ON THE QUESTION OF THE CONCRETE UNIVERSAL: THE PLURALITY OF LIFE AND DECOLONIAL CRITIQUE

Hegel’s concept of the ‘concrete universal’ challenges conventional notions of the relationship between the abstract and the concrete. Unlike understandings of universals as exclusively abstract, Hegel’s speculative conception posits that true universals embody abstract and concrete qualities. Rather than being static, the concrete universal is dynamic and evolving. Hegel’s perspective urges us to envision the concrete universal as transcending the dichotomy between pure abstraction and mere particularity, thereby bringing universality together with concreteness. I contend that such a speculative understanding of the concrete universal can contribute to contemporary and decolonial discourse regarding epistemic politics of identity. Subaltern theories and resistant knowledge projects offer a framework to critique and challenge the partial and exclusionary models of universality propagated by Western philosophical tradition. In actualizing Hegel’s speculative dialectic of the concrete universal, we can benefit from this notion in response to the need for a critical reassessment and decolonization of identity, recognition, and epistemic politics. Here, the problem of devalorization and violence by Western predominance is at stake. This problem is not denied but taken as a critical point of departure for decolonial awareness within a culture of conflict, incorporating an epistemic praxis of recognition in the light of a ‘normative ideal’ of communicative freedom.