'Seit ein Gespräch wir sind': Language and dialogical experience in Hegel

Abstract

An influential tradition in Hegel reception interprets Hegel’s dialectics as a monologue conducted by an omniscient subject, without any openness to what presents itself as other. This dissertation aims to present Hegel as a dialogical thinker and does so by means of a precise analysis of Hegels approach to language: of his reflections on language, his particular and idiosyncratic use of language and of the interaction with the reader.

Reading Hegel as a dialogical thinker who grants a central position to both language and the reader allows for further development of Hegel’s concept of experience. ‘Bestimmung’ is a movement that allows for determination of experience, but also demands that we actively involve ourselves with the voices (‘Stimmen’) of others. The outcome is not a definitive truth in which there is no more to be said. Even though we have ultimately arrived at a comprehensive conceptual understanding, our concepts are not inert and require continuous interaction.

This reading also allows for a rethinking of the role played by language in Hegel’s thought. A focus on the interaction between Hegel’s text and the reader shows that the reader is implicated in the process of knowing, and that language can be used as a means to bring about experience. Hegel’s texts allow for a process of continuous ‘Bestimmung’: of the development of the text’s meaning, but also of the voice of philosophy, a voice in which we can come to know and recognize the plurality of voices that contributed to its making.