2006

THE SOCIETY FOR GERMAN IDEALISM

The SGI had a paper session at the 2006 Pacific APA, on March 25, in Portland at the Hilton Portland & Executive Tower.

Saturday evening, March 25, 6:00-9:00

Paper session

David Ciavatta (Northern Arizona University)

On Burying the Dead: The Role of Ritual in Hegel's Account of Spirit

I suggest that Hegel's interpretation of burial rituals in the Phenomenology is actually an essential part of his understanding of the realization of human freedom. I compare his account of burial rituals to his account of the slave's labor in particular, for both involve the realization of freedom through concrete transformation of nature. I then argue that rituals can be understood as a form of "spiritual labor," whereby the truth of human freedom comes to be realized in a symbolic form; I suggest that this form of symbolic realization is indispensable to Hegel’s account of spirit.

Barbara Hannan (University of New Mexico)

Schopenhauer on Freedom, Responsibility, and Character

Schopenhauer's views on freedom and responsibility are often misunderstood and misrepresented, primarily because people have not read Schopenhauer's work in its entirety. Taking into account all of Schopenhauer's work on the subject, including the appendix to the Prize Essay on Freedom of the Will (on what Schopenhauer calls "intellectual freedom") I argue that Schopenhauer's view is best described as a sophisticated form of compatibilism, anticipatory of today's mainstream views in philosophy of law.

Jeffrey Reid (University of Ottawa)

Chaos and System in Friedrich Schlegel's Progressive, Universal Poetry

This paper shows how F. Schlegel's concepts of wit, irony and the fragment are related through a certain relationship between chaos and system. The creative nature of this relationship is presented as stemming from two contemporary intellectual models: Fichte’s self-positing I and Galvanic notions of electrochemical reactions.

Chair: Aaron Bunch (Lewis & Clark College)

The Society for German Idealism

Updated on 25 May 2013