Kenneth R. Westphal

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 he makes some detailed criticisms in the conceptual preliminaries of the lesser Logic and in a number of remarks in the larger Logic, these criticisms appear isolated. While there is much important criticism of Kant in Hegel's early writings, those criticisms are embedded in Hegel's still embryonic philosophy, and as such do not constitute a thorough and mature Hegelian critique. Furthermore, Hegel scholarship has yet to make up this decisive gap in Hegel's purported proof of his own philosophy; far too little, of far too little detail and scope, has been written on Hegel's critical relation to the critical philosophy.

The debate about the relation between the (phenomenal) psychological realm and our (noumenal) rational freedom is moot because Kant in fact argues that psychological determinism is undemonstrable, even in the phenomenal realm. Kant contends that causality is strictly related to substance. Also, the three Analogies form a mutually integrated set of principles. Kant’s Paralogisms show we have no knowledge of a substantial self. If we have no evidence of a substantial self, then we cannot apply any of the Principles of the Analogies to the self. Consequently, we cannot justify any determinate causal judgments in psychology. Hence determinism is in principle unjustifiable within even empirical psychology.

In Erwiderung auf Kohlbergs Theorie moralischer Entwicklung betont Gilligan (1982, 2. Aufl.: 1993, S. 18 – 9), dass seine Theorie völlig von ihrem postulierten Ziel abhänge, nämlich einer prinzipien-geleiteten Urteilskraft. Hier wird nun analysiert, inwiefern Gilligans Diagnose nur die Spitze eines moralischen sowie theoretischen Eisbergs dadurch beleuchtet, dass ihre Untersuchungen der Klärung dienen, inwiefern Kohlbergs Etappen „Fünf“ und „Sechs“ eine spezifische Theorie des „moralischen Standpunkts“ voraussetzen, bei der Fragen der Gerechtigkeit und zu viel von dem, was wir einander und auch uns selbst schulden, vernachlässigt werden. Um dies zu zeigen, untersuche ich zunächst, wie klassische Gerechtigkeitsfragen für teleologische Ethiktheorien nicht nur einmal, sondern zweimal verloren gegangen sind (§ 2). Ein wichtiges Beispiel dafür ist die radikale Kehre in der „ethischen Theorie“ zu Beginn des anglophonen 20. Jahrhunderts (C.E.), repräsentiert durch die Kehre von Moore, Prichard und Ross hin zu Partikularismus und Intuitionismus und deren prinzipielle Missachtung des tatsächlichen Verhaltens im tatsächlichen Kontext eines jeglichen Agenten (§ 3). Ein zweiter wichtiger Fall betrifft die liberal-individualistische Grundlage von Untersuchungen zu „der“ moralischen Sichtweise aus der Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts (C.E.) und Vorstellungen von „Unparteilichkeit“, die Kant oft, aber fälschlicherweise zugeschrieben werden (§§ 4 – 7). Diese Überlegungen ermöglichen es, einige zentrale methodologische Verwirrungen zu identifizieren (§ 8), die unvermeidlich auch einige schwerwiegende moralische Verwirrungen erzeugen – Verwirrungen, die Kohlbergs Theorie der moralischen Entwicklung zugrunde liegen, von denen einige durch Gilligans Einwände gegen seine Theorie identifiziert werden (§ 9). Diese kritischen Überlegungen erlauben es mir dann, wesentliche Züge von Kants kritischem Ansatz zur Moralphilosophie zu charakterisieren (§ 10). Kants scharfsinnige Theorie moralischer Urteile und moralischer Rechtfertigung erfordert keine Berufung auf den einzigen inkommensurablen Wert der „Würde“; auch ist seine Darstellung nicht individualistisch: Die „Universalität“, die erforderlich ist, um Prinzipien, Handlungen und unsere moralischen Verpflichtungen, Erlaubnisse oder Verbote zu identifizieren und zu bewerten, ist im Prinzip und in der Praxis kosmopolitisch. Kants ‚konstruktiver‘ Ansatz zu diesen Fragen ist nicht der von Rawls; er wird vielmehr von Onora O’Neill korrekt identifiziert. Kants Explikation des rationalen Urteils und der rationalen Rechtfertigung kann das Pyrrhonsche Kriteriumsdilemma auflösen; alternative Methoden, die in der Moralphilosophie bevorzugt worden sind, können dies nicht.

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 preliminaries of that first essay are properly articulated. In part, however, these puzzles stem, directly or indirectly, from Kant’s opposition to moral empiricism, which is bound to puzzle Anglophone readers, whose default orientation is empiricist. Accordingly, particular attention is paid to Kant’s reasons for rejecting moral empiricism and for developing an alternative to it, to Kant’s account of how his universalization tests serve as criteria of morally obligatory, permissible or prohibited actions and to his account of what is morally wrong with actions which violate those criteria. Examining these points provides a compelling synopsis of Kant’s system of moral principles, centring on the key terms ‘practical reason’, ‘law’, ‘maxim’ and ‘Categorical Imperative’.

Hegel identified in Kant’s practical philosophy precisely the powerful kind of constructivism about the identification and justification of norms that has recently been explicated by Onora O’Neill. If so (I have argued elsewhere this is so), what then did Hegel contribute to practical philosophy? This essay partly answers this question by examining Kant’s and Hegel’s views of the aim and structure of practical philosophy, and what is required to determine specific duties. This theme is specified by examining these issues: two oversights in Kant’s justification of rights to possession (§2), the role of philosophical anthropology in Kant’s universalization tests (§3), the roles of social institutions in specifying our ethical obligations (§4), Kant’s under-developed view of government (§5), and Hegel’s claim that, in contrast to Kant’s Rechtslehre, his Rechtsphilosophie provides an „immanent“ doctrine of duties (§6). I argue that Hegel attempted to respond to his own criticisms of Kant’s Categorical Imperative, and in doing so, Hegel contributed to practical philosophy in ways that Kantians and other moral, social and legal philosophers should consider seriously.

The young Hegel was entranced by the notion of intellectual intuition, and this notion continues to entrance many of Hegel’ commentators. I argue that Kant provided three distinct conceptions of an intuitive intellect, that none of these involve aconceptual intuitionism, and that they differ markedly from Fichte’s and Schelling’s conceptions of intellectual intuition. I further argue that by 1804 Hegel recognized that appealing to an aconceptual model, or to Schelling’s model, or to his own early model of intellectual intuition generates inevitable and insoluble problems of question-begging. By incorporating several important points from Kant’s Transcendental Ideal into his reinterpretation of Kant’s Transcendental Deduction and Refutation of Idealism, Hegel’s mature discursive and conceptual account of ‘absolute knowing’ performs some of the functions Kant assigned to the intuitive intellect, though without invoking any such intuitive intellect. I discuss several of these functions.

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 transcendental idealism and Transzendentalphilosophie in the late opus postumum (§2), Hegel’s critical rejection of intellectual intuition because it cannot escape Pyrrhonian scepticism (§3), and his critical rejection of the deductivist ideal of scientia, which undergirds Kant’s transcendental idealism and his late Transzendentalphilosophie (§4), the highly un-Kantian principles of Hegel’s mature idealism (§5) and finally Hegel’s thorough and incisive critique in the 1807 Phenomenology of Spirit of common philosophical views, concepts and presuppositions, including those which undergird the three presumptions noted above (§6). To understand properly Hegel’s philosophy of nature and hence also his philosophical system requires abandoning those three presumptions.

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 they should be, integrated in good works of art. This essay provides some of this criticism. By focusing on the work of the contemporary artist, Robert Turner, this criticism further suggests that Hegel’s aesthetic ideal is still relevant. Moreover, the nature of Turner’s work suggests that art is still relevant in our day in ways Hegel did not expect.

Kant’s justification of possession appears to assume rather than prove its legitimacy. This apparent question-begging has been recapitulated or exacerbated but not resolved in the literature. However, Kant provides a sound justification of limited rights to possess and use things (qualified choses in possession), not of private property rights. Kant’s argument is not purely a priori; it is in Kant’s Critical sense ‘metaphysical’ because it applies the pure a priori ‘Universal Principles of Right’ to the concept of finite rational human agency. This use implicitly involves a ‘Contradiction in Conception’ test, which I explicate in detail. The limited rights to possession and use justified by Kant’s argument suffice for his social contract argument for the legitimacy of the state.

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 determinate connection to any of the basic forces of Newtonian physics. Hence they are mere Gedankendinge. I argue further, that real physical forces transcend Kant’s analysis by showing that his proof of Newton’s law of inertia is unsound. I then show that this apparently specific disagreement underlies the enormous philosophical shift from Kant’s anti-naturalist transcendental idealism to Hegel’s naturalistic use of regressive, quasi-transcendental arguments.

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 requirements. This includes rational, critical assessment of social institutions, and their role in enabling us to achieve our most basic collective good: our complex modern form of freedom.

Four themes are central to the tension in Nietzsche's writings between skepticism and 'cognitivism,' the view that there are knowable empirical truths. These are his claims on behalf of truth and knowledge, his skepticism, his view of language, and his 'perspectivism.' I argue that none of his commentators has fully resolved this tension, and that a proper resolution of this tension must render his cognitive claims as claims to know truths about the world--without dismissing his radical claims about language or perspectivism. Important to resolving this tension are Nietzsche's distinctions between four senses of 'thing-in-itself' and between six senses of the 'creation' of truth. ;I develop a cognitivist interpretation of Nietzsche's late period writings. Five points are central to my reconstruction. Nietzsche distinguishes two kinds of interpretation. One of these results from rejecting foundationalist theories of knowledge. The interpretive character of empirical knowledge is nonetheless compatible with the determinancy of the objects of knowledge. The second kind of interpretation concerns the normative interpretation of human existence. This sort of interpretation, he holds, is only possible on the basis of the kind of empirical knowledge gleaned through the first kind of interpretive activity. Nietzsche's views on "philology" directly respond to his view that ordinary language is too crude to grasp psychological, ethnographic, and historical subtleties. Only members of Nietzsche's intellectual elite have either the interest or the capacity to know empirical truths; the remainder of humanity is strapped with futile belief. Such belief may be called true by crude pragmatists, but not by Nietzsche himself. Perspectivism does not entail the rejection of cognitivism; knowledge of truths about something does not require knowledge of the whole truth about anything. Perspectivism is self-referentially consistent; Nietzsche can know that all knowledge is perspectival without having to transcend his own perspective to do so. Therefore, Nietzsche's own epistemological views do allow him to make the kinds of cognitive claims required by his genealogical critique of the European cultural tradition. Also, epistemological realism can be far more subtle than is often thought

Modern Philosophy bloomed into the Enlightenment, a cultural and philosophical movement still alive today, despite growing criticism. Some recent critics claim (roughly) that the alleged ‘universality’ of Enlightenment reason led directly to the imposition of Eurocentric reason on other, less militarily developed cultures. Some contend that there is no such thing as ‘universal’ reason. I contend that there are serious flaws in the Enlightenment notion of reason resulting from three basic dichotomies: (1) reason versus tradition, (2) knowledge versus customary belief, and (3) individuals versus society. Identifying and remedying these flaws leads, not to the abandonment of rational enlightenment, but to an improved account of human rationality.

This paper extends my prior analysis of Hegel’s solution to the Pyrrhonian Dilemma of the Criterion to moral philosophy. So doing provides a uniform account of rational justification in non-formal, substantive domains, i.e. empirical knowledge and morals. It argues that the Pyrrhonian Dilemma refutes both foundationalist and coherentist models of justification, and raises serious issues about the justificatory adequacy of contemporary forms of moral constructivism. It explicates and defends Kant’s account of the autonomy of reason as the self-critical regulation of one’s own thought and judgment in view of relevant principles, standards, evidence and alternative analyses. It argues that Kant’s account of autonomy is defensible independently of transcendental idealism and of natural causality. Due to our fallibility and incomplete knowledge and understanding, our individual critical self-assessment requires the constructive mutual criticism of others. Hence maximally rational justification in non-formal, substantive domains is in part, ineliminably, a social and historical phenomenon. These aspects of rational justification are consistent with, and ultimately support, realism about the objects of empirical knowledge and strict objectivity about basic moral principles. One’s own maximally rational justification of non-formal, substantive claims or views accordingly requires recognition of one’s justificatory dependence upon the constructive criticism of others. This requires recognizing their capacities for critical assessment and rational justification. This is the most fundamental form of mutual recognition in Hegel’s analysis. It provides direct and powerful justification for Kant’s thesis that we ought and must respect all others as autonomous rational agents, as agents who can think and act on the basis of justifying reasons. This justification is independent of Kant’s account of ‘dignity’ or the incommensurable value of rational agency.

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 extended by Newton. The roles of reason and empirical evidence in inquiry, and their superiority to custom and tradition for knowledge of nature were undeniable, though their respective roles and proper epistemological accounting were far from obvious. I review briefly some key points in the advent of natural science in order show that some fundamental philosophical predilections have obscured the proper roles of reason and evidence in the philosophical accounting of scientific knowledge. These predilections are found both among rationalists and among empiricists. Though they may be more readily apparent among seventeenth and eighteenth century philosophers, they are no less prevalent in mainstream analytical philosophy of science. Their diagnosis augurs a fundamental philosophical reorientation, a reorientation inaugurated, indeed, by Hegel.

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 Hegel’s philosophy of nature (§4). Hegel recognized some key weaknesses in Newton’s own mathematical treatment of planetary orbits which were only rectified when Johann Bernoulli recast Newtonian gravitational theory on the basis of mathematical analysis (calculus). So reconstructed, Newtonian physics provides sufficient grounds to ascribe gravitational force to matter (Enz. §§262, 269). Hegel incorporated this important point into his illuminating accounts of causal laws of nature and natural-scientific explanation. These points reveal how Hegel’s Science of Logic and Philosophy of Nature are interdependent works, integrated in part by Hegel’s critical, moderately holistic theory of semantic meaning and reference. Highlighting these features of Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature illuminates Hegel’s emergentist account of structural and functional organization of various kinds of natural phenomena.

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 are not compatible; Kant's defense of absolute obedience undermines his own division of powers. Examining exactly why this is the case leads to several further results. First, a constitutional court is crucial to a republic. Second, Kant is closer to a consistent view of government and obedience than first appears. Third, Kant's account of the division of powers was theoretically behind his times. Fourth, there is a crucial distinction between the separation of governmental powers and a system of checks and balances among the three branches of government. Fifth, Kant did grasp the relevant principles governing impeachment - a far more drastic measure than a constitutional court. Finally, most of the principles needed to revise Kant's constitutional theory are already contained in his published writings. Kants Thesen zur Revolution sind viel diskutiert worden, und lange Zeit waren Kommentatoren darüber verwundert, daß der Philosoph, der das Prinzip berühmt gemacht hat, wonach Personen Zwecke an sich selbst sind, insbesondere zu der abschreckenden Schlußfolgerung kommen konnte, die Bürger eines Staates hätten dem Herrscher unbedingten Gehorsam zu leisten. Ich befasse mich mit einem wichtigen und regelmäßig übersehenen Aspekt dieses Problemfeldes: Dem Verhältnis zwischen Kants Lehre von der Gewaltenteilung und seiner These vom absoluten Gehorsam des Staatsbürgers. Ich behaupte, daß diese beiden Lehren nicht miteinander vereinbar sind; Kants Verteidigung des absoluten Gehorsams unterminiert seine Gewaltenteilungsthese. Eine genaue Untersuchung der Frage, warum das so ist, führt zu weiteren Resultaten: Erstens ist ein Verfassungsgericht wesentlich für eine Republik. Zweitens ist Kant näher an einer konsistenten Auffassung von Staat und Gehorsam als dies auf den ersten Blick zu sein scheint. Drittens bleibt Kants Auffassung zur Gewaltenteilung hinter der Entwicklung seiner Zeit zurück. Viertens besteht ein wesentlicher Unterschied zwischen der Trennung der Staatsgewalten einerseits und einem System von "checks and balances" der drei Zweige der Staatslenkung andererseits. Fünftens hat Kant durchaus die relevanten Prinzipien eines "impeachment" erkannt - eine wesentlich drastischere Einrichtung als die eines Verfassungsgerichts. Schließlich sind die meisten der Prinzipien, die für eine Revision von Kants Verfassungstheorie notwendig sind, bereits in seinen eigenen Werken enthalten

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 defend realism sans phrase. Strikingly, this prospect illuminates some otherwise occluded aspects of post-Kantian German Idealism (§6), and sets an important contemporary philosophical agenda (§7).

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’s view faces an exact analog of Jacobi’s problem; (2) Buchdahl’s view of Kant is much more a reconstruction than an interpretation of the Critical philosophy (this counsels greater caution and frankness about the extent to which we interpret or reconstruct Kant’s texts); (3) Buchdahl’s recent effort to address Kant’s practical philosophy is inadequate.

Though philosophical antipodes, Hegel and Russell were profound philosophical revolutionaries. They both subjected contemporaneous philosophy to searching critique, and they addressed many important issues about the character of philosophy itself. Examining their disagreements is enormously fruitful. Here I focus on one central issue raised in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit: the tenability of the foundationalist model of rational justification. I consider both the general question of the tenability of the foundationalist model itself, and the specific question of the tenability of Russell’s preferred foundations of empirical knowledge, namely sense data. The stage is set by briefly considering Russell’s philosophical revolt (§2). I examine Russell’s neglect of the Pyrrhonian Dilemma of the Criterion (§3), and then consider Russell’s appeal to “knowledge by acquaintance”—the very view Hegel criticized under the banner of “Sense Certainty” (§4). I argue that Hegel’s internal critique of “Sense Certainty” refutes Russell’s “knowledge by acquaintance” and undermines Russell’s ahistorical approach to philosophy. (This article supercedes ‘“Sense Certainty”, or Why Russell had no “Knowledge by Acquaintance”’. The Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain 45/46 (2002):110–23.)

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 content internalism, all depend upon the deductivist model of rational justification (scientia), and that this model is suited only to strictly formal domains, not to the non-formal substantive domain of empirical knowledge. Hegel thus refutes the epistemological presuppositions of the ego-centric predicament; hence he may omit it from the forms of consciousness examined in the Phenomenology.

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 arguments for internal realism are taken as cases in point, and criticized accordingly. Pragmatic realists can use this transcendental argument, because its strong modal claims are consistent with falliblist accounts of justification.