I begin by identifying an ambiguity in the post-Hegelian literature on Immanent Critique, distinguishing two possible definitions: judging an object against its ‘internal’ norms; and accounting for one’s own standpoint with reference to the object. I then claim that both definitions are represented in Hegel’s Phenomenology, and develop extended interpretations of material from the Introduction in order to clarify and substantiate this thesis. This yields revisionist readings of the famous ‘internal criteria’ and ‘self examination’ tropes. My discussion builds towards elucidating (...) the relation between the two definitions of Immanent Critique I have distinguished, as it is developed in the Phenomenology. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWhile Hegel’s concept of second nature has now received substantial attention from commentators, relatively little has been said about the place of this concept in the Phenomenology of Spirit. This neglect is understandable, since Hegel does not explicitly use the phrase ‘second nature’ in this text. Nonetheless, several closely related phrases reveal the centrality of this concept to the Phenomenology’s structure. In this paper, I develop new interpretations of the figures ‘natural consciousness’, ‘natural notion’, and ‘inorganic nature’, in order to (...) elucidate the distinctive concept of second nature at work in the Phenomenology. I will argue that this concept of second nature supplements the ‘official’ version, developed in the Encyclopedia, with an ‘unofficial’ version that prefigures its use in critical theory. At the same time, this reconstruction will allow us to see how the Phenomenology essentially documents spirit’s acquisition of a ‘second nature’. (shrink)

While Hegel's discussion of the ‘speculative sentence’ occurs in the ‘Preface’ to the Phenomenology of Spirit, commentators rarely link it to the larger program of this text. Instead, this discussion has typically been received as a guide to the Science of Logic's presentation, as an independent theory of judgment, or as a reflection on the constraints and capacities of language generally. In this paper I argue that the speculative sentence can and should be linked to the Phenomenology itself. Specifically, I (...) show that Hegel's discussion both mirrors and supplements the ‘Introduction's’ explication of immanent phenomenological method. Establishing this parallel in turn allows us to identify a class of sentences throughout the Phenomenology as properly speculative and methodologically substantive. At the same time, this interpretation helps clarify several characteristics that Hegel ascribes to the speculative sentence, but which have gone unaddressed by commentators. (shrink)