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7An Introduction to Hegel's Logic (edited book)Hackett Publishing Company. 1998.Justus Hartnack provides a highly accessible, philosophically astute introduction to Hegel's logic--one of those rare books that rewards readers at any level of sophistication--and the ideal text for students about to embark on the study of this challenging topic.
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68A review of Thomas F. Green, 1999, Voices: The Educational Formation of Conscience (review)Studies in Philosophy and Education 22 (6): 507-512. 2003.
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Adriaan T. Peperzak: Hegels praktische Philosophie. Ein Kommentar zur enzyklopädischen Darstellung der menschlichen Freiheit und ihrer objektiven Verwirklichung (review)Jahrbuch für Recht Und Ethik 2. 1994.
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19Kant: Lectures and Drafts on Political Philosophy (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2016.This book is the first translation into English of the Reflections which Kant wrote whilst formulating his ideas in political philosophy: the preparatory drafts for Theory and Practice, Toward Perpetual Peace, the Doctrine of Right, and Conflict of the Faculties; and the only surviving student transcription of his course on Natural Right. Through these texts one can trace the development of his political thought, from his first exposure to Rousseau in the mid 1760s through to his last musings in…Read more
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2On Hegel’s Early Critique of Kant’s Metaphysical Foundations of Natural ScienceIn S. Houlgate (ed.), Hegel and the Philosophy of Nature, Suny. 1998.In 1801 Hegel charged that, on Kant’s analysis, forces are ‘either purely ideal, in which case they are not forces, or else they are transcendent’. I argue that this objection, which Hegel did not spell out, reveals an important and fundamental line of internal criticism of Kant’s Critical philosophy. I show that Kant’s basic forces of attraction and repulsion, which constitute matter, are merely ideal because Kant’s arguments for them are circular and beg the question, and they have no determin…Read more
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2Hegel's Standards of Political LegitimacyJahrbuch für Recht Und Ethik/Annual Review of Law and Ethics 10 307-320. 2002.This critical review article on Frederick Neuhouser, The Foundations of Hegel’s Social Theory, examines in detail Hegel’s standards of political legitimacy, according to which social institutions are justified only by their roles in facilitating human freedom in its three basic forms: personal, moral, and social. Social freedom involves both ‘objective’ institutional requirements and ‘subjective’ aspects of personal understanding and endorsement of institutions so far as they fill their requirem…Read more
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57Natural Law, Social Contract and Moral Objectivity: Rousseau's Natural Law ConstructivismJurisprudence 4 (1): 48-75. 2013.Rousseau's Du contrat social develops an important, unjustly neglected type of theory, which I call 'Natural Law Constructivism' ('NLC'), which identifies and justifies strictly objective basic moral principles, with no appeal to moral realism or its alternatives, nor to elective agreement, nor to prudentialist reasoning. The Euthyphro Question marks a dilemma in moral theory which highlights relations between artifice and arbitrariness. These relations highlight the significance of Hume's found…Read more
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66Though concise and introductory, this book argues inter alia that Dretske’s information-theoretic epistemology must take into account that many of our information channels are socially constructed, not least through learning concepts and information. These social aspects of human knowledge are consistent with realism about the objects of our empirical knowledge. It further argues that, though important, Margaret Gilbert’s social ontology in principle can neither accommodate nor account for the m…Read more
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60Hegel, Idealism, and Robert PippinInternational Philosophical Quarterly 33 (3): 263-272. 1993.In Hegel’s Idealism, Robert Pippin contends that Hegel develops a more adequate version of Fichte’s idealism, where the key to idealism lies in the general thesis that there are conditions presupposed by self-conscious judgments about objects. Focusing on this thesis led post-Kantian German idealists to dismiss Kant’s doctrine that space and time are a priori forms of intuition and to develop views of the autonomy of human reason in terms of thought’s self-determination. While Pippin and I agree…Read more
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478‘Constructivism, Contractarianism and Basic Obligations: Kant and Gauthier’.In J.-C. Merle (ed.), Reading Kant’s Doctrine of Right, . forthcoming.Gauthier’s contractarianism begins with an idea of a rational deliberator but ‘finds no basis for postulating a moral need for the justification of one’s actions to others. The role of agreement is to address each person’s demand that the constraints of society be justified to him, not a concern that he justify himself to his fellows’ (Gauther 1997, 134–5). He contrasts his view with Scanlon’s contractualism, according to which agreement with others is the core of morality and each agent has the…Read more
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139Contemporary Epistemology: Kant, Hegel, McDowellEuropean Journal of Philosophy 14 (2). 2006.Argues inter alia that Kant and Hegel identified necessary conditions for the possibility of singular cognitive reference that incorporate avant la lettre Evans’ (1975) analysis of identity and predication, that Kant’s and Hegel’s semantics of singular cognitive reference are crucial to McDowell’s account of singular thoughts, and that McDowell has neglected (to the detriment of his own view) these conditions and their central roles in Kant’s and in Hegel’s theories of knowledge. > Reprinted in:…Read more
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1'Science and the Philosophers'In Pihlström & Vilkko Koskinen (ed.), Science: A Challenge to Philosophy? Pp. 125-152., . 2006.The advent of distinctively Modern European philosophy at the turn of the seventeenth century was occasioned by two major developments: the painful recognition after thirty years of religious war that principles of public conduct must be justified independently of sectarian religious dogma; and the growth of natural science, especially discoveries in astronomy that linked terrestrial and celestial physics in a newly mathematicized, explanatory mechanics founded by Galileo and dramatically extend…Read more
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Kant’s [Moral] Constructivism and Rational JustificationIn Pihlström & Williams Baiasu (ed.), Politics and Metaphysics in Kant, Wales University Press. 2011.This paper characterises concisely a key issue about rational justification which highlights an important achievement of Kant’s constructivist method for identifying and justifying basic norms: uniquely, it resolves the Pyrrhonian Dilemma of the Criterion. Kant’s constructivist method is both sound and significant because it is based on core principles of rational justification as such. Explicating this basis of Kant’s constructivism affords an illuminating and defensible explication of four key…Read more
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53‘Hegel on Political Representation: Laborers, Corporations, and the Monarch’.The Owl of Minerva 25 (1): 111-116. 1993.Hegel holds that members of a society can only be fully free and autonomous if they enjoy political representation. Hegel grants political representation to the landed aristocracy and to members of corporations. Causal day laborers fall outside both of these groups. Consequently, they lack political representation in Hegel’s state; hence they lack the political resources for full freedom and autonomy. This is a serious problem, but not so serious as Hegel’s marxist critics maintain. I propose tw…Read more
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122Kant on the State, Law, and Obedience to Authority in the Alleged ‘Anti-Revolutionary’ WritingsJournal of Philosophical Research 17 383-426. 1992.The tension between Kant’s egalitarian conception of persons as ends in themselves and his rejection of the right of revolution has been widely discussed. The crucial issue is more fundamental: Is Kant’s defense of absolute obedience consistent with his own principle of legitimate law, that legitimate law is compatible with the Categorical Imperative? Resolving this apparent inconsistency resolves the subsidiary inconsistencies that have been debated in the literature. I argue that Kant’s legal …Read more
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3Does Kant’s Opus Postumum Anticipate Hegel’s Absolute Idealism?In Ernst-Otto Jan Onnasch (ed.), Kants Philosophie der Natur: Ihre Entwicklung Im Opus Postumum Und Ihre Wirkung, Walter De Gruyter. 2009.The three presumptions that Hegel’s idealism further develops or radicalises Kant’s transcendental idealism, that their respective versions of idealism are linked by Kant’s account of self-positing (Selbstsetzungslehre) in the late opus postumum and that the basic model of Hegel’s early idealism holds also for his mature system are wide-spread and largely unexamined. This paper examines several problems confronting these presumptions, including Hegel’s refutation of the basic premises of Kant’s …Read more
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86Hegel’s Attitude Toward Jacobi In the ‘Third Attitude of Thought Toward Objectivity’Southern Journal of Philosophy 27 (1): 135-156. 1989.In the conceptual preliminaries of his philosophical Encyclopedia Hegel discusses three approaches to epistemology under the headings of three ‘Attitudes of Thought Toward Objectivity’. The third of these is Jacobi’s doctrine of ‘immediate’ or intuitive knowledge. Hegel’s discussion presumes great familiarity with Jacobi’s highly polemical and now seldom read texts. In this essay I disambiguate and reconstruct Hegel’s discussion of Jacobi, in close consideration of Jacobi’s texts, showing why He…Read more
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74‘Analytic Philosophy and the Long Tail of Scientia: Hegel and the Historicity of Philosophy’The Owl of Minerva 42 (1/2). 2010.Rejection of the philosophical relevance of history of philosophy remains pronounced within contemporary analytic philosophy. The two main reasons for this rejection presuppose that strict deduction is both necessary and sufficient for rational justification. However, this justificatory ideal of scientia holds only within strictly formal domains. This is confirmed by a neglected non-sequitur in van Fraassen’s original defence of ‘Constructive Empiricism’. Conversely, strict deduction is insuffic…Read more
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81Affinity, Idealism and Naturalism: The Stability of Cinnabar and the Possibility of ExperienceKant Studien 88 (2): 139-189. 1997.In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant introduced both transcendental idealism and transcendental arguments into philosophy. Transcendental arguments in general aim to establish conditions necessary for our having self-conscious experience at all. Transcendental idealism holds that such conditions do not hold independently of human subjects; those conditions obtain or are satisfied because they are generated or fulfilled by the structure or functioning of the subject’s cognitive capacities. Is tran…Read more
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1‘ ‘Philosophizing about Nature: Hegel’s Philosophical Project’In F. C. Beiser (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Hegel and Nineteenth Century Philosophy, Cambridge University Press. 2008.Henry Harris noted that ‘the Baconian applied science of this world is the solid foundation upon which Hegel’s ladder of spiritual experience rests’. Understanding the philosophical character of Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature requires recognizing some basic legitimate philosophical issues embedded in the development of physics from Galileo to Newton (§2). These issues illuminate the character of Hegel’s analysis of philosophical issues regarding nature (§3) and the central aims and purposes of Heg…Read more
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‘Hegel’s Semantics of Singular Cognitive Reference, Newton’s Methodological Rule 4 and Scientific Realism Today’Philosophical Inquiries 2 (1): 9-67. 2014.Empirical investigations use empirical methods, data and evidence. This banal observation appears to favour empiricism, especially in philosophy of science, though no rationalist ever denied their importance. Natural sciences often provide what appear to be, and are taken by scientists as, realist, causal explanations of natural phenomena. Empiricism has never been congenial to scientific realism. Bas van Fraassen’s ‘Constructive Empiricism’ purports that realist interpretations of any scientifi…Read more
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1Republicanism, Despotism, And Obedience To The State: The Inadequacy Of Kant's Division Of PowersJahrbuch für Recht Und Ethik 1. 1993.Kant's views on revolution have been widely discussed, and commentators have long been astounded that the philosopher who made famous the principle that persons are ends in themselves could reach such abhorent conclusions as that citizens owe unqualified obedience to their supreme ruler. I address an important and ignored sub-issue of this topic: the relations between Kant's doctrine of the division of governmental powers and his doctrine of absolute obedience. I argue that these two doctrines a…Read more
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41‘Hegel’s Epistemology? Reflections on Some Recent Expositions’.Clio: A Journal of Literature, History, and the Philosophy of History 28 (3): 303-323. 1999.The notion that Hegel repudiated epistemology has had dire consequences for our understanding of Hegel. By disregarding epistemology, Hegel’s expositors often disregarded the general issues central to epistemology of how one can establish or justify a philosophical view. If Hegel did address epistemological issues and tried to justify (not simply to expound) ‘absolute knowledge’, then that disregard would produce skewed interpretations of Hegel. Recent attention to Hegel’s epistemology (e.g., by…Read more
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50Comments on Graham Bird’s The Revolutionary KantKantian Review 16 (2): 1-11. 2011.My contribution to a book symposium on Graham’s commentary on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, sponsored by the North American and the UK Kant Societies, held in conjunction with the Central Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, Chicago, 20 February 2009. Comments also delivered by Adrian Moore, Gary Banham, Jill Buroker and Manfred Kuehn, with relplies by Graham Bird.
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Die positive Verteidigung Kants der Urteils- und Handlungsfreiheit, und zwar ohne transzendentalen IdealismusIn Mario Brandhorst, Andree Hahmann & Bernd Ludwig (eds.), Sind wir Bürger zweier Welten?: Freiheit und moralische Verantwortung im transzendentalen Idealismus, Meiner. 2012.
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8‘The Basic Context and Structure of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right’.In F. C. Beiser (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Hegel, Cambridge University Press. 1993.Hegel’s Philosophy of Right responds to two dichotomies. One is between the freedom of rational thought in its practical application and the givenness of natural impulses and desires. Against Kant Hegel argues that pure reason alone cannot determine the content of any maxim or principle of action. Thus Hegel must find a way in which the content of natural needs and impulses – the only source of content for maxims of action – can be transfigured into contents of rationally self-given principles a…Read more
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1‘Must the Transcendental Conditions for the Possibility of Experience be Ideal?’In C. Ferrini (ed.), Eredità Kantiane (1804–2004): questioni emergenti e problemi irrisolti, Bibliopolis. 2004.Three genuinely transcendental conditions for the possibility of self-conscious experience are and can only be material (§§2–4). Identifying these conditions shows that the link between transcendental proof and transcendental idealism is not direct, but must be justified by substantive argument (§§ 4, 5). This illuminates the prospect of separating transcendental proofs from transcendental idealism. Indeed, examining these conditions reveals a powerful strategy for using transcendental proof to …Read more
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81‘Hegel’s Phenomenological Method and Analysis of Consciousness’In K. R. Westphal (ed.), The Blackwell Guide to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, Blackwell. pp. 1--36. 2009.This chapter argues that Hegel is a major (albeit unrecognized) epistemologist: Hegel’s Introduction provides the key to his phenomenological method by showing that the Pyrrhonian Dilemma of the Criterion refutes traditional coherentist and foundationalist theories of justification. Hegel then solves this Dilemma by analyzing the possibility of constructive self- and mutual criticism. ‘Sense Certainty’ provides a sound internal critique of ‘knowledge by acquaintance’, thus undermining a key tene…Read more
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86Kant's Transcendental Proof of RealismCambridge University Press. 2004.This book is the first detailed study of Kant's method of 'transcendental reflection' and its use in the Critique of Pure Reason to identify our basic human cognitive capacities, and to justify Kant's transcendental proofs of the necessary a priori conditions for the possibility of self-conscious human experience. Kenneth Westphal, in a closely argued internal critique of Kant's analysis, shows that if we take Kant's project seriously in its own terms, the result is not transcendental idealism b…Read more
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Alumnus, 1986
Istanbul, Turkey