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Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2009

Michael Quante
Affiliation:
Universität Duisburg–Essen
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Summary

The volume of literature devoted to Hegel might lead one to suspect that the central concepts, theses, and insights of his philosophy have been exhaustively explicated. It is therefore surprising that there remain significant gaps in the scholarship, gaps in areas not only of historical interest, or on questions internal to the system, but rather concerning fundamental concepts of Hegel's philosophy itself. Just such a gap seems to me to exist with the concept of action. Although action is explicitly introduced in a prominent place in Hegel's system – namely, in the Morality chapter of the Elements of the Philosophy of Right – there are hardly any contributions to the scholarship that investigate Hegel's action-theoretic premises and the insights underlying his concept of action. This is surprising for at least three reasons. First, the text of the Philosophy of Right shows that Hegel does not use his concept of action simply in the everyday sense; his aim is to unpack the concept philosophically. Second, action-theoretic problems have been thoroughly examined in the last forty years of analytic philosophy. Much progress has been made in the field that can help to explicate Hegel's thought. Further, this omission in the scholarship is amazing because Hegel's social philosophy, ethics, and critique of morality have always stood at the center of interest in his thought. But it is highly improbable that these parts of Hegel's philosophy are independent of his concept of action.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2004

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  • Introduction
  • Michael Quante, Universität Duisburg–Essen
  • Translated by Dean Moyar
  • Book: Hegel's Concept of Action
  • Online publication: 05 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511498299.002
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  • Introduction
  • Michael Quante, Universität Duisburg–Essen
  • Translated by Dean Moyar
  • Book: Hegel's Concept of Action
  • Online publication: 05 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511498299.002
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Introduction
  • Michael Quante, Universität Duisburg–Essen
  • Translated by Dean Moyar
  • Book: Hegel's Concept of Action
  • Online publication: 05 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511498299.002
Available formats
×