Inscriptions of the multitude in Hegel, Heidegger and Plato (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Martin Heidegger)

The dissertation set out to account for the discussion of physiognomy in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit and the neglect of that discussion by previous Hegel-criticism. The challenge of the project also was to describe the relevance of studying philosophy after its deconstruction. I discovered that in the physiognomy-discussion Hegel dramatizes both the relation of contiguity implied in determinate negation, and the process of reading implicit in the dialectical production of meaning. At the same time, I noticed similarities between this moment and other passages from canonical works that had been ignored by the criticism. The topic of the dissertation became the way in which moments in Hegel, Heidegger and Plato explicitly face the metonymical rhetoric subtending a metaphorics of subjectivity. The major critics I consulted were Poggeler, Lacoue-Labarthe, Derrida, de Man and Warminski. Through close readings of passages from the Phenomenology, Heidegger's Nietzsche lectures and Plato's Republic, I concluded that the traditions of their reception actively had suppressed the way in which they present philosophical knowledge as an act of reading.; The philosophical rhetoric of Hegel, Heidegger, and Plato implies the figure of the liberated subject which democratic rhetoric also presumes. At the same time, these authors present philosophical language as originating in response to an actual order to which it is materially attached. On account of their rigor, they attempt to come to terms with the material foundation of their philosophical projects by theorizing reading and by performing readings. Figures and indications of an uncontrollable multitude are inscribed as the limit of this self-reflexive moment. The findings of the research have implications for the study of philosophy within the context of comparative literature. The texts studied present political responsibility as a necessarily fictional response to material history. They indicate that philosophical texts in general could be read as particularly self-conscious examples of the fictional production of truth. The project therefore demonstrates how the study of philosophical texts can shed light on the philosophical presumptions both of the rhetoric of modern democracy and of the political turn being effected today within the study of literature in the university.