Daniel Dahlstrom

This meeting of the Hegel-Gesellschaft featured forty-six papers, including those presented during the two plenary sessions, covering a wide range of topics within the theme of the congress. The congress was ably administered and hosted by Dr. Wolfgang Sünkel at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg in Nürnberg. As usual, the congress was heavily represented by scholars from Eastern Europe and by scholars working at the Hegel-Archiv in Bochum. The contingent from the United States included Howard Kainz, Thomas Rockmore, Lawrence Stepelevich and myself.

The first part of this essay contests traditional objections to Kant's derivation of the law of right from the moral law, objections based upon the formalism and subjectivism that are inherent in Kant's formulation of the latter. Through a reconstruction of that derivation in syllogistic form, the nature and extent of the empirical presupposition underlying Kant's doctrine of right - furnishing it with a kind of content and natural objectivity - are made perspicuous. After noting the multiple uses of the term 'right' in Kant's doctrine, the second part of the essay sharply criticizes his dismissal of what he calls a "right in a broad sense", namely, equity.

Over a hundred scholars from as far away as Tokyo, New York, and Buenos Aires, participated in the twentieth congress of the Internationale Hegel-Gesellschaft held in Debrecen and Budapest, Hungary, from August 24 to August 28, 1994, on the theme: Vernunft in der Geschichte? Among those addressing the Debrecen portion of the congress were Agnes Heller, Manfred Riedel, Shlomo Avineri, Walter Jaeschke, and Ludwig Siep. Howard Kainz of Marquette University also gave a well received paper in Debrecen on “Hegel’s Philosophy of History and Providence.”

This paper suggests that Hegel's legacy is precisely the questionability of any attempt to put it in question. Derrida's acknowledgment of différance's "absolute proximity" to Hegel's notion of Aufhebung is an admission of this difficulty and an insistence, nevertheless, on disestablishing Hegel's thinking. Part one reviews four Hegelian legacies, summed up in the notion of Aufhebung: a suspicion of immediacy, a presumption of the fully mediated character of reality, a decentering of subjectivity by way of recovering nature and society, and finally, an endorsement of the absolute power of negation. Part two briefly recounts how Derrida manages, nevertheless, to deconstruct Hegel's legacy. However, the paper concludes that, since deconstruction and différance also call for the humility of deferring to a non-deferral of meaning, the questionability of putting Hegelian legacy in question remains its legacy.

In Heidegger's 1921 lectures, he presents an extensive interpretation of Book Ten of Augustine's Confessions. The present paper elaborates parallels between that interpretation of Augustine's Confessions and Heidegger's interpretation of existence in Being and Time, with special reference to the themes of self-possession and resoluteness as respective anchors of the two interpretations. The study also highlights ways the two interpretations diverge, i.e., the aspects of the interpretation of the Confessions ' themes of the good and desirable, the joyful and endearing, the delectatio that Augustine deems the end of our care that do not find their way into the existential analysis. By way of conclusion, questions are raised about the significance and plausibility of Heidegger's prima facie omissions of these themes from his existential analysis.