Hegel Scholarship Research Articles

Hegel, Feminist Philosophy, and Disability: Rereading our History

Although feminist philosophers have been critical of the gendered norms contained within the history of philosophy, they have not extended this critical analysis to norms concerning disability. In the history of Western philosophy, disability has often functioned as a metaphor for something that has gone awry. This trope, according to which disability is something that has gone wrong, is amply criticized within Disability Studies, though not within the tradition of philosophy itself or even within feminist philosophy. In this paper, I use one instance of this disability metaphor, contained within a passage from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, in order to show that paying attention to disability and disability theory can enable identification of ableist assumptions within the tradition of philosophy and can also open up new interpretations of canonical texts. On my reading, whereas Hegel’s expressed views of disability are dismissive, his logic and its treatment of contingency offer up useful ways to situate and re-evaluate disability as part of the concept of humanity. Disability can in fact be useful to Hegel, especially in the context of his valorization of experiences of disruption and disorientation. Broadening our understanding of the possible ways that the philosophical tradition has conceived human beings allows us to better draw on its theoretical resources. Keywords: Hegel; contingency; history of philosophy; feminist Hegel scholarship

Conflicting and complementary conceptions of discursive practice in non-metaphysical interpretations of Hegel

Pippin, Pinkard and Brandom are rightly seen as representatives of a distinct approach in contemporary Hegel scholarship. Still, their interpretations diverge due to different definitions and uses of conceptions of discursive practice. We focus on three ways in which such definitions and uses bear on their interpretations. First, while Lumsden has recently criticized Pinkard and Brandom for ‘discursive bias’ in their accounts of the contestation and upheaval of normative authority in Hegel’s Phenomenology, we note that Pinkard distinguishes between various modes of reason-giving, and we argue that a further qualification of interdependencies between these modes may support his interpretation against such criticism. Second, Pinkard and Pippin have recently criticized Brandom’s conception of discursive score-keeping practice, and Pippin in particular has argued that the latter rests on an individualistic reductionism about content foreign to Hegel. However, we find that the real issue is that the modes of methodological abstraction and idealization assumed for Brandom’s conception of discursive practice leave out of account the historical alteration as well as the institutional embodiment of normative authority as emphasized by Pippin and Pinkard. Third, while Pippin and Pinkard both make Hegel’s notion of modern ethical life bear on a conception of practical rationality, their uses of a conception of discursive practice in such an undertaking betray divergent conceptions of the sociality of rational agents.

Moral Sentiments, Institutions, and Civil Society: Exploiting Family Resemblances between Smith and Hegel to Resolve Some Conceptual Issues in Sen’s Recent Contributions to the Theory of Justice

In his Idea of Justice, Amartya Sen compares the two basic approaches to evaluate institutions, transcendental institutionalism and realization-focused comparisons. Referring to Smith’s Impartial Spectator, he argues in favor of the latter and proposes the principle of Open Impartiality. However, this cannot solve the tension between universalism and contextualization of values that Sen therefore inherits from Smith. Based on recent Hegel scholarship, we argue that some of the difficulties can be resolved, considering the role Smith played in the development of Hegel’s thinking. Hegel’s concept of recognition plays an essential role in establishing the possibility of impartiality both on the level of consciousness and on the level of institutional intersubjectivity. Hegel’s critique of Kants formalist ethics (also considered as transcendental institutionalism by Sen), his analysis of the civil society in the Philosophy of Right, especially his focus on associations and estates, can serve as a model for making Sen’s focus on public discourse theoretically more concise and pragmatically feasible.

The “Myth of the Given”: The Hegelian Meditations of Wilfrid Sellars

The “Myth of the Given”: The Hegelian Meditations of Wilfrid Sellars

Thom Brooks and the ‘Systematic’ Reading of Hegel

Hegel was a systematic philosopher, who grounded his system on a speculative logic. But his greatest philosophical contributions lie in his reflections on human culture: ethics, social and political philosophy, aesthetics, religion and the philosophy of history. This fact poses a problem for anyone who accepts it and then attempts to provide a philosophical discussion of Hegel's thought with the aim of making it available to a later age.There can be no doubt that any authentic treatment of Hegel's social and political philosophy must take account of Hegel's explicit intention to ground it in his logical system of thought-determinations. But if we simply take that intention at face value, we make our appropriation of Hegel hostage to his philosophical system and speculative logic, which now are at best outdated and, though they may themselves contain some insights of lasting philosophical value, are not of nearly as much philosophical interest as Hegel's thoughts about human culture, society and history. A Hegel whose ethical, social, historical and cultural insights could be appropriated only by those who accept his speculative logical system would be a Hegel few would ever read or learn from.The other horn of the same dilemma is that those interpreters who are honest enough that they don't accept uncritically Hegel's own account of the structure of his philosophical accomplishments will inevitably be charged with doing violence to Hegel's thought, ignoring its true structure and unity. To quote a passage from Fred Beiser, which Thom Brooks uses to pillory all such Hegel scholarship: ‘We make Hegel alive and relevant, a useful contributor to our concerns; but that is only because we put our own views into his mouth.

Hegel and the Analytic Tradition - Angelica Nuzzo (ed.)

Talk of a ‘Hegel Renaissance’ within the analytic tradition has become almost commonplace. However, a closer look reveals that various Renaissances, in part incompatible, are in progress now (some of them are distinguished along rough geographical criteria: there is talk of Chicago Hegelians, Pittsburgh Hegelians, Münster Hegelians, etc.). Among the proponents of these various Renaissance movements there are very different views as to what it is about Hegel's philosophy that deserves to be revived in the current philosophical climate. In addition, the Hegel Renaissances tend to go along with a critical re‐reading of the history of analytic philosophy itself: for instance, was the crucial break with Hegelianism at the dawn of the movement based on a simple misunderstanding on Moore's and Russell's part? Did they fail to distinguish Hegel's philosophy from the varieties of Hegelianism now grouped together under the heading of ‘British idealism’? In all these respects the present volume promises some clarification. The editor's introduction says (p. 3) that it aims to be useful both ‘with regard to the renewal of Hegel scholarship and with regard to the advancement of the current philosophical agenda’.

Hegel and the Modern Arts (review)

Reviewed by: Hegel and the Modern Arts Matthew C. Altman Benjamin Rutter . Hegel and the Modern Arts. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Pp. xii + 286. Cloth, $85.00. In his lectures on aesthetics, Hegel famously declares that art has become irrelevant, because at this point in the history of philosophy, artists can only provide us with an incomplete and distorted picture of how we have come to reconcile the opposition between mind and world. The philosopher, not the artist, can bring freedom fully to consciousness. Benjamin Rutter's project in Hegel and the Modern Arts is to show that, although art cannot give us the comprehensive self-understanding provided by philosophy, art nonetheless serves an important function precisely because of its particularity. Artists "offer eye-level insights into local domains of human experience," and in doing so, they present the reconciliation of mind and world sensuously to consciousness (17). Successful art finds vitality in the activities of daily life, making us feel at home in the contingencies of the world and showing us concretely how freedom is actualized in a way that philosophy's abstract theorizing cannot. Rutter focuses on Hegel's analyses of Dutch genre painting, lyric poetry, and what he calls "objective humor," a style of writing through which we remove ourselves from and then embrace our subjective attachments. Rutter begins with a discussion of Dutch Golden Age painting, and the themes that he develops here reappear throughout the book. According to Hegel, Dutch artists such as Johannes Vermeer and Frans Hals infuse simple domestic scenes with a sense of liveliness. Individuals are portrayed as absorbed in the activity of daily life; and the artist, by devoting such attention and skill to their depiction, becomes absorbed in the piece itself. The banality of everyday existence, which seems like a limitation or a problem, is resolved with the artist's and the subject's shared investment in it. The incredible skill of the Dutch painters typifies the virtuosity that comes to define post-romantic art. A virtuoso has mastery over his materials and freely engages them to express himself, and so the artistic product represents the reconciliation of spirit and nature, freedom and necessity. Next, Rutter unpacks Hegel's appreciation of lyric poetry, which, he claims, continues the work of making visible the achievement of reconciliation. First, love poetry expresses the poet's feelings in a reflective way, such that the poet comes to terms with his desire and makes it his own. Petrarch's poetry is illustrative here, in that the woman he loves becomes a poetic image and the longing for her, expressed poetically, becomes an end in itself. Freedom emerges from the contingency of feeling. Second, occasional verse, like Dutch painting, enlivens the trivial features of everyday life. The poet creates a persona whose self-sufficiency is reflected in the world he inhabits. And, in identifying with the poet as hero, the reader comes to see her life as a work of art. She engages the world freely, as a virtuoso engages his medium. Rutter's final topic is Hegel's appreciation of objective humor, where he focuses on Laurence Sterne and the little-known T. G. von Hippel. Both authors reveal that, although we recognize the insignificance of our everyday attachments, we cannot help but be invested in them. Hegelian reconciliation occurs when we are able to laugh at and forgive those elements of our lives that are contingent, idiosyncratic, and resistant to rational incorporation. Rutter concludes his discussion with a detailed reading of Goethe's West-östliche Divan, which combines a Persian wit and freedom of the imagination with an Italian engagement with the life of feeling, purified through the process of reflection. [End Page 381] Hegel and the Modern Arts is a significant achievement in Hegel scholarship. Unlike much secondary work on Hegel, Rutter does an excellent job of explaining Hegel's technical philosophical vocabulary in ways that are generally understandable. Rutter's Hegelian analysis of Dutch genre painting, in particular, would be an excellent addition to both art history courses and courses on German aesthetics. Rutter often follows quotes from Hegel with helpful paraphrases, and he includes occasional references to...

Poetry and the Romantic Musical Aesthetic (review)

Donelan, James H. 2008. Poetry and the Romantic Musical Aesthetic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. $93 he. xvi + 216 pp.James H. Donelan's Poetry and the Romantic Musical Aesthetic examines four cultural giants all born in 1770: Holderlin, Hegel, Wordsworth, and Beethoven. In each separate and largely self-contained study, Donelan elaborates interdisciplinary and erudite re-interpretation of Romanticism, offering original insight into ideas of the self-conscious mind emerging in early nineteenth-century Europe. He argues that because music connects sensory experience and spiritual significance it exemplifies the autonomous aesthetic creation of the Romantic self. To develop this argument, Donelan restricts the ambitions of German Romanticism, of Hegel and Holderlins ontological and historical claims for aesthetics, allowing only for the autonomous creation of artist's self-consciousness. Similarly, he insists on the autonomy of this aesthetic process, the independence of the individual self, and the continued relevance of this notion of Romantic selfhood, dismissing along the way efforts in recent theory to deconstruct or historicize or otherwise challenge the autonomy, independence, or contemporary relevance of the Romantic self. He fails to recognize, however, that the very concept of the musical aesthetic he rigorously unearths more readily serves the theory he dismisses.Crucial to Donelan's concept of the musical aesthetic is a reading of Tlte Phenomenology of Spirit. In Hegel's history of self-consciousness becoming objective and universal, Donelan highlights the sensory encounter with object as the ground for self-conscious human subjectivity, which emerges over time through reflection upon this sensory encounter. Music, or purely instrumental music, is special because it is between object and subject. Unlike other art objects, music has neither visible form nor any determinate physical place, yet exists for the subject's sensuous apprehension; at the same time, as aesthetic object produced by and for conscious contemplation, music powerfully affects human spirit. Donelan then contests Hegel's view that music is a lower art form, and that all art lies lower than religion or philosophy, because the higher forms of spirit are rich in conceptual content enabled by language. First, he argues that absolute music, though it uses no words, does indeed articulate ideas in its relation to its cultural and intellectual context. Second, Donelan argues that leaving music or art behind in spirit's development toward higher forms of self-consciousness elides what is essential element in the process of becoming self-conscious, that is, the connection to sensory experience and thus to the objective world. Unlike religion and philosophy, art takes place in paint and canvas, wood and stone, but especially for Donelan's purposes in the sound of musical notes or the structured sound of metered poetry. In its brevity and narrow focus on music, Donelan's critique is limited as a contribution to Hegel scholarship, especially since it doesn't address the implications of the critique for Hegel's ambitious ontological and historical claims for aesthetics and for self-consciousness. Nonetheless, through this reading of Hegel, Donelan defines the Romantic musical aesthetic as instance of self-consciousness that is both thing and idea, both a sensory object and act of a subject reflecting upon sensory experience.This sensory musical aesthetic is evident in Holderlin's poetry, but only, again, at the cost of reducing profound ontological and historical claims to the assertion of individual consciousness. In such poems as Brot und Wein and Patmos, Holderlin reflects within poetry on the ontological function of poetry, which for Donelan emphasizes how the poet brings himself into being as an autonomous subject who has acquired self-consciousness and whose words allow this self-consciousness to have real existence (58). …

Dewey, Hegel, and Causation

Dewey, Hegel, and Causation Jim Good and Jim Garrison [Cause and effect], if they are distinct, are also identical. Even in ordinary consciousness that identity may be found. We say that a cause is a cause, only when it has an effect, and vice versa. Both cause and effect are thus one and the same content: and the distinction between them is primarily only that the one lays down, and the other is laid down.1 In the quote above, Hegel claims that cause and effect are only distinct from a particular point of view. A cause only becomes a cause when it has an effect, thus the two apparently opposing terms reverse their roles. The effect is the cause of the cause, and the cause is the effect of its own effect. This article begins with a discussion of what we believe to be an effect, Dewey's theory of causation, and then proceeds to Hegel's theory, arguing that the two philosophers clarify one another. Both philosophers' ruminations on causation provide a provocative challenge to the standard view that cause and effect are discrete and independent from one another. Although both philosophers accept the utility of analyzing events as cause and effect [End Page 101] for particular purposes, both contend that a more complete view of such events shows that they are reciprocal moments within an ongoing process. By drawing attention to the similarities in their theories of causation we also hope to advance our larger project of promoting a rapprochement between present-day Dewey specialists and Hegel specialists. In the context of the long-standing debate about Dewey's debt to Hegel, we emphasize the Hegelianism of Dewey's mature philosophy much more than most Dewey scholars.2 Nonetheless, an essay by Alan Hance may well pinpoint an important sticking point for both groups.3 Hance correctly criticizes Richard Rorty's claim that pragmatism is "naturalized Hegelianism" by showing that Rorty incorrectly assumes that Hegel's rejection of Kant's thing-in-itself commits him to subjective idealism.4 Although we choose to leave Rorty aside in our article, we agree with Hance's argument that Hegel rejects representational epistemology much more successfully than Rorty. We disagree, however, with Hance's apparent equation of naturalism with the reduction of reality to efficient causes and the subjects studied by the natural sciences. Whether this characterization is true of Rorty's naturalism or not, it is not true of Dewey's. It is possible, however, that whenever Hegel scholars think of Dewey most of them think of his "instrumentalism" and his "naturalism" as reductionistic (the Frankfurt school's critique of instrumental reason may be in the back of their minds).5 Conversely, when Dewey scholars think of Hegel, it is possible that most of them think of reductionistic subjective idealism. Perhaps both groups see the other philosopher as trapped on one side of Cartesian dualism and believe that their philosopher successfully bridges that divide. If this generalization is accurate, we are convinced that both groups err because Dewey and Hegel share a nonreductionist, emergent conception of process that is apparent in their theories of causation. Hegel's potential alliance with pragmatism is more evident to those familiar with the nonmetaphysical interpretation of his thought, now accepted by many contemporary Hegel scholars.6 Whether or not this reading is correct, there is compelling evidence that it is the way Dewey himself in fact read Hegel.7 On the nonmetaphysical reading, the moment of "absolute knowing" at the end of The Phenomenology of Spirit is not perfect knowledge of eternal truth; it is knowledge that does not reach beyond itself to posit a metaphysical foundation for itself. Hegel's absolute knowing sublates the dualism between the self and its objects by seeing those two terms as moments within an ongoing, unified process. Both knower and the known are constructs, momentarily posited for specific purposes [End Page 102] in the process of knowing. This standpoint is absolute precisely because it is a complete whole that does not exceed itself; Hegel's idealism is absolute because, contra Kant, he refuses to posit anything that transcends experience in order to explain thought.8 For...

Hegel’s Practical Philosophy: Rational Agency as Ethical Life (review)

Reviewed by: Hegel’s Practical Philosophy: Rational Agency as Ethical Life Liz Disley Robert B. Pippin. Hegel’s Practical Philosophy: Rational Agency as Ethical Life. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Pp. xi + 308. Paper, $29.99 In this work, Pippin offers an interpretation of freedom, rationality, and agency in Hegel’s work and adds substantive content to the key concept of recognition. In doing so, he offers not only a compelling elucidation of a particularly opaque part of Hegel’s analysis of human action and interaction, but also demonstrates the relevance of his practical philosophy to contemporary discussions about free will, intersubjectivity, autonomy, recognition, and liberalism. Pippin provides a substantial defense of Hegel’s position in the context of contemporary political philosophy, arguing against a commonly-held view that Hegelian political philosophy must be much closer to modern communitarian theories than those of classical or modern liberalism. Pippin’s work is central to the recent resurgence of interest in Hegel’s theoretical philosophy by analytical philosophers such as Robert Brandom and John McDowell, as well as the renewed study of recognition in a practical context. Controversially, Pippin claims that Hegel has only one theory of intersubjectivity and recognition from the time of the Jena writings to the Philosophy of Right. The theory develops from an initial stage, where “the desideratum of mutual recognition is posed and explored,” to a realization that ethical life as described in the Philosophy of Right provides the necessary conditions for rational, mutual recognition (184n4). Thus, he rejects the common view in recent Continental Hegel scholarship, asserted by critics including Jürgen Habermas, Michael Theunissen, and Axel Honneth, that Hegel fails to develop adequately the theory of intersubjectivity initially present in his earlier writings and subsumes intersubjectivity into a “grand metaphysical process” of the Absolute Subject’s self-manifestation (184). Pippin defends Hegel from this common charge on the basis of his “very unusual” concept of freedom (185). The key claim here is that Hegel does not set recognition or indeed other-relation as a precondition for any kind of self-relation, but rather, “A true individual [End Page 112] is a free subject and recognition relations function in a complex way as conditions for that possibility” (186). This seems like a promising method of demonstrating that Hegel’s intersubjectivity does not, after all, dissolve in the face of a monological divine conception of reality. The difficulty with the approach, as Pippin concedes, is that it involves making a series of radical, strange, and controversial claims. These claims, in general, focus on the temporal priority of freedom, recognition, and rationality: deeds can count as “mine” in Pippin’s special sense only if they are undertaken rationally, but this state of rationality depends on being in a social state of recognizing and being recognized (190). However, it is neither radical nor strange to make a clear distinction between human interdependence in terms of our particular social psychology and in terms of “an ideal of normative mutuality inherent in any attempt to act” (211). Pippin appreciates that defenders of Hegel’s concept of recognition do not want to say that I cannot be a free subject by myself, but at the same time want to leave the door open for there to be some kind of possibility of ascertaining moral harm in cases of failure to recognize. For Pippin, free actions, and actions committed out of free will, are those committed by agents in a particular social context, namely being situated within norm-governed relations of reciprocal recognition to others. Such an approach fulfills neither of these criteria, since it means I cannot be free by myself but also that, in the case of my being placed in a situation where I am not within these relations of reciprocal recognition to others, there is no obvious originator of moral harm caused by this recognition (218). Pippin accepts that there is no clear answer to this difficulty, but his account of the genesis of norms and social rationality does save Hegel’s account from the objection by Theunissen, Habermas, Honneth et al. mentioned above. Like Rolf-Peter Horstmann, Pippin sees the answer to charges of introducing a...

German Idealism: Contemporary Perspectives (review)

Reviewed by: German Idealism: Contemporary Perspectives Martin Shuster Espen Hammer, ed. German Idealism: Contemporary Perspectives. London: Routledge, 2007. x + 339 pages. Espen Hammer has assembled an invaluable resource both for specialists working within German philosophy (particularly German Idealism) and for others interested in getting their feet wet with the varied and often impenetrable authors that get classed under the moniker of “German Idealism.” Collected in the volume are fourteen essays grouped into six categories. The essays are all very lucid and concise, showing clear rigor of argument and research. I mention this because reading many of the figures discussed in these essays (e.g., Hegel or Fichte) is a feat in understanding extremely complex (and, often, to Anglo-American ears) strange terminology. The essays are grouped into largely arbitrary categories (e.g., “The Legacy of Hegel’s Philosophy,” which could easily apply to the majority of the essays collected in this volume), so I will focus on the volume as a whole and on a small selection of essays that I think have a common theme. Sebastian Gardner’s piece, which kicks off the collection, problematizes the relationship between idealism and naturalism in the work of Norman Kemp Smith, the celebrated Kant scholar. Starting from a lecture that Kemp Smith delivered at Edinburgh in 1919, Gardner’s essay shows how radically the Anglo-American philosophical landscape has changed since the beginning of the past century. For Kemp Smith, idealism trumped naturalism as a philosophical position. As Gardner points out, “once upon a time idealism seemed without doubt philosophically superior to naturalism, whereas we now think, more or less, the exact opposite” (22). At the same time, though, Gardner points out that “in line with Kemp Smith’s view, the ‘extremes’—either hard naturalism, or metaphysically construed idealism—are all that remain” (45). Gardner reaches this conclusion by distinguishing “hard naturalism” and “soft naturalism,” the latter being opposed to “the presumption that nature consists of nothing but the hard physical bare-bones of things” (28). In opposing the hard naturalist, the soft naturalist, according to Gardner, either loses the argument to the hard naturalist or is forced to adopt idealism (35). Weaving contemporary debates within German Idealism interpretation into this broader discussion of idealism and naturalism, Gardner is able to situate metaphysical and non-metaphysical readings of the German Idealists within the same broader debate. Now, while Gardner is certainly correct to stress certain exegetical points in Hegel (38–39), and while he is correct to point out that there are persistent problems in navigating the relationship between normativity and nature (40–43), I have reservations about not only whether the normative/natural distinction is one that has an analog (or, for that matter, even any sort of anchor) in the distinction between thought and being (44) but as well reservations about whether the success or failure of certain strands of contemporary naturalism is linked to the success or failure of non-metaphysical readings of German Idealism. Both of these claims [End Page 1210] require more argumentation than Gardner provides, and they both hinge on how the distinction between metaphysical and non-metaphysical readings of various German Idealist figures are drawn—a matter to which Gardner devotes insufficient attention (which Gardner seems to acknowledge, 48–49, in particular, note 51). This relationship between metaphysical and non-metaphysical readings is one that resurfaces in a number of essays in this collection, notably in Frederick Beiser’s piece, where he argues that, “since the end of the Second World War, the predominant concern of Anglophone scholarship on German idealism has been to emasculate, domesticate and sanitize it, to make it weak, safe, and clean for home consumption” (70). The rest of the piece proceeds to argue for this by looking at the work of P. F. Strawson and John Rawls for Kant scholarship and Terry Pinkard and Robert Pippin for Hegel scholarship (the latter discussion has Beiser proposing one of my favorite sub-titles anywhere in print: “The owl of Minerva, stuffed”). While I am sympathetic to many of his concerns vis-à-vis antiquarianism and anachronism being a false dilemma (73), as well as his broader concerns vis-à-vis historical scholarship (84–87...

Beyond the Totalitarian: Ethics and the Philosophy of Religion in Recent Hegel Scholarship

AbstractRecent developments in Hegel scholarship have been dominated by two waves. Focusing on his complex conception of freedom, the first has transformed the dominant view of his ethical and political thought. The second, which has dramatic consequences for the interpretation of his philosophy of religion, reads Hegel as extending rather than repudiating Kant's critical project. These ‘post‐Kantian’ interpretations have rejected the view of Hegel's logic as principally metaphysical in favor of a reading that focuses on the spontaneous and social character of thought.

<i>Analytic Philosophy and the Return of Hegelian Thought</i> (review)

Reviewed by: Analytic Philosophy and the Return of Hegelian Thought Joshua Wretzel Analytic Philosophy and the Return of Hegelian Thought. Paul Redding. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. 252. $95.00 h.c. 978-0-521-87272-0. Hegel's recent resurgence within certain analytic circles is the result of a parallel movement: on the one hand, a new line of interpretation in Hegel scholarship now makes it possible to move beyond the metaphysical, spirit-monist interpretations that were the grounds for his dismissal from analytic discourse a century ago. On the other hand, Wilfrid Sellars's critique of givenness has led analytic thinkers such as Robert Brandom and John McDowell to form alliances with those who, like Hegel, are generally critical of appeals to immediacy in its various forms. In his book Analytic Philosophy and the Return of Hegelian Thought, Paul Redding offers the most substantial account of this parallel movement to date. Aligning himself with Pippin, Pinkard, and other key figures of this "nonmetaphysical" Hegelian school, Redding contextualizes the works of Brandom and McDowell within the analytic tradition and points out precisely those Hegelian elements of their thought that are most amenable to a nonmetaphysical interpretation, all while maintaining remarkable range and clarity. There are three main parts to Redding's book. In chapters 1 and 2, he analyzes the analytic philosophical context within which Brandom and McDowell develop their critiques of givenness. Then, in chapters 3 through 6, Redding critically assesses McDowell's and Brandom's fidelity to Kant's and Hegel's texts. Finally, chapters 7 and 8 widen the scope to consider Hegel's place within analytic philosophy generally, [End Page 138] showing how his positions on contradiction and metaphysics, respectively, are not as fusty and outmoded as many analytic scholars still seem to think. The first part is unquestionably the highlight of the book. Beginning with Moore's and Russell's influential critiques of Hegel and idealism, Redding moves through Sellars's response to them to his "Hegelian" appropriation in McDowell (in chapter 1) and Brandom (in chapter 2). The latter discussion is particularly worthy of note: there, Redding's insight is that Brandom follows Sellars in rejecting a logical given, or the notion that logic lies a priori in the mind. This way of situating Brandom with respect to the logical positivists also motivates and grounds the discussion on Kant, Hegel, and the contents and processes of applying concepts in Tales of the Mighty Dead. Without Redding's assessment, the outsider may too easily gloss over that analysis as just another in a series of strange appropriations of the German tradition. In the second part, however, the book struggles to wholly realize its ambitions. For though the stated goal of these chapters is "to assess the degree to which [Brandom and McDowell] capture the views of [Kant and Hegel]" (19), it is largely Redding's own views, mostly of Kant and Aristotle, that are in play here, and the comparisons between his positions and those of Brandom and McDowell are frequently too brief. In chapter 4, for example, Redding goes to great lengths to show how certain insights of Brandom's inferentialism—particularly, claims about the normativity of inference and conceptual content—find their roots in Kant. But not only does Redding fail to mention how Brandom actually attributes most of these inferentialist claims only to Hegel; he gives almost no indication of what interpretive claims of Brandom's are at stake.1 As such, it is unclear what Redding wishes to do with the account he goes to such pains to elaborate: he neither addresses the "two-phase," model theoretic account of conceptuality that Brandom attributes to Kant nor the differences he claims exist between Kant and Hegel on the semantic revisability of conceptual content. These are issues that any interpretive evaluation of Brandom, Kant, and Hegel should undertake as central to its argument. This reluctance to engage fully with the main figures of the book carries over into the later chapters. In chapter 7, where Redding wishes to accommodate both Brandom's and Priest's views on Hegel's principle of contradiction, it is again Aristotle, not Brandom or Priest...

The Rise of the Non‐Metaphysical Hegel

AbstractThere has been a resurgence of interest in Hegel's thought by Anglo‐American philosophers in the last 25 years. That expansion of interest was initiated with the publication of Charles Taylor's Hegel (1975). That work stills stands as one of7 the important branches of Hegel interpretation. However the dominance of the strongly metaphysical interpretation of Hegel, which dominated the understanding of Hegel until the 1980s, and of which Taylor's work represents the culmination, has now, at least among the major interpreters of Hegel, given way to what has come to be known as the non‐metaphysical reading of Hegel. This article charts the emergence and development of the non‐metaphysical Hegel, which takes his thought to be a continuation of the Kantian project of critically examining the presuppositions of any normative claim. This article provides an overview of the latest developments in Hegel research, primarily focusing on the English‐language literature. Recent research has placed Hegel's concerns at the centre of contemporary debates in analytic philosophy, particularly concerning the status of norms, the ‘space of reasons’ and the ‘myth of the given’. This research has in turn been influential on the two most important figures in English‐language Hegel scholarship (Robert Pippin and Terry Pinkard). The article will position this new wave of Hegel scholarship and its influence in relation to the metaphysical interpretation of Hegel and will also provide a brief overview of Hegel's reception in French post‐structuralism, which has largely accepted and promoted a view of Hegel as a metaphysician.

The Unity and Difference of the Speculative and the Historical in Hegel's Concept of <i>Geist</i>

While Hegel scholars overall have acknowledged that the concept of Geist (Spirit or Mind) is central to Hegel’s comprehension of history, there is some degree of controversy among commentators concerning the interpretation of this concept. Lack of clarity about whether the principles Hegel presents fall on the speculative or on the historical level can result in charges of mystification. In this essay I attempt to clarify the concept of Geist by 1) defining the speculative transcendental meaning of Geist, which will involve articulating the principles that structure Geist’s essential features, especially as presented in Hegel’s Logic; 2) explicating the historical and existential dimension of Geist, which will focus on the nature of its action and embodiment, specifically attending to the nation state as the true historical individual, and 3) explaining the essential connection between the speculative and the historical in such a way as to address their dialectical unity in difference, and thus to alleviate the problem of ontology overcoming Geist’s temporality.

John Dewey's "Permanent Hegelian Deposit" and the Exigencies of War

From 1882 to 1903, Dewey explicitly espoused a Hegelian philosophy. Until recently, scholars agreed that he broke from Hegel no later than 1903, but never adequately accounted for what he called the "permanent deposit" that Hegel left in his mature thought. I argue that Dewey never made a clean break from Hegel. Instead, he drew on the work of the St. Louis Hegelians to fashion a non-metaphysical reading of Hegel, similar to that championed by Klaus Hartmann and other Hegel scholars since the 1970s. This reading of Hegel is remarkably consistent with Dewey's mature philosophy. Although Dewey abruptly repudiated Hegel during World War I, I contend this reflected the exigencies of war rather than philosophical concerns.

Pierre Bourdieu: From Neo-Kantian to Hegelian Critical Social Theory

This paper challenges the commonly made claim that the work of Pierre Bourdieu is fundamentally anti-Hegelian in orientation. In contrast, it argues that the development of Bourdieu's work from its earliest structuralist through its later ‘post-structuralist’ phase is better described in terms of a shift from a late nineteenth century neo-Kantian to a distinctly Hegelian post-Kantian outlook. In his break with structuralism, Bourdieu appealed to a bodily based logic of practice' to explain the binaristic logic of Lévi-Strauss' structuralist analyses of myth. Effectively working within the tradition of the Durkheimian approach to symbolic classification, Lévi-Strauss had inherited Durkheim's distinctly neo-Kantian understanding of the role of categories in experience and action—an account that conflated two forms of representation—‘intuitions’ and ‘concepts’—that Kant himself had held distinct. Bourdieu's appeal to the role of the body's dispositional habitus can be considered as a retrieval of Hegel's earlier quite different reworking of Kant's intuition-concept distinction in terms of distinct ‘logics’ with different forms of ‘negation’. Bourdieu commonly acknowledged the parallels of his analyses of social life to those of Hegel, but opposed Hegelianism because he believed that Hegel had remained entrapped within the dynamics of mythopoeic thought. In contrast, Durkheim and Lévi-Strauss, he claimed, by instituting a science of myth, had broken with it. This criticism of Hegel, however, relies on an understanding of his philosophy that has been rejected by many contemporary Hegel scholars, and without it, the gap separating Hegel and Bourdieu narrows dramatically

Hegel’s Critique of Representation

Recently, philosophy of language has swept through the community of Hegel scholarship. Since the early 1980s, Hegel scholars, such as John Mc-Cumber, Willem De Vries, Rodney Coltman, John Russon, Frank Schalow, Irene Harvey, and Henry Sussman, have imputed to Hegel the notion that the problems of philosophy are problems of language. What these readings ignore is that the essential systematic obstacle in Hegel is representation, not language as such. Hence, any Hegelian resolution of philosophical problems involves the speculative overcoming of representation, rather than the reformation of language, as is clear in the transition from Revealed Religion to Absolute Knowing in the Phenomenology. By tracing seriously the implications of the fact that the completion of revealed religion is absolute knowing and that the limiting form of revealed religion is representation, I will show that representation is the dominant problem throughout the Phenomenology.

VIII-Hegel's Manifold Response to Scepticism inThe Phenomenology of Spirit

For many reasons mainstream Hegel scholarship has disregarded Hegel's interests in epistemology, hence also his response to scepticism. From the points of view of defenders and critics alike, it seems that ‘Hegel’ and ‘epistemology’ have nothing to do with one another. Despite this widespread conviction, Hegel was a very sophisticated epistemologist whose views merit contemporary interest. This article highlights several key features and innovations of Hegel's epistemology—including his anti-Cartesianism, fallibilism, realism (sic) and externalism both about mental content and about justification—by considering his systematic responses to Pyrrhonian, Humean, Cartesian and Kantian scepticism.

The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America • Karl Popper—The Formative Years, 1902–1945: Politics and Philosophy in Interwar Vienna

The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America • Karl Popper—The Formative Years, 1902–1945: Politics and Philosophy in Interwar Vienna