Thesis... antithesis... synthesis... That’s Hegel, right? Well, not exactly...
These lectures will provide an introduction to Hegel’s philosophy through an explication of the third moment of his thought—not the infamous ‘synthesis’ but what he calls ‘speculative’ thought. Beginning with Hegel’s comments on philosophical method, we will see how he places speculation alongside abstraction and dialectic as the other two moments of thought by which things are logically determined and opposed to one another. Following this thread, these lectures will examine how Hegel presents speculation as the moment of positive rationality, or of looking beyond contradiction, exclusion, and difference to find a conceptual unity underpinning these forms of separation. By taking the question of method as our starting point, the goal of this course is not only to show what Hegel meant, but to discover what strategies of reading are needed to make sense of his writings.
Through the course of this investigation we will examine central works and concepts of the Hegelian corpus: the speculative proposition in the Phenomenology of Spirit, the dialectic of being and nothing in the Science of Logic, and the affinity of poetic and conceptual language in the Lectures on Fine Art. The analysis of these works will also open the way to a discussion of the problems of language and metaphysics in the post-Hegelian philosophies of R.G. Collingwood, Theodor Adorno, Jean Hyppolite, Jacques Derrida, Gillian Rose, and Catherine Malabou.
Week 1 – Abstraction, Dialectic, Speculation
We will begin by examining the three ‘sides’ of logical thought as outlined in Hegel’s Encyclopedia Logic: abstraction, dialectic, and speculation. We will see how Hegel opposes abstraction to the dull immediacy of the senses and defends it as a necessary starting point for thought. Then, we will see how the dialectic is placed as the negative moment of reason, which puts abstractions in relation to one another as contradictory terms. Lastly, we will see how speculative thought arrives as the positive moment of reason, which reveals the conceptual affinity of the terms despite their logical contradiction.
Reading:
- G.W.F. Hegel, Encyclopedia Logic, trans. Brinkmann and Dahlstrom, §79-82.
Week 2 – The Exhaustion of Form
In week two we will take on a close reading of one of the thorniest passages from the preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit, where Hegel outlines the difference between ordinary language and philosophical meaning. Specifically, we will see how Hegel opposes the formal separation of terms in philosophical statements to the conceptual unity that they are supposed to express. Read dialectically, the form of the proposition alternates between its subject and predicate, prioritising one term over the other until it reaches a point of exhaustion and logical identity. From out of this dialectical impasse, the speculative reading emerges to express a unity implicit in the proposition’s formal separation. Though stated abstractly here in Hegel’s preface, we will see how this complex of language and meaning works as the motor behind the forms of consciousness that make up the Phenomenology.
Reading:
- G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. Inwood, §58-66.
Suggested reading:
- Theodor Adorno, “Skoteinos, or How to Read Hegel,” in Hegel: Three Studies, trans. Nicholsen, p. 89-148.
Week 3 – Nothing Becomes of Nothing
The third week will turn to the opening of the Science of Logic and its infamous equation of being and nothing. We will see how how the initial dialectic between these two terms resolves in the third category of becoming and ask what the resulting triad means for Hegel’s logical method. By beginning with pure being, is the Logic a work of ontology? If being is the beginning, why does Hegel claim that this work has no presuppositions? By taking Hegel’s outlines of speculative thought in the Encyclopedia and the Phenomenology as our guides, we will work to answer these questions and come to an understanding of the critical perspective that marks the Logic as the turning point in the death and rebirth of modern metaphysics.
Reading:
- G.W.F. Hegel, Science of Logic, trans. Giovanni, p. 49-80.
Suggested readings:
- R.G. Collingwood, An Essay on Metaphysics, p. 11-33.
- Jacques Derrida, “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” in Writing and Difference, trans. Bass, p. 351-370.
Week 4 – Language and Reality
Our penultimate lecture will revisit the problems of speculation in the Phenomenology via Hegel’s structuralist and poststructuralist commentators. Specifically, we will examine the role of language in Hegel’s philosophy from two angles. Firstly, we will ask who or what is the subject of speculative thought? Though Hegel privileges the events of human history in his philosophy of spirit, the subject that thinks this history is never exactly coterminous with any narrowly defined ‘humanity,’ allowing commentators such as Jean Hyppolite to speak of a reason that is expressed ‘across’ but not ‘through’ human discourse. Secondly, for whom does the speculative meaning of a proposition appear? Hegel gives no clear delineation between the language of ordinary thinking and speculative thought, suggesting only that the style of philosophy must be judged by its readers. For Catherine Malabou, this makes Hegel an author against authorial right, whose text is determined in its reading rather than its writing. Between these re-readings, we will attempt to do justice to not only the spirit but the letter of Hegel’s thought.
Readings:
- Jean Hyppolite, Logic and Existence, trans. Lawlor and Sen, p. 129-148.
- Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, trans. During, p. 167-183.
Week 5 – Speculative Poetics
Finally, we will take on Hegel’s comments on the kinship between speculative and poetic thought, as discussed in his Lectures on Fine Art. We will see how Hegel defines poetic art as a play between form, content, style, and substance in the language of the work. We will also see how the speculative language examined in previous weeks compares with metaphorical and allegorical language, which likewise attempt to express conceptual unity in formal difference. This will lead us toward the wider questions of what the problems of literary interpretation have in common with philosophical thought, and whether a better understanding of poetics can help us to decipher not only Hegel’s works but philosophical writing more broadly.
Reading:
- G.W.F. Hegel, Lectures on Fine Art, trans. Knox, p. 971-996.
Suggested reading:
- Gillian Rose, Hegel Contra Sociology, p. 129-157.