Abstract:
This paper explores some of Hegel’s key philosophical commitments concerning biographical narrative, drawing on the narrative aspects of his philosophy of agency in the Phenomenology of Spirit and Philosophy of Right. The important philosophical claim that lies behind both works is that the self is precisely what it does – or, in other words, a biographical subject is a series of actions that is open to construal. On Hegel’s analysis, this openness of an agent’s actions to construal involves two sorts of conflict for the project of interpretive biography: the first between differing assessments of the motives behind an action (whether possibly universal or only personal and self-interested), and the second between what can be isolated as distinctive about an agent’s own action and the larger elements of world-historical action at work around them. Hegel’s philosophy of agency offers resources both to explore and possibly resolve these two conflicts.
Keywords:
Hegel, biography, narrativity, narrative self, Phenomenology of Spirit
How to cite:
Speight, Allen, “Hegel and the Task of Biographical Narrative.” Eidos. A Journal for Philosophy of Culture 9, no. 4 (2025): 12-27. https://doi.org/10.14394/eidos.jpc.2025.0032.
Author:
Allen Speight
Department of Philosophy, Boston University
745 Commonwealth Avenue, 5th Floor, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1970-5874
casp8@bu.edu
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