The American philosopher Judith Butler, one of the most influential social scientists of the present, gave the 2nd Hegel Lecture to an overwhelming audience. More than 2000 guests crowded into the Max Kade Auditorium and several lecture halls to hear her speak.

Her lecture provided a foretaste of her book Frames of War. When Is Life Grievable? published two months later. She referred to Hegel's philosophy by drawing upon his dialectics of recognition in the "domination and bondage" section of Phenomenology of the Mind.