Andreja Novakovic

Hegel claims that nothing truly great has ever been accomplished in history without passion. In this paper I aim to explain what he means by passion and why he holds it in such high esteem, even though he thinks that its great contribution is limited to historical contexts. I consider the role of passion in the cunning of reason, proposing that passion be understood as a concrete expression of reason. I also argue that passion illuminates the structure of motivation in general, specifically the relationship between “universality” and “particularity” embodied in what Hegel refers to as the matter-at-hand. Finally, I turn to the peculiarity of passion, showing that passion in the historically relevant sense differs from other motives because it is invested in an unrealized cause and involves the sacrifice of ordinary life.

Katherine Angel has recently challenged contemporary conceptions of erotic desire by suggesting that sex is a learning process in which we discover what it is to be a person. This paper brings her suggestion to bear on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. It offers an interpretation of what Hegel calls ‘immediate desire’ and the experience an immediately desiring consciousness makes by reading a key paragraph through the lens of erotic desire. What the paper hopes to show is that Hegel’s analysis of the experience of desire and the example of sexual encounters can be mutually illuminating.

In 1780 Frederick II pushed the Prussian Academy to put forward a controversial question for a public essay contest: “Is it useful for the people to be deceived, be it by leading it into new errors or by confirming it in those which it upholds?” Although Hegel would have been too young to participate in the contest, he took two later opportunities to provide what would have been his answer. Whereas the Phenomenology of Spirit evaluates Enlightenment’s charge that religious faith is based on deception, the Philosophy of Right suggests that public opinion formation tends to lead to collective self-deception. In both versions of his answer, however, Hegel argues that it is impossible to deceive a people about its essence. In this paper I clarify what Hegel means by a people’s essence and why he thinks it impossible to deceive a people about it.

Hegel frequently identifies ethical life with a “second nature.” This strategy has puzzled those who assume that second nature represents a deficient appearance of ethical life, one that needs to be overcome, supplemented, or constantly challenged. I argue that Hegel identifies ethical life with a second nature because he thinks that a social order only becomes a candidate for ethical life, if it provides a context conducive to the development of what I call “real habits.” First, I show that a criterion for a real habit can be found in Hegel's Anthropology, namely, that of liberation. Next, I explain how the state, as Hegel analyzes it in the Philosophy of Right, provides such an environment by enabling trust toward and within it. I then consider two literary examples of contexts that fail to be similarly supportive—Coates' Between the World and Me and Atwood's Handmaid's Tale—concluding with reasons for thinking that real habits are an integral part of ethical life.

Hegel's Science of Logic tracks the self-contained and self-generated development of what Hegel calls the concept. My question is: can the concept in the Logic surprise itself? I argue that the answer to that question is yes—the concept can surprise itself when it rediscovers itself in a place it did not expect to be. I first clarify the kind of perspective that the Logic asks us as readers to occupy and its difference from the perspective inside the ‘opposition’ of consciousness. I then provide an example of the concept's self-surprise, namely, the transition from subjective to realized purpose in the Subjective Logic. I conclude by drawing out some implications of self-surprise for Hegel's method in the Logic and in the subsequent Realphilosophie.

What does it take to be subjectively free in an objectively rational social order? In this book Andreja Novakovic offers a fresh interpretation of Hegel's account of ethical life by focusing on his concept of habit or 'second nature'. Novakovic addresses two central and difficult issues facing any interpretation of his Philosophy of Right: why Hegel thinks that it is is better to relate unreflectively to the laws of ethical life, and which forms of reflection, especially critical reflection, remain available within ethical life. Her interpretation draws on numerous parts of Hegel's system, particularly on his 'Anthropology' and his Phenomenology of Spirit, and also explores connections between his account and those of other philosophers. Her aim is to argue that Hegel has a compelling conception of the ordinary ethical standpoint which takes seriously both the virtues and the perils of reflection.