Abstract

This dissertation aims to reconstruct Hegel's argument for the claim that the phenomenological standpoint can be justified non-dogmatically by dialectical argument. Dialectical justification is understood as a form of immanent critique that involves reading `forms of consciousness' together as different moments in a teleological series of progressive succession. To say that a dialectical argument is a form of immanent critique is to say that it evaluates forms of consciousness in terms of their ability to warrant the particular positive claims which they make on the basis of their fundamental presuppositions; and, to say that a dialectical argument is progressive is to say that later forms of consciousness are understood as solutions to the inadequacies implicit in the conflicts which emerge within earlier ones. ;Dialectical arguments have been subjected to two telling criticisms: the Causal Necessity Objection and the Circularity Objection. The first of these objections understands the kind of necessity at issue in the dialectic of the Phenomenology on a causal model---such that the failure of one form of consciousness is understood to causally necessitate the emergence of its successor. The second objection holds that since the necessity of the connections between forms of consciousness is established at the level of the phenomenological scientist, these standards---the standards of the phenomenologist---must be presupposed in order to establish the necessity of the argumentative steps which together supposedly establish the legitimacy of the phenomenological standpoint. ;The dissertation responds to these criticisms by reinterpreting the structure of necessity at issue in dialectical argument. First, instead of causal necessity, the dissertation argues that the kind of necessity at issue in dialectical arguments is properly understood as a form of rational necessity: i.e., later forms of consciousness are necessary insofar as they overcome the conflicts or rational insufficiencies implicit within earlier ones. Second, the dissertation abandons the strong interpretation of `necessary' captured by the phrase `one and only one possible successor,' replacing it with a weaker one: Later forms of consciousness are necessary just in the sense that they overcome the rational insufficiencies of their predecessors and do so better than any other currently conceivable alternative