When I was first studying Hegel I encountered quite divergent readings of his views on religion. The teacher who first presented Hegel to me was a Jesuit, Quentin Lauer at Fordham University, who read Hegel as a Christian theologian providing a better metaphysical system for understanding the doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation. When I studied at Yale, Kenley Dove read Hegel as the first thoroughly atheistic philosopher, who presented the conditions of thought without reference to any foundational absolute being. (...) Meanwhile, also at Yale, John Findlay read us a deeply Neo-Platonic Hegel who taught about absolute forms held in a cosmic mind. In giving my own reading I want to talk about the ways Hegel redefines both metaphysics and religion. I would like to approach these issues by way of the medieval controversy over double truth, which was a previous conflict between religion and science. (shrink)

A prevailing view in the literature on Hegel’s dialectical method is that employing it involves advancing a false account and then modifying it to be closer to the truth. I will call this the Modification View. In this essay, I argue that the Modification View is incorrect. Hegel’s insight, I show, is that one can only explain the objective validity of a form of thought through employing that very form. Consequently, the dialectical method cannot relate to its subject matter as (...) something given to it, and so cannot involve advancing and then correcting errors in one’s account. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper attempts to shed light on Hegel’s recurring comment that Spinoza’s philosophy lacks the ‘principle of individuality’. It shows that this criticism can have three distinct meanings: that Spinozism cannot account for the multiplicity of finite individuals; that Spinozism leads to a moral devaluation of the finite individual; the form of substance is indifferent and lacks a differentiating principle. It is shown that Hegel argued, somewhat incoherently, for all three.

Peirce's study of Kant, and later of Hegel, and Dewey's (1930) retention of much of Hegel's social philosophy are recognised idealist sources of pragmatism. Here I argue that the transition from idealism to pragmatic realism was already achieved by Hegel. Hegel's ‘Objective Logic’ corresponds in part to Kant's ‘Transcendental Logic’ (WdL,GW21:47.1-3). Hegel faults Kant for relegating concepts of reflection to an Appendix to his Transcendental Logic (WdL,GW12:19.34-38), and for treating reason as ‘only dialectical’ and as ‘merely regulative’ (WdL,GW12:23.12,.16-17). I present (...) three important yet neglected features of Kant'sCritique of Pure Reasonwhich are key enthymemes undergirding Hegel's critical reconstruction of Kant's Critical philosophy (§2). I then summarise some features of the philosophical context within which Hegel begins to re-assess and reconstruct Kant's Transcendental Logic (§3), and review several key steps in this direction Hegel undertook in the 1807Phenomenology(§4). (A related paper extends these results to Hegel'sLogicandEncyclopaedia.) These points show that Hegel's reanalysis of Kant's Critical philosophy is the first and still one of the most sophisticated and adequate pragmatic — specifically pragmatic realist — accounts of thea priori. (shrink)

This study argues that the exploration of Hegel and Spinoza’s philosophies of material Nature yields a more compelling critique of Spinoza’s thought than either Hegel himself or commentators have recognised. Rather than attempting a full comparison of Hegel and Spinoza’s accounts of material Nature, this study focuses on elaborating a critique of the deficiencies found, from a Hegelian standpoint, in Spinoza’s account of extended Nature. This study argues that the Hegelian critique of Spinoza’s theory of extended Nature takes at least (...) two major interrelated forms. Firstly, this critique suggests that Spinoza does not adequately derive the necessity of Substance’s existence as Extension, as motion and rest, and as finite bodies. This is demonstrated in this study through an account of Hegel’s immanent development of Nature as such and its mechanical forms from the conclusion of the Science of Logic. Secondly, this critique suggests that Spinoza’s mechanical and quantitative conception of the broader picture of material Nature is inadequate. This is demonstrated through an account of Hegel’s critique of any purely mechanical conception of the natural world, arguing instead that Nature is necessarily driven through a series of qualitatively different stages including the chemical and organic. This study makes an original scholarly contribution through its investigation of the Hegel-Spinoza relationship in the specific context of their philosophies of material Nature, an aspect of this relationship previously unexplored. This study thereby makes the first step in the expansion of the scholarship of the Hegel-Spinoza relationship into this new area, opening a promising new avenue for future work on these great philosophers. (shrink)

Hegel’s many remarks that seem to imply that philosophy should proceed completely a priori pose a problem for his philosophy of nature since, on this reading, Hegel offers an a priori derivation of...

In an attempt to reconcile first-hand historical research on scientific material and philosophical concerns, this paper aims to show how Hegel took active part in the scientific debate of the time, by publicly siding with some strands of contemporaneous natural science against others, as well as how Hegel supports a considered scientific position, by providing it with philosophical justification and foundation, taking issue at the same time with formulations of British Empiricism and German Idealism.

Dans laScience de la logiqueet dans l’Encyclopédie des sciences philosophiques,Hegel reconstruit la philosophie critique de Kant en développant i) une logique transcendantale dans laScience de la logiqueet dans laPhilosophie de la nature; ii) une conception pragmatique de l’a priori; et iii) une caractéristique-clé de l’usage du verbe «réaliser» en relation avec les concepts et les principes. Chacun de ces trois éléments constitue un aspect central de la sémantique spécifiquement cognitive de Hegel, que celui-ci développe, en partant de la thèse kantienne (...) de la référence cognitive singulière, en un réalisme pragmatique systématique. (shrink)

In his introductions to the encyclopaedic Philosophy of Nature and to the Lectures on the Philosophy of Nature, Hegel distinguishes between three ‘attitudes’ (Verhaltensweisen, Einstellungen) towards nature—the theoretical, the practical and the philosophical attitude. According to him there is a certain ‘contradiction’ or tension between our theoretical attitude towards nature, which makes it an object of scientific inquiry, and the practical attitude that we assume as living rational beings who intervene in nature and shape it according to our purposes. This (...) article focuses on how exactly to pinpoint that tension and on how it is resolved in what Hegel calls the ‘philosophical’ or ‘comprehending’ attitude towards nature. (shrink)

This paper explicates and argues for the thesis that individual rational judgment, of the kind required for rational justification in non-formal, substantive domains – i.e. in empirical knowledge or in morals (both ethics and justice) – is in fundamental part socially and historically based, although these social and historical aspects of rational justification are consistent with realism about the objects of empirical knowledge and with strict objectivity about basic moral principles. The central thesis is that, to judge fully rationally that (...) one judges – in ways which provide rational justification of one’s judgment about any substantive matter – requires recognising one’s inherent fallibility and consequently also recognising our mutual interdependence for assessing our own and each others’ judgments and their justification. This explication provides a pragmatic account of rational justification in substantive domains which puts paid to the traditional distinction, still influential today, between ‘rational’ and ‘historical’ knowledge. (Note: This paper is a counterpart to Westphal 2011b; each paper contains substantial material not included in the other.). (shrink)