Is there a Deduction in Hegel's Science of Logic?

Abstract

AbstractRobert Pippin's recent study of Hegel's Logic, Hegel's Realm of Shadows, argues that we should read Hegel as rejecting the need for a Transcendental Deduction in logic because he takes Hegel, in the Phenomenology of Spirit, to have ruled out the scepticism that motivates Kant's Deduction. By contrast, I argue, we cannot understand what Pippin calls the ‘identity’ of logic and metaphysics in the Science of Logic unless we see how Hegel does provide a kind of Deduction argument in the Logic, albeit one stripped of the psychologism present in the Kantian version. Accordingly, I provide a sketch of what such an ‘absolute’ Deduction must look like, and argue that Hegel's presentation of the ‘absolute idea’ functions as the conclusion of such an argument.