NYGIW||Gregor Schäfer and Jay Bernstein

"Speculative Thinking ('s) Today: On the Critical Actuality of Hegel's Philosophy"

 
Abstract:

Influential receptions of Hegel's philosophy tend to separate in Hegel what - "today" - is still actual from what should be rejected as out-dated. When it comes to the possible critical impacts of Hegel's philosophy on our (post-Hegelian) present, Hegel's practical philosophy hereby is subtracted from the speculative framework of the entire system - such as, paradigmatically, from speculative logic and the conception of absolute spirit in which the absolute idea finds its actual "reconciliation."

Against such strands, the talk puts forward two theses: Firstly (1) that it is precisely the speculative character of Hegel's philosophy that articulates and enables its character as being "its time grasped in thoughts," i.e., its constitutive present relevance and embeddedness in the historical-political world; and secondly (2)  that the specific present inscribed in this speculative framework does not imply, as an established cliché has it, the reconciliation of a stabilized harmony but rather an unsettling and destabilized present full of ongoing contradictions, conflicts, and crises - according to Dieter Henrich's description: a reconciliation "in the very middle of struggles" -, which, as such, opens up the possibility of change and liberation in the world. 

Bio:

Gregor Schäfer is research fellow at the Ernst Bloch Centre for German Thought at the University of London. His dissertation, written at the University of Basel, deals with the connection between speculative logic and philosophy of objective and absolute spirit in Hegel. Among other places, he was visiting scholar at the University of Notre Dame and visiting researcher at the University of Bamberg. His upcoming postdoc project is focused on crisis, transformation, and utopia in German Idealism. For his work he was awarded with the International Domenico Losurdo Prize. Main research and publication interests include Classical German Philosophy (particularly Leibniz, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and the reception of Hegelian philosophy), the history and relevance of metaphysics, political thinking, philosophy of religion, and aesthetics.