Matthew J. Delhey

Publications

• Hölderlin's Politics of the New Mythology. Journal of Speculative Philosophy 37, no. 3 (2023): 369–80. [link]

  Abstract: This article reevaluates Hölderlin's social and political thought in the 1790s. Against Georg Lukács, it argues that Hölderlin's politics of the new mythology, while utopian, are not mystical. In the Fragment of Philosophical Letters and the Oldest System-Programme of German Idealism, Hölderlin instead articulates two fundamental claims. Socially, the new mythical collectivity must elevate (erheben) the social relations produced by bourgeois society, exalting them in aesthetic-religious form, rather than sublating (aufheben) them, modifying both their form and their content. Politically, realizing this new collectivity requires transcending the state, and so is essentially revolutionary. Hölderlin's prosaic writings thus supplement Hyperion's romantic critique of modernity. They take as their point of departure a sober exposition of the social relations of the market emerging in Hölderlin's time and, from within these relations, excavate a new mythical collectivity capable of suturing the fragmentary divisions of modern life.

• Review of Caleb J. Basnett, Adorno, Politics, and the Aesthetic Animal. Phenomenological Reviews (5/2022). [link]

Under Review

• Apriorism and Scientific Cooperation in Hegel.

  Abstract: Hegel's commentators often attribute to his system some form of apriorism, the view that the system's content or its justification (or both) are independent of experience and empirical science. In this article, I argue that apriorism conflicts with Hegel's commitment to cooperation between the philosophical and empirical sciences, as outlined in §§1–18 of the 1830 Encyclopaedia. I do so by attributing two theses to Hegel: scientific cooperation—that knowledge arises through a process of conceptual transformation which requires an intellectual division of labour between the philosophical and empirical sciences; and incompatibility—that scientific cooperation entails a feedback loop between the philosophical and empirical sciences, rendering the concepts of Hegel's system empirically revisable, and so not a priori. Although these two theses hold across all the philosophical sciences, I focus on their application in logic, as it is in logic where apriorist interpretations appear the most justified. Reimagining a scientifically cooperative Hegel not only supports naturalist readings of his system but also reframes the task of philosophical critique. Critique, on the scientific-cooperative reading I propose, aims to exposit the insights, discoveries, and theories of the empirical sciences, furthering their ends by ameliorating their conceptual apparatus, not to debunk them.

• Hegel and Fichte on Institutional Content.

Abstract: Hegel's interpreters often regard his turn toward an institutional analysis of society and politics to be among his most important contributions to philosophy. However, precisely how to understand this institutional turn in Hegel's thought and its success as a paradigm for social philosophy remain a matter of ongoing scholarly debate. In this paper, I aim to further our understanding of Hegel's institutionalization of ethical life by reconstructing just one aspect of his institutional theory, namely, its account of institutional content as rational or vernünftig, insofar as it responds to Fichte's account of institutional content being the product of arbitrariness or Willkür.

• The Liberal Subject in Hobbes's Leviathan.

Pedagogy

My pedagogy centers on the practice of writing, which I support with regular, low-stakes writing assignments, scaffolded assignments, in-class writing exercises, and metacognitive reflections on writing practice. For more information, see the sample syllabi below.

Syllabi

• ⊕ Summer 2023 syllabus, University of Toronto, St. George. PHL322: Contemporary Continental Philosophy. Topic: Social Critique.
• ⊕ Summer 2022 syllabus, University of Toronto, St. George. PHL210: 17th-and 18th-Century Philosophy.
• ⊕ Summer 2021 syllabus, University of Toronto, Mississauga. PHL243: Philosophy of Human Sexuality.

Recent Talks

• ⊕ Handout available here. Locke contra Hobbes on Opinion: A Social-Theoretic Defect of Leviathan?

  International Hobbes Association, Eastern APA, New York, NY (1/2024)

• ⊕ Handout available here. Apriorism and Scientific Cooperation in Hegel.

  International Hegel-Vereinigung, "The Self-Conception of Philosophy and its Relationship to the (Other) Sciences," Stuttgart, Germany (6/2023)

• ⊕ Video available on youtube. Slides available here. Institutions or Interaction? Hegel's Critique on Fichte Reconsidered.

  Association of Philosophy Students, University of Toronto, Scarborough (10/2022)

Interviews

• ⊕ Available on the Blog of the APA. APA Member Interview.

  Association of Philosophy Students, University of Toronto, Scarborough (3/2022)

Miscellanea

• Hegel Links.

  A collection of links that I have found helpful for thinking and writing about Hegel.

• Dramaturgies of Resistance.

  An event series I co-organized with colleagues in Cinema Studies, Comparative Literature, and Philosophy funded by the Jackman Humanities Institute's Program in the Arts. The series ran for two discontinuous years: Collectivity, Performance, Dialectics (2020–21) and The Labour of the Negative (2022–23).

• Marx & Critique Reading Group.

  A reading group started during the COVID-19 pandemic. We've read, inter alia, the Grundrisse, Volume 1, and Volume 2. From contemporary authors, we've read Black Marxism (Cedric Robinson), The Warehouse (Alessandro Delfanti), and Marx and Critical Theory (Emmanuel Renault), the latter two having joined the reading group for discussion of their work. We're currently reading Volume 3.