Matthew J. Delhey

Publications

• Schelling's Metametaphysical Critique of Hegel. International Journal of Philosophical Studies, forthcoming.

  Abstract: This article defends Hegel against Schelling's critique that his system can only comprehend actuality but cannot explain it. It does so while granting Schelling his basic premise, namely, that Hegel's system is entirely logical. Hegel's account of comprehension effectively answers Schelling's ‘despairing' question: why is there something rather than nothing? In the first part, I reconstruct Schelling's critique, showing that he takes Hegel's system to be entirely logical; as logical, a priori, and as a priori, unable to explain existence. In the second part, I advance a moderately deflationary reading of Hegel on which philosophy, as comprehending cognition, guarantees the non-vacuity of its categories by deriving them through conceptually transforming the universals of empirical science. Given its compellingness as a response to Schelling's critique, this moderately deflationary reading warrants further development as an interpretation of Hegel's thought.

• Hölderlin's Politics of the New Mythology. Journal of Speculative Philosophy 37, no. 3 (2023): 369–80. [link]

  Abstract: This article reevaluates Hölderlin's social and political thought in the 1790s. Against Georg Lukács, it argues that Hölderlin's politics of the new mythology, while utopian, are not mystical. In the Fragment of Philosophical Letters and the Oldest System-Programme of German Idealism, Hölderlin instead articulates two fundamental claims. Socially, the new mythical collectivity must elevate (erheben) the social relations produced by bourgeois society, exalting them in aesthetic-religious form, rather than sublating (aufheben) them, modifying both their form and their content. Politically, realizing this new collectivity requires transcending the state, and so is essentially revolutionary. Hölderlin's prosaic writings thus supplement Hyperion's romantic critique of modernity. They take as their point of departure a sober exposition of the social relations of the market emerging in Hölderlin's time and, from within these relations, excavate a new mythical collectivity capable of suturing the fragmentary divisions of modern life.

• Review of Caleb J. Basnett, Adorno, Politics, and the Aesthetic Animal. Phenomenological Reviews (5/2022). [link]

Under Review

• Apriorism and Scientific Cooperation in Hegel.

  Abstract: Hegel's commentators often attribute to his system some form of apriorism, the view that the system's content or its justification (or both) are independent of experience and empirical science. In this article, I argue that apriorism conflicts with Hegel's commitment to cooperation between the philosophical and empirical sciences, as outlined in §§1–18 of the 1830 Encyclopaedia. I do so by attributing two theses to Hegel: scientific cooperation—that knowledge arises through a process of conceptual transformation which requires an intellectual division of labour between the philosophical and empirical sciences; and incompatibility—that scientific cooperation entails a feedback loop between the philosophical and empirical sciences, rendering the concepts of Hegel's system empirically revisable, and so not a priori. Although these two theses hold across all the philosophical sciences, I focus on their application in logic, as it is in logic where apriorist interpretations appear the most justified. Reimagining a scientifically cooperative Hegel not only supports naturalist readings of his system but also reframes the task of philosophical critique. Critique, on the scientific-cooperative reading I propose, aims to exposit the insights, discoveries, and theories of the empirical sciences, furthering their ends by ameliorating their conceptual apparatus, not to debunk them.

• Institutions or Interaction? Hegel’s Critique of Fichte Reconsidered.

Abstract: In the practical sphere, Hegel’s critique of Fichte often falls under the rubric of “individualism” or “subjectivism.” By establishing the voice of conscience as the unassailable criterion of the morality of an action, Fichte unjustly sets up one’s subjectivity as the final arbitrator of morality. Or, by assuming “universal egoism” in his deduction of the commonwealth, Fichte atomizes the state’s foundations. In this retelling, Hegel rectifies Fichtean subjectivism by grounding the claims of morality and right within an institutional framework of the state, civil society, and the family, supplanting morality and abstract right with an institutionalized theory of Sittlichkeit. But however accurate such a rubric may be in broad outline, it cannot do justice to what is, I believe, most challenging and interesting in Fichte’s practical philosophy: that in it, Fichte equally incorporates a tendency towards communitarianism, conditioning the content of morality and right by the reciprocal interaction among members of a community. Fichte’s practical philosophy, one might say, is constituted by its oscillation between these two antithetical principles or tendencies, not its adherence to one or the other. This is my first contention in this chapter. My second contention concerns Hegel’s critique of Fichte. If I am right that Fichte’s practical philosophy cannot be adequately grasped as subjectivist or individualist, then Hegel’s critique of Fichte must also be revised on pain of misunderstanding its target. The best terrain for articulating this revision, I suggest, lies in their diverging theories of institutions, as this is the practical domain in which subjectivity and objectivity most thoroughly interpenetrate and, therefore, in which Fichte’s oscillation can be most readily perceived.

• Hegel and Fichte on Institutional Content.

Abstract: Hegel's interpreters often regard his turn toward an institutional analysis of society and politics to be among his most important contributions to philosophy. However, precisely how to understand this institutional turn in Hegel's thought and its success as a paradigm for social philosophy remain a matter of ongoing scholarly debate. In this paper, I aim to further our understanding of Hegel's institutionalization of ethical life by reconstructing just one aspect of his institutional theory, namely, its account of institutional content as rational or vernünftig, insofar as it responds to Fichte's account of institutional content being the product of arbitrariness or Willkür.

• The Liberal Subject in Hobbes's Leviathan.

  Abstract: Hobbes's relation to liberalism remains a matter of contentious debate in contemporary political philosophy. In this article, I exposit one underappreciated aspect of Hobbes's contribution to liberal thought, namely his theory of political subjectivity as developed in Leviathan. Building on the work of Leo Strauss and C. B. Macpherson, I argue that Hobbes advances a two-sided theory of political subjectivity, one which unifies the political subject's status as a natural being, attuned by her nature to the market, and as an artificial entity instituted by law and bearing inalienable rights. These two aspects, I argue, are not independent but mutually support Hobbes's liberalism.

Dissertation

Hegel's Theory of Institutions: A Study of Sittlichkeit

Hegel's institutionalization of ethical life (Sittlichkeit) into the spheres of the family, civil society, and the state is regarded as among his most important contributions to philosophy. In this study, I show that Hegel understands institutions to be rational social forms. Institutions, such as marriage, the corporation, and sovereignty, are concrete forms that order social life according to its immanent telos, the realization of human freedom.

For Hegel, I argue, institutions must be understood ontologically (Chapter 3) and normatively (Chapter 4). In doing so, he unifies the two institutional paradigms that precede him: the French institutional tradition, exemplified by Montesquieu and Rousseau, and the German one, represented by Gustav Hugo and Kant (Chapter 1). Hegel's use of the concept of institutions across his published writings is also examined (Chapter 2).

Ontologically, institutions are, for Hegel, meso-level social structures that combine a mode of being with a social function. For example, marriage is a social relation that functions to spiritually unite two spouses; the corporation is an association that functions to establish internal order and mutual respect among its members. Against the views of contemporary social ontologists, such as John Searle and Vincent Descombes, these forms have an existence that is ontologically objective, similar to other social phenomena like economic recessions and racism, because it does not depend on people's attitudes about the institution itself.

Normatively, Hegel combines institutionality, that institutions are transcendental conditions of human sociality, and institutional rationality, that institutions have as their telos the realization of human freedom. Challenging the prevailing readings of normativity in Hegel, I argue that Hegel distinguishes between two kinds of institutional critique. The first is scientific or philosophical critique, which has a limited scope and derives from the concept of the institution in question. The second is political critique, which is wider-sweeping and derives from one's membership in an ethical community, but is always open to contestation by other members, and so cannot achieve certainty. By distinguishing between these two forms of institutional critique, Hegel limits science to make room for politics.

Hegel's institutional theory should be compelling to us today, I conclude, because it accounts for the nature, necessity, and objectivity of institutions in human life and provides a normative foundation for social critique. Appreciating Hegel's theory will aid us in rethinking institutions and inspire new directions in social research.

Pedagogy

My pedagogy centers on the practice of writing, which I support with regular, low-stakes writing assignments, scaffolded assignments, in-class writing exercises, and metacognitive reflections on writing practice. For more information, see the sample syllabi below.

Syllabi

• ⊕ Fall 2024, University of Toronto, St. George. PHL377: Ethical Issues in Big Data. Theme: Ethics of AI.
• ⊕ Summer 2024, University of Toronto, St. George. PHL217: Introduction to Continental Philosophy. Theme: Philosophy of Technology.
• ⊕ Summer 2023, University of Toronto, St. George (online). PHL322: Contemporary Continental Philosophy. Topic: Social Critique.
• ⊕ Summer 2022, University of Toronto, St. George (online). PHL210: 17th-and 18th-Century Philosophy.
• ⊕ Summer 2021, University of Toronto, Mississauga (online). PHL243: Philosophy of Human Sexuality.

Recent Talks

• ⊕ Handout available here. Locke contra Hobbes on Opinion: A Social-Theoretic Defect of Leviathan?

  International Hobbes Association, Eastern APA, New York, NY (1/2024)

• ⊕ Handout available here. Apriorism and Scientific Cooperation in Hegel.

  International Hegel-Vereinigung, "The Self-Conception of Philosophy and its Relationship to the (Other) Sciences," Stuttgart, Germany (6/2023)

• ⊕ Video available on youtube. Slides available here. Institutions or Interaction? Hegel's Critique on Fichte Reconsidered.

  Association of Philosophy Students, University of Toronto, Scarborough (10/2022)

Interviews

• ⊕ Available on the Blog of the APA. APA Member Interview.

  Association of Philosophy Students, University of Toronto, Scarborough (3/2022)

Miscellanea

• Hegel Links.

  A collection of links that I have found helpful for thinking and writing about Hegel.

• Dramaturgies of Resistance.

  An event series I co-organized with colleagues in Cinema Studies, Comparative Literature, and Philosophy funded by the Jackman Humanities Institute's Program in the Arts. The series ran for two discontinuous years: Collectivity, Performance, Dialectics (2020–21) and The Labour of the Negative (2022–23).

• Marx & Critique Reading Group.

  A reading group started during the COVID-19 pandemic. We've read, inter alia, the Grundrisse, Volume 1, and Volume 2. From contemporary authors, we've read Black Marxism (Cedric Robinson), The Warehouse (Alessandro Delfanti), and Marx and Critical Theory (Emmanuel Renault), the latter two having joined the reading group for discussion of their work. We're currently reading Volume 3.