Simon Skempton at the conference ‘Hegel and the Concept of World History’

The conference ‘Hegel and the Concept of World History’ took place at Kingston University in London on the 14^th and 15^th of April 2016. ICEF’s Lecturer in World Intellectual History Simon Skempton attended and presented a paper entitled ‘Intersubjectivity and the Historical Actualization of the World Spirit’. The presentation argued that, contrary to many interpretations, communication and dialogue are essential components of Hegel’s concept of ‘spirit [Geist]’ (collective consciousness). It was then suggested how in this light Hegel’s notion of the culmination of world history (modernity) as the coming to self-consciousness of the ‘world spirit [Weltgeist]’ might be relevant to interpreting the communicative integration of today’s ‘globalizing’ world.