Natural Kind Essentialism is the view that the objects of sciences like physics, chemistry and biology fall into natural kinds, and that such kinds have essences—sets of properties possession of which is necessary and sufficient for kind-membership. Since Putnam and Kripke brought NKE back onto the philosophical agenda, it has found many advocates. But comparatively little attention has been paid to the question of how this view can be positively motivated. After illustrating the current need for an argument for NKE (...) through critical discussions of Putnam’s, Kripke’s and Ellis’s arguments for NKE, this article aims to show that Hegel offers the resources for an original argument for the view. This argument works by deriving metaphysical implications from an account of what it means to understand an explanandum. (shrink)

This essay argues that one structural feature of the law is its working as an expectations machinery that generates and protects legitimate expectations at the same time. The vindication of expectations becomes apparent when we focus on the ex post-dimension of legal norms. In their ex post-dimension, legal norms vindicate legitimate expectations, in their ex ante-dimension, they generate them. This paper identifies three categories of expectations: Mere hopes, legitimate expectations and vindicated (legitimate) expectations. In the practice of legal discourse, this (...) categorisation is of crucial importance and decisive for our legal rights. This will be illustrated with examples concerning contract and property. The essay further shows that the classification of expectations faces an uncertainty problem. Building on Brandom, the essay argues that the rationality of the law’s classification of expectations can be ensured through the practice of legal discourse. Brandom’s theory of mutual recognition as a normative social structure must be supplemented by justice as a virtue (JAV), however. It will be argued that JAV strengthens the mutual recognition of the players of the law in their permanent reconstruction of legal content. JAV must be included in legal discourse to ensure the rationality of the law’s quest for the classification of expectations. (shrink)

Hegel draws a distinction between ‘judgements’ and ‘posits’. Judgements serve to explicate a unified subject matter, while posits do not. Because different forms of judgement are marked by specific combinations of logical constants with certain types of predicates, statements combining logical constants with predicates not ‘suited’ for each other cannot express judgements, but only posits. Current accounts of Hegel’s concept of judgement tend either to ignore or reject his conception of posits. This article shows that Hegel’s exclusion of a vast (...) variety of well-formed statements from the realm of judgements contains a valuable insight rather than a flaw. It demonstrates that certain statements, even if correct, cannot contribute to the explication of a non-arbitrarily unified subject matter. Doing justice to Hegel’s notion of posit thus serves to motivate his general conception of judgement as well as his classification of particular types of judgement. (shrink)