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HPD – Padova Hegel Lectures 2020: Christopher Yeomans “Hegel, our Archaic Contemporary” (November 23th, 2021)

HPD - Padova Hegel Lectures 2020: Christopher Yeomans "Hegel, our Archaic Contemporary" (November 23th, 2021)

In order to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Hegel’s birth, hegelpd has launched the Padova Hegel Lectures: a series of lectures given by international Hegel scholars, aimed at exploring Hegelian philosophy as a whole, investigating its main insights as well as its relevance for contemporary concerns.

We are very glad to announce that the next lecture will be given by Christopher Yeomans (Purdue College of Liberal Arts). The title of the Lecture is Hegel, our Archaic Contemporary.

The lecture will take place on November 23th, at 16:30 (GMT+1). It will also be possible to follow the lecture on Zoom. To sign up, please email info@hegelpd.it for the Zoom link.

Abstract

There is much in Hegel’s philosophy—and particularly his social and political philosophy—that strikes us as archaic. The monarchy, the estates, the deep teleology, his philosophy of history, and even his certainty about the idea as a form of comprehension—all are central elements of his thinking that we may struggle to take seriously. And yet the surprising events of the 21st century thus far ought to humble us and make us doubt that we have ever been modern in the social way that these reactions presuppose. In contrast, I propose placing Hegel’s thought in its context of socio-political modernity by interpreting it as a response to the separation between traditional corporate society, the state, and modern civil society. That this separation continues as a tension in our own time is what makes Hegel our archaic contemporary.


You can watch the first five lectures on our youtube channel:

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