Life and Actuality

On Placing Possibility in Hegel's Modal Metaphysics

Authors

  • Ekin Erkan

Keywords:

Hegel, Kant, Science of Logic, Actuality, Possibility, Modal Metaphysics, Modal Logic

Abstract

This paper looks at dialectical inferences as they relate to Hegel’s modal metaphysics, closely examining the Actuality section of Hegel’s Science of Logic and positing a reading of Hegel’s modal actualism that engages with two strains of secondary commentary. Responding to commentators, we make the case that Hegel’s ‘das Logische’ avoids presupposing possibility’s being prior to actuality insofar as actuality and the derivation of possibility is considered as the in-itselfness of actuality, an implicit inner moment whereby actuality further determines itself. Actuality is immediate yet derived as an identity from the logic of inner and outer. If actuality as immediacy is explicit/outer, then its opposition, its implicitness/innerness, has to be possibility in the logic of modality. In order to conceive of actuality as existence, and particularly as an emerging process, we must already conceive the problem of presupposing an alien form within the logic of actuality.

Author Biography

Ekin Erkan

Ekin Erkan is a Turkish writer in science, technology and philosophy living in New York City, notable for researching with and developing Reza Negarestani's research on artificial general intelligence. Erkan's work originally concerned Bernard Stiegler's work on psychopolitics as well as secondary literature on François Laruelle's non-standard philosophy but has more recently (given their analytic return) been working on Catarina Dutilh Novaes' concept of de-semantification and Robert Brandom's inferentialism. Background Erkan's work examines the collective closure between neural networks, predictive processing, and perceptual faculties as they relate to machine intelligence and algorithmic governmentality. Erkan has a background in both analytic and continental philosophy, supplemented by graduate research in medialogy, media archaeology and film philosophy. Despite originally working within the continental tradition of philosophy of art, aesthetics and media, Erkan's more recent work has been associated with the post-continental school of thinkers, influenced by philosophers such as Carl Sachs, Ray Brassier, Reza Negarestani and Thomas Moynihan. Erkan is currently pursuing post-graduate study in Critical Philosophy at The New Centre for Research & Practice, researching under the tutelage of Iranian theory fiction pioneer Reza Negarestani while working on Bayesian neuro-inference and AGI. Erkan also is a columnist and critic at the art and literature journal AEQAI, publishing monthly contributions on contemporary art and intermedia. In addition to Erkan's work on Stiegler and Rouvroy, Erkan has published writing on Andy Clark and David Chalmers' ''extended mind'', Ned Block's ''non-iconic memory'' and ''phenomenology of perception and mental paint'', François Laruelle's ''non-ethics'' and ''non-aesthetics'', Robert Brandom's inferentialism, Negarestani's neo-rationalist turn, Catherine Malabou's "neuroplasticity" and "creative non-calculation," and post-Deleuzian film philosophy in publications including Radical Philosophy, Theory & Event, Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Cosmos & History, Alphaville, Cultural Studies, New Review of Film and Television Studies, Chiasma, Rhizomes, Labyrinth, Cultural Logic: A Journal of Marxist Theory & Practice, Media Theory, Philosophy East and West, and The Cincinnati Romance Review.

References

Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer. Trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998.

Brown, Nahum. Hegel’s Actuality Chapter of the Science of Logic. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2019.

Burbidge, John. The Logic of Hegel’s Logic. Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2006.

Ficara, Elena. “Hegel and the Consequentia Mirabilis.” History and Philosophy of Logic 39(4), 2018, 357-364, doi.org/10.1080/01445340.2018.1441679.

_____ . “Hegel on the Naturalness of Logic.” Argumenta 4(2), 2019, 47-57.

Hegel, G.W.F. The Encyclopaedia Logic, Part I of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences with the Zusätze. Trans. T.F. Geraets, W.A. Suchting, and H.S. Harris, Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1991.

_____ . Science of Logic. Ed. and Trans. George di Giovanni, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

_____ . Lectures on the History of Philosophy vol. 2. Trans. E.S. Haldane and Frances Simson, London: Kegan Paul, 2016.

Henrich, Dieter. “Anfang und Methode der Logik.” In Hegel im Kontext, Ed. Dieter Henrich, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1971, 73–94.

Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Hegel’s Dialectics: Five Hermeneutical Studies. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976.

Houlgate, Stephen. The Opening of Hegel’s Logic. West Lafayette: Purdue, 2005.

Hyppolite, Jean. Logic and Existence. Albany: SUNY Press, 1997.

Kant, Immanuel. Gesammelte Schriften, hg. von der Preußischen. Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin, 1900 ff.

Kervegan, Jean-François. The Actual and the Rational. Chicago: University of Chicago, 2018.

Longuenesse, Béatrice. “Actuality in Hegel’s Logic.” Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 13(1), 1998, 115-124, doi.org/10.5840/gfpj19881316.

_____ . Hegel’s Critique of Metaphysics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Ng, Karen. Hegel’s Concept of Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.

Nuzzo, Angelica. “Dialectical Reason and Necessary Conflict: Understanding and the Nature of Terror.” Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, 3(2-3), 2007: 291–307.

_____ . “Vagueness and Meaning Variance in Hegel’s Logic.” In Hegel and the Analytic Tradition, Ed. Angelica Nuzzo, New York: Continuum, 2010, 61-82.

_____ . Approaching Hegel’s Logic Obliquely. Albany: SUNY Press, 2018.

_____ . “Method in Hegel’s Dialectic-Speculative Logic." In The Palgrave Hegel Handbook, Eds. Kenneth Westphal and Marina Bykova, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, 153-164.

Maker, William. Philosophy Without Foundations. Albany: SUNY Press, 1994.

Pinkard, Terry. Hegel’s Dialectic. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998.

Pippin, Robert. Hegel’s Idealism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

Redding, Paul. “Actualist versus Naturalist and Conceptual Realist Interpretations of Hegel's Metaphysics.” Hegel Bulletin, 42(1), 19-38. doi:10.1017/hgl.2020.26

Williams, Robert. “Hegel’s Recasting of the Theological Proofs.” In The Palgrave Hegel Handbook, Eds. Kenneth Westphal and Marina Bykova, London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2020, 351-365.

Downloads

Published

30-12-2021 — Updated on 31-12-2021

Versions

How to Cite

Erkan, E. (2021). Life and Actuality: On Placing Possibility in Hegel’s Modal Metaphysics. Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, 17(3), 171–195. Retrieved from https://cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/view/990 (Original work published December 30, 2021)

Issue

Vol. 17 No. 3 (2021): Civilization in Crisis

Section

Articles

License

Copyright (c) 2021 Ekin Erkan

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.