Hegel and the Normativity of the Concept

Dr. Victoria I. Burke

University of Guelph

The opening of Book III of Hegel's Science of Logic shows the concept [ der Begriff ] to be structured by two reciprocally dependent moments,

the cause and the effect. I offer a reading of this concept that shows it to exhibit the normativity of meaning. The two

reciprocally dependent moments are the rule and the following of a rule inherent in any lexical ideality. These moments, and their

reciprocity, are mirrored in the two shapes of consciousness that Hegel calls the master and slave in the Phenomenology of Spirit .

 

~

~Jacques Derrida