Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T09:47:22.413Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Hegel on the Idealism of Practical Life

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 April 2016

David V. Ciavatta
David V. Ciavatta*
Affiliation:
Ryerson University, [email protected]
Get access

Abstract

This paper investigates Hegel’s thesis that we are, in our practical relation to the world, inherently committed to certain aspects of idealistic metaphysics. For Hegel, our practical attitude is fundamentally at odds with a naïve realism that would take the world to consist ultimately of self-contained, self-sufficient individuals whose relations to one another are fundamentally external to their identities. Hegel contends that our practical attitude is premised upon an overcoming of this mutual externality, and especially the externality which is supposed to hold between individual agent and world. It is shown that his argument hinges on conceiving of external things as inadequately individuated, as compared to living agents, and that it is precisely this ontological deficiency that conditions and motivates our action. Hegel’s discussions of morality and property ownership are appealed to in order to illustrate how we might better understand the nature and practical role of this purported deficiency.

Type
Articles
Information
Hegel Bulletin , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , May 2016 , pp. 1 - 28
Copyright
© The Hegel Society of Great Britain 2016 

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

Ciavatta, D. (2005), ‘Hegel on Owning One’s Own Body’, Southern Journal of Philosophy 43:1: 1–23.Google Scholar
Deligiorgi, K. (2010), ‘Doing without Agency: Hegel’s Social Theory of Action’, in A. Laitinen and C. Sandis (eds.), Hegel on Action. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Gibson, J. J. (1986), The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Hillsdale NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. (1956), The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree. New York: Dover.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. (1968), Wissenschaft der Logik, vol. 12 of Gesammelte Werke Hamburg: Meiner.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. (1969), Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse (1830), 7th edn, ed. F. Nicolin and O. Pöggeler. Hamburg: Felix Meiner.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. (1970), Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. (1970), Philosophy of Nature: Being Part Two of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1830), trans. A. V. Miller. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. (1977), Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. (1988), Phänomenologie des Geistes, ed. H.-F. Wessels and H. Clairmont. Hamburg: Felix Meiner.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. (1991), The Encyclopaedia Logic, trans. T. F. Geraets, W. A. Suchting and H. S. Harris. Indianapolis: Hackett.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. (1991), Elements of the Philosophy of Right, trans. H. B. Nisbet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. (2010), Science of Logic, trans. G. di Giovanni. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Heidegger, M. (1962), Being and Time, trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Knowles, D. (2010), ‘Hegel on Actions, Reasons, and Causes’, in A. Laitinen and C. Sandis (eds.), Hegel on Action. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Kreines, J. (2004), ‘Hegel’s Critique of Pure Mechanism and the Philosophical Appeal of the Logic Project’, European Journal of Philosophy 12:1: 38–74.Google Scholar
Laitinen, A. and Sandis, C. (eds.) (2010), Hegel on Action. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962), Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Pippin, R. (1991), ‘Idealism and Agency in Kant and Hegel’, The Journal of Philosophy 88:10: 532–541.Google Scholar
Pippin, R. (2008), Hegel’s Practical Philosophy: Rational Agency as Ethical Life. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pippin, R. (2010), ‘Hegel’s Social Theory of Agency: The “Inner–Outer” Problem’, in A. Laitinen and C. Sandis (eds.), Hegel on Action. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Quante, M. (2004), Hegel’s Concept of Action, trans. D. Moyar. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Russon, J. (2004), ‘Vision and Image in Hegel’s System’, in his Reading Hegel’s Phenomenology. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Speight, A. (2001), Hegel, Literature and the Problem of Agency. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Stern, R. (2009), Hegelian Metaphysics. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, C. (2010), ‘Hegel and the Philosophy of Action’, in A. Laitinen and C. Sandis (eds.), Hegel on Action. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Westphal, M. (1992), ‘Hegel’s Radical Idealism: Family and State as Ethical Communities’, in his Hegel, Freedom, and Modernity. Albany NY: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Williams, R. (2000), Hegel’s Ethics of Recognition. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Yeomans, C. (2012), Freedom and Reflection: Hegel and the Logic of Agency. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Young, G. (2005), ‘Ecological Perception Affords an Explanation of Object Permanence’, Philosophical Explorations 8:2: 189–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar