SOCIAL STRUCTURE OF COGNITION IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF G. W.F. HEGEL AND L. WITTGENSTEIN

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to give an account of Wittgenstein’s epistemological view in Philosophical Investigations (PI) in the context of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (PoS). PoS serves as a model structure through which the conception in PI of cognition is being gradually outlined. After the sketch of Wittgenstein’s account of knowledge in On Certainty compared to Kant’s epistemological conception and Hume’s skeptical doubts, the sole examination of Hegel’s PoS commences. First, I intend to deal with the problem of sense-certainty. It is argued that pure sensory experience without an intrusion of concept cannot grasp any particular object in apprehension. Second, I observe that Hegel’s account of force and understanding introduces the theme of conceptuality. Wittgenstein is being examined simultaneously, on the background of the analysis of Hegel’s dialectical course. It is concluded that both Hegelian and Wittgensteinian conception implies that any kind of knowledge requires some social basis, i.e. that cognition is possible only when language, or conceptuality and propositionality respectively, intervenes. The thesis is shorty compared to John McDowell’s concept of how a human mind approaches the world.12