Hegel, Analytic Philosophy, and Formal Logic

We issue here an updated CFP exploring the real possibilities and/or limits to a “Hegel turn” in English-speaking philosophy.

We shall explore the possibilities and/or limits--building on 20th century Hegel scholarship which has helped recover the historical Hegel--of developing the Hegelian systematic philosophical project (which Hegel called the perennial philosophy in its latest form) beyond the point where he left it. Success in this project may require a scholarly consensus about the core position of the mature Hegelian system as a whole. Submitters may state their view as to what that consensus, faithful to the historical Hegel, might be. They are invited to explore the integration of conceptual and linguistic tools from the analytic tradition and from post-Aristotelian formal and mathematical logic in clarifying that core to the contemporary English-language mainstream. Those in the analytic tradition or formal logic holding that only limited or no elements of that core can be clarified in an enlightening manner today are invited to make that case.

Paul Redding (University of Sydney) and Clark Butler (Purdue University, Indiana-Purdue Fort Wayne Campus) are the organizers of this conference on the Fort Wayne Campus, Friday-Saturday, October 17-18, 2014. Two co-sponsors are the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences of the University of Sydney, Australia, and the Purdue University Philosophy Department at the Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne Campus (IPFW).

This conference is also co-sponsored by the Indiana Philosophical Association (IPA), meeting concurrently at the Fort Wayne Campus. Three simultaneous sessions are planned, two organized by the IPA alongside the Hegel sessions cited above. No one is allowed to submit two papers, one for the IPA and one for this Hegel conference. Hegelian philosophy of science (“philosophy of nature”) in connection with current natural science is one theme of the IPA meeting. See the IPA CFP atsites.hanover.edu/ipa/. Sample questions are: “Can ‘the philosophy of nature’ be defended against claims that it attempts a priori natural science?” Can it, or concepts it carries over from the Science of Logic, illuminate the methods and results of current empirical science?   Invited speakers for the Hegel conference are Robert Brandom (Pittsburgh), Ermanno Bencivenga (UC-Irvine), Angelica Nuzzo (CUNY Graduate Center), and Graham Priest (CUNY Graduate Center). Robert Brandom has accepted an invitation from the IPA to be keynote speaker for the plenary session.

The deadline for submitting for blind review either abstracts sufficiently developed to permit evaluation or advanced drafts of the paper itself is August 1, 2014. Notification to submitters will be given on September 1. Sample questions: If the Science of Logic most crucial to the core Hegelian position, Are analytic tools like the linguistic ascent of the sense/reference distinction helpful in making Hegel clear? How much merit would Hegel, if alive today, see in contemporary formal logic? “Can non-standard types of formal logic help clarify Hegel, or is the cause of making Hegel clearer better served by using standard formal logic (e.g., Quine, with the possible addition of modal logic)? Can the view of some Hegel scholars that formal logic empty of content is useless in making Hegel clear be rethought through formal logics other than those known to Hegel? Is formal logic in use not empty of content in a way that evades Hegel's criticism of formal logic? Did Hegel contribute to formal logic in his logical development of conceptual definitions, judgments and "syllogistic reasoning" in the last part of his science of logic? “Can Hegel be understood better by preserving a gap between dialectical logic and formal logic, or can dialectical logic perhaps be assimilated to the use of formal logic in a derivation of reason (Vernunft) by an immanent self-critique of the understanding (Verstand)?” Submissions addressing such and other related questions are welcome.

An issue in the Hegelian Research Series published by the journal CLIO is expected to be devoted to the themes of the conference. Send inquiries, developed abstracts, and submissions for this Hegel conference to Clark Butler at [email protected]