In his Logic, Hegel argues that evaluative judgments are comparisons between the reality of an individual object and the standard for that reality found in the object's own concept. Understood in this way, an object is bad insofar as it fails to be what it is according to its concept. In his recent Life and Action, Michael Thompson has suggested that we can understand various kinds of natural defect in a similar way, and that if we do, we can helpfully (...) see intellectual and moral badness—irrationality and vice—as themselves varieties of natural defect. In this paper, I argue that Hegel's position on animal individuality denies the claim that irrationality and vice are forms of natural defect. Hegel's account of the individuality proper to the animal organism in the Philosophy of Nature clearly disallows evaluative judgments about animals and thereby establishes a well-defined conceptual distinction between natural defect and intellectual or ethical—i.e., broadly spiritual or geistliche—defect. Hegel thus provides a way of maintaining the difference between nature and spirit within his broader commitment to a post-Kantian conception of substantial form. (shrink)

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's 'Philosophy of Nature' has often been accused of promoting a view of nature fundamentally at odds with the modern scientific understanding of nature. I show this accusation to be false by pointing to two aspects of Hegel's treatment of nature: its rejection of the 'a priori/a posteriori' distinction, and its connection to Hegel's conception of autonomy as freedom from givenness. I give a reading of Hegel's treatment of the laws of motion along these lines, and I (...) close with some points connecting this reading of Hegel to contemporary philosophy (specifically John McDowell and Catherine Malabou). (shrink)

Some of Catherine Malabou’s recent work has developed her conception of plasticity (originally deployed in a reading of Hegelian Aufhebung ) in relation to neuroscience. This development clarifies and advances her attempt to bring contemporary theory into dialogue with the natural sciences, while indirectly indicating her engagement with the French tradition in philosophy of science and philosophy of medicine, especially the work of Georges Canguilhem. I argue that we can see her development of plasticity as an answer to some specific (...) shortcomings in Canguilhem’s conception of organic or biological normativity as advanced in The Normal and the Pathological . Such a view of plasticity shows its potential to provide the basis for a powerful critical engagement with contemporary conceptions of selfhood, self-transformation, subjectivation, and the general theory of norms. (shrink)

Some recent interpretations of his philosophy of mind argue that Hegel endorses one or both of a pair of Aristotelian ideas about human reason: first, that our responsiveness to reasons is a capacity we acquire through the development of our second nature; second, that our rationality is not merely one more capacity alongside those capacities we appear to share with nonrational animals but rather transforms the latter qualitatively. In this paper I argue, through an interpretation of Hegel’s discussion of gestation (...) and childbirth, that he endorses these ideas only in a negatively united form in which both the naturalism of the first and the rationalism of the second are sublated. The result is a uniquely Hegelian understanding of our rational animality. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that Hegel’s system includes no ontology of nature, either in any traditional sense, or in any specifically Hegelian sense, of “ontology.” What Hegel provides instead is a philosophy of nature in which specifically natural activities generate specifically natural differences and identities out of themselves. I make my case first by considering the meaning of “ontology” Hegel inherited from Wolff and Kant. I show that Hegel rejected this sense of ontology for his own philosophy, in part (...) because of his recognition of the success of the Kantian critical project in making traditional ontology impossible. I then argue that although Hegel sometimes characterizes his own Objective Logic in ontological terms, he also restricts that characterization in a way that makes it inapplicable to his treatment of apparently natural categories in the Logic itself, and to his Philosophy of Nature. Against this anti-ontological background I examine a small portion of Hegel’s concrete treatment of natural phenomena and kinds: his discussion of the nervous system in higher-order animals. Through its self-formation and the contribution of its nervous-system activity to its overall life, the animal does not implement differences, identities, or logical structures borrowed from elsewhere, but itself produces the differences and identities through which it is constituted. The self-determination Hegel articulates in his study of the nervous system gives us a good example of his typically “on-the-ground” approach, which is strikingly different from the “top-down” approach more common in the ontological tradition. (shrink)

This paper addresses problems associated with the role of the empirical concept of matter in Kant's Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, offering an interpretation emphasizing two points consistently neglected in the secondary literature: the distinction between logical and real essence, and Kant's claim that motion must be represented in pure intuition by static geometrical figures. I conclude that special metaphysics cannot achieve its stated and systematically justified goal of discovering the real essence of matter, but that Kant requires this failure (...) for his larger philosophical presentation of the dialectic that (A298/B354). (shrink)

Hegel's Philosophy of Right was his last systematic work and the most complete statement of his mature views on ethical and political philosophy. It explores the relationships between three distinct conceptions of human freedom: persons as possessing contract rights, subjects as reflective moral agents, and individuals as members of an ethical community. It strongly influenced the early Marx and with the rise of debates over liberalism and communitarianism in the latter half of the twentieth century. In this volume an outstanding (...) line up of contributors examine the nature and impact of Hegel's Philosophy of Right. A diverse array of topics is examined, ranging from Hegel's account of rights, freedom, the state and history to some hitherto relatively overlooked topics such as Hegel and Luther, art and nationality and Hegel and the market. Hegel's Philosophy of Right: Critical Perspectives on Freedom and History will be valuable reading for scholars of Hegel, nineteenth-century German philosophy, political philosophy and history of political thought. (shrink)

In this essay I discuss Fichte's changing understanding of the a priori/a posteriori distinction from the earliest writings on the Wissenschaftslehre to the System of Ethics. I argue that Fichte moves decisively away from the Kantian conception of the a priori, due to his development of the ideal/real distinction in his elaboration of the Wissenschaftslehre. Since Fichte's conception of apriority is not Kant's, we can only understand his claim that the System of Ethics can provide an answer a priori to (...) the question: what is our duty? (shrink)

James Kreines’s Reason in the World offers readers—including those not already steeped in Hegelian terminology and argument—a compelling interpretation of key elements in Hegel’s Logic. It reconstructs Hegel’s arguments clearly and straightforwardly; it treats a tightly coherent group of topics; and it engages thoroughly with the most important secondary literature in German and English. But while these are all excellent qualities, its truly distinguishing contribution to recent debates in the history of philosophy is the case it makes for Kant, rather (...) than Spinoza, as the major source of Hegel’s own metaphysics. Kant’s pervasive influence on Hegel is of course obvious in a general sense. But in... (shrink)