Modal Foundationalism in Brandom´s Interpretation of Hegel

Abstract

Brandom’s reading of Hegel’s metaphysics offers an excitingly rich interpretation within the context of contemporary modal metaphysics. Brandom reads Hegel’s determinate negation in the way that the concepts of material incompatibility and material consequence relations operate. Brandom recognizes incompatibility as a modal concept and places it as a primitive in the foundation of Hegel’s metaphysics. This paper examines of Brandom’s modal foundationalist claim in comparison to how Hegel conceives of modality in his Logic. Upon this examination, the paper suggests that Brandom’s interpretation remains problematically indifferent to the anti-foundationalist aspect of Hegel’s Logic and Hegel’s understanding of modality.