Hegel’s logic of finitude

Continental Philosophy Review 45 (2):213-233 (2012)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

In “Violence and Metaphysics” Jacques Derrida suggests that “the only effective position to take in order not to be enveloped by Hegel would seem to be…to consider false-infinity…irreducible.” Inversely, refuting the charge of logocentrism associated with Hegelian true infinity ( wahrhafte Unendlichkeit ) would involve showing that Hegel’s speculative logic does not establish the infinity of being exempt from the negativity of the finite. This paper takes up Derrida’s challenge, and argues that true infinity is crucial to Hegel’s understanding of ideality as a question of normative authority, which does not fall prey to logocentrism. Through an exposition of the dialectic of the finite and the infinite in Hegel’s Science of Logic , I argue that true infinity is not an ontological category that eliminates division, but rather refers to the metalogical standpoint involved in a philosophical account of determinacy. Although fully achieved at the end of the Logic , the metalogical standpoint that Hegel elaborates in the Seinslogik under the banner of the true infinite already clarifies that determinacy is a product of normative authority that is itself precarious.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Hegel’s Concept of The True Infinite.Robert R. Williams - 2010 - The Owl of Minerva 42 (1/2):89-122.
Reading: Derrida in Hegel's understanding.John Russon - 2006 - Research in Phenomenology 36 (1):181-200.
The Opening of Hegel's Logic: From Being to Infinity.Stephen Houlgate - 2006 - West Lafayette, IN, USA: Purdue University Press.
Hegel's legacy.Rocío Zambrana - 2012 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 50 (2):273-284.
Hegel: a collection of critical essays.Alasdair C. MacIntyre - 1976 - Notre Dame [Ind.]: University of Notre Dame Press.
A commentary to Hegel's Science of logic.David Carlson - 2007 - New York: Palgrave Macmillian.
Hegel's account of contradiction in the science of logic reconsidered.Karin de Boer - 2010 - Journal of the History of Philosophy 48 (3):345-373.
Hegel's critique of metaphysics.Béatrice Longuenesse - 2007 - New York: Cambridge University Press.

Analytics

Added to PP
2012-03-29

Downloads
123 (#136,076)

6 months
7 (#175,814)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Rocío Zambrana
University of Puerto Rico

References found in this work

Phenomenology of Spirit.Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel - 1977 - Oxford: Oxford University Press. Edited by Arnold V. Miller & J. N. Findlay.
Reason in philosophy: animating ideas.Robert Brandom - 2009 - Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

View all 83 references / Add more references