Ana Vieyra

Hegel identifies thought with the ‘in itself’ of things. It is common to read the statement as an unrestricted claim regarding Hegel's metaphysical view of reality. I argue it should be read as the expression of what speculative truth achieves. When speculative truth is achieved, that which thinking thinks when thinking the true nature of the object is one and the same as that which is truly thinkable in it. Although seemingly uncontroversial, I argue that an overlooked implication of Identity as the achievement of speculative truth is a restrictive view of the adequate objects for speculative cognition: it restricts speculative cognition to things expressing the internally purposive form of the self. I argue this solves a difficulty ‘apperceptive’ interpretations of the Logic face, namely the inability to meet an inflationary standard for metaphysical truth.

My aim in this paper is to begin arguing for how a philosophically defensible theory of truth can indeed follow from Hegel’s notion of ‘the idea’ as the culmination of the logic in the unity of the ‘concept’ and ‘objectivity’. I introduce the argument by showing how the coherence of the logical shape of truth Hegel presents in the final stage of the Logic involves no uncritical commitment to an independent metaphysically inflationary entity or reality. I do so by firstly considering some recent approaches to Hegel’s ‘theory’ of truth and responding to the challenge put forth by Mark Alznauer regarding the requirements of a post-critical doctrine of conceptual evaluation in the Science of Logic.