Hegel, Literature, and the Problem of Agency

168 Pages·2001·1.12 MB·English

by  Allen Speight

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HEGEL, LITERATURE
AND THE PROBLEM OF AGENCY
Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirithas attracted much attention recently from
philosophers, but none of the existing English-language books on the
text addresses one of the most difficult questions the book raises: Why
does the Phenomenology make such rich and provocative use of literary
works and genres?
Allen Speight’s bold contribution to the current debate on the work
of Hegel argues that behind Hegel’s extraordinary appeal to literature in
the Phenomenology lies a philosophical project concerned with under-
standing human agency in the modern world. It shows that Hegel looked
to three literary genres– tragedy, comedy, and the romantic novel– as of-
fering privileged access to three moments of human agency: retrospec-
tivity, or the fact that human action receives its full meaning only after
the event; theatricality, or the fact that human action receives its full
meaning only in a social context; and forgiveness, or the practice of re-
assessing human action in the light of its essentially interpretive nature.
Taking full account of the authors that Hegel himself refers to (Sopho-
cles, Diderot, Schlegel, Jacobi), Allen Speight has written a book with a
broad appeal to both philosophers and literary theorists that positions
Hegel as a central figure in both the continental and Anglo-American
philosophical traditions.
Allen Speight is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Boston University.

MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY
General Editor
Robert B. Pippin, University of Chicago
Advisory Board
Gary Gutting, University of Notre Dame
Rolf-Peter Horstmann, Humboldt University, Berlin
Mark Sacks, University of Essex
Some Recent Titles:
Frederick A. Olafson:What Is a Human Being?
Stanley Rosen:The Mask of Enlightenment: Nietzsche’s Zarathustra
Robert C. Scharff: Comte after Positivism
F. C. T. Moore: Bergson: Thinking Backwards
Charles Larmore: The Morals of Modernity
Robert B. Pippin: Idealism as Modernism
Daniel W. Conway: Nietzsche’s Dangerous Game
John P. McCormick: Carl Schmitt’s Critique of Liberalism
Frederick A. Olafson: Heidegger and the Ground of Ethics
Günter Zöller: Fichte’s Transcendental Philosophy
Warren Breckman: Marx, the Young Hegelians, and the Origins of Social Theory
William Blattner: Heidegger’s Temporal Idealism
Charles Griswold:Adam Smith and the Virtues of the Enlightenment
Gary Gutting: Pragmatic Liberalism and the Critique of Modernity
Allen Wood: Kant’s Ethical Thought
Karl Ameriks: Kant and the Fate of Autonomy
Alfredo Ferrarin: Hegel and Aristotle
Cristina Lafont: Heidegger, Language and World-Discourse
Nicholas Wolterstorff: Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology
Daniel Dahlstrom: Heidegger’s Concept of Truth
Michelle Grier: Kant’s Doctrine of Transcendental Illusion
Henry Allison: Kant’s Theory of Taste

HEGEL, LITERATURE AND
THE PROBLEM OF AGENCY
ALLEN SPEIGHT
Boston University
         
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http://www.cambridge.org
©Allen Speight 2004
First published in printed format 2001
ISBN 0-511-03164-5 eBook (Adobe Reader)
ISBN 0-521-79184-7 hardback
ISBN 0-521-79634-2 paperback
To My Father