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This paper argues that crisis in Hegel’s philosophy is not an external disturbance of rationality but the very logic through which reason sustains and improves itself. I propose that Hegel’s speculative reason internalizes crisis as the enduring form of constitutive negativity that enables both the life of the concept and the vitality of Geist.
This is because vitality, unlike other forms of motion, involves a purposeful or goal-oriented movement directed toward the improvement of the living organism. Such purposiveness can emerge only when the organic unity—whether it be an individual, a state, or humanity as a whole—undergoes a crisis. To experience crisis is to encounter an opposition to one’s own identity and existence. Through this encounter, the organism becomes aware of its boundaries and the limits of its capacities. Without such an experience of limitation, one cannot attain the self-knowledge required for genuine self-development. In short, crisis functions as the intrinsic locomotive of the purposeful motion of life itself, compelling the organism to overcome its disruption and thereby to progress.
As I will argue, the inner persistence of crisis manifests itself in three dimensions. (1) Logical: Crisis is the speculative moment of contradiction in which the concept recognizes its own insufficiency and transcends it through Aufhebung. (2) Ethical: Within the Sittlichkeit, as exemplified by the Antigone tragedy, crisis expresses the conflict between competing normative orders, revealing ethical life as a dynamic field of self-correction rather than harmony. (3) Historical: The unfolding of Spirit proceeds through crises of identity—each crisis functioning as the threshold of a new universality.
Thus, Hegel’s speculative philosophy does not resolve crisis but renders it necessary for reason’s vitality. To think with Hegel today is therefore to recognize that crisis is a precondition for self-knowledge and self-development.
| Keywords | Hegel, crisis, negativity, vitality, self-knowledge, progress |
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| berk.ozcangiller@medeniyet.edu.tr |