Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T18:55:20.198Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Aristotelian Priority, Metaphysical Definitions of God and Hegel on Pure Thought as Absolute

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 September 2019

James Kreines
James Kreines*
Affiliation:
Claremont McKenna [email protected]
Get access

Abstract

This paper advances a philosophical interpretation of Hegel's Logic as defending a metaphysics, which includes an absolute, itself comparable to God in other systems of metaphysics of interest to Hegel, including Aristotle's and Spinoza's. Two problems are raised which can seem to block the prospects for such a metaphysically inflationary interpretation. The key to resolving these problems is consideration of the kinds of metaphysical priority that Hegel sees in Aristotle. This allows us to build a philosophical model of Hegel's absolute, and to demonstrate how the model fits the argument of Hegel's Logic. Application of this model provides a philosophical explanation of the senses in which Hegel's metaphysics is idealist; he argues that thought is absolute and comparable to God in other systems of metaphysics: thought is both self-determining and metaphysically prior to being.

Type
Articles
Information
Hegel Bulletin , Volume 41 , Special Issue 1: Hegel and Aristotle on the Metaphysics of Mind , April 2020 , pp. 19 - 39
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Hegel Society of Great Britain, 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aristotle (1984), The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, ed. Barnes, J.. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Beere, J. (2008), ‘The Priority in Being of Energeia’, in Crubellier, Jaulin, Lefebvre, and Morel, (eds.), Dynamis: Autour de la puissance chez Aristote. Louvain: Peeters.Google Scholar
Beiser, F. C. (2005), Hegel. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Brandom, R. (2001), ‘Holism and Idealism in Hegel's Phenomenology’, Hegel-Studien 36: 57–92.Google Scholar
Cohen, S. M. (2008), ‘Substances’, in Anagnostopoulos, G. (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Aristotle. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Düsing, K. (1986), ‘Hegel und die Geschichte der Philosophie’, Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 48:1: 135–36.Google Scholar
Ferrarin, A. (2001), Hegel and Aristotle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
García, M. (2016), ‘Energeia vs Entelecheia’, Tópicos, Revista de Filosofía 51: 113–37.Google Scholar
Horstmann, R. P. (2006), ‘Hegels Ordnung der Dinge’, Hegel-Studien 41: 9–50.Google Scholar
Inwood, M. (1983), Hegel. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kern, W. (1971), ‘Die Aristotelesdeutung Hegels’, Philosophisches Jahrbuch 78: 237–59.Google Scholar
Knappik, F. (2016), ‘Hegel's Essentialism: Natural Kinds and the Metaphysics of Explanation in Hegel's Theory of “the Concept”’, European Journal of Philosophy 24:4: 760–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kreines, J. (2004), ‘Hegel's Critique of Pure Mechanism and the Philosophical Appeal of the Logic Project’, European Journal of Philosophy 12:1: 38–74.Google Scholar
Kreines, J. (2015), Reason in the World: Hegel's Metaphysics and its Philosophical Appeal. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190204303.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malink, M. (2013), ‘Essence and Being’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 45: 341–62.Google Scholar
McTaggart, J. (1901). Studies in Hegelian Cosmology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Peramatzis, M. (2011), Priority in Aristotle's Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pinkard, T. (1988), Hegel's Dialectic: The Explanation of Possibility. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Pippin, R. (2018), Hegel's Realm of Shadows: Logic as Metaphysics in The Science of Logic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schaffer, J. (2009), ‘On What Grounds What’, in Chalmers, D., Manley, D. and Wasserman, R. (eds.), Metametaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Spinoza, B. (1985), The Collected Works of Spinoza, ed. and trans. Curley, E.. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Stern, R. (1990), Hegel, Kant and the Structure of the Object. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Stern, R. (2009), Hegelian Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199239108.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Theunissen, M. (1980), Sein und Schein. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar