Publications
Peer-reviewed journal articles
“Extravagance and Misery: Hegel on the Multiplication and Refinement of Needs”, European Journal of Philosophy (2024) [Link]
The topic of this paper is Hegel’s claim in the Philosophy of Right that, within the modern social world, human needs tend to be endlessly expanded. Unlike the role that the system of needs plays in the formation of its participants’ psychological makeup and the problem of poverty and the rabble, the topic of the expansion of needs remains underdiscussed in the recent Hegel literature on the virtues and vices of civil society. My discussion of the topic aims to answer the following two sets of questions: How does it come to pass that individuals’ needs are endlessly expanded in this way? And is that expansion a phenomenon to be applauded or condemned? In particular, does the endless expansion of needs aid or obstruct the realization of social members’ freedom? In answer to the first question, I argue that for Hegel the endless expansion of needs results from the level of specialization and division of labor distinctive of the modern market economy, the human capacity for a certain kind of abstraction, and the desire to be recognized by other participants in the market system. In answer to the second set of questions, and despite Hegel’s own apparent ambivalence, I argue on his behalf that the endless expansion of needs represents an obstacle to the realization of freedom, and is on that ground a phenomenon to be condemned, for the following two reasons: First, the endless expansion of needs increases the influence or “pressure” of desire on the members of civil society that are subject to that expansion. Second, that expansion leads to widespread frustration, understood as the inability on the part of the members of civil society to ever fully realize their ends or satisfy their desires. I end by briefly considering two Hegelian solutions to the pernicious effects of the endless expansion of needs.
“Hegel’s Ethical Organicism”, Inquiry (2022) [Link]
In this paper, I attempt to make sense of Hegel’s repeated comparisons between the biological and the social by articulating and defending the claim that social members and the institutions in which they participate are normatively evaluable, for him, in a manner analogous to that of animal organisms and their parts. In arguing for this interpretive thesis, I hope to bring together two Hegelian views (namely, what I shall refer to as his normative essentialism about animal organisms and his organicism about social institutions) and the two corresponding strands in the Hegel literature. On the reading I propose here, Hegel’s normative essentialism is not restricted to animal organisms. The pattern of normative evaluation that applies to animal organisms applies also, in remarkably similar ways, to the sphere of "Objective Spirit" and "Ethical Life" as well. I end by raising and answering the objection that Hegel’s organicism, as I portray it, has conservative, even reactionary political implications.
“Hegelian Practical Freedom and Nature”, Journal of Modern Philosophy (2022) [Link]
In this paper, I argue that, despite his remarks to the effect that freedom consists in the “movement” away from nature, Hegel conceives of the will as a natural power or capacity of sorts. I articulate and defend this thesis in two steps. In section I of the paper, I sketch a reading of Hegel’s account of practical freedom in the Introduction to the Philosophy of Right as a capacity to respond to ethical requirements or duties. In section II, I argue that the will, on that account, qualifies for Hegel as natural in the following two respects: First, in the good or virtuous case, our responsiveness to ethical requirements exhibits features similar to the lawlike behavior of subhuman denizens of the natural world and other law-governed natural processes. Second, our capacity for practical freedom emerges through processes of habituation from the exercises of capacities that we share with other animals. Although the second thesis is the more important of the two for the purposes of naturalizing Hegel’s account of the will, I believe it has not yet been the focus of satisfactory scholarly attention. I thus hope to help remedy what I take to be a gap in the recent literature.
“Self-Consciousness is Desire Itself: On Hegel’s Dictum”, Review of Metaphysics (2021) [Link]
In this paper, I offer a novel reconstruction of Hegel’s argument for his mysterious claim that “self-consciousness is desire itself.” In section I, I motivate two interpretive constraints, which I refer to as the practicality constraint and the continuity constraint. According to the former, the kind of desire that Hegel argues is a necessary condition of self-consciousness involves a practical (and so not merely theoretical or contemplative) relation between subject and object. According to the latter, Hegel’s argument takes as its sole starting point a shape of consciousness that has itself as object or, as Hegel puts it, a shape that consists in “a distinguishing of what is not distinct.” I argue that recent influential interpretations openly or tacitly violate either the practicality constraint or the continuity constraint. In section II, I piece together my own, alternative interpretation of Hegel’s argument, which heeds the two constraints in a way that fits Hegel’s text more closely than do other interpretations. I thus hope to shed new light on Hegel’s view that the I or consciousness can have itself as its object only if it also relates to external objects in a desirous, destructive way.
“Hegel on the Normativity of Animal Life”, Hegel Bulletin (2020) [Link]
My aim in this paper is to show that and how animal organisms are appropriate subjects of normative evaluation, in Hegel’s view. I contrast my reading with the interpretive positions of Sebastian Rand and Mark Alznauer. I disagree with Rand and agree with Alznauer that animal organisms are normatively evaluable for Hegel. I substantiate my disagreement with Rand, and supplement Alznauer’s interpretation, by spelling out the role that the “generic process” or “genus process [Gattungsprozess]” plays within Hegel’s account of animal organisms and their normative evaluability. In the course of my discussion, I highlight the main differences that Hegel purports to identify between animal and vegetable organisms and suggest that the upshot of those differences is that some but not all plants are normatively evaluable, by his lights. I also situate Hegel’s discussion of the Gattungsprozess within the debate on biological functions in the philosophy of biology over the last few decades.
“Realizing the Good: Hegel’s Critique of Kantian Morality”, European Journal of Philosophy (2017) [Link]
Although the best-known Hegelian objection against Kant’s moral philosophy is the charge that the categorical imperative is an “empty formalism”, Hegel’s criticisms also include what we might call the realizability objection. Tentatively stated, the realizability objection says that within the sphere of Kantian morality, the good remains an unrealizable “ought” – in other words, the Kantian moral “ought” can never become an “is”. In this paper, I attempt to come to grips with this objection in two steps. In the first section of the paper, I provide an initial reading of the objection, according to which Hegel agrees with Kant’s formulation of the realizability problem but disagrees with the specific Kantian solution, namely, with the Kantian idea of the highest good and the doctrine of the postulates. In the second section, I go on to argue that this reading is potentially too superficial and offer a more far-reaching interpretation whereby Hegel is ultimately targeting fundamental distinctions (between, for instance, reason and sensibility) of Kant’s moral theory. I end by employing these more far-reaching results of Hegel’s objection to sketch some features of Hegel’s alternative ethical view.
“¿Cuál debe ser el comienzo de la ciencia? El problema del comienzo en Hegel”, Anales del Seminario de Historia de la Filosofía (2012) [Link]
Book chapters
“Human Beings as the ‘Perfect Animals’: Hegel on the Difference between Animal Life and Human Spirit”, in Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature: A Critical Guide, ed. Marina Bykova, Cambridge University Press (2024) [Link]
The main question that I ask and attempt to answer in this paper is: What is the principal difference between animal life and human spirit, as Hegel construes it at the end of his “Philosophy of Nature”? More specifically, in what way are non-human animal organisms “inadequate” or “imperfect” and in what way, correspondingly, are human beings the “perfect” animal? As we shall see, answering this question will require getting clear on the different ways in which non-human and human animals bear their respective natures, the connection between reproduction and the manner in which non-human animals relate to their genus, and the role of biological death within that process of reproduction. To the extent that Hegel commentators have dealt with the relation between animal life and human spirit, they have been predominantly concerned in recent years with Hegel’s “Anthropology.” The end of the “Philosophy of Nature” has by contrast been relatively neglected. On the occasions when it has been discussed, the latter text has tended to be the object of passing paraphrase rather than the focus of an attempt at philosophical comprehension. With this paper, I hope to contribute to remedying this scholarly situation.
Conference proceedings
“Hegel, Kant and the Realizability Problem”, Hegel-Jahrbuch (2017) [Link]
A shorter, earlier version of the European Journal of Philosophy paper on the same topic.
Book reviews
The Actual and the Rational: Hegel and Objective Spirit, Jean-François Kervégan, British Journal for the History of Philosophy (2021) [Link]
Fichte: De la consciència a l’absolut, Salvi Turró, Éndoxa (2013) [Link]