Autorentext

Emilia Angelova is an associate professor of philosophy at Concordia University.

Klappentext

The Necessity of Freedom in Hegel's Turn Between Logic and History explores Hegel’s claim that freedom is not just an abstract ideal but a necessary foundation for philosophy itself. This collection of essays examines how Hegel’s system connects logic, history, and rationality, shaping the meaning of historical development through the actualization of conceptual necessity.

Hegel’s philosophical position is unique in the tradition of German idealism in its insistence that freedom is a necessity that permeates and grounds philosophy as a system. The contributions in this collection, as a result, work in the intersections between the philosophy of right, logic, phenomenology, history, and aesthetics to demonstrate this realization. Bringing together leading scholars, this volume investigates key dimensions of Hegel’s thought: Stephen Houlgate, Michael Quante, and Angelica Nuzzo on the philosophy of right; Iain Macdonald and Nahum Brown on the science of logic; Alberto Siani, Jennifer Bates, and Jim Vernon on the phenomenology of spirit; Jeffrey Reid and Timothy Brownlee on the philosophy of history and aesthetics; and John McCumber, Ian Balfour, and Rebecca Comay on Hegel and the French Revolution.

Through close textual analysis, this volume illuminates how Hegel’s dialectic rejects atomistic individualism, instead emphasizing the subject’s role in actualizing political rationality. This collection offers fresh insights into Hegel’s enduring relevance in philosophy, history, and political thought.

Inhalt

Editor’s Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Necessity of Freedom in Hegel’s Turn Between Logic and History
Emilia Angelova

Part One: The Logic of Freedom and Its Necessity
Ch 1. Right and Trust in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
Stephen Houlgate
Ch. 2. Hegel’s Cognitivist Ascriptivism
Michael Quante (translated by Niels Feuerhahn)
Ch. 3. The Justice of Contradiction: History and the Realization of Freedom in Hegel
Angelica Nuzzo
Ch. 4. Adorno’s Modal Utopianism: Possibility and Actuality in Adorno and Hegel
Iain Macdonald
Ch. 5. Possibility Necessarily Entails Itself in Actuality: Hegel’s Theory of Conditions
Nahum Brown

Part Two: Phenomenological and Aesthetic Approaches to the Necessity of Freedom and its History
Ch. 6. Hegel on the Self-Fulfilment of Philosophy as the Opening of Human History
Alberto L. Siani
Ch. 7. Organic Freedom: Hegel’s Four-Way Dialectic
Jennifer Bates
Ch. 8. Hegel on Language and Freedom
Jim Vernon
Ch. 9. Re-Presenting the Past: The Reason in Hegel’s History
Jeffrey Reid
Ch. 10. Hegel on the Need for a Philosophy of Art: An Ethical Account
Timothy Brownlee

Part Three: Hegel on the History of Freedom and the French Revolution – Symposium on Comay’s Mourning Sickness: Hegel and the French Revolution
Ch. 11. Introduction to Comay’s Approach to History and Revolution in Hegel
Emilia Angelova
Ch. 12. Against a Literalist Account of Time in the Phenomenology: On Comay’s Mourning Sickness
John McCumber
Ch. 13. Hegel Before Comay: Mourning Sickness and the Absolutes of Freedom
Ian Balfour
Ch. 14. Silhouettes (Notes on Mourning Sickness)
Rebecca Comay

Notes on Contributors