Stanford Humanities Center
Sophia Hlavaty is a senior from New Jersey studying English Literature with a minor in German Studies. Her academic interests are the novel from the late eighteenth to the twentieth century, German Idealism, philosophy and theology, political theory, and jurisprudence. Sophia is the editor-in-chief of Caesura (Stanford’s undergraduate literary studies journal) and an avid skier.
SHC Project
The Self-Determination of Form: Life, Infinity, and Freedom in Hegelian Imaginative Literature
Advisors: R. Lanier Anderson, Gavin Jones
What is the focus of your current research?
The purpose of this thesis is to retrieve the Hegelian notion of self-determining form within imaginative literature to expand conceptual frameworks for the consideration of human freedom. The case study to be developed here is Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) compared with James Hogg’s canonized Scottish novel The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824), the first critical pairing of these texts. I argue that a phenomenological reading of the Confessions discovers that “novel-consciousness,” defined as the consciousness that develops over the history that spans the frame narrators, namely Robert and the Editor, the novel reader, and the critic, immanently progresses in accordance with the sequence of self-determining forms of consciousness in the Phenomenology toward the Absolute Idea and the modern version of what Hegel calls “ethical life.” The subordinate argument is that the Confessions sharpens the stakes in the Phenomenology that consciousness’ representation of the absolute impacts human freedom as exemplified through “law,” that of ethical life and authorship, i.e., the literary genre. In each shape of novel-consciousness, the logical relation that Hegel identifies between form and content that structures the representation of the absolute is shown to reproduce itself in and “justify” the law, that of ethical life and authorship, bound together in the teleology of the shape. Thus, the progression of novel-consciousness to a unity of form and content in its representation of the absolute manifests in the progression of not only ethical life to that unity, which is true freedom or the true ethical, but also the novel literary form. History, for Hegel and the novel, proves to be the process whereby humanity comes to consciousness of itself as self-determining and thus free.
What drew you to this topic?
In college, I have interned at several organizations focused on criminal law, freedom, and democracy on a national and international level. The senior thesis presented the occasion to consider the questions and problems that have motivated my practical work through a unifying theoretical endeavor. I was also drawn to the prospect of philosophy “coming to life” through literature.
How are you conducting your research?
The premise of the Confessions is that an early nineteenth-century fictional “Editor” representative of the Enlightenment discovers inside a collectively re-opened grave a confessional manuscript that he publishes as the book we are reading. At the center is that manuscript which the eponymous justified sinner, a century earlier youth named Robert Wringhim, wrote before his suicide to set forth his life story that tells of his increasing submission to Gil-Martin, a devil-like figure who leads him to commit a series of ever more heinous deeds. The Editor appends on each side of the manuscript an “Editor’s Note.” In the preface the Editor recounts the same events as the manuscript instead from the perspective of “history” and “tradition” while in the conclusion the Editor recounts his discovery of the manuscript. Since publication the novel has been critiqued as unintelligible. My departure from that received view begins with the insight to reconstruct, from the compositional choices in their order of appearance, the Editor’s evolving consciousness throughout his writing of the Notes, and to read the prefatory “Editor’s Note” and the memoir side-by-side. The outcome is the central argument concerning novel-consciousness elaborated above.
What would people be surprised to learn about the topic you are working on?
Critics have not accorded the attention that the novel merits, so its profundity as exhibited in this recuperation is likely to surprise.
In your view, why is it valuable to study this topic?
There are several reasons. The thinkers I am investigating have extraordinary philosophical and historical impact. The novel’s account of the modern problem of autonomy (self-rule) fundamentally reconceives the free life. This concern with freedom responds to our current political situation. Moreover, the thesis makes a sustained contribution to methodological debates ranging across precedent, evidence, and a “postcritique” turn in humanistic inquiry.
How is your honors thesis impacting you academically and/or personally?
I am drawn to Hegel’s ideas on the nature of law. I have conducted research on his views of crime, justice, and forgiveness. After my thesis, I would like to examine the fate of his legal philosophy in international law and contemporary debates. I am also intrigued by the relation between Hegel’s self-determining form and the notion of self-government prominent in constitutional theory.
How do you anticipate the fellowship will be able to support your research?
The fellowship hosts interdisciplinary cooperation and expands resources. I also look forward to friendship that gives strength for the work ahead.
