Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher whose dialectical system fundamentally shaped modern philosophy. His contribution to the book lies in the counter-position: Hegel’s sublation of the principle of identity undermines the foundations of the substance-ontological concept of person and forms the core of dialectical thinking as the second strand of the oblivion of the person.
Key Contribution
Hegel replaces the principle of identity (A = A) with the dialectical movement of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. For Hegel, contradiction is not a sign of error, but the motor of reality: being passes over into its opposite and is sublated (aufgehoben) in a higher unity. Substance becomes subject — it is not an abiding being identical with itself, but a process of self-unfolding.
Consequences for the Concept of Person
For the ontology of the person, this form of thought has far-reaching consequences:
- Dissolution of substance: if substance is process, there is no abiding bearer of personhood. The person becomes, but she is not in any abiding sense.
- Sublation of the principle of identity: without the principle of identity, agere sequitur esse can no longer be thought — for there is no abiding esse that the agere could follow.
- Loss of inalienable dignity: if the being of the person is not an identical being, there is no ontological ground for an inalienable dignity.
Alma von Stockhausen has shown that Hegel’s dialectic stands in a line running from Luther via Kant and unfolds its effect in the theology of Karl Rahner. This line issues in anti-essentialism: the denial of immutable essential forms.
Place in the Book
Hegel is discussed in Chapter 5 (German) as a representative of the dialectical strand of the theoretical oblivion of the person — in contrast to the empiricist strand (Locke, Hume, Singer).
Sources: Bexten 2017, pp. 218–254 (theoretical oblivion of the person).
Further sources:
- Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1807): Phänomenologie des Geistes (Engl.: Phenomenology of Spirit, transl. A. V. Miller, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1977). Bamberg/Würzburg: Goebhardt. — New edition by H.-F. Wessels and H. Clairmont. Hamburg: Meiner (PhB 414), 1988.
- Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1812–1816): Wissenschaft der Logik (Engl.: Science of Logic, transl. A. V. Miller, London: Allen & Unwin 1969). Nürnberg: Schrag. — New edition by G. Lasson. Hamburg: Meiner (PhB 56/57), 1971.
- Stockhausen, Alma von (1990): Der Geist im Widerspruch — Von Luther zu Hegel (Engl.: The Spirit in Contradiction — From Luther to Hegel). Weilheim-Bierbronnen: Gustav-Siewerth-Akademie.