No abstract

In this paper, I first explore Hegel’s own distinctions between various types of idealism, most of which he explicitly rejects. I discuss his notions of subjective, transcendental and absolute idealism and present the outlines of his criticisms of the first two as well as the motivation behind his commitment to a version of absolute idealism. In particular, I argue that the latter does not share the defining features of what is now commonly called ‘idealism’, as Hegel neither denies the existence of an external world nor even holds that we can only somehow indirectly infer the truth of propositions about the external world from the structure of some given mental material. I give a basic account of what Hegel’s concept of ‘the absolute idea’ is about, which lies behind his absolute idealism. In this context, I maintain that it is crucial for our understanding of Hegel and of his potential relevance for contemporary metaphysics and epistemology that the absolute idea is precisely not a mental or ‘spiritual’ (geistig) entity. Rather, it amounts to a set of methodological assumptions designed to guarantee the overall intelligibility of what there is, regardless of its actual natural, social or more broadly normative structure.

This is the third Aarhus lecture by Markus Gabriel submitted by editor in chief Brock Steen.

In this fourth, concluding part of the Aarhus Lectures, I want to make sense of some features of Schelling’s positive philosophy in light of the fundamental idea of a philosophy of mythology. I believe that it is at least worth inquiring to what extent something like the so-called scientific world-picture – as well as the associated prominent insistence on normativity as a potential mark of autonomous mindedness as opposed to blind law-governed natural events – is embedded in a mythology. Genealogical points of this form are typically invoked in order to make room for an alternative. In Schelling’s case, the ultimate alternative (revelation) consists in overcoming the mythological condition of human consciousness as we know it altogether. However, like later modern eschatologists of a similar stripe (such as Heidegger and Derrida), he does not flesh out the alternative without creating another mythology, which is why in the second part of his positive philosophy, the Philosophy of Revelation, he resorts to revelation as a counter-myth to mythology, to an event that is not under the control of any kind of theory-building. Be that as it may, in the preparation of his triumphalist story about revelation, Schelling offers resources for a critical account of modernity’s constitutive mythology that he brings to bear in his critique of Hegel in ways not yet sufficiently explored in contemporary philosophy.

In this chapter, the question whether robots could be conscious is evaluated from a philosophical perspective. The position taken is that the human being is the indispensable locus of ethical discovery. Questions concerning what we ought to do as morally equipped agents subject to normative guidance largely depend on our synchronically and diachronically varying answers to the question of “who we are.” It is argued here, that robots are not conscious and could not be conscious, where consciousness is understood as a systemic feature of the animal-environment relationship. It is suggested, that ethical reflection yields the result that we ought not to produce cerebral organoids implanted in a robotic “body.”