Habermas and Dummett: Beyond Dogmatism and Scepticism

In this article I suggest a way of overcoming the traditional dichotomy between analytic and continental philosophy by pointing at some similarities between apparently disparate philosophical approaches, viz. those of Michael Dummett and Jürgen Habermas. The comparison revolves around the so-called 'paradox of analysis', which poses a dilemma concerning philosophical propositions: these are allegedly shown to be either trivial or unsecured. Both Dummett and Habermas offer ways out of the dilemma, through recognition of the intersection of analysis with life. A transcendentally characterized conception of language is conceived by both as the only way to overcome the haunting objective m subjective distinction. Thus they offer fresh insights into the nature of meaning and truth, and the place these occupy within philosophical systems. Both philosophers take the notions of justification and procedural rationality to be primary in the order of philosophical explanation. Meaning is not conceived in terms of representation and truth conditions, but in terms of validity claims. Truth is not viewed as independent and static, but as historically conditioned and constantly unfolding. As a result, even the statements of logic, and certainly those of philosophy, find a place between the alleged emptiness of analyticity and the robust empirical character of science. This common ground represents, I believe, one of the new faces of post-analytic m and hence also post-continental m philosophy. Parts of it are shared by other contemporary philosophers, such as Derrida and Brandom. What marks this new Weltanschauung is the way it surpasses the current eliminativist trends in philosophy.     

From a Continental Point of View: The Role of Logic in the Analytic-Continental Divide

My discussion addresses the differences between analytic and continental philosophy concerning the use of logic and exact reasoning in philosophical practice. These differences are mainly examined in the light of the controversial dominance of Hegel's concept of logic (and theory of concept) in twentieth-century continental philosophy. The inquiry is developed in two parts. In the first (Sections 1-2), I indicate some aspects of the analytic-continental divide, pointing to the role that the topic 'logic and philosophy' plays in it. In the second part (Sections 3-6), I give a short account of the views of logic which are typical of the three main trends of continental philosophy (see Table 1). I also suggest how, with the aid of some typical analytical devices, some continental 'anti-logical' attitudes may be corrected, on their own terms.     

Jenson,Hegel and the Spirit of Recognition

This article engages the pneumatology and account of divine freedom found in Robert Jenson's Systematic Theology. It raises a novel set of questions about Jenson's account of divine freedom, which bears on persistent questions regarding the nature of G.W.F. Hegel's influence upon Jenson. While most engagements with Jenson take for granted what it is to be ‘Hegelian’, this article foregrounds the diversity of contemporary Hegel interpretation. It argues that Jenson's account of divine freedom would profit from a stronger dose of Hegel's philosophy – specifically, Hegel's account of mutual recognition – provided that Hegel is interpreted along the lines of the non‐traditional school of Hegel interpretation. The article concludes with a brief constructive sketch of a Jensonian pneumatology conceived along these lines.     

HEGEL'S LEGACY

Answering the challenge of G. W. F. Hegel's idealism and its perceived logocentrism has arguably been a defining feature of nineteenth‐ and twentieth‐century continental philosophy. Today, in the midst of a Hegel renaissance, Hegel's legacy within continental philosophy is far more ambivalent. In this essay, I cut across debates about the status of Hegel's idealism in order to offer a reflection on the legacy of Hegel by reconstructing a Hegelian notion of legacy. I develop this notion in response to Jacques Derrida's discussion of inheritance in Specters of Marx (1993). Both Hegel and Derrida articulate the structure of legacy, inheritance, and history on the basis of the strictures of gathering. For both, gathering is an act of memory that determines a legacy as a legacy, a history as a history. Gathering determines an event, norm, idea, or institution as something to be passed on for a future to come. While Derrida concludes that inheritance implies decision, Hegel's recollection provides the basis for what I will call a critical history, which contributes to any such decision in crucial ways.     

REFLECTIONS ON THE LEGACY AND FUTURE OF THE CONTINENTAL TRADITION WITH REGARD TO THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF RACE

The legacy and future of continental philosophy with regard to the critical philosophy of race can be seen in prominent canonical philosophical figures, the scholarship of contemporary philosophers, and recent edited collections and book series. The following reflections highlight some (though certainly not all) of the contacts and overlaps between a select number of continental philosophers and the critical philosophy of race. In particular, I consider how the continental tradition has contributed to the development of the critical philosophy of race by offering tools from existentialism, phenomenology, and genealogy to emphasize questions of existence, facticity, lived experience, and historicity as they relate to analyses of race, racism, slavery, and colonialism. 1 I argue that these tools have been used both implicitly and explicitly in the writings of contemporary continental philosophers who theorize about race and that the critical philosophy of race has impacted and expanded continental philosophy in significant ways.     

Social Conceptions of Moral Agency in Hegel and Sellars

This essay contributes to our understanding of the relation between the philosophies of Hegel and Sellars. While most treatments of this relation have focused on metaphysics or epistemology, I focus on ethics, and in particular on the formulation of moral agency. I argue that Hegel and Sellars arrive at a similar metaphilosophical rejection of individual moral agency in favor of conceptions of moral agency as the outcome of social mediation. To demonstrate this, I trace how Hegel and Sellars offer parallel resolutions of the ‘Kantian paradox’: the apparent problem that, in Kantian ethics, moral agents must both freely self-legislate the moral law unto themselves and stand in a dutiful relation to the moral law as a necessary function of practical reason. Drawing Hegel and Sellars together in this way casts new light on Sellars’s understudied ethical theory and further evidences the contemporary relevance of Hegel’s moral philosophy.     

The Role of Mathematics in Deleuze’s Critical Engagement with Hegel

Abstract

The role of mathematics in the development of Gilles Deleuze’s (1925–95) philosophy of difference as an alternative to the dialectical philosophy determined by the Hegelian dialectic logic is demonstrated in this paper by differentiating Deleuze’s interpretation of the problem of the infinitesimal in Difference and Repetition from that which G. W. F Hegel (1770–1831) presents in the Science of Logic. Each deploys the operation of integration as conceived at different stages in the development of the infinitesimal calculus in his treatment of the problem of the infinitesimal. Against the role that Hegel assigns to integration as the inverse transformation of differentiation in the development of his dialectical logic, Deleuze strategically redeploys Leibniz’s account of integration as a method of summation in the form of a series in the development of his philosophy of difference. By demonstrating the relation between the differential point of view of the Leibnizian infinitesimal calculus and the differential calculus of contemporary mathematics, I argue that Deleuze effectively bypasses the methods of the differential calculus which Hegel uses to support the development of the dialectical logic, and by doing so, sets up the critical perspective from which to construct an alternative logic of relations characteristic of a philosophy of difference. The mode of operation of this logic is then demonstrated by drawing upon the mathematical philosophy of Albert Lautman (1908–44), which plays a significant role in Deleuze’s project of constructing a philosophy of difference. Indeed, the logic of relations that Deleuze constructs is dialectical in the Lautmanian sense.     

Women,Hegel, and Recognition in The Second Sex

This paper develops a new account of Beauvoir's “Hegelianism” and argues that the strand of contemporary interpretation of Beauvoir that seeks to represent her thought in isolation from that of Jean‐Paul Sartre constitutes a betrayal of the philosophy of recognition that she derives from Hegel. It underscores the extent to which Beauvoir influenced Sartre's Being and Nothingness and shows that Sartre and Beauvoir both adapted Hegel's ideas and agreed in rejecting his optimism.     

Hegel: Death of God and Recognition of the Self

Abstract

This paper covers the theme of the death of God considered from a Hegelian standpoint. For Aristotle, the image of God as ‘thought thinking itself’ was an image of the knowledge aspired to in philosophy. With the notion of God becoming man and his insistence on the icon of the Cross, Hegel challenged the Aristotelian goal of philosophy as immutable knowledge of an ‘ultimate’ reality. Hegel viewed the crisis of normativity (the death of the Cartesian divine guarantor) as strictly linked to the conception of the self. It is Nietzsche who is best known for alluding to the full significance of this image for modern life, but Hegel’s thought on the complex relations of philosophy and religion in the modern world can be regarded as an attempt to think through this same historical phenomenon. In this paper, I focus on the philosophical relevance of Hegel’s notion of the death of God. I argue that unpacking the significance of the ‘truths’ presented symbolically in modern Christianity is crucial in understanding the requirements that an idealistic philosophy must meet.     

Annihilating the Nothing: Hegel and Nishitani on The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism

In Nishitani’s The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism, Nishitani explores, among other related topics, the history of the problem of Nihilism in the West. Conspicuously absent from Nishitani’s historical analysis is the thought of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, who famously raised the charge of Nihilism against Fichte’s philosophy in 1799. As is evident from a variety of Hegel’s texts, Hegel explicitly responds to Jacobi’s charge against Speculative Idealism and designs his philosophy in part as a response to Jacobi’s charge of Nihilism. On the one hand, Nishitani fails to appreciate Hegel’s philosophy as a response to the problem of Nihilism because he has an incomplete possession of the history of the problem. On the other hand, Nishitani’s critique of Hegel begs the question. Nishitani’s dogmatic rejection of Hegel appears to be grounded in his methodological approach to the philosophy of history, which assumes the falsehood of Hegel’s account. Jacobi’s charge against Speculative Idealism consists in the Idealist’s failure to account for the very existence of the world. On his view, philosophy is Nihilism because the world disappears completely from philosophical speculation. Hegel attempts to overcome this charge of Nihilism by re-thinking the structure and content of reason.     

Method in Kant and Hegel

ABSTRACT

For Kant as for Hegel method is not a structure or procedure imported into philosophy from without, as, e.g. a mathematical demonstration in modern physics or in the proof-structure of philosophies such as Spinoza’s or Wolff’s. For both Hegel and Kant method is the arrangement that reason gives its contents and cognitions; for both, that is, method and object do not fall asunder, unlike in all disciplines other than philosophy. For Kant method is the design and plan of the whole, the scientific form that guides the organization of cognitions (KrV A 707/B 736, Ak 24, 780). Likewise, Hegel writes that method is the consciousness of the form of its inner movement (WL 1, 49, SL 53, W 3 47, PhS 28). Unfortunately, Hegel never considers Kant an example or a precursor or a positive role model. It is important to ask why Hegel never takes seriously Kant’s Doctrine of Method. Why, if he shares so many central points with the Architectonic of the first Critique, does he never acknowledge Kant as a possible ally? Why does he misunderstand Kant on analysis and synthesis as he does? These are some of the questions I plan to discuss in this paper.     

Dialectics and the Transcendence of Dialectics: Adorno's Relation to Schelling

The influence of the thought of the great German Idealist philosopher G.W.F Hegel on the thought of Theodor Adorno, the leading thinker of the first generation of the Frankfurt School, is unmistakeable, and has been the subject of much commentary. Much less discussed, however, is the influence of Hegel's prominent contemporary, F.W.J. Schelling. This article investigates the influence of Schelling on Adorno, and the sometimes striking parallels between fundamental motifs in the work of both thinkers. It argues that Adorno's critique of Hegelian (and indeed of his own, negative) dialectics, his conception of the relation between nature and spirit, and his philosophy of history (amongst other aspects of this thought) owe a considerable debt to Schelling. Furthermore, when adequately explicated, Schelling's position on a range of problems which confronted German Idealist philosophy often prove intrinsically preferable to those of Hegel.     

Morality,Politics and Mytho-Poetic Discourse in the Oldest System-Programme for German Idealism: The <Emphasis Type="Italic">Rousseauian</Emphasis> Answer to a Contemporary Question

This paper considers the relation between mytho-poetic narrative and practical philosophy in an Idealist/Romantic fragment, usually attributed to Hegel, known as the ‘System-programme’. Like many works of the young Hegel, the text seeks political reform through a reform of religion and suggests that for politics to be truly motivating reason must be embedded in mytho-poetic discourse. This Hegelian ‘reform’ is in the service of a new, sensuous, practical rationality and a motivating political praxis. The paper places these issues in the context of the religious thought of J.J. Rousseau, particularly his religious themes, as presented in The Social Contract. The paper also connects these issues to a political problem identified in recent work by Simon Critchley, the problem of practical or moral motivation. Critchley claims that while citizens of secular, liberal, democratic societies experience the political norms that shape their lives as externally binding, these norms are not internally compelling. Against this he claims that what are motivating are frameworks of belief that call the secular project into question. At least one of Critchley’s solutions to this problem is connected to the sphere of the religious. While accepting the idea that connecting social and political problems to religion can render them motivating, this paper will withhold from endorsing either the solution offered by the young Hegel in the ‘System-programme’ or Critchley’s, and raises doubts also about the Rousseauian response. It argues that these solutions fail to adequately address the problem they face: how to render contemporary political life internally compelling for modern political subjects?     

Whose Fault? The Origins and Evitability of the Analytic–Continental Rift

This is a broad survey of the chronology of the rift between continental and analytic philosophy, starting in 1899. Whereas at that time there was no discernible divide, as the twentieth century progresses we can see a gradual parting of the ways in which philosophy was done, culminating in a period of maximum separation in 1945-68, followed by some convergence. There is one substantial historical thesis proposed, and facts are adduced from the chronology to back it up: that the divide was never absolute, never purely geographical, and above all that it was not inevitable, but was largely the product of accidental historical circumstances, of which the most crucial was the flourishing of totalitarianism in Europe and the disruption caused by two world wars.     

Kant’s,Hegel’s and Cousin’s Perceptions of China and Non-European Cultures: Racialism,Historicism and Universalism,and the Methodology of Comparative Philosophy

The aim of this paper is to discuss some assumptions of comparative philosophy by providing a critical analysis of Hegel’s perception of China and other non-European cultures in relation to Kant’s anthropological works. The main assumption of comparative philosophy is that the temporal-cognitive distance between Plato and Diderot is irrelevant compared to the geographic-cultural distance between Plato and Confucius or Diderot and Dai Zhen. This paper will demonstrate that this culturalist assumption is also a legacy of Hegel’s history of philosophy, whose anthropological basis and historicist framework needs to be deconstructed. Finally, this paper will make reference to Victor Cousin, the French philosopher who introduced German philosophy in France, to show how this thinker’s adaptation of Hegel’s history of philosophy allows us to propose a more inclusive conception of the value of non-European cultures’ intellectual productions and to elaborate, on this basis, a radically non-culturalist framework for comparative philosophy.     

Hegel,modal logic,and the social nature of mind

ABSTRACT

Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit provides a fascinating picture of individual minds caught up in “recognitive” relations so as to constitute a realm—“spirit”—which, while necessarily embedded in nature, is not reducible to it. In this essay I suggest a contemporary path for developing Hegel's suggestive ideas in a way that broadly conforms to the demands of his own system, such that one moves from logic to a philosophy of mind. Hence I draw on Hegel's “subjective logic”, understood in the light of modern modal logic, in an attempt to model the way minds might be thought as connected by way of shared intentional contents. Here, we should not be surprised at some of the parallels that emerge between the approaches of Hegel and the modal logician Arthur Prior, as Prior had testified to the influence of his teacher, John N. Findlay, who himself had strong Hegelian leanings. In the final section, Robert Stalnaker's version of possible-world semantics is suggested as a framework within which Hegel's recognitive account of the mind might be understood.     

Convergence and Its Limits: Relations Between Analytic and Continental Philosophy

Abstract

In this article, it is argued that a convergence between the (post-)analytic and continental traditions in philosophy is unlikely. Both traditions have fundamentally different approaches to questions concerning consciousness and subjectivity. They also differ in their conception of the role of philosophy, if we are to become autonomous and reflective humans beings.To illustrate this, a comparison is made between the work of the continental philosopher Dieter Henrich and the ‘post-analytic’ philosopher Thomas Nagel, who is often seen as a typical ‘converger‘.     

The Place of Philosophy in Africa

Recently there has been a strong movement towards reflections about the “geography of reason,” especially among philosophers who deal with postcolonial thinking. There is also a renewed interest among different schools of thought, both analytical and continental, in the ways our “life world,” or “embodiment,” or “situated cognition,” shape our minds and eventually the philosophy we do. As a result, we have seen some recent publications on the nature and import of the concept of “place” by authors such as Edward Casey, Jeff Malpas, and Bruce Janz. In Philosophy in an African place, Bruce Janz introduces the concept of “philosophy‐in‐place” with the question as to what it is to do philosophy in a particular context of lived experience or, more specifically, what it is to do philosophy in an African place. This paper expands on Janz's “philosophy‐in‐place” by developing what will be called a “philosophy through place.” It starts with Janz's discussion of the problem of placing philosophy and a philosophy‐in‐place. Then it attempts to develop an argument for a “philosophy through place” and its implications for considering the place of philosophy in Africa and the challenge it poses to philosophy.     

EVOLUTION AND SUBJECTIVITY

Evolutionary theory is becoming an all‐encompassing form of explanation in many branches of philosophy. However, emergence theory uses the concept of self‐organization to support yet alter traditional evolutionary explanation. Biologist Stuart Kauffman suggests that the new science will need to tell stories, not simply as a heuristic device but as part of its fundamental task. This claim is reminiscent of C. S. Peirce's criticism of the doctrine of necessity. Peirce's suggestions reference Hegel, and this essay draws out this Hegelian background, addressing the question of subjectivity and issuing some Hegelian reminders so that such evolutionary and emergent theories will consider the implication of this research program on philosophy of mind. The primary focus is on two post‐Kantian, neo‐Hegelian thinkers in contemporary philosophy who deal with this problem: John McDowell and Robert Brandom.     

Editors’ Introduction to ‘Hegel and Sellars’: A Special Issue of International Journal of Philosophical Studies

ABSTRACT

In our Introduction to the special issue on Hegel and Sellars, we explain why there needs to be a more detailed analysis of the similarities and differences between Hegel and Sellars. Sellars is usually regarded as closer to Kant than to Hegel, but this obscures the more Hegelian features of his theoretical and practical philosophy. We briefly describe each article in the special issue.