Armin Schneider

Since 2022, Armin Schneider is a PhD student at Brown University in an interdisciplinary program between the departments of Comparative Literature, Philosophy and Modern Culture and Media. Before he finished his BA and MA at Humboldt University Berlin, in Media and in Cultural Studies, with theses on Heidegger and modern science and technology, and on the problem of economy and labor in Hegel’s Jena development. He was a visiting student at New York University and briefly studied in Leipzig before transferring to Berlin.

Research Project

The becoming matter of the idea in Hegel’s Logic

In the introduction of the chapter “The Idea” of the Science of Logic, Hegel makes an enigmatic remark, followed by an elliptical explanation: Not only is the idea the unity of concept and reality, but it has its reality in a “Materiatur”; this Materiatur, however, is not a “being” but is to be taken as “becoming”. In a diagonal, or short cut, between the most elementary conceptual determinations and the saturated concretion of the idea, the remark and its explanation thus open a perspective on a hidden undercurrent of the Logic: a becoming matter of the idea. The singular status of the expression “Materiatur” signals an obliqueness of the dimension it opens up, since this term is used only twice in the Logic (the second time in a prospect toward the encyclopedic Anthropology) and barely more often beyond it. To explore the systematic presuppositions and consequences of this singularity, within the Logic, within the corpus of Hegel’s texts, and within the Kantian/post-Kantian situation of philosophy, and furthermore to explore its potential as a conceptual resource with bearings on subsequent and current debates is the goal of this project.

Research Project

The becoming matter of the idea in Hegel’s Logic

Selected publications

Article