical theory traditions is that the revolutionary transformation of capitalism would pave the way for the disappearance of rights in communist society. The aim of this article is to question the orthodoxy concerning the (...) fate of rights in communist society by bringing into relief the relevance of Aufhebung. When applied to Marx’s social theory, this Hegelian concept sheds valuable light on the transformation of rights in communist society and points to an alternative conclusion than the one proposed by leading commentators. A re-Hegelianized reading of Marx’s cumulative reflections on rights shows the possibility of a reconstituted notion of rights in communist society. (shrink)

The central axis of the article is the argument thatHistory and Class Consciousnessadopts from the Hegelian dialectics not only the category of totality but also the master–slave dialectic, although it never refers explicitly to the latter. Hence, in this article, we aim to detect the subtle influence that the Hegelian master–slave dialectic exerts onHistory and Class Consciousnessand, more specifically, on the constitution of the Lukacsian concepts of reification, praxis, working class-bourgeoisie interaction, working-class self-consciousness, autonomous subject. Our approach to the Hegelian (...) master–slave dialectic is mostly – but not only – based on its philosophical–anthropological interpretation by A. Kojeve. Kojeve’s interpretation, by attributing a crucial role to labour in the mastery–slavery dialectic, focuses on that aspect of the Hegelian dialectic which, in our estimation, was determining forHCC.In addition, our approach to the Hegelian master–slave dialectic is based on some occasional references Lukacs has to it inYoung Hegelas well as on his interpretation latent inHistory and Class Consciousness. (shrink)

This article explores the Hegelian ‘night of the world’ that plays such an important role in Žižek’s theorisation of the subject. In the first part, I examine how the themes of the “pre-synthetic imagination” and “abstract negativity" are crucial to understanding Žižek’s theorisation of the Hegelian subject. In the second part, I consider how this Hegelian model of the subject is decisive for understanding Žižek’s conception of Hegelian “concrete universality,” and how the latter concept figures prominently in Žižek’s analysis of (...) the relationship between the abstract negativity of the subject and the political question of confronting global capitalism. Žižek’s unorthodox reading of the Hegelian ‘night of the world’—the radical negativity that haunts subjectivity—is developed further in an explicitly political direction. This Hegelian theme helps explain Žižek’s recent critique of the ‘Fukuyamaian’ consensus, shared both by moral-religious conservatives and libertarian ‘postmodernists’, that global capitalism remains the ‘unsurpassable horizon of our times’. In conclusion I raise some questions about Žižek’s combining of abstract and determinate negation in his ‘romantic’ reading of the negativity of the Hegelian subject. I then critically examine the implications Žižek draws from this analysis in In Defense of Lost Causes , which presents a sustained argument to reclaim the revolutionary tradition of Leftist politics. (shrink)

There has been considerable disagreement about the relationship between Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and his Philosophical Investigations with some scholars arguing that there is considerable continuity between them and some arguing that they are completely opposed. The paper argues that this breadth of disagreement is not surprising because the relation between TLP and PI is analogous with that described in Hegel’s dialectical model of philosophical truth in the Phenomenology of Spirit. One might say that TLP is “refuted” by PI but there is (...) also a sense in which PI is “the truth” of TLP. TLP and PI are both essential stages in “the progressive unfolding of truth” bound together like the successive stages in a single living organism where the view of the former is both “annulled” and “preserved at a higher level” in the view of the latter. The paper thereby helps to facilitate Rorty’s attempt to usher “analytical philosophy” from its Kantian to its Hegelian stage. (shrink)