TY  - CHAP
A1  - Mascat, Jamila M.H.
T1  - Hegel and the ad-venture of the totality
T2  - De/constituting wholes : towards partiality without parts / edited by Manuele Gragnolati and Christoph F.E. Holzhey ; Cultural inquiry ; vol. 11
N2  - A different take on knowledge, history, and totalization is presented in Jamila Mascat's essay 'Hegel and the Ad-venture of the Totality', which aims at exploring the controversial notion of the Hegelian totality. Countering Louis Althusser's critique of Hegel's 'expressive totality', where every part is thought to expresses the whole, it proposes to consider such a speculative figure as a temporalizing instance situated at the entanglement of Knowing and History. Firstly, it illustrates the paradoxical inclination of Hegel's totality to being both complete and a never-ending task. Secondly, it analyses the accomplishment of totality at the peak of the Science of Logic, focusing on the temporal circularity of the Concept ('Begriff'). Thirdly, drawing on the readings of Alexandre Koyré, Alexandre Kojève, and Jean Hyppolite, the essay illustrates the peculiar relation between becoming and eternity that is located at the heart of Hegel's conception of time. Finally, it approaches the last section of the "Phenomenology of Spirit" devoted to Absolute Knowing in order to highlight the twofold movement of seizure ('Begreifen') and release ('Entlassen') that characterizes the activity of the Spirit and that is constitutive of the contingent ad-venture of the totality as a philosophical achievement. In other words, it is by embracing contingency as its limit that Absolute Knowing reaffirms the status of its absoluteness precisely because of its capacity to sacrifice itself and let it go. Critically engaging with Catherine Malabou's reading of plasticity in Hegel, Mascat highlights that Absolute Knowing is a process of totalization that entails cuts and interruptions. The essay shows that the Hegelian totality may be interpreted and actualized as a theoretical construct densely charged with temporal and historical implications: on the one hand, totality expresses a timely standpoint for thought - the standpoint of Hegel's age, which is, as claimed by the philosopher at the end of his "Lectures on the History of Philosophy", 'for the time being completed', as well as the standpoint of the present time to be speculatively accomplished; on the other hand, Hegel's idea of a speculative totalization sets for the philosophies yet to come the never-ending task of constituting and re-constituting wholes.
KW  - Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
KW  - Totality (Philosophy)
KW  - History
KW  - Knowledge
KW  - Plasticity
KW  - Time
KW  - Contingency (Philosophy)
KW  - Totalität
KW  - Geschichte
KW  - Wissen
KW  - Plastizität
KW  - Zeit
KW  - Kontingenz
Y1  - 2020
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/55265
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-552650
UR  - https://www.ici-berlin.org/oa/ci-11/mascat_ad-venture-of-the-totality.pdf
SN  - 978-3-85132-854-7
SN  - 2627-731X
SP  - 131
EP  - 148
PB  - Turia + Kant
CY  - Wien ; Berlin
ER  -