Federico Perelda

In contemporary Western culture, death has been widely censured because of its conceptual implications; it lies at the boundaries between reductionism and metaphysics. There is not yet an efficacious epistemology able to solve this contraposition and its consequent collision with science and tradition. This article analyzes Near Death Experiences as a prototypical argument in which the two perspectives conflict. Specifically, it analyzes the epistemological antinomies of the ontological representations of death, inhering in passage versus absolute annihilation. Indeed, the NDEs theme permits the examination of the logical contradiction between monistic reductionism and its ontological counterpart to improve the discovery of a new paradigm that integrates the ecological with eternalist views.

In this essay I compare Hegel's theory of time and becoming with the contemporary debate, aiming on the one hand (A) at presenting Hegel's though in contemporary terms, and on the other, (B) at offering new inpunts to the present metaphysical debate from a Hegelian point of view. From a close reading of selected Hegelian texts I argue (1) that Hegel advocates a form of presentism and shares McTaggart's thesis that the B-series (chronological time) presupposes the A-series (dynamical time); (2) tht his position is peculiar because, althought he admits that change is inconsistent, he puts jeopardy the law of non-contradiction (at least in its universality), instead of denying the reality of time and change, as McTaggart did. These considerations will then lead to Hegel's speculative logic. According to the so called coherentistic reading of Hegel's thought, he never seriously questioned the principle of non-contradiction: he would be just a very sophisticated Aristotelian, after all. I oppose this view, arguing (3) that Hegel was a proponent of an articulated form of dialetheism.

Some anti-metaphysical readings of Hegel have been recently proposed by analytical (but not only analytical) philosophers. According to them, absolute idealism is reduced to the holistic system of concepts that organizes and regulates linguistic practices. I regard such interpretations as misrepresentations of Hegel's thought. On the contrary, I put forward a metaphysical reading that hinges upon the notion of objective thought. This is regarded as the result of a sort of triangulation between, on the one hand, Kant's criticism and, on the other, traditional metaphysics. The objectivity of thought is not merely the overcoming of phenomenalism in favour of a new form of empirical realism. Rather, it is the grounded certainty that what appears to be rationally undeniable is actually true. A parallelism between Hegel and Descartes is then drawn with regard to their attempt to ground the objectivity of reason: in Descartes by means of the mediation of God's existence, and in Hegel through the structure of the whole system. Thus, Hegel is thought of as closely related to rationalistic metaphysics. Just as the objection of the Cartesian circle can be raised to the author of the Meditations, analogously one could speak of a Hegelian circle with respect to objective thought