Articulations of Nature and Politics in Plato and Hegel Vicky Roupa Articulations of Nature and Politics in Plato and Hegel Vicky Roupa Articulations of Nature and Politics in Plato and Hegel Vicky Roupa Department of Philosophy The Open University Milton Keynes, UK ISBN 978-3-030-52126-4 ISBN 978-3-030-52127-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52127-1 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. 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The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland A cknowledgements Many individuals have helped me develop the ideas presented here and have offered comments on drafts of earlier versions of this book. I would like to thank colleagues and faculty at the University of Sussex where my research for this project started. I am particularly grateful to Alison Stone and Tanja Staehler for their careful reading of my work, their encourage- ment, and valuable comments. Thank you to the philosophy department at the University of Hertfordshire for offering me the opportunity to lec- ture on Plato’s Republic and Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, and for engaging with my research, especially Brendan Larvor, John Lippitt, Jane Singleton and Daniel D. Hutto. I am also thankful to the philosophy fac- ulty at the Open University, and especially the Head of Department, Manuel Dries, for extending resources that allowed me to complete my research and writing. Earlier versions of portions of this book have been presented at various conferences and colloquia. An earlier version of Chap. 2 was delivered at the 2015 ‘Thinking in the Open’ Open University philosophy conference. Chapter 4 was presented at the 2005 Hegel Society of Great Britain annual conference on ‘Hegel and the Greeks’. Chapter 5 has been presented at the Social and Political Thought graduate/faculty seminar at the University of Sussex, and Chap. 6 has been presented at the conference ‘Hegelian Philosophy: A Renaissance?’ at the University of Sheffield. I would like to thank the organisers and participants of these conferences for their helpful comments, especially Thom Brooks, Fabian Freyenhagen, Allegra de Laurentiis, Stephen Houlgate, Alfredo Ferrarin, Kimberly Hutchings and Maureen Eckert. v vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A big thank you to my editor, Brendan George, for his support of this project, and to the publishing team of Palgrave Macmillan for their effi- ciency and hard work. Finally, my gratitude goes to Persephone for chal- lenging me and for many discussions on this book, on life, on everything. c ontents 1 Articulations: Of Nature and Politics 1 Part I Redefining the Natural: Language and Logic 21 2 Naming as Technē in Plato’s Cratylus 23 3 Producing the Categories of Being: The Sophist 43 4 Producing the Categories of Being: The Science of Logic 63 Part II Redefining the Natural: Society and Politics 93 5 The Question of Nature in the Republic 95 6 Between Two Paradigms of Politics 129 7 Embodying the Political 153 vii viii CONTENTS 8 Conclusion: Towards Finitude and the Fragility of Sense 175 Index 187 A 1 bbreviAtions writings by Hegel GW Gesammelte Werke, ed. the Academy of Sciences of North Rhineland- Westphalia in association with the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1968 ff). W G. W. F. Hegel: Werke in zwanzig Bänden, ed. Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1969–1972). References to this edition are given in the form W 5: 20, indicating volume and page number. Brown Lectures on the History of Philosophy 1825–6, ed. Robert F. Brown, trans. R.F. Brown and J.M. Stewart with the assistance of H.S. Harris. 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006). EL Encyclopaedia Logic, trans. T.F.  Geraets, W.A.  Suchting, and H.S.  Harris (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1991). 1 References to Plato’s dialogues are given parenthetically to the standard Stephanus pages. All Greek cited has been transliterated. I have employed ē for eta, ō for omega and i for iota subscript. References to Hegel’s works are given by paragraph number (§) wherever appli- cable, otherwise the page of the English translation is given first, followed by the page num- ber in the German edition. Remarks are cited ‘R’, additions ‘A’. ix x ABBREVIATIONS Haldane & Simson Lectures on the History of Philosophy, trans. E.S.  Haldane and Frances H.  Simson. 3 vols. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995). HHS Hegel and the Human Spirit: A Translation of the Jena Lectures on the Philosophy of Spirit (1805–6) with Commentary, ed. Leo Rauch (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1983). LFA Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, trans. T.M. Knox. 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975). LNR Lectures on Natural Right and Political Science: The First Philosophy of Right, trans. J. Michael Stewart and Peter C.  Hodgson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). LPR Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, ed. Peter C. Hodgson, trans. P.C. Hodgson, R.F. Brown, and J.M. Stewart with the assistance of H.S. Harris (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). ‘NL’ ‘On the Scientific Ways of Treating Natural Law, on its Place in Practical Philosophy, and its Relation to the Positive Sciences of Right’ in Political Writings, ed. Laurence Winant Dickey, trans. Hugh Barr Nisbet (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999). PM Philosophy of Mind, trans. A.V. Miller and W. Wallace, revised with introduction and commentary by Michael Inwood (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007). PN Philosophy of Nature, trans. A.V. Miller (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004). PR Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. Allen Wood, trans. H.B.  Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). PS Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). PSS Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, ed. and trans. M.J. Petry. 3 vols. (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1978). PW Political Writings, ed. Laurence Winant Dickey, trans. Hugh Barr Nisbet (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999). SL Science of Logic, trans. A.V. Miller (London: Allen and Unwin, 1969).