Hegel The Infinite

Here, 13 major scholars reassess the place of Hegel in contemporary theory and the philosophy of religion. The contributors focus not only on Hegelian analysis but also on the transformative value of his thought in relation to our current 'turn to religion'.

Catherine Malabou, Antonio Negri, John D. Caputo, Bruno Bosteels, Mark C. Taylor, and Slavoj Zizek join seven others—including William Desmond, Katrin Pahl, Adrian Johnston, Edith Wyschogrod, and Thomas A. Lewis—to apply Hegel's thought to twenty-first-century philosophy, politics, and religion. Doing away with claims that the evolution of thought and history is at an end, these thinkers safeguard Hegel's innovations against irrelevance and, importantly, reset the distinction of secular and sacred. These original contributions focus on Hegelian analysis and the transformative value of the philosopher's thought in relation to our current "turn to religion." Malabou develops Hegel's motif of confession in relation to forgiveness; Negri writes of Hegel's philosophy of right; Caputo reaffirms the radical theology made possible by Hegel; and Bosteels critiques fashionable readings of the philosopher and argues against the reducibility of his dialectic. Taylor reclaims Hegel's absolute as a process of infinite restlessness, and Zizek revisits the religious implications of Hegel's concept of letting go. Mirroring the philosopher's own trajectory, these essays progress dialectically through politics, theology, art, literature, philosophy, and science, traversing cutting-edge theoretical discourse and illuminating the ways in which Hegel inhabits them.

Infinite Phenomenology builds on John Russon’s earlier book, Reading Hegel’s Phenomenology, to offer a second reading of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Here again, Russon writes in a lucid, engaging style and, through careful attention to the text and a subtle attunement to the existential questions that haunt human life, he demonstrates how powerfully Hegel’s philosophy can speak to the basic questions of philosophy. In addition to original studies of all the major sections of the Phenomenology, Russon discusses complementary texts by Hegel, namely, the Philosophy of Spirit, the Philosophy of Right, and the Science of Logic. He concludes with an appendix that discusses the reception and appropriation of Hegel’s Phenomenology in twentieth-century French philosophy. As with Russon’s earlier work, Infinite Phenomenology will remain essential reading for those looking to engage Hegel’s essential, yet difficult, text.

G. W. F. Hegel and Friedrich Nietzsche are often considered the philosophical antipodes of the nineteenth century. In Infinite Autonomy, Jeffrey Church draws on the thinking of both Hegel and Nietzsche to assess the modern Western defense of individuality—to consider whether we were right to reject the ancient model of community above the individual. The theoretical and practical implications of this project are important, because the proper defense of the individual allows for the survival of modern liberal institutions in the face of non-Western critics who value communal goals at the expense of individual rights. By drawing from Hegelian and Nietzschean ideas of autonomy, Church finds a third way for the individual—what he calls the “historical individual,” which goes beyond the disagreements of the ancients and the moderns while nonetheless incorporating their distinctive contributions.

This book collects the work of leading scholars on Alain Badiou and G.W.F. Hegel, creating a dialogue between, and a critical appraisal of, these two central figures in European philosophy.

Hegel is one of the most important modern philosophers, whose thought influenced the development of existentialism, Marxism, pragmatism, hermeneutics, and deconstruction. Yet Hegel's central text, the monumental Science of Logic, still remains for most philosophers (both figuratively and literally) a firmly closed book. The purpose of The Opening of Hegel's Logic is to dispel the myths that surround the Logic and to show that Hegel's unjustly neglected text is a work of extraordinary subtlety and insight. Part One of The Opening of Hegel's Logic argues that the Logic provides a rigorous derivation of the fundamental categories of thought and contrasts Hegel's approach to the categories with that of Kant. It goes on to examine the historical and linguistic presuppositions of Hegel's self-critical, "presuppositionless" logic and, in the process, considers several signifi-cant criticisms of such logic advanced by Schelling, Feuerbach, Gadamer, and Kierkegaard. Separate chapters are devoted to the relation between logic and ontology in Hegel's Logic and to the relation between the Logic itself and the Phenomenology. Part Two contains the text - in German and English - of the first two chapters of Hegel's Logic, which cover such categories as being, becoming, something, limit, finitude, and infinity. Part Three then provides a clear and accessible commentary on these two chapters that both examines Hegel's arguments in detail and relates his insights to those of other philosophers, such as Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, Nietzsche, and Levinas. The Opening of Hegel's Logic aims to help students and scholars read Hegel's often formidably difficult text for themselves and discover the wealth of philosophical riches that it contains. It also argues that Hegel's project of a presuppositionless science of logic is one that deserves serious consideration today.

wide criticism both from Western and Eastern scholars.

The discoveries of general relativity and quantum mechanics in the 20th century provide the perfect opportunity for Hegel's thought to become more topical than it has ever been. By bringing speculative philosophy into conversation with quantum cosmology, this book develops Hegel's metaphysics of true infinitude and Hawking's theory on the origins of spacetime in tandem, providing a compelling rationale for the idea that the universe is a self-generating, self-organizing, self-enclosed whole. Ever sensitive to the complex relationship of scientific, philosophical, and theological issues in theoretical cosmology, the study brings a fresh perspective to the unique brand of metaphysical theology underlying speculative philosophy and offers a new way of conducting transdisciplinary work involving Hegelian thought. This is essential reading for Hegel scholars, Hawking scholars, those interested in philosophical cosmology, the ontology of the quantum void, the realism vs. idealism debate, infinitude, "imaginary��? time, and dialectical materialism, and those compelled by post-classical approaches to theology.