Abstract

Hegel's Logic still lacks a definitive interpretation. This study advances the view that an integral dimension of Hegel's achievement is his demonstration of the interimplication of categorical knowing and the movement of poetic imagination. Modern studies of poetic imagination increasingly focus on tropes as the organizing principles of poetic imagination, but these studies have been unable to provide an acceptable demarcation between science and poetry, literal and figurative, tropological and non-tropological. I suggest that Hegel's concept of the "speculative" is suited to making these distinctions comprehensible, and that the Logic in fact functions as a speculative tropology, as an immanent exposition of the creation and self-delimination of tropological possibilities. ;The introduction argues the possibility of an absolute discourse and notes that Hegelian "science" delimits itself by its unique sensitivity to the problem of how science justifies itself. ;The first chapter surveys tropological theory from Aristotle to the present. I find three major divisions in tropological study: Metaphor theories, where metaphor is considered to be the pre-eminent trope; Metaphor/metonymy theories which hold that metaphor and metonymy are specifically co-implicative; and master-trope theories, which find that four tropes--metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche and irony--form an irreducible and integral set for all tropological study. ;Chapter Two undertakes a tropological reading of the Phenomenology of Spirit, as "Introduction to Science," and notes the emergence of a new sense of "category." The Enlightenment is analyzed as a particular configuration of ironic and metonymic modes of discourse. ;Chapter Three considers the Logic as a "critique of pure trope." I offer first a tropological reading of the "attitudes of thought to Objectivity" which precede the Encyclopedia Logic. Next is a tropological reading of the Science of Logic itself. The Absolute Idea is characterized as a peculiar wedding of Ironic and Synecdochic modes of construal. ;Chapter Four examines the concrete operation of tropes in view of Hegel's doctrine of metaphor as symbolic imagination, considering the Aesthetics and Philosophy of Spirit. Habit as the metonymic training of the soul is highlighted, as well as the incapacity for metaphor to adequately express its contents. ;Chapter Five is a summary and survey of some implications of the speculative-tropological approach to current debates in various disciplines