We are pleased to give notice of this year’s Bochumer Hegel-Vorlesung, that will be held by Prof. Sally Sedgwick (University of Chicago). The lecture’s title is “Zweck und Notwendigkeit in Hegels Geschichtsphilosophie“.

The lecture will take place on June 20th 2017 in the Hörsaal H-GA, GA building at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. The lecture will begin at 6.15 p.m.

Please find the abstract and the flyer of the lecture below:

Hegel defends the thesis that a proper philosophy of history must rely on the idea of purpose. He insists, moreover, that not any idea of purpose will do. If our philosophy of history is to qualify as a genuine “science”, our narrative must reveal connections that are somehow “necessary”. Our philosophy of history can only satisfy this condition, however, if the idea of purpose unifying our narrative is of the right kind. Our idea of purpose, Hegel says, must be “internal” or “inner” versus “external”. In this lecture, I explore Hegel’s treatment of this distinction. I identify features of the internal purpose that, in Hegel’s view, unifies events of world history in a narrative that is “necessary”.