Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T22:50:26.544Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Bad Habits: Habit, Idleness, and Race in Hegel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2021

Rocío Zambrana*
Affiliation:
Get access

Abstract

Recent discussions of Hegel's conception of second nature, specifically focused on Hegel's notion of habit (Gewohnheit), have greatly advanced our understanding of Hegel's views on embodied normativity. This essay examines Hegel's account of embodied normativity in relation to his assessment of good and bad habits. Engaging Hegel's account of the rabble (Pöbel) in the Philosophy of Right and Frank Ruda's assessment of Hegel's rabble, this essay traces the relation between ethicality, idleness and race in Hegel. In being a figure of refusal in its affirmation of idleness, the rabble disallows the progressive revision of the project of modernity central to Hegel's philosophy. Hegel's discussion of the rabble is thus key to assessing the production of race within Hegel's notion of ethical life.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Hegel Society of Great Britain 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adorno, T. W. (2006), Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life, trans. Jephcott, E. N. F. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Comay, R. (2010), Mourning Sickness: Hegel and the French Revolution. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Coma, R., and Zantvoort, B. (2017), Hegel and Resistance: History, Politics, and Dialectics. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
de Laurentiis, A. (2014), ‘Race in Hegel: Text and Context’, in Egger, M. (ed.), Philosophie Nach Kant: Neue Wege Zum Verständnis von Kants Transzendental- Und Moralphilosophie. De Gruyter: Berlin.Google Scholar
Forman, D. (2008), ‘Autonomy as Second Nature: On McDowell's Aristotelian Naturalism’, Inquiry 51:6: 563–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greene, M. (1972), Hegel on the Soul: A Speculative Anthropology. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hardimon, M. (1994), Hegel Social Philosophy: The Project of Reconciliation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. (1979), System of Ethical Life and First Philosophy of Spirit, trans. Harris, H. S. and Knox, T. M.. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. (1983), Hegel and the Human Spirit: a Translation of the Jena Lectures on the Philosophy of Spirit (1805–6), trans. Rauch, L.. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.Google Scholar
Honneth, A. (2014), Freedom's Right: The Social Foundations of Democratic Life, trans. Ganhal, J.. London: Polity.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunt, G. (2013), ‘Redeeming Resentment: Nietzsche's Affirmative Ripostes’, American Dialectic 3:2/3: 118–47.Google Scholar
Hunt, G. (2015), ‘Arendt on Resentment: Articulating Intersubjectivity’, The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 29:3: 283–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lugones, M. (2007), ‘Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System’, Hypatia 22:1: 186209.Google Scholar
Lugones, M. (2010), ‘Toward a Decolonial Feminism’, Hypatia 25:4: 742–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lumsden, S. (2012), ‘Habit, Sittlichkeit and Second Nature’, Critical Horizons 13:2: 220–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lumsden, S. (2013), ‘Between Nature and Spirit: Hegel's Account of Habit’, in Stern, D. S. (ed.), Essays on Hegel's Subjective Spirit. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Malabou, C. (2005), The Future of Hegel. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Mbembe, A. (2003), ‘Necropolitics’, Public Culture 15:1: 1140.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCumber, J. (1990), ‘Hegel on Habit’, The Owl of Minerva 21:2: 155–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Menke, C. (2013), ‘Hegel's Theory of Second Nature: The “Lapse” of Spirit’, Symposium 17:1: 3149.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merker, B. (2012), ‘Embodied Normativity’, Critical Horizons 13:2: 154–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moland, L. (2003), ‘Inheriting, Earning, and Owning: The Source of Practical Identity in Hegel's Anthropology’, Owl of Minerva 34:2: 139–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moland, L. (2011), Hegel on Political Identity: Patriotism, Nationality, Cosmopolitanism. Chicago: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Monahan, M. (ed.) (2017), Creolizing the Canon. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Nichols, N. (2013), ‘Awakening to Madness and Habituation to Death in Hegel's Anthropology’, in Stern, D. S. (ed.), Essays on Hegel's Philosophy of Subjective Spirit. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Novakovic, A. (2017), Hegel on Second Nature in Ethical Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Novakovic, A. (2019), ‘Hegel's Real Habits’, European Journal of Philosophy 27:4: 882–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parekh, S. (2009), ‘Hegel's New World. History, Freedom, and Race’, in Dudley, W. (ed.), Hegel and History. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Peters, J. (2016), ‘On Naturalism in Hegel's Philosophy of Spirit’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy 24:1: 111–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peters, J. (ms), ‘Hegel and the Science of Human Nature: The Case of Bodily Expression’.Google Scholar
Pinkard, T. (2012), Hegel's Naturalism: Mind, Nature, and the Final Ends of Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pippin, R. (2008), Hegel's Practical Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quijano, A. (2000), ‘Colonialidad del Poder y Clasificación Social’, Festschrift for Immanuel Wallerstein, Journal of World Systems Research 6:2: 342–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ruda, F. (2011), Hegel's Rabble: An Investigation into Hegel's Philosophy of Right. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Seddone, G. (2018), ‘The Conception of Habit as a Stage of Hegel's Naturalistic Theory of Mind’, Open Information Science 2:1: 7582.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stone, A. (2013), ‘Hegel, Naturalism and the Philosophy of Nature’, Bulletin for the Hegel Society of Great Britain 34:1: 5978.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Testa, I. (2012a), ‘Hegel's Naturalism, or Soul and Body in the Encyclopedia’, in Stern, D. S. (ed.), Essays on Hegel's Philosophy of Subjective Spirit. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Testa, I. (2012b), ‘How does Recognition Emerge from Nature? The Genesis of Consciousness in Hegel's Jena Writings’, Critical Horizons 13:2: 176–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Testa, I. (2020), ‘Embodied Cognition, Habit, and Natural Agency in Hegel's Anthropology’, in Bykova, M. and Westphal, K. (eds.), The Palgrave Hegel Handbook. London: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Wynter, S. (1990), ‘Beyond Miranda's Meanings: Un/silencing the “Demonic Ground” of Caliban's “Woman”’, in Davis, C. B. and Fido, E. S. (eds.), Out of the Kumbla: Caribbean Women and Literature. Trenton NJ: Africa World Press.Google Scholar
Wynter, S. (1994), ‘1492: A New World View’, in Hyatt, V. L. and Nettleford, R. (eds.), Race, Discourse, and the Origin of the Americas: A New World View. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.Google Scholar
Wynter, S. (2003), ‘Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation—An Argument’, CR: The New Centennial Review 3:3: 257337.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zambrana, R. (2015), Hegel's Theory of Intelligibility. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zambrana, R. (2017), ‘Hegel, History, and Race’, in Zack, N. (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Race. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Zambrana, R. (2018), ‘Actuality in Hegel and Marx’, Hegel Bulletin 39:1: 7491.Google Scholar
Žižek, S. (2009), ‘Discipline between Two Freedoms – Madness and Habit in German Idealism’, in Gabriel, M. and Žižek, S., Mythology, Madness and Laughter: Subjectivity in German Idealism. London: Continuum.Google Scholar