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Module G. W. F. HEGEL: PHILOSOPHER OF CRISIS AND RECONCILIATION

Module code: PH642
Credits: 10
Semester: 2
Department: PHILOSOPHY
International: Yes
Overview Overview
 

Hegel was a Janus figure in the history of philosophy. He seemed to sum up the tradition of philosophy preceding him and also to anticipate many major crucial lines of development coming after him. He swivels between the past and the future. Indeed, it has been said that many of the forms of contemporary philosophizing owe something important to him, either as developing some of his insights in different directions, or in reaction against or rejection of him. There is also the fact that he is often seen as a grandiose system builder whose thinking is abstracted from concrete actuality rather than engaged with it. Yet Hegel sought to respond in philosophy to what he perceived was the crisis of modern thought, which seemed to lead to a fragmented sense of life, a fragmentation affecting all areas, such a politics, religion, science and art. Responding to this fragmentation Hegel proclaimed that ‘the true is the whole’. He claimed to develop a philosophy that was true to this truth of the whole. He believed also that if such a comprehension of the true was accomplished, our relation to actuality would be shown to entail reconciliation as well as crisis – reconciliation more ultimate than crisis.
This module will offer as comprehensive a discussion as possible of the essential themes of Hegel’s philosophical career, from early beginnings to more mature expression. We will look at Hegel between the past and the present, between the crisis and the claim of reconciliation. We will look at selected aspects of his major systematic works where he claims to work out the dialectical-speculative logic that alone for him is properly true to actuality. We will also look at selections from his lecture series on art and religion and history which made him the most famous philosopher in Berlin in his later period (the 1820s). We will also consider something of the continuing legacy of these works and lectures and the major questions his thinking still poses for us, agree we with him or not.
Use will be made of Stephen Houlgate, The Hegel Reader (Blackwell, 1998)

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