Truth and Method in the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences

Abstract

In this paper, I defend the claim that Hegel employs a transcendental methodology to the study of mind in his Philosophy of Spirit. I focus on a key passage from §441 Anm., which sets the trajectory for his study of ‘the intelligence.’ I argue that this passage reveals a profound, novel and entirely overlooked commitment to a transcendental methodology in his work. The novelty of Hegel’s approach is a particular point of emphasis in this paper. For I mean to distinguish, following Franks (2005), between types of transcendental argument, and I shall demonstrate that the approach Hegel follows here differs from the one Taylor (1975) finds in the ‘Consciousness’ chapter of the Jena Phenomenology. Rather, as I argue, Hegel employs a circular or, as we may also call it, an organic transcendental approach to the study of mind. As I show, this organic method represents three advances over other transcendental approaches in use at the time. For one, while other transcendental methods are either regressive – reasoning from things conditioned to underlying conditions – or progressive – reasoning from basic conditions to things conditioned by them – in Hegel’s circular approach, each moment stands in a reciprocal relation of both condition and conditioned with respect to the other moments. Second, while at least some other forms of transcendental argument seek to reason from conditioning parts to unconditioned whole, Hegel holds that the whole is present in each of the parts. That is, Hegel does not think that each of the various faculties of mind somehow interact to constitute the whole, but that they are simply different, variously complex manifestations of the mind’s activity itself. Finally, and contrary to the sort of standard, received view of Hegel, his methodological approach is not a one-size-fits-all, mechanistic crank that churns out dialectic outputs from given inputs. Rather, it displays a surprising sensitivity to a study of the subject matter at hand: as Hegel himself avows at several points, the dialectic must allow a moment of passivity, whereby it conforms itself to meet the varying complexity of the objects of study. For this reason, it is not right to say that the organic transcendental method I describe is one present throughout the various moments of the system, but only comes into view at the point of theoretical mind, where the object of study requires the sort of methodological approach adequate to its own complexity.