INTRODUCTION It is a commonplace to observe that the left-Hegelian Max Stirner is little-known.gure in the history of political and philosophical thought. However, that obscurity should not be exaggerated. The author of Der Einzige und sein Eigentum is not only familiar to certain rather specialised and largely academic circles-those with an interest in Hegelianism, for example, or in the early intellectual development of Karl Marx -he is also, and more widely, known as a member of, and in.uence upon, (...) the anarchist tradition. Stirner's best-known work is often excerpted in anthologies of anarchist writings, and his name is regularly included as part of the modern pantheon in historically orientated surveys of anarchist thought. (shrink)

Widmer sheds light on a neglected aspect of the Western philosophical tradition. Following an era of Hegelianism, the members of the neo-Kantian "Marburg School," such as Friedrich Albert Lange, Hermann Cohen, Rudolf Stammler, Paul Natorp, and Ernst Cassirer defended socialism or left-wing ideals on Kantian principles. In doing so, Widmer breaks with two mistaken assumptions. First, Widmer demonstrates that the left-Hegelian and Marxist traditions were not the only significant philosophical sources of socialist critique in nineteenth-century Germany, as (...) the left-Kantians identified problems of normativity that the left-Hegelians could not adequately address. Second, Widmer challenges the prevailing assumption that the political philosophies developed in the Marburg School can be comprehensively characterized as a unified school of "ethical socialism." By showing that they varied fundamentally regarding their political views and their philosophical foundations of socialism, Widmer fills a gap in the studies of neo-Kantianism that is long overdue. (shrink)

Als Hegel 1831 stirbt entwickelt sich in den Kreisen seiner Anhänger eine komplexe Diskussion um das Verhältnis von Religion, Philosophie und Staat. Was zunächst als Debatte um die adäquate Deutung des Hegelschen Denkens beginnt, gestaltet sich im Vorlauf der Revolution von 1848 zu einer der radikalsten und fruchtbarsten Phasen der Geschichte des politischen Denkens. Unter dem Eindruck der repressiven Züge des Preußischen Staates und der zunehmenden Loslösung des Individuums aus sozialen Banden, versuchen sich Denker wie Bruno Bauer, Ludwig Feuerbach, Arnold (...) Ruge und Karl Marx nicht bloß an einer Neubestimmung unseres Verständnisses von Freiheit und sozialer Gemeinschaft, sondern demonstrieren durch ihre Schriften die politisch-praktische Bedeutung von Philosophie überhaupt. Zu diesen zentralen Zügen des Linkshegelianismus versammelt dieser Band zwölf neue Forschungsbeiträge in deutscher und in englischer Sprache. Sie zeigen, dass die Protagonisten des Linkshegelianismus auf vielfältige Weise immer noch unsere Zeitgenossen sind. (shrink)

Scholars agree that Hegel had an important influence on John Dewey's early work.1 Unfortunately, the precise nature of this influence is not always easy to discern; in his early works, Dewey mentions Hegel only rarely, and seldom refers to him. However, in his letters and in his later works, Dewey concedes that Hegel had a strong influence on his philosophy. For example, in a 1930 essay, "From Absolutism to Experimentalism," Dewey acknowledges the influence of Hegel, noting that "acquaintance with Hegel (...) has left a permanent deposit in my thinking."2This paper is dedicated to the investigation of an important but not particularly well known, connection between the work of Hegel and Dewey's early educational ideas.3 .. (shrink)

From 1882 to 1903, Dewey explicitly espoused a Hegelian philosophy. Until recently, scholars agreed that he broke from Hegel no later than 1903, but never adequately accounted for what he called the "permanent deposit" that Hegel left in his mature thought. I argue that Dewey never made a clean break from Hegel. Instead, he drew on the work of the St. Louis Hegelians to fashion a non-metaphysical reading of Hegel, similar to that championed by Klaus Hartmann and other (...) Hegel scholars since the 1970s. This reading of Hegel is remarkably consistent with Dewey's mature philosophy. Although Dewey abruptly repudiated Hegel during World War I, I contend this reflected the exigencies of war rather than philosophical concerns. (shrink)

Looking at the emergence recently of a New Hegelianism (Badiou, Bhaskar, Jameson, Žižek), in which Hegel’s dialectic is variously reassessed for its political and philosophical resistance to the prevailing ‘weak nihilisms’ of left and right, I argue with Žižek and Jameson against Badiou and Bhaskar for Hegel as, essentially, a philosopher of the ‘productive return’ and failure. In this sense, what emerges is a picture of Hegel as a profoundly nonlinear historical thinker, in which loss, dissolution, breakdown and the (...) excremental prevail. This means that the received notion of Hegel as a crude historicist is deeply problematic. But, more importantly, it means that Hegelian dialectic can find a renewed anti-teleological and non-synchronistic identity within the Marxist tradition. Content Type Journal Article Category Article Pages 72-98 Authors John Roberts, University of Wolverhampton Journal Journal of Critical Realism Online ISSN 1572-5138 Print ISSN 1476-7430 Journal Volume Volume 12 Journal Issue Volume 12, Number 1 / 2013. (shrink)

In addition to its main theme of freedom, Hegel’s political philosophy addresses the problem of poverty. This article proposes a theoretical foundation for a Hegelian welfare state by demonstrating how its rationale and concepts are derived from Hegel’s political philosophy. Poverty constitutes a fundamental deficiency in the modern liberal state focused on the self-actualization of its citizens. This poverty is not an accidental but a structural factor of modern market society, resulting from economic contingencies. The poor rabble is deprived (...) of the opportunities for self-actualization that market society provides. Therefore, the main task of a Hegelian welfare state is to secure the right of subsistence as a condition of the possibility of self-actualization. Without subsistence citizens are unable to develop and actualize their free will through property formation in market society. Derived from Hegel’s right of necessity and the guiding principle of freedom, the right of subsistence is paramount to the legitimacy of the state. Therefore, it cannot be left to the contingent morality of private charity. The right of subsistence does not only guarantee mere survival, but also includes a minimum of property needed to participate in market society. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the developments of Young Hegelianism in Restoration Prussia, with a special focus on Max Stirner’s radical critique of Hegelian thinking. It presents an overview of the history of Hegelianism in the 1830s and 1840s, and addresses the theoretical issues raised by Stirner’s attack in 1844. It examines important aspects of Young Hegelianism, including ideas of a modernized civic humanism and emancipation, and traces the Young Hegelians’ reconfiguration of Hegel’s thought in order to eliminate what they saw (...) as its conservative or insufficiently critical elements. The refurbished republicanism of the Young Hegelians took up the new challenges of the industrial age that was dawning in Germany, with special attention to the social question and the intransigent conflicting interests that typified the emergent economic order. Stirner’s critique is framed by its anti-humanist repudiation of Left Hegelian emancipatory projects. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 31.1 (2001) 3-24 [Access article in PDF] Forlorn fortThe Left in trialogue Simon Jarvis Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau, and Slavoj Zizek. Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left.London: Verso, 2000. These "Contemporary Dialogues on the Left" are both on the Left and partly worried about whether there is a future for the Left. Once, talk on the Left was largely concerned (...) with the hope that there might one day be a good end to the Left. If it now sometimes sounds worried about how to stop the Left's being brought to an end, that is partly because, as the prose for the Phronesis series candidly puts it, "Today, the left-wing project is in an even deeper crisis than it was ten years ago" [iv].One sign of hope is that the mantra "Left" of itself carries so little weight now even with those (of us) found there. It is a sign of hope that the meaning of that word is so unclear. The writers of these dialogues disagree about much. If we knew what they shared, we should know more about what in their view is the Left. By luck, what they do agree about is something striking and unusual. It is not a method, approach, or language for thinking. It is not any set of substantial theses about social experience, far less any set of proposals for altering it. It is rather an idea that is subtle, of uncertain meaning, full of political resonance, difficult in the extreme to keep hold of, and whose consequences are hard accurately to delimit. One of the contributors formulates it thus: "The universal is an empty place, a void which can be filled only by the particular, but which, through its very emptiness, produces a series of crucial effects in the structuration/destructuration of social relations" [L 58]. 1What is it for an empty place, a void, to produce a series of effects, a series of critical effects? A fair response to this question has to go a long way around. Each of these writers has come to think of "the universal" as a category both necessary and impossible. It is in the strict sense an aporetic word: we cannot do without it, yet cannot say what it "is." When it is asked, "who, we?" the question itself shows the difficulty. Insofar as the "we" of "the Left" understands itself as demanding justice for any individual or number of individuals, it finds itself appealing to an "us" that will exclude no—what, no sentient human being? Each of these writers will find lacking any theory of justice floated free into an ideal domain of rights. Yet each has seen, in quite different idioms, that it proves impossible utterly to delete all appeal to universality from political thinking. Each is trying to think new and true thoughts. Yet each understands that such thoughts are defined only through a relation to traditions of thinking with which they cannot but be entangled. The method of dialogue fosters a still more concentrated [End Page 3] complexity than that, already in-wrought, from which the authors began. In these circumstances, the long, slow route round, through intellectual history, recommends itself as a provisional method to a commentator. Triangulations Perhaps many readers start navigating this kind of book by noting the distancings. In this case, refusals to belong provide a rough means of orientation. If these maps are rough, however, they are an important part of the book's own method. The thinking of each contributor, for example, can in certain ways be understood as made possible by Hegel and Marx. Rarely, though, are Hegelian Marxists, or anyone associated with them, reasoned with here. The exceptions afford defining moments. Zizek's assertion that "one of the great and permanent results of the so-called 'Western Marxism' first formulated by the young Lukács is that the class-and-commodity structure of capitalism is not just a phenomenon limited to the particular 'domain' of economy, but the structuring principle that overdetermines the social totality, from politics to art and religion... (shrink)

It is not just rhetoric to ask why we should still be reading the Young Hegelians today. In spite of their commitment to action, their influence on the politics of the times was marginal at best; and even as philosophers, the movement of thought which they represented was all but dead by 1848. Now that we read them at a distance of over a century, it is clear that for once at least the fate meted out by circumstances was well (...) deserved. The writings of the Young Hegelians appear painfully thin in insight and force of argument. This global judgment must of course be qualified. Protestant theology has not been the same since David Strauss, and Feuerbach’s conception of man stands as the first statement of modern scientific humanism. Still, the ideal of humanity that inspired either of them has none of the historical richness of Hegel’s “spirit”; in the case of Feuerbach there is also none of the scholarship that redeems at least some of Strauss’ work. The value of both men’s writings lay mostly in their iconoclastic nature. They cleared the air, though at the cost of grave oversimplifications, of the illusion that after Hegel things could quite ever be the same again - as if the speculative comprehension of the Christian faith that Hegel claimed to have achieved could have left that faith undisturbed. But now that the profane has become the commonplace, there is little to recommend them in our eyes; and now that we have also had plenty of opportunity to notice how quickly the spirit of revolution degenerates into faction and anarchy, there is even less to recommend the rest of the Young Hegelians. The later Marx stands out intellectually in comparison to them precisely because he succeeded in breaking free from their ideological hold. I sometimes wonder whether his figure has really been enhanced by the post-war attempt at reinterpreting Capital in the light of his supposed earlier “humanism.” Sidney Hook’s statement that the late Marx was a scientist, and that his theory is to be proven either right or wrong on strictly historical and empirical evidence, might be a bit far-fetched perhaps; it still is in my mind the best compliment that one can pay to Marx. (shrink)

Breckman’s intention, as his title suggests, is to trace the development—or, more tendentiously, the origin—of Marx’s thought through his relation to the Young Hegelians, the principle figures of the Prussian left just prior to Marx. Though Marx engaged in frequent acts of polemical distinction between himself and these earlier thinkers, Breckman suggests we have been too quick to take Marx at his own word and to locate the source of his theory in “his opposition to the private property regime (...) of capitalism and the doctrine that underpins classical political economy and liberal bourgeoisie society”. This source, Breckman suggests, would be better sought in Marx’s appropriation and development of the Young Hegelian’s religious debates with conservative critics of Hegel who defended a personalist conception of God. It is one of Breckman’s central and most convincing contentions that these religious debates over the nature of God must be read equally as political debates between a defense of monarchal sovereignty modeled on the personalist God and a leftist critique of this conception, which struggles to construct out of Hegel’s “World Spirit” a secularized conception of social unity that might establish the grounds for a noncoercive political form. (shrink)

Often it is said that Robert Pippin’s Hegel is too Kantian or too Fichtean. By this is meant, not so much that it is wrong per se that Pippin emphasises the Kantian and Fichtean elements, but rather that something crucial is left out by his reading of Hegel. His is, supposedly, a deflationary reading of Hegel, a kind of bowdlerised version of Hegel the thoroughbred metaphysician in the Spinozan sense, say. Too much emphasis is put, by Pippin, on the (...) fact that we can’t know Being without a dependence on the categories in virtue of which Being can first be determined in and through self-determining thought. Despite the fact that Pippin, certainly more recently, insists on a metaphysical reading, and points to the fact that it is Being’s own intelligibility that is at issue, not just our subjective perspective on it, his Hegelian detractors have often taken and still take Pippin’s Hegel to be unappealingly unhegelian in some important sense. So in what sense is Pippin’s Hegel then not sufficiently ‘metaphysical’ or ‘ontological’, not enough of a Hegel, as Pippin’s critics believe? (shrink)

The Hobbesian social contract is effectively a repudiation of politics. And the story of humanity it tells is that of alienation. The multitude left politics behind in the state of nature, demarcating it as the power and domain of the Sovereign, as they surrendered their political capacities — their wills and judgments — to constitute the commonwealth. What they got in return is the guarantee to safely pursue the necessities of life. Thus, the politics of the modern state, as (...) applied to subjects, has always been the administration and care of mere life. This interpretation depends on a Hegelian and Arendtian reading of Hobbes. The only way to erect such a Common Power, as may be able to defend them from the invasion of Foraigners, and the injuries of one another, and thereby secure them in such sort, as that by their owne industrie, and by the fruites of the Earth, they may nourish themselves and live contentedly; is to conferre all their power and strength on one Man… and therein submit their Wills, every one to his Will, and their Judgements, to his Judgement.—Thomas Hobbes. (shrink)

The paper analyzes the American counterculture of the 1960s and early '70s, from the New Left through the hippies, revolutionaries and Jesus people, to the counterculture's collapse in artistry and the cynicism of Watergate; this evolution is viewed as a re-enactment of Hegel's dialectic of 'active reason' in the Phenomenology of Spirit , from the critique of 'observation' to 'society as a community of animals'. Secondly, an attempt is made to account for this re-enactment in the twentieth century. The (...) tentative conclusion is that the counterculture was America's discovery of the Hegelian idea of the state, but that, in an age of world economic interdependence and universal (if sometimes unacknowledged) military insecurity, this discovery came too late. The economic and military basis of the only world-history which Hegel knew, the history of nation-states all the way from oriental despotisms to modern 'Germanic' states is, it seems, in the process of disappearance. Section on the dialectic of Observation to Active Reason revised and updated in The Dialectical Method: A Treatise Hegel Never Wrote. Prometheus Books, 2012. (shrink)

RESUMEN: La época moderna como es sabido modificó el sentido de la autoridad, porque venía a impugnar la auctoritas y la potestas de la todopoderosa Iglesia de Roma y, con ello, se quería sustituir la autoridad del papa por la de la conciencia de cada uno, es decir, la razón individual o subjetiva se constituye en la nueva autoridad. Fue Hegel quien, en su filosofía política, da un lugar central a la noción de Estado, constituyendo la culminación del pensamiento moderno (...) y fuente de gran parte de la crítica de la modernidad y del pensamiento contemporáneo en general, en sus vertientes ideológicas de izquierda, centro y derecha.ABSTRACT: The modern epoch since it is known it modified the sense of the authority, because it was coming to contest it auctoritas and potestas of the all-powerful Church of Rome and, with it, the authority of the dad wanted to be replaced with that of the conscience of each one, that is to say, the individual or subjective reason is constituted in the new authority. It was Hegel, who in his political philosophy, gives a central place to the notion of State, constituting the culmination of the modern thought and source of great part of the critique of the Modernity and of the contemporary thought in general, in his ideological slopes of left side, center and right.PALABRAS CLAVE: época moderna, estado hegeliano, auctoritas y potestasKEYWORDS: modern epoch, hegelian state, auctoritas and potestas. (shrink)

Lacanian Zizek attempts to Hegelian and anti-capitalism, is to establish close contact. Critique of global capitalism in the process, Zizek and other left-wing intellectuals exists between the points of attack. Although the distinction between Lacan Zizek, "it sector" of several concepts, but he Lacan's "real world" equated with capital, this is a misunderstanding. Political interference in how to deal with Lenin and decision theory, the Zizek see an objective principle of universality and the concrete application of the theory (...) that exists between the cracks, but far-fetched to understand the universality of the vacancy for the Lacanian sense of energy refers to. Zizek left Ji theoretical difficulties inherent in the theory that his position must be re-reflect on their own tension. Zizek sets out to bridge the Lacanian Hegelianism and anti-capitalism. Despite their common endeavor to criticize global capitalism, there is a discrepancy between Zizek and other left-wing intellectuals. Although Zizek distinguishes different interpretations of Lacan's concept of le rée / the real, he misreads it by equating it with capital. In matters of dealing with Lenin's theory of political intervention and decisionism, Zizek perceives the chasm between a universal principle and its application in reality. However, the universality of the principle is understood, in a far- fetched fashion, as the empty signifier in Lacan's sense of the word. The dilemma of Zizek's left-wing theory compels him to reflect on the tension of his own position. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Ohio HegeliansDenys P. LeightonSelected and introduced by James A. Good. The Ohio Hegelians. Bristol, UK: Thoemmes Continuum, 2005. Volume I: Peter Kaufmann, The Temple of Truth (1858). Volume II: Moncure D. Conway, The Earthward Pilgrimage (1870). Volume III: J. B. Stallo, The Concepts and Theories of Modern Physics (2nd ed., 1884).This collection of facsimile reprints prepared by James A. Good is one of the newest contributions to (...) the series 'History of American Thought' published by Thoemmes Continuum. Good has already made significant contributions to study of the history of American philosophy and 'thought' by editing for the same series a reprint edition of the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 1867–1893 (22 volumes, 2002) and co-editing, with Michael DeArmey, a selection of writings by the St. Louis Hegelians (3 volumes, 2001). The latter constitutes very nearly a subset of the former. The acknowledged leader of the 'St. Louis Movement' from 1858 until the late 1870s was William Torrey Harris (1835–1909), who edited the Journal of Speculative Philosophy during the entire period of its publication. JSP predated Mind in England by nearly ten years and was the first specialized venue in the [End Page 445] Anglo-American world for serial publication of scholarly writing on philosophical issues. It also featured original writing on arts and literature, education, and theology, as well as some of the first translations into English of works by J. G. Fichte, F. Froebel, F. A. Trendelenburg and K. Rosenkranz. In addition to publishing work by North American and European thinkers who have by now—perhaps predictably—fallen from scholarly view, JSP featured writing by G. Stanley Hall, William James, C. S. Peirce, Josiah Royce, John Watson and John Dewey.There is a general historical rationale for Good's compilation of ostensibly significant writings by men collectively dubbed by Loyd Easton—with genuflection to the better-known St. Louis Idealists—'the Ohio Hegelians'.1 Yet, as I shall elaborate, the criteria of selection of documents for this collection are somewhat puzzling. Easton grouped under the label 'Ohio Hegelians' Peter Kaufmann (1800–1869), August Willich (1810–1878), John Bernhard Stallo (1823–1900) and Moncure Daniel Conway (1832–1907), while nevertheless denying that they formed a distinctive school of Hegelian philosophy. The most obviously Hegelian among them was Willich, a radical democratic journalist and agitator who features prominently in the complex history of 'Left Hegelianism' and early Marxism. However, Good has decided not to include Willich's writings in this collection, reasoning that his journalistic writings and ephemera 'do not lend themselves... readily to a collection of philosophical works' ('Introduction', p. v). Neither were all the items Good selected for the aforementioned collections of a strictly philosophical nature (whatever that might mean), so one wonders why Willich's Hegelian writings were left out here. It is somewhat curious that Good should include here The Earthward Pilgrimage (1870) by Conway, a Virginian by birth, who, after alienating his Unitarian congregation in Washington, DC by his strongly abolitionist sentiments, was appointed in 1856 to a pastorate at the First Congregational Church in Cincinnati. This 'Ohioan' left the state and the country by 1863 and was thereafter more directly associated with English intellectual life. For most of the period 1864–1897 Conway presided over the undenominational South Place Chapel in London (subsequently, the South Place Ethical Society), which literally served as a pulpit for many guest speakers expressing forms of religious and political radicalism (e.g., agnosticism, 'secularism', republicanism, producer and consumer co-operation). There are few direct references in Conway's The Earthward Pilgrimage to his American experiences. Easton's reason for including Conway among these Ohioans was that Conway had interacted closely in Cincinnati with Willich and Stallo after 1856, when all were enthusiastic supporters of the Republican, 'free-soil' candidate for President, John C. Fremont.Of Peter Kaufmann, author of The Temple of Truth (1858), something will be said in due course, but Stallo became the most un-Hegelian of the Ohio Hegelians. In his Preface to the first edition of The Concepts and Theories of Modern Physics (1881)—the second edition is the one included in Good's [End Page 446] compilation... (shrink)

Slavoj Žižek, alongside Quinton Meillassoux, takes up the position that correlationism – the idea that one can only know the world as it appears for one’s subjective perception of it – fails to account for its own articulation, and thus depoliticizes the formal space from which it can arise. Through his reading of Hegel and locating of the Kantian thing-in-itself within reality, Žižek claims that he can subvert Kantian correlationism and its consequent political ‘celebration of failure’. [i] This paper, however, (...) argues that Žižek’s Hegelian move, with its corresponding notion of the Act, fails to politicize the formal space that he criticizes Kantianism and the contemporary left for failing to consider. That is, Žižek’s alternative, his use of Marxism to delineate and politicize the formal Real space of capital, falls short. His Marxist construction and analysis of capital, since it relies upon the labor theory of value, which Žižek himself criticizes, results in an unwarranted speculation. Without a plausible construction, his claim to avoid Kantian impotence has little ground to stand on. The left is forced back to the drawing board; without Žižek’s alternative it is forced to revise Žižek’s concept of the Act, Marxist construction, or re-confront the political limits of Kantian finitude and correlationism. [i] Žižek, Enjoyment as a political Factor, xii, xvii. (shrink)

An anti-representationalist view of language and a deflationary view of truth, key themes in contemporary pragmatism and especially Richard Rorty, do not undermine the notion, in critical theory, of ideology as 'false consciousness'. Both Foucault and Marx were opposed to what Marxists call historical idealism and so they should be seen as objecting to forms of ideology-critique that do not sufficiently avoid such an 'Hegelian' perspective. Foucault's general views on the relations between truth and power can plausibly be construed (...) in a way that makes them compatible with a Marxian critical theory. (shrink)

Les remarques des jeunes Marx et Engels relatives à la Révolution française sont bien connues et ont été largement commentées. Mais on oublie souvent qu’ils appartiennent à une génération d’intellectuels contestataires allemands qui, dans les années 1830-1840, ne cesse de se référer au XVIIIe siècle français dans le but de le comparer à la philosophie et à la vie politique allemandes de leur temps. L’article propose une analyse de deux positions divergentes sur ces questions, formulées par deux représentants de cette (...) génération : celle de Ludwig Börne, qui ressortit à ce que l’on peut considérer comme une version allemande du jacobinisme, et celle de Bruno Bauer, Jeune hégélien promoteur d’une révolution philosophique allemande susceptible de surpasser la Révolution française en radicalité et en profondeur spirituelle. Ainsi, le rapport des intellectuels allemands à la Révolution française pendant le Vormärz apparaît dans toute l’ambiguïté relevée par Lucien Calvié : tel le renard aux raisins de la fable de La Fontaine, partagés entre attirance et frustration, les Allemands de gauche ont les yeux rivés sur une France révolutionnaire à la fois enviée et décriée. (shrink)

In this article, I examine Slavoj Žižek’s Freudian-Hegelian interpretation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: or the Modern Prometheus (1818), and argue that Žižek’s critique of Shelley’s ambiguous and contradictory attitude toward the French Revolution and its regime of terror remains central to the debates about the revolutionary and Enlightenment ideals today. For Žižek, Shelley employs the family myth not only to obfuscate the social reality of the French Revolution, but also to subvert the bourgeois family from within, through its transgressive (...) sexual politics. Although Shelley manages not simply to dismantle modernity, she expresses a radical commitment to a “pure Enlightenment subjectivity”. Nonetheless, Shelley fails to articulate the speculative identity of the Enlightenment and revolutionary terror. Žižek’s analysis of Shelley’s ambiguous position on emancipatory politics has major implications for his critique of Leftist debates about Muslim refugees in Europe and transgender sexuality. It is still urgent, Žižek correctly insists, to interrogate the ways in which identity politics and the human rights regime can be readily appropriated and commodified in late capitalism. (shrink)

The „left Hegelian” interpretation of Hegel′s theory of Sittlichkeit has shown that the claim of the concept of autonomy to establish an internal connection between normativity and freedom can only be carried out, if the subject of autonomy is defined by its participation in social practices. While the left Hegelian interpretation thereby solves the paradoxes of the Kantian tradition of understanding autonomy, it is destined to repeat the paradoxical structure of autonomy in a new and fundamental (...) form. This follows from the insight – articulated by Hegel′s anti-Aristotelian concept of “second nature” – that participation in social practices is at the same time the medium and the other of autonomy. Autonomy thus remains dependent on an act of liberation that cannot be an autonomous action itself. (shrink)

Karl Marx’s “On the Jewish Question” has fueled discussions around his early intellectual development as a Young-Hegelian thinker as well as debates about an allegedly distinct form of anti-Semitism native to Left-Hegelian and later to left-thinkers in general, Jewish and non-Jewish alike. In this article, I argue that Marx’s assessment of contemporary Judaism is motivated by an underappreciated criticism of Hegelian historiography. Surveying the genesis of the Hegelian treatments of Judaism between Hegel and Marx, (...) I distinguish Marx’s intervention as a reaction to non-materialistic teleological historiography. This historiography assumes dialectical movement and demands practical change from those considered foreign to the movement. In contrast, this article suggests that Marx’s primary target is the belief that Judaism has been sublated into Christianity, that the abnormality lies not in Judaism’s historical persistence, but in the Christian pretense that the material contradictions Judaism was a response to have been overcome. Against the teleological nature of all renditions of Hegelian historiography, including Marx’s later historical-materialism, his “On the Jewish Question” weaponizes a hitherto unrecognized anti-teleological argument against the assimilationist views it responds to, of the kind that should evoke Nietzschean genealogy. (shrink)

I find myself in the odd position of trying to convince someone who had done as much as anyone to bring philosophy into the wider culture that he is wrong to urge now that its practice be consigned to the esoteric pursuits of “private ironists.” The problem, I still believe, is Richard Rorty’s all-or-nothing approach to philosophy : foundationalism or ironism; and this, I think, is encouraged by his selective reading of philosophy’s history. On that reading, modern philosophy “centered around (...) a discussion of truth” ; it was preoccupied with foundationalist claims of one sort or another. But that preoccupation was permanently discredited by Friedrich Nietzsche and his descendants, especially Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida, leaving philosophy with nothing to do but pick the bones of its own carcass. What is missing from this story is precisely the line of thought—extending from the left Hegelians to Jürgen Habermas—I sought to develop in my paper. That line is defined by, among other things, the primacy of practical reason and the rerouting of philosophical inquiry in sociohistorical directions. One of its high points is American pragmatism, which, pace Rorty, does not lie along the Nietzsche—Heidegger—Derrida line. Thomas McCarthy is professor of philosophy at Northwestern University. He is the author of The Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas and editor of the series Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought. His work-in-progress concerns the relation of philosophy to social theory. (shrink)

This article aims to shed light on some core challenges of liberating social criticism. Its centerpiece is an intuitively attractive account of the nature and difficulty of critical social thought that nevertheless goes missing in many philosophical conversations about critique. This omission at bottom reflects the fact that the account presupposes a philosophically contentious conception of rationality. Yet the relevant conception of rationality does in fact inform influential philosophical treatments of social criticism, including, very prominently, a left Hegelian (...) strand of thinking within contemporary Critical Theory. Moreover, it is possible to mount a defense of the conception by reconstructing, if with various qualifications and additions, an argument from classic—i.e., mid twentieth-century—Anglo-American philosophy of the social sciences, in particular, the argument that forms the backbone of Peter Winch’s _The Idea of a Social Science_. Winch draws his guiding insights from the later philosophy of Wittgenstein, and one of the payoffs of considering Winch’s Wittgenstein-inspired work against the backdrop of Hegel-inspired work in Critical Theory is to contest the artificial professional strictures that are sometimes taken to speak against reaching across the so-called ‘Continental Divide’ in philosophy. The larger payoff is advancing, by means of this philosophically ecumenical approach, the enterprise of liberating social thought. (shrink)

Widely chosen by students of society as an approach under which to labour, emancipatory, liberatory or, otherwise put, critical social thought occupies a position between knowledge and practical action whose coherence is taken for granted on account of the pressing nature of the issues it attempts to deal with. As such it is rarely subjected to scrutiny and the methodological, conceptual and moral challenges it faces are not properly identified. The contribution of this article is to raise these problems into (...) view clearly and unambiguously. This is undertaken via a careful examination of Alice Crary’s recent work, in which she attempts, firstly, to defend a left-Hegelian version of Critical Theory by relating it to the work of Peter Winch and, second, to issue a set of methodologically radical recommendations on employing the sensibility-shaping powers of the literary form. The article aims to deepen our understanding of the fundamental tensions between the Critical Theory and Wittgensteinian traditions, which Crary attempts to bring together and, ultimately, of those crucial features of our moral practices that frustrate the enterprise of critical social thought. (shrink)

In this article, I draw upon the ‘post-Kantian’ reading of Hegel to examine the consequences Hegel’s idea of God has on his metaphysics. In particular, I apply Hegel’s ‘recognition-theoretic’ approach to his theology. Within the context of this analysis, I focus especially on the incarnation and sacrifice of Christ. First, I argue that Hegel’s philosophy of religion employs a distinctive notion of sacrifice (kenotic sacrifice). Here, sacrifice is conceived as a giving up something of oneself to ‘make room’ for the (...) other. Second, I argue that the idea of kenotic sacrifice plays a fundamental role in Hegel’s account of Christ. Third, I conclude by sketching some of the consequences of Hegel’s idea of a God who renounces his own divinity for an idealistically conceived metaphysics. My main thesis is that the notion of incarnation is conceived by Hegel as the expression of a spirit that advances only insofar as it is willing to withdraw and make room for the other. A kenotic reading of the Hegelian notion of the incarnation is also useful in terms of a clarification of the dispute between ‘left Hegelians’ and ‘right Hegelians’ concerning the status of the idea of God in Hegel’s philosophy. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The question concerning the connection of scientific inquiry to democratic praxis is central to both Antonio Gramsci and John Dewey. They share a common philosophical origin in Hegel and are essentially both in the tradition of Left Hegelian thought. Likewise, their respective analyses of the forces obstructing democratic emancipation were sharply focused on the distortions of social life caused by economic agents cooperating under hugely unequal power relations. As Gramsci wrote from his prison cell from 1929 to (...) 1937 in Italy, Dewey went through his most fruitful philosophical period in the United States, including his writings on politics and democracy. They both found targets of critique by diagnosing the pathologies of public life resulting from the power of private capital interests in collusion with a co-opted representative body, the authoritarian crimes and attendant culture of fascism, and the theoretical rigidity of the Soviet Marxists. In addition, true to their Hegelian roots, they marshaled their critiques of the abstractions of liberalism and its attendant moral and economic theory by insisting on the embedded, cultural, and historically deep contexts in which emancipatory practice need take place. (shrink)

This article endeavors to draw out and explicate some of the normative tensions that animate the imaginary and practice of solidarity. It begins by examining the account of solidarity set forth in the writings of Jürgen Habermas. It then considers Axel Honneth’s recognition-theoretic conception of the solidaristic attitude. While remaining sympathetic to the left-Hegelian intersubjectivism of Habermas’ discourse-ethic, Honneth seeks to redress the “cognitive-centric” limitations of the latter thinker’s conception of solidarity. In this context, particular emphasis is placed (...) on Honneth’s engagement with the idea of Sittlichkeit, or shared form of ethical life, discussed in Hegel’s early “Jena period” work, as well as in his later Elements of the Philosophy of Right. To Honneth, while these writings can contribute significantly to a recognition-theoretic understanding of solidarity, they must be distinguished from the philosophy of consciousness that circumscribes the famous recognition struggle between master and slave in The Phenomenology of Spirit. In conclusion, the paper questions the capacity of Honneth’s approach to criticize ideological forms of solidaristic recognition, offering a qualified defense of Habermas’ contravening perspective. (shrink)

The answer to this question is simple, but it requires elaborate argumentation. Epicureanism in The First Circle stands for the ethics of Stalinist society and furnished Solzhenitsyn with the vehicle for a destructive critique of Stalinist moral theory. But Stalinism has tended to be viewed in the West chiefly as a vicious form of political opportunism, its implicit ethical structure has escaped due recognition. But Stalinism was more than one man's strategy for the seizure and consolidation of power, more even (...) than the collective aims, policies, and methods of the Soviet bureaucracy. The ideological component of Stalinism must not be neglected. Howsoever the integrity of its doctrines was subordinated to political exigencies of the moment, Stalinist ideology could lay claim to a coherent and distinguished intellectual ancestry: it was heir to the materialist philosophy of the so-called Left Hegelians , a philosophy militantly reinterpreted by the architects of the Russian Revolution. Stalinist ideology expected a profound influence on the popular notions of obligation and moral value during the period of its ascendancy, smoothing the way of acquiescence and cooperation for the reluctant, the dubious, and the conscience-stricken. One need not therefore subscribe to an idealist interpretation of history in order to agree with Solzhenitsyn that Stalin's creation of an univers concentrationnaire would have been impossible without an accessory code of official ethics. David M. Halperin, an assistant professor of literature at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is the author of articles on Solzhenitsyn, Conrad, Augustine, Virgil, and ancient bucolic poetry. (shrink)

This paper aims to make better sense of Hegel’s Philosophy of Objective Spirit and defend it against the charge of political conservatism and optimism. I will argue for the left Hegelian position in the theological-philosophical respect, thereby leaving the left-right divide in the social-political respect largely open. I will explain that Hegel’s commitment to the inherent rationality of the state and the course of human history as the progress of freedom does not imply blind optimism, since his (...) thesis is not to be taken as a factual description. Hegel’s point is rather a conceptual one: to comprehend the human world means to comprehend it as a holistically rational entity and process, which is the essential nature of comprehending in the context of the humanities. I will further clarify Hegel’s point by introducing relevant ideas from contemporary philosophy of mind and language, comparing it in particular with Davidson’s principle of charity. (shrink)

This paper has several aims. Its main interpretive task is to argue that the democratic aspirations of contemporary critical theory are informed and haunted by an essentially Hegelian conception of constitutional order that I describe in part 1, according to which the modern state represents an institutional structure that integrates society through rational activity by mediating between the different interests of various social strata, connecting them in a common enterprise—haunted, because this Hegelian vision of making individuals free and (...) “at home” in the modern world, reconciled to it by virtue of being able to comprehend their social order as the work of their own shared reasons, remains a griping one, but one that critical theorists starting with the Left Hegelians view as increasingly implausible under modern social conditions. In section 2, I trace the decline of confidence in the prospects for the rational/mediational integration of society Hegel envisioned through Horkheimer and Adorno, and discuss some relevant aspects of Habermas’s initial reception of their views. Section 3 argues that the conceptions of democratic constitutional politics offered by Habermas and Benhabib should be read as attempts to recover, in a critical manner and under changed conditions, Hegel’s idea of social order as the product of rational activity. Along the way, I will make three interpretive and critical points: first, the existence of this link to Hegelian conceptions of constitutionalism demonstrates that interpretations of Habermas’s later work that read him as having broken with the tradition of Left Hegelianism are overstated—my reading of Habermas highlights his essentially Hegelian proceduralism and the social theoretic dimension of his work, and should challenge people who think of him as a neo-Kantian moralist. Second, this Left Hegelian social theoretic backdrop provides a stronger normative justification for the practice of democratically rearticulating constitutional norms—along with its apparent demotion of the stabilizing virtues of the rule of law—than the contextual one that some legal theorists have so far offered. Thirdly, I will comment on the shortcomings of Habermas’s conception of democratic constitutionalism, as well as Benhabib’s modified concept of “democratic iterations,” along with some brief suggestions on how this set of ideas should be developed. (shrink)

This article examines the role of class divisions in critical social theory through Habermas’ theory of law and democracy. It begins with Hegel’s view that social freedom involves reconciliation with the modern division of labor, which in turn requires membership in ‘estates’, and his thoughts on their role in the state. While subsequent Left Hegelian thinkers reject these institutions as authoritarian, the melancholic tenor of much Frankfurt School social theory stems partly from their view that class divisions are (...) not only entrenched, but also ‘latent’ and therefore not amenable to reconciliation through the political process that Hegel envisions. Habermas’ conception of ‘interchange roles’ between the system and the lifeworld as sites of reification, but potentially of democratic contestation, synthesizes these lines of thought, by conceptualizing how the political mediation of class-based interests can be an ongoing possibility amidst a condition of latent class conflict. (shrink)

"Angeleitet durch Marx’ Thesen über Feuerbach untersucht der Artikel die linkshegelianischen Triebgründe des Programms der ›Operativen Ontologien‹. Bernhard Siegerts Versuch, »ontologische Unterscheidungen« auf »ontische Operationen« zurückzuführen, findet eine überraschende Parallele in Feuerbachs Unternehmen, »die religiöse Welt in ihre weltliche Grundlage aufzulösen«. Zugleich lässt sich im Postulat einer Vorgängigkeit kulturtechnischer Operationen ein technisch verstärktes Echo der Marxschen Rede vom Primat der Praxis vernehmen. Directed by Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach, the article examines the Left Hegelian motives of the agenda of (...) ‘operational ontologies.’ Bernhard Siegert’s attempt to attribute “ontological distinctions” to “ontical operations” finds a surprising parallel in Feuerbach’s enterprise “to dissolve the religious world into its secular foundation.” At the same time, a technically amplified echo of Marx’s idea of the primacy of practice can be perceived in the postulate of a precedence of cultural technological operations.". (shrink)

This paper clarifies Stirner’s relationship to his Left Hegelian contemporaries, Ludwig Feuerbch and Bruno Bauer, by showing how, in The Ego and Its Own, Stirner sought to exploit a fundamental contradiction that he perceived in the humanisitc atheism of Feuerbach and Bauer, and thereby to complete the critique of religious consciousness initiated by them. After having reconstructed Stirner’s position in relation to those of his contemporaries, the paper goes on to identify a significant weakness in it, and to (...) identify resources in Feuerbach’s program for a future philosophy that might be enlisted in response to Stirner. The author argues that the central claim underlying Stirner’s criticism of Feuerbach involves a misconception of Feuerbach’s notion of the Gattungswesen or species-essence. Furthermore, Stirner’s unmitigated epistemological relativism is ultimately incompatible with his materialist ontology. (shrink)

Recent literature on the Young Hegelians attests to a renewed appreciation of their philosophical and political significance. Important new studies have linked them to the literary and political currents of their time, traced the changing patterns of their relationships with early French socialism, and demonstrated the affinity of their thought with Hellenistic theories of self-consciousness. The conventional interpretative context, which focuses on the left-Hegelian critique of religion and the problem of the realisation of philosophy, has also been decisively (...) challenged. Ingrid Pepperle emphasizes instead the centrality of practical philosophy, notably Hegel's dialectic of objectification, arguing that Bruno Bauer in particular derives from this a doctrine of autonomy with politically revolutionary implications. (shrink)

“To understand Bauer, one must understand our time. What is our time? It is revolutionary.” So wrote Edgar Bauer of his brother Bruno in October 1842. The literature on the Hegelian Left has depicted this revolution in diverse ways: as abstract-utopian posturing, as a religious crisis, or as cultural degradation or transformation. More recent commentators stress the political dimensions of the crisis, and the interest of the Left Hegelians in developing a theory of popular sovereignty, citizenship, and (...) republicanism. (shrink)