Hegelian Dialectic

The essay attempts to discuss the main interpretations of the Hegelian philosophy of history from the viewpoint of its utopian potential. Although it can be revealed in a conceptual, lexicological manner, it can be regarded by means of a semantic deconstruction of the sophisticated conceptual framework which constitutes the Hegelian “system of knowledge,” too. The clarification and explanation of the basic terms of Hegelian historiosophy (history, spirit, the State, freedom) allows to determine the basic threads of Hegel’s thought, which are the subject matter of intellectual disputes between the Hegelian Right and Left. It also allows – at least partially – to separate these elements of the concept of history of the author of The Phenomenology of Spirit secondarily, which when combined together seem to be comprehensible, unlike categories that are both ambiguous in terms of interpretation and fuzzy as well as ideologically marked. The analysis ends with the problem of perceiving the Hegelian philosophy of history as utopian despite the fact that it is based on the ideas that create historical determinism (rationalism, schematism and historical finitism), which seemingly overshadow the sphere of individual human freedom, excluding the 83 K. Popper, Społeczeństwo otwarte..., Tom 2, s. 78. 146 sense of any pro futuro forms of activities that are focused on a social and historical change. Any a priori solution leads to the problem of the relationship between theory and practice, which additionally begets the problem of author’s responsibility for both predicted (foreseeable) and unexpected social effects that the theory may generate.

In a message, recorded on October 15, 2010, Fidel Castro stated:

“The use of nuclear weapons in a new war would mean the end of humanity,” adding: “Each and every government in the world has the obligation to respect the right to life of each and every nation and of the totality of all the peoples on the planet.”

Castro ended his message saying:

“In a nuclear war the ‘collateral damage’ would be the life of all humanity. Let us have the courage to proclaim that all nuclear or conventional weapons, everything that is used to make war, must disappear!”

It seems that Castro is trying to paint himself a-posteriori as a pacifist and anti-nuclear war advocate. This paper examines the facts showing that, on the contrary, the available record shows that Fidel Castro has always been an advocate for nuclear war. Actually, Fidel Castro is the man who in 1962 brought the world closer to a nuclear Armageddon than never before or after.

This article engages with Todd McGowan's Emancipation after Hegel by taking seriously its overall ambition, that of thinking emancipation in conjunction with the central Hegelian category of the contradiction. Endorsing the intractability of the contradiction, that is to say the self-relating inadequacy (negativity, inconsistency) of thought, is for McGowan the philosophical task par excellence for any reader of Hegel. In what follows, I tackle the above proposition by exploring it in connection with the capital-labour dialectic. The aim, however, is not to offer yet another debate on Marx's controversial return to Hegel. Rather, I probe the extent to which Hegel's dialectical method of enquiry allows us to grasp the immanent contradiction of contemporary capitalism and its socioeconomic crisis. I argue that while capital is by definition reconciled with its labour contradiction, insofar as the latter is the engine of its mode of production and socioeconomic dynamism, at the same time such dialectic is now fast approaching its expiration date: the historical tipping point at which the contradiction stops working for capital and mercilessly begins to destroy its foundations. Volume 2 | Issue 4: Emancipation after Hegel

I begin by identifying an ambiguity in the post-Hegelian literature on Immanent Critique, distinguishing two possible definitions: (a) judging an object against its “internal” norms; and (b) accounting for one’s own standpoint with reference to the object. I then claim that both definitions are represented in Hegel’s Phenomenology, and develop extended interpretations of material from the Einleitung, in order to clarify and substantiate this thesis. This yields revisionist readings of the famous “internal criteria” and “self examination” tropes. My discussion builds towards elucidating the relation between the two definitions of Immanent Critique I have distinguished, as it is developed in the Phenomenology.

URL: https://brill.com/view/title/36299
In Capitalism, Alienation and Critique Asger Sørensen offers a wide-ranging argument for the classical Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School, thus endorsing the dialectical approach of the original founders (Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse) and criticizing suggested revisions of later generations (Habermas, Honneth). Being situated within the horizon of the late 20th century Cultural Marxism, the main issue is the critique of capitalism, emphasizing experiences of injustice, ideology and alienation, and in particular exploring two fundamental subject matters within this horizon, namely economy and dialectics. Apart from in-depth discussions of classical political economy and Hegelian dialectics, the explorative and inclusive argument also takes issues with Émile Durkheim’s theory of value, the general economy of Georges Bataille and the dialectics of Mao Zedong.

Browse book: https://brill.com/fileasset/downloads_products/flipbooks/9789004362413/index.html

Seminar in Belgrade on the book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TUQRHEHKC4&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR0fGzQE7kZwjXRNs4irbxbbbrw7bIXed6qR2_aXSRWMhJSyvDaBd-a1JkQ

Special theme, Author meets critics from Shanghai and Belgrade (pp. 3-64): https://journal.instifdt.bg.ac.rs/index.php/fid/issue/view/58

Special theme, Author meets critics from Copenhagen (pp. 153-208)
https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/pscb/48/2

Reviews:
https://isegoria.revistas.csic.es/index.php/isegoria/article/view/1145/1178
https://revistas.um.es/daimon/article/view/411331
https://nome.unak.is/wordpress/volume-15-no-1-2020/book-review-volume-15-no-1-2020/asger-sorensen-capitalism-alienation-and-critique-studies-in-economy-and-dialectics-leiden-brill-2019/

On the verge of the 1917 October revolution, Lenin reads and elaborates on the Hegel's Science of Logic, as if he were attempting to outline, from it, specific effects. Theoretical effects, because human activity is never uncoupled from the logic objective, through which the real matter unfolds and to whom each individual indissolubly belongs. Practical effects, because if Hegelian philosophy is good for the Church, for the bourgeoisie, for the capital, by changing the order of some of its factors it may as well turn out good for guiding the practical-cognitive development of an urgent proletarian revolution.

While Hegel’s concept of second nature has now received substantial attention from commentators, relatively little has been said about the place of this concept in the Phenomenology of Spirit. This neglect is understandable, since Hegel does not explicitly use the phrase “second nature” in this text. Nonetheless, several closely related phrases reveal the centrality of this concept to the Phenomenology’s structure. In this paper, I develop new interpretations of the figures “natural consciousness,” “natural notion,” and “inorganic nature,” in order to elucidate the distinctive concept of second nature at work in the Phenomenology. I will argue that this concept of second nature supplements the “official” version, developed in the Encyclopedia, with an “unofficial” version that prefigures its use in critical theory. At the same time, this reconstruction will allow us to see how the Phenomenology essentially documents spirit’s acquisition of a “second nature.”

This Comment uses the dialectical paradigm of German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1833) to analyze the progression of United States voting laws since the colonial foundations of a participatory democratic process in this country. This analysis can be used to interpret past progression of voting rights in the United States as well as a provoking way to predict future trends in United States voting rights--as an ongoing “progressive” political process or rhetorical method of erasing categories or classifications and eliminating distinctions amongst persons.
First, Hegel's dialectical method is established as a major premise. This Comment employs the language of “thesis-antithesis-synthesis” and the dialectical method as a simplified paradigm of Hegel's complex thoughts of “aufheben”; Michael H. Hoffheimer explains the detailed distinction between “dialectic” and “aufheben”:
Hegel himself does not use the terms “dialectic” or “dialectical” very often. They appear only three times in the sections on philosophy of law in the first edition of his Encyclopedia (1817). That text refers to the dialectical conflict among various duties--a conflict that lacks any resolution. It refers to “true dialectic” as constituting the subject that knows its subordination under another. And it terms the “justice of the world” as the representation (darstellt) of the dialectic of spirits of particular peoples. None of these passages apply the term “dialectic” to the transcendental resolution of an opposition or to the move to a new phase or level of the system.
The term Hegel employs most frequently to denote the transcending resolution of oppositions, contradictions and conflicts, is “aufheben.” Variously translated as “transcend,” “supersede,” or “sublimate,” the term “aufheben” is best translated by the neologism “sublate.” Unlike “dialectic,” the term “sublation” figures prominently in important transitions in Hegel's system. It occurs twice in the first, cryptic section of Hegel's philosophy of law from 1817:
Objective spirit is the unity of theoretical and practical spirit. Free will for itself appears in the form of free will now that the *89 formalism, contingency, and subjectivity of its practical activity is sublated. Through the sublation of this mediation, spirit becomes the unmediated self-posited particularity, which in the form of universal is freedom itself.
Other passages apply the term “sublation” to express the overcoming of contradiction and to describe the resolution of a progress in a third judgment. Unlike the term “dialectic,” “sublation” denotes resolution of an unmediated opposition into a higher category--a resolution that marks the movement to a new level of the system. Thus, Hegel applies the term “sublation” in the 1817 philosophy of law to the resolution or mediation of unmediated existence and unmediated singularity. In the final appearance of the term “sublation” in the philosophy of law, a mediated relationship is itself overcome or resolved into the higher category of order based on custom.
It is thus the term “sublation,” not “dialectic” or “thesis-synthesis-antithesis,” that is linked most closely to distinctive, transcending features of Hegel's treatment of conflict and contradiction. Hegel did not coin the term “aufheben.” Vernacular meanings in the eighteenth century included to pick up, to preserve, and to cancel. Commentaries always emphasize that he used the term “sublation” with the double meaning of both to cancel and to preserve, referring to the reconciliation of an opposition in a manner that somehow both cancels and preserves the opposed elements at a higher level. But the term also had technical meanings. In mathematics, it meant to reduce a fraction. In law, it meant to repeal or annul a statute. Hegel was not the first to import the term into philosophy or legal philosophy. His friend Schelling employed the term widely throughout his early writings, and notably in his New Deduction of Natural Law (1796), but Schelling almost always used the term “aufheben” in the univocal sense of “to cancel.” Similarly, some of Hegel's followers returned to this more vernacular use of the term.1
Second, the generally accepted history of United States voting laws from the 1770s to the current day is laid out as a minor premise.
*90 Third, the major premise of Hegel's dialectical method weaves and applies itself to the progression of United States voting laws to explain the progressive elimination of distinctions and categories. This third step of application suggests possible future scenarios.
Hegel was a philosopher in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.2 His ideas have been applied to interpret a wide range of academia and law, including torts,3 contracts,4 property,5 criminal,6 and evidence.7




42 U. Dayton L. Rev. 87
University of Dayton Law Review
Spring, 2017

La teoría política de Ernesto Laclau ha generado un sin número de debates en el campo académico de izquierda. El calificativo de Post-marxismo para referir a su teoría originó controversias sobre su ruptura con Marx y la presencia de la herencia marxista en su obra. En este sentido, una de las propuestas del posmarxismo es abandonar la dialéctica por su carácter determinista. Para Laclau es la dialéctica hegeliana la culpable de introducir la lógica de la necesidad en el marxismo y esto le impide pensar la contingencia. Este artículo estudia la lectura que hace Laclau de la dialéctica hegeliana en diferentes obras y revisa su trabajo sobre las nociones de determinación, negatividad y contingencia. Una revisión de estos conceptos puede restituir un concepto de dialéctica no-determinista y acorde al pensamiento político posfundacional para pensar la ontología social y los antagonismos. Abstract: The political theory of Ernesto Laclau has generated several debates in the academic left. The label of Post-Marxism to his theory originated discussions about his relationship with Marx and the presence of the Marxist legacy in his work. In this matter one of the proposals of post-Marxism is abandoning dialectics. For Laclau, the Hegelian dialectic is guilty of introducing the logic of necessity in Marxism. This impedes analysis of contingency in history. This article studies Laclau's reading of Hegelian dialectic in different works and analyzes his writings on the notions of determination, negativity and contingency. A review of these concepts can restore an adequate concept of dialectic non-deterministic for the postfundational political thought.

Sellars's relationship with Hegel is complex and itself 'dialectical' in interesting ways. Sellars follows Hegel in recognizing that the normativity essential to intentionality and conceptuality is a social phenomenon. But Sellars criticizes Hegel for his inability to independently explain the emergence and function of this essential group phenomenon. I shall argue that Sellars's critique of Hegel on this count is part of a larger, metaphysically ambitious and rigorously realistic position, which, though turning Hegel's ontology on its head, shares with Hegel the methodological ambition of arriving at a position which is globally explanatorily closed. Further, it will be suggested that although Sellars would surely have been critical of the ontological reification of Hegel's dialectical method, he nonetheless reserves an important role for conceptual dialectical development right at the heart of his system, namely in his understanding of the conceptual evolution that leads from the manifest to the scientific image. Finally, I shall argue that Sellars thereby aspires to provide nothing less than a materialist aufhebung of idealist Hegelian dialectics.

The following review explores Intercultural Information Ethics (IIE) in terms of comparative philosophy, supporting IIE as the most relevant and significant development of the field of Information Ethics (IE). The focus of the review is threefold. First, it will review the core presumption of the field of IIE, that being the demand for an inter- mission in the pursuit of a founding philosophy for IE in order to first address the philosophical biases of IE by western philosophy. Second, a history of the various philosophical streams of IIE will be outlined, including its literature and pioneering contributors. Lastly, a new synthesis of comparative philosophies in IIE will be offered, looking towards a future evolution of the field. Examining the interchange between contemporary information ethicists regarding the discipline of IIE, the review first outlines the previously established presumptions of the field of IIE that posit the need for an IE as grounded in western sensibilities. The author then addresses the implications of the foregoing presumption from several non-western viewpoints, arguing that IIE does in fact find roots in non-western philosophies as established in the concluding synthesis of western and eastern philosophical traditions.

The article attempts to demonstrate how Julia Kristeva's groundbreaking work, 'Revolution in Poetic Language',  (i) opposes Fregean logic to Husserlian phenomenology, (ii) adopts a Lacanian view of negativity and exclusion in displacing the traditional philosophical subject, while (iii) employing Hegelian dialectics to introduce a "textual" conception of cultural practices, so that (iv) actual works of art can provide the material basis for a critical analysis of social reality.

Towards Hegel or the Utopia of Historical Reason The essay attempts to discuss the main interpretations of the Hegelian philosophy of history from the viewpoint of its utopian potential. Although it can be revealed in a conceptual, lexicological manner, it can be regarded by means of a semantic deconstruction of the sophisticated conceptual framework which constitutes the Hegelian “system of knowledge”, too. The clarification and explanation of the basic terms of Hegelian historiosophy (history, spirit, the State, freedom) allows to determine the basic threads of Hegel’s thought, which are the subject matter of intellectual disputes between the Hegelian Right and Left. It also allows – at least partially – to separate these elements of the concept of history of the author of The Phenomenology of Spirit secondarily, which when combined together seem to be comprehensible, unlike categories that are both ambiguous in terms of interpretation and fuzzy as well as ideologically marked. Th...

Resumo: este artigo tem como objetivo apresentar os primeiros passos de uma pesquisa desenvolvida no âmbito do pensamento hegeliano, voltada para a problemática de como se dá a relação entre o trabalho e a linguagem na formação da consciência, e como esta se exterioriza na tensão estabelecida entre a substância ética (sittliche Substanz) e o agir moral. A ênfase na relação entre o trabalho e a linguagem justifica-se no sentido de realizar uma leitura da filosofia política hegeliana, emoldurada pela sua concepção ontológica do trabalho como formador da consciência e, consequentemente, da relação entre conteúdo e forma decorrente deste processo, que adquire expressão prática na linguagem, ao mesmo tempo em que forma o sujeito que age na vida social como realidade (Realität) na qual se manifesta o ethos enquanto substância ética e, portanto, efetividade (Wirklichkeit) da vida ética (sittliche Leben). Neste primeiro momento, apresentaremos essa relação como uma urdidura entre ontologia e política a partir da exposição das primeiras aproximações que fizemos entre a Fenomenologia do Espírito e a Filosofia do Direito. Palavras-chave: Hegel. Ontologia e política. Formação. Consciência. Vida ética.

This article critically examines Christopher Arthur’s “New Dialectic”, showing its analytical and formal character, which works through the addition of determinations, making necessary to “reconstruct” Marx’s Capital. With the abandonment of the universal concrete, the unfolding of its inner contradictions, losing its features as necessary and systematic, no longer generates the totality. As a result, the totality, besides an a-systematic

ABSTRACT: The entity of God is an essential metaphysical concept that needs speculative language to be known. Hegel understands the flourish of that language is able to prove the Existence of God, in Saint Anselm's meditations on Divine Essence, Monologium and Proslogium. Both meditations present philosophical reflections using: arguments, conclusions, and proofs, for articulating reasons and truth evidences. Ultimately, the Anselmian meditations about mysteries of faith are directed to elevate the human soul towards the contemplations of the Divinity, and to its first principle as the last subject of the predications of the Cosmos, being God the most perfect being, the first Origin from where the existences of all the other beings stem.

In recent years, Christopher J. Arthur's 'New Dialectic' has had a strong impact on Marx scholarship in the Anglophone world  by highlighting the correlation of Hegel’s systematic (non-historical) dialectic with Marx’s central oeuvre, Capital, and especially Marx’s theory
of the value form. He claims that the categories of Hegel’s Logic and
those of the beginning of Marx’s Capital show a ‘striking homology... & given some minor reconstructive work.’ (Arthur 2004, p. 4).
This essay criticises Arthur’s reading of Marx and especially Hegel
against the background of important contributions to Hegel scholarship in the last decades. This scholarship has been groundbreaking in
of the antinomical structure of the concept and the problem of
the semantic-pragmatic presupposition (semantisch-pragmatischer Präsuppositionsbegriff) of the scientific exposition. Notwithstanding its  foundational character for a scholarly treatment and understanding
of Hegel’s dialectic, these approaches are missing from Arthur’s
intervention.
This, as will be shown, has grave consequences for 1) Arthur’s reading of Hegel’s Logic, 2) Arthur’s application of Hegel’s dialectic to Marx’s presentation of the value form and 3) Arthur’s ‘sublation’ of Marx in Hegel.
It will be argued that Arthur’s misrecognition of Hegel’s dialectical method also negatively affects Arthur’s understanding of the scope and intent of Marx’s critical project, especially the necessary inner relation between abstract labour, value and money at the beginning of Capital vol. 1.

Keywords: Marx, value form theory, Hegelian dialectic, critique of fetishism, antinomical structure, Dieter Wandschneider, Michael Theunissen

Cherchi Usai organizes the text into a collection of pithy observations and reflections on how contemporary film history problematically constructs its spatiotemporal framework through a historiographical model that emphasizes cultural/technological amnesia and fetish for the digital. It is a model that sees the ontology of the film artifact determined teleologically through aesthetic concepts emerging from spectatorship and visual culture. Each observation/reflection is delineated by a separate chapter with individual title headings, and there are fifty-two of these chapters altogether. As such, The Death of Cinema, can be understood as a treatise on the urgency to remedy postmodern cultural values with modernist material technology. The structure of the text is free-flowing and Cherchi Usai makes liberal use of citations in order to direct the reader to previous related “chapters”. There are two primary throughlines for the text with respect to Cherchi Usai’s intervention on contemporary film history: a need for structuralist schema to properly construct the film artifact’s ontology and build a new film history, and psychodynamic explanations for justifying the deconstruction of contemporary film history. Working in conjunction, these two disparate intellectual endeavors provide the foundation for Cherchi Usai’s the Moral Image paradigm – a structure where a new film history can form.

My effort to address the comments made by the two distinguished scholars (to "negate their negations" as it were), consists of three steps. I will start with a brief resume of Hegel's dialectical logic, to provide a scaffold for the debate. Subsequently, I will address the comments made. In the case of Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, I will focus on his reference to Althusser. In the case of Bart Gremmen, I will focus on the dialectics of biology (on biology as an inherently dialectical science), notably on his reference to Mendel. Finally, I will address the tension between the conceptual and the empirical dimension of philosophical scholarship. Keywords Hegel's dialectical logic · Althusser's philosophy of science · Dialectical biology · Gregor Mendel · The empirical turn in philosophy

Contributo in: Fernanda Gallo (a cura di), "Gli Hegeliani di Napoli: il Risorgimento e la ricezione di Hegel in Italia. Scritti in onore di Gerardo Marotta", Scuola di Pitagora, Napoli 2020

-De Sanctis sotto accusa
-La polemica con Luigi Settembrini e Cesare Cantù
-De Sanctis e la lezione di Hegel (1): mondo intenzionale e mondo effettivo
-De Sanctis e la lezione di Hegel (2): verita storica e verità poetica
-De Sanctis e la lezione di Hegel (3): realtà e vita come unità di Interno ed Esterno, di Intensità ed Estensione, ovvero l'autentico diagramma De Sanctis
-De Sanctis e la lezione di Hegel (4): la propensione inclusiva del Vero e del Bello. Conferire dignità filosofica al momento del falso e dignità artistica al momento del brutto
-Conclusioni

This paper develops a dialectical methodology for assessing technoscience during the Anthropocene. How to practice Hegelian dialectics of technoscience today? First of all, dia-lectics is developed here in close interaction with contemporary technoscientific research endeavours, which are addressed from a position of proximity and from an 'oblique' perspective. Contrary to empirical (sociological or ethnographical) research, the focus is on how basic concepts of life, nature and technology are acted out in practice. Notably, this paper zooms in on a synthetic cell project called BaSyC as a concrete instantiation of converging views of life, nature and technology currently at work in technoscience. While dia-lectics is used to explore the significance of this project (of this 'experience' in the dialecti-cal sense), the synthetic cell as a case study also allows us to demonstrate the remarkable relevance of dialectics for understanding contemporary research, notably because it incites us to see the synthetic cell project as a concrete exemplification of life under Anthropoce-nic conditions. Should we assess the synthetic cell as the ultimate realisation of the tech-noscientific will to control and optimise life, or rather as an effort to bridge the disruptive collision between technoscience and nature, or both?

This article critically examines Christopher Arthur’s “New Dialectic”, showing its analytical and formal character, which works through the addition of determinations, making necessary to “reconstruct” Marx’s Capital. With the abandonment of the universal concrete, the unfolding of its inner contradictions, losing its features as necessary and systematic, no longer generates the totality. As a result, the totality, besides an a-systematic

The philosophy of Hegel envisions a world-soul that can be known through the dialectical method of logic. The dialectical method of logic is founded upon the negation of contradictions or, said another way, the reconciliation of opposites. According to this method, one concept or event (thesis) inevitably produces its opposite (antithesis). The tension between these opposites generates a new category (synthesis). This new category can be said to unify the opposites in a way that, in a sense, preserves them while at the same time abolishes them, thereby avoiding their self-contradictoriness.

Hegel investigated the limits of the social order envisaged by political economy, while admiring the universality of modernity. I ask how a series of tropes involved in this critique can illuminate its own limits, the nature and consequences of Hegel's engagement with political economy. The attempts to domesticate and re-integrate the economic, mostly associated with irrationality of the unconscious, turn out to be a failure, while the very logic of domestication has to follow the logic of the economic. The mutual recognition turns into a mutual mimicry, whose success presents a major threat to the speculative enterprise.