Given its centrality to the intellectual thought processes through which the great structures of logic, nature, and spirit are unfolded it is clear that mediation is vital to the very possibility of Hegel’s encyclopaedic philosophy. Yet Hegel gives little specific explanation of the concept of mediation. Surprisingly, it has been the subject of even less attention by scholars of Hegel. Nevertheless it is casually used in discussions of Hegel and post- Hegelian philosophy as though its meaning were simple and straightforward. (...) In these discussions mediation is the thesis that meanings are not atomic in that the independence of something is inseparable from its relation to something else. Hence being is mediated by nothing, the particular by the universal, the individual by society. But does Hegel ever explain mediation in a way which justifies such use of the concept? The same easy employment of mediation is found in Theodor Adorno whose works are replete with the use of this concept and, indeed, acknowledgements of its Hegelian origin. But the concept of mediation in Adorno’s negative dialectic is operative in an entirely different context from that of Hegel. How, it might be asked, can a concept be so adaptable? I want to argue that mediation is, in fact, an equivocal term which in both Hegel and Adorno covers a variety of entirely different conceptual relations. Furthermore, as propounded by both Hegel and Adorno it lacks the rigour which could allow the particular conclusions which the concept allegedly facilitates. (shrink)

This paper criticizes the assumptions behind Robert Brandom’s reading of Hegel’s Phenomenology, contending that Hegel’s concern with the rational structure of experience, his valorization of reflection over ordinary experience and his idea of the necessit y of progress in knowledge cannot be accommodated within the framework of semantic pragmatism. The central contentions are that Brandom’s pragmatism never comes to terms with Hegel’s idea of truth as a result, leading to a historicist distortion, and also that Brandom’s failure to deal with (...) Hegel’s distinction between natural consciousness and the phenomenological observer collapses Hegel’s phenomenology into a philosophy restricted to the level of natural consciousness. (shrink)

This paper contends that Kant’s argument in the Refutation of Idealism section of the Critique of Pure Reason misses a step which allows Kant to move illicitly from inner experience to outer objects. The argument for persistent outer objects does not comprehensively address the skeptic’s doubts as it leaves room for the question about the necessary connection between representations and outer objects. A second fundamental issue is the ability of transcendental idealism to deliver the account of outer objects, as required (...) by the Refutation of Idealism itself. (shrink)

The core argument of the paper is that the modern philosophical notion of self-constitution is directed against the prospect of human beings dissolving into idleness. Arguments for self-constitution are marked by non-philosophical presuppositions about the value of usefulness. Those arguments also assume a particular conception of superior experience as conscious integration of a person’s actions within an identifiable set of chosen commitments. Exploring particular arguments by Hegel, Kant, Korsgaard and Frankfurt the paper claims that those arguments are problematic in the (...) various ways in which they suppose usefulness and explicitly or implicitly take extra-philosophical views of idleness. (shrink)

This is a critical theoretical investigation of Hubert Dreyfus’ ‘phenomenology of everyday expertise’ (PEE). Operating mainly through the critical perspective of the ‘emancipatory interest’ the article takes issue with the contention that when engaged in expert action human beings are in non-deliberative, reason-free absorption. The claim of PEE that absorbed actions are not amenable to reconstruction places those actions outside the space of reasons. The question of acting under the wrong reasons – the question upon which the emancipatory interest rests (...) – is thereby rendered groundless. A further difficulty for the emancipatory interest is the elimination by PEE of reflective agency. Framing expert action as perception- and affordance-driven, PEE diminishes practical reasoning. Furthermore, it understands freedom – consistently with its notion of action as affordance – as primarily the capacity of human beings to submit themselves to processes rather than to step back reflectively from them. Several criticisms of the philosophical delimitations created by methodology of PEE – phenomenology – are also developed. (shrink)

International Journal of Philosophical Studies, Volume 19, Issue 5, Page 753-760, December 2011.