Conference

LCCP Conference: 'Hegel in Motion: Adventures in (Mis)reading'

Bart Zantvoort

Date: Friday 14 March 2025 - Saturday 15 March 2025
Location: Lipsius
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden
Room: 2.06

Workshop

All of Hegel’s philosophy is punctuated by a peculiar tension between the irresistible development of thought, the restless motion of the concept, the ceaseless flow of Spirit on the one hand, and the inertial resistance of contingencies, matter, and empirical existences on the other.

The progression of consciousness, as described in the Phenomenology of Spirit, is unaufhaltsam, unstoppable, and cannot find satisfaction anywhere. And yet, the same consciousness is continuously held up by the need to delve into its world and to immerse itself in the concrete content of experience, where it is prone to remaining stuck: thinking is impeded (aufgehalten) by the ‘weight of substance’.

As Adorno recalled in ‘Skoteinos, or How to Read Hegel’, the ‘fusion of the dynamic moment with the static’ in Hegel’s philosophy is rooted in the very texture of the concept. Therefore, the simultaneous implication of halting and haltlessness within the dialectic imposes a difficult practice of reading: the reader is faced both with the imperative to accelerate and keep up with the flow of thoughts as well as the need to slow down and pause to tarry with the negative, the need to stop everywhere as ‘each moment has to be lingered over.’

How should we then read the constitutive Unruhe of Hegel’s logic? How do we make sense of the relentless pace of the dialectics? Where and when should we stop reading Hegel?

This two-day symposium aims at exploring Hegel’s philosophy in motion, by focusing on its moves and arrests to investigate the fruitful (mis)readings it engenders.

Speakers

Dr. Rachel Aumiller (Radboud University Nijmegen)
Prof. Mladen Dolar (University of Ljubljana)
Isabel Jacobs (Queen Mary University London)
Dr. Johan de Jong (Leiden University)
Dr. Marie Louise Krogh (Leiden University)
Dr. Gregor Moder (University of Ljubljana)
Prof. Frank Ruda (University of Dundee)
Dr. Sebastian Stein (University of Tübingen)

Organized by

Dr. Ivan Boldyrev (Radboud University Nijmegen)
Dr. Jamila Mascat (Utrecht University)
Dr. Bart Zantvoort (Leiden University)

With the support of the Leiden Institute for Philosophy, Leids Universiteitsfonds and Onderzoeksschool voor Wijsbegeerte (OSZW) – History of Philosophy section