Hegel Today: Towards a Tragic Conception of Intercultural Conflicts

Authors

  • Karin G de Boer University of Groningen

Keywords:

Hegel, Tragedy, Antagonism, Multiculturalism

Abstract

This essay draws on Hegelrsquo;s conception of tragedy in the emPhenomenology/em to reinterpret the intercultural conflicts that confront us today. It is argued that the prevailing self-conception of modern states, relying on the opposition between universality and particularity, effaces the irresolvable entanglement of contrary values such as progress and tradition or reason and faith. The essay seeks to employ Hegelrsquo;s insight into the dynamic of tragic conflicts to conceptualize precisely this entanglement. This requires, however, that the tragic strand of this insight be extricated from the predominant optimism of Hegelrsquo;s dialectics as a whole. By turning this tragic strand into a conceptual perspective of its own, this essay seeks to account for the inherent tendency of contending cultural paradigms to oppose their counterpart instead of recognizing themselves in the other.nbsp; br /

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Published

27-12-2007

How to Cite

de Boer, K. G. (2007). Hegel Today: Towards a Tragic Conception of Intercultural Conflicts. Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, 3(2-3), 117–131. Retrieved from http://cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/view/71