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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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‘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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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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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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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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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
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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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Hume's Commitment to, and Critique of,''Knowledge by Acquaintance'': Some Hegelian Reflections'Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain 51. 2005.
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Do Kant’s Principles Justify Property or Usufruct?Jahrbuch für Recht Und Ethik/Annual Review of Law and Ethics 5 141-194. 1997.Kant’s justification of possession appears to beg the question (petitio principii) by assuming rather than proving the legitimacy of possession. The apparent question-begging in Kant’s argument has been recapitulated or exacerbated but not resolved in the secondary literature. A detailed terminological, textual, and logical analysis of Kant’s argument reveals that he provides a sound justification of limited rights to possess and use things (qualified choses in possession), not of private proper…Read more
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45Übergang (review)The Owl of Minerva 24 (2): 235-242. 1993.This book provides an important opportunity to explore Hegel's relation to Kant. Hegel claims that a proper criticism of a philosophy must be sufficiently immanent, detailed, and systematic to show that and how a more adequate view is introduced and justified by a thorough comprehension of the merits and deficiencies of another view. However, Hegel's explicit criticisms of Kant cannot be credited with meeting this exacting standard. His lectures on Kant do not get beyond an overview, and though …Read more
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1Buchdahl’s “Phenomenological” View of Kant: A CritiqueKant Studien 89 (3): 335-352. 1998.In Kant and the Dynamics of Reason, Gerd Buchdahl proposes to solve Jacobi’s objection to Kant’s metaphysics – one needs a ‘thing-in-itself’ to enter the Critical Philosophy, but one cannot uphold both that philosophy and the ‘thing-in-itself’ – by interpreting Kant in terms of a phenomenological ‘reduction’ of objects to their transcendental conditions and their subesequent ‘realization’ in various theoretical or practical contexts. I summarize Buchdahl’s interpretation and argue: (1) Buchdahl’…Read more
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5Practical Reason: Categorical Imperative, Maxims, LawsIn W. Dudley & K. Engelhard (eds.), Kant: Key Concepts, Acumen Publishing. 2010.This chapter considers the centrality of principles in Kant’s moral philosophy, their distinctively ‘Kantian’ character, why Kant presents a ‘metaphysical’ system of moral principles and how these ‘formal’ principles are to be used in practice. These points are central to how Kant thinks pure reason can be practical. These features have often puzzled Anglophone readers, in part due to focusing on Kant’s Groundwork, to the neglect of his later works in moral philosophy, in which the theoretical p…Read more
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37Kant’s Cognitive Semantics, Newton’s Rule Four of Philosophy and Scientific RealismBulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain 63 (1-2): 27-49. 2011.Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason contains an original and powerful semantics of singular cognitive reference which has important implications for epistemology and for philosophy of science. Here I argue that Kant’s semantics directly and strongly supports Newton’s Rule 4 of Philosophy in ways which support Newton’s realism about gravitational force. I begin with Newton’s Rule 4 of Philosophy and its role in Newton’s justification of realism about gravitational force (§2). Next I briefly summarize …Read more
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1‘Self-Consciousness, Anti-Cartesianism and Cognitive Semantics in Hegel’s 1807 Phenomenology’In S. Houlgate & M. Baur (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Hegel, Blackwell. 2011.If Hegel’s 1807 Phenomenology is to justify our capacity to know the world as it is, by examining a complete series of forms of consciousness, why and with what justification does he omit the Cartesian ego-centric predicament? By augmenting Franco Chiereghin’s explication of Hegel’s concept of thought, and of why Hegel provides it only at the start of the second half of ‘Self-Consciousness’, this paper shows how Hegel showed that Pyrrhonian, Cartesian and Humean scepticism, and also mental conte…Read more
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45Hegel’s Pragmatic Critique and Reconstruction of Kant’s System of Principles in the Logic_ and _EncyclopaediaDialogue 54 (2): 333-369. 2015.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 He…Read more
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2‘‘‘Hegel, Formalism, and Robert Turner’s Ceramic Art’.Jahrbuch für Hegelforschung 3. 1997.Hegel’s aesthetic ideal is the perfect integration of form and content within a work of art. This ideal is incompatible with the predominant 20th-century principle of formalist criticism, that form is the sole important factor in a work of art. Although the formalist dichotomy between form and content has been criticized on philosophical grounds, that does not suffice to justify Hegel’s ideal. Justifying Hegel’s ideal requires detailed art criticism that shows how form and content are, and why t…Read more
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1Epistemic Reflection and Transcendental ProofIn Hans-Johann Glock (ed.), Strawson and Kant, Clarendon Press. 2003.
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‘Can Pragmatic Realists Argue Transcendentally?’In John Shook (ed.), Pragmatic Naturalism and Realism, Prometheus. 2003.Kant’s and Hegel’s transcendental argument for mental-content externalism breaks the deadlock between ‘internal’ and genuine realists. This argument shows that human beings can only be self-conscious in a world that provides a humanly recognizable regularity and variety among the things (or events) we sense. This feature of the world cannot result from human thought or language. Hence semantic arguments against realism can only be developed if realism about the world is true. Some of Putnam’s ar…Read more
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19‘Transcendental Reflections on Pragmatic Realism’.In K. R. Westphal (ed.), Pragmatism, Reason, & Norms: A Realistic Assessment, Fordham Up. pp. 17--58. 1998.By deepening Austin’s reflections on the ‘open texture’ of empirical concepts, Frederick L. Will defends an ‘externalist’ account of mental content: as human beings we could not think, were we not in fact cognizant of a natural world structured by events and objects with identifiable and repeatable similarities and differences. I explicate and defend Will’s insight by developing a parallel critique of Kant’s and Carnap’s rejections of realism, both of whom cannot account properly for the content…Read more
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76Normative Constructivism: Hegel's Radical Social PhilosophySATS 8 (2): 7-41. 2007.Onora O’Neill has contributed enormously to moral philosophy (broadly speaking, including both ethics and political philosophy) by identifying Kant’s unique and powerful form of normative constructivism. Frederick Neuhouser has contributed similarly by showing that all of Hegel’s standards of moral rationality aim to insure the complete development of three distinct, complementary forms of personal, moral and social freedom. However, Neuhouser’s study does not examine Hegel’s justificatory metho…Read more
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82Mutual Recognition and Rational Justification in Hegel’s Phenomenology of SpiritDialogue 48 (4): 753-99. 2009.: This paper explicates and defends the thesis that individual rational judgment, of the kind required for justification, whether in cognition or in morals, is fundamentally socially and historically conditioned. This puts paid to the traditional distinction, still influential today, between ‘rational’ and ‘historical’ knowledge. The present analysis highlights and defends key themes from Kant’s and Hegel’s accounts of rational judgment and justification, including four fundamental features of t…Read more
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12How "Full" is Kant's Categorical Imperative?Jahrbuch für Recht Und Ethik/Annual Review of Law and Ethics 3 465-509. 1995.Through a careful examination of two detailed investigations of Kant’s Categorical Imperative as a criterion for determining correct action I show that Hegel’s widely castigated critique of Kant’s CI has significant merit. Kant holds that moral imperatives are categorical because the obligations they express do not depend upon our contingent ends or desires and he holds that the CI is the supreme normative principle. However, his actual illustrations show that Kant repeatedly appeals to continge…Read more
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14How Hume and Kant Reconstruct Natural Law: Justifying Strict Objectivity Without Debating Moral RealismOxford University Press UK. 2016.Kenneth R. Westphal presents an original interpretation of Hume's and Kant's moral philosophies, the differences between which are prominent in current philosophical accounts. Westphal argues that focussing on these differences, however, occludes a decisive, shared achievement: a distinctive constructivist account of the basic principles of justice which justifies their strict objectivity without invoking moral realism nor moral anti- or irrealism. Westphal explores how Hume developed a kind of …Read more
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Alumnus, 1986
Istanbul, Turkey