No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Hegel's Time: Between Tragic Action and Modern History
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 September 2019
Abstract
This paper offers an alternative perspective to the traditional interpretation of Hegel's philosophical reflection on history, departing from a reinterpretation of Hegel's reading of the tragic action of Antigone in Chapter VI of the Phenomenology of Spirit. The customary interpretation of this text affirms that Hegel shows how the conflict of tragic action finds its truth and its end in the identity of spirit. Tragic conflict is left behind to the same extent that (modern historical) spirit sublates the Greek ethical substance. This way, spirit can guarantee that our historical time is released from the past of the substance, or the spiritual movement of mediation from the immediacy of an ‘in-itself’. My reading, by contrast, finds under the tragic conflict of this text of Hegel's nothing but the ‘no’ of death that negates itself, or a principle that has the form of an original and irreducible conflict. Under this interpretation of Hegelian spirit, it becomes clear that it can neither fail to posit some form of ‘in-itself’ nor sublate its own tragic nature. This way it is shown that Hegel's reflection on the past does not reassure the superiority of the identity of the (modern) present (as the end of history), but rather illuminates its ‘broken’ nature. I thus offer an alternative view on Hegel's comprehension of the relation between present and past and between philosophy and time.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Hegel Bulletin , Volume 40 , Special Issue 3: Hegel and the Philosophy of Action , December 2019 , pp. 464 - 483
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Hegel Society of Great Britain, 2019
References
Butler, J. (2000), Antigone's Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Derrida, J. (1982), ‘Ousia and Grammē: Note on a Note in Being and Time’, in Margins of Philosophy, trans. Bass, A.. Brighton: Harvester Press.Google Scholar
Derrida, J. (1986), Glas, trans. Leavey, J. P. and Rand, R.. Lincoln NE: University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Donougho, M. (1989), ‘The Woman in White: On the Reception of Hegel's Antigone’, The Owl of Minerva 21:1: 65–89.10.5840/owl198921122Google Scholar
D'Hondt, J. (1966), Hegel: philosoph de l'histoire vivante. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.Google Scholar
Habermas, J. (1990), The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, trans. Lawrence, F.. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Heidegger, M. (2000), Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Fried, G. and Polt, R.. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Heidegger, M. (2010), Being and Time, trans. Stambaugh, J.. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Malabou, C. (2005), The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality, Dialectic, trans. During, L.. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Marrades, J. (2001), El trabajo del espíritu. Hegel y la modernidad. Madrid: Antonio Machado Libros.Google Scholar
Menke, C. (1999), ‘Ethischer Konflikt und ästhetisches Spiel: Zum geschichtsphilosophischen Ort der Tragödie bei Hegel und Nietzsche’, Hegel-Jahrbuch 1: 16–28.Google Scholar
Nussbaum, M. (1986), The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sophocles, (2003), Antigone, trans. Gibbons, R. and Segal, C.. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Steiner, G. (1996), Antigones: How the Antigone Legend has Endured in Western Literature, Art, and Thought. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, C. (1975), Hegel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781139171465Google Scholar
Žižek, S. (1999), The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Žižek, S. (2012), Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism. London: Verso.Google Scholar