Hegel accords great philosophical importance to Kant's discussions of Au: James on Table of Contents? Which do you prefer? teleology and biology in the Critique of the Power of Judgment, and yet also disagrees with Kant's central conclusions there. 1 More specifically, Kant argues for a generally skeptical view of teleological explanation 1 In citing works, the following abbreviations have been used: HEGEL: Most writings are contained in the Werke in zwanzig Bände, ed. by E. Moldenhauer und K. Michel, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1970-1971. The first references to these writings are by volume: page in that edition. The exception is that I cite the Encyclopedia by § §number, with "A" indicating Anmerkung and "Z" indicating the Zusatz; where helpful I also add after a "/" a citation from Werke. I indicate individual works using the abbreviations below.
Recent debates about Hegel's theoretical philosophy are marked by a surprising lack of agreement, extending all the way down to the most basic question: what is Hegel talking about? On the one hand, proponents of ‘metaphysical’ interpretations generally read Hegel as aiming to articulate the overall structure or organisation of reality itself, and the nature of a highest or most fundamental being. Particularly influential is the idea that Hegel is reviving and modifying a form of Spinoza's metaphysical monism, according to which the organised whole of everything is the highest being, providing a ground or reason for everything real. On the other hand, proponents of ‘non-metaphysical’ interpretations argue Hegel's topic is something else entirely. The idea is that Hegel agrees with Kant in finding pre-critical forms of metaphysics to be uncritical or dogmatic. And the topic of Hegel's positive project is supposed to be not the nature of reality itself, nor any most fundamental being, but rather ‘forms of thought’ akin to Kant's categories and the objectivity, legitimacy, or normative authority of those forms of thought.This is of course only a rough sketch of the most basic recent debate, about which there is more to say than can fit in this paper. My focus here is on what Hegel has to say about nature and natural kinds, in ‘Observing Reason’ from the Phenomenology, and also in similar material from the Logic and Encyclopedia. I intend to argue that this material suggests a surprising way of stepping beyond the fundamental debate sketched above. There can of course be no question of elaborating and defending here a complete interpretation of Hegel's entire theoretical philosophy. I will have to restrict myself to arguing for the unlikely conclusion that there is an approach that can combine and integrate the strongest points made by both sides in the most basic debate shaping recent Hegel interpretation.
Hegel seeks to overturn Kant's conclusion that our knowledge is restricted, or that we cannot have knowledge of things as they are in themselves. Understanding this Hegelian ambition requires distinguishing two Kantian characterizations of our epistemic limits: First, we can have knowledge only within the "bounds of experience." Second, we cannot have knowledge of objects that would be accessible only to a divine intellectual intuition, even though the faculty of reason requires us to conceive of such objects. Hegel aims to drive a wedge between these two characterizations, showing that we can have knowledge beyond Kant's bounds of experience, yet without need of divine intuition. And attention to such knowledge is supposed to show that we have no legitimate need to even conceive of divine intuition and its objects-and no need to conclude that our own knowledge is restricted by comparison, or that we cannot know things as they are in themselves. I focus here on the initial case Hegel uses to introduce this extended argument strategy: we can have more knowledge of natural kinds and laws than would be allowed by Kant's bounds of experience. Recent work on Hegel lacks consensus concerning the central ambitions of his mature project in theoretical philosophy. It is at least widely agreed that Hegel's ambitions are closely tied to his rejection of Kant's famous claim about our epistemic limits: Kant denies that we can have theoretical knowledge of things as they are in themselves; Hegel seeks, in response, to show that our knowledge is not restricted or limited in Kant's sense. But there is a surprising divergence between two recently popular approaches to this central Hegelian ambition.
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