In this paper, I shall investigate whether Hegel can be considered as a sort of ancestor of McDowell’s disjunctivism. If this hypothesis turns out to be plausible, then the paper offers two gains. On the one hand, it offers an innovative interpretation of the way in which Hegel conceives of our sensible epistemic access to the world. On the other hand, McDowell's own claim that his own theoretical proposal has a Hegelian sound is supported by a previously unexplored argument. I (...) organize my analysis into three parts: I sketch McDowell’s version of disjunctivism (Section 2); I analyze some passages from Hegel that I believe are important for showing some similarities between his and McDowell’s argumentative strategy (Section 3); in the conclusion (Section 4), I highlight a number of core features that Hegel seems to share with McDowell’s disjunctivism and I submit that they are sufficient to label Hegel the “grandfather” of McDowell's disjunctivism. (shrink)

This paper explores Sellars’ and Hegel’s treatment of ‘sensation’ – a notion that plays a central role in the reflections of both authors but which has garnered little scholarly attention. To disentangle the issues surrounding the notion and elaborate its role, function, and fate in their thought, I begin with a methodological question: what kind of philosophical argument leads Sellars and Hegel to introduce the concept of ‘sensation’ into their systems? Distinguishing between their two argumentative approaches, I maintain that Hegel (...) offers what I broadly label a ‘transcendental’ argument for ‘sensation,’ which he presents in the Philosophy of Subjective Spirit and in the corresponding Lectures, whereas Sellars introduces the notion of sensation for what I term empirically ‘explanatory’ reasons. Next, I closely analyze Hegel’s and Sellars’ theories of sensation to produce a textually supported and conceptually coherent reading of their views on the notion. To clarify my methodological distinction and its stakes in Hegel’s and Sellars’ I will reference Lewis’ notion of the given. (shrink)