Subjects in the Ancient and Modern World On Hegel's Theory of Subjectivity

by de Laurentiis, Allegra

• ISBN13: 9781403938244
• ISBN10: 1403938245
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-11-29
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Being a subject and being conscious of being one are different realities. According to Hegel, the difference is not only conceptual, but also influences people's experience of the world and of one another. This book aims to explain some basic aspects of Hegel's conception of subjectivity with particular regard to the difference he saw in ancient and modern ways of thinking about and acting as individuals, persons and moral subjects.

Author Biography

Allegra de Laurentiis is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	ix
List of Abbreviations	xi
Introduction	1	(12)
1 A Philosophy of the History of Philosophy	13	(26)
1.1 Movement and moments of truth	18	(11)
(i) Organicism	23	(2)
(ii) Speculation	25	(2)
(iii) Externality and inwardness	27	(2)
1.2 Logic and chronology	29	(6)
(i) A space and time for thinking	31	(2)
(ii) From knowing substance to knowing subject	33	(2)
1.3 Completions and transitions in philosophy	35	(4)
2 The Experience of Thought	39	(31)
2.1 'Enmattered forms' or thoughtful sensibility	41	(7)
2.2 Historical subjectivity and absolute subject matter	48	(6)
2.3 Reason and the rational	54	(11)
(i) Self-assertion and self-confinement of reason	56	(5)
(ii) Existing reason	61	(4)
2.4 Concepts of 'concept'	65	(5)
(i) Determinations of the understanding	65	(1)
(ii) Concepts of reason	66	(2)
(iii) A self-positing concept	68	(2)
3 Conceptualizing Thought	70	(26)
3.1 How thought differs from being and essence	72	(11)
3.2 How thought differs from itself	83	(13)
(i) Inward determination	83	(2)
(ii) Inherent negativity	85	(2)
(iii) The Concept as syllogism	87	(9)
4 Hegel's Reading of Plato's Parmenides	96	(17)
4.1 An ancient concept of 'idea'	97	(3)
4.2 With what must Plato's dialectic begin?	100	(8)
4.3 The one that is not one	108	(5)
5 Greek Moral Vocabulary: 'Shame is the greatest compulsion'	113	(36)
5.1 Apology: hearkening to the few	120	(4)
5.2 Crito: hearkening to a daimon	124	(5)
5.3 Contradiction in the city: the enemy within	129	(8)
(i) What the city lacks: a universal without individuality	131	(4)
(ii) What the slave lacks: an individual without universality	135	(2)
5.4 Gifts of fortune, not deeds of will	137	(12)
6 Dialectic Matters: Starting Out with Simple Motion	149	(30)
6.1 Potential and actual motion: Aristotle	156	(5)
(i) A continuum of continuity and discreteness	156	(3)
(ii) An intuition of infinitesimal motion	159	(2)
6.2 Pure motion: Kant	161	(7)
(i) Motion in the Phoronomy	161	(6)
(ii) Motion in the Antinomy	167	(1)
6.3 Contradiction in motion: Hegel	168	(11)
(i) Motion, grasped	169	(2)
(ii) Contradiction, subjective and objective	171	(2)
(iii) A Parmenidean beyond Parmenides	173	(6)
Notes	179	(38)
Works Cited	217	(4)
Index	221