Review Reviewed Work(s): Hegel, Idealism, and Analytic Philosophy by Tom Rockmore Review by: Chris Yeomans Source: The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 60, No. 3 (Mar., 2007), pp. 686-687 Published by: Philosophy Education Society Inc. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20130844 Accessed: 19-06-2019 18:54 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Philosophy Education Society Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Review of Metaphysics This content downloaded from 128.210.106.161 on Wed, 19 Jun 2019 18:54:09 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 686 THERESE SCARPELLI AND STAFF The last two chapters, "Thomism: Past, Present, and Future" and "Re spect for Tradition and the Catholic Philosopher Today" have the feel of in-house advice to Catholic philosophers as to how they should go about their professional work, how to use their sources judiciously, and in what way respect for the authority of the Church as well as authority for past philosophers should be given. Rescher's knowledge of the history of philosophy?especially the me dieval and modern eras?is impressive. Drawing upon Aquinas and other great scholastics, he is able to formulate questions and propose solutions to contemporary metaphysics and epistemology that are in formed by the great medieval scholastics in a way that critically em ploys these authors without slavishly following them wherever they lead. Yet, one wonders why Rescher ignores the most important inter preter of Aquinas, and an outstanding scholastic metaphysician in his own right, Francisco Suarez.?Craig A. Boyd, Azusa Pacific University. ROCKMORE, Tom. Hegel, Idealism, and Analytic Philosophy. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. 284 pp. Cloth, $40.00?Rockmore argues that recent attempts by analytic philosophers such as Robert Brandom and John McDowell to make use of Hegel's ideas represent an encroach ment on continental philosophy that cannot be allowed to pass unchal lenged. This encroachment rests on a basic confusion over the differ ences between analytic and continental philosophy, and in particular between the analytic semantic concern to establish reference and the continental concern with epistemology. Philosophers like Brandom and McDowell only think that their positions are Hegelian because they completely ignore Hegel's idealism, and so think that Hegel's views could be consistent with their own metaphysical realism. In this way they are still influenced by G. E. Moore's uninformed rejection of ideal ism as denying the existence of the external world. The book is split into three long chapters. Chapter 1 surveys idealism, British idealism and the early analytic reaction against it. Rockmore ar gues that there is no single point of doctrine that unites all idealists, or even British idealists. In particular, Rockmore argues that no idealist denies the existence of the external world, and thus that Moore's rejec tion of idealism is off the mark. If this is so, then there is no reason for contemporary (analytic) philosophers to be wary of idealism, or to avoid looking to idealism as a solution to epistemological problems. Chapter 2 surveys the various forms of pragmatism and neopragma tism. As in Chapter 1, Rockmore denies that there is a single doctrine linking all pragmatists; furthermore he adds that, as currently used, the term "pragmatism" is close to losing all meaning. Rockmore argues that pragmatism does not understand knowledge as historical in the same way that Hegel does, and thus that Hegel cannot be said to be a pragma tist. The chapter culminates in a discussion of Brandom, McDowell, and Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer. In arguing against the Hegel interpretations of these three authors, Rockmore claims that each of the three is com This content downloaded from 128.210.106.161 on Wed, 19 Jun 2019 18:54:09 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms SUMMARIES AND COMMENTS 687 mitted to a project that is fundamentally at odds with Hegel's own project. Brandom and Stekeler-Weithofer are fundamentally interested in a semantic theory of reference that, as usually understood, is funda mentally different from the interest in epistemology that Hegel has. The semantic theory of reference is only one topic in epistemology, which concerns the broader issue of knowledge. In addition, each of the three is a metaphysical realist, whereas Hegel (as a good post-Kantian) rejects metaphysical realism (the doctrine that we can know a mind-indepen dent world as it is) in favor of empirical realism (the doctrine that we can know the real within consciousness in such a way that it represents an empirical constraint on knowledge). The two themes are connected because the Fregean focus on semantics involves reference to the mind independent real world, and thus entails metaphysical realism. This chapter is predominantly negative in character: the main point is that there is not currently an interesting conversation across the analytic continental divide because these analytic thinkers have not squarely ad dressed the vast differences in project and approach that separate the two kinds of philosophy. In Chapter 3, Rockmore provides the picture of Hegel on which his criticisms in Chapter 2 are based. There are three basic elements to this picture. First, Hegel is an empirical, not metaphysical realist. This dis cussion left me with a number of questions. A consideration of Kenneth Westphal's realist interpretation of Hegel (which is summarily dismissed in a footnote) would have been useful. Also, though I doubt that Hegel is a metaphysical realist, he is not an antirealist such as Rorty, nor is it clear that there is any restriction on objects of knowledge of Hegel's view (since he thinks the transcendental thing in itself is unintelligible). Since Brandom and McDowell's professions of realism come in re sponse to Rortean antirealism, a real conversation between the two and Hegel still seems possible. Second, Hegel does not advance a doctrine of absolute knowledge, but of absolute knowing (that is, our understanding of the epistemic process). Hegel distinguishes between first order knowledge claims and second-order conceptual schemes. Hegel's "spirit" is the "practical ne gotiation of unstable, mutable conceptual frameworks in real time" (p. 191). My concern here is that this characterization applies more obvi ously to the Phenomenology of Spirit than it does to Hegel's mature sys tem, and Rockmore provides no argument to link it to Hegel's mature thought. Third, Hegel's contextualism is fundamentally historical (unlike the [neo]pragmatists). Knowledge claims are historically relative, but still objective. They are historical in the sense that they involve reference to a world-view or conceptual schemes that change through time for rea sons that are not directly related to the first-order judgments those schemes support. I was left wanting to know more about the nature of Hegel's historicism, and particularly why it would be at odds with prag matist contextualism.?Chris Yeomans, Kenyon College. This content downloaded from 128.210.106.161 on Wed, 19 Jun 2019 18:54:09 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms