Hegel, Logic and Speculation

In the second edition of Being (book I of the Science of Logic) Hegel makes extensive use of the term plastisch. Hegelian critics and commentators from Catherine Malabou to Pierre-Jean Labarriere read his use of this term as a wish to override the Logic''s pure forms and rigid conceptualizations of universality. Other readers of Hegel''s Logic, like Stanley Rosen, warned against this plastic model of ''universal effectuality'' and the scholarly danger of straying away from ''the idea of Hegel''s science of logic.'' Contemporary Hegelian studies have been marked by this double turn to the logical foundation and speculative core of Hegel''s system, that is, to his logic as ''science''.

This is the first book to introduce Italian and subaltern interpretations of the Hegelian Wirklichkeit (often translated as actuality), and to examine its implications throughout Hegel''s thought, taking Hegel''s Science of Logic as the basis for his philosophy. The volume''s understanding of effectual reality situates itself in a Machiavellian-Gramscian genealogy of ideas, and with an emphasis on the practical element of Wirklichkeit, beyond plasticity and actuality, it systematically considers the applications of Hegel''s logic to his philosophy of nature and the human world.

Analyzing the relation between the Logic and its realizations, this book shows the internal tension that inhabits Hegel''s philosophy at the intersection of logical (conceptual) speculation and concrete (interpretative) analysis.