Kenneth R. Westphal

?Hegel? and?human rights? are rarely conjoined, and the designation?human rights? appears rarely in his works. Indeed, Hegel has been criticised for omitting civil and political rights all together. My surmise is that readers have looked for a modern Decalogue, and have neglected how Hegel justifies his views, and hence just what views he does justify. Philip Pettit has refocused attention on republican liberty. Hegel and I agree with Pettit that republican liberty is a supremely important value, but appealing to its value, or justifying it by appeal to reflective equilibrium, are insufficient both in theory and in practice. By reconstructing Kant?s Critical methodology and explicating the social character of rational justification in non-formal domains, Hegel shows that the republican right to non-domination is constitutive of the equally republican right to justification - both of which are necessary requirements for sufficient rational justification in all non-formal domains, including both claims to rights or imputations of duties or responsibilities. That is the direct moral, political and juridical implication of Hegel?s analysis of mutual recognition, and its fundamental, constitutive role in rational justification. Specific corollaries to the fundamental republican right to non-domination must be determined by considering what forms of illicit domination are possible or probable within any specific society, in view of its social, political and economic structures and functioning. nema

Kant provided two parallel, sound proofs of mental content externalism; both prove this thesis: We human beings could not think of ourselves as persisting through apparent changes in what we experience - nor could we think of the apparent spatio-temporal world of objects, events and people - unless in fact we are conscious of some aspects of the actual spatio-temporal world and have at least some rudimentary knowledge of it. Such proofs turn, not on general facts about the world, but on appreciating various fundamental regards in which our finite human cognizance depends upon the world we inhabit. The?transcendental? character of these analyses concerns identifying and appreciating various fundamental features of our finite form of human mindedness, and basic constraints upon, and prospects of, cognitive justification within the non-formal domain of human empirical knowledge. Such analyses and proofs have been developed in various ways, using distinctive strategies, not only by Kant, but also by Hegel, C.I. Lewis, Heidegger, Wittgenstein and Frederick Will. Here I examine and defend the methodological reflections required to understand, assess and appreciate such transcendental proofs, and why so few analytic epistemologists have found them persuasive or illuminating. nema

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 constructivism for basic property rights and for government, and how Kant greatly refined Hume's construction of justice within his 'metaphysical principles of justice', whilst preserving the core model of Hume's innovative account. Westphal contends that Hume's and Kant's constructivism avoids the conventionalist and relativist tendencies latent if not explicit in contemporary forms of moral constructivism.

This handbook presents the conceptions and principles central to every aspect of Hegel’s systematic philosophy. In twenty-eight thematically linked chapters by leading international experts, The Palgrave Hegel Handbook provides reliable, scholarly overviews of each subject, illuminates the main issues and debates, and details concisely the considered views of each contributor. Recent scholarship challenges traditional, largely anti-Kantian, readings of Hegel, focusing instead on Hegel’s appropriation of Kantian epistemology to reconcile idealism with the rejection of foundationalism, coherentism and skepticism. Focused like Kant on showing how fundamental unities underlie the profusion of apparently independent events, Hegel argued that reality is rationally structured, so that its systematic structure is manifest to our properly informed thought. Accordingly, this handbook re-assesses Hegel’s philosophical aims, methods and achievements, and re-evaluates many aspects of Hegel’s enduring philosophical contributions, ranging from metaphysics, epistemology, and dialectic, to moral and political philosophy and philosophy of history. Each chapter, and The Palgrave Hegel Handbook as a whole, provides an informed, authoritative understanding of each aspect of Hegel’s philosophy.

In this book, Westphal offers an original interpretation of Hegel's moral philosophy. Building on his previous study of the role of natural law in Hume's and Kant's accounts of justice, Westphal argues that Hegel developed and justified a robust form of civic republicanism. Westphal identifies, for the first time, the proper genre to which Hegel's Philosophical Outlines of Justice belongs and to which it so prodigiously contributes, which he calls Natural Law Constructivism, an approach developed by Hume, Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel. He brings to bear Hegel's adoption and augmentation of Kant's Critique of rational judgment and justification in all non-formal domains to his moral philosophy in his Outlines. Westphal argues that Hegel's justification for the standards of political legitimacy successfully integrates Rousseau's Independence Requirement into the role of public reason within a constitutional republic. In these regards, Hegel's moral and political principles are progressive not only in principle, but also in practice. Hegel's Civic Republicanism will be of interest to scholars of moral philosophy, social and political philosophy, philosophy of law, Hegel, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century philosophy.

This book assesses and defends Kant's Critical epistemology, and the rich yet neglected resources it provides for understanding and resolving fundamental issues regarding human experience, perceptual judgment, empirical knowledge and cognitive sciences. Kenneth Westphal first examines Kant's methods and strategies for examining human sensory-perceptual experience, and then examines Kant's central, proper, and subtle attention to judgment, and so to the humanly possible valid use of concepts and principles to judge particulars we confront. This provides a comprehensive account of Kant's anti-Cartesianism, the integrity of his three principles of causal judgment, and Kant's account of disciminatory perceptual-motor behaviour, including both sensory reafference and perceptual affordances. Westphal then defends the significance of Kant's subtle and illuminating account of causal judgment for three main philosophical domains: history and philosophy of science, theory of action and human freedom, and philosophy of mind. Kant's Critical Epistemology will appeal to researchers and advanced students interested in Kant and the relations of his thought to contemporary philosophical debates and to the sciences of the mind.

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 contingent ends and desires in deriving our obligations and that CI tests often reveal conflicts between maxims and other presupposed norms of action. Moreover, Barbara Herman makes a persuasive case that Kant’s CI test must be supplemented by ‘Rules of Moral Salience’ and by ‘Middle Theory’, which links Kant’s theory of value to a theory of applications. These supplements ultimately shift the principle of universalization from the standpoint of individual morality to social ethics – precisely Hegel’s strategy in his Philosophy of Right!

I first highlight a main theme of the collection I edited and issued last year, Realism, Science and Pragmatism, by contrasting classical pragmatism and neo-pragmatism in terms of the distinction between semantic externalism and semantic internalism, and exhibiting how both of these semantic views are concisely stated by Carnap, though neither he nor his followers recognised this contrast, nor its profound methodological and substantive implications – although they were highlighted at the time by Wick, published by Wilfrid Sellars and Herbert Feigl in the second year of their journal, Philosophical Studies. I exhibit the continuing influence of semantic internalism – which dominates Quine’s, Rorty’s, van Fraassen’s, Brandom’s and Huw Price’s neo-pragmatist views – and argue against it with pragmatic realist considerations drawn from Kant, Carnap and Sellars.

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 and maxims. Hegel also responds to the dichotomy between the individual agent and the social whole within which agents act. Hegel argues that this dichotomy is specious because human beings are fundamentally social practitioners and because neither social practices nor individual agents have priority over the other. There are no social practices without social practitioners and there are no social practitioners without social practices. Hegel’s response to this second dichotomy allows him to respond to the first one as well. The elaboration and specialization of natural needs and desires through exchange relations and the social division of labor transfigures the contents of those needs and desires into collectively self-given ends. The social practices producing this transfiguration and meeting these ends form the contents of implicit principles of right. These implicit principles are collectively self-given because they result from the social practices collectively developed to meet these needs. Only acts that are executed and accepted by an agent are free acts. This strong condition requires that an agent’s intentions correspond to the actual nature and consequences of his or her act. Since the aims, the principles, and the means of action are fundamentally social, these strong constraints entail that free action is possible only within a community which makes known its structure and the role of its members within it and their contribution to it, so that its members can act on the basis of that knowledge. Hegel’s theory of the state is a theory of a communal structure that makes such explicit, free action possible. In briefest compass, Hegel holds that laws are legitimate only insofar as they codify those practices that have been developed in order to achieve human freedom, and laws are obligatory only insofar as they are necessary for achieving human freedom. Hegel’s government is designed to codify and promulgate such laws. Hegel’s legislature is designed to make known to the citizens at large, through their corporate representatives, that laws have such a basis and how individual roles and actions fit within the community as a whole.

Kant’s account of cognitive judgment is sophisticated, sound and philosophically far more illuminating than is often appreciated. Key features of Kant’s account of cognitive judgment are widely dispersed amongst various sections of the Critique of Pure Reason, whilst common philosophical proclivities have confounded these interpretive difficulties. This paper characterises Kant’s account of causal-perceptual judgment concisely to highlight one central philosophical achievement: Kant’s finding that, to understand and investigate empirical knowledge we must distinguish between predication as a grammatical form of sentences, statements or judgments, and predication as a cognitive act of ascribing some characteristic to some localised particular. With Kant’s finding in view, I then elucidate how we have occluded his achievement. My results are not merely interpretive, but philosophical, because they show that Kant’s account of perceptual judgment accords with – and indeed justifies – a central and sound point regarding language, thought and reference advocated by apparently unlikely philosophical comrades. These finding highlight some methodological cautions which require re-emphasis today.

Die Abhandlung zeigt, dass Hegels Untersuchung der Wahrnehmung in der Phanomenologie des Geistes eine subtile und tiefgreifende Kritik entwickelt an dem systematisch wichtigen Abschnitt von Humes Traktat Vom Skeptizismus in Bezug auf die Sinne (I,iv 2), in dem Hume den Begriff der Ding-Identitat untersucht. Hume und ihm folgend Hegel beschaftigten sich mit basalen Fragen der Wahrnehmungssynthesis und des Begriffs der Substanz viel grundlicher als ihre (aber nicht nur ihre) Zeitgenossen (einschliesslich Kant): Wie ist eine gegebene Menge von Qualitaten in der Wahrnehmung eines Gegenstandes zusammenzubringen? Und: Durch was fur einen Begriff eines Gegenstandes lassen sie sich so vereinheitlichen? (Diese Fragen tauchen in der heutigen Neurophysiologie der Wahrnehmung als das bis jetzt ungeloste Bindungsproblem auf.) Hegel zeigt u.a., dass der Begriff der Ding-Identitat die zwei entgegengesetzten Teilbegriffe Einheit und Verschiedenheit einschliesst, ohne sich auf diese bloss quantitativen Begriffe reduzieren zu lassen; dass demzufolge dieser Begriff (gegen Humes Begriffs-Empirismus) relativ a priori gilt; dass wir nur durch den Gebrauch eines solchen Begriffs Bewusstsein von Gegenstanden mit vielen Eigenschaften erlangen und dass insofern eine aktiv gedachte Erkenntnisweise durchaus in Einklang mit Common Sense-Realismus steht. Durch Bezugnahme auf Hume und den neuzeitlichen philosophischen Kontext der Problemlage Hegels ergibt sich zum ersten Mal eine befriedigende, vollstandige und philosophisch aufschlussreiche Rekonstruktion des Wahrnehmung-Kapitels.