Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T19:26:39.803Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

On Immanent Critique in Hegel’s Phenomenology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 June 2018

Michael A. Becker*
Affiliation:
New School for Social Research, [email protected]
Get access

Abstract

I begin by identifying an ambiguity in the post-Hegelian literature on Immanent Critique, distinguishing two possible definitions: (a) judging an object against its ‘internal’ norms; and (b) accounting for one’s own standpoint with reference to the object. I then claim that both definitions are represented in Hegel’s Phenomenology, and develop extended interpretations of material from the Introduction in order to clarify and substantiate this thesis. This yields revisionist readings of the famous ‘internal criteria’ and ‘self examination’ tropes. My discussion builds towards elucidating the relation between the two definitions of Immanent Critique I have distinguished, as it is developed in the Phenomenology.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Hegel Society of Great Britain 2018

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

Adorno, T. (1983), Prisms, trans S. Weber Nicholsen and S. Weber. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Adorno, T. (1993), Hegel: Three Studies. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Antonio, R. J. (1981), ‘Immanent Critique as the Core of Critical Theory: Its Origins and Developments in Hegel, Marx and Contemporary Thought’, British Journal of Sociology 32:3: 330345.10.2307/589281CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benhabib, S. (1986), Critique, Norm and Utopia: A Study of the Foundations of Critical Theory. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Benjamin, W. (1998), The Origin of German Tragic Drama. New York: Verso.Google Scholar
de Boer, K. (2012), ‘Hegel’s Conception of Immanent Critique: its Sources, Extent and Limit’, in K. de Boer and R. Sonderegger (eds.), Conceptions of Critique in Modern and Contemporary Philosophy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.10.1057/9780230357006CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bristow, W. F. (2007), Hegel and the Transformation of Philosophical Critique. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199290642.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buchwalter, A. (1991), ‘Hegel, Marx, and the Concept of Immanent Critique’, Journal of the History of Philosophy 29:2: 253279.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caygill, H. (1998), Walter Benjamin: The Colour of Experience. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Comay, R. (2011), Mourning Sickness: Hegel and the French Revolution. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Dove, K. R. (1970), ‘Hegel’s Phenomenological Method’, Review of Metaphysics 23:4: 615641.Google Scholar
Fackenheim, E. L. (1967), The Religious Dimension in Hegel’s Thought. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Finlayson, J. G. (2014), ‘Hegel, Adorno and the Origins of Immanent Criticism’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy 22:6: 11421166.10.1080/09608788.2014.993918CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fornäs, J. (2013), ‘The Dialectics of Communicative and Immanent Critique in Cultural Studies’, triple C 11:2: 504514.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Förster, E. (2012), The Twenty-Five Years of Philosophy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Forster, M. N. (1998), Hegel’s Idea of a Phenomenology of Spirit. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Geuss, R. (1981), The Idea of a Critical Theory: Habermas and the Frankfurt School. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Guay, R. (2011), ‘Genealogy as Immanent Critique: Working from the Inside’, in A. Stone (ed.), The Edinburgh Critical History of Nineteenth-Century Philosophy. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. (1977), Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F.Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. T. Pinkard. Available at: http://terrypinkard.weebly.com/phenomenology-of-spirit-page.html.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. (1966), ‘Who Thinks Abstractly?’, in W. Kaufmann (ed.), Hegel: Texts and Commentary. New York: Anchor Books.Google Scholar
Henrich, D. (2003), Between Kant and Hegel: Lectures on German Idealism. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Houlgate, S. (2013), Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. New York: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Jaeggi, R. (2009), ‘Rethinking Ideology’, in B. de Bruin and C. Zurn (eds.), New Waves in Political Philosophy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Jarvis, S. (1998), Adorno: A Critical Introduction. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kortian, G. (1980), Metacritique: The Philosophical Argument of Jürgen Habermas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kreines, J. (2006), ‘Hegel’s Metaphysics: Changing the Debate’, Philosophy Compass 1: 466480.10.1111/j.1747-9991.2006.00033.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Larsen, N. (2009), ‘Literature, Immanent Critique, and the Problem of Standpoint’, Mediations: Journal of the Marxist Literary Group 24:2: 4865.Google Scholar
Marx, W. (1975), Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit: A Commentary on the Preface and Introduction. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Marx, K. (1978), ‘For a Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing’, in R. C. Tucker (ed.), The Marx-Engels Reader. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Neuhouser, F. (2009), ‘Desire, Recognition, and the Relation between Bondsman and Lord’, in K. R. Westphal (ed.), The Blackwell Guide to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Ng, K. (2015), ‘Ideology Critique from Hegel and Marx’, Constellations 22:3: 393404.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pinkard, T. (1994), Hegel’s Phenomenology: The Sociality of Reason. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pippin, R. B. (1989), Hegel’s Idealism: The Satisfactions of Self-Consciousness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Postone, M. (1993), Time, Labor, and Social Domination. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511570926CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rose, G. (1981), Hegel Contra Sociology. London: The Athlone Press.Google Scholar
Rosen, M. (1982), Hegel’s Dialectic and its Criticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Royce, J. (1919), Lectures on Modern Idealism. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, S. B. (1989), Hegel’s Critique of Liberalism: Rights in Context. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Stahl, T. (2013), ‘What is Immanent Critique?’ SSRN Working Papers. Available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2357957.Google Scholar
Westphal, K. R. (1988), ‘Hegel’s Solution to the Dilemma of the Criterion’, History of Philosophy Quarterly 5:2: 173188.Google Scholar