Memory, History, Justice in Hegel

by Nuzzo, Angelica

• ISBN13: 9780230371040
• ISBN10: 0230371043
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-05-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Angelica Nuzzo offers a thoroughly new, engaging perspective on Hegel's idea of history by turning Hegel into a participant in the current discussion among historians and philosophers on the relation between history and memory. The fundamental question regards the guiding principle of history and the structure of historical processes. Does memory play a role in shaping developmental processes ashistorical? In order to answer this question the concept of "dialectical memory" is introduced. The thesis is that Hegel offers two alternative models for thinking history. The first, developed in the earlyPhenomenology of Spirit, sees in "collective memory" the moving principle of history; the second, developed on the basis of the Logic, indicates the principle of "justice" as the foundation of history, and assigns to the works of art, religion, and philosophy the function of conveying the "absolute memory" of spirit. The book ends with a Hegelian interpretation of the idea of memory mobilized in Toni Morrison's and Primo Levi's literary worksexamples of spirit's "absolute memory."

Author Biography

Angelica Nuzzo is Professor of Philosophy at City University of New York, USA. She is editor of Hegel and the Analytics Tradition (2009) and the author of Ideal Embodiment: Kant's Theory of Sensibility (2008) and Kant and the Unity of Reason (2005).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. xi
Introduction	p. 1
Hegel in a discussion of historians - history and collective memory	p. 3
Hegel's first model of history: "ethical memory" and phenomenological history	p. 7
Hegel's second model of history: world history and justice	p. 11
Spirit's memories: dialectical, psychological, and absolute memory	p. 13
Overview	p. 17
History and Memory in the Phenomenology of Spirit	p. 20
Figures of memory: substance becoming subject - preface	p. 21
Geometries of memory: "ethical memory" and history - (BB) Der Geist	p. 25
Geometries of memory: the net of religious and historical memory - (CC) Die Religion	p. 32
The circle of the last Erinnerung and the present - (DD) Das absolute Wissen	p. 43
Thinking and Recollecting: The Logical Memories of Being	p. 50
Memory lost? The Logic as the "realm of shadows"	p. 51
Logic and psychology: thinking and being	p. 56
Memory and method	p. 60
Logical memory: being without memory?	p. 63
Logical memory: essence as the memory of being	p. 67
Logical memory: the last recollection of being	p. 76
Thinking and Recollecting: Psychological Memory, Personal History, and Subjectivity	p. 82
The different memories of the psychology	p. 83
Memory, being, and thinking in the psychology (Encyclopedia §§440-68)	p. 88
Spirit as subject: psychological memory and personal history	p. 99
Memory, History, Justice	p. 103
Dialectical memory, ethical memory, and the problem of history	p. 106
The logic as the condition for thinking history	p. 110
The logic of transformative processes	p. 111
"Logical Memory" and method: metaphysical origins, logical and historical beginnings	p. 114
Logical judgment, contradiction, and justice	p. 120
History and the systematics of Geist	p. 125
History and justice	p. 125
After History: Absolute Memory	p. 129
World history and the "Absolute Memory" of spirit (Encyclopedia §§552-53)	p. 137
Memories: personal, collective, and absolute	p. 145
The absolute memory of historical contradictions	p. 153
Absolute memories - of other histories	p. 158
Conclusion	p. 165
List of Abbreviations Used in Notes and Bibliography	p. 169
Notes	p. 170
Bibliography	p. 196
Index	p. 203
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