An original philosophical exploration of the limits of Hegel’s thought. In the preface to the second edition of the Science of Logic, Hegel speaks of an instinctive and unconscious logic whose forms and determinations “always remain imperceptible and incapable of becoming objective even as they emerge in language.” In spite of Hegel’s ambitions to provide a philosophical system that might transcend messy human nature, Félix Duque argues that human nature remains stubbornly present in precisely this way. In this book, he responds to the “remnants” of Hegel’s work not to explicate his philosophy, but instead to explore the limits of his thought. He begins with the tension between singularity and universality, both as a metaphysical issue in terms of substance and subject and as a theological issue in terms of ideas about the human and divine nature of Jesus. Duque argues that the questions these issues bring out require a search for some antecedent authority, for which he turns to Hegel’s theory of “second nature” and the idea of nature as reflected in the nation-state. He considers Hegel’s evaluation of the French Revolution in the context of political and civil life, and, in a religious context, how Hegel saw considerations of authority and guilt sublimated and purified in the development of Christianity. “This is the work of an important philosopher, with a lifetime of ideas and research to draw on. It is a great book on Hegel and a great book of philosophy in its own right.” — Jay Lampert, author of Deleuze and Guattari’s Philosophy of History “As a contribution to the field, this book does the admirable work of bringing to the fore the interrelated problems of religion and death as fundamentally philosophical problems. The author is refreshingly well versed in theological debates surrounding the Eucharist and their philosophical import for Hegel. There is much insight here for scholars, especially of the analytic, anti-metaphysical school of Hegel studies. They may not walk away convinced that Hegel’s metaphysics is mediated by religion, but they will certainly see the plausibility of such a reading. For other Hegel scholars, the book is a treasure trove of insightful ways of framing Hegel’s project.” — Brent Adkins, author of Death and Desire: In Hegel, Heidegger, and Deleuze

This book relates Hegel to later philosophers and philosophies.

This book offers the first genuinely systematic treatment of Hegel's eschatology in the literature. It is an investigation into Hegel's project to demonstrate the ultimate unity of thought and being (consciousness and reality, self and world). The author traces the project through Hegel's epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of history. The grand synthesis creates a basic tension, an ambivalence, that reaches its most acute formulation in Hegel's eschatological language of a final completion or fulfillment of history. This conflicts with his dialectic and Heracletian metaphysics of becoming. Berthold-Bond concludes that a substantially new approach to Hegel's eschatology is needed.

This book shows how an understanding of the nature and role of insanity in Hegel's writing provides intriguing new points of access to many of the central themes of his larger philosophic project. Berthold-Bond situates Hegel's theory of madness within the history of psychiatric practice during the great reform period at the turn of the eighteenth century, and shows how Hegel developed a middle path between the stridently opposed camps of "empirical" and "romantic" medicine, and of "somatic" and "psychical" practitioners. A key point of the book is to show that Hegel does not conceive of madness and health as strictly opposing states, but as kindred phenomena sharing many of the same underlying mental structures and strategies, so that the ontologies of insanity and rationality involve a mutually illuminating, mirroring relation. Hegel's theory is tested against the critiques of the institution of psychiatry and the very concept of madness by such influential twentieth-century authors as Michel Foucault and Thomas Szasz, and defended as offering a genuinely reconciling position in the contemporary debate between the "social labeling" and "medical" models of mental illness.

Hegel After Derrida provides a much needed insight not only into the importance of Hegel and the importance of Derrida's work on Hegel, but also the very foundations of postmodern and deconstructionist thought. It will be essential reading for all those engaging with the work of Derrida and Hegel today and anyone seeking insight into some of the basic but neglected themes of deconstruction.

An account of Hegel’s political insights and their contemporary relevance. Drawing from a variety of Hegel’s writings, Shannon Hoff articulates a theory of justice that requires answering simultaneously to three irreducibly different demands: those of community, universality, and individuality. The domains of “ethicality,” “legality,” and “morality” correspond to these essential dimensions of human experience, and a political system that fails to give adequate recognition to any one of these will become oppressive. The commitment to legality emphasized in modern and contemporary political life, Hoff argues, systematically precludes adequate recognition of the formative cultural contexts that Hegel identifies under the name of “ethical life” and of singular experiences of moral duty, or conscience. Countering the perception of Hegel as a conservative political thinker and engaging broadly with contemporary work in liberalism, critical theory, and feminism, Hoff focuses on these themes of ethicality and conscience to consider how

This is a penetrating reinterpretation and defense of Hegel's social theory as an alternative to reigning liberal notions of social justice. The eminent German philosopher Axel Honneth rereads Hegel's Philosophy of Right to show how it diagnoses the pathologies of the overcommitment to individual freedom that Honneth says underlies the ideas of Rawls and Habermas alike. Honneth argues that Hegel's theory contains an account of the psychological damage caused by placing too much emphasis on personal and moral freedom. Although these freedoms are crucial to the achievement of justice, they are insufficient and in themselves leave people vulnerable to loneliness, emptiness, and depression. Hegel argues that people must also find their freedom or "self-realization" through shared projects. Such projects involve the three institutions of ethical life--family, civil society, and the state--and provide the arena of a crucial third kind of freedom, which Honneth calls "communicative" freedom. A society is just only if it gives all of its members sufficient and equal opportunity to realize communicative freedom as well as personal and moral freedom.

Identity and difference (or sameness and otherness) are contrasting but interrelated terms that have played an explicit role in the development of Western philosophy at least since Plato wrote the Sophist. As Plato pointed out then, and Hegel reiterated more recently in his Science of Logic, the proper comprehension of these terms, and particularly of their interrelation, plays a fundamental role in shaping our conception of philosophical reason itself. The contributors in this book examine Hegel's treatment of these terms, and the role they play in structuring his philosophical system as a whole and also in shaping his conception of dialectical reasoning.

The translations are accompanied by a detailed interpretive essay that seeks to place these materials in their historical context, relate them to the systematic concerns of German Idealism, and evaluate them in relation to later approaches to language, especially those of semiotics and post-structuralism.

Investigates the role of family in Hegel’s phenomenology.