ABOUT

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION

The 36th International Hegel Congress aims to provide a ‘global’ view of the contemporary relevance and legacy of Hegelian Philosophy and its worldwide reception. After all, it is embedded in Hegelian Philosophy itself to aspire to ‘the whole’, and to believe that separateness must be overcome.

One of the aims of the Congress will therefore be to try to overcome particularisms, first of all from a geographical perspective (Section 1). Only by grasping the specificities of the reception of Hegel’s Philosophy in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Oceania, and Europe, is it possible to identify the recurring paradigms and “Fixpunkte” of World Hegelianism as well as its different declinations and thus to give an appraisal, however provisional, of the fortunes and misfortunes Hegelian thought has met with in the world. Equally, it is valuable to consider the images that Hegel presents in his various writings of Africa, North and South America, Asia, Oceania, and Europe, and to evaluate those images’ limits no less than their possibly fertile intuitions.

However, to achieve a “global” vision of the contemporary relevance of Hegelian philosophy and its reception, it is equally indispensable to overcome particularisms from the perspective of content (Section 2). The most ambitious challenge facing the Congress will therefore be to search for the presence of Hegelian resonances in spheres that are, on the face of it, extraneous to and even incompatible with his Idealism: from the debate on human rights to social movements, from ecological movements to the world economy, from philosophy of technology to posthumanism and pop culture. Indeed, the Congress seeks to extend the frontier of Hegelian Idealism to confront social problems, gender issues, environmental crisis, and artistic creations, and to assess whether the contemporary debate can borrow concepts, paradigms, figures of thought from Hegel’s Idealism so as to submit these to innovative and original contaminations that may prove fruitful in addressing heated issues, for instance by suggesting unusual frameworks in which to situate and approach them. In recent decades, Hegel’s Idealism has come to exert “influence” on and within a variety of different and unusual contexts. For example, while in the 1970s feminism was conspicuous for its violent attacks on Hegelian philosophy as an instance of patriarchal thought, a number of contemporary feminist philosophers acknowledge the fruitfulness of confronting some paradigmatically Hegelian concepts – e.g. self-consciousness, recognition, and dialectics – as a way to enhance emancipatory thinking and to identify new, unexplored narratives. Moreover, without Hegel we would not have the politics of recognition as we know it. Similarly, Hegel’s Idealism has been brought into play to address contemporary environmental concerns, showing the connections between idealism, the philosophy of nature, and environmental ethics. This global dimension may also encourage reflection on Hegel’s conception of religions in the horizon of an ever greater speculative understanding of them. Even the art-world, in all its expressions, has drawn and continues to draw on Hegelian philosophy — and it does so not only in the most traditional contexts, but also across the breadth of pop culture from video games to cinema. In fact, several pop-cultural products resonate, albeit at a lower level of complexity, with Hegelian concepts and perspectives. In this framework, the conference aims at fostering a broader reflection on new alternative narratives of German Idealism, focused on inclusion, coexistence, and intercultural dialogue. Furthermore, original source-manuscripts from the Heidelberg period, newly (re-) discovered in 2022, promise to fill a gap and offer an increasingly comprehensive view of Hegelian philosophy. The new sources, as well as the history of Hegelian manuscripts and scholars, testify to the global attitude and dissemination of Hegel’s philosophy, since several manuscripts have been found in different European countries.

The 36th International Hegel Congress will be held in Rome, the capital of Italy, one of the few countries in which Hegel’s philosophy has found maximum resonance since the 19th century, becoming a sort of “adoptive homeland” for Hegelian Idealism, not only because Hegel’s Philosophy experienced a second flowering here in the second half of the 19th century, while in Germany the confidence in the system was gradually waning, but also because Italy has been a “happy oasis” for Idealism in the 20th and 21st centuries. Hegel’s long-running Italian reception-history is undoubtedly unique, given that the attraction of Italian intellectuals to Hegelian philosophy has continued virtually without interruption, so much so, indeed, that it was no accident that one of the most important centers of European Hegelianism developed in Naples in the 1840s, thanks to Bertrando Spaventa and Francesco De Sanctis. Hegel’s theories of freedom and progress took root in the midst of the Risorgimento, raising hopes for the country’s future political and cultural emancipation. Hegel’s philosophy then became a powerful message of hope, a providential lifeline, a secular ‘cult’ or ‘ideal religion’ as Bertrando Spaventa saw it, suited to guide the political action of Italian intellectuals. It was against this turbulent background that Benedetto Croce and Giovanni Gentile’s intense confrontation with Hegel took place – not without reinterpretations, reforms, and betrayals – which a number of acute Italian interpreters then went on to turn into a critical study of Hegel’s philosophy in the 1960s, when interest in Hegel was heightened in the light of dialectical and historical materialism and hermeneutics: from Galvano della Volpe to Ugo Spirito, from Guido Calogero to Eugenio Garin, from Leo Lugarini to Nicolao Merker, from Lucio Colletti to Francesco Valentini, from Valerio Verra to Remo Bodei, from Franco Chiereghin to Claudio Cesa, from Gianni Vattimo to Giorgio Agamben. In addition to the general issues suggested above, the Congress also aims to discuss the specific, rich tradition of the Italian reception of Hegel’s Philosophy, which is indebted to such personalities. This topic will be addressed in a separate section held in memory of Francesco Valentini (1924-2009) and Valerio Verra (1928 –2001), two of the leading Hegel scholars in Italy, active at the Universities of Rome La Sapienza and Roma Tre, who have trained generations of Italian Hegel scholars. A discussion exploring themes, research perspectives, and new translations by young scholars engaged in the study of the reception of Hegelian philosophy in Italy will also be held as part of the Congress. Contributions are welcome in German, English and French.