Abstracts:

Rainer Enskat: Die Form der Dialektik in Hegels Phänomenologie des Geistes

In his Phenomenology of Spirit Hegel has – in comparison with the enormous
complexity of the whole work – in a somewhat hidden way hinted at the formal nucleus of what he conceives of as dialectic, especially as the dialectical movement. This movement has the form of a sceptical examination, testing the claims of the consciousness to be in the possession of knowledge. Such a claim is bound, as Hegel shows, to many different cognitive levels of the consciousness – beginnig with sensual certainty and ending with absolute knowledge. The way of the examination corresponds exactly to the levels of the consciousness. But on its way to the absolute knowledge the examination encounters, appropriate to its sceptical intention, as many non-veracious forms of knowledge as are different from absolute knowledge. Each sceptical test
which encounters a non-veracious form of knowledge presents necessarily the nothingness of what it is the result, a result which contains what the foregoing non-veracious forms of knowledge save anyhowas true. In the following article it is to show that this nucleus of the form of the dialectical movement stands the test ifapplied to the step resp. jump from sensual certainty to perception. If the following interpretations and analyses are founded well enough it is justified to be confident that interpretations and analyses of further ‘experiences of consciousness’ on the same line can be fruitful.

Bernardo Ferro: How Platonic is Hegel’s Dialectic? A new approach to an old debate

While in recent years the link between Hegel and Aristotle has been widely explored, Hegel’s Platonic heritage seems to have faded into the background. This asymmetry is
partly due to the standard characterization of Plato as a dogmatic metaphysician, committed to a “two-world” ontology. In this paper, I show that Hegel’s engagement with Plato stands out precisely for his rejection of this kind of reading and, moreover, that this attitude sheds an important light on his own thought. To determine how, I focus on Plato’s and Hegel’s conceptions of dialectics. I argue that both models, despite their obvious differences, share key structural similarities, which can only be truly appreciated by moving beyond mainstream Platonism. This change of perspective allows for a clearer understanding of Hegel’s philosophical development and for new insights into his philosophy as a whole.

Anton Friedrich Koch: Hegel’s Parmenidean Descent to the Science Without Contrary

This essay is intended to make Hegel’s Science of Logic intelligible from its basic antidogmatic methodological rule and resolve: “to want to think purely”, i. e. without presuppositions. The beginning of the Logic (with Being, Nothing, Becoming, Being-there) is deduced from this resolve in detail, as is the central logical operation of negation, especially in application to itself, i. e. non-well-founded or circular negation. Various forms of negation in the logic of being and the three basic types of circular negation that are operative in the logic of being, essence and concept respectively are distinguished and all findings are related to Hegel’s text. The discussion takes place within the framework of classical metaphysics and logic (Plato, Aristotle, Leibniz) and
contemporary analytic metaphysics. In particular, Michael Della Rocca’s radically monistic Parmenidean Ascent (2020) to Being is discussed as a profiling foil against which Hegel’s Parmenidean descent from Being to negation, becoming and to all sorts of distinctions stands out. A second foil for comparison is the “science without contrary” that Sebastian Rödl presented in Self-Consciousness and Objectivity (2018). It turns out that Hegel is much more considerate of the radical sceptic than Rödl. – All in all, the Science of Logic is portrayed here as Hegel’s theory of the pre-temporal, purely logical evolution of logical space (the Hegelian Absolute). As such it is designed by Hegel as the final nonstandard metaphysics which, if successful, would critically assess all possible standard metaphysical theories, each of which fixes and immobilises a fluid stage in the logical evolution and treats it as the static whole of logical space. – If successful, mind you, but there are reasons to believe that Hegel does not achieve what he is aiming at.

Christian Krijnen: Heterologie oder Dialektik? Rickerts Lehre vom Ursprung des Denkens im Spiegel der hegelschen Logik

With his heterology, the southwest German neo-Kantian Heinrich Rickert developed
a doctrine that proved to be groundbreaking not only for neo-Kantianism, but also for
the theory of subjectivity in postwar transcendental philosophy in the broad sense. Rickert’s heterology is primarily concerned with the original structure of thought. In the discussion, the alternative ‘Negation (Hegel) or Otherness (Rickert)?’ has become widespread. Since the discussion of Hegel plays an important role for Rickert, heterology concerns at the same time the relation of Hegel’s speculative idealism and (advanced) Kantian transcendental philosophy. Accordingly, it has also had an impact on Hegel scholarship. However, until today and on the whole, the debate is far from unanimous with regard to the validity of Rickert’s critique of Hegel. In view of the almost deadlocked discussion, this study proposes a new interpretative perspective. It focuses on the issue of formalism as a methodological problem. First, I outline the problem of formalism, then I examine Rickert’s heterology for its formalism, subsequently I put
the thesis forward that Rickert’s heterology is, in Hegel’s words, a kind of external reflection. This leads to the consequence that heterology lacks a logic of being: Rickert hastily moves from the beginning of philosophy to the origin of thinking. Thus, unlike Hegel, Rickert provides only an insufficient account of the very concepts with which he determines the origin of thought – an Achilles’ heel of transcendental philosophy.

Ryôsuke Ohashi: Die Logik des Absoluten und die Logik des Leeren – oder: die Durchsichtigkeit bei Hegel und das soku bei Nishitani

In this article, an attempt is made to compare, with reference to the theme indicated in the title, Hegel’s logic, as the core of his entire philosophical speculation, and Buddhist logic, which lays deep roots in the intellectual soil of the Kyoto School’s philosophy, as represented by Keiji Nishitani. The term transparency, in the sense that it is used in Hegel’s logic, and the soku of Buddhist logic stand as the focal point of this comparative treatment. In Hegel’s Science of Logic, the term transparency first shows up at the end of the logic of essence and then prominently in the logic of the Concept. The determinateness of the Concept-categories, and indeed of all logical categories, is a thoroughly transparent shine, a difference that vanishes in its positedness. This transparency itself is employed in the Hegelian logic without logical definition, just like with the terms negation, transition, and mediation, as Kierkegaard once pointed out.
This element of transparency has nowhere been considered in past research on Hegel. Yet, this element can be drawn out as the focal point in a comparative treatment of the Hegelian and Buddhist logics. For in Buddhist logic, the word soku is used at such places where different states of affairs are on level, and insofar as they are made transparent, with one another. For example, there stands the most well-known saying of Mahayana Buddhism, which declares: “Emptiness is soku appearance, appearance is soku emptiness.” At the point where these two terms intersect, Hegel’s transparency and Nishitani’s soku, we see that the two overlap, and yet, at the same time, they are separated by a gap in which what is peculiar to each becomes visible.

Ernst-Otto Onnasch: Fünf Briefe, eine Abschrift eines Goethe-Gedichts und ein Nürnberger Zeugnis von G.W.F. Hegel

This paper presents four new letters by Hegel to (1) the wine merchant Ramann
(12 October 1802), to (2) his student and repetent in Berlin Friedrich Wilhelm Corové (12
December 1818) to (3) his friend Heinrich Beer (2 November 1828) and (4) the publisher Friedrich Frommann (11 September 1818). A fifth letter to Friedrich Niethammer (11 September 1826) comes in a new and full transcription. A lost Hegel transcript of three poems by Goethe resurfaced in a Dutch archive and is edited. Lastly a 1814 school certificate that Hegel wrote in Nurnberg for his pupil Johann Christoph Sigmund Lechner has been found and edited. Short introductions accompany each of the documents.