We are glad to give notice of the Workshop Hegel’s Concept of Singularity, which will take place at the University of Ljubljana (Conference Halls: M3/M4), from the 6th to 8th November, 2025.
The event is jointly organized by the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, the Department of Philosophy (the research group The Common Between Substance and Subject), Cankarjev dom, and the Goethe-Institut Ljubljana.
Below you can find the description and the program of the event.
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Singularity (Einzelheit) is one of the key logical categories of Hegel’s philosophy, yet it receives surprisingly little attention in the literature. According to several influential interpretations (e.g., Russell’s or Adorno’s), Hegel’s philosophy explicitly prioritizes the universal over the singular – in the sense that something singular gains actuality only as an instance of a concept (i.e., something universal). According to these interpretations, Hegel’s philosophy is distinctly a philosophy of the devaluation of the singular as singular. However, a closer reading reveals that Hegel’s conception of singularity is significantly more nuanced. Nevertheless, considerable ambiguity remains in the complex relationship between singularity and universality in Hegel’s thought. Hegel himself distinguishes two meanings of “singularity”: the traditional philosophical meaning, where singularity is the way in which sensible things exist – immediately and factually; and the second, more complex and specifically Hegelian meaning, where singularity is one of the (three) moments in the articulated structure of the concept. However, it is not entirely clear what the relationship between these two meanings is, and consequently, which meaning Hegel refers to in individual cases. Clarifying these ambiguities is the main purpose of the conference. Although this topic touches upon the deep logical core of Hegel’s philosophy, it also has clear implications for the field of political philosophy, as it directly concerns the status of the individual – the central political category of modernity – in his relationship to universality. Perhaps in Hegel, we can hope to find logical tools for thinking an alternative to the social ontology of radical individualism, which at the same time does not lose the individual.
Program
06.11.2025
10:00 – 11:00: Zdravko Kobe and Georges Faraklas, Hegel’s Concept of Singularity: Introduction to the Problem
11:15-12:15: Elena Ficara, Logics of singularity
12:15 – 13:15: Joris Spigt, Ethics and Singularity
14:15– 15:15: Luca Corti, Singularity and Sense Certainty
15:15-16:15: Jelscha Schmid, Fichte on individuality
07.11.2025
09:00 – 10:00: Karen Koch, Conceiving the singular through the universal? On Hegel’s
metaphysics of singularity
10:00-11:00: Attay Kremer, Truth and Singularity in the Science of Logic
11:15 – 12:15: Michela Bordignon, Singularity and life between the Science of Logic and the Philosophy of Nature
12:15 – 13:15: León Antonio Heim, Being a Living Individual: Hegel’s Conception of Freedom as the Self-Relation of a Natural
14:15-15:15: Berker Basmaci, Art and the Sensuous: Singularity of the Hegelian
Concept
08.11.2025
09:00 – 10:00: Lucian Ionel, The Doing of One, the Doing of All: Hegel on Agency
10:00-11:00: Guido Frilli, Powers, Passions and Habits: Hegel on Singular Will
11:15-12:15: Martin Hergouth, Is Hegel’s political philosophy structured as concession to individuality or particularity?
12:15-13:15: Bojana Jovićević, Singularity, Practical Reason and Action in The Science of Logic
