Wednesday evening, April 4, 6:00-9:00
Paper Session
Marina F. Bykova (North Carolina State University)
Spirit and Concrete Subjectivity in Hegel's Phenomenology
This paper is a part of a big project, which goal is to reconstruct a real meaning of Hegel's concept of spirit and demonstrate its instrumental role in the Phenomenology. It shows that the core issue on which Hegel focuses in the Phenomenology is the formation of the socially developed and historically oriented universal subjects of thought, will, and action within the forms of manifest spirit. It interprets Hegel's main task as his attempt to uncover the universal and absolute in manifest spirit and to grasp this as the truth of concrete subjectivity.
Commentator: Katrin Pahl (John Hopkins University)
Charles E. DeBord (University of Kentucky)
The Logic of Science in Hegel's Phenomenology
This essay addresses the status of the necessity of the world-historical progressions of chapters VI and VII of Hegel's Phenomenology by attending to his exposition of the scientific standpoint in chapter VIII. The essay explains the ascension of spirit's consciousness to the standpoint of absolute knowing while advancing the following interpretive claim: Hegel means for the reader's acceptance of his claims for the necessity of the histories of chapter VI and VII to be contingent on her acceptance of his conclusion in chapter VIII that spirit has come to the end of its history of self-knowing.
Commentator: Marcos Bisticas-Cocoves (Morgan State University)
Dietmar Heidemann (Hofstra University)
Epistemic Justification and the History of Self-Consciousness in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit
The Phenomenology of Spirit basically deals with the problem of epistemic justification, of how to conduce beliefs to truth. The problem of epistemic justification is the proof of a criterion that functions as the standard of justification. Against the sceptical doubts with regard to the possibility of such a proof, Hegel in the Phenomenology develops two arguments: a) the argument from self-creation of the epistemic standard, and b) the argument from the history of self-consciousness. The first argument shows that the standard has to be understood as an internal element of the cognitive consciousness. The second argument shows how the self-creation sets up the entire structure of the Phenomenology. This paper's thesis is that both arguments are highly original but in the end they have to be modified in order to hold.
Commentator: Scott Jenkins (Reed College)
Chair: John McCumber (University of California, Los Angeles)
Saturday evening, April 7, 6:00-8:00
A Celebration of the Two-Hundredth Anniversary of the Publication of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit
Brent Adkins (Roanoke College)
The Politics of Fear: Hegel's Response to Hobbes in the Phenomenology
John Russon (The University of Guelph)
Spirit and Method in Hegel's Phenomenology
Drawing primarily on texts from the "Self-Consciousness" chapter of the Phenomenology and the "Spirit" chapter, I will argue that Hegel's dialectical method and his notion of spirit are mutually implicating.
Chair: Aaron Bunch (Washington State University)