Richard Dien Winfield

Winfield’s explication of Hegel’s theory of mind, especially Hegel’s theory of intelligence, is, he suggests, important for solving three problems that continue to haunt contemporary work in the philosophy of mind and epistemology: 1) A problem concerning the acquisition of language and its place in an account of consciousness, 2) A problem concerning the objectivity of representations, and 3) A problem concerning the grounds of knowing. I think Winfield is correct in identifying all three problems as having their source in Kantian philosophy. I examine these three problems more carefully through a critical lens aimed at recent work by John McDowell and Robert Brandom. Both philosophers claim certain Hegelian influences. I argue that, in crucial ways, both Brandom and McDowell have each inherited the problems Hegel sought to solve and that are so clearly articulated in Winfield’s essay.

RésuméLa doctrine hégélienne du concept et du jugementpermet une approche à la fois non circulaire et non formelle, capable de légitimer lew rôle privilégié comme véhicules de la vérité. Pour le voir, ilfaut d'abord clarifier le rapport intrinsèque entre le concept, l'autodétermination et les catégories d'universalité, de particularité et d'individualité. Au cœur de ce rapport se trouve la manière dont l'universalité, la particularité et l'individualité sont elles-mêmes interreliées. Cette interconnexion peut sembler prendre tour à tour deux formes différentes, l'une qui se manifeste dans les jugements où l'individu opère comme universel particularisé, et l'autre qui apparait lorsque l'individu englobe l'universel particularisé. Ces caractéristiques ne sont pas exclusives l'une de l'autre; mais c'est plutôt que I'individualité comme universel particularisé sous-tend l'individualité comme particulier différencié et entraine ainsi la détermination du jugement dans lequel ce dernier se trouve contenu. La compréhension de ces rapports fournit la clé pour concevoir de manière non arbitraire la relation qu'ily a entre le concept et le jugement.

The proliferation of arts may be a commonplace phenomena, with old arts changing and new arts arising with every novel turn in technology. Yet, just as the diverse experiments of artists demand, rather than render superfluous, an adjudication of the boundary between art and prosaic things, the parade of old, transmuted and newborn arts equally calls into question the identities of the arts that it continually spews forth. The existence of artworks cannot of itself provide any unequivocal guidelines for demarcating one art from another or for establishing their totality.

Although Hegel has frequently been granted felicitous insight into the rich detail of known facts, his strategy for conceiving reality has been roundly dismissed as a relic of philosophical hypertrophy. Such dismissal is certainly understandable considering how often Hegel’s theory of reality has been interpreted to be the child of either a leviathan metaphysical construction or a demonically inventive transcendental constitution. Unfortunately, the weight of these interpretations has not just led to the general discrediting of Hegel’s system. It has also virtually banished from view a central strand in Hegel’s argument which suggests an entirely different approach offering a viable, yet ignored strategy for conceiving reality without falling prey to the foundational dilemmas afflicting metaphysical and transcendental argument. There is no better way of comprehending the significance and neglected promise of this strategy than first following in broad outline the path of inquiry which has led to the quagmire in which thought today confronts reality.

What it is to be determinate, to have quality, to be something, hardly appears to be a problem worthy of thought. How could anything be more self-evident or familiar or resistant to questioning? It seems virtually impossible to be unacquainted with the category of something, whether in reality or in thought or speech. To encounter anything real at all is to encounter something, whereas to think or speak any intelligible content is already to refer to something thought or spoken. Indeed, it is unimaginable how one could fail to understand something, since if one did lack all notion of something there would be nothing determinate to understand or encounter.