Hegel's 'Individuality'

Zusatztext

This book explores an overlooked area in Hegel studies: his use of individuality (Individualität). Hegel joined a lively conversation, from Leibniz to Romanticism and beyond, about this novel concept/phenomenon. Successive chapters track Hegels engagement, in such texts as the Phenomenology, Encyclopedia, and Aesthetics. Hegels system tends to follow a syllogistic logic (universal, particular, singular), but individuality departs from the norm. The category enacts a certain pragmatics (as against semantics or syntactics) regarding tacit assumptions at work or implicit terms of address, which requires active participation by a thinking subject charged with discerning individuality (which bars resort to explicit rules). The category reflexively implicates the user even in presuming an objective context.Individuality should not be confused with individualism, wholly distinct in origin. Moreover, Hegels Aesthetics embraces a paradoxical anachronism. Like art itself, individuality emerged as an essentially modern category, though one transferred to the past and to distant cultures.

Autorenportrait

Martin Donougho is Professor Emeritus in philosophy at the University of South Carolina.

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