German Idealism

Contrary to Reinhold's theoretical discussion of Kant's philosophy, his practical critique and its underlying action theory and theory of freedom have been neglected in scholarship. In my paper, I shall reconstruct Reinhold’s practical philosophy after Kant. For that purpose, I will concentrate on the so-called “Reinhold’s Dilemma,” which concerns the problem of moral imputability in the case of evil actions in Kant. I show how Reinhold tried to escape this dilemma by introducing an elaborated action theory and theory of individual freedom. I shall argue that Reinhold’s account of freedom to act according and against the moral law is not best understood in terms of freedom of indifference, but rather in terms of a freedom to balance reasons on the basis of first and second-order volitions. I shall also discuss Kant’s attempt to escape Reinhold’s Dilemma in his late Metaphysics of Morals. Finally, I will evaluate Reinhold’s systematic siginificance by relating his theory of individual freedom with recent conceptions of volitional self-determination.

A overview of the "Self-Consciousness" chapter of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit.  I analyze the basic significance of each of the three themes of the chapter, (which Hegel calls "desire," "recognition," and "thought"), and I consider how the relationship between self and other is constituted in each of these fundamental relationships.

Band 12 der »Nachgelassenen Manuskripte und Texte« umfasst vor allem das gründlich ausgearbeitete Vorlesungsmanuskript der 1920/21 in Hamburg gehaltenen Vorlesung »Schillers philosophische Weltansicht«. Cassirer argumentiert darin in fünf Kapiteln für die innere Bedingtheit von philosophischem System und dichterischem Schaffen bei Schiller. In Schillers Werk sieht er einen neuen Stil in der Philosophie entstehen, der sich dadurch auszeichnet, dass der philosophische, abstrakte Gedanke je immer schon eine gestaltete Form hat und philosophische und künstlerische Momente in einem inneren Abhängigkeitsverhältnis stehen. Philosophische Weltansicht ist zugleich auch die Weltansicht des Künstlers, und Kunst erhält damit eine herausragende Stellung im System der geistigen Kultur.

Das Manuskript der Schiller-Vorlesung stellt neben dem Kapitel »Freiheitsproblem und Formproblem in der klassischen Ästhetik« in »Freiheit und Form« von 1916 die intensivste direkte Auseinandersetzung Cassirers mit Schiller dar. Der zeitgleich mit der Vorlesung erschienene Text aus »Idee und Gestalt«, »Die Methodik des Idealismus in Schillers philosophischen Schriften« (1921), erscheint vor dem Hintergrund des ausführlicheren Manuskripts als die Behandlung eines Spezialproblems – des Methodengedankens – innerhalb der größeren Fragen nach der Symbolfunktion der Kunst und der Rolle der ästhetischen Anschauung. Mit der Veröffentlichung des in diesem Band erschlossenen Manuskriptes wird auch deutlich, wie viel Cassirers eigene Antworten auf diese Fragen sich seiner Auseinandersetzung mit Schiller verdanken.

This essay discusses Swami Vivekananda’s unduly neglected critical remarks on Arthur Schopenhauer’s philosophy, which are contained primarily in lectures delivered in America and England between 1895 and 1896.  I argue that Vivekananda, one of the first commentators to critique Schopenhauer’s doctrine of the will from a Vedāntic standpoint, occupies a unique place in the late nineteenth-century reception of Schopenhauer’s philosophy.  To set the stage, I outline briefly in Part I the interpretations of two of Vivekananda’s contemporaries, Paul Deussen and Max Hecker, the pioneers in the field of Schopenhauer’s relation to Indian thought.  In Part II, I discuss Vivekananda’s critical remarks on Schopenhauer’s doctrine of the will and place them in dialogue with the views of Deussen and Hecker.  In contrast to Deussen and Hecker, Vivekananda claims that Schopenhauer equates the will with the noumenal thing in itself.  According to Vivekananda, Schopenhauer’s conception of the will as the noumenal reality is mistaken for two main reasons: first, the will is at least subject to time and hence cannot be identified with the Kantian thing in itself beyond time, space, and causality; second, Schopenhauer’s conception of the will as the noumenal thing in itself conflicts with the soteriological thesis that the will can be transcended through self-denial and asceticism.  Vivekananda also reproaches Schopenhauer for misinterpreting Vedānta, which conceives the noumenal reality not as the evil will but as the transcendental Ātman/Brahman beyond all willing and suffering.  In Part III, I argue that many of Vivekananda’s views on Schopenhauer’s doctrine of the will and its relationship to Vedānta and Buddhism find echoes in recent scholarly interpretations of Schopenhauer’s philosophy.

Both for Kant and for Nietzsche, aesthetics must not be considered as a systematic science based merely on logical premises but rather as a set of intuitively attained artistic ideas that constitute or reconstitute the sensible perceptions and supersensible representations into a new whole. Kantian and Nietzschean aesthetics are both aiming to see beyond the forms of objects to provide explanations for the nobility and sublimity of human art and life. We can safely say that Kant and Nietzsche used the dualities of the beautiful/sublime and Apollonian/Dionysian to advocate their general philosophical worldview, and that the initial formation (in Observations and The Birth of Tragedy) and final dissolution (in the Critique of Judgment and Zarathustra and other later works) of these dualities are determined by the gradually established telos of their philosophical endeavor. Therefore, by observing the evolution of these so-called dualities, Kaplama gathers important clues as to how Kant's and Nietzsche's aesthetics transformed into different ways to affirm human art and life. On the one hand, Kaplama argues, the Dionysian came to be the heart and soul of Nietzschean aesthetics and ethics, and the Apollonian (or the formal drive of individuation) was reduced into a mere aesthetic criterion. On the other, Kant treats the sublime (which is originally an idea-producing feeling and/or judgment) as a mere appendix to his Critique of Judgment and aesthetic theory teleologically reducing it into its possible moral consequences. This is why Schopenhauer calls the sublime " by far the most excellent thing in the Critique of Judgment " which touches on the real problem of aesthetics very closely but does not provide a real solution for it. Kant's forced teleological move is to make his theory of aesthetic judgment stand as a 'reaffirmation' of the www.cosmosandhistory.org 166

In this paper, I reply to the critics of my book, Hegel's Concept of Life, by taking up the question of how a science of pure thought thinking itself arrives at the conclusion that it must determine itself as life. In particular, I consider how the logical concept of life informs Hegel's understanding of subjects, objects, and ground, and I also take up the relationship between logic and Realphilosophie in Hegel's system. Throughout, I aim to clarify and elaborate on one of the central arguments from my book, namely, that for Hegel, life is the primitive or original form of judgment. In a book rife with obscure philosophical puzzles, one of the most difficult puzzles to emerge in reading the Science of Logic is the following: why does the science of pure thinking, a science of thought thinking itself, arrive at the conclusion that it must determine itself as life? Why must the self-comprehension of pure thought ultimately comprehend its own essential activity as the activity of life? Immediately, one is struck by the sheer difficulty of bringing together two intuitively distinct modes of engagement: the austerity, formality, and abstraction required by the pursuit of pure thinking and logic on the one hand, and the vitality, dynamism, and concreteness of the phenomenon of life on the other. Although readers of Hegel are no strangers to the bringing together of opposites, this particular case poses special problems, not least because the Logic provides the method and central categories (the "thought-determinations") that are operative throughout the remainder of Hegel's philosophical system. In what follows, I will try to respond to this puzzle by clarifying one of the central lines of argument from my book, namely, that for Hegel, life is the primitive or original form of judgment. I am immensely grateful to my critics for providing an occasion for me to do so, and for the generous, thoughtful engagement that one always hopes for in philosophical debate. Responding to their critical questions concerning how life figures in Hegel's understanding of subjectivity, objectivity, and ground, as well as how we can best understand the relation between logic and Realphilosophie, will hopefully help to resolve the problem of how pure thinking and life are connected in Hegel's system.

http://ojs.francoangeli.it/_omp/index.php/oa/catalog/book/510?fbclid=IwAR1kePaq_Yq-hpJUZ63DNFlz1dpKcQfE3UXX8VdxRnZYQmnWuyUTl3CpL7o

Il volume riunisce contributi che, rispondendo ad un’esigenza oggi molto sentita, si interrogano sui concetti di libertà, responsabilità e imputazione: si tratta di categorie fondamentali non solo in ambito morale, per definire la colpa del soggetto agente, ma anche in ambito giuridico, per definire una pena che sia equa e giusta.
I saggi qui presentati analizzano, da un lato, le condizioni di attribuzione di responsabilità e di libertà all’essere umano; dall’altro, rintracciano forme di libertà anche in riferimento alla natura (tradizionalmente compresa come regno della necessità) e all’indagine filosofica stessa. Si dispiegano così differenti prospettive, che risultano complementari nella comune ricerca di un fondamento filosofico.
A partire da un classico della filosofia antica, Platone, si giungerà, passando attraverso le concezioni della libertà di Leibniz, Kant e Fichte, alla filosofia di Hegel, di cui proprio nel 2020 si celebra il duecentocinquantesimo anniversario della nascita, proseguendo da qui verso la contemporaneità. Ci si interrogherà, infine, sul significato della pratica filosofica e sulla responsabilità che essa comporta.

Scritti di: G. Battistoni, G. Erle, S. Fuselli, P. Giuspoli, F.L. Marcolungo, F.
Menegoni, A. Moretto, A. Schmidt, K. Vieweg.

If we turn from Kant’s definition of prejudice in the 'Critique of the Power of Judgement' to that of Gadamer in 'Truth and Method', then a fundamental difference between them becomes apparent. Whereas Kant calls on us in the spirit of the Enlightenment to liberate ourselves from blind submission to prejudices, Gadamer speaks of prejudices as 'conditions of understanding' that constitute 'the historical reality of … being' (TM, 289).Thus, Gadamer, in contrast to Kant, attaches a positive meaning to the notion of prejudice.

Against the background of these contrasting conceptions of prejudice, I will argue that Gadamer's critique of reflecting judgement can be refuted through a precise analysis of Kant's concept. Starting with the distinction between determining and reflecting judgement, I will offer a more detailed explanation of the aesthetic principle underlying reflecting judgement (section 2). Then I will elucidate Gadamer's critique of Kant in terms of his notion of the hermeneutic circle (section 3), and go on to argue that Kant's conception involves a more innovative and reflexive component than that of Gadamer (section 4). In conclusion, I will offer some critical remarks on hermeneutics which will show that the methodology informing Gadamer's model is too conventionalist. It binds the subject to unquestionable traditional stipulations with regard to content and validity and is thus at odds with the principles of the Enlightenment.


Link to the paper: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110605389-017/html

In this paper I sketch the emergence of transcendence and immanence to the binary pair of opposites we know today. I show that such usage doesn't stretch back beyond Kant and that its real career only takes off in the 1830s. Major influences on this development are the debate about Spinoza's 'pantheism', Hegel's idealism, and the place of religion in the modern world. In a second part, I look at some historical scholarship of the time to illustrate how the duality of transcendence and immanence began to inform the reading of earlier religious history. I end by pointing to some new contexts that are beginning to emerge at the turn of the 20th century, notably Catholic thought, and which ensured that the popularity of that duality continued to grow.

Este texto foi elaborado para a discussão do (Neo)Hegelianismo aqui exposto no III Congresso Hegel em Diálogo: O Próprio Tempo Apreendido em Pensamento, realizado na Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, de 29 a 31 de agosto de 2018.
Resumo: Este artigo expõe sucintamente conceitos (filosofia, especulação, Absoluto, Razão, Sistema das Filosofias, Filosofia, Autoconsciência, em si e para si de uma autoconsciência, Sistema das Autoconsciências e Espírito) relativos a um (Neo)Hegelianismo atual, explicitando suas articulações e organização.

El libro es el resultado de una colección de conferencias del VIII Coloquio de Kant. Kants Vorlesungen, realizado en agosto de 2013 en la ciudad de Marília (Brasil). El texto tiene por base de su consideración las transcripciones de las lecciones realizadas por Kant para enseñar a sus estudiantes durante el período de su profesorado como Privatdozent (desde 1755) y como Ordinarius (desde 1770) en la Universidad de Königsberg. Esta obra cuenta con seis capítulos destinados a las lecciones de lógica, antropología, metafísica, derecho, ética y teología racional. En su totalidad el texto contiene diecisiete artículos precedidos por un ensayo que en su conjunto intentan explicar, cuestionar, contrastar y conectar lo mentado por Kant en sus lecciones con aquello publicado en el marco de su propia filosofía.

Language was of no particular importance for the early transcendentalists. Hence, Fichte's treatise on language from 1795 is unique in this respect. It is however not obvious how the theory of language is related to his Wissenschaftslehre and whether it bears any transcendental significance. The present paper shows that the theory of language is an indispensable part of Fichte's project. His account of language as an intention-based form of interaction between rational subjects is systematically linked to his theory of intersubjectivity: language is a necessary condition for the possibility of the mutual acknowledgment of autonomous, self-conscious persons.

The aim of the paper is to analyze the Hegelian interpretation of the notion of “irony” in the light of its evolution thorough the Berlin courses and in a comparison with the edition of the Ästhetik published by Hotho. The analysis of the last course of the 1828-29 is of particular importance, because there the notion of irony, which traditionally appears to be harshly criticized by Hegel, is taken as a decisive moment for the very concept of art. In this course, Hegel explicitly distinguishes between a “practical irony”, which he continues to criticize, and an irony that we could define as “artistic” or “aesthetic”, which he instead assumes as a significant moment in the constitution of the ideal. The discussion of this course can lead to a redefinition of Hegel’s interpretation of irony as it has been established by much of the critical tradition.

The essay argues that the portrayal as child-killers in 18th-century German infanticide poetry can be read as a direct literary descendant of the portrayal of women as children in bourgeois tragedies of the age. Both images constitute a specific projection of femininity by male authors which was mirrored neither in real-life infanticide cases nor in contemporaneous literature by women.

La poetologia della conoscenza di Heinrich von Kleist si configura come un viaggio nella mente umana, nelle sue capacità conoscitive e immaginative, nelle sue labilità e nei suoi trascendimenti. La totalità romantica è infranta e il linguaggio è il materiale magmatico di attraversamento del reale e della mente: in ciò si esprime un progetto epistemico che, muovendo dall’orizzonte biologico della corporeità, si realizza, in virtù della forza poietica del linguaggio, nella narrazione.

Sententiae. - 2010. - Vol. XXII (1)

The paper examines the history-of-philosophy component within the metatheory of experience which
is elaborated by Wolfgang Röd. The theory focuses its crucial attention on the reconstruction of connections
between varieties of patterns concerning a problem of experience, because of their revealing in the
universal self-reflection of mind.

In their works, Arthur Schopenhauer and the Japanese philosopher Kitarō Nishida combine Western attitudes with the Eastern traditions of Buddhism. While Schopenhauer, a Western thinker, loads his philosophy with sources from Indian writings (the Vedas and the Upanishads), Nishida is considered the first modern thinker in Japan to achieve a synthesis between East Asian and European philosophy. Both Schopenhauer and Nishida found themselves at the tail-end of German Idealism and share an attitude that is both anti-metaphysical and critical of reason, which expresses itself in a skepticism of conceptual thinking and knowledge. Schopenhauer seeks refuge in art by identifying aesthetic contemplation as a place of unity of subject and object and, at first, shifting the knowledge of truth to the intuitive consideration of artworks. Schopenhauer's subject of pure knowledge and its correlative, the idea, merge into one another in the act of aesthetic contemplation and enter a unity in which there is no longer a distinction between subject and object, knowing and known. In his earlier work, Nishida also ascribes to pure experience, as the foundation of all reality, similar attributes as those ascribed to the dissolution of subject-object-duality; the freedom from conceptual thought or judgment and the opening of the individual awareness for a different kind of unitary experience. While one can clearly establish a connection, with regards to content, between the characterization of pure experience of Nishida's early work and Schopenhauer's state of pure knowledge, the initial movement of the two types of experience, is, however, different. A comparison of the two philosophers is all the more interesting for the fact that Nishida had himself explored Schopenhauer's writings and made references to them; Nishida also considers a general “system of consciousness that transcends the individual” possible, which “can even be seen as the manifestation of a great, trans-individual will.” Both philosophers think of the transcendence of the individual as a globally immanent path to the ‘sublime’.

Co-edited and translated with Jacob van Sluis.

Vol 1 of the Edinburgh Edition of the Philosophical Works of François Hemsterhuis

The first ever English translation of François Hemsterhuis’ early series of philosophical letters published during the 1760s and 1770s

This complete edition publishes Hemsterhuis’ 'Letter on an Antique Gemstone', 'Letter on Sculpture', 'Letter on Desires', 'Letter on Man and his Relations' and 'Philosophical Description of the Character of the Late Mr. F. Fagel' chronologically to gradually reveal Hemsterhuis’ complete systematic vision.

These letters are supplemented by three introductions. The first by Peter Sonderen pinpoints the significance of Hemsterhuis’ remarkably influential aesthetics. The second by Jacob van Sluis provides the context to 'Letter on Man and his Relations'. And the third by Gabriel Trop focuses on the importance of these writings in the history of ideas, especially Herder’s translation and ‘Postscript’ to the 'Letter on Desires', Diderot’s commentary on the 'Letter on Man and his Relations' and Goethe’s incorporation of Hemsterhuis’ definition of beauty into his aesthetic reflections.

The book is available here for purchase: https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-early-writings-of-francois-hemsterhuis-1762-1773.html

More than a century after Guido Adler's appointment to the first chair in musicology at the University of Vienna, Music, Criticism, and the Challenge of History provides a first look at the discipline in this earliest period, and at the ideological dilemmas and methodological anxieties that characterized it upon its institutionalization. Author Kevin Karnes contends that some of the most vital questions surrounding musicology's disciplinary identities today-the relationship between musicology and criticism, the role of the subject in analysis and the narration of history, and the responsibilities of the scholar to the listening public-originate in these conflicted and largely forgotten beginnings.

In this paper I examine intellectual Intuition, Aufforderung and Pure Will in J. G. Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre Nova Methodo.  After considering the various senses in which Fichte used the term "intellectual intuition," I discuss the relations between intellectual intuition, Aufforderung, and pure will.

This volume examines Fichte's notion of the image in the systematic domains of ethics, philosophy of history, political philosophy, philosophy of language, aesthetics, and the philosophy of religion. Several contributions investigate from various viewpoints the central feature of Fichte's late philosophy that, in terms of image theory, human freedom is understood as the ability to understand oneself as the image of an absolute that transcends all appearances. These investigations reveal that Fichte's image theory underlies his late ethics, state theory, and educational conception and thus characterizes the peculiar meaning in which Fichte's late philosophy is still to be understood as an expression of an Enlightenment project that goes beyond mere theory. This volume also contains the three papers awarded with the "Fichte Prize for Young Researchers" in 2018. Der vorliegende Band untersucht Fichtes bildtheoretisches Denken von der Theorie der Einbildungskraft bis in die systematischen Bereiche der Ethik, der Geschichtsphilosophie, der politischen Philosophie, der Sprachphilosophie, der Kunsttheorie und der Religionsphilosophie. Dass die Freiheit des Menschen bildtheoretisch aus der in seinem Selbstbewusstsein angelegten Fähigkeit zu verstehen ist, sich als Bild eines alle Erscheinungen transzendierenden Absoluten zu verstehen, ist ein zentraler Gedanke der Spätphilosophie Fichtes, der in mehreren Beiträgen unter verschiedenen Fragestellungen in den Blick genommen und diskutiert wird. Dabei zeigt sich, dass diese These Fichtes seiner späten Ethik, Staatstheorie und Erziehungskonzeption zugrunde liegt und damit den eigentümlichen Sinn prägt, in dem auch Fichtes Spätphilosophie noch als Ausdruck eines über die bloße Theorie hinauszielenden Au lärungsprojekts zu verstehen ist. Der Band wird von drei Beiträgen beschlossen, die 2018 mit dem "Fichte-Preis für junge Forscher" ausgezeichnet wurden.

It will be shown that at least four foundational concepts of Cultural Historical Activity Theory were previously formulated by Hegel, viz., (1) the unit of analysis as a key concept for analytic-synthetic cognition, (2) the centrality of artifact-mediated actions, (3) the definitive distinction between goal and motive in activities, and (4) the distinction between a true concept and a pseudoconcept.

Nineteenth century Christian thought about self and relationality was stamped by the reception of Kant’s groundbreaking revision to the Cartesian cogito. For René Descartes (1596-1650), the self is a thinking thing (res cogitans), a simple substance retaining its unity and identity over time. For Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), on the other hand, consciousness is not a substance but an ongoing activity having a double constitution, or two moments: first, the original activity of consciousness, what Kant would call original apperception, and second, the reflected self, the “I think” as object of reflection. Both are essential to the possibility of an awareness of a unified experience. Such an awareness is achieved only insofar as the self is capable of reflecting on its activity of thinking. As such, the possibility of self-consciousness, or the capacity to reflect on one’s own acts of thought is essential to the constitution of the self. This new model of the mind became the starting point to the thought of central 19th century figures such as Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834), J. G. Fichte (1762-1814), Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) and Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855). This chapter will explore their reception of Kant’s model of self-consciousness, the controversies surrounding its development and exposition, and the advantages of this model for theological reflection. The idea of mind as essentially capable of reflection provided an account of how the self can stand in an ontologically immediate relation to God constitutive of the self, while at the same time allowing that the self’s consciousness of itself is distinct from this original moment, so that a limited or false consciousness of self is possible. As such the task of the self is to recognize (that is, to realize in and through self-consciousness) who it most truly is, both in relation to God, and in relation to self and other.

This article attempts to present the unity as well as the difference between Hegel's and Dewey's social philosophical approaches to struggles for recognition. It argues that interpreting Dewey's Lectures in China as a commentary on Hegel sheds new light on Dewey's social philosophy as a recognition theoretical whole. Furthermore, the resulting "experimentalist" account of recognitive relations, norms and values might turn out to present a fruitful perspective in contemporary discussions on recognition.

Hegel's "Philosophy of Spirit" applies two different notions of 'social practice'-one as a condition of possibility for intentional action and another one as the living actuality within which an action is initiated and takes place. Both notions go hand in hand with their own logically distinct form of normativity-social normativity and the normativity of right. Whereas the first one can already be understood from the standpoint of subjective spirit, the second notion is at home in objective spirit or Hegel's Rechtsphilosophie. Stressing this distinction has consequences not only for a more differentiated account on Hegel's philosophy of action, but also for an interpretation of ethical life-which should not be equated with the first notion of social practice. In order to mark the importance of ethical life for Hegel's Rechtsphilosophie, the relevance of objectivity for objective spirit needs to be highlighted, which according to Hegel cannot be derived from a process of inner transformation of changing attitudes of the acting subject towards the norms of her action. Hegel-Studien 53/54 (2020), S. 117-134

Classical mise-en-scène analysis elides an excess that, when revealed, exposes film’s figuration as a movement of appearing or Erscheinung – a revelation of “otherness” as the very constitution of film in its relation to the viewer. My aim is to undertake an analysis of this figuration in Terrence Malick’s film The Tree of Life, as the shining of the film in its possibilities – in what it reveals of itself as “other” to character and narrative drive. The essay responds to Steven Rybin’s analysis of The Tree of Life, recently published in this journal, which focuses on the acting style of Jessica Chastain who plays the mother in the O’Brien family, a typical mid-twentieth century family living in Waco, Texas. Rybin argues that Chastain’s acting style, and in particular her glances, resist male authority and project her own vision of the world. My analysis shows how the actor’s glances can be seen in terms of a more comprehensive vision enacted by the film which reveals an Erscheinung or revelatory appearance of “otherness” repeatedly shown throughout the film.

This essay argues that the methodological advantages and disadvantages that Hegel’s Natural Law essay (1802-03)  generated for the development of critical social theory become clearest in carefully reconstructing its analyses of the “tragedy of the ethical” and Aeschylus’s The Eumenides. The essay maintains that Hegel’s use of both is ambivalent. On the one hand, immediately preceding the introduction of The Eumenides, Hegel’s analysis prioritizes historical method: it develops an account of the potentially destructive processes at the core of modern European social life between the dictates of law, morality, and “absolute ethical life” by proceeding historically. On the other hand, the analysis’ introduction of “the absolute” and The Eumenides as “instruments of reconciliation” undermines its methodological commitment to developing these contradictory tensions and their resolution historically. Hegel’s methodological breakthrough insists on the priority of historical development but capitulates in the final analysis proposing resolution in terms of metaphor, knowledge, the perspective of “the absolute.” Tragedy and The Eumenides, consequently, offer us a precise sense of what is most valuable and problematic in the Natural Law essay, revealing the utmost limits of what this exploratory essay offered in the advancement of critical social analysis. Despite this setback, in concluding, the essay outlines a lasting advantage that follows from Hegel’s innovative methodology. It argues that The Natural Law essay remains significant for the history of critical social theory insofar as it remains open to the possibility of real overcoming. While its appeal to tragedy and the Eumenides might fail the very appeal itself indicates a commitment to the principle of overcoming. This commitment has potential insofar as it is pursued in terms of historical actuality: bypassing problematic structural instabilities at the core of the modern European nation state.