We are glad to give notice of the International Workshop “Hegel’s Metaphysics: Dead or Alive? On the contemporary relevance of Hegel’s metaphysics”.
Testifying an ongoing collaboration on the topic between Padua and Berlin, the workshop aims at making a step in the direction of assessing the relevance and interest of Hegel’s metaphysics in light of the most recent developments in meta-metaphysics and metaphilosophy, presenting new lines of research around the character of Hegel’s metaphysics and its potential contribution to contemporary debates.
The workshop will consist of two meetings, one held in Berlin (May 20th, 2022), and one held in Padua (January 9th-10th, 2023), and it will be held in German and English. It will be possible to attend in person or via zoom (for both in-person and zoom attendance, please register at paduaberlinworkshop@gmail.com)
The workshop is organized by Karen Koch (Freie Universität Berlin) and Elena Tripaldi (Università degli Studi di Padova/Freie Universität Berlin), with the help of Achim Wamssler (Free University of Berlin), and it is realized thanks to the sponsorship of the chairs of Theoretical Philosophy at the Università degli Studi di Padova, Luca Illetterati, and of History of Philosophy at the Freie Universität Berlin, Dina Emundts.
Speakers will be Michela Bordignon (Universidade Federal do ABC), Dina Emundts (Freie Universität Berlin), Rolf-Peter Horstmann (Humboldt Universität zu Berlin), Luca Illetterati (Università degli Studi di Padova), Karen Koch (Freie Universität Berlin), James Kreines (Claremont McKenna), Dean Moyar (John Hopkins University), Sebastian Rödl (Universität Leipzig), Elena Tripaldi (Freie Universität Berlin/Università degli Studi di Padova).
Please find a presentation of the workshop and the program below.
Workshop description:
For years, Hegel’s metaphysics has been identified with the “untimely”, “less appealing” when not downright scandalous and dangerous kernel of Hegel’s philosophy, being associated with the affirmation of totality and universality at the expense of contingency, historicity, and freedom.
Within the general philosophical debate, this led to an outright ban of Hegel’s philosophy as totalitarian and outdated. Within Hegel scholarship, this led to a tendency to focus on other, allegedly more relevant, parts of Hegel’s philosophy, like his Phenomenology and his Philosophy of Right.
Yet, over the last thirty years, Hegel’s metaphysics became the epicenter of the debate around Hegel’s contemporary relevance: it is by investigating the character of Hegel’s metaphysics that many interpreters today aim at defining the timeliness of Hegel’s philosophy.
This not only produced a revisiting of traditional interpretive questions concerning Hegel’s metaphysics, but also an exploration of the potential associations and combinations of Hegelian philosophy with contemporary theories.
Being focused on timeliness, of course, the debate on Hegel’s metaphysics has been influenced by the evolution of the (meta)-philosophical mainstream. Over the years, Hegel’s metaphysics has been connected to the most diverse, and even conflicting, contemporary theories: internalist realism, direct realism, semantic holism, contemporary ontology, metaphysics of kinds, modal actualism, realism of universals, just to name a few.
Nevertheless, the debate on the relevance of Hegel’s metaphysics seems to have not yet explored all the possible interactions between Hegel’s work and today’s metaphysics. In the last few years, in fact, the meta-metaphysical and meta-philosophical landscape has undergone changes so dramatic, that it has been hard for Hegel interpreters to keep up with them. Influenced by the progressive deconstruction of analytic philosophy’s suspect for “ambitious” metaphysics, on the one hand, and by the need for a conceptual framework able to grasp complexity and dynamism highlighted by feminist and environmental analysis, on the other, the contemporary accepted notion of metaphysics is radically and rapidly changing.
The workshop aims at making a step in the direction of assessing the relevance and interest of Hegel’s metaphysics in light of the most recent developments in metametaphysics and metaphilosophy, presenting new lines of research around the character of Hegel’s metaphysics and its potential contribution to contemporary debates.
Program
Berlin, May 20th, 2022
(Freie Universität Berlin – Institut für Philosophie, Vortragsraum, Habelschwerdter Allee 30)
9.30 Welcome
Session I
Chair- Achim Wamssler (Freie Universität Berlin)
10.00 Luca Illetterati (Università degli Studi di Padova) – “Hegel and the Metaphysics of Naturalism”
11.15 Break
11.30 Elena Tripaldi (Freie Universität Berlin/Università degli Studi di Padova) – “The Timely Untimeliness of Hegel’s Metaphysics”
12.45 Lunch
Session II
Chair: Lilja Walliser (Freie Universität Berlin)
14.00 James Kreines (Claremont McKenna College) – “The Poisoned Chalice of Metaphysical Grounding: Towards German Idealism and Hegel’s Metaphysical Idealism”
15.15 Break
15.30 Dean Moyar (John Hopkins University) – “Ameliorative Metaphysics and Hegel’s Unification of the True and the Good”
16.45 Break
17.00 Roundtable
Padua – January 9th-10th, 2023
(Università degli Studi di Padova – FISPPA, Sala delle Edicole, Piazza Capitaniato 3)
Jan 9th
9.30 Welcome
Session I
Chair: Luca Corti (Università degli Studi di Padova)
10.00 Dina Emundts (Freie Universität Berlin) – TBA
11.15 Break
11.30 Karen Koch (Freie Universität Berlin) – TBA
12.15 Lunch
Session II
Chair: Giovanna Miolli (Università degli Studi di Padova)
14.00 Sebastian Rödl (Universität Leipzig) – TBA
15.15 Break
15.30 Michela Bordignon (Universidade Federal do ABC) – TBA
Jan 10th
9.30 Welcome
Session III
Chair: Luca Illetterati (Università degli Studi di Padova)
10.00 Rolf-Peter Horstmann (Humboldt Universität zu Berlin)
11.15 Break
11.30 Roundtable
