: Hegel is commonly thought to affirm Leibniz’s principle of the identity of indiscernibles, which states that no two things are exactly alike. I argue that this interpretation is mistaken: it cannot accommodate passages in which Hegel rejects PII, and the texts cited in favor of this interpretation admit of another reading, which I provide. On my view, Hegel distinguishes between different senses of PII, and the sense of PII he accepts only entails that determinacy is immanent to individuals qua (...) concrete particulars. (shrink)

I interpret Heidegger’s “Origin of the Work of Art” in terms of his contemporaneous lectures on Schelling’s Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom. I uncover several connections and similarities between the two works, which make possible a new reading of the artwork essay: namely, as an “ontodicy.” This term of Jean-Luc Nancy’s denotes the readiness with which Heidegger’s thinking on Being may be used to justify evil. I argue that Nancy’s term may be applied legitimately to the artwork (...) essay also, i.e., that it can be read as a silent justification of evil. (shrink)

I interpret Heidegger’s “Origin of the Work of Art” in terms of his contemporaneous lectures on Schelling’s Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom. I uncover several connections and similarities between the two works, which make possible a new reading of the artwork essay: namely, as an “ontodicy.” This term of Jean-Luc Nancy’s denotes the readiness with which Heidegger’s thinking on Being may be used to justify evil. I argue that Nancy’s term may be applied legitimately to the artwork (...) essay also, i.e., that it can be read as a silent justification of evil. (shrink)

It turns out that you can teach an old dog—even a “dead dog,” as Lessing would describe Spinoza—new tricks. In Spinoza and German Idealism, we learn not only how Spinoza influenced the German Idealists, but also how they transformed and gave new life to the key concepts of his system. In this collection of fourteen essays, we see how Kant, Schleiermacher, Herder, Goethe, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and Trendelenburg understood (and misunderstood) Spinoza’s conception of God, intellectual intuition, human freedom, and the (...) relation between the infinite and the finite—to name but a few of the topics treated in these pages—and also how they defined their own philosophical projects in response to Spinoza on those points. .. (shrink)

I resolve a tension in Hegel’s views, which I call the “paradox of irrationalism,” in order to lay the logical foundation of Hegel’s philosophy of the absurd. The paradox is that Hegel both affirms and denies that the world is rational. While critics maintain that this presents a genuine problem for Hegel, I argue Hegel resolves this paradox by showing that reason constitutes itself through the irrational element that it itself grounds. I make my case by investigating the categories of (...) diversity and contingency, which are central to the paradox of irrationalism and Hegel’s account of human agency. (shrink)

As dictums go, Hegel’s Doppelsatz—“what is rational is actual [wirklich]; and what is actual is rational”—has a nice ring to it, right up there with “existence precedes essence” and “revenge is a dish best served cold.” Still, it has long befuddled readers: what does it mean, and what does it suggest about Hegel’s worldview?Anyone looking for answers to these questions would do well to consult the essays in Wirklichkeit. Beiträge zu einem Schlüsselbegriff der Hegelschen Philosophie. The essays are grouped into (...) two sets of six, with the first tending toward theoretical, the second toward practical issues in Hegel. Their gravitational center is the Logic’s technical concept of Wirklichkeit—“the unity of essence and... (shrink)