Name and Surname
Goran Vranešević
Affiliation
Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade
Contact email
Goran.vranesevic@outlook.com
Short Biography
Goran Vranešević is an Assistant Professor and Research Associate whose work centers on German Idealism, political philosophy, the philosophy of language, and structuralism. He has published and lectured widely on topics ranging from aesthetics and cultural theory to classical commentaries on ontological questions and speculative approaches to key philosophical concepts. In addition to his academic research, he is an accomplished translator, having notably contributed to the Slovene translation of Hegel’s Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences. He is the editor of Idea of the Good in Kant and Hegel (University of Ljubljana Press, 2024) and co-editor of Between Substance and Subject: The Presence of Spinoza in Hegel (Brill, 2025). He is currently completing two monographs: one on Spinoza’s influence on Fichte’s thought, and another on the philosophical and political concept of speculation.
Research abstract
The project explores the intricate relation between revolution and democracy in German classical philosophy, focusing on the tension between normative and historical conceptions of freedom. While Kant famously opposed revolution as an illegitimate disruption of juridical order, he also recognized the fact of revolution—the historical reality of revolution—as a moral sign of humanity’s ethical predisposition toward progress. This ambivalence mirrors a deeper tension in his thought: although the subject must submit to the authority of public law, moral autonomy requires a radical transformation of maxims—an act of freedom. The project examines how Kant’s political and ethical writings negotiate this tension and how his legacy is reinterpreted by Fichte and Hegel, who both recast revolution as a constitutive moment in the emergence of democratic subjectivity. By tracing the development of these concepts, the project aims to clarify the role of revolutionary rupture in the constitution of moral and political autonomy, and to interrogate whether democratic legitimacy ultimately rests on legality, moral freedom, or their contested reconciliation.