Rousseau e Hegel: poder e impotência da má-infinitude
Abstract
This article compares Rousseau’s and Hegel’s interpretations of the biblical myth of the fall from paradise since both philosophers’ comprehensions of the original sin offer an original perspective on their works and a guiding thread to mark their similarities and differences concerning the concepts of imagination, consciousness and bad and good infinity. Whereas for Rousseau bad infinity (schlechte Unendlichkeit) remains, after the loss of the state of nature, a structure out of which humans can no longer escape, for Hegel, on the other side, it is, simply put, a one-sided experience of infinity that has to and will be overcome by true infinity. This entails consequences concerning the way both philosophers see the sphere in which bad infinity unfolds its power and has to be limited: civil society and the state. Although Hegel is thoroughly acquainted with Rousseau’s denunciation of the evils degenerated society has brought about, with its moral and social corruption, Hegel searches not to overcome, but to sublate such evils by binding the consumer and the worker to a higher well-determined purpose: the state. Hand in hand with this ‘solution’ to the problem goes his critique of Rousseau: as Rousseau demands the ‘total exteriorisation’ of every citizen – the complete replacement of the particular by the general will, without any mediation –, his way of overcoming bad infinity is abstract and therefore ineffective. At the same time Rousseau provides the tools to criticize Hegel’s attempt to reconcile the bourgeois and the citoyen. In a closing section their concepts of state are confronted with one another.Downloads
Download data is not yet available.