Angelica Nuzzo

Stephen Houlgate's long-awaited two volumes on Hegel's Logic of Being offer a thorough presentation and a detailed reconstruction of the Doctrine of Being, which constitutes the first part of the first division of Hegel's Science of Logic (appeared in 1812 in the first edition; revised in the second edition of 1832 published after Hegel's death). The first volume takes on the logic of Quality and the transition to Quantity while the second volume addresses the logic of Quantity and Measure leading up to the transition to Essence. Along with the Doctrine of Essence, the Doctrine of Being occupies the first main division of Hegel's Logic or Objective Logic, which is followed by the Subjective Logic, or Doctrine of the Concept, as its second main division. Within Hegel's philosophical system, the Logic is followed by the Philosophy of Nature and the Philosophy of Spirit, the three main parts of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences (appeared in the three editions of 1817, 1827, 1830). Chronologically, but also systematically (at least in a qualified way),1 the Logic is preceded by the 1807 Phenomenology of Spirit. This brief sketch may help us locate the object of Houlgate's volumes within Hegel's philosophy as a whole.

An unprecedented reading of Hegel’s Logic that sets this difficult work in a dialogue with literary texts. In this book, Angelica Nuzzo proposes a reading of Hegel’s Logic as “logic of transformation” and “logic of action,” and supports this thesis by looking to works of literature and history as exemplary of Hegel’s argument and method. By examining Melville’s Billy Budd, Molière’s Tartuffe, Beckett’s Endgame, Elizabeth Bishop’s and Giacomo Leopardi’s late poetry along with Thucydides’ History in this way, Nuzzo finds an unprecedented and productive way to render Hegel’s Logic alive and engaging. She argues that Melville’s Billy Budd is the most successful embodiment of the abstract movement of thinking presented in Hegel’s Logic, connecting Billy Budd’s stutter to the puzzlingly inarticulate beginning of Hegel’s Logic, “Being, pure Being,” identical with “Nothing,” and argues that the Logic serves as an especially appropriate tool for understanding the sudden violent action that strikes Claggart dead. Through these and other readings, Nuzzo finds a fresh way to address interpretive issues that have remained unresolved for almost two centuries in Hegel scholarship, and also presents well-known works of literature in an entirely new light. This account of Hegel’s Logic is framed by the need for an interpretive tool able to orient our understanding of the contemporary world as mired in an unprecedented global crisis. How can the story of our historical present—the tragedy or the comedy we all play parts in—be told? What is the inner logic of our changing world? “Angelica Nuzzo presents an original interpretation of Hegel’s Logic by representing it as a logic of action. This novel approach is supported by insightful readings of the literary texts she covers in the book.” — Andrew Cutrofello, author of All for Nothing: Hamlet’s Negativity.

This chapter examines the systematic and thematic extension that the concept of Trieb receives in Hegel’s mature philosophy, that is, throughout a system conceived as the dialectical connection of a logic, a philosophy of nature, and a philosophy of spirit. For Hegel, the concept of Trieb is no longer the specific and exclusive province of a philosophy of nature, a psychology, or a moral philosophy. While crucial in the thematization of these fields, the notion of Trieb becomes a logical and methodological feature of dialectical processes. The chapter brings this latter point to the fore discussing the occurrence of the concept in central passages of Hegel’s Logic.

ABSTRACT Foregrounding Hegel’s political cosmology allows us to set his dialectic-speculative theory of the political world in contrast both to ideal theories and to historicist-positivist theories. Against these positions, Hegel upholds his “realism of the idea”: the claim that a rational world is neither a pre-given whole nor an unattainable ideal, but the dynamic, immanent orientation of reason that continually constructs and animates the world. Hegel’s view of the world thus provides him with a way of reconceiving the relationship between philosophy and actuality. In this view, philosophy is not immune from, or external to, the world it theorizes, but is produced and checked by that world, which it, in turn, produces.

The essay uses the second moment of Hegel’s “absolute method,” namely, the moment of the advancing action, in order to shed light on the constitution of the dynamic universal in society, politics, and history through the moment of stasis or crisis. In the action that advances or in the middle moment of the method lies the “crisis” of the unfolding process. Dialectically, action advances by stalling and imploding but also by emerging from this frozen state, moving on from it. I indicate the moment of crisis-stasis as the predicament of “living in the interregnum” and examine it by appealing to Thucydides, Gramsci, and Gordimer.

Taking as point of departure Hegelrsquo;s early reflections on his historical present, this essay examines the relationship between dialectical reason and the activity of the understanding in generating contradiction. Dialecticmdash;as logic and methodmdash;is Hegelrsquo;s attempt at a philosophical comprehension of the conflicts and the deep changes of his contemporary world. This idea of dialectic as logic of historical transformation guides the development of consciousness in the emPhenomenology of Spirit/em. Since my claim is that the dialectic of consciousness and its capacity of overcoming contradiction are rooted in the historical situation of 1807, the question is raised of what would be the specific problems encountered by consciousness in our contemporary worldmdash;in 2007. What are the challenges posed by our globalized world to a phenomenology of contemporary spirit; and what is the role that contradiction and dialectic play in the understanding of our own historical present?

Angelica Nuzzo - Kant and Herder on Baumgarten's Aesthetica - Journal of the History of Philosophy 44:4 Journal of the History of Philosophy 44.4 577-597 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Kant and Herder on Baumgarten's Aesthetica Angelica Nuzzo While philosophers since antiquity have offered reflections and theories on subjects such as the beautiful, the sublime, art, and its appreciation, "aesthetics" as a discipline in its own right dates back only to the second half of the eighteenth-century. We owe to Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten the introduction of 'aesthetics' into philosophical discourse. At the moment of its inception, however, this discipline had little to do with art and was not primarily concerned with the beautiful. It was instead a theory of the cognitive value of human sensibility—a doctrine of "sensible cognition." A general historical and systematic question presents itself at this point: How shall human sensibility be conceived in order for aesthetics as a theory of sensibility to gain an independence of its own in philosophical discourse? And accordingly: How shall the human being be conceived in order for our aesthetic experience to claim a philosophical value of its own? In this essay, I elaborate the results of the hypothesis that I submit in response to these questions. My claim is that the mind/body dualism dominating the rationalist tradition of modern philosophy is the principal obstacle..

This essay examines the presence of Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel in Merleau-Ponty’s thought. The perspective adopted here is methodological. Central to this is the choice of “transcendental phenomenology,” understood as a rehabilitation of the idealism and subjectivism proper to the transcendentalism of Kant and Fichte—the choice by which Merleau-Ponty refuses to abandon transcendental philosophy, like Hegel on the contrary did with his dialectical-speculative philosophy, and follows instead the phenomenological perspective suggested for the first time by Schelling.

This essay is a renewal of Hölderlin’s poetic question as raised again philosophically by Heidegger, and is an attempt to frame the issue anew bringing Hegel into the conversation. At stake, first, is the way in which poetry and philosophy respectively—or perhaps in conjunction—are able to address the chief question of the time as a question of “truth.” What is it that poetry and the poet properly and uniquely do in relation to their time? Does the poet think, and how does she think poetically in language? And, crucially, how does poetic thinking differ from philosophical thinking? But at stake is also, second, the way in which philosophy can—and should—itself speak of poetry. Significantly, both Heidegger and Hegel propose a thoroughly new way of addressing the question of poetry in philosophy.

Angelica Nuzzo offers a comprehensive reconstruction of Kant's theory of sensibility in his three Critiques. By introducing the notion of "transcendental embodiment," Nuzzo proposes a new understanding of Kant's views on science, nature, morality, and art. She shows that the issue of human embodiment is coherently addressed and key to comprehending vexing issues in Kant's work as a whole. In this penetrating book, Nuzzo enters new terrain and takes on questions Kant struggled with: How does a body that feels pleasure and pain, desire, anger, and fear understand and experience reason and strive toward knowledge? What grounds the body's experience of art and beauty? What kind of feeling is the feeling of being alive? As she comes to grips with answers, Nuzzo goes beyond Kant to revise our view of embodiment and the essential conditions that make human experience possible.