•  666
    The Problem of Nature in Hegel's Philosophy of Right
    Hegel Bulletin 42 (1): 96-113. 2021.
    The notion of being-at-home-in-otherness is the distinctive way of thinking of freedom that Hegel develops in his social and political thought. When I am at one with myself in social and political structures they are not external powers to which I am subjected but are rather constitutive of my self-relation, that is my self-conception is mediated andexpandedthrough those objective structures. How successfully Hegel may achieve being-at-home-in-otherness with regard to these objective structures …Read more
  •  133
    The rise of the non-metaphysical Hegel
    Philosophy Compass 3 (1). 2008.
    There has been a resurgence of interest in Hegel's thought by Anglo‐American philosophers in the last 25 years. That expansion of interest was initiated with the publication of Charles Taylor's Hegel (1975). That work stills stands as one of7 the important branches of Hegel interpretation. However the dominance of the strongly metaphysical interpretation of Hegel, which dominated the understanding of Hegel until the 1980s, and of which Taylor's work represents the culmination, has now, at least …Read more
  •  122
    Community in Hegel’s Social Philosophy
    Hegel Bulletin 41 (2): 177-201. 2020.
    In thePhilosophy of RightHegel argues that modern life has produced an individualized freedom that conflicts with the communal forms of life constitutive of Greek ethical life. This individualized freedom is fundamentally unsatisfactory, but it is in modernity seemingly resolved into a more adequate form of social freedom in the family, aspects of civil society, and ultimately the state. This article examines whether Hegel’s state can function as a community and by so doing satisfy the need for …Read more
  •  107
    Dialectic and différance: The place of singularity in Hegel and Derrida
    Philosophy and Social Criticism 33 (6): 667-690. 2007.
    This article examines Derrida's critique of Hegel. It argues that there are two key issues that Derrida misunderstands in Hegel's thought: first, Hegel's response to the concept-intuition dichotomy that plagued Kant's critical thought; second, that Hegel's notions of reason and the dialectic, when they are conceived non-metaphysically, are not tools employed to subsume differences but are, like Derrida's différance , fundamentally concerned with thought's instability. The article shows the way i…Read more
  •  83
    In Totality and Infinity Levinas presents the 'face to face' as an account of intersubjectivity, but one which maintains the absolute difference of the Other. This essay explores the genesis of the 'face to face' through a discussion of Levinas in relation to Buber. It is argued that Levinas' account of subjectivity shares much in common with Fichte's theory of subjectivity. It is further argued that while the 'face to face' clarifies and opposes traditional problems in social ontology, the 'fac…Read more
  •  80
    Hegel had taken the Kantian categories of thought to be merely formal, without content, since, he argued, Kant abstracted the conditions of thought from the world. The Kantian categories can, as such, only be understood subjectively and so are unable to secure a content for themselves. Hegel, following Fichte, tried to provide a content for the logical categories. In order to reinstate an objective status for logic and conceptuality he tries to affirm the unity of thought and being. The idea tha…Read more
  •  60
    Absolute Knowing
    The Owl of Minerva 30 (1): 3-32. 1998.
    In this essay, I focus on the way Hegel reconciles consciousness and self-consciousness in absolute knowing. What I want to suggest is that in absolute knowing the conscious subject comes to understand itself in terms of these conditions, providing it with the content of a new form of consciousness. It is in conceiving of itself in terms of these objective conditions for knowledge, which supersede the singularity of the self and yet are the conditions for consciousness, that the conscious subjec…Read more
  •  57
    Realism and Idealism in Fichte's theory of Subjectivity
    The Proceedings of the Twenty-First World Congress of Philosophy 10 189-196. 2007.
    Kant's account of subjectivity is ambiguous: there is an implicit critique of Descartes in Kaaat, but this is in conflict with more Cartesian aspects of his approach to subjectivity. Fichte develops the critical elements of Kant and turns them against Kant's residual Cartesianism. Fichte, in the various versions of the Wissenschaftslehre, is the first to be aware of the limitations of the reflective model of consciousness. In those texts he presents his alternative model for subjectivity by tryi…Read more
  •  53
    Fichte's striving subject
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 47 (2). 2004.
    In this paper I argue that Fichte's attempt to reconcile the dualism of concept and intuition requires the overcoming of any idea of a thing-in-itself. At the same time he preserves the idea of an external constraint on the I's self-positing. This central role for the realist constraint of the check conflicts with recent interpretations of Fichte that see his project as advocating the exclusivity of the space of reasons. The striving subject confronts and unifies the opposition between the reali…Read more
  •  53
    The Problem of Beginning Hegel’s Phenomenology and Seience of Logic
    International Studies in Philosophy 35 (4): 83-103. 2003.
  •  53
    This paper examines Jean-Luc Nancy's interpretation of Hegel, focusing in particular on The Restlessness of the Negative. It is argued that Nancy's reading represents a significant break with other post-structuralist readings of Hegel by taking his thought to be non-metaphysical. The paper focuses in particular on the role Nancy gives to the negative in Hegel's thought. Ultimately Nancy's reading is limited as an interpretation of Hegel, since he gives no sustained explanation of the self-correc…Read more
  •  52
    At Home with Hegel and Heidegger
    Philosophy Today 59 (1): 7-21. 2015.
    The image of home has a central place in the thought of both Heidegger and Hegel. In Hegel, being at home is central to Hegel’s reformulation of Kantian freedom. The notion of home and dwelling is also a central notion in Heidegger’s thought, especially his later thought. This paper examines their respective uses of the term and argues that the different ways they conceive the problem of home or dwelling reveals their different conceptions of modernity.
  •  47
    Habit, Sittlichkeit and Second Nature
    Critical Horizons 13 (2). 2012.
    Discussions of habit in Hegel’s thought usually focus on his subjective spirit since this is where the most extended discussion of this issue takes place. This paper argues that habit is also important for understanding Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. The discussion of habit and second nature occur at a critical juncture in the text. This discussion is important for understanding his notion of ethical life and his account of freedom.
  •  47
    Second Nature and Historical Change in Hegel’s Philosophy of History
    International Journal of Philosophical Studies 24 (1): 74-94. 2016.
    Hegel’s philosophy of history is fundamentally concerned with how shapes of life collapse and transition into new shapes of life. One of the distinguishing features of Hegel’s concern with how a shape of life falls apart and becomes inadequate is the role that habit plays in the transition. A shape of life is an embodied form of existence for Hegel. The animating concepts of a shape of life are affectively inscribed on subjects through complex cultural processes. This paper examines the argument…Read more
  •  44
    Veganism, Normative Change, and Second Nature
    Environmental Philosophy 14 (2): 221-238. 2017.
    This paper draws on the account of second nature in Aristotle, Dewey and Hegel to examine the way in which norms become embodied. It discusses the implications of this for both the authority of norms and how they can be changed. Using the example of veganism it argues that changing norms requires more than just good reasons. The appreciation of the role of second nature in culture allows us to: firstly, better conceive the difficulty and resistance of individuals to changing norms because of the…Read more
  •  37
    Introduction to German Philosophy (review)
    International Philosophical Quarterly 45 (2): 259-260. 2005.
  •  36
    Philosophy and the Logic of Modernity
    Review of Metaphysics 63 (1): 55-89. 2009.
    The paper argues against those who interpret Hegel's project as concerned above all with reconciliation. These interpreters usually take reconciliation to be a historical achievement produced by thought moving along a self-correcting pathway. On this view, modernity is its high point, since here Spirit is at home with itself, its freedom realized. The paper argues that in Hegel's assessment of philosophy's role, Spirit's dissatisfaction is more fundamental than reconciliation, and hence philosop…Read more
  •  33
    Hegel’s Metaphysics of God (review)
    Review of Metaphysics 57 (3): 608-610. 2004.
    The argument of the book develops through four chapters, all of which are heavily reliant on Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. There is little engagement with Hegel’s systematic works, the Phenomenology of Spirit and the Science of Logic. Instead, Hegel’s thought of god and religion is determined almost entirely by his lectures on religion, and the argument is largely constructed through a detailed use of quotations from these lectures. The first chapter is concerned to position He…Read more
  •  30
    Beyond an Ontological Foundation for The Philosophy of Right
    Southern Journal of Philosophy 39 (S1): 139-145. 2001.
    This paper responds to an article by Kevin Thompson (in the same volume) which argued that a systematic reading of the _Philosophy of Right requires that it be ontologically grounded. In response I argue that such an approach to the _Philosophy of Right is essentially based on a precritical metaphysics which Hegel could not support and that his "Logic" excludes as a viable interpretation of his thought
  •  24
    Ecological Crisis and the Problem of How to Inhabit a Norm
    Ethics and the Environment 23 (1): 29. 2018.
    Abstract:The Anthropocene is distinguished by the knowledge that collective human action is damaging the earth's biophysical systems in a manner that has serious implications for human life and nature. In a recent work, Dale Jamieson has argued that despite this knowledge moral philosophy is limited in its capacity to provide the wholesale re-orientation of human practices that are required if humanity is to respond successfully to the array of ecological crises that have emerged in the Anthropo…Read more
  •  24
    Tragedy and Understanding in Hegel's Dialectic
    Idealistic Studies 31 (2-3): 125-134. 2001.
    At every point of transition in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit each shape of consciousness becomes a seemingly irreconcilable contradiction. It is just at these points, however, that the shape of consciousness in question shows itself as a 'higher' or more adequate shape of consciousness that is able to suspend or move beyond [aufheben] these seemingly irreconcilable differences. The transitions in Hegel's systematic works are complicated and often bewildering. One element is constant in all of…Read more
  •  24
    Review of Barry Stocker, Derrida on Deconstruction (review)
    Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2007 (1). 2007.
  •  22
    The Satisfaction of Absolute Spirit
    The Owl of Minerva 49 (1): 83-105. 2017.
    Robert R. Williams, in Hegel on the Proofs and the Personhood of God, offers an important examination of the notion of absolute spirit, a central but under-examined notion in Hegel’s thought. Williams argues that absolute spirit, along with Hegel’s other core notions such as the concept and the absolute idea, is best conceived as an organic whole. This approach, he claims, best captures the self-determination and dynamism of the whole. What absolute spirit seeks to describe is how spirit can bot…Read more
  •  20
    Hegel, Derrida and the subject
    Cosmos and History 3 (2-3): 32-50. 2007.
    There is a simple story to be told about Derridarsquo;s relation to Hegel. He develops his core concepts such as diffeacute;rance and trace through an essentially negative relation to the central notions of the idealist tradition. Derrida has been particularly concerned to undermine what he takes to be the heart of the idealist projectmdash;the self-present subject. This paper examines the influence of Heidegger on the deconstructive critique of idealist subjectivity and presents Derridarsquo;s …Read more
  •  19
    The Logic of Modernity and Ecological Crisis
    Environmental Values 30 (3): 277-296. 2021.
    This paper examines the theory of sustainable development presented by Jeffrey Sachs in The Age of Sustainable Development. While Sustainable Development ostensibly seeks to harmonise the conflict between ecological sustainability and human development, the paper argues this is impossible because of the conceptual frame it employs. Rather than allowing for a re-conceptualisation of the human-nature relation, Sustainable Development is simply the latest and possibly last attempt to advance the co…Read more
  •  18
    Hegel's God, Normativity, and Self-Knowledge
    Philosophy Today 63 (2): 543-548. 2019.
  •  18
    The Logic of Modernity and Ecological Crisis
    Environmental Values 30 (3): 277-296. 2021.
    This paper examines the theory of sustainable development presented by Jeffrey Sachs in The Age of Sustainable Development. While Sustainable Development ostensibly seeks to harmonise the conflict between ecological sustainability and human development, the paper argues this is impossible because of the conceptual frame it employs. Rather than allowing for a re-conceptualisation of the human-nature relation, Sustainable Development is simply the latest and possibly last attempt to advance the co…Read more