•  128
    I begin by defending Heinrich Gustav Hotho’s foundational edition of the Lectures on Aesthetics (LA), contra Gethmann-Siebert. In doing so, I also defend Hegel against the common conceit that his comprehension of music was somehow deficient. Reference to Kant’s transcendental aesthetics then allows us to grasp how, in Hegel, meaningful tones arise from the vibratory oscillation between selfhood’s presiding unity and its temporal ideality or self-positing. Further elements of musical architecture…Read more
  •  99
    Hegel reads the poet Novalis as an expression of terminal irony, a pathological case of Gemüt, where the conscious mind is alienated from reality and turns its negativity inwards on the contents of its own natural soul. The condition of self-feeling, presented in Hegel’s “Anthropology”, is a self-consumption that manifests itself somatically in the physical disease (consumption) from which Novalis dies. The poet’s literary production represents a pathological fixation that impedes the dynamic or…Read more
  •  483
    Kate Crawford presents AI as “both reflecting and producing social relations and understandings of the world”; or again, as “a form of exercising power, and a way of seeing… as a manifestation of highly organized capital backed by vast systems of extraction and logistics, with supply chains that wrap around the entire planet”. I interpret these material insights through a Marxist understanding of ideology, with reference to Marx/Engels, Guy Debord and Louis Althusser. In the German Ideology, Mar…Read more
  •  163
    The Subversive Politics of Hegel's Speculative Sentence: An Onto-grammatical Reading of Lordship and Bondage
    In Elias Bongmbas & Rob Manzinger (eds.), Philosophy, Freedom, Language and Their Others: Contemporary Legacies in German Idealism., Bloomsbury. 2023.
    Reading the Phenomenology onto-grammatically means interpreting its constitutive forms of consciousness as grammatical iterations of the speculative proposition, where the subject-object relations can be read as dialogical encounters between subject and predicate, where the predicate “talks back”, creating a discursive space of hermeneutical ambiguity and openness, at play in the copula. The article begins with a brief presentation of Hegel’s general theory of language, as it pertains to the dis…Read more
  •  323
    Hegel's Dialectics of Digestion, Excretion, and Animal Subjectivity
    The Owl of Minerva 53 (1): 71-97. 2022.
    In the Philosophy of Nature, Hegel describes at length and in detail the particular workings of animal digestion and excretion, referring to the empirical research of his day (Berzelius, Spallanzani, Traviranus). By becoming engaged in the scientific disputes and insights of the time—regarding, for example, the mechanical versus chemical nature of digestion, immediate digestive assimilation and the chemical composition of feces—Hegel arrives at the novel idea that what the animal excretes as sup…Read more
  •  411
    Through reference to Karl Löwith's reading of time in Hegel as fundamentally inspired by the temporality of Aristotle, the paper shows how the absolute "now" is thoroughly informed by historical time. Hegel's preferred tense is that of the Perfekt, the present perfect, where the present "now" is always also what it has been. Hegel thus reconciles Greek and Christian forms of temporality, the distinction that Löwith reads as unreconciled and tragic in Hegel's "young" followers: Feuerbach, Stirner…Read more
  •  99
    The organic trope is a popular way of accepting the systematicity of Hegelian science. It allows for diversity and difference within the living whole, where each organ contributes to the life of the holistic "one", which, in turn, ensures the vitality of each organ. For example, in the Philosophy of Right, the organic state maintains itself in relation to the various institutions and corporations that constitute its organs. However, one element of the organic trope remains largely ignored: excre…Read more
  •  304
    This is a version of a book chapter included in a mss on Hegel and the Absolute. It deals with metaphysical issues in Big Bang cosmology (the Big Crunch, the Big Chill, the anthropic principle, singularities...) from a Hegelian point of view. If human consciousness is an undeniable feature of the universe, then can we not say that the universe possesses or has possessed consciousness and therefore is or has been conscious? Similarly, Hegel's Absolute knows itself through the self-knowing agency…Read more
  • The book holds the French translation of Hegel's 1828 review of K.W.F. Solger's Posthumous Writings and Correspondence, published by his friends in 1818, along with a lengthy introduction in French. In his review, Hegel distinguished between Solger's little-known theory of aesthetic irony, which he had likened to Hegel's own dialectic of the Absolute, from the romantic irony of Friedrich Schlegel.
  •  86
    Hegel et la maladie psychique: le cas Novalis
    Science Et Esprit 2 (56): 189-202. 2004.
    Hegel's take on mental illness, as presented in the Subjective Spirit chapter of his Encyclopedia, is explored through his diagnosis of the romantic poet/philosopher Novalis, whose yearning (Sehnsucht) becomes a pathological condition where subjective negativity turns inward, creating a pathological condition of Gemüt. The mental condition manifests itself physiologically. Sehnsucht becomes Schwindsucht (consumption) bringing about the death of Novalis.
  •  438
    Hegel's Critique of Romantic Irony
    In Elizabeth Millán Brusslan & Judith Norman (eds.), Brill’s Companion to German Romantic Philosophy, Brill. pp. 241-57. 2018.
    Hegel's critique of the Early German Romantic figures of Fr. Schlegel, Novalis and Schleiermacher resonates to the very core of his work and is as essential to understanding his vision of Science as Plato's polemic against the Sophists is to comprehending his philosophy. Hegel's presentation of romantic irony may not be faithful to its Romantic conception but it is deeply insightful in apprehending irony's postmodern threat to systematic philosophy.
  •  218
    Comets and Moons: The For-another in Hegel's Philosophy of Nature
    The Owl of Minerva 45 (1/2): 1-11. 2013.
    This paper examines the Hegelian moment of the for-another in its negative relation to the other moment of particularity: the for-itself. I identify the dissolving, fluidifying action of the for-another by examining figures within the Philosophy of Nature, particularly comets and moons, but also Hegel’s physics of light and sound. The dissolution of the lunar for-itself at the hands of the cometary for-another illustrates how the dynamic relation between the two moments of particularity particip…Read more
  •  296
    Friedrich Schlegel and Romantic Psychology: The Fragmentary Self as Ironic System
    Internationales Jahrbuch des Deutschen Idealismus / International Yearbook of German Idealism 2019 (Psychologie): 269-92. 2019.
    Romantic psychology is first specified in counter-distinction to Enlightenment-informed faculty-psychology, whose scientific paradigm is fundamentally materialistic and mechanistic. Romantic psychology is then presented through Fr. Schlegel’s theory and practice of the literary fragment. In the fragment, we discover selfhood that is self-positing, powered by electro-chemical forces and enlivened by the stimulating Other. Romantic psychology determines the self as an ironic system, complete and y…Read more
  •  12
    Deals with Hegel's critique of Fr. Schlegel, Novalis and Schleiermacher, as representatives of ironic Romanticism.
  •  5
    Reading The Phenomenology of Spirit through a linguistic lens, Jeffrey Reid provides an original commentary on Hegel's most famous work. Beginning with a close analysis of the preface, where Hegel himself addresses the book's difficulty and explains his tortured language in terms of what he calls the “speculative proposition”, Reid demonstrates how every form of consciousness discussed in The Phenomenology involves and reveals itself as a form of language. Elucidating Hegel's speculative proposi…Read more
  •  244
    Hegel's End of Art Revisited: The Death of God and the Essential Finitude of Artistic Beauty
    Clio: A Journal of Literature, History, and the Philosophy of History 1 (48): 77-101. 2020.
    The article re-visits the different scholarly approaches to Hegel's end-of-art scenario, and then proposes a new reading whereby ending and finitude are presented as essential features of beautiful art. The first and most determinant of art's endings is the death of the Christly art object, not representations of Christ, but the actual death of (the son of) God himself as the last classical artwork. The death of God represents the last word in Greco-Roman art, the accomplishment of the beautifu…Read more
  •  7
    1. The Objective Discourse of Science
    In Real Words: Language and System in Hegel, University of Toronto Press. pp. 1-17. 2007.
    How is Hegel's scientific (systematic) language meant to be objective? Through an examination of Hegel's theory of language, as outlined in the Encyclopedia, we understand how thought inhabits signs to form words, gaining in objectivity. The words of the positive sciences of the understanding are then taken up (reflected upon) syllogistically, where the discourse of Science is informed by the relative objectivity of its linguistic contents. The Philosophy of Nature, for example, does not reflect…Read more
  •  233
    La jeune fille et la mort : Hegel et le désir érotique
    Laval Théologique et Philosophique 61 (2): 345-353. 2005.
    Mettre en rapport des textes de Hegel sur l’amour érotique avec quelques passages du penseur romantique Friedrich Schlegel permet de mettre en relief la méfiance hégélienne à l’égard du désir sexuel. Selon l’échelle hiérarchique de désirs chez Hegel, le désir érotique fait preuve d’un déséquilibre entre le sujet désirant et l’objet désiré, ce qui est typique d’un rapport purement naturel et non spirituel. C’est dire que la connaissance charnelle, avec son objet dénué de Soi propre, représente po…Read more
  •  7
    Last Words
    In Real Words: Language and System in Hegel, University of Toronto Press. pp. 117-120. 2007.
  •  128
    Hegel on Schleiermacher and Postmodernity
    Clio: A Journal of Literature, History, and the Philosophy of History 32 (4): 457-72. 2003.
    Hegel's critique of Schleiermacher as the embodiment of two currents of romantic irony: empiricist skepticism (Schlegel) and feeling (Novalis), are explicitly presented as "absolute presupposition of our time". The article associates these "presuppositions" with features of postmodernity, as presented by Lyotard. Thus, the Hegelian critique of Schleiermacher might be read as a critique of postmodernity.
  •  12
    The paper examines the historiographic element in Hegel's philosophy of history, i.e. how the philosophy is constituted as a narrative whose objective truth is guaranteed through the incorporation of original accounts, which are reflected upon in secondary sources. It is these accounts that the philosophy of history further reflects upon and incorporates as the objective linguistic content of Science. Briefly, philosophy of history is a discourse that reflects upon other discourses and not on hi…Read more
  • Clio the Romantic Muse: Historicizing the Faculties in Germany (review)
    Clio: A Journal of Literature, History, and the Philosophy of History 34 (1-2): 199-205. 2005.
  •  315
    Hegel and the Politics of Tragedy, Comedy and Terror
    Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 25 (1): 135-153. 2020.
    Greek tragedy, in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, represents the performative realization of binary political difference, for example, “private versus public,” “man versus woman” or “nation versus state.” On the other hand, Roman comedy and French Revolutionary Terror, in Hegel, can be taken as radical expressions of political in-difference, defined as a state where all mediating structures of association and governance have collapsed into a world of “bread and circuses.” In examining the diale…Read more
  •  19
    Pourquoi Hegel ne s'est pas joint au "Kant-Klub"
    Archives de Philosophie 66 (2): 251-264. 2003.
    Le fait que Hegel ne se soit pas joint au groupe de lecture qui s’est formé au Stift de Tübingen en 1790, dans le but de discuter de la philosophie kantienne, est généralement évoqué comme preuve de son manque d’intérêt pour la première Critique. Or les premières références à Kant, dès 1787, dans les extraits que Hegel a recopiés à partir de sources premières et secondaires, nous montrent qu’il s’était déjà approprié des éléments essentiels au développement de sa propre pensée. Ces éléments s’ac…Read more
  •  241
    Hegel uses the term Einsicht (‘insight’) throughout several key subsections of Chapter Six of the Phenomenology of Spirit (notably in ‘Faith and Pure Insight’ and ‘The Struggle of the Enlightenment with Superstition’). Nowhere else in his work does the term enjoy such a sustained treatment. Commentators generally accept Hegel’s use of the term in the Phenomenology as simply referring to the type of counter-religious reasoning found in the French Enlightenment. I show how Hegel derives the term, …Read more
  •  278
    Ful-filling the Copula, Determining Nature: The Grammatical Ontology of Hegel's Metaphysics
    Journal of Speculative Philosophy 31 (4): 575-593. 2017.
    Until their recent Anglo-American rehabilitation or reinvention, metaphysics, perhaps since Kant, have tended to be either philosophically avoided or rejected wholesale. The word itself has been taken as virtually synonymous with ideology and unscientific religiosity. Systematic metaphysical coherence has even been portrayed as harboring incipient totalitarianism. Epistemologically and politically, metaphysics have been reproached for their pernicious disregard for something called "reality."In …Read more
  •  537
    Why does Hegel change “Dreaming Soul” to “Feeling Soul” in the 1830 edition of the Philosophy of Subjective Spirit? By tracing the content of the Dreaming Soul section, through Hegel’s 1794 manuscript on psychology, to sources such as C.P. Moritz’s Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde, the paper shows how the section embraces a late Enlightenment mission: combating supposedly supernatural expressions of spiritual enthrallment by explaining them as pathological conditions of the soul. Responding to …Read more
  •  307
    Reason and Revelation: Absolute Agency and the Limits of Actuality in Hegel
    Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy/Revue canadienne de philosophie continentale 21 (1): 182-202. 2017.
    Contemporary reluctance to consider any complicity between philosophy and religion has led to an inability to consider, in Hegel studies, how the revelatory agency of the Absolute necessarily complements the narrative of human reason. According to Hegel, reason alone can do no more than end in the endless limitations of actuality, in the infinite approximations of a moral summum bonum and in the ad infinitum strivings for concrete political freedom. Recognizing where revelatory agency occurs in …Read more