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THE PROJECT OF SPECULATIVE THINKING IN HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Lawrence Bruce-Robertson January 2014 © January 2014 Lawrence Bruce-Robertson THE PROJECT OF SPECULATIVE THINKING IN HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY Lawrence Bruce-Robertson, Ph.D. Cornell University 2014 This dissertation makes a contribution towards understanding Hegel's enigmatic conception of philosophy as system in which form and content are one and thinking rises to the divine perspective. I argue for the following interpretive view. We can understand an important part of what motivates Hegel's conception of philosophy by attending to a project in Plato's middle dialogues which demands that philosophy be a science of the Good (understood as the principle of all things). The Meno, Phaedo, Republic, and Parmenides develop a conception of philosophy as the journey towards a knowledge that is absolute and comprehensive, rational and teleological. (Such a knowledge cannot be construed as a species of belief.) Hegel transforms this Platonic project into a demand for a fully 'concrete' thinking. The least inadequate expression of what this is, outside of philosophy in its true form (which Hegel calls 'speculative'), demands the categories of religious representation in which the truth is thought of as a divine going forth and return to self, an activity of self-determining and knowing which has the structure of self-consciousness. The dialectic is best understood as a journey which ends in the (self-)discovery that in true philosophy we are this divine return - a kind of recollection which completes Plato's project of a science of the Good. The system, if complete, will just be our thinking in which we are no longer only referring to the content which is the truth, but are simply that content thinking itself. This is what concrete thinking is. In the Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit Hegel invites us to enter into a process which will reveal itself to be this concrete thinking that the Platonic project, as transformed by Hegel, has demanded. We are presented with two related aims of speculative thinking: to be free of anything that is pre- philosophical and to be complete by being self-justifying. Paralleling Descartes, the invitation takes the form of developing a deep enough skepticism about more ordinary forms of argument that we are open to discovering what the dialectic will reveal. Hegel's argument that the family is an ethical institution is one moment in that dialectic. I interpret this as presenting us with a compelling view of love which could not be adequately expressed if we were to re-construct it in such a way as to avoid Hegel's conception of philosophy. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Lawrence Bruce-Robertson received a B.A. (1985) in philosophy from the University of Toronto and an M.D. (1990) from the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, following this with training in internal medicine at Mt. Sinai hospital in New York city. He returned to the study of philosophy, earning an M.A. (1998) in Classics from Dalhousie University, and an M.A. (2006) and Ph.D. (2014) in philosophy from Cornell University. In August 2013 he took up the position of assistant professor in the Humanities at Grenfell Campus, Memorial University, Newfoundland, Canada. iii DEDICATION I dedicate this dissertation to my father, whose example of a life well-lived will always stand before me as an example to follow. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my parents, Dr. Alan Bruce-Robertson and Kathleen McCormick Bruce-Robertson, for their unconditional love and untiring support over the course of my unconventional trajectory. My father died before I began my graduate work at Cornell and my mother's continued support at a time when her own life was not easy is a noble example for me. I would like to thank my wife, Jane, and our children, Julia, Caroline and William, for their love, their patience, their inspiration and the joy they bring to my life. I would like to thank Fred Neuhouser, Andrew Chignell and Dick Boyd for their generous spirit of philosophical friendship during my time at Cornell. I would like to thank the Sage School of Philosophy and the Graduate School at Cornell for their support, which included a Sage Fellowship and teaching support, but went well beyond these. Some of the material in this dissertation began as papers written for Gail Fine and Fred Neuhouser. I am grateful for their comments on those early attempts to work out my own interpretive and philosophical position. Parts of chapters three and four were presented to the department workshop of the Sage School of Philosophy and I received much helpful feedback from the students and faculty who attended. An early version of chapter three was presented to a colloquium on "The Labor of the Concept," hosted by the Department of German Studies at Cornell. I am grateful to the organizers, Peter Gilgen and Andrew Chignell, for the invitation to present my research, and to the participants for their helpful responses. An early version of chapter four was presented to a graduate student conference, "Encountering Hegel," at Boston College and the lively discussion which ensued helped me to think about the v vi material from further angles. I was privileged to teach many very fine students at Cornell and King's College. They challenged me to be a better philosopher and teacher. I am grateful to a group philosophers and teachers at the University of Toronto who first introduced me to the life of the mind: Francis Sparshott, Larry Lynch, Emil Fackenheim, Lloyd Gerson, Graeme Nicholson and Zev Friedman. I am also grateful for the inspiration and teaching of a group of philosophers at King's College and Dalhousie University: Robert Crouse, Dennis House, Angus Johnston, Colin Starnes and Wayne Hankey. The force of their philosophical reflections and my experience teaching as a fellow in the Foundation Year Programme at King's College, along with the philosophical discussions among the fellows of the College (especially with David Peddle, Neil Robertson and Tom Curran), spurred me to embark on my doctoral work. Last, but not least, I would like to thank the Hegel reading group at Cornell, in particular Robin Sowards, Danielle St. Hilaire, Rob Lehman, Audrey Wasser, Aaron Hodges, Bradley Depew, Ari Linden, Tatiana Sverjensky, Carl Gelderloos, Johannes Wankhammer, and Bret Leraul. Our discussions together made actual the best that the academic life has to offer: intellectual engagement, imaginative openness and friendship. TABLE OF CONTENTS Biographical Sketch ................................................................................................................... iii Dedication .................................................................................................................................. iv Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................... v List of Abbreviations .................................................................................................................. ix Preface ........................................................................................................................................ xi CH. 1. Hegel and Plato: Philosophy as Theoria, the Science of the Absolute, Part I I. The Platonic Project .............................................................................................................. 1 I.1. Introduction .................................................................................................................. 1 I.2. The Beginning of a Platonic Project in the Meno ........................................................ 12 I.3. Plato’s Mature Project and Self-criticism in the Parmenides ...................................... 38 I.3.1. Overview ............................................................................................................ 38 I.3.2. Preliminary Questions: Is the theory of Forms presented in the Parmenides Plato's theory of the middle dialogues? Are the criticisms leveled at it internal to Plato's theory? ................................................................................... 40 I.3.3. The Philosophical Context of the Discussion Between Socrates and Parmenides as Implied by the Prologue of the Parmenides ............................... 54 I.3.4. An Overview of Some Important Features of the Theory of Forms as Found in the Phaedo ...................................................................................... 67 I.3.5. The Presentation and Criticism of the Theory of Forms in the Parmenides ...... 73 CH. 2. Hegel and Plato: Philosophy as Theoria, the Science of the Absolute, Part II II. Hegel's Transformation of the Platonic Project .................................................................... 98 II.1. Overview of the Platonic Project with Attention to Hegel's Interpretation of it ......... 98 II.2. Hegel's Transformation of the Platonic Project, an Interpretive View ........................ 106 II.3. The Result of Hegel's Transformation of the Platonic Project: Thinking that is Concrete and Free .............................................................................. 146 II.4. Hegel's Alternative Introduction to the System ........................................................... 162 II.5. Hegel's Critique of the Rationalists'