Frederick Neuhouser

This paper situates _Julie, or the New Heloise_ in relation to Rousseau’s more familiar texts by reading it as concerned with the tensions among morality, culture and human nature. In _Julie_ this takes the form of a conflict among virtue, love, and sexual passion. Neuhouser compares _Julie_’s view of that conflict with that of its literary predecessor, the letters of Abelard and Heloise, and argues that _Julie_ is Rousseau’s attempt to modernize that tale of love by seeking a resolution of its central conflict that respects the constraints of nature. The key to this is preserving the lovers’ bond by creating a shared life of mutual care and affection in which sexual love has been replaced by a fraternal bond. This attempt, however, leaves behind a residue of sexual passion that retains its power to act as virtue’s opponent.

Dass die amour propre eine zentrale Rolle in Rousseaus Denken spielt, zeigt sich daran, dass sie die wichtigste Antwort auf die Leitfrage seines Discours sur lʼorigine et les fondements de lʼinégalité parmi les hommes ist: Worin liegt der Ursprung der moralischen (oder sozialen) Ungleichheit unter den Menschen? Obwohl die Komplexität des Diskurses es leicht macht, diesen Punkt zu übersehen, behauptet Rousseau, den primären Ursprung der moralischen Ungleichheit aufgedeckt zu haben, indem er sie auf die „Entwicklung des menschlichen Geistes“ zurückführt (OC III, 162). Tatsächlich ist das, was Rousseau den „ersten Schritt zur Ungleichheit“ (OC III, 169) nennt, ein psychologisches Phänomen: die Entstehung einer inhärent sozialen Leidenschaft, die er (später im Text) „amour propre“ nennt. Hier ist die Stelle, an der diese Leidenschaft – der Wunsch, angeschaut zu werden, angesehen zu sein, öffentliche Wertschätzung zu erhalten oder Respekt zu erlangen – zum ersten Mal im zweiten Diskurs auftaucht, ohne als solche benannt zu werden.

This paper responds to Frederick Neuhouser's attempt to make sense of Hegel's social theory, and in particular the conception of freedom that grounds the detailed claims made within that theory, in abstraction from its larger systematic context. I argue that Neuhouser's interpretation, despite its many virtues, could be further improved by increased attention to the importance of absolute spirit for Hegel's account of social freedom, as well as to the logical necessity of the developments within the Philosophy of Right. I conclude by explaining the consequences of these omissions for our understanding of Hegel's conception of freedom and the social theory that arises from it.

Michael Forster’s latest book is a comprehensive and illuminating treatment of the basic tasks and strategies of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. As the title indicates, Forster is more concerned to elucidate the aims and structure of the Phenomenology as a whole than to reconstruct the claims of specific sections or to provide a chapter-by-chapter commentary. Forster is correct that a coherent and sympathetic account of the Phenomenology’s “official project” is badly needed, and he succeeds admirably in the task he has set for himself. In explicating Hegel’s project Forster draws on an impressive knowledge of Hegel’s early, lesser-known writings, as well as those parts of the history of philosophy that matter most to the Phenomenology. These virtues alone suffice to make the book an indispensable resource for Hegel scholars, as well as for those who are new to his philosophy.

Can a human society suffer from illness like a living thing? And if so, how does such a malaise manifest itself? In this thought-provoking book, Fred Neuhouser explains and defends the idea of social pathology, demonstrating what it means to describe societies as 'ill', or 'sick', and why we are so often drawn to conceiving of social problems as ailments or maladies. He shows how Rousseau, Hegel, Marx, and Durkheim – four key philosophers who are seldom taken to constitute a 'tradition' – deploy the idea of social pathology in comparable ways, and then explores the connections between societal illnesses and the phenomena those thinkers made famous: alienation, anomie, ideology, and social dysfunction. His book is a rich and compelling illumination of both the idea of social disease and the importance it has had, and continues to have, for philosophical views of society.

ABSTRACT This article reconstructs Nietzsche's conception of spiritual illness, especially as exhibited in various forms of the bad conscience, and asks what positive, ennobling potential Nietzsche finds in it. The relevant concept of spirit is arrived at by reconstructing Nietzsche's conception of life and then considering what reflexive life—life turned back against itself—would look like. It distinguishes four independent features of spiritual illness: the measureless drive to make oneself suffer, self-opacity (or mendaciousness), life denial, and a self-undermining dynamic in which life exhausts the sources of its own vitality. The article ends by considering various suggestions as to how these features of spiritual illness might also be preconditions of great spiritual health, including the preconditions for erecting new “ideals.”

This chapter examines the philosophical underpinnings of Durkheim’s account of anomie as social pathology. It examines and evaluates Durkheim’s conception of social pathology and his claim that social problems must be understood as analogous to illnesses. Further, it explores the vision of social ontology—of the kind of being that human societies have—underlying Durkheim’s position, which involves articulating the ways in which human societies are both different from and similar to biological organisms. Because Durkheim conceives of the task of social theory as similar to that of medicine, his account of anomie can be regarded as compatible in important ways with the tradition of Frankfurt-style critical theory. Both approaches to social reality attribute to social theory three inter-related tasks: theoretical understanding, normative evaluation, and guidance for practical action directed at changing the pathologies it diagnoses.

ABSTRACT Hegel calls social life “the living good,” but what this means is unclear. The idea expresses an ontological claim about the kind of being that human societies possess, but it is also normatively significant, clarifying why the category of social pathology is an appropriate tool of social critique. Social life consists in processes of life infused with ethical content. Societies are normatively and functionally constituted living beings that realize the good similarly to how organisms achieve their vital ends: via specialized, coordinated functions. In distinction to living organisms, the living good realizes itself through the consciousness and will of individual social members.

This paper reconstructs Nietzsche’s conception of spiritual illness, especially as exhibited in various forms of the bad conscience, and asks what positive, ennobling potential Nietzsche finds in it. The relevant concept of spirit is arrived at by reconstructing Nietzsche’s conception of life and then considering what reflexive life – life turned back against itself – would look like. It distinguishes four independent features of spiritual illness: the measureless drive to make oneself suffer, self-opacity (or mendaciousness), life-denial, and a self-undermining dynamic in which life exhausts the sources of its own vitality. The paper ends by considering various suggestions as to how these features of spiritual illness might also be preconditions of great spiritual health, including the preconditions for erecting new “ideals.”

“Hegel on Social Ontology and the Possibility of Pathology.” This paper examines the theoretical resources Hegel’s philosophy offers for constructing a compelling conception of social pathology. Its main thesis is that these resources can be adequately grasped only by first getting clear on his social ontology, that is, on his view of what kind of thing human societies, as part of objective spirit, are. The key to doing this lies in understanding the fundamental analogy Hegel draws between spirit (including human societies) and life, especially with respect to their essential ‘functions’. This requires also investigating the ways in which social life, as a form of spirit, differs from mere life, primarily because the beings who make up human societies are conscious agents and are therefore capable of a kind of reflexivity that is absent in non-human life. The type of social pathology the paper focuses on is one in which human subjects fail to endure, or negotiate, the fundamental opposition between spiritual and merely animal life or, in other words, fail to unite their ends as living beings with the loftier end of freedom.

The aim of the dissertation is to examine Fichte's attempt at demonstrating the unity of theoretical and practical reason. Chapter 1 discusses the young Fichte's dissatisfaction with Kant's two separate accounts of reason in the First and Second Critiques. It also analyzes the relationship between the issue of the unity of reason and what Fichte takes to be another crucial problem in Kant's moral philosophy, the lack of a positive proof that pure reason is practical. ;Chapter 2 traces Fichte's development from his early criticisms of Kant through the Wissenschaftslehre of 1797-9 and examines the various strategies he considers in his attempt to demonstrate the unity of reason. The main concern here is to clarify the sense in which Fichte ultimately comes to regard theoretical and practical subjectivity as unitary. It is argued that his main strategy is to show that a single structure underlies consciousness in both its theoretical and practical forms, a structure which he intends to capture with his distinctive notion of the subject's "self-positing" activity. ;Chapter 3 examines Fichte's theory of the self-positing subject as it relates to the phenomenon of theoretical self-consciousness. It focuses on three reasons behind Fichte's central claim that subjectivity cannot be grasped by the same concepts employed to understand objects: The subject must be understood as an activity rather than as a thing. The subject's existence is distinct from that of an object, for in the former case self-awareness is essential to the subject's being. This implies that the subject, in a sense, constitutes itself through its own conscious activity. The self-referring activity which constitutes the subject must have a structure that is distinct from the dual, subject-object structure of representation. ;Chapter 4 investigates Fichte's use of the doctrine of the self-positing subject to construct a theory of practical self-determination which explains the autonomous subject's relation to itself without recourse to a "two-worlds" view in which the subject of experience is determined by a rational but unknowable noumenal self. ;The conclusion assesses the extent to which Fichte's theory succeeds in showing that an identical structure informs both theoretical and practical subjectivity