Jon Stewart


Ph.d., Dr. habil. theol. & phil.
Institute of Philosophy
Slovak Academy of Sciences

 
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Institute of Philosophy
Slovak Academy of Sciences               

Institute of Philosophy
Slovak Academy of Sciences
Klemensova 19
811 09 Bratislava
Slovak Republic

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Upcoming Seminar dedicated to exploring the book

Hegel’s Century: Alienation and Recognition in a Time of Revolution

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2021.

January 19, 2023

Bratislava International School of Liberal Arts

Read more here




Interview in The Slovak Spectator about Hegel's Century and Slovak Philosophy



Interview, Slovac Spectator








Moller Immortality

Poul Martin Møller's "Thought on the Possibility of Proofs of Human Immortality" and Other Texts 

Translated and edited by Finn Gredal Jensen and Jon Stewart

Leiden: Brill 2022

A classicist, philosopher, and poet, Poul Martin Møller was an important figure in the Danish Golden Age. After the early death of his wife in 1834, Møller was plunged into an extended period of depression. This traumatic event led him to think more profoundly about the question of the immortality of the soul. Møller had long been interested in Hegel’s philosophy, and this same issue was central to the then current debates in the Hegelian school. In 1837 he published his most important philosophical treatise, “Thoughts on the Possibility of Proofs of Human Immortality with Regard to the Latest Literature on the Subject.” This work gave an overview of the German debates about the issue and Møller’s own critical evaluation of them. It was read and commented upon by the leading figures of the Golden Age, such as Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Frederik Christian Sibbern, and Søren Kierkegaard. It proved to be the last important work that Møller wrote. He died in March of 1838 at the age of 43.


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An Introduction to Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion: Philosophy of Religion

The Issue of Religious Content in the Enlightenment and Romanticism

Oxford: Oxford University Press 2022

This work attempts to give a basic introduction to Hegel’s religious thinking by seeing it against the backdrop of the main religious trends in his own day that he was responding to, specifically, the Enlightenment and Romanticism. The study provides an account of the criticism of religion by key Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire, Lessing, Hume, and Kant. This is followed by an analysis of how the Romantic thinkers, such as Rousseau, Jacobi and Schleiermacher, responded to these challenges. For Hegel, the views of these thinkers from both the Enlightenment and Romanticism tended to empty religion of its content. The goal that he sets for his own philosophy of religion is to restore this lost content. A detailed account is given of Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion with an eye to the issue of the content of religious faith. It is argued that the basic ideas of the Enlightenment and Romanticism are still present today and that this remains an important issue for both academics and non-academics, regardless of their religious orientation.


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Hegel’s Century: Alienation and Recognition in a Time of Revolution
  

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2021

The book is the category winner in philosophy
in the 2021 Prose Awards
of the Association of American Publishers
Read more about the award here


See the homepage of the Slovak Academy of Sciences

See the homepage of the Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences


The book has been awarded the 
Slovak Academy of Sciences Prize
for Scholarly work for 2021
Jon Stewart Prize 2022

June 30, 2022


Many students who attended Hegel’s lectures in Berlin in the 1820s recalled with nostalgia in later life the stimulating intellectual environment that radiated from the ideas they heard in his lecture hall. This atmosphere still existed a decade after his death, as zealous students continued to flock to Berlin to study with Hegel’s students in the 1840s. Over the coming decades these students would come to constitute the leading lights in Continental philosophy in the nineteenth century: Feuerbach, Bauer, Kierkegaard, Engels, Marx, Bakunin, and others. The present work is an introduction to the history of this development. It takes as its point of departure two concepts that originated in Hegel’s Jon Stewart, Hegel's CenturyPhenomenology of Spirit, namely, alienation and recognition. Hegel’s students of both the first and the second generation all appropriated these concepts, among others, and applied them indifferent contexts. It is argued that the broad constellation of problems surrounding these rich ideas can be seen as providing a central theme of philosophy in the nineteenth century. The work also sketches how these concepts constituted a broader cultural phenomenon as they spilled over into a number of other fields as well, including religion, politics, literature, and drama. Later in the twentieth century they were also taken up in the then budding social sciences, especially sociology and psychology. These concepts thus represent a key element in the nineteenth century’s contribution to the history of philosophy.

Download the flyer here


Reviews


"It is often thought that Hegel's philosophy fell into a rather deserved obsolescence by the middle of the nineteenth century. But Hegel's Century shows that even while Hegelianism waned, Hegel's concerns with alienation and recognition continued to set the agenda for European philosophy, both inside and outside the universities. It offers a magisterial yet accessible guide to those thinkers, mystics, and revolutionaries who appropriated these Hegelian themes for radically new purposes."

Mark Alznauer - Northwestern University


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“In this wide-ranging and important study, Jon Stewart provides a convincing account of Hegel’s influence on the philosophy that came after him, focusing on the themes of alienation and recognition. Following these themes through a range of central thinkers, from Heine through to Engels, he shows how the shadow cast by Hegel was a long one – and that we are living with these issues still. Stewart is an engaging, well informed and perceptive guide to this central tradition in the history of ideas, and will bring the debates alive for a range of different audiences.”
Robert Stern, University of Sheffield

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“Among other things, this book is to be celebrated for its clarity and breadth of exposition. In an age of increasing academic specialization, Stewart shows great range in tackling such a broad theme from such an intellectually active century. This work spans the fields of at least philosophy, theology, literature, and political theory, and displays a commanding knowledge of central texts from the period and the socio-historical context in which they appear.”

Hegel’s Century is a great book for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and even professors who would like to get a better sense of Hegel’s impact on the philosophical world, or would like to know a bit more about the intellectual climate of the nineteenth century. Its analyses are clear and instructive, and I will continue to use it in my classes.”
Joshua Wretzel, International Journal of Philosophical Studies, vol. 30, April 2022, pp. 1-4.




Download Recent Articles



"The Complexity of History of Reception: Hegel, Heiberg, and the Nature of Philosophical Inquiry," Scandinavica, vol. 61, no. 1, 2022

Notes to a Marxist Phenomenology: The Body and the Machine in Engels’ The Condition of the Working Class in England,” Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai. Philosophia, vol. 67, no. 1, 2022 (special issue, Hand—Work/Labor—Matter, ed. by Jaroslava Vydrová and Michal Lipták), pp. 75-99.
Download the article as pdf.

Kierkegaard como hegeliano,” El Arco y la Lira: Tensiones y Debates Filosóficos, no. 9, 2021, pp. 161-167. 

El concepto de realidad en Kierkegaard y la influencia de Schelling,” El Arco y la Lira: Tensiones y Debates Filosóficos, no. 9, 2021, pp. 33-47.


"Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion as a Phenomenology," in Filozofia, vol. 75, no. 5, 2020, pp. 386-400.


"The Crisis of the Danish Golden Age as the Problem of Nihilism," in The Crisis of the Danish Golden Age and Its Modern Resonance, edited by Jon Stewart and Nathaniel Kramer, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press 2020 (Danish Golden Age Studies, vol. 12), pp. 123-168.

For more downloadable articles click here.




Forthcoming Publications

A History of Nihilism in the Nineteenth Century:
Confrontations with NothingnessStewart, Nihilism

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2023

The twentieth century is the period best known for thematizing the issue of nihilism with, for example, the works of the existentialists. For this reason, most philosophical or literary histories of this topic start with Nietzsche and move on from there. This study aims to show that the background for the tradition of twentieth-century nihilism was already well established in the nineteenth century. The thesis of the work is that the true origin of modern nihilism can be found in the rapid development of the sciences in the Enlightenment that established a new secular worldview that gradually displaced the old religious one. The modern scientific view presented a picture of human beings as increasingly small and insignificant in the vastness of space and time. This led to discussions about and literary portrayals of different issues related to nihilism in the first half of the nineteenth century, long before Turgenev and Nietzsche made the term fashionable. Drawing on the importance of Enlightenment science, this work tries to gain insight into the nature and development of nihilism in the nineteenth century.



Recent Publications



Check out the new articles:

The Misnomer of Relativism in the Modern World: The Rise of Individualism"
in the online journal Culturico
(21 May, 2021):





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“What is it to be Human? The Dominance of Subjectivity,” in the online journal Aeon (2 November, 2020):


Aeon article front page


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The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism and Existentialism

Edited by Jon Stewart

Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2020

This Handbook explores the complex relations between two great schools of continental philosophy: German idealism and existentialism. While the existentialists are commonly thought to have rejected idealism as overly abstract and neglectful of the concrete experience of the individual, the chapters in this collection reveal that the German idealists in fact anticipated many key existentialist ideas. A radically new vision of the history of continental philosophy is thereby established, one that understands existentialism as a continuous development from German idealism.



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The Emergence of Subjectivity in the Ancient and Medieval World:
An Interpretation of Western Civilization

Oxford: Oxford University Press 2020


This work presents a philosophical analysis of the development of Western Civilization from antiquity to the Middle Ages. It traces the various self-conceptions of the different cultures from ancient Mesopotamia to Medieval Christendom. The thesis is that as human civilization took its first tenuous steps, it had a very limited conception of the individual. Instead, the dominant principle was the wider group: the family, clan or people. Only in the course of history did the idea of individuality begin to emerge. The conception of human beings as having an inner sphere of subjectivity subsequently had a sweeping impact on all aspects of culture and largely constitutes what is today referred to as modernity.

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The Crisis of the Danish Golden Age and Its Modern Resonance

Edited by Jon Stewart and Nathaniel Kramer

Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press 2020

(Danish Golden Age Studies, vol. 12)

 

The historical circumstances of the Danish Golden Age are well known: the Napoleonic Wars, the bombardment of Copenhagen, the state bankruptcy in 1814 with the ensuing financial crisis, the Revolution of 1848, and the establishment of a parliamentary democracy in 1849. There were peasant reforms, religious upheavals, and changes in class and social structures. These events constituted the milieu in which the Golden Age was born and developed. The guiding idea of the present volume is that these different crises served not just as a backdrop or as obstacles but rather as catalysts for the flowering of culture in the Golden Age.

Despite their many debates and polemics among themselves, the leading figures of Golden Age Denmark were generally in agreement about the fact that their age was in a state of crisis. The dramatic events spilled over into the various cultural spheres and shaped them in different ways. The articles in this volume trace the different crises as they appear in literature, criticism, religion, philosophy, politics and the social sciences. The contributing authors draw compelling parallels between the perceived crisis of the Golden Age and the acute issues of our own day. The articles collected here thus together show the continuing relevance of the Golden Age for readers of the twenty-first century.

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Faust, Romantic Irony, and System:
Kierkegaard and German culture cover
German Culture in the Thought of Søren Kierkegaard


Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press 2019

(Danish Golden Age Studies, vol. 11)


Kierkegaard readers are familiar with his dogged polemic with Hegelianism, his critique of Friedrich von Schlegel’s Romantic irony, and his visit to Schelling’s lectures in Berlin. However, these are only a few well-known examples of a much deeper relation of influence and inspiration. Kierkegaard read German fluently and was interested in many different authors and thinkers from the German-speaking countries. The auction catalogue of his personal library reveals a wealth of works in German from a number of different fields. Given his famous criticisms of the Hegelians, Schlegel, and Schelling, one might be tempted to believe that Kierkegaard was anti-German. But this is clearly not the case since he had high praise for some German thinkers such as Hamann, Lessing and Trendelenburg. The present work is dedicated to an exploration of Kierkegaard’s relation to different aspects of Germanophone culture. Its goal is to gain a better appreciation of the importance of the various German sources for his thought. The points of contact are so numerous that it can truly be said that if it were not for the influence of German culture, Kierkegaard would not have been Kierkegaard and the Danish Golden Age would not have been the Golden Age.


Reviews

"This text leaves the reader with an entirely new perspective on Kierkegaard. Of course, Kierkegaard readers knew that the Dane was in dialogue with Hegel and that he occasionally refers to German theologians or literary figures, but the vast scope of this usage has gone unnoticed. Stewart demonstrates beyond a doubt that virtually all of Kierkegaard’s writings and indeed his academic agenda itself were in some way shaped by German thought. Indeed, Kierkegaard would never have been the thinker that he was without his interaction with the German intellectual tradition. This is an exciting new perspective that breaks with traditional wisdom....Jon Stewart’s new book Faust, Romantic Irony, and System: German Culture in the Thought of Søren Kierkegaard is of a very high academic standard, and it contributes in many respects new insights and promising perspectives to research in the field. The work will be highly relevant not only for researchers and scholars but for the general reader too."

István Czakó,  Pázmány Péter Catholic University
 
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"The Scandinavian countries have long been receptive to cultural currents flowing northward from the south. This has been especially the case as concerns Denmark in its relation to German culture, and this influx of ideas was particularly intense during the Danish Golden Age. Stewart’s manuscript covers a broad swath of these influences in exploring Kierkegaard’s entanglement in various aspects of Germanophone culture. Stewart’s work intends to cultivate greater appreciation of the significance of these sources for Kierkegaard’s creative work. Therefore, source work research is the functioning methodology that has allowed Stewart to identify the nature, scope, and extent of effects streaming from particular authors, writings, topics, and issues to shape Kierkegaard’s deliberations.....In every chapter the probing into the subject matter runs deep. Generally, the reader learns much about the social location of each author considered, the primary writings this figure has produced, major themes that have been addressed, Kierkegaard’s awareness of the figure, writings, and themes, and ways in which Kierkegaard was influenced by them. The highest level of scholarship informs all of these queries. An unsurpassed level of academic excellence is at work in the employment of the chosen research methodology, in the careful textual analysis of writings influencing and influenced, in the lucid articulation of the findings, and in the steadfast pursuit of carrying out the investigation in a purposeful manner."
Curtis L. Thompson, Thiel College

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Hegel’s Interpretation of the Religions of the World: The Logic of the Gods cover
The Logic of the Gods

Oxford: Oxford University Press  2018
xix+321pp.

In his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Hegel treats the religions of the world under the rubric “the determinate religion.” This is a part of his corpus that has traditionally been neglected since scholars have struggled to understand what philosophical work it is supposed to do. The present study argues that Hegel’s rich analyses of Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Egyptian and Greek polytheism, and the Roman religion are not simply irrelevant historical material, as is often thought. Instead, they play a central role in Hegel’s argument for what he regards as the truth of Christianity. Hegel believes that the different conceptions of the gods in the world religions are reflections of individual peoples at specific periods in history. These conceptions might at first glance appear random and chaotic, but there is, Hegel claims, a discernible logic in them. Simultaneously a theory of mythology, history and philosophical anthropology, Hegel’s account of the world religions goes far beyond the field of philosophy of religion. The controversial issues surrounding his treatment of the nonEuropean religions are still very much with us today and make his account of religion an issue of continued topicality in the academic landscape of the 21st century.

Reviews

"Hegel's Interpretation of the Religions of the World is a thorough study of a neglected aspect of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s philosophy of religion: the role of history in Hegel’s overall philosophical construction.  . . . Stewart’s book must be regarded as an extremely valuable piece of scholarship for both philosophers of religion and—more importantly—scholars of religion."   
Nickolas P. Roubekas, Reading Religion

Read the full review here

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"Stewart documents the way in which Hegel used his sources to explain how various world religions made sense in the broader context of their conceptions of humanity, divinity, and individuality ... Although the author does not spare Hegel from criticism, he demonstrates that the philosopher's approach to non-Christian traditions was far from an exercise in parochial apologetics; rather, it represented a decisive step in the direction of a contemporary multicultural understanding of religion ... Recommended." J. A. Gauthier, CHOICE

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“Stewart has the requisite expertise, and he has written an important book. He possesses a mastery of the many sources utilized by Hegel; he shows the pivotal position of Determinate Religion in the lectures as a whole; he reveals many connections between the lectures on religion and those on the philosophy of world history and the history of philosophy; he discusses the rise of Orientalism in the nineteenth century and Hegel’s role in it; he analyzes the impact of G. F. Creuzer on Hegel; and he demonstrates the connection between “the logic of the gods,” human self-recognition, and the slow progression of freedom in culture and history.” Peter C. Hodgson, “Hegel’s Interpretation of Determinate Religion: Analysis of the Scholarship Issues,” The Owl of Minerva, vol. 52, nos. 1-2, 2021, pp. 6-7.

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“Jon Stewart’s important recent book Hegel’s Interpretation of the Religions of the World examines Hegel’s account of what he called “Determinate Religion,” the title of the second, massive part of the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. In the four different iterations Hegel gave of these lectures during his Berlin years, the attention of this crucial section was devoted to an ever-expanding and changing exploration of the great world traditions of religious thought and experience. Stewart’s careful sifting of the wealth of sources that Hegel used for this part of his lectures is key for any attempt at understanding Hegel’s changing stance on issues like religious pluralism and the larger relation between his conception of history and the systematic concerns that lie behind Hegel’s account of religion and Absolute Spirit more broadly.”
Allen Speight, “The Sphinx and the Veil of Isis: Enigmas of Interpretation in Hegel’s Determinate Religion and Its Relation to Hegel’s History of Art,” The Owl of Minerva, vol. 52, nos. 1-2, 2021, p. 11.

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“With Hegel’s Interpretation of the Religions of the World, Jon Stewart has amply carried out his ‘wish to explore in detail Hegel’s historical interpretation of these various world religions.’ In so doing, he has provided a context within which to appreciate the content of Hegel’s interpretations. He has successfully argued in favor of the importance of the determinate religions for a fuller understanding of Hegel on the consummate religion. He has as well and, especially important, prepared the way for further historically oriented studies in Hegel’s philosophy of determinate religion. And he has, in effect, launched a challenge to develop a contemporary Hegelian phenomenology of determinate religion, namely, to paint anew philosophy’s gray in gray.”
Dale M. Schlitt, “Hegel on Determinate Religion: Claims, Challenges, Conclusions,” The Owl of Minerva, vol. 52, nos. 1-2, 2021, p. 48.

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“…we all stand in debt to Jon Stewart’s masterful new synthesis, Hegel’s Interpretation of the Religions of the World: The Logic of the Gods, for what he achieves is nothing less than an ac­count of Hegel’s philosophy of religion that begins to do justice to Hegel’s own unique conception of what a history of religions must be. He does this by integrating Hegel’s discussions of various religions in the lecture courses on the philosophy of religion, especially the accounts offered in the long neglected determinate religion section, with treatments taken from the lec­tures on the philosophy of art, the history of philosophy, and world history, which provide a broader view of the historical and cultural worlds in which those religious belief-systems and practices arose and flourished. Stewart of­fers us a richly detailed overview, in the best sense of that term, one that is buttressed by significant discussions focused on the state of academic studies at the time when the various religions that Hegel examines were prominent; and he also identities and explores the most pivotal sources that Hegel uses to construct his accounts. This latter dimension of Stewart’s work enables him to advance significantly our understanding not only of Hegel’s history of religions, but also the concrete and varied ways in which that history was shaped by Eurocentrism. In this way, Stewart’s philological work contributes to an interpretation of Hegel on religion that brings a broadened view of his thought into important contemporary debates about the role of religion in society and the problems of a deeply and profoundly pluralistic world…. Let me conclude then by once again recalling that Hegel’s Interpretation of the Religions of the World marks a significant advance, in my judgment, in the burgeoning scholarship on Hegel’s account of determinate religions and his project for a history of religions more broadly….students of Hegel’s philosophy of religion will, no doubt, remain in Stewart’s debt for years to come.”
Kevin Thompson, “Hegel’s History of Religions: The Speculative Method in the Philosophy of Religion,” The Owl of Minerva, vol. 52, nos. 1-2, 2021, p. 119, p. 134.

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“There is much to admire in Jon Stewart’s recent book. His argument is clearly stated, judiciously elaborated, and persuasively defended. His prose is bracingly clear and mercifully devoid of jargon, pseudo-technical sophistications, and other writerly conceits. His erudition is on full display as he samples and measures a vast secondary literature spanning multiple languages and scholarly traditions. Moreover, his appreciation of Hegel’s achievement is guided neither by partisan affinity nor by unwarranted or anachronistic criticism. Most notably, perhaps, his attention to the basic structure of Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion enables him to bring to bear on the discussion of religion the more familiar Hegelian thesis that reveals a teleological progression, in which successive conceptions of freedom and subjectivity emerge. As a result, the Hegel who emerges from this study is appropriately contextualized and eminently accessible to curious readers.”
Daniel Conway, “Exemplarity and Its Discontents: On the Hegelian Futures of Religion,” The Owl of Minerva, vol. 52, nos. 1-2, 2021, p. 137.

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See the special issue of the journal Owl of Minerva dedicated to this book.

See the online article about the book.




News


New Editor for Philosophy Series Published by Brill


Studies in the History of Western Philosophy

Series:
Value Inquiry Book Series

Editor: Jon Stewart

Today research in the history of Western philosophy is a global phenomenon. The series features the work of leading scholars from the different subfields, regardless of where they are found in the world. Philosophy is a discipline substantially enriched by a broad dialogue of perspectives that transcend the local contexts – the Studies in the History of Western Philosophy series provides a forum for this dialogue. The series also strives to showcase the modern importance and relevance of the history of Western philosophy to pressing issues of our day. This series seeks single-author monographs and collected-author volumes that demonstrate that the texts, figures and debates from the history of the Western tradition are still very much alive in the academic field of philosophy, and in many areas beyond its conventional boundaries.


First volume of the series under the new editorship:

Modern and Postmodern Crises of Symbolic Structures:
Essays in Philosophical Anthropology


Edited by Peter Šajda
Leiden and Boston: Brill 2021


In debates about philosophical anthropology human beings have been defined in different ways. In Modern and Postmodern Crises of Symbolic Structures, the contributors view the human being primarily as animal symbolicum. They examine how the human being creates, interprets and changes symbolic structures, as well as how he is affected and impacted by them. The focus lies on the context of modernity and postmodernity, which is characterized by a number of interrelated crises of symbolic structures. These crises have affected the realms of science, religion, art, politics and education, and thus provoked crucial changes in the human being’s relations to himself, others and reality. The crises are not viewed merely as manifestations of dysfunctions, but rather as complex processes of transformation that also provide new opportunities.

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The second volume of the series under the new editorship: The Bounds of Myth

The Bounds of Myth:
A Logical Path from action to Knowledge


Edited by Gustavo Esparza and Nassim Bravo
Leiden and Boston: Brill 2021

The articles in The Bounds of Myth, edited by Gustavo Esparza and Nassim Bravo, shed light on the internal shapes of the mythological discourse, showing the way in which myth borders religion, science, literature, theology, i.e., other forms of rationality. The contributing authors of the volume claim that myth is a valid form of thought and that the former evolves within other forms of discourse, even though its composition is independent and even precedes the latter.
The articles collected here demonstrate the importance of myth as a form of thought that is in constant development, a feature that shows in turn that in spite of its remote and archaic origin, myth remains a valuable and relevant tool to interpret our own culture.

Contributors are: Nassim Bravo, Claudio Calabrese, Teresa Enríquez, Gustavo Esparza, Ethel Junco, Enrique Martínez, Cecilia Sabido and Jon Stewart.

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The third volume of the series under the new editorship:Kjaeldgaard

The Original Age of Anxiety:
Essays on Kierkegaard and His Contemporaries


By
Lasse Horne Kjældgaard
Leiden and Boston: Brill 2021

Why was anxiety such a major issue for Søren Kierkegaard and his contemporaries? This book revisits the “original” age of anxiety, the time and place where Kierkegaard’s ground-breaking thoughts on anxiety were formed. The pseudonym used by Kierkegaard in The Concept of Anxiety (1844), Vigilius Haufniensis, is Latin for “the watchman of Copenhagen.” A guiding question is what the vigilant Haufniensis might have observed in his city—and especially in the literary culture of his time and day? Exploring freedom in many forms, Kierkegaard and his contemporaries found combinations of fear and desire that have later been considered symptomatic of modernity.




Recent Events



An Analysis of the Religion of the Maya: A Hegelian Approach based on the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion and the Lectures on the Philosophy of Art

Critics have argued that the development of the world religions that Hegel sketches in the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion is a crass expression of 19th-century Eurocentrism. This criticism aims to undermine Hegel’s claim about the necessity of this development. If one wanted to defend Hegel against this charge, it would be necessary to explore other religions that he failed to treat and to see to what extent, if at all, they can be said to fit into his scheme of the development of world religions. If his theory is really universal as he claims, then we would expect to find this same kind of development in other religions, besides the ones that Hegel himself was familiar with. In the present paper I wish to do this by means of an exploration of the religion of the Maya in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. My thesis is that the polytheism of the Maya, in fact, fits very well into Hegel’s scheme. I argue specifically that it corresponds generally to the stage occupied by the Egyptian religion on Hegel’s account. Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Art also play a key role in this analysis since, I argue, similarities between the two cultures can perhaps best be seen by their artworks which depict their conceptions of their gods.

International Congress: “Hegel’s Aesthetics Today”

University of Urbino "Carlo Bo"

Palazzo Veterani, Aula 3

Urbino

May 4, 2022

10:00 am (CET)

Read more about the congress here

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"Hegel’s Diagnosis of Modern Alienation, and the Story of the Fall, and its Echoes in


Bauer, Heine, and Bakunin"

In his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Hegel gives a provocative and heretical interpretation of the Fall in Genesis. Surprisingly, his focus on key concepts such as alienation and freedom proved to be highly influential for the development of social-political thinking in the 19th century. In this paper I trace this development in the works of Hegel’s students Heinrich Heine and Bruno Bauer, as well as Mikhail Bakunin (who can be regarded as one of his students at a second remove). All three of these thinkers make use of Hegel’s interpretation of the Fall in order to support their quite different agendas. Thus a largely overlooked part of Hegel’s philosophy of religion is transformed into a fruitful seed when it is transplanted into the field of social-political philosophy.

May 19, 2022: 2:00-3:30 pm (CET)

Research Seminar, Department of Political Science,

Comenius University, Bratislava


"Hegel as a Source of Inspiration for Heine, Feuerbach, and Marx and the Revolutions of 1848"

 
With regard to politics, Hegel is often known as a reactionary thinker, keen to defend the state of Prussia of his day and the repressive forces of the Restoration. He is not usually associated with young radicals. However, in this lecture I wish to sketch how Hegel inspired a number of his students in Berlin to play an active role in the call for radical social change that culminated in the Revolutions of 1848. This lecture will be based on my recent book, Hegel’s Century: Alienation and Recognition in a Time of Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2021).
 

Nová Cvernovka, Tabuľa

Radčianska 1575/78, Bratislava

April 6, 2022

7pm (CET)

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"The Development of the Individual in Society"

The Carlos Llano Lectures

Departamento de Humanidades, Universidad Panamericana, Aguascalientes, Mexico

The first lecture will be held online: on Thursday, October 14, 2021 from 17:00-20:00 CET

The second lecture will be held online: on Friday, October 15, 2021 from 17:00-20:00 CET

To register, you just need to click here and give your name and e-mail:

https://forms.gle/LSA7LGsahHkCjG5E7


Abstract:

The main line of argument traces the various self-conceptions of different cultures as they developed historically, reflecting different views of what it is to be human. The thesis is that through examination of these changes we can discern the gradual emergence of what we today call inwardness, subjectivity, and individual freedom. As human civilization took its first tenuous steps, it had a very limited conception of the individual. Instead, the dominant principle was that of the wider group: the family, clan, or people. Only in the course of history did the idea of what we now know as individuality begin to emerge, and it took millennia for this idea to be fully recognized and developed. The conception of human beings as having a sphere of inwardness and subjectivity subsequently had a sweeping impact on all aspects of culture, including philosophy, religion, law, and art: indeed, this notion largely constitutes what is today referred to as modernity.

Lecture 1, October 14

Introduction

Part 1: Analysis of Sophocles’ Oedipus the King

Part 2: Analysis of Socrates in Plato’s Apology

Conclusions: The New Role of Subjectivity

Lecture 2, October 15

Introduction

Part 1: Analysis of Seneca’s Letters

Part 2: Analysis of the Gospel of Matthew

Conclusions: Subjectivity in the Modern World


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Annual Book Prize of the Slovak Academy of SciencesJon Stewart 2021

June 28, 2021

The book The Emergence of Subjevticity in the Ancient and Medieval World: An Interpretation of Western Civilization (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2020) was awarded the annual book prize of the Slovak Academy of Sciences under the category "Scientific Monographs in a Recognized Publishing House."







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"Teaching Philosophy in Different Countries:
Reflections on Authority or the Lack thereof in the Classroom"

Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts, Matej Bel University 

The lecture will be held online: on Wednesday 30th of September 2020 at 13:00 CET

Platform: MS Teams. We kindly ask everybody who is interested to participate to register by sending an email to: michal.sedik@.umb.sk no later than 29th of September 2020 till 19:00 CET.


Abstract:

Teaching is a social event, and the classroom is a part of a wider society. What takes place in the teaching context is thus invariably a reflection of the wider society. In this paper I wish to make some reflections based on several years of teaching philosophy in many different countries. I will explore how the social context of a given country influences the nature of the pedagogical approach and techniques used. My claim is that basic social structures concerning authority find their way into the classroom in ways that are not always conducive to the learning process.

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Annual Book Prize of the Slovak Academy of Sciences

June 23, 2020


The book Faust, Romantic Irony, and System: German Culture in the Thought of Søren Kierkegaard (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press 2019) was awarded the annual book prize of the Slovak Academy of Sciences under the category "Scientific Monographs in a Recognized Publishing House."





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Honorary title of Private Professor Awarded from
the University of Szeged

May 25, 2020







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Annual Book Prize of
the Slovak Academy of Sciences

July 2, 2019

The book Hegel’s Interpretation of the Religions of the World: The Logic of the Gods (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2018) was awarded the annual book prize of the Slovak Academy of Sciences under the category "Scientific Monographs in a Recognized Publishing House."




    




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