Michael J. Thompson - Hegel’s Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Politics

MICHAEL J. THOMPSON

Part I
The Relation of Hegels Metaphysics and Political Theory

PETER J. STEINBERGER

ANDREW BUCHWALTER

ANGELICA NUZZO

ERIC GOODFIELD

Part II
Ontology, Metaphysics and Practical Reason

MICHAEL J. THOMPSON

SEBASTIAN STEIN

MICHAEL MORRIS

KEVIN THOMPSON

Part III
Metaphysics, History and the Structures of Ethical Life

CHRISTOPHER YEOMANS

JOSHUA D. GOLDSTEIN

DAVID KOLB

MATTHEW J. SMETONA

Michael J. Thompson

We live in a decidedly anti-metaphysical and even post-metaphysical age, or so we are told. Influential currents in contemporary social, moral and political philosophy, in particular, have been dominated in recent years by a perspective that places emphasis on a constructivist and pragmatic turn, where we are asked to focus on practices of the exchange of reasons, of recognition, justifications, and the kinds of social action that can generate discursive relations of rational agreement on moral questions and problems. This is viewed as non- or post-metaphysical in the sense that any kind of ontological quality to the objective world is no longer assumed, nor is there any legitimacy to claims of transhistorical forms of meaning or substance. As Jrgen Habermas has lucidly framed the post-metaphysical conception of modernity, it

is characterized by a rejection of the substantive rationality typical of religious and metaphysical worldviews and by a belief in procedural rationality and its ability to give credence to our views in the three areas of objective knowledge, moral-practical insight, and aesthetic judgment.

For Habermas, and many other contemporary philosophers, Hegels metaphysics has been grouped together with the pre-critical metaphysical doctrines of Western philosophical thought. The move toward a pragmatic, procedurally and intersubjective-cognitivist stance has led even further toward a cleavage between Hegels metaphysical project and the self-described aims of modernity. Objectivity is now construed as the congealed practices and agreements to which rational agents commit themselves. But what has been lost is a connection to the social as more than our cognitive and epistemic practices. Gone from view now is the idea that the social itself as a category possesses ontological weight, that there is some richness to it being distinct from its parts. The fact that Hegel has been decidedly swept up in this new paradigm shift therefore raises serious questionsquestions with which the essays gathered in this volume seek to grapple.

The reasons for revisiting Hegels metaphysical and ontological project are perhaps an important concern to address. One cause for this reexamination of Hegel can be found not in the academic world of technical philosophy but in the increasing pressures of the culture and institutions of the liberal conception of society and the individual, on one hand, and from the deepening effects of market capitalism, on the other. In both cases, we have been asked to consider the idea that the social world does not have ontological validity but is, instead, the result of the intentional actions of individuals. The concept of the good, indeed of the good as a common good, as a normative category has been displaced by the idea of individual conceptions of the good. The shift away from Hegels metaphysical ideas was carried forward by the emergence and dominance of analytic philosophy in Anglo-American thought throughout the postwar years. A move away from the metaphysical ideas at the heart of Hegels project, not to mention the increasingly hostile political environment in which American philosophy operated in the shadow of anti-communist activities in the 1950s, meant a shift away from the concerns of continental metaphysics. The very idea that the social can be seen as possessing metaphysical or ontological features has granted the liberal-individualist thesis more weight than it deserves, and Hegels contributions to understanding modernityits promises as well as its current pathologiesare largely concealed from view.