Béatrice Longuenesse

Hegel's Critique of Metaphysics

Hegel’s Science of Logic has received less attention than his Phenomenology of Spirit, but Hegel himself took it to be his highest philosophical achievement and the backbone of his system. The present book focuses on this most difficult of Hegel’s published works. Béatrice Longuenesse offers a close analysis of core issues, including discussions of what Hegel means by “dialectical logic,” the role and meaning of “contradiction” in Hegel’s philosophy, and Hegel’s justification for the provocative statement that “what is rational is actual, what is actual is rational.” She examines both Hegel’s debt and his polemical reaction to Kant, and shows in great detail how his project of a “dialectical” logic can be understood only in light of its relation to Kant’s “transcendental” logic. This book will appeal to anyone interested in Hegel’s philosophy and its influence on contemporary philosophical discussion.

Kant's Theory of Judgment, and Judgments of Taste: On Henry Allison's Kant's Theory of Taste

Kants use of the leading thread of his table of logical forms of judgment to analyze judgments of taste yields more results than Allisons account allows. It reveals in judgments of taste the combination of two judgments: a descriptive judgment about the object, and a normative judgment about the judging subjects. Core arguments of Kants critique of taste receive new light from this analysis.

Kant?s Categories and the Capacity to Judge: Responses to Henry Allison and Sally Sedgwick

In response to Henry Allison?s and Sally Sedwick?s comments on my recent book, Kant and the Capacity to Judge, I explain Kant?s description of the understanding as being essentially a ?capacity to judge?, and his view of the relationship between the categories and the logical functions of judgment. I defend my interpretation of Kant?s argument in the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories in the B edition. I conclude that, in my interpretation, Kant?s notions of the ?a priori? and the ?given? are more complex and flexible than is generally perceived. Nevertheless, Kant maintains a strict distinction between receptivity and spontaneity, the ?passive? and the ?active? aspects of our representational capacities. This separates him from his German idealist successors, most notably Fichte and Hegel. Contrary to Sedgwick?s and Allison?s suggestions, I do not think that my interpretation tends to blur this distinction.

Point of view of man or knowledge of God. Kant and Hegel on concept, judgment, and reason

There is something quite paradoxical in Hegels presentation of Kants critical system in the first part of his 1802 article Faith and Knowledge . On the one hand, Hegel praises Kant for having expressed the “true idea of reason” in his Critique of Pure Reason and his Critique of Judgment . On the other hand, he describes the so-called “pure practical reason” expounded in the Critique of Practical Reason as resulting from a “complete trampling down of reason.” More surprising still, it seems that in effect, Hegel sees an anticipation of his own notion of reason in those explanations of judgment , in Kants first and third Critiques , where our discursive abilities are presented as inseparable from sensibility (synthetic a priori judgments in the first Critique , aesthetic and teleological judgments in the third Critique ). By contrast, he considers as a destruction of reason what Kant took to be its purest and highest use: its practical use in the autonomous determination of the will, as described in the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals and in the second Critique . What is the motivation for this peculiar appropriation of Kants critical system? The beginning of an answer to this question can be found already in Hegels early theological writings, most notably, The Spirit of Christianity and its Fate . There Hegel proclaimed the superiority of the moral teaching of Jesus (whose principle was love as the expression of life) over Kantian morality which teaches the bondage of inclinations and sensibility by reason and the moral law.

“I” and the brain

Many philosophers as well as many biological psychologists think that recent experiments in neuropsychology have definitively discredited any notion of freedom of the will. I argue that the arguments mounted against the concept of freedom of the will in the name of natural causal determinism are valuable but not new, and that they leave intact a concept of freedom of the will that is compatible with causal determinism. After explaining this concept, I argue that it is interestingly related to our use of the first person pronoun “I.” I discuss three examples of our use of “I” in thought and language and submit a few questions I would like neuropsychologists to answer concerning the brain processes that might underlie those uses. I suggest answering these questions would support the compatibilist notion of freedom of the will I have offered in part 1.

Hegel's Critique of Metaphysics: Transcendental logic and dialectical logic: from Kant to Hegel, a critique of all dogmatic metaphysics

determination of essence, which reveals itself to be in truth the concept, we should say that the logical is only the ground for the real in g r o u n d against c o n c e p t ? 105 that this ground is in itself the concept. But precisely, this temptation to explain the concrete (rational) category of the concept by the abstract category (stemming from the understanding) of ground [. . .] perhaps expresses the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of grasping as concept the relation of the logical and the real, of thought and being. We are reaching here [. . .] a major problem – perhaps the problem – posed by Hegelianism.19 Now of course, according to Hegel it is strictly speaking not possible to oppose the perspective of ground to that of the concept. For it is already a misinterpretation to understand ground from a perspective of separation between ground and the grounded. Ground is nothing outside that which it grounds, and what it grounds is nothing independently of ground: such is the unity of ground and conditions, which leads to Hegel’s definition of the absolutely unconditioned, to which I now turn.20 Ground, conditions, absolutely unconditioned “Complete ground” presented us with a reflection that was at once positing and presupposing. Ground posits being as a unity of determinations. This means that ground constitutes this real unity at the same time as the latter is “superseded,” since it exists only through the ground that posits it. This is the side of “positing” reflection. But on the other hand, reflection is “positing” only insofar as it is “presupposing.” What is “posited” must have already been there, presupposed, in order to be reflected. “Complete ground” presupposes real determinations, and reflects the relation between these determinations as posited by itself. Thus “ground” is the side of unity (in thought). “Condition” is the side of real determinations, of empirical multiplicity. Each of these two sides is, with respect to the other, relatively independent, i.e. relatively unconditioned. First, the condition is relatively independent with respect to the ground for which it is the condition. Posited as condition, determinate being [das Dasein] has the determination [. . .] of losing its indifferent immediacy and becoming the moment of something else. Through its immediacy it is indifferent to this relation; but, in so far as it enters into this relation, it constitutes the in itself of the ground, and is for the latter the unconditioned. (GW 11, 315; S. 6, 114;

Hegel's Critique of Metaphysics: List of Abbreviations

Hegel’s Science of Logic has received less attention than his Phenomenology of Spirit, but Hegel himself took it to be his highest philosophical achievement and the backbone of his system. The present book focuses on this most difficult of Hegel’s published works. Béatrice Longuenesse offers a close analysis of core issues, including discussions of what Hegel means by “dialectical logic,” the role and meaning of “contradiction” in Hegel’s philosophy, and Hegel’s justification for the provocative statement that “what is rational is actual, what is actual is rational.” She examines both Hegel’s debt and his polemical reaction to Kant, and shows in great detail how his project of a “dialectical” logic can be understood only in light of its relation to Kant’s “transcendental” logic. This book will appeal to anyone interested in Hegel’s philosophy and its influence on contemporary philosophical discussion.

Hegel's Critique of Metaphysics: POINT OF VIEW OF MAN OR KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

Hegel’s Science of Logic has received less attention than his Phenomenology of Spirit, but Hegel himself took it to be his highest philosophical achievement and the backbone of his system. The present book focuses on this most difficult of Hegel’s published works. Béatrice Longuenesse offers a close analysis of core issues, including discussions of what Hegel means by “dialectical logic,” the role and meaning of “contradiction” in Hegel’s philosophy, and Hegel’s justification for the provocative statement that “what is rational is actual, what is actual is rational.” She examines both Hegel’s debt and his polemical reaction to Kant, and shows in great detail how his project of a “dialectical” logic can be understood only in light of its relation to Kant’s “transcendental” logic. This book will appeal to anyone interested in Hegel’s philosophy and its influence on contemporary philosophical discussion.

Hegel's Critique of Metaphysics: HEGEL'S CRITIQUE OF METAPHYSICS: A STUDY OF THE DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE

Hegel’s Science of Logic has received less attention than his Phenomenology of Spirit, but Hegel himself took it to be his highest philosophical achievement and the backbone of his system. The present book focuses on this most difficult of Hegel’s published works. Béatrice Longuenesse offers a close analysis of core issues, including discussions of what Hegel means by “dialectical logic,” the role and meaning of “contradiction” in Hegel’s philosophy, and Hegel’s justification for the provocative statement that “what is rational is actual, what is actual is rational.” She examines both Hegel’s debt and his polemical reaction to Kant, and shows in great detail how his project of a “dialectical” logic can be understood only in light of its relation to Kant’s “transcendental” logic. This book will appeal to anyone interested in Hegel’s philosophy and its influence on contemporary philosophical discussion.

Hegel's Critique of Metaphysics: What is rational is actual, what is actual is rational

Hegels notion of Wirklichkeit , actuality, is known above all through the sentence that appears in the Preface to the Principles of the Philosophy of Right: What is rational is actual; and what is actual is rational. ( S . 7, 24; R . 20) A scandalous statement, and even more scandalous in the translation that long prevailed: What is rational is real, and what is real is rational. For in identifying Hegels notion of Wirklichkeit with the more familiar notion of reality, this translation makes plausible an interpretation according to which, by elevating “the real” to the dignity of “the rational,” Hegel indulges in the speculative sanctification of what is, of the existing world. But in fact, Hegels notion of Wirklichkeit has a quite specific content which resists any overly simplistic interpretation of the sentence just cited. This content is progressively laid out in Section 3 of the Doctrine of Essence ( GW 11, 369–409; S . 6, 186–240; L . 529–571), where the exposition of Wirklichkeit (actuality) provides the transition to the concept (Book 2 of the Science of Logic ). The concept, in turn, is what opens the way to the system expounded in the second and third parts of the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences : the Philosophy of Nature and the Philosophy of Spirit. In a way, then, the notion of “actuality” at work in the Principles of the Philosophy of Right is beyond that which is explained in the Doctrine of Essence of the Science of Logic .