Hegel's Truth: A Property of Things?

The John Hopkins Guide to Critical and Cultural Theory

There is no better way to characterize G.W.F Hegel (1770-1831) than as a philosopher of truth. Like most classical and early modern thinkers, Hegel believed that the task of philosophy was to furnish as comprehensive and true an account of reality as possible. As in Aristotle or Spinoza, truth as a category implied extreme rigor, a uniquely wide breadth of scope-ranging from physics and ontology to politics and logic-and a capacity both to reflect the world as it actually is and to express it in the form of a system. Systematicity was for Hegel proof of thoroughness and of the muscularity of reason, but it also mirrored formally an important aspect of reality itself: the latter, he argued, was also a kind of system-an organized, deeply interconnected, and (to some extent) living (or at least dynamic) whole. From a Hegelian standpoint, truth exists not just in the sense that it is possible, that it can be grasped, shared, and made actionable by humans (or perhaps other rational creatures), but that it is fundamentally thisworldly or immanent, rather than other-worldly or transcendent. Truth was not, as in Platonic Idealism, something that hovered over or preceded the world in the form of a static essence. Nor was it contained, ready-made, in the mind of God, an eternal logic or law that only had to be humbly recited by humans to be known. These ways of understanding truth, thought Hegel, reduced humans to passive instruments of a reality they had no hand in making themselves. Instead, truth was best understood as back-bendingly difficult work-a process that could be understood as simultaneously discovery (of something objectively there in the world) and invention (something we ourselves create and wilfully sustain). Despite Hegel's reputation in some circles as an austere theologian of eternity it is important to keep in mind the deeply existential dimension of Hegel's work, one that helps to explain why he was taken up so readily

Second Lecture. From the Phenomenology of Spirit to the Science of Logic 1.3 Remarks on the Phenomenology of Spirit 2. The Science of Logic 2.1 The beginning of the presuppositionless theory Third Lecture. Hegel's Logic I. Quality 2.2 Negation as the first step within the background logic 2.3 Remarks on the logic of quality Fourth Lecture. Hegel's Logic II. From finitude to essence 2.4 The finite, the infinite and being-for-itself. An overview 2.5 From being to essence Fifth Lecture. Hegel's Logic III. The concept and the progression to nature and spirit 2.6 About the logic of the concept 3. Outlook into the Realphilosophie (of nature and of spirit) 1 These talks were given as video lectures at

I argue that the central methodological problem Hegel addresses in the Introduction to the Phenomenology of Spirit is Sextus Empiricus’s “Dilemma of the Criterion,” a dilemma purporting to show that no criterion for distinguishing truth from falsehood can be established. I show that the Dilemma is especially pressing for any epistemology that, like Hegel’s, rejects ‘knowledge by acquaintance,’ aims to avoid dogmatism, and retains a realist, correspondence conception of truth. Hegel’s response to the dilemma appears to beg the question. I argue that a careful disambiguation of some of Hegel’s key phrases shows that he developed a sophisticated response to this dilemma that does not beg the question. On Hegel’s view, the internal coherence of a ‘form of consciousness’ (explained herein) entails that the principle conceptions of knowledge and of the objects of knowledge comprised by that ‘form of consciousness’ are true of actual knowledge and of the actual objects of knowledge. I indicate why this criterion can be made to work at the broad categorial level of Hegel’s inquiry although it does not apply to problems of theory selection faced in philosophy of science. I begin by showing that Sextus’ Dilemma has not been adequately resolved by Chisholm, Alston, Moser, or Fogelin, although their efforts are instructive about the genuine difficulties involved in the Dilemma of the Criterion.

The paper's main aims can be formulated as follows: a) Hegel has a strong notion of contingency. Contingency is for him not simple absence of necessity, and not simple under-determinedness either. Contingency is an original notion, having the same logical and metaphysical weight and dignity as the notion of necessity; b) this " strong " notion of contingency is decisive for Hegel's conception of subjectivity. Insofar it can be tracked up to his real philosophy. Other than assumed in many commonplace interpretations of Hegel, I will suggest that the power to go from necessity to contingency makes up an essential part of subjective freedom as much as the power to go from contingency to necessity. This has important consequences especially in the philosophy of history, which is shown to be not aprioristic and dogmatic, but open to contingency (though not to sceptical conclusions); and c) consistently with the recognition of the irreducibility of contingency to a priori concepts, Hegel also recognizes the need for a non-philosophical narration of contingency and gives us some interesting clues about it and its relationship to philosophy. Throughout my argumentation of these three theses, I hope to provide evidence for the thesis that dogmatic constructions on Hegel's philosophy of history (including, but not limited to the so-called thesis of the " end of history ") can be undermined by referring to Hegel's understanding of contingency. On a more general scale, this also shows that the logical groundwork of Hegel's real philosophy cannot be abandoned without jeopardizing the potential of Hegel's thought to contribute to current philosophical debates. My argument is structured as follows. I will, first of all, comment on some passages of Hegel's Science of Logic from the beginning of the " Subjective logic " regarding the logic of

European Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 2012

This paper examines Hegel’s claim that philosophy “has no other object than God” as a claim about the essentiality of the idea of God to philosophy. On this idealist interpretation, even atheistic philosophies would presuppose rationally evaluable ideas of God, despite denials of the existence of anything corresponding to those ideas. This interpretation is then applied to Hegel’s version of idealism in relation to those of two predecessors, Leibniz and Kant. Hegel criticizes the idea of the Christian God present within his predecessors in terms of his own heterodox reading of the Trinity in order to resolve a paradox affecting them – the “paradox of perspectivism”.

This paper aims to understand Hegel's claim in the introduction to his Philosophy of Mind that mind is an actualization of the Idea and argues that this claim provides us with a novel and defensible way of understanding Hegel's naturalism. I suggest that Hegel's approach to naturalism should be understood as 'formal', and argue that Hegel's Logic, particularly the section on the 'Idea', provides us with a method for this approach. In the first part of the paper, I present an interpretation of Hegel's method in which life plays a central role. In the second part of the paper, I develop Hegel's method by providing a reading of Hegel's Subjective Spirit, focusing on the sections 'Anthropology' and 'Phenomenology' in particular, arguing that they display the dialectic between life and cognition outlined by Hegel's Idea.

This paper examines Hegel's claim that philosophy " has no other object than God " as a claim about the essentiality of the idea of God to philosophy. on this idealist interpretation, even atheistic philosophies would presuppose rationally evaluable ideas of God, despite denials of the existence of anything corresponding to those ideas. This interpretation is then applied to Hegel's version of idealism in relation to those of two predecessors, leibniz and Kant. Hegel criticizes the idea of the Christian God present within his predecessors in terms of his own heterodox reading of the Trinity in order to resolve a paradox affecting them – the " paradox of perspectivism " .

2003

The papers included in this volume were part of the technical conference cited on the cover and title page. Papers were selected and subject to review by the editors and conference program committee. Some conference presentations may not be available for publication. The papers published in these proceedings reflect the work and thoughts of the authors and are published herein as submitted. The publisher is not responsible for the validity of the information or for any outcomes resulting from reliance thereon.

2011

Hegel and the Language of Philosophy Jon Burmeister Advisor: John Sallis This dissertation attempts to give an account of philosophical language in Hegel, with particular emphasis on his claim that a philosophical exposition must be living and selfmoving. Since Hegel did not provide an extended, thematized account of philosophical language, my primary approach is to take the resources of his thought in general and attempt to construct an account which is consistent with his philosophy as a whole. Thus, a large portion of this dissertation is not directly about philosophical language, but about other determinations such as becoming, indifference, contradiction, life, the understanding, reason, etc., which lay the groundwork for discussing philosophical language in the final chapter. As a preface to all of this, however, I devote Part I of the dissertation to an investigation of Hegel’s view of how one should go about comprehending philosophical determinations, i.e., those things whic...