The Very Idea of Organization: Towards a Hegelian Exposition

The contemporary debate on the social ontological foundations of organization does not, for methodological reasons, sufficiently get a grip on the phenomenon of organization. The original determinacy of organization remains presupposed. To render this implicit meaning of organization explicit, another, more embracing and in-depth methodology is needed. German idealist types of philosophy provide an extremely powerful methodology. In the philosophy of German idealism from Kant to Hegel, along with neo-Kantianism and up to contemporary transcendental philosophy, however, the idea of organization is not addressed. Indeed, it is a challenge to construct the idea of organization from the perspective of German idealism: the perspective of reason, and with that, of freedom. It results in a new framework for dealing with organization in theory and practice. The article constructs the idea of organization (and claims that it still makes sense to do so) within the framework of G.W.F. Hegel. It shows where the issue of organization should be addressed topologically in Hegel’s system of philosophy and what, then, organization shows to be here speculatively.