HEGEL E LA DISPUTA SUGLI UNIVERSALI. UNIVERSALISMO STRATEGICO E POLITICHE DELL’EMANCIPAZIONE

This essay revisits Hegel’s concept of universality with a focus on its political implications. Drawing on Étienne Balibar, it argues that struggles for the liberation of the masses and minorities, while rooted in specific contexts and therefore particular, can only be articulated sub specie universitatis. Through an analysis of distinct instantiations of the universal within Hegel’s corpus – particularly his critique of abstract universality in the essay on Natural Law and in the Phenomenology of Spirit, and his formulation of concrete universality in the Science of Logic – the essay seeks to identify the configuration of universality most suited to capture the dialectics of a radical politics of emancipation. This is understood as a partisan politics that, while advocating for a particular cause, simultaneously aspires to universality by aiming to transcend its own partiality.