Advanced Studies in Metaphysics B [ LFILO2251 ]

Basic instruction in the history of modern philosophy ;
Reading knowledge of German sufficient at least to allow the identification of the key concepts in the original texts. Advanced reading knowledge of German, while helpful, is not a strict requirement.

The course will be devoted to a major theme in German idealism, and refer to a text or set of texts judged particularly good illustrations of that theme. Beyond the exegetical approach required by this type of text and its contextualisation within the systematic development of a given major work, the course will attempt to illuminate the role played by the particular theme studied in the works of various German idealist philosophers insofar as it leads to differences between their positions.

Upon completion the student will be able to :

Define major concepts employed by German idealist philosophers;
Explain various philosophical methods that differentiate one philosopher from another ;
Interpret in general terms some famously difficult passages with the help of reading hints furnished in the course.

Topic: Logic and Actuality in Hegel 

Contents: In the Preface to hisElements of the Philosophy of Right Hegel writes: “What is rational is actual and what is actual is rational.”  A great deal of ink has been spilt over this famous thesis, and it has regularly been taken as the expression of an immoderate and dogmatic rationalism with consequences hard to accept particularly in the field of political thought. However, Hegel is affirming here – and this is a point the critics have sometimes missed – the intrinsically rational character of a very specific category, namely actuality, which is neither purely and simply being, nor reality, nor even existence, as Hegel himself emphasizes in the Introduction to the Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences. What is this “actuality”, then, for Hegel? The most comprehensive reply to this question is to be found in Hegel’s Science of Logic, in which actuality, at the end of objective logic (the logics of being and essence) and just before the transition to subjective logic (logic of the concept), forms one of the most important, but at the same time one of the least understood categories in Hegel’s logic.

Text-book: Hegel, Science de la logique, Vol. I, Bk. 2. Doctrine de l’essence, transl. P.-J. Labarrière and G. Jarczyk, Paris, Aubier Montaigne, 1976.