G.W.F. Hegel

21st Century Hegel

Frank M. Kirkland in Logos:

As we scome to the end of the 200th anniversary of the publication of the Phenomenology of Spirit (PhS),[1] I am reminded of a remark made a decade ago by the noted Hegel-scholar Robert Pippin. He then entertained the possibility of what a sequel to the PhS would look like were Hegel able to complete one. In his mind, the sequel would present two new chapters, which “would have to include oddly parallel accounts of both [a] the great expanding confidence and influence of modern science and technology…and [b] the coincident ever-growing pessimism that all of that, and much of anything else, matters all that much….”[2] Pippin rightly recognized the need of new “shapes of Spirit” relevant for at least a 1997 PhS. He had seen in the trajectories of these two large-scale cognitive and ethical enactments “contradictory” outcomes in which the success of (a), in fulfilling ideals that have been set for modern science and technology, comes at once with (b), with a disposition that ever loosens the normative grip their ideals are to have on us.

I myself admit that Pippin’s selections to a hypothetical sequel to the PhS and his evaluations for those selections are on point. However, I would like to make a suggestion of my own to such a sequel. With all the discussion, both critical and uncritical, on racial oppression and cultural diversity over the distant and recent past, a shape of spirit accounting for a conceptualization of these matters appears to me quite apropos.

(Via 3 Quarks Daily.)

—Bryan Klausmeyer

The Possibility of Time Travel

I just ran across this interesting article on time travel published by BBC News. The basic idea is that there are essentially two formulas: (a) time travel is not possible (ostensibly because we have never encountered its affects in the present) or (b) time travel is possible, but something is preventing it from changing the present. As the article points out, option (a) seems more intuitive, but option (b) is certainly plausible insofar as Einstein’s general theory of relativity points to a space-time curvature in which time loops back over itself (and, derivatively, that quantum physics does not distinguish between moving back and forward in time).

In attempting to articulate a more cohesive materialist formula for examining history, I thought this passage was particularly interesting, especially in regards to its Hegelian flavor:

It is as if, in some strange way, the present takes account of all the possible routes back into the past and, because your father is certainly alive, none of the routes back can possibly lead to his death.

I think it’s also worth pointing out, at least humorously, that the entire article is postulated around the murder of one’s father, which will no doubt elicit a smirk from psychoanalytically-informed readers.

—Bryan Klausmeyer