Stephen Houlgate

According to Hegel, true freedom consists not just in arbitrariness, but in the free willing of right. Right in turn is fully realised in the laws and institutions of ethical life. The ethical subject, for Hegel, is a practical subject that acts in accordance with ethical laws; yet it is also a theoretical, cognitive subject that recognizes the laws and institutions of ethical life as embodiments of right. Such recognition can be self-conscious and reflective; but it can, and indeed must, also be a felt recognition and as such it takes the form of trust. In Hegel’s view, therefore, the proper stance to adopt towards ethical institutions is that of trust; moreover, there is a distinctive freedom to be found in trust itself. Trust is appropriate, however, only when the institutions of ethical life are themselves worthy of it. Hegel is well aware that not all states and their institutions merit trust, but in his view a life without trust in institutions is a life without true freedom.

In this essay, I examine Robert Williams’s account of Hegel’s concept of divine “personhood.” I endorse Williams’s claims that God, for Hegel, is not a person but exhibits only personhood, and that divine personhood realises itself in a human community based on mutual recognition. I take issue, however, with Williams’s further claim that Hegel also takes God and humanity to stand in a relation of mutual recognition to one another, since this claim, in my view, risks turning God into a person after all. To conclude, I briefly consider a difference between Williams and myself concerning the relation of right to mutual recognition.

RESUMEN Largamente desatendida o malinterpretada, la noción de caos en la filosofía de Nietzsche es una pieza constitutiva de la particular concepción del ser que este autor habría dejado apenas esbozada. El artículo se propone elaborar este concepto en la obra nietzscheana, siguiendo algunas de las metáforas que lo iluminan. Desde allí se busca plantear los rasgos centrales de una ontologia del caos, de sesgo no metafísico, que, al afirmar el carácter acontecimental de la realidad, puede verse como precursora de la ontología hermenéutica contemporánea. ABSTRACT The notion of chaos, which has long been neglected or misinterpreted, is a constitutive element of a peculiar conception of being that the philosopher only had time to outline. The objective of this article is to elaborate on this concept in Nietzschean philosophy, guided by some of the metaphors that shed light on it. This serves as the basis to set forth the main characteristics of a non-metaphysical ontology of chaos that asserts the eventful nature of reality and can thus be seen as a precursor of contemporary hermeneutic ontology.

In his excellent recent book, Recognition: Fichte and Hegel on the Other, Robert Williams argues that, contrary to what many commentators claim, Hegel’s philosophy does not seek to swallow up individuality and difference in an all-embracing and all-consuming absolute, but rather takes individuality and differentiation seriously as essential features of the society and the world in which we live. Williams defends this interpretation by arguing that Hegel understands all forms of genuine human community and interaction - including not just civil society and the state, but also family relations and forgiveness - as modes of reciprocal recognition between individuals.

The Fifth Annual Conference of the Hegel Society of Great Britain took place on September 15–16, 1983 in the delightful setting of St. Edmund Hall, Oxford. The theme of this year’s conference - “Hegel’s Dialectic” - was approached in a variety of ways by the contributors and provoked several lively and interesting discussions. The first paper of the conference was to have been given by Howard Williams, but unfortunately he had found his way to Pembroke College instead of St. Edmund Hall and so was unable to begin the proceedings. The conference started therefore with a paper by John Llewelyn entitled “The Development of Dialectic from Kant to Hegel.”

The aim of this article is to explain why, in Hegel's view, art's history brings it to the point at which it can no longer afford the highest satisfaction of our spiritual needs and so fulfill its own highest calling, and why, nevertheless, we moderns still need art and still need it to create beauty. I argue that Hegel advocates a modern art of beauty because he believes that what has to be given aesthetic expression in the modern world is concrete human freedom and life (ratherthan the abstract, subjective freedom of Romantic irony) and that the aesthetic expression of such concrete human freedom entails beauty.

In this essay I argue that Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature combines four elements. Hegel develops an a priori account of the logical determinations immanent in and peculiar to nature—determinations that incorporate the determinations set out in the Logic. Hegel then points to the empirical phenomena corresponding to each determination and so proves indirectly that such phenomena are necessary. Finally, he draws attention to those aspects of nature that cannot be explained by nature’s immanent logic and so are contingent. In this way, I argue, Hegel demonstrates a priori that certain natural processes are made necessary by the distinctive logic of nature, but he also recognizes that there are contingencies in nature that only empirical science can discover