Hegel's Account of Rule‐Following1

Abstract

I here discuss Hegel's rule‐following considerations as they are found in the first four chapters of his Phenomenology of Spirit. I begin by outlining a number of key premises in Hegel's argument that he adopts fairly straightforwardly from Kant's Transcendental Deduction. The most important of these is that the correctness or incorrectness of one's application of a rule must be recognizable as such to the rule‐follower. Supplementing Hegel's text as needed, I then argue that it is possible for an experiencing subject to follow a rule only where there is a community of individuals whose agreement can provide a standard for the correctness and incorrectness of his use. I further argue that a community must consist of members that are compresent, and thus that a collection of time‐slices of an individual will not serve this purpose. I conclude by raising a potential problem for Hegel's account of rule‐following concerning the correctness and incorrectness of the judgments of a community, and pointing to a possible line of response to this problem.