Hegel avait vingt ans à la Révolution française et la quarantaine à la Restauration. Ceci le rend terriblement actuel, car de ce fait la question qui l’a hanté est aussi la question qui nous ronge aujourd’hui : pourquoi la pensée s’accommode d’un tel retard par rapport à la vie ? Pourquoi ce scandale : ce qui devrait être (socialement) selon tous, n’est pas ce qui est, et, qui plus est, rétrograde, hier de la Révolution à la Restauration, aujourd’hui du communisme, de l’État social, de la décolonisation au capitalisme totalement débridé de la crise et au néocolonialisme ? Chacun vit avec cette tension aporétique en lui enfouie et en cherche, parfois à son insu, confusément la résolution. C’est que cette question ne se laisse pas facilement théoriser. Et c’est l’immense mérite de Hegel de l’avoir initié pour nous.
« Hegel a voulu penser la vie. Ce désir naissait d’une privation : la pensée théorique manifestait, particulièrement à son époque, un désaccord profond avec la vie. Les intellectuels dévidaient l’écheveau de leurs pensées apparemment intemporelles, que la Révolution française démentait chaque jour. Il fallait que l’intelligence cessât de méconnaître l’existence historique.
La Révolution française posait les problèmes. On n’estimera jamais assez haut son influence sur la pensée de Hegel : elle exhibait ce que d’autres époques avaient dissimulé, l’événement révolutionnaire proprement dit, le renversement brusque et violent des rapports sociaux et politiques établis.
Hegel s’étonnera de cette contradiction : des idées et des sentiments consacrés, les institutions qui les incarnent, les donjons qui les protègent, s’effondrent soudain, alors que la plupart des témoins continuent de croire à leur invulnérabilité, à leur éternité. Dans la poussière des démolitions, on démontre encore rationnellement la pérennité des édifices – et ce sont parfois les mêmes hommes qui manient la pioche du démolisseur et la rhétorique du conservateur !
Hegel cherchera le heurt avec cette difficulté : d’où provient le désaccord de la pensée et de la vie, le retard excessif de la première sur la seconde ? Comment réduire ce décalage, obtenir une réconciliation ? » J. D’Hondt

How should a prospective reader approach the vast and many-sided discussion that Less than Nothing contains?

Posted on November 10, 2013 by Евгений Павлов

Another review of Zizek’s book on Hegel.

Hegel’s Rabble (by Frank Ruda) Reviewed

Posted on November 2, 2013 by Евгений Павлов

Here:

What is surprising about this selection of works is the neglect it pays to Marx’s own paragraph by paragraph critique of sections from Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, to which Ruda seldom refers. Readers turning to this text may be surprised further that Marx himself did not zero in on Hegel’s discussion of the rabble and instead focused his critique elsewhere. In any case perhaps the bigger concern is the unproblematic reading into Marx’s writings of concepts generated by thinkers such as Žižek and Badiou who are often referred to as ‘post-Marxist’. Such a strategy can only present us with the conclusion that the young Marx was, in fact, a post-Marxist.

Егор Федорович Гегель

Posted on November 1, 2013 by Евгений Павлов

Статья и запись беседы здесь.

О Гегеле чаще говорят как о завершителе, чем как о зачинателе. Это справедливо, поскольку сам себя он так и мыслил, а свою систему считал венцом философии, не предполагающим продолжения, ведь все внутренние конфликты дисциплины нашли в ее рамках окончательное разрешение. Тем не менее гегелевская система продолжения имела, а в России XIX века оказалась даже начальной точкой, от которой прослеживается развитие публичной философской дискуссии.

В стране, где сам Гегель никогда не был и о которой он написал, кажется, только то, что она своего места во всемирной истории еще не обнаружила, Гегель стал первым широко воспринятым западным философом. Настолько воспринятым, что один из его горячих пропагандистов, Виссарион Белинский, даже обращался к нему по имени-отчеству, называя Георга Вильгельма Фридриха Егором Федоровичем.

“When did you start to see problems with dialectical materialism?” (Interview with Rosa Lichtenstein)

Posted on October 28, 2013 by Евгений Павлов

Your larger project seems to be aimed explaining how Hegelian readings of Marx, starting with Engels, have had major philosophical and political problems for working class politics. When did you start to see problems with dialectical materialism?

I began to read Hegel back in the 1970s, but when I started a degree course in Philosophy — which was incidentally delivered largely by leading Fregeans and Wittgensteinians, who introduced me to Analytic Philosophy — I very soon began to reject not just Hegel but all forms of traditional Philosophy as little other than “houses of cards”, to paraphrase Wittgenstein.

More here.

P.S. Her website has perhaps the worst design of all time (considering this is 2013, not 1991).

New Book: The Idea of Hegel’s “Science of Logic” (Stanley Rosen)

Posted on October 26, 2013 by Евгений Павлов

Here.

Posted on October 24, 2013 by Евгений Павлов

Das Unwahre aber ist unbegreiflich

Posted on October 24, 2013 by Евгений Павлов

After a break got to finish the second chapter of the first part (Bestimmtheit – Qualität) of the first book (Die Lehre vom Sein) of Science of Logic this morning. So this is Das Dasein chapter (from Sein – Das Dasein – Das Fürsichsein trio). By far the most interesting discussion so far, I think, is not the usually brought up Being-Nothing-Becoming (Sein-Nichts-Werden) from the first chapter (Sein) but finitude and infinitude sections.

The second chapter – in di Giovanni’s new SL translation, it is “Existence” but more familiar in the old version as “Determinate Being” – ends with a short “Transition” paragraph (and two Remarks). There is some German weirdness that I cannot quite understand here – so here it is…

If you read di Giovanni’s translation carefully, you’ll see that there is an interesting problem of translation (I can only guess that this is a deliberate choice):

Transition
Ideality can be called the quality of the infinite; but it is essentially the
process of becoming, and hence a transition – like the transition of becoming (Werden) into existence (Dasein). We must now explicate this transition. This immanent turning back, as the sublating of finitude (als Aufheben der Endlichkeit) – that is, of finitude as such and equally of the negative finitude that only stands opposite to it, is only negative finitude – is self-reference, being. Since there is negation in this being, the latter is existence; but, further, since the negation is essentially negation of the negation, self-referring negation, it is the existence that
carries the name of being-for-itself.

The bolded part has “negative finitude” (twice) where the German has the term “infinitude” (once) – but it seems that di Giovanni corrects Hegel in suggesting his meant finitude since negated finitude is infinitude, so that which stands against finitude should be negative finitude (not negative infinitude).

Der Ubergang
Die Idealität kann die Qualität der Unendlichkeit genannt werden; aber sie ist wesentlich der Prozeß des Werdens und damit ein Übergang, wie des Werdens in Dasein, der nun anzugeben ist. Als Aufheben der Endlichkeit, d. i. der Endlichkeit als solcher und ebensosehr der ihr nur gegenüberstehenden, nur negativen Unendlichkeit ist diese Rückkehr in sich, Beziehung auf sich selbst, Sein. Da in diesem Sein Negation ist, ist es Dasein, aber da sie ferner wesentlich Negation der Negation, die sich auf sich beziehende Negation ist, ist sie das Dasein, welches Fürsichsein genannt wird.

However, there seems to be no adjective + noun construction in German – so there is neither “negative finitude” nor “negative infinitude” – in the German text we have der ihr nur gegenüberstehenden, nur negativen or if we take one clause out der ihr nur negativen = “ihr” is dative of “sie” and relates to “der Endlichkeit” – so “to it only opposite, only negative, infinitude” sounds like a good version.

Here is A.V. Miller’s translation:

Transition

Ideality can be called the quality of infinity; but it is essentially the process of becoming, and hence a transition – like that of becoming in determinate being – which is now to be indicated. As a sublating of finitude, that is, finitude as such, and equally of the infinitude which is merely its opposite, merely negative, this return into self is self-relation, being. As this being contains negation it is determinate, but as this negation further is essentially negation of the negation, the self-related negation, it is that determinate being which is called being-for-itself.

Miller’s translation takes (again, it seems to me, correctly and better than di Giovanni) this phrase and breaks it down this way = und ebensosehr [der ihr nur gegenüberstehenden, nur negativen] Unendlichkeit. That is, “and equally of (only standing opposite it, only negative) infinitude” – but I leave this up to those who are better at German than me…

“Darwin Rocks Hegel: Does Nature Have a History?” (David Kolb)

Posted on October 21, 2013 by Евгений Павлов

Here is a nice essay on Hegel and Darwin (obviously Hegel died long before The Origin of Species, but I always wondered about possible connections):

The way current debates get publicised, there appear to be two extreme positions. The first is a reductionist materialism: all complex systems are describable purely in terms of the qualities of their most basic components, and the systems themselves result from Darwinian selection. No teleological concepts at all need be applied. At the other extreme is total teleology; all systems and their interactions and development are the result of preconceived conscious purposeful design by a powerful designer. The ontological status of the designer is usually filled out with theological notions.

Here is a section from Stephen Houlgate’s An Introduction to Hegel, Freedom, Truth and History where he presents Hegel’s anti-evolutionary positions (Hegel would have been familiar with Lamarck’s theory):

Given Hegel’s commitment to a synchronic rather than diachronic understanding of nature and life, it is clear that he would have had no greater interest in the Darwinian theory of evolution than in the Lamarckian theory. Pace Findlay, Hegel in the Philosophy of Nature is not ‘a philosopher of evolution’. There is a difference, however, between a lack of interest in something and outright hostility to it, and I see nothing in the very idea of speculative philosophy that justifies Hegel in rejecting, rather than simply beingindifferent to, the idea of the evolution of species. It is quite possible to focus one’s own philosophical attention on the logical, structural differences between species, but also to allow other scientists to study the process whereby such species emerged in time (just as it is possible to let scientists study the origins of the solar system and of life). In my view, therefore, Hegel’s philosophy of nature is not in principle incompatible with either the general idea of the evolution of species or Darwin’s particular theory of evolution by natural selection.