Giuliano Infantino
I am a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the University of Stuttgart, working on a dissertation concerning the concept of nature in Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature. My research reconstructs the conditions under which nature can be understood philosophically. I argue that, although nature does not share the same conceptual form as thought, its intelligibility requires a distinctive mode of philosophical cognition rather than mere empirical description. This project combines historical-systematic scholarship with contemporary debates in metaphysics, philosophy of science, and epistemology. Beyond the philosophy of nature, I work on issues in philosophy of mind, epistemology, ethics, and cultural philosophy. At the same time, I am deeply engaged with classical literature, and I explore the relation between philosophical reflection and literary thought — for instance, how literary form can articulate conceptual problems that philosophy attempts to systematize. I am equally interested in forms of ideological critique, especially in contemporary film. Outside my academic work, I spend time doing sports, and I regularly go mountaineering.
Areas of Competence: Metaphysics and Philosophy of Nature (Kant, Hegel).
Areas of Interest: Philosophy of Mind (Theories of Rationality, Empirical Knowledge), Philosophy of Culture (Cassirer), Meta-Ethics (Kant), Applied Ethics (Children's suffrage).
Contact
Email: giuliano[dot]infantino[at]philo[dot]uni-stuttgart[dot]de
Current Project
My dissertation develops a novel interpretation of Hegel's philosophy of nature that addresses a fundamental puzzle: how can we achieve genuine knowledge of nature if nature itself lacks logical structure, yet all knowledge requires logical form? Against traditional metaphysical readings of Hegel, I argue that nature possesses irreducible features that resist complete conceptual determination while remaining philosophically comprehensible.
The central argument establishes a separation principle: logical forms and natural existence must be fundamentally distinct yet necessarily related. While the logical realm requires nature's existence as its condition, nature itself does not possess logical structure. This separation is demonstrated through a difference in cardinality—the logical realm is countably infinite (ℵ0), while nature is uncountably infinite (ℵ1), making nature fundamentally more extensive than any logical system can capture.
Building on this foundation, I characterize nature through features that stand in contradictory opposition to logical principles: nature is a continuous manifold that makes violations of the principle of sufficient reason and true contradictions possible. Ultimately, I argue that Hegel's characterization of nature as "Idea in the form of otherness" should not be read as a straightforward realist claim about nature's essence, but rather describes our philosophical perspective on nature—a way of comprehending what is fundamentally other to thought through logical categories, without reducing nature to those categories. This work thus offers a non-reductive yet rationally grounded philosophy of nature that preserves both the autonomy of nature and the possibility of its philosophical comprehension.
Work in Progress
Published Work
Journal Articles
Book Chapters & Proceedings
Reviews
University of Stuttgart
course description
A sustained engagement with the opening movement of Hegel's Science of Logic, focusing on the transitions from pure indeterminacy to determinate being, becoming, and finitude. The material is approached as an inquiry into the minimal logical structures that make determination, modality, and change intelligible. Emphasis lies on Hegel's analyses of immediacy, negation, and limit, and on the internal dynamics through which categories generate their successors. The seminar situates the Doctrine of Being within debates on metaphysical fundamentality, modal explanation, and the logical presuppositions of any philosophy of nature.
course description
A systematic reconstruction of Hegel's natural philosophy as articulated in the Encyclopaedia. Topics include space, time, matter, motion, and organism, alongside Hegel's critique of the explanatory limits of mechanistic science and mathematically formulated natural laws. Central is the question of nature's inner unity—presupposed by scientific inquiry yet not expressible within the form of natural law. The course positions Hegel's project within early 19th-century scientific debates and contemporary discussions of explanation, lawhood, and metaphysical structure in the philosophy of science.
course description
An exploration of the evolving concept of the nature–spirit relation across key figures of German Idealism and its aftermath. Kant's analysis of natural purposiveness frames the discussion, followed by Hegel's attempt to integrate nature and spirit within a single conceptual logic. Further sessions examine Hölderlin's reflections on unity and estrangement and Marx's critique of alienated human activity. Themes include embodiment, self-consciousness, sociality, normativity, and historical formation. The material is approached through close reading, conceptual mapping, and comparative analysis, with an eye to contemporary debates on agency, ecology, and social freedom.
course description
A guided reading path through classical texts from antiquity to the Enlightenment, structured around problems of metaphysics, mind, knowledge, nature, and freedom. The tutorial reconstructs arguments from Plato and Aristotle through medieval thinkers to Descartes, Leibniz, Hume, and Kant, with emphasis on conceptual structure, argumentative strategy, and interpretive accuracy. Short writing exercises cultivate analytical precision and philosophical literacy.
University of Bonn
course description
A historical and systematic pathway through major epistemological debates from the early modern period to contemporary analytic theory. Readings include Descartes on certainty, Locke and Hume on the sources of knowledge, Kant on the conditions of possible experience, and later developments in theories of justification, perception, intellectual virtue, and social epistemology. Core distinctions between belief, certainty, knowledge, and evidence are examined alongside the challenges of scepticism and epistemic normativity.
Selected Talks
2025
2024
2023
2022
2021
* = Applied, † = Invited