Lisabeth During

Now the problem is this. Have we found a positive foundation, instead of self-sacrifice, for the hermeneutics of the self? I cannot say this, no. We have tried, at least from the humanistic period of the Renaissance till now. And we can’t find it.The reputation of political thinkers is a tricky thing. Sometimes your strongest supporters are your worst nightmare. At other moments, your best friends can see you more clearly than is strictly comfortable. The French militant, philosopher, and mystic Simone Weil is a good example. In the years 1932 to 1933, she was connected to the dissident, Trotsky-leaning Communist Boris Souvarine and his Cercle communiste démocratique. She taught philosophy to well-bred...

At the center of Catherine's Malabou's study of Hegel is a defense of Hegel's relation to time and the future. While many readers, following Kojève, have taken Hegel to be announcing the end of history, Malabou finds a more supple impulse, open to the new, the unexpected. She takes as her guiding thread the concept of “plasticity,” and shows how Hegel's dialectic—introducing the sculptor's art into philosophy—is motivated by the desire for transformation. Malabou is a canny and faithful reader, and allows her classic “maître” to speak, if not against his own grain, at least against a tradition too attached to closure and system. Malabou's Hegel is a “plastic” thinker, not a nostalgic metaphysician.