Nearly two centuries after declaring ‘the end of history, ‘ Hegel remains a rich source of insights into our historical nature. The essays collected here interpret and develop those insights, while also challenging Hegel’s philosophical approach to comprehend present and future phenomena that he could neither experience nor imagine. They represent the very best in contemporary scholarship on Hegel and history, and collectively they address all of the important and disputed topics in the field: Hegel’s claim that history has an end, whether his philosophy of history is Eurocentric or racist, how elements of what he terms ‘subjective spirit’ and ‘objective spirit’ contribute to historical development, and the relationship between religion and his philosophy of history.
Table of Content
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Will Dudley
I. PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE
1. The End of History and the Nihilism of Becoming
William Maker
2. Hegel, Utopia, and the Philosophy of History
Mario Wenning
3. Hegel’s Account of the Present: An Open-Ended History
Karin de Boer
4. Hegel and the Logics of History
John Mc Cumber
II. HISTORY, GEOGRAPHY, AND RACE
5. Is Hegel’s Philosophy of History Eurocentric?
Andrew Buchwalter
6. Hegel’s New World: History, Freedom, and Race
Sûrya Parekh
III. THE HISTORICITY OF MORALITY, ETHICAL LIFE, AND POLITICS
7. Spirit without the Form of Self: On Hegel’s Reading of Greek Antiquity
Allegra de Laurentiis
8. The Historicity of Ethical Categories: The Dynamic of Moral Imputation in Hegel’s Account of History
Jason Howard
9. The Mechanization of Labor and the Birth of Modern Ethicality in Hegel’s Jena Political Writings
Nathan Ross
10. Hegel’s Claim about Democracy and His Philosophy of History
Mark Tunick
IV. THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY AND RELIGION
11. Hegel’s Philosophy of World History as Theodicy: On Evil and Freedom
Pierre Chételat
12. Hegel’s Philosophy of History and Kabbalist Eschatology
Glenn Magee
Contributors
Index
About the author
Will Dudley is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Williams College. He is the author of
Hegel, Nietzsche, and Philosophy: Thinking Freedom and
Understanding German Idealism.