"Speculative Thinking ('s) Today: On the Critical Actuality of Hegel's Philosophy"

Gregor Schäfer (University of London)

Influential receptions of Hegel's philosophy tend to separate in Hegel what - "today" - is still actual from what should be rejected as out-dated. When it comes to the possible critical impacts of Hegel's philosophy on our (post-Hegelian) present, Hegel's practical philosophy hereby is subtracted from the speculative framework of the entire system - such as, paradigmatically, from speculative logic and the conception of absolute spirit in which the absolute idea finds its actual "reconciliation."

Against such strands, the talk puts forward two theses: Firstly (1) that it is precisely the speculative character of Hegel's philosophy that articulates and enables its character as being "its time grasped in thoughts," i.e., its constitutive present relevance and embeddedness in the historical-political world; and secondly (2)  that the specific present inscribed in this speculative framework does not imply, as an established cliché has it, the reconciliation of a stabilized harmony but rather an unsettling and destabilized present full of ongoing contradictions, conflicts, and crises - according to Dieter Henrich's description: a reconciliation "in the very middle of struggles" -, which, as such, opens up the possibility of change and liberation in the world.