Memory History Justice In Hegel

This reconstruction of the work of 'dialectical memory' in Hegel raises the fundamental question of the principle that presides on the articulation of history and indicates in Hegel's philosophy two alternative models of conceiving history: one that grounds history on 'ethical memory,' the other that sees justice as the moving principle of history.

The philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel is certainly one of the richest and most complex philosophical endeavours in the history of Western thought. Hegelian scholars have either tried to make sense of its individual parts through detailed analyses, or to offer a comprehensive interpretation of the system as a whole. Attempts to combine these two approaches have often appealed to some key-concepts, such as historicity, recognition, dialectic, and Aufhebung, or to a combination of these concepts, in order to develop consistent interpretations of the different components of the system. This book lays the foundation for a similar interpretive project by focusing on Hegel’s concept of recollection (Erinnerung). This collection of essays provides a detailed examination of the role played by recollection within the different spheres of the system, while at the same time acknowledging the specific character of its different instances. This undertaking is guided by the idea that the relationship between the different instances examined here constitutes a privileged key to the interpretation of Hegel’s philosophy and allows a deeper understanding of some of its essential speculative moments.

Memory has long been a subject of fascination for poets, artists, philosophers and historians. This timely volume, edited by Siobhan Kattago, examines how past events are remembered, contested, forgotten, learned from and shared with others. Each author in The Ashgate Research Companion to Memory Studies has been asked to reflect on his or her research companions as a scholar, who studies memory. The original studies presented in the volume are written by leading experts, who emphasize both the continuity of heritage and tradition, as well as the memory of hostilities, traumas and painful events. Comprised of four thematic sections, The Ashgate Research Companion to Memory Studies provides a comprehensive overview of the latest research within the discipline. The principal themes include: ¢ Memory, History and Time ¢ Social, Psychological and Cultural Frameworks of Memory ¢ Acts and Places of Memory ¢ Politics of Memory, Forgetting and Democracy Featuring contributions from key thinkers in the field, this comprehensive volume will be a valuable resource for all academics and students working within this area of study.

Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Introduction -- 1. Preliminaries: The Logic of Self-Conscious Animals -- 2. Building an Idealist Conception of History -- 3. Hegel's False Start: Non-Europeans as Failed Europeans -- 4. Europe's Logic -- 5. Infinite Ends at Work in History -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Acknowledgments -- Index

Associando-se a um amplo movimento comemorativo europeu e norte-americano, o Instituto de Estudos Filosóficos, com sede na Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Coimbra, em colaboração com a unidade de I&D L.I.F. – Linguagem, Interpretação e Filosofia e com o “Centro de Filosofia” da Universidade de Lisboa organizou nos dias 19 e 20 de Novembro de 2007 um Congresso Internacional comemorativo dos 200 anos da Fenomenologia do Espírito de G. W. F. Hegel, obra publicada inicialmente em 1807. Por ocasião deste congresso, a comunidade filosófica portuguesa teve a grata oportunidade de se confrontar com algumas das mais recentes orientações de análise da obra do filósofo, pondo-se a si mesma à prova quanto às suas aptidões analíticas. Aqui se deixa o retrato de um tal encontro, tanto quanto possível fiel ao que foram, na altura, as exposições dos diferentes autores. In conjunction with a broad commemorative movement in Europe and America, the Institute for Philosophical Studies, based at the Faculty of Letters, University of Coimbra, in collaboration with the R&D unit L.I.F. – Language, Interpretation and Philosophy and with the “Centre for Philosophy” of the University of Lisbon organized on 19th and 20th November 2007 an international conference commemorating the 200th anniversary of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (first published in 1807). On the occasion of this conference, the Portuguese philosophical community had the opportunity to come up against some of the most recent orientation in the analysis of this philosopher’s oeuvre, putting itself to the test as regards its analytical skills. This volume offers a picture of that encounter, as faithful as possible to what were, at the time, the papers offered by/expositions of the various authors.

An unprecedented reading of Hegel’s Logic that sets this difficult work in a dialogue with literary texts. In this book, Angelica Nuzzo proposes a reading of Hegel’s Logic as “logic of transformation” and “logic of action,” and supports this thesis by looking to works of literature and history as exemplary of Hegel’s argument and method. By examining Melville’s Billy Budd, Molière’s Tartuffe, Beckett’s Endgame, Elizabeth Bishop’s and Giacomo Leopardi’s late poetry along with Thucydides’ History in this way, Nuzzo finds an unprecedented and productive way to render Hegel’s Logic alive and engaging. She argues that Melville’s Billy Budd is the most successful embodiment of the abstract movement of thinking presented in Hegel’s Logic, connecting Billy Budd’s stutter to the puzzlingly inarticulate beginning of Hegel’s Logic, “Being, pure Being,” identical with “Nothing,” and argues that the Logic serves as an especially appropriate tool for understanding the sudden violent action that strikes Claggart dead. Through these and other readings, Nuzzo finds a fresh way to address interpretive issues that have remained unresolved for almost two centuries in Hegel scholarship, and also presents well-known works of literature in an entirely new light. This account of Hegel’s Logic is framed by the need for an interpretive tool able to orient our understanding of the contemporary world as mired in an unprecedented global crisis. How can the story of our historical present—the tragedy or the comedy we all play parts in—be told? What is the inner logic of our changing world? Angelica Nuzzo is Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate Center and Brooklyn College, City University of New York. She is the author of Memory, History, Justice in Hegel and the editor of Hegel on Religion and Politics, also published by SUNY Press.

Whereas historical determinacy conceives the past as a complex and unstable network of causalities, this book asks how history can be related to a more radical future. To pose that question, it does not reject determinacy outright but rather seeks to explore how it works. In examining what it means to be "determined" by history, it also asks what kind of openings there might be in our encounters with history for interruptions, re-readings, and re-writings. Engaging texts spanning multiple genres and several centuries from John Locke to Maurice Blanchot, from Hegel to Benjamin Clift looks at experiences of time that exceed the historical narration of experiences said to have occurred in time. She focuses on the co-existence of multiple temporalities and opens up the quintessentially modern notion of historical succession to other possibilities. The alternatives she draws out include the mediations of language and narration, temporal leaps, oscillations and blockages, and the role played by contingency in representation. She argues that such alternatives compel us to reassess the ways we understand history and identity in a traumatic, or indeed in a post-traumatic, age.