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.

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?

“The relation of a trillion to unity is very clearly understood, yet so far philosophers have not been able to make the concept of freedom comprehensible in terms of their unities, i.e., in terms of their simple and familiar concepts.” That this estimation of Kant’s, formulated as early as 1764, still holds true for the state of post-Kantian philosophy becomes evident when one attempts to reconstruct the discussion of the concept of freedom, which was initiated even among Kant’s contemporaries by his formulation of its problematic. The problem connected with this discussion can be understood historically as well as systematically. On the one hand, it is concerned with following the historical inheritance of the Kantian philosophy along the guiding thread of the concept of freedom in the debate between the followers and opponents of Kant. On the other hand, this historical investigation should serve to trace the systematic changes that the concept of freedom necessarily undergoes as soon as it enters a philosophical framework that is different from the Kantian. This dual perspective, under which the theme of “freedom” will be considered, offers the further possibility of marking off the temporal as well as the systematic limits of what is to be investigated here. The main philosophical interest in pursuing the modifications to which Kant’s concept of freedom was subjected in post-Kantian philosophy obviously lies in casting new light on the epochal course of thought that leads “from Kant to Hegel.” A claim to satisfy this interest is justified, however, only after one is clear about the philosophical discussion that had already begun among Kant’s contemporaries even while Kant himself was completing and working out his philosophical program. In short, the transition from the concept of freedom in Kant’s transcendental philosophy to the conception of freedom that is unique to the speculative idealism of Hegel can be explained only in light of a preceding analysis of the transformations that the Kantian theory of freedom underwent even as it was being worked out. These transformations, then, will appear at the same time as alternatives to the Kantian program.