The University of Wollongong Philosophy Research Seminar Held in the CAPSTRANS Seminar Room 1003 (Building 19, Arts) on Wednesdays at 17.30, all are welcome.
28th May 2008 Dr. Jean-Philippe Deranty (Macquarie) The social mediation of practical self-relation. Critical implications of current debates on Hegel and recognition. Abstract The paper begins by identifying the main strands in the debate around recognition, and the question of how to interpret its main point of reference, the philosophy of Hegel. The first strand, associated with American writers, sees Hegel as providing a social-theoretical inflection to Kant's definition of freedom as rational self-determination. For these writers the question to which the Hegelian concept of recognition is the answer is that of the social mediation of individual action through practical reason. The other line of interpretation, associated with German social and ethical philosophy, rereads Hegel from the perspective of an intersubjectivistic theory of subjective formation and finds in recognition the term that best encapsulates the genetic and conceptual preconditions of subjective identity, and thus of normativity. The paper attempts to move the debate forward by drawing on studies on recognition recently conducted in France. In particular, the following central idea is borrowed from Emmanuel Renault: whilst it seems inevitable to use the language of practical reason to justify the validity of normative claims, this does mean that normative claims actually originate in practical reason. Rather, it is the intersubjective vulnerability of the subject caught up in different kinds of interactions that needs to be identified as the origin of normativity. This emphasis on subjective vulnerability allows one to take a critical stance, not only towards rationalist accounts of Hegel and recognition, but even towards the German, *intersubjectivistic* authors, as the latter can be shown to often deviate from their original insight and restrict themselves to an overly narrow definition of interaction. The paper finishes by pointing to some of the consequences that derive from this alternative approach to Hegel and recognition. This approach suggests firstly a new way of rereading the history of post-Kantian philosophy in its grappling with the normative foundations of modern society. It also leads to a reformulation of the method and scopes of critical theory, arguing especially for a return to a revised concept of alienation. With best wishes, Richard Dr. Richard Menary Lecturer in Philosophy and Research Seminar Convenor The University of Wollongong <http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/selpl/philosophy/UOW025977.html> Personal Webpage Book: Cognitive Integration Available from: <http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?PID=275285> Palgrave Macmillan and <http://www.amazon.com/Cognitive-Integration-Mind-Cognition-Unbounded/dp/140 398977X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-0660778-1972653?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1190152573&s r=8-1> Amazon
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