Publisher:
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [u.a.]
;
EBSCO Industries, Inc., Birmingham, AL, USA
"Allen Speight's contribution to the current debate on the work of Hegel argues that behind Hegel's extraordinary appeal to literature in the Phenomenology lies a philosophical project concerned with understanding human agency in the modern world. It...
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"Allen Speight's contribution to the current debate on the work of Hegel argues that behind Hegel's extraordinary appeal to literature in the Phenomenology lies a philosophical project concerned with understanding human agency in the modern world. It shows that Hegel looked to three literary genres - tragedy, comedy, and the romantic novel - as offering privileged access to three moments of human agency: retrospectivity, or the fact that human action receives its full meaning only after the event; theatricality, or the fact that human action receives its full meaning only in a social context; and forgiveness, or the practice of reassessing human action in the light of its essentially interpretive nature." "Taking full account of the authors that Hegel himself refers to (Sophocles, Diderot, Schlegel, Jacobi), Allen Speight has written a book with appeal to both philosophers and literary theorists that positions Hegel as a central figure in both the continental and Anglo-American philosophical traditions."--Jacket.