Hegel’s thought represents a huge challenge for every philosopher because it fosters the power of abstraction and conceptualization and pushes the limits of language to attain an extensive understanding of human rationality, sociality and history. This book acquiesces in following the path indicated by Hegel and aims at enhancing our comprehension of the classical philosophical problems from the contemporary point of view. This is the reason why I am indebted to a large group of people for helping me in various ways to develop the ideas in the book and get them on paper. Firstly, I would like to mention the Research European Agency of the European Commission for financing this project under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 704127, hegnat. Many thanks go to the Department dusic of the University of Parma where the project hegnat has been hosted and carried out from 2016–2019 and where I am currently associate professor for theoretical philosophy. The support from the Director Prof. D. Saglia, the faculty members and the administrative staff has been of utmost importance for obtaining the serenity necessary to carry on this philosophical endeavor. Many thanks also to the Department of Philosophy, Georgetown University (Washington D.C.) for hosting me two years as a Visiting Fellow from 2016–2018. I express also my gratitude to the Department of Philosophy, unsw (Sydney, au) for the co-organization of the conference Naturalism and Sociality in February 2019.
Finally, I would like to acknowledge my indebtedness to relevant colleagues and academics for their competent support, supervision and criticism. Terry Pinkard has been crucial in supporting me and supervising my project on Hegel’s naturalism during my stay at Georgetown University; his expertise in this field has been fundamental for improving my knowledge about this argument. Of course, my research has benefited by the feedback from many influent colleagues, among them I would like to remember those who mostly inspired my work: Karen Ng, Rocío Zambrana, Sebastian Rödl, Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer, Christopher Yeomans, Robert Pippin, Thomas Khurana, Matthias Haase, Heikki Ikäheimo.
Concerning the literature quoted in this book, I would like to inform the reader about my choice to only use the English translation of the Hegel’s works because my aim has been to address theoretical and systematic aspects of the Hegelian philosophy and to avoid any methodology recalling history of philosophy and its nuances. For me the central issue is relating Hegel
’s thought to contemporary issues and not to past ones. I decided to abbreviate the titles of these books, the reader will find the list of the abbreviations at the end of this volume under the heading References and Abbreviations.