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Hegel and the Freedom of Moderns

Hegel and the Freedom of Moderns

  • Author: Losurdo, Domenico; Morris, Jon; Morris, Marella; Jameson, Fredric
  • Publisher: Duke University Press
  • Serie: Post-Contemporary Interventions
  • ISBN: 9780822332534
  • eISBN Pdf: 9780822385608
  • Place of publication:  Durham , United States
  • Year of digital publication: 2004
  • Month: August
  • Pages: 400
  • DDC: 320/.01
  • Language: English
Available in English for the first time, Hegel and the Freedom of Moderns revives discussion of the major political and philosophical tenets underlying contemporary liberalism through a revolutionary interpretation of G. W. F. Hegel’s thought. Domenico Losurdo, one of the world’s leading Hegelians, reveals that the philosopher was fully engaged with the political controversies of his time. In so doing, he shows how the issues addressed by Hegel in the nineteenth century resonate with many of the central political concerns of today, among them questions of community, nation, liberalism, and freedom. Based on an examination of Hegel’s entire corpus—including manuscripts, lecture notes, different versions of texts, and letters—Losurdo locates the philosopher’s works within the historical contexts and political situations in which they were composed.

Hegel and the Freedom of Moderns persuasively argues that the tug of war between “conservative” and “liberal” interpretations of Hegel has obscured and distorted the most important aspects of his political thought. Losurdo unravels this misleading dualism and provides an illuminating discussion of the relation between Hegel’s political philosophy and the thinking of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. He also discusses Hegel’s ideas in relation to the pertinent writings of other major figures of modern political philosophy such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Locke, Edmund Burke, John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham, Karl Popper, Norberto Bobbio, and Friedrich Hayek.

  • CONTENTS
  • Translators' Note
  • Hegel Source Abbreviations
  • Preface to the Italian Edition
  • ONE. A Liberal, Secret Hegel?
    • I. Searching for the "Authentic" Hegel
      • 1. Censorship and Self-Censorship
      • 2. Linguistic Self-Censorship and Theoretical Compromise
      • 3. Private Dimension and Philosophical Dimension
      • 4. Hegel . . . a Mason?
      • 5. Esoteric and Exoteric History
      • 6. Philosophical Arguments and Political "Facts"
      • 7. An Interpretative "Misunderstanding" or a Real Contradiction?
    • II. The Philosophies of Right: A Turning Point or Continuity
      • 1. Reason and Actuality
      • 2. The Power of the Sovereign
      • 3. One Turn, Two Turns, or No Turn at All
  • TWO. Hegel, Marx, and the Liberal Tradition
    • III. Contractualism and the Modern State
      • 1. Anticontractualism = Antiliberalism?
      • 2. Contractualism and the Doctrine of Natural Law
      • 3. Liberal Anticontractualism
      • 4. The Celebration of Nature and the Ideology of Reactionism
      • 5. Hegel and Feudal, Proto-Bourgeois Contractualism
      • 6. Contractualism and the Modern State
    • IV. Conservative or Liberal? A False Dilemma
      • 1. Bobbio's Dilemma
      • 2. Authority and Freedom
      • 3. State and Individual
      • 4. The Right to Resistance
      • 5. The Right of Extreme Need and Individual Rights
      • 6. Formal and Substantive Freedom
      • 7. Interpretative Categories and Ideological Presuppositions
    • V. Hegel and the Liberal Tradition: Two Opposing Interpretations of History
      • 1. Hegel and Revolutions
      • 2. Revolutions from the Bottom-Up or from the Top-Down
      • 3. Revolution According to the Liberal Tradition
      • 4. Patricians and Plebeians
      • 5. Monarchy and Republic
      • 6. The Repression of the Aristocracy and the March Toward Freedom
      • 7. Anglophobia and Anglophilia
      • 8. Hegel, England, and the Liberal Tradition
      • 9. Equality and Freedom
    • VI. The Intellectual, Property, and the Social Question
      • 1. Theoretical Categories and Immediate Political Options
      • 2. The Individual and Institutions
      • 3. Institutions and the Social Question
      • 4. Labor and Otium
      • 5. Intellectuals and Property-Owners
      • 6. Property and Political Representation
      • 7. Intellectuals and Craftsmen
      • 8. A Banausic, Plebeian Hegel?
      • 9. The Social Question and Industrial Society
  • THREE. Legitimacy and Contradictions of Modernity
    • VII. Right, Violence, and Notrecht
      • 1. War and the Right to Property: Hegel and Locke
      • 2. From the Ius Necessitatis to the Right of Extreme Need
      • 3. The Contradictions of Modern Economic Development
      • 4. Notrecht and Self-Defense: Locke, Fichte, and Hegel
      • 5. "Negative Judgment," "Negatively Infinite Judgment," and "Rebellion"
      • 6. Notrecht, Ancien Régime, and Modernity
      • 7. The Starving Man and the Slave
      • 8. Ius Necessitatis, Ius Resistentiae, Notrecht
      • 9. The Conflicts of Right with Moral Intention and Extreme Need
      • 10. An Unsolved Problem
    • VIII. "Agora" and "Schole": Rousseau, Hegel, and the Liberal Tradition
      • 1. The Image of Ancient Times in France and Germany
      • 2. Cynics, Monks, Quakers, Anabaptists, and Sansculottes
      • 3. Rousseau, the "Poor People's Grudge," and Jacobinism
      • 4. Politics and Economics in Rousseau and Hegel
      • 5. The Social Question and Taxation
      • 6. State, Contract, and Joint-Stock Company
      • 7. Christianity, Human Rights, and the Community of Citoyens
      • 8. The Liberal Tradition and Criticism of Rousseau and Hegel
      • 9. Defense of the Individual and Criticism of Liberalism
    • IX. School, Division of Labor, and Modern Man's Freedom
      • 1. School, State, and the French Revolution
      • 2. Compulsory Education and Freedom of Conscience
      • 3. School, State, Church, and Family
      • 4. The Rights of Children
      • 5. School, Stability, and Social Mobility
      • 6. Professions and the Division of Labor
      • 7. Division of Labor and the Banality of Modernity: Schelling, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche
    • X. Moral Tension and the Primacy of Politics
      • 1. Modern World and the Waning of Moral Heroes
      • 2. Inconclusiveness and Narcissism in Moral-Religious Precepts
      • 3. Modern World and the Restriction of the Moral Sphere
      • 4. Hegel and Kant
      • 5. Hegel, Schleiermacher, and the Liberal Tradition
      • 6. Hegel, Burke, and Neo-Aristotelian Conservatism
      • 7. Hegel, Aristotle, and the Rejection of Solipsistic Escape
      • 8. The French Revolution and the Celebration of Ethicality
      • 9. Morality, Ethicality, and Modern Freedom
      • 10. Hegel's Ethical Model and Contemporary Actuality
    • XI. Legitimacy of the Modern and Rationality of the Actual
      • 1. The "Querelle des Anciens, des Modernes," . . . and of the Ancient Germans
      • 2. Rejection of Modernity, Cult of Heroes, and Anti-Hegelian Polemic
      • 3. Kant, Kleist, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche
      • 4. Modernity and the Uneasiness of the Liberal Tradition
      • 5. Philistinism, Statism, and Modern Standardization
      • 6. The Rationality of the Actual and the Difficult Balance between Legitimation and Criticism of Modernity
  • FOUR. The Western World, Liberalism, and the Interpretation of Hegel's Thought
    • XII. The Second Thirty Years War and the "Philosophical Crusade" against Germany
      • 1. Germans, "Goths," "Huns," and "Vandals"
      • 2. The Great Western Purge
      • 3. The Transformation of the Liberal Western World
      • 4. An Imaginary Western World, an Imaginary Germany
      • 5. Hegel Faces the Western Tribunal
      • 6. Ilting and the Liberal Rehabilitation of Hegel
      • 7. Lukács and the Burden of National Stereotypes
    • XIII. Liberalism, Conservatism, the French Revolution, and Classic German Philosophy
      • 1. Allgemeinheit and Égalité
      • 2. The English Origins of German Conservatism
      • 3. A Selective Anglophilia
      • 4. Tracing the Origins of Social Darwinism and Fascist Ideology
      • 5. Beyond National Stereotypes
      • 6. Burke and the History of European Liberalism
      • 7. Burke's School of Thought and Classic German Philosophy
      • 8. Hegel and the Legacy of the French Revolution
      • 9. The Conflicts of Freedom
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
  • Index

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