The return of the repressed: Reflection, the subject and the absolute idea in Hegel's 'Science of Logic'

This dissertation is a reexamination of Hegel's Science of Logic as a critical exposition of the conceptual underpinnings of modern philosophy. I argue that Hegel's approach is unique in the history of philosophy because it is an attempt to think through the impasses in which philosophical thought gets caught in its attempt to account for its own structures and limitations. Hegel recognizes the paradoxical nature of this self-referential project and explores the tensions and conflicts to which it gives rise.;Arguing that Hegel's project is such a critical exposition requires a confrontation with critics who allege that Hegel is best understood as a speculative metaphysician. I offer a refutation of the critics in the first chapter as well as throughout this work. The body of the work is an examination of three sections of Hegel's Logic: its account of the structure of reflection, its discussion of the concepts of substance and subject, and its methodological conclusions, the "absolute idea." I show how Hegel's account of philosophical categories presents an alternative mode of analysis of conceptual difficulties intractable to philosophies that attempt to avoid paradox while attempting to give a self-account of thought. Hegel's insight is that philosophical paradoxes have definite structures, so a meaningful exposition of them is possible.;I further argue that Hegel's approach to philosophical thought is analogous to the approach of psychoanalysis to the difficulties of self-understanding experienced by people suffering from psychopathologies. The psychoanalyst attempts to resolve the conceptual difficulties involved by exploring their structures and not by explaining them away or dismissing them as mistakes any "normal" person would not make. Similarly, Hegel's approach to traditional philosophical dilemmas expressed for example in debates between rationalism and empiricism, dualism and monism, involves working through the limitations inherent in the concepts employed. Hegel seeks not to endorse one or the other of these positions but to come to an understanding of the way reflective thought is necessarily led into troubles in its attempt to account for itself. Hegel's work in the Logic presents a viable alternative to modern foundationalism and postmodern skepticism.