Continental Philosophy Research Group Talk (Dylan Shaul, California, Riverside)

The Continental Philosophy Research Group is pleased to welcome as guest speaker Dylan Shaul, an assistant professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. Dr. Shaul works primarily in 18th- and 19th-century philosophy (especially German Idealism) and Jewish philosophy. He also has interests in early modern philosophy, 20th-century European philosophy, ethics, and the philosophy of religion.

Talk Title

Hegel and Heidegger on the Future: Time, Forgiveness, Decision

Talk Abstract

This paper reconstructs and evaluates Heidegger’s critique of Hegel in Being and Time, offering a new Hegelian response to this critique. Heidegger criticizes Hegel for his alleged view that Absolute Knowing allows Spirit to annul time in the eternal present of its absolute self-knowledge, in contrast to Heidegger’s own insistence on Dasein’s ineliminable futurity. Against Heidegger, I argue that the Hegelian annulling of time in fact constitutes a break in History: by forgiving the past and thereby undoing it, Spirit can decide to create a new future world. Hegel’s silence about the future entails that the shape of this new world remains radically open. 

About the Continental Philosophy Group

One of six departmental research interest groups, the Continental Philosophy Group works in the traditions of textual interpretation of human consciousness, phenomenology, and post-structuralist critical theory, among other related traditions of thought.