Hegel's Antiquity

by Will Desmond

Hegel's Antiquity aims to summarize, contextualize, and criticize Hegel's understanding and treatment of major aspects of the classical world, approaching each of the major areas of his historical thinking in politics, art, religion, philosophy, and history itself. The discussion excerpts relevant details from a range of Hegel's works, with an eye both to the ancient sources with which he worked, and the contemporary theories (German aesthetic theory, Romanticism, Kantianism, Idealism (including Hegel's own), and emerging historicism) which coloured his readings. What emerges is that Hegel's interest in both Greek and Roman antiquity was profound and is essential for his philosophy, arguably providing the most important components of his vision of Hegel is generally understood as a thinker of modernity (in various senses), but his modernity can only be understood in essential relation to its predecessors and 'others', notably the Greek world and Roman world
whose essential 'spirit' he assimilates to his own notion of Geist .

404 pages, Hardcover

Published September 30, 2020

About the author

William Desmond is originally from Cork but was educated mainly in the US. He has a BA in classics and philosophy, a BSc in mathematics and completed a joint MA and Ph.D. in classics and philosophy at Yale University. He was a lecturer at Yale for two years before returning to Ireland where he lectured in UCD, TCD and Milltown, before taking up a permanent post in Maynooth in 2007.

Dr Desmond’s research interests centre on intellectual history, particularly in the Greek classical period and certain modern receptions of antiquity; recurrent themes include virtue ethics, political philosophy, historiography and metaphysics. His doctorate on classical Greek ideas about wealth was published as The Greek Praise of Poverty (Notre Dame UP, 2006), which was awarded the NUI Centennial Prize in Academic Publishing in Languages, Literature & Linguistics (2009). A second monograph, Cynics (Acumen & University of California Press, 2008), examines the “dog philosophers” in antiquity, and their later influence. Philosopher-Kings of Antiquity (Bloomsbury, 2011, pbk. 2013) explores the ideal Platonic union of power and wisdom and its more important variations and historical refractions through antiquity and beyond. His current research remains interdisciplinary as it focuses on nineteenth-century German receptions of both Greek and Roman cultures, especially among Idealist and Romantic writers. Other specialist areas of interest include Homer and mythology, and Whitehead and modern process thought; he has edited (with Michel Weber) the two-volume Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought (de Gruyter, 2008).

This biography is an excerpt from: https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/peo...