On Hegel / Renewing Philosophy (PDF)

KARIN DE BOER has taught at the Universities of Amsterdam and Louvain, and is currently lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. She is the author of Thinking in the Light of Time: Heidegger's Encounter with Hegel (2000) and of numerous articles on Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, tragedy, and contemporary French thought.

'Here is a unique and fresh approach to Hegel's thought. By tapping the resources of his early writings, and developing the tragic strand that distinguishes them from the totalizing thrust of his later work, Karin de Boer demonstrates the relevance of Hegel's thought for a critical assessment of modernity's self-understanding. The pivotal contribution of this rich and sophisticated study, whose strength is on par with Hegel's, is the development of a 'logic of entanglement' which not only undercuts the concept of absolute negativity characteristic of Hegel's speculative works, but also provides new insight into the instable nature of the relation between contrary moments.' - Rodolphe Gasché, SUNY Distinguished Professor& Eugenio Donato Professor of Comparative Literature at SUNY at Buffalo

'In her On Hegel: The Sway of the Negative Karin de Boer masterfully shows how the idea of tragedy and the work of tragic negativity is at the heart of Hegel's system of philosophy, in constant tension with his famous dialectic, pervading the Logic, Nature, and History. This is a great accomplishment that offers a fresh, actual, and highly insightful re-reading of Hegel as the philosopher of modernity's self-criticism.' - Angelica Nuzzo, Professor of Philosophy at Brooklyn College, City University of New York