Tereza Matějčková’s book presents a highly interesting phenomenological reading of Hegel’s early masterpiece. The result is a proposal to take the title seriously – such that we can see the book as the earliest introduction into the methods and topics of philosophical phenomenology, despite the fact that Husserl himself, in contrast to Heidegger, did not seem to see the narrow relation. I especially value Tereza Matějčkováʼs very deep understanding of the dialectical humour and irony of Hegel’s writings. However, I understand (...) the Phenomenology of Spirit in a somehow more radical way as a most general ‘logicֹ’ of self-consciousness. It shows how referring to myself is referring to the world and vice versa, despite the fact that the word ‘world’ does not play a prominent role in Hegelʼs text. Some disagreements result over Hegelʼs wide use of metaphors and analogies in his structural analysis of personal self-relations, for example in his reconstruction and critique of the age-old (in fact Platonic) image of a fight between a thinking soul as master and a system of immediate bodily desires as slave. We cannot get rid of inclinations and appetites, and we cannot retreat, as the Stoics had thought, into pure thinking. In other words, there is no fight ‘for recognition’ between different individuals in Hegelʼs book, but in the end an answer to a classical theodicy saying that the world, as it is, is the best one we have because there is only one world. (shrink)

In order to understand Hegel's approach to philosophy, we need to ask why, and how, he reacts to the well-known criticism of German Romantics, like Novalis and Friedrich Schlegel, against philosophical system building in general, and against Kant's system in particular. Hegel's encyclopedic system is a topical ordering of categorically different ontological realms, corresponding to different conceptual forms of representation and knowledge. All in all it turns into a systematic defense of Fichte's doctrine concerning the primacy of us as actors (...) with respect to any knowledge claim or scientific theory. Hegel's limitations of the principle of causality and of the possibility of using mathematical methods in science show, in fact, how a merely compatibilist solution of Kant's third antinomy can be overcome. (shrink)

The project of developing a pragmatic theory of meaning aims at an anti-metaphysical, therefore anti-representationalist and anti-subjectivist, analysis of truth and reference. In order to understand this project we have to remember the turns or twists given to Frege's and Wittgenstein's original idea of inferential semantics (with Kant and Hegel as predecessors) in later developments like formal axiomatic theories (Hilbert, Tarski, Carnap), regularist behaviorism (Quine), mental regulism and interpretationism (Chomsky, Davidson), social behaviorism (Sellars, Millikan), intentionalism (Grice), conventionalism (D. Lewis), justificational (...) theories (Dummett, Lorenzen) and, finally, Brandom's normative pragmatics. (shrink)

The topic of this article is the ontogenetic development of an understanding of perception and of different subjects’ perspectives. We discuss the importance of alternating and explicating the different perspectives involved in joint object reference in hopes to get a better grip on what is actually meant by the metaphor of “putting oneself in someone else’s mental shoes” and on how such an ability might be acquired. Hegel’s (1820/2009, §260)principle of subjectivity states that no one can ever step outside of (...) her subjective perspective. Thinking about another’s thoughts or perspectives is not first of all a psychological process of getting into or reading someone else’s mind. Rather, it is the internalization of a possible symbolic action qua form, which, like speech, has commonly intelligible content (Hegel 1820/2009, §§110, 111). Our investigations show that an understanding of other persons and their subjective access to the world has its origin in experiences of joint attention and joint action. By jointly acting with others, even infants can acquire practical knowledge of others’ relations to objects. Only much later do children come to understand others’ thoughts that are not actualized in action. (shrink)

Man's rational capacities rest on education and this makes the form of human sapience interpersonal. As persons, however, we do not take part in the tradition of sapience only passively. That is, mere rationality in Kant's sense, i.e. the faculty of following implicit norms or explicit rules, is not enough for personhood. It requires also reason in Hegel's sense, i.e. free active participation in developing 'the idea' (eventually of good human life), as well as 'the concept', i.e. joint generic knowledge (...) that defines the inferential content of our words and sentences. In making reasonable proposals for developing these persons are themselves the free 'spirit' of the human world. (shrink)

It is a heroic enterprise to develop a systematic reading of Hegel's Doctrine of Being, the first of three books in the Science of Logic. The basic idea of Houlgate's grand interpretation of Hegel's three parts of this Doctrine, which I call the Logic of Quality, Quantity and Measure, is that Hegel demands a ‘presuppositionless derivation of categories’ (II: ix). Hegel on Being (in short: HoB) presents a thoroughgoing and rigorous interpretation in a kind of dialogue (as I would characterize (...) what HoB marks as ‘Excursus’) with Kant (I: 19–46, 307–73; II: 171–79) and especially Frege's formal logic and his attempts of a predicative definition of numbers (II: 25–138). In any case, HoB makes us aware of the really problematic presuppositions in post-Fregean Analytic Philosophy. (shrink)

Addresses various crucial approaches to the history of philosophy - narrative, philological, hermeneutic, and systematic. This book elaborates the principles of each approach and puts focus on their capacity to properly comprehend problems.

This article develops an interpretation of Hegel that aims to show how a proper understanding of the nature of speculative sentences might achieve what Kant set out to do: to vindicate our most fundamental claims to knowledge as actual knowledge, rather than mere acts of believing. To this end, it develops a conception of speculative geographies (or “maps”) as an interpretive tool and introduces an Hegelian-inspired distinction between empirical, generic, and speculative sentences. On this reading, Kant’s employment of the “boundary (...) concept” of a noumenon is bound to fail as it needs to employ a contrast between our human point of view and that of an omniscient God – which turns out to be an aperspectival “view from nowhere” and thus an incoherent notion. The artcile ends by suggesting ways in which Hegel’s logical analysis can help us to better comprehend the reflective ascent necessary to make our conceptual differentiations and typical ways of understanding intelligible to ourselves. (shrink)

Was sind reine geometrische Formen? In welchem Sinne gibt es überabzählbar viele Punkte auf einer Linie? Wie verhalten sich empirisch richtige Aussagen über reale Figuren an Körpern zu den idealen Wahrheiten einer rein mathematischen Geometrie? In einer Auseinandersetzung mit Kants Rede von den Formen der Anschauung und im Geist der Philosophie Wittgensteins führt das Buch ein in die sprachlogischen Techniken der Abstraktion und Ideation als Basis des rechnenden Beweisen in der Mathematik. wichtige und hochaktuelle Abhandlung zu einem Kernthema der Philosophie (...) der Mathematik für Studenten der Philosophie und der Mathematik gleichermaßen geeignet Mitherausgeber der Reihe Grundthemen Philosophie. (shrink)

The following account of a Kantian theory of action, in which I do not proceed in accordance with just one text of Kant’s, has as its main aim a critical assessment of Kant’s ‘solution’ of the third antinomy, i.e., of the dilemma between the principle of causality in the domain of understanding nature and the cardinal proposition of free will in the domain of understanding action. According to the first horn of the dilemma, we assume that at least in principle (...) every event in the world can be considered as the necessary result of preceding conditions and some efficient causal laws. According to the second horn, preceding events outside or inside our body cannot cause our deeds. They must be understood as consequences of free choices between different possibilities of action. (shrink)

Filozofia analityczna po logicyzmie Fregego i atomizmie logicznym Russella odziedziczyła szereg założeń związanych z istnieniem rodzajowej dziedziny bytów indywidualnych, których tożsamość i elementarne określenia już mamy zdefiniowane. Te „indywidua” istnieją tylko w idealnych „światach możliwych” i nie są niczym innym jak zbiorami posiadającymi strukturę bądź czystymi zbiorami matematycznymi. W przeciwieństwie do takich czysto abstrakcyjnych modeli, Hegel analizuje rolę pojęciowych rozróżnień i odpowiednich brakujących inferencji w rzeczywistym świecie. Tutaj wszystkie obiekty są przestrzennie i czasowo skończone. Nawet jeśli rzeczywiste rzeczy poruszają się (...) zgodnie z pewnymi formami, są tylko momentami w całościowym procesie. Wszelako, formy te nie są przedmiotami bezpośredniej, empirycznej obserwacji, lecz zakładają udane i powtarzalne działania i akty mowy. W rezultacie żadna semantyka odnoszącej się do świata referencji nie może obyć się bez kategorii Heglowskich, które wykraczają daleko poza narzędzia opartej wyłącznie na relacjach logiki matematycznej. (shrink)

English summary: The freedom potential of modern societies, above all the justification of political authority, is today linked to a democratically constituted order. What is meant by the idea of being democratic seems, however, to be anything but clear. Is it only a question of representing the people through elections, ballots, and political parties, or does it include institutional culture, the division of powers, and the legal regime within a community? A "philosophy of the republic," as developed in this volume's (...) contributions, shows that the current "dominance of the democratic" falls short of accounting for the independent significance to the republican self-organisation of state and society. German description: Das Freiheitspotential moderner Gesellschaften, vor allem die Rechtfertigung politischer Herrschaft, wird heute mit einer demokratisch verfassten Ordnung verknupft. Was eine demokratische Ordnung ausmacht, was also die Idee des Demokratischen meint, scheint aber alles andere als klar zu sein. Soll es nur um Fragen der Reprasentation des Volkes durch Wahlen, Abstimmungen und Parteien oder daruber hinaus auch um die institutionelle Kultur, die Gewaltenteilung und das Rechtsregime innerhalb eines Gemeinwesens gehen? Eine "Philosophie der Republik," wie sie in den Beitragen dieses Bandes entwickelt wird, kann zeigen, dass die aktuelle "Dominanz des Demokratischen" keine eigenstandige Bedeutung der republikanischen Selbstorganisation von Staat und Gesellschaft beimisst. Mit Beitragen von: David Abraham, Andreas Anter, Susanne Beck, Jochen Bung, Daniela Demko, Horst Dreier, Andrea Marlen Esser, Helmut Goerlich, Bernd Grzeszick, Klaus Gunther, Matthias Kaufmann, Jean-Francois Kervegan, Thomas Khurana, Stephan Kirste, Oliver Lembcke, Rochus Leonhardt, Georg Lohmann, Wolfgang Schild, Christian Schmidt, Thomas Schmidt-Lux, Kurt Seelmann, Hannes Siegrist, Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer, Trevor Wedman, Marc Andre Wiegand, Benno Zabel, Sabrina Zucca-Soest. (shrink)

There is no immediate knowledge, neither empirical nor conceptual. Hegel shows this in his Phenomenology of Spirit. He develops this most important insight in his writings on logic. Science is the project of developing situation-independent generic sentences – which are not to be confused with universally quantified empirical statements. Rather, the sentences articulate law sor rules of default inference and proper judgment in a generic way. They are set as “conceptually valid” not only on merely verbal or conventional grounds, but (...) are “material” in their world-relation. In other words, science develops “the concept” which, in turn, enables us to understand, i.e. to use languages and to think about reality and possibilities more or less correctly. “The concept” is, therefore, the system of generic conditions of all “meaning” and “truth” and is, as such, presupposed in empirical judgments of the category of singularity. “Reason” is the subjective side of “spirit”, which, in turn, is nothing but our practice of scientific development. If we look at this practice from within, spirit is the “self-development” of conceptual contents. Moreover, any causal explanation and any appeal to forces or dispositions rest on conceptual constructions of generic models. This is the core claim of Hegel’s idealism with respect to causes and grounds by which we “explain” appearances: The underlying “Wirklichkeit” is our own scientific construction suited to our joint experiences. (shrink)

In order to understand Hegel's gnomic oracle according to which the ‘I’ is a ‘We’, the notion of apersonalsubject is explained by its competence to perform personal roles in a pre-given partition of roles. Explicit divisions of labour by contractual promises are special cases that presuppose the general case of an already established social practice. On the other hand, methodological individualism is right to stress that we actualize joint intentions only via corresponding instantiations. In performing our parts, we form a (...) plural subject, a we-group. The result of what each of us does is what we do, and the generic ‘We’ turns into the generic ‘I’. (shrink)

The problem of evaluating philosophical texts is not only an institutional problem for philosophers. It transcends our own discipline. In a globalized word, English seems to be the lingua franca of all the sciences, much more than Latin ever was. But if we do not appreciate the systematic differences between articulating the ‚results‘ in the ‚natural‘ sciences on the one hand and normative and philosophical disputes about reasonable developments of forms of articulation and understanding in the ‚Geisteswissenschaften‘ on the other, (...) there is a great danger of transnational regionalism — especially if we limit philosophical thinking and research to one language. Instead, we should treasure the diverse traditions and experiences as they are manifested in different languages. In consequence, the policy of evaluating international visibility of philosophic journals, as proposed by the European Science Foundation , must be changed. (shrink)

Robert Musil sagt über seinen Roman „Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften“, dieser sei „religiös unter den Voraussetzungen der Ungläubigen“, kritisiert aber Kierkegaards Entweder-Oder ebenso wie Hegels angeblich entscheidungsschwaches Sowohl-als-auch-Denken. Dieses wird hier dargestellt als spekulative Betrachtung der Wahrheit, des Ganzen des Seins, einerseits, als absolute Haltung zur Endlichkeit von allem Seienden, auch des eigenen Subjekts, andererseits, so aber, dass das gemeinsame und dabei indefinit-unendliche Selbst-Bewusstsein zum gemeinsamen Thema aller wahren Religion wird, wie es die Aufklärung aus dem Blick verloren hat.