{"title":"Hegel's Theory of Absolute Spirit: Reflexive Practices in Hegel's Social Philosophy","authors":"Markus Gante","doi":"10.1111/ejop.70015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.70015","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper argues that Hegel's concept of <i>absolute spirit</i> should be understood as central to his social philosophy. Rather than designating a metaphysical endpoint, absolute spirit refers to reflexive practices—art, religion, and philosophy—through which societies critically engage with the norms and assumptions that structure social life. While <i>objective spirit</i> secures freedom through institutionalized norms, it does so by relying on elements that often remain implicit. Absolute spirit makes these elements visible and open to transformation. I propose that absolute and objective spirit are connected through a feedback loop: objective spirit generates binding norms, while absolute spirit reflects on and potentially reshapes them.</p>","PeriodicalId":46958,"journal":{"name":"EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"34 1","pages":"96-114"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ejop.70015","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147566775","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Seeing Others as Objects: Perceptual Objectification & Affordances","authors":"Prof Paulina Sliwa, Dr Tom McClelland","doi":"10.1111/ejop.70027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.70027","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 \u0000 <section>\u0000 \u0000 <p>In discussions of objectification, the use of visual language is ubiquitous. It is striking that the literature often talks about <i>treating</i> and <i>seeing</i> someone as an object in the same breath. Yet accounts of objectification focus on objectifying <i>treatment</i> and leave the notion of objectifying <i>perception</i> unexplained. This prompts the question of our paper:</p>\u0000 </section>\u0000 \u0000 <section>\u0000 \u0000 <p><i>what does it mean to see someone as an object?</i> Our aim in this paper is to develop an affordance-based account of perceptual objectification. Put simply, affordances are the <i>possibilities for action</i> in an agent's environment. To perceptually objectify someone is a matter of perceiving the object-related affordances they present as opposed to their person-related affordances. We argue that this account explains the close connection between seeing and treating someone as an object.</p>\u0000 </section>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":46958,"journal":{"name":"EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"34 1","pages":"297-312"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ejop.70027","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147568274","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Being Wrong About Personal Transformation","authors":"Adrian Kind","doi":"10.1111/ejop.70024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.70024","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Transformative experiences are thought to change us in different ways. Some transform us epistemically by providing genuinely new, previously unimaginable experiences, while others bring about personal transformation by altering our values. Recent debates on transformative experiences have explored the challenges these experiences pose for decision theory and medical ethics, prompting efforts to better understand their nature. An important but largely unexplored epistemic question concerns how we come to know that an experience has had a transformative impact. In this paper, I examine this issue, focusing on the epistemologically more complex case of personal transformation. I argue that while epistemic transformation is transparent—making first-person judgments about it highly reliable—first-person judgments regarding personal transformation are more complex, inferential, and prone to error. To explore these complexities, I introduce the phenomenon of Transformative Dazzle—situations in which the inherent error-proneness of inferences about personal transformation leads to mistaken self-attributions of personal transformation. I further elaborate on how such errors may be identified, both in everyday life and in empirical research on transformative experiences.</p>","PeriodicalId":46958,"journal":{"name":"EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"34 1","pages":"281-296"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ejop.70024","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147569821","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Amphibian Habits: Freedom, Death, and History in Hegel's Account Of Second Nature","authors":"Eskil Elling","doi":"10.1111/ejop.70039","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.70039","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Hegel's concept of habit is key to his account of social freedom. But it also appears preclude free reflection on social norms. Recent readers have either minimized this problem or concluded from it that social freedom necessarily implies new forms of unfreedom. This paper aims to avoid the latter conclusion while taking seriously its critical insight. I do this by noting Hegel's association of habit with death, which he sees not as an abstract end to life but as the source of more complex forms of life. Modern social habits structure life in ways that are not transparent to the individual subject. That subject thus retreats into the moral idea that they are individually the source of the legitimacy of those norms. But this undermines their binding force, and without this force, subjects lose their habitual grounding in the world. They are thus tempted to reverse into an unreflective submission to social habits that I call spiritual death. But, I argue, construing the problem in this way also allows us to see its solution: before spiritual death ensues, our habitual relationship to norms is momentarily disrupted in a way that allows us to develop a new relationship to them.</p>","PeriodicalId":46958,"journal":{"name":"EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"34 1","pages":"115-132"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ejop.70039","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147564685","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Hegel's Theory of Absolute Spirit: Reflexive Practices in Hegel's Social Philosophy","authors":"Markus Gante","doi":"10.1111/ejop.70015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.70015","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper argues that Hegel's concept of <i>absolute spirit</i> should be understood as central to his social philosophy. Rather than designating a metaphysical endpoint, absolute spirit refers to reflexive practices—art, religion, and philosophy—through which societies critically engage with the norms and assumptions that structure social life. While <i>objective spirit</i> secures freedom through institutionalized norms, it does so by relying on elements that often remain implicit. Absolute spirit makes these elements visible and open to transformation. I propose that absolute and objective spirit are connected through a feedback loop: objective spirit generates binding norms, while absolute spirit reflects on and potentially reshapes them.</p>","PeriodicalId":46958,"journal":{"name":"EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"34 1","pages":"96-114"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ejop.70015","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147566774","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Kant on Utopia","authors":"Karoline Reinhardt","doi":"10.1111/ejop.70044","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.70044","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Immanuel Kant's The Dispute between the Faculties (1798) contains a footnote referencing four utopian states — Atlantis, Utopia, Oceana, and Severambia. This passage has largely been overlooked in Kantian scholarship. This paper revisits this neglected passage to explore Kant's engagement with utopian literature and its implications for his philosophy of history and political thought. The footnote, though brief, sheds light on Kant's views regarding the feasibility of ideal states and their connection to revolutionary change. It reveals Kant's nuanced perspective on the role of utopian visions in shaping political ideals and the duties of individuals and governments in realizing such ideals. While Kant acknowledges these utopias as “sweet dreams,” he also questions their practicality and warns against revolutionary approaches to achieving them. This paper examines how Kant's references to these utopian constructs reflect his broader philosophical concerns about progress and reform, emphasizing that progress must occur through gradual, lawful reform rather than through revolutionary upheaval. By analyzing Kant's treatment of these literary fictions, the paper aims to illuminate his complex relationship with utopian thought and its place within his broader theoretical framework.</p>","PeriodicalId":46958,"journal":{"name":"EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"34 1","pages":"66-78"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ejop.70044","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147570281","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Leopoldo Zea on the Role of Hegel's Master–Slave Dialectic in the Philosophy of Latin American History","authors":"Pavel Reichl","doi":"10.1111/ejop.70017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.70017","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In one of the most influential works in 20th-century Latin America, Leopoldo Zea draws on Hegel's Master–Slave Dialectic to construct a philosophy of Latin American History from colonialism to the present. Yet his motives for organizing his work around these brief but suggestive passages from Hegel's <i>Phenomenology of Spirit</i> have not been well understood. In this article, I explore these motives with the aim of shedding light on Zea's philosophy of history and on his strategy for appropriating Hegel in a post-colonial context.</p>","PeriodicalId":46958,"journal":{"name":"EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"34 1","pages":"152-162"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ejop.70017","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147562179","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Cugoano on Responsibility and Oppression","authors":"Iziah C Topete","doi":"10.1111/ejop.13084","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.13084","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article contributes to the growing literature on the West African Quobna Ottobah Cugoano by reconstructing his concept of responsibility from <i>Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species</i>, first published in London in July 1787. In this text, Cugoano drew the thesis that every individual in the British empire was responsible for the oppression of Africans. Objections to the plausibility of his claim are raised. By contextualizing the argument in eighteenth-century abolitionist thought, I clarify that his thesis is not grounded in causation but in judgment. I develop a <i>passive judgment</i> principle that animates his argument: to judge oppression <i>qua</i> oppression without intervening is to be complicit in it. He applies this principle to different instances, particularly the case of slavery's legal toleration in the British empire.</p>","PeriodicalId":46958,"journal":{"name":"EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"34 1","pages":"17-32"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147562199","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Social Truth of Schopenhauer's ‘Metaphysics of Pity’: Compassion and Critical Theory","authors":"David James","doi":"10.1111/ejop.13085","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.13085","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Taking Horkheimer and Adorno's account of pity in the <i>Dialectic of Enlightenment</i> as my starting point, I show that Schopenhauer's compassion-based moral theory exemplifies key elements of this account. In particular, this moral theory will be shown to possess a social truth for Horkheimer and Adorno because it is an expression of a wrong relation between the particular and the universal that reflects a social reality which is the cause of suffering to which compassion responds. I then argue, mainly with reference to Adorno's theory of moral impulse, that compassion is a presupposition of the type of critical social theory to which Horkheimer and Adorno are committed. This invites the question of how their position differs from Schopenhauer's.</p>","PeriodicalId":46958,"journal":{"name":"EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"34 1","pages":"79-95"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ejop.13085","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147565205","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Marx's Concept of Life","authors":"Christopher Shambaugh","doi":"10.1111/ejop.70025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.70025","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This essay aims to reveal the conceptual unity of an ensemble of concepts of organic, animal, and anthropological life articulated by the young Karl Marx between 1842 and 1844. To lay the groundwork for my analysis, I begin with Marx's general account of “life as activity.” I argue that Marx articulates a hylomorphic theory of organic form in 1842 and 1843, and a Left Hegelian conception of organismal agency as productive activity in 1844. I then interpret Marx's organismic conception of “productive life-activity” as the guiding thread of his scala naturae in the <i>Manuscripts</i>. More precisely, I examine how Marx distinguishes plant, animal, and human life through the organism's production of its life and the life of its species (<i>Gattung</i>). I then redefine Marx's concept of species-being as the unfulfilled power of an animal organism to self-consciously pursue its productive life-activity as its species-life. In making this argument for the unity of Marx's concept of life, I hope to clarify the Aristotelian and Left Hegelian roots of his materialism.</p>","PeriodicalId":46958,"journal":{"name":"EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"34 1","pages":"163-190"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ejop.70025","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147570017","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}