33rd
International Hegel Congress (JUN 2021)
Institute of Philosophy, University of Warsaw
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In 2020 the international community
of Hegel researchers celebrates two anniversaries: on the one hand
the 250th birthday of G.W.F. Hegel, on the other hand, the 200th
anniversary of the publication of The Philosophy of Right.
These two anniversaries provide an excellent opportunity to discuss
the main concept of Hegelian philosophy – freedom – in
all its aspects. Not only in The Philosophy of Right, but
consistently throughout his philosophical work, Hegel describes
two moments of human existence as ”most deeply” his ”own”:
thinking and freedom. Freedom of the self-consciousness, which already
manifests itself as the negative freedom of thinking, able to abstract
from all its objects, is described and analysed in Hegel’s
philosophy in its various and complex manifestations as: formal-legal,
moral, aesthetic, economic, ethical and civic freedom. According
to Hegel, each form of freedom has its own right and one of the
most important tasks of philosophy is to conceptualise the forms
of this right of freedom. The constellations of freedom, right and
thinking create the general conceptual framework for the Congress.
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Although at first glance the topic might appeal mainly to
those researchers who deal with Hegel's practical philosophy (his
legal and political theory, political and social philosophy, and
aesthetics), it is aimed at Hegel’s entire oeuvre. Therefore, we
welcome presentations which take up various aspects of Hegel’s understanding
of freedom both in his practical and theoretical philosophy. We
put important questions up for debate:
•How
is, generally, the relation between freedom and thinking to be understood?
•What role does the moment of freedom play in the structure
of Hegelian logic?
•What constitutes the freedom of spirit, which seems to function
as the inner motor of the successive forms of consciousness and
knowledge in the Phenomenology?
•Is there freedom in nature – the “Other“ of spirit – or is
it only in the sphere of culture and Bildung, as its very
own element?
•In what sense can history be understood as the development
of the consciousness of freedom?
•What are the anthropological grounds of human freedom?
•How does the freedom of the believer and the community of
believers express itself within the philosophy of religion?
•What role does freedom play in the artistic work, according
to Hegelian aesthetics?
