Giulia Bernard

This paper attempts a fresh approach to understanding the emergence of philosophy of religion within classical German philosophy by delving into the process through which philosophy came to critically examine its discursive forms and the ways it was performed and transmitted. In particular, the paper explores several models of philosophy of religion centered around a key concept that proves pivotal in reshaping rationality and transcending mere historical knowledge: the concept of Mitteilung. Through its examination, Mitteilung is revealed as not only the self-expression of communicated content but also as a transformative experience for both philosopher and audience, challenging the philosophical discourse itself. This investigation points out a fundamental meta-philosophical gradient of philosophy of religion, indicating its emergence within diverse endeavors to develop a cosmic rather than scholastic philosophy in the world.

In her insightful Introduction to the volume "Approaching Hegel’s Logic, Obliquely: Melville, Molière, Beckett", titled "Thinking Transformation", Angelica Nuzzo argues for the overall significance of the transformation processes with which Hegel’s logic is concerned, descriptively and normatively. In this contribution, I would like to discuss the question at the core of the volume, namely how it is possible for thought to examine and at the same time perform transformation: i.e., to change along with the actuality it describes, in order not to remain external to the transformation

The aim of this essay is to examine issues held together by the Hegelian Zeitdiagnose on modernity as a period marked by a growing tendency toward knowledge. In particular, I will discuss to what extent such an epochal turning point, characteristic of a Bildung that has a cosmic dimension, seems to place philosophy as «thought of the world [Gedanke der Welt]», i.e. its very time «apprehended in thoughts [in Gedanken]», in a favourable position: namely, that of working on an actuality that in its forming (bilden) seems to exhibit in an extensive, widespread manner the element in which its philosophical understanding takes place. Through an analysis of some textual places from the Berlin period, I will show how the presence of Gedanke both on the side of the object (reality to be comprehended) and on the side of the discourse (philosophy offering the comprehension of the present) conditions the critical-diagnostic exercise of philosophy. This presence gives rise to a contemporaneity of philosophy with the world in which it is inscribed that is, however, different from what was the ursprüngliche Geschichte in antiquity. In this examination I will discuss the relationship between philosophy and that to which the concept of spirit also belongs: the religion of modernity, Protestantism, in which truth is for all.

The essay focuses on Hegel’s Vorlesungen über die Beweise vom Dasein Gottes (1829) as a pivotal text in his Berliner reflections on how to  philosophically ground an object of scientific consideration. The guiding thread is the shift from the metaphysical account of the existence of God to the elevation of spirit. The claim is that the overcoming of the subjective character of the proofs in their customary form is not a supervenient consequence of the elevation, nor a preliminary task explored just in the first part of the lectures (on Beweisen in general) and not in the last one (on Gottesbeweise). It is rather their main issue – a methodological process, which is «on its own account the sublation of the one-sidedness of subjectivity in general and of knowledge above all».

International Workshop: "Endlichkeit und Möglichkeit" with Luca Illetterati, Leibnizprofessor at the Universität Leipzig in the Sommer Semester 2024. The workshop will take place on June 6th, 2024, at the Universität Leipzig (Villa Tillmanns, Wächterstraße 30, Leipzig). The event is organized by Lucian Ionel (Leipzig) and Ioris Spigt (Leipzig).

International Workshop "Denken und seine Geschichtlichkeit in der klassischen Deutschen Philosophie".

The workshop will take place on May 4th-5th, 2024, at the Universität Basel (Alte Universität, Am Rheinsprung 11, Basel).

The event is organized by Karen Koch (Basel), Lucian Ionel (Leipzig).

It is hard to overestimate the family resemblances between the exposition of Hegel’s Idea and the expression of Spinoza’s substance. The “eternal Idea”, one reads at the end of the Encyclopaedia, “eternally remains active, engenders and enjoys itself” (§577). Similarly, blessedness for Spinoza consists in “Love of God, a Love which arises from the third kind of knowledge [and] must be related to the Mind insofar as it acts” (Ethica V, D42). Pivotal in the shared emphasis on activity is how these activities are differently achieved and performed. While Spinoza expounds a direct proportionality between adequate cognition and activity, according to Hegel philosophy seems to imply an attitude that is coupled with passivity – or even violence: it is “thought determinations” that have us “in [their] possession” (GW 21, 14). In this paper, I want to challenge this reading by confronting Spinoza’s thesis of the Mind actively enjoying divine Love and Hegel’s science as “absolute Bildung and discipline of consciousness”. Through the exam of some key features of Spinoza’s and Hegel’s methods, and of the shared understanding of science as implying emendatio, I aim to clarify the different kinds of ‘activity’ of adequate cognitions by means of their irreducibility to ‘activism’ and ‘objectivism’. This will eventually shed further light on the question of the actuality of cognition and, above all, of true freedom and philosophy.

The International Conference "Between Substance and Subject. The Presence of Spinoza in Hegel" will take place on October 26th-28th, 2023, at the University of Ljubljana (Academy of Theater, Radio, Film and Television AGRFT, Aškerčeva cesta 5).

The event is organized by Giovanna Luciano (Padua), Martin Hergouth (Ljubljana), Luca Illetterati (Padua), Bojana Jovićević (Ljubljana), Zdravko Kobe (Ljubljana), Goran Vranešević (Ljubljana), together with the Internationales Netzwerk Hegels Relevanz.

https://www.speculativethought.com/between-substance-and-subject-the-presence-of-spinoza-in-hegel

1st Berlin-Padua DAAD Workshop on Classical German Philosophy “Encountering Objectivity. Reality and Cognition between German Classical Philosophy and Contemporary Debates” (Berlin, 10-11 July 2023).

The workshop will take place at Freie Universität Berlin (Altensteinstr. 15, Raum 003B) on July 10th-11th, 2023, and is organized by Karen Koch, Elena Tripaldi, Dina Emundts, and Luca Illetterati.

The workshop is the first meeting of the DAAD Hochschuldialog mit Südeuropa project “Encountering Objectivity. Reality and Cognition between German Classical Philosophy and Contemporary Debates“, whose aim is to investigate the notion and understanding of objectivity in view of the inevitably situated standpoint of human cognition, bridging the gap between contemporary debates in feminist theory and the posthuman, and Classical German Philosophy.

Hegel Kongress of the Internationale Hegelvereinigung "Das Selbstverständnis der Philosophie und ihr Verhältnis zu den (anderen) Wissenschaften", which will take place in Stuttgart (Rathaus Stuttgart, Marktplatz 1) on June 7th-10th, 2023.

The Hegel Kongress is sponsored by DFG, Stadt Stuttgart, and the Frauenförderung des Fachbereichs Philosophie und Geisteswissenschaften der Freien Universität Berlin. It is organized by Julia Christ, Barbara Dober, Dina Emundts, Franck Fischbach, Gunnar Hindrichs, Luca Illetterati, Karen Koch, Yannick Nordwald, Dirk Quadflieg, Robert Stern, and Christina Vollmer.

International workshop "Hegel’s Concept of Philosophy between Logic and Practical Philosophy: Research Trajectories across Europe and Latin America", hosted by the University of Padua on January 27-28, 2022. The workshop was organized by Luca Illetterati, Giovanna Miolli and Pablo Pulgar Moya.

Organization: Giulia Bernard, Barbara Santini, Marzia Soavi.

Speakers: Dietmar Heidemann (Université du Luxembourg), Michela Massimi (University of Edinburgh), Sofie Møller (Universität Köln), Burkhard Nonnenmacher (Universität Tübingen), Annette Sell (Universität Tübingen), Jens Timmermann (University of St Andrews).

The conference is sponsored by the Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Pedagogy and Applied Psychology of the University of Padova.

For both in-person and online attendance, please email kant300.unipd@gmail.com.

Il concetto di mondo si trova al centro di prospettive che in Germania si sono confrontate con il significato storico della Rivoluzione francese tra la fine del ‘700 e i primi decenni dell’‘800. Nel determinare una nuova idea di ragione, nell’indagare la storicità del regno della libertà e nel ripensare il concetto di natura alla luce delle nuove scienze, gli esponenti della filosofia classica tedesca hanno elaborato maniere differenti di pensare un’idea di mondo che consentisse l’esercizio della libertà intesa in senso cosmopolitico e si prestasse a fornire la base per ripensare radicalmente la totalità. Alla base di ciascuno di questi tentativi di mettere a fuoco il mondo come concetto, come idea, si trova inoltre la possibilità di stabilire una maniera specifica di pensare il rapporto della filosofia alla sua attualità.

Il seminario si terrà in presenza e sulla piattaforma Zoom. Per iscrizioni alla piattaforma Zoom inviare richiesta di adesione all'indirizzo newsletter@iisf.it

International Workshop: "Historical and Natural World in Hegel’s Philosophy"

Mercoledì 14 giugno 2023
Orario: 9:30
Sede: Sala delle Edicole (Piazza Capitaniato 3)

Angelica Nuzzo (CUNY), The Logic of Nature
Sally Sedgwick (Boston University), Temporality and The Method of Hegel’s Phenomenology

The event is organized by Giovanna Luciano, Giulia Bernard, and Luca Illetterati

After longstanding neglect, towards the end of the twentieth century the issues tackled during the time stretching ‘von Kant bis Hegel’ have become relevant in the Anglophone reception. Several are the attempts to explore the philosophical project of those who escape from this teleology and can be traced back to the period known as ‘German idealism’ or, in a less distorting way, as ‘classical German philosophy’. Although it did not represent one of the first philosophies to experience a renaissance in English-speaking studies, there is no doubt that in recent decades the interest of interpreters is moving significantly towards F.W.J. Schelling’s thought.

The volume Schelling’s philosophy: Freedom, Nature and Systematicity edited by G. Anthony Bruno undoubtedly represents a turning point in this process of appropriation. The book collects twelve essays. Following a canonical periodization of Schelling’s thought, they are divided into four parts that trace the major phases of Schelling’s project. To his «early philosophy» are dedicated Essay 1 (on the Philosophical Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism) and Essay 2 (on On University Studies and his Würzburg Lectures). Essay 3 (on Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature, the On the World-Soul, and his First Outline for a System of the Philosophy of Nature), Essay 4 (on On the World-Soul), Essay 5 (on Presentation of My System of Philosophy), and Essay 6 (on Philosophy and Religion and Freedom Essay) address Schelling’s «philosophy of nature». Essay 7 (on Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature and the First Outline), Essay 8 (on Freedom Essay), Essay 9 (on First Outline and Freedom Essay), Essay 10 (on Ages of the World) are gathered under the label of «philosophy of freedom». Finally, his «late philosophy» is assessed in Essay 11 (on the On the Source of the Eternal Truths) and Essay 12 (on the 1833 Munich Lectures).

As the partial ‘overlapping’ of the commented texts reveals, the labels specifying multiple «phases» of Schelling’s philosophy, although legitimate, are far from univocal. They rather oversimplify a style of thinking which insists on some issues, changing with every opportunity to address them. For this reason, in discussing the contributes, we will follow the set of the arguments and questions rather than their chronological order of exposition.

Au sein de la Hegel-Renaissance de la dernière décennie, on a surtout assisté à la diffusion d’études consacrées à des parties spécifiques du système hégélien. La pensée hégélienne a ainsi pu être interrogée du point de vue de son épistémologie, de sa métaphysique, de sa théorie de l’État, du penser logique, ou de l’art. Dans ce panorama, enrichi écemment de contributions consacrées au problème du système en tant que tel et de son exposition, on note paradoxalement une moindre attention à la métaphilosophie de Hegel, c’est-à-dire à sa conception de ce qu’est la philosophie, de la manière dont elle se développe et se lie à d’autres formes de savoir. Le volume édité par Luca Illetterati et Giovanna Molli fournit un instrument indispensable pour affronter une telle question, sans se limiter à une seule oeuvre de Hegel (comme c’est le cas de l’étude de Brendan Theunissen sur la Phénoménologie de l’esprit parue en 2014), en vue d’évaluer la capacité du concept hégélien de philosophie à interagir avec d’autres traditions philosophiques et notamment avec la pensée métaphilosophique contemporaine – un débat relativement récent dont les moments les plus saillants (Richard Rorty, Timothy Williamson, Nicholas Rescher) sont reconstruits dès l’introduction.

«Spirito è un concetto non-metafisico». Inizia così uno dei contributi raccolti per la prima volta nel volume Hegels Philosophie di cui si arricchisce la fortunata collana Blaue Reihe della Meiner Verlag. Lontano dall’ambizione di offrirne un commentario esaustivo, Walter Jaeschke  intende illuminare il programma filosofico di Hegel alla luce di alcuni «problemi» (p. 9). Nonostante la sequenza espositiva non venga anticipata nella suggestiva Prefazione, non è difficile scorgere nel testo una progressione tematica e storico-biografica. Il percorso prende avvio infatti dalla «correzione dell’immagine» (p. 30) dello Hegel francofortese di Herman Nohl, tutto centrato su questioni religioso-teologiche, e dimentico di Hegel filosofo «del diritto e dello stato, dell’agitazione politica, degli studi storici, degli studi geometrici e di filosofia della natura» (p. 31); prosegue attraverso Bamberga e Norimberga, e culmina nel lavoro berlinese sul concetto di storia, di estetica, e della filosofia della religione – secondo un climax ascendente che mima l’organizzazione del sistema hegeliano.

Nei resoconti contemporanei di storia della logica è tutt’altro che raro imbattersi nell’assunzione per cui la logica hegeliana sarebbe incompatibile con la logica formale. Le tesi di Hegel sulla logica sono all’origine di un imbarazzo generale, e il suo modo di concepire la contraddizione e la dialettica viene ritenuto non più praticabile perché gravato dall’ipoteca di una metafisica speculativa. L’obiettivo del recente volume di Elena Ficara è mostrare che invece “Hegel’s logic, although non-formalised and non-formalistic in principle, is not anti-formal” (p.2). Nello specifico, il testo si può considerare come un tentativo di valutare la rilevanza della proposta hegeliana per la logica filosofica contemporanea a partire anzitutto da ciò che appare come la condivisione del medesimo tema: “for Hegel as well as for Aristotle and many other authors (including Frege), ‘logic’ is the study of the forms of truth, i.e. the forms that our thought can (or ought to) assume in searching for truth” (p.1).
Il binomio “forms of truth” – o “form of truth”, nella versione al singolare che compare nel titolo – è il centro di una costellazione di istanze sotto cui l’A. organizza 16 contributi pubblicati tra il 2013 e il 2020. “Logic”, “Form”, “Truth”, “Validity” e “Contradiction” intitolano le parti attraverso cui si dipana un’indagine di interesse tanto per chi si dedica alla logica formale e alla sua storia, quanto per chi è interessato ad alcuni dei dibattiti più recenti sulla filosofia hegeliana.

In recent decades the wealth of interpretative criteria provided by the contributions on Hegel’s Science of Logic has become almost impossible to master. Without a doubt, one of the issues over which the interpreters continue to quarrel is the possibility (or not) of reading the Hegelian project as a metaphysical one. Predominant are the attempts to discuss the Hegelian reading of the philosopher who, along with Jacobi, “did do away with this whole style of the previous metaphysics and its method along with it” (SL 12.229): Kant. This argumentative line is picked up by the recent volume of Robert B. Pippin, Hegel’s Realm of Shadows. Logic as Metaphysics in the Science of Logic, which attempts at discussing a theoretical interest that Hegel and Kant share: “how to account for the determinate moments of ‘any thinking of the knowable’, such that they count as the determinate moments of the knowable itself” (p.8).
Such a genealogy with Kant alone certainly does not hit the mark, if one recalls Pippin’s Hegel's Idealism published thirty years ago. Unprecedented in Pippin’s interest in the SL is the decision to risk a positive answer to the ‘metaphysical question’ – i.e. to make sense of the statement “logic coincides with metaphysics” (p.39), without thereby renouncing all forms of metaphysics.

Can one attempt a rigorously non-metaphysical rendering of Hegel’s philosophy by affirming what is normally taken to be its most indigestible core? Can a potential for transformation be reconciled with some of the seemingly most narcissistic issues of the system, namely “absolute knowing” and “God’s thoughts before the creation”? The Dash – The Other Side of Absolute Knowing by Rebecca Comay and Frank Ruda risks a positive answer to this question.
The work is engaging and experimental as few books on Hegel’s philosophy are. Combining the “paranoid microscopism of the detail with a preposterous macroscopism of the system” (p.7), the volume rests on an irrepressible duplicity. Two books stand at its centre: The Phenomenology of Spirit and the Science of Logic. The two authors, Comay and Ruda, discuss some of the less palatable issues of Hegel’s work, driven by a deceiving “stupid little observation” (p.6): Hegel punctuates strangely. Two marks of punctuation keep obsessing them – or rather one, a “dash”, that repeats itself at the end of the Phenomenology, detaching Hegel’s text from a (misquoted) epigram by Schiller, and at the beginning of the Logic: “Being, pure Being, –”.
The text is unsettling, and it fails to meet the expectations of those in search of a definitive clue regarding the question of which of the two books should take precedence over the other. Its attempt consists rather of unhinging this interpretative framework and of discussing a constitutive (i.e. unresolved) oscillation between the two works, which allows a reading that views them as different acts of a single play meant to reframe subjectivity against its voluntarist background.

In questa recente monografia Ermylos Plevrakis affronta la questione disciplinare della teologia filosofica instaurando un serrato corpo a corpo con la Logica hegeliana, esaminata in una magistrale combinatoria di livelli di lettura del sistema.
La scelta di rivolgersi al pensiero di un autore tutt’altro che estraneo alle querelle di marca teologica è motivata anzitutto dalla convinzione che la filosofia speculativa sia in grado di inaugurare, con la tematica teologica, un confronto “spiccatamente filosofico, difficilmente superabile per grado di complessità, completezza e sistematicità” (p.4). L’obiettivo perseguito dall’A. è duplice: innanzitutto, rintracciare nella “concezione dell’assoluto puramente logica” approntata dal sistema hegeliano un’opportunità proficua per perimetrare i margini di una “disciplina-limite” (p.1) che ha il proprio baricentro nell’articolazione di un discorso razionale sull’assoluto, e non nella “descrizione di puri stati emotivi” (p. 389). A ciò si affianca, in secondo luogo, una più generale presa di posizione sul compito “fondazionale” della Logica. In questione è qui l’emancipazione del concetto dall’orbita dell’ontoteologia (una forma di sapere che determina l’assoluto come ‘essente’) e l’esplicitazione della sua marcatura epistemologica: come quel discorso, vale a dire, che si compie nell’esame della forma e delle condizioni della sua propria articolazione. Nell’intrecciarsi di questi due intenti, disciplinare e logico-immanente, si misura la posta in gioco ambiziosa di un contributo denso, stimolante sia per chi è interessato al potenziale critico della filosofia hegeliana per ripensare la costellazione degli ‘-ismi’ (teismo, ateismo, panteismo…), sia per chi è alla ricerca di una lettura inedita e puntuale del testo hegeliano.

In che modo pensare la trasformazione, la dinamica peculiare dei tempi storici di crisi, quando a darne esposizione è un punto di vista che non le è esterno? Come configurare la narrazione della crisi attuale, se la sincronicità che lega il pensare al suo presente non lascia combaciare perfettamente i loro margini, ma esibisce sempre un eccesso?
Angelica Nuzzo pretende di avvicinarsi a questo spettro problematico attraverso un testo che ha ad oggetto la Scienza della logica di Hegel. Il lavoro, dal titolo enigmatico Approaching Hegel’s Logic, Obliquely. Melville, Molière, Beckett, può risultare disorientante sia per coloro che si rivolgono ad esso convinti di trovarvi una trattazione della trasformazione; sia per chi crede di imbattersi ‘soltanto’ in un nuovo commento al testo hegeliano. È forse in questo doppio spaesamento il suo tratto decisamente più significativo e stimolante.
A confermare una simile impressione è l’obiettivo, anch’esso duplice, perseguito da Nuzzo. Da una parte, l’A. si propone di illustrare come la rilettura delle dinamiche logiche nei termini di «figure dell’agire» (p. xiii) consenta di esporre il «pensiero dei processi trasformativi » qua talis, ovvero «ancora prima che siano state specificate le condizioni determinate (naturali, psicologiche, storiche, sociali, politiche, economiche) sotto le quali si realizzano le trasformazioni particolari» (p. 7); dall’altra, l’A. intende dimostrare che l’enfatizzazione del tema della trasformazione risulti produttiva per esplicitare uno strato problematico più profondo e originario del testo logico stesso, rispetto alle sue contemporanee ricostruzioni epistemologiche, metafisiche o anti-metafisiche: quello in cui la dinamica del pensare puro viene esibita nel suo «carattere trasformativo» (p. xiv).

Sin dalla sua prima ricezione, la valutazione hegeliana del rapporto fra religione, teologia e filosofia non ha cessato di mostrarsi occasione di infinite contese, le cui linee di tensione cardinali hanno finito per porsi all’origine della divisione della stessa scuola hegeliana. Che ruolo assolve il contenuto religioso all’interno del progetto sistematico hegeliano? Quale significato assume la sua rideterminazione in termini concettuali? E, d’altra parte, in che modo procedono teologia e filosofia della religione nella definizione dei loro ambiti d’azione? Si lasciano esse pensare nei termini di prassi complementari, o il loro sviluppo comporta il sorgere di necessari conflitti di competenze? Se il contesto contemporaneo di un mondo secolarizzato mette alla prova la radicalità di simili domande, il contributo di Nadine Mooren, Hegel und die Religion. Eine Untersuchung zum Verhältnis von Religion, Philosophie und Theologie in Hegels System, intende offrire una puntuale riconsiderazione dalla costellazione a tre termini che le istanzia, ordinata in due relazioni principali o «ambiti problematici» (Problembereichen, p. 13). Da questi dipendono interrogativi specifici, che l’autrice si impegna a differenziare.

Editors: Luca Illetterati (Università di Padova), Zdravko Kobe (Univerza v Ljubljani) and Giulia Bernard (Università di Padova).

The term ‘speculative’ closely characterizes Hegel’s philosophy, to the point of designating his own philosophical proposal: speculative thinking as opposed to intellectual-abstract and negative-rational thinking, speculative philosophy as a totality of knowledge organized as a system, and speculative logic as departing from transcendental and formal logic are just a few examples that surface when considering Hegel’s philosophy in terms of its differences from other philosophical projects. The term has thus become almost a proper name. And yet it is all but clear what determines the speculative as such: its specific form.

A similar fate seems to have befallen the later revivals of the concept in those who referred to it, in a genealogy directly or indirectly dependent on Hegel. We have seen an increase of interest in the speculative (Alfred North Whitehead, Theodor W. Adorno, Dieter Henrich, Jean-Luc Nancy, Slavoj Žižek) and an upsurge of theoretical proposals that refer back to the speculative (speculative realism, speculative materialism, speculative naturalism), but do so by explicitly distancing themselves from something like ‘speculative thinking’, which in their view represents a legacy to be overcome. The question is: What does speculative thinking actually mean? And in what way do these new conceptions of the speculative succeed in freeing themselves from the allegedly cumbersome burden carried by the term?

This issue of Rivista di Estetica aims at addressing these questions by dwelling on the different uses and meanings of the term ‘speculative’ in Hegel’s philosophy, and the issues that have defined speculative thinking as such. Its scope is to arrive at a conceptual clarification of ‘speculative thinking’ and to examine some of its outcomes in contemporary debate.