Variations on State and Infinity. The Deconstruction of Atomism in the Doctrine of Being from the Science of Logic as a Propaedeutic for a Late-modern Revision of the Contractualism and Infinity problem.

Abstract

This research aims to demonstrate the solidarity between Logic and the political, taking as a starting point the references to atomism in the Doctrine of Being within Hegel’s Science of Logic. This approach seeks to overcome interpretative shortcomings arising from selective readings of Hegel's System; in other words, it attempts to avoid the excesses of an approach that would allow reading the Philosophy of Right without undertaking the labor—explicitly mandated by Hegel in that very text—of first reading that without which the method for grasping the political would remain insufficient, just as the modern approach had previously been. In this regard, Hegel's own references to contractualism in the Doctrine of Being itself make it possible to significantly modulate contractualism at the logical level, thereby ensuring—and only thereby—the essence of what will later unfold within the Philosophy of Right.