Hegel and His Critics: Philosophy in the Aftermath of Hegel PDF
Preview Hegel and His Critics: Philosophy in the Aftermath of Hegel
cover next page > title: Hegel and His Critics : Philosophy in the Aftermath of Hegel SUNY Series in Hegelian Studies author: Desmond, William publisher: State University of New York Press isbn10 | asin: 0887066674 print isbn13: 9780887066672 ebook isbn13: 9780585059891 language: English subject Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich,--1770-1831--Influence, Philosophy, Modern--19th century--Congresses, Philosophy, Modern--20th century--Congresses. publication date: 1989 lcc: B2948.H3175 1989eb ddc: 193 subject: Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich,--1770-1831--Influence, Philosophy, Modern--19th century--Congresses, Philosophy, Modern--20th century--Congresses. cover next page > If you like this book, buy it! < previous page page_i next page > Page i Hegel and His Critics < previous page page_i next page > If you like this book, buy it! < previous page page_ii next page > Page ii SUNY Series in Hegelian Studies William Desmond, Editor < previous page page_ii next page > If you like this book, buy it! < previous page page_iii next page > Page iii Hegel and His Critics Philosophy in the Aftermath of Hegel Edited by William Desmond State University of New York Press < previous page page_iii next page > If you like this book, buy it! < previous page page_iv next page > Page iv Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 1989 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address State University of New York Press, State University Plaza, Albany, N.Y., 12246 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hegel and his critics. Includes index. 1. Hegel, George Wilhelm Friedrich, 1770-1831 Influence. 2. Philosophy, Modern19th century. 3. Philosophy, Modern20th century. I. Desmond, William, 1951- B2948.H3175 1988 193 87-16185 ISBN 0-88706-667-4 ISBN 0-88706-668-2 (pbk.) 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 < previous page page_iv next page > If you like this book, buy it! < previous page page_v next page > Page v Contents Introduction by William Desmond vii I. Presidential Address The Use and Abuse of Hegel by Nietzsche and Marx George L. Kline 1 II. Hegel and the Problem of Difference: A Critique of Dialectical Reflection by Carl G. Vaught 35 Commentary by Ardis B. Collins III. Hegel and Marx on the Human Individual by Leslie A. Mulholland 56 IV. Hegel's Critique of Marx: The Fetishism of Dialectics by William Maker 72 V. Hegel's Philosophy of God in the Light of Kierkegaard's Criticisms by Bernard Cullen 93 Commentary by Robert L. Perkins VI. Hegel's Revenge on Russell: The 'Is' of Identity versus the 'Is' of Predication by Katharina Dulckeit 111 Commentary by John N. Findlay VII. Hegel and Heidegger by Robert R. Williams 135 Commentary by Eric von der Luft VIII. Hegel, Derrida and Bataille's Laughter by Joseph C. Flay 163 Commentary by Judith Butler IX. A Hegelian Critique of Reflection by David S. Stern 179 X. Is Hegel's Logic a Logic? Analytical Criticism of Hegel's Logic in Recent German Philosophy by Walter Zimmerli 191 XI. Husserl's Critique of Hegel by Tom Rockmore 203 Commentary by David A. Duquette < previous page page_vi next page > Page vi XII. Hegel Versus the New Orthodoxy by Richard Dien Winfield 219 Commentary by Drucilla Cornell Index 241 < previous page page_vi next page > If you like this book, buy it! < previous page page_vii next page > Page vii Introduction William Desmond In recent centuries perhaps no philosopher has been rejected as often as Hegel. A roll call of his critics would include many of the major philosophers who have succeeded him. Yet an equally impressive list could be drawn up of thinkers who in different ways have been dependent on him. Some of his critics have even fed on the disjecta membra of his system, developing one of its strands in an effort to dismember the system's fuller claims. Post- Hegelians philosophers have repeatedly tried to determine, in Croce's now hackneyed words, what is living and what is dead in Hegel. One critic declares dead what another detects as still vibrant with life, and vice versa. Such contrary evaluations might imply that there is something inherently ambiguous in the Hegelian enterprise. Many commentators have admitted as much. But even this is barely a beginning in coming to terms with Hegel. If ambiguity hovers over Hegel, this evokes many responses, two of the chief being the following. First we have the response that Hegelianism is humbug. This is a variation of Schopenhauer's denunciation of the "charlatanry" of Hegel and other self-proclaimed heirs of Kant. Schopenhauer thought Hegelianism was humbug partly because he had his own rival metaphysical wares to peddle and was envious of Hegel's success. But the majority of those subscribing to this view take their sights from more empiricist, analytically oriented philosophizing. On this view, Hegelianism undergoes repeated resurrection only because human credulity is perennial and lets itself be repeatedly taken in by pseudo-science. To the analytical philosopher Hegel presents a double scandal, of course. The analytical philosopher prides himself on fidelity to logic's precisions. Hegel's double affront is to claim to effect a revolution in philosophical logic. He carries the insult into their Holy of Holies. < previous page page_vii next page > If you like this book, buy it! < previous page page_viii next page > Page viii A second response is less dismissive. The fact that Hegel needs to be repeatedly "refuted" makes one suspect that he is not being "refuted" at all. Here the critics find themselves with growing respect for the thinker they are intent on "refuting." Something about the complexity, indeed greatness of Hegel's thought resists reduction to more manipulable, univocal concepts. It is not so easy to put Hegel in his place. Instead of being a straw man to be knocked down, Hegel may become a living voice in the conversation of post-Hegelian thought. This has happened in the best of Continental thought, even when Hegel is explicitly seen as an antagonist to be strongly opposed. Hegel's ambiguity is doubled here, in that Hegel, the antagonist of post-Hegelian thought, proves to be absolutely necessary to the life of that opposing thought. Kierkegaard and Marx, critics of Hegel from significantly different perspectives, already knew this, perhaps more deeply than later critics. The different chapters in this book will look at most of Hegel's major critics and the basic issues that are at stake. Most of the contributors attempt to speak for Hegel in response to his critics. But this does not mean that Hegel escapes criticism. Prescinding from individual critics, many of the major criticisms cluster around a set of striking oppositions that the reader may find helpful to keep in mind. I will single out four such oppositions for brief mention. The first opposition deals with the criticism that Hegel was a "panlogist," and also helped precipitate "irrationalism" in subsequent thought. Panlogism is the view that Hegel's system is entirely a logical system, that the genuinely real is the fully rational. Hence Hegel the panlogist is absolutely insistent that being conform to the requirements of logical thought. This Hegel is unremittingly hostile to the "irrational." Yet opposite to this is the Hegel of many analytical philosophers, the Hegel who helped unhinge the flood gates of the ''irrational." The logic of this Hegel is merely an apotheosis of the illogical. It is significant that Hegel's apotheosis of reason historically coincides with the onset of "irrationalist" philosophies of existence. But to castigate Hegel for this is another thing. Yet in the eyes of these critics, Hegel becomes the ancestor of all the metaphysical absurdity and "woolly nonsense" that Continental thought has supposedly spawned ever since. Hegel seems to have two faces: panlogist and harbinger of logic's humiliation. Perhaps this reflects his thought as both faithful to the requirements of philosophical reason, and yet facing towards what normally resists reason, struggling with this to make philosophy itself more concrete and comprehensive. A second striking opposition relates to religion. On the one hand, Hegel has been denounced as being an insidious "atheist." Reasons for this include Hegel's view that the philosophical concept is more < previous page page_viii next page > If you like this book, buy it! < previous page page_ix next page > Page ix ultimate than religious representation. To the religious critic this is a sign of Hegel's will to pluck the heart of mystery out of religion, to reduce its sacred enigmas to abstract, poverty-stricken concepts. This is part of the Kierkegaardian criticism. But the opposite criticism has been levelled, namely that he was too timid to follow the path of his thought all the way to atheism and instead "mystified" the rational kernel of his philosophy with religious obscurantism. This is part of the Marxist and generally the Left-Hegelian view. This Hegel took religion too seriously; and though he claims to transcend religion philosophically, Hegel ends up reinstating religious "mystification" once more in the end. Is this doubleness just philosophical duplicity? Or does it testify to a commitment that philosophy must be double, that is dialectical, in being at once both respectful and critical of what is other? His critics sometimes split this doubleness into two starkly opposed polarities, each of which inevitably is found wanting for exactly opposite reasons. A third important opposition might be expressed as the contrast between foundationalists and deconstructionists. Some critics of Hegel, call them the deconstructionists, see his doctrine of the absolute as one of the most extreme versions of foundationalism. In current debates foundationalism is itself a very ambiguous conception. (Hegel is not a foundationalist, if we simply think of the ultimate grounds as immediately given; against the Schellingian contact with the absolute as like "shot from a pistol," for Hegel the ultimate grounds must be mediated.) But Hegel's absolute, in one interpretation, does provide an ultimate ground or foundation for the intelligibility of being and the rationality of the categories we require to make being intelligible. The deconstructionist is an anti-Hegelian in claiming to expose the illegitimacy of any appeal, immediate or mediated, to such ultimate grounds. But once again Hegel has been seen as the exact opposite of a foundationalist, in this sense. This Hegel is seen as a radical historicist, where this means that there are no transtemporal grounds of intelligibility or meaning. All truth is historically mediated; reason itself is an historical product; there is no leap outside history to an eternal standpoint that would comprehend time within itself. It is interesting that the deconstructionists themselves exploit this historicist side in their own crusade against foundationalism. In Anglo-American analysis, Rorty has intoned the name of Hegel with the same intent of radical historicism. A more abstract way of putting this opposition of foundationalism and deconstruction would be to point out that Hegel has been repeatedly criticized as a philosopher of identity in supposedly reducing all multiplicity to a conceptually totalitarian monism. And yet, at the same time, Hegel is sometimes seen as a philosopher of difference. < previous page page_ix next page > If you like this book, buy it!
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