Abstract The central claim of constitutivism is that there is an inescapable, constitutive aim (or feature) of action that generates and grounds normativity in general, and moral normativity in particular. However, constitutivist accounts often face two significant challenges: the specificity challenge, which argues that any norm-generating aim is too specific to be genuinely inescapable (giving rise to so-called ‘shmagency’ objections), and the vagueness challenge, which contends that any sufficiently general aim fails to generate specific norms. This paper argues that a version of constitutivism that draws on a Hegelian account of willing can overcome both challenges, thereby enabling constitutivism to maintain its viability as a metaethical theory.
While Kantian readers consider Hegel’s discussion of the significance of Kant’s account of apperception as the key to understanding what he means by the concept of the concept, the so-called metaphysical readers have warned against identifying these accounts too swiftly, urging instead that the concept is an onto-logical structure which needs to be conceived through the genuinely Hegelian notion of absolute negativity. In this paper, I reject the problematic underlying assumption shared by both interpretative strands that Hegel’s notion of self-negation sits uncomfortably with conceiving Hegel’s concept of the concept in terms of the unity of apperception. Contrary to both one-sided readings, I seek to preserve their insights by arguing first that Hegel’s conception of the concept, or thinking only thinking itself, and its absolute negativity, can be understood as the radicalization of Kant’s account of apperception, or self-relation of thinking, and its original emptiness. Second, I will show that the absolute negation provides the conceptual resources to understand how pure thinking can determine itself and thus give itself concrete conceptual content.
Constitutivism is the general view that some class of normative standards can be derived from the constitutive features of agency. The constitutivist claims that all persons, as agents, are bound by certain norms simply because they are agents. The view aims to counter sceptical worries about the bindingness of norms, moral or otherwise. I articulate a Hegelian version of constitutivism, according to which adherence to norms of recognition is both necessary to know what one has done in the past and to guide future action. A person cannot have a coherent conception of themselves as an agent if they do not abide by recognitive norms. Many existing versions of constitutivism promise too much. It is unlikely that we can derive all of morality from the constitutive features of agency. Hegel, however, allows us to see that the foundations of morality can be gleaned from the nature of action.
Metaphysics is the science of what is as such. And what is is the formal object of thought; it is what is thought as such. Hence metaphysics, the science of being, is the self-clarification of thought. The original moment of metaphysics is Parmenides’ pronouncement that being and thinking are the same: ‘τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ νοεῖν ἐστίν τε καὶ εἶναι’. The moment is recaptured when Hegel writes that, in the idea of being, thought embraces itself in its absolute abstraction. So this is the concern of metaphysics: thinking and being. That concern was central to a certain tradition of analytic philosophy, originating in Frege and Wittgenstein. Thus books belonging in this tradition bear titles like Word and Object, Mind and World . A late book in this tradition is Peacocke’s The Primacy of Metaphysics . It opposes itself to McDowell’s Mind and World and Dummett’s ‘What is a Theory of Meaning?’ In what follows I want to discuss that opposition. I shall do so in a way that, I hope, will show a reader of Hegel that it may be fruitful, in one’s attempts to think about thinking and being, to engage the said analytic tradition. In this qualified way, my contribution will bring today’s metaphysics into communication with Hegel’s philosophy, revealing, hopefully, the relevance of the former.
Today issues about ‘metaphysical grounding’ have come to the centre of philosophical discussion. In the case of Schaffer’s widely influential work, this comes with a defence of monism, according to which everything is grounded in one comprehensive whole. He cites as predecessors Hegel and Spinoza. Part of Schaffer’s case runs through a claim that issues about grounding are unavoidable in philosophy. It is natural to expect that an unavoidability of grounding should help the case of such a monism. But can we read Hegel’s claims for his comprehensive system as similarly supported by a claim for the interwovenness of grounding with philosophy? No. I argue that, in the unusual philosophy of Hegel’s historical context, our expectations are reversed: Hegel and contemporaries who influence him, like Jacobi, see reasons for thinking that claims for the unavoidability of grounding would support rather critique of the prospects for defence of any unity or organization in terms of which everything would be comprehensively explicable or intelligible. Hegel’s challenge in defending a comprehensive system, then, is to resist such unavoidability claims. Seeing this opens an approach to reading Hegel’s Science of Logic in terms of the unusual reasons that animate it.
History, for Hegel, is the history of the ‘spirit’. It is the history which the spirit itself creates and in which the spirit takes on an ‘objective’ shape in the world. The objectivity of what Hegel calls ‘objective spirit’ is realized in the form of world history. The term ‘world history’ refers less to the history of the whole world, and more to the historical sequence of ‘worlds’, or epochs. World and history thus have an asymmetrical relationship in the Hegelian understanding of ‘world history’: it is one history, which divides everything on earth into many worlds, into local and temporally limited world cultures. What makes it one history—what makes it unified—is the unitary concept of the spirit. The contributions brought together in this special issue discuss Hegel’s theory of world history, taking different approaches to the question of the relationship between the incomplete and the completed, between ‘actuality’ as a rational state and ‘existence’ as a reality that lacks rationality. In all texts, Hegel’s method of developing a philosophy of history represents a central problem.
This paper revolves around three topics (being, living and thinking), which correspond to three interconnected aspects of Edgar Maraguat’s recent attempt to establish Teleology as the definitive, ‘non-provisional’ derivation of the category of ‘purpose’ (Zweck) in the Logic. Because Maraguat reads Hegel’s derivation of purpose as the key to understanding the objective validity of the Logic (the bearing of the categories on the world), his project affords the commentator a rare opportunity to reflect on the issue of the systematic unity of the work. This paper identifies three problems with Maraguat’s approach as well as the crucial, unifying concept that I take to be missing from his account: however improbably, the concept (Begriff). By travelling this negative path, I attempt to illuminate an alternative approach to the Logic, which seeks to accomplish three interconnected goals: (1) to ground the objective validity of the categories in the opening account of pure being; (2) to interpret the notion of a species-concept or kind (Gattung) as the highest principle of being; and (3) to locate Hegel’s definitive derivation of purpose in his account of the self-conscious kind.
In what sense can human beings be conceived of as social beings? I argue that sociality is not merely an attribute of the species to which we belong; rather, the way in which we belong to our own life-form is itself socially mediated. To bring this other sense of sociality into view, the article (I) distinguishes the logical sociality of all living beings from the material sociality of social animals and the political sociality of self-conscious social animals. (II) The political sociality characterizing human beings requires a complex second-personal articulation through which alone we can exist as members of our life-form and determine its content. (III) Constituted in this way, the human form of life is characterized by a particularly open and at the same time precarious character. (IV) Against this background, forms of objective spirit are necessary which grant us a generalized recognition and relieve us from the contingency of particular second-personal recognitions, without abandoning the openness of the sociality of the human form of life. This double requirement has led to paradoxical institutions in modern society which strive to protect and ensure the sociality of the human form of life precisely by naturalizing and individualizing our access to it.
Throughout the history of philosophy, numerous philosophers have formulated theories about the connection between law and freedom. However, few have suggested that freedom and love are inherently connected. According to Hegel, the family and marriage represent the initial tangible manifestation of freedom, embodied in ethical and self-conscious love. This contentious thesis pertains to Hegel’s endorsement of the modern bourgeois family and his assertion regarding a compulsory and heteronormative conception of conjugal love. I analyse Hegel’s family theory in what follows, emphasizing the marital relationship as delineated in Outlines of the Philosophy of Right. I examine the significance and ramifications of his dismissal of the marriage contract to illustrate how this creates a paradox. I propose an alternative interpretation of these passages by emphasizing the relationship between love and law within marital relations. I advocate the importance of law within the family and demonstrate its significance to marriage. I assert that Hegel’s understanding of the family, especially regarding marriage, highlights the tensions present in the complex relationship between the legal aspect of marriage as a contract and the ethical aspect rooted in self-conscious love. To achieve this, I firstly reconstruct Hegel’s conception of the family and explore his understanding of marriage as sexual drive, desire, passion and contract. Secondly, I explore Hegel’s notion of ethical and self-conscious love, examining the relationship between law and love to reveal the paradox of marriage. Third, I discuss Hegel’s views on divorce and marriage settlements to demonstrate why marriage cannot overcome the contract. Finally, I discuss why Hegel’s response to the issues he identifies in the theories of his contemporaries is inadequate and how marriage and conjugal love threaten freedom. My claim is that marriage entails a paradoxical relationship between love and law, which calls into question the suitability of marriage to realize freedom.
This paper shows how Hegel’s philosophy of psychiatry was established within the framework of the unitary psychosis (Einheitspsychose). This psychiatric position considered that there was only one single mental illness with several distinct species. Due to some editions of Hegel’s works, this interpretative framework is often omitted. However, in this paper it is considered to be the key interpretative framework for understanding Hegel’s psychic nosography and therapeutic approach.
What can a Hegelian perspective contribute to addressing the ecological crisis? This paper argues that, for Hegel, a transformative yet sustainable relation with nature is a requirement for a free form of life. Drawing on both the Phenomenology of Spirit and the Philosophy of Right , it contends that Hegel’s notions of work, bad infinity and habit help us understand how societies become entrenched in unsustainable practices. At the same time, by pointing to the notion of limit, these concepts illuminate what an alternative form of life could look like. Modern subjective and objective structures that resemble a ‘bad infinity’—in the sense of an imperative of endless wealth accumulation—come at the cost of human and non-human nature. To respond to this, work must be reoriented toward social needs, mutual recognition and cooperation. However, achieving this vision requires more than individual moral commitments; it demands the transformations of sedimented habits, socio-economic relationships and their material expressions.
In her Time and History in Hegelian Thought and Spirit , Sally Sedgwick sets out to: specify the extent to which we can accurately attribute to Hegel the view that human reason and the freedom it affords us are indebted for their nature to this temporal order of nature and history. Hegel’s concern with our reason’s development conveys not just his fascination with the past but his interest in how reason responds to and is anchored in and shaped by the past. ( TH : 4) In the first part of the book Sedgwick is concerned with freedom being temporally conditioned. The second part consists of the last two chapters and is concerned with the claim that ‘all our thought is indebted to this actual realm as well’ ( TH : 8). Hegel repeatedly asserts, Sedgwick notes, ‘that none of us can escape our time in thought’ ( TH : 143).
I am grateful to the Reviews Editor for the Hegel Bulletin , Susanne Herrmann-Sinai, for arranging this discussion of my book, Time and History in Hegelian Thought and Spirit (2023). I appreciate this opportunity to clarify and expand on some of the main ideas of the book, including those that are the most challenging to defend. I also owe thanks, of course, to each of my four critics for giving their valuable time to this project. In the context of so few pages, it is not possible to respond to every criticism; I have had to pick and choose. In the process, I may have failed to do full justice to my critics’ concerns.
Historians have long disregarded Hegel as a rigidly aprioristic thinker. However, they have not arrived at this view based on familiarity with his works. Usually, early on in their education, historians are taught that teleology is anathema to their craft, and that Hegel is an exemplar of this approach. As a result, they are routinely advised that his writings can safely be ignored. Nonetheless, ironically, much in Hegel’s narrative continues to be influential. He emphasized a number of seismic shifts that shaped the world over millennia—for instance, the passage from ancient paganism to modern Christianity, and from the Reformation to the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. These events, and their pivotal role, still dominate historiography. Yet despite the staying-power of much of this account, its author is still discounted among professional historians.
In her latest book, Sally Sedgwick raises two essential questions. The first will be of interest to all philosophers: why do most of Hegel’s texts take the form of ‘progressive narratives’? Why does Hegel give the form of a narrative to some of his philosophical texts, in a relatively unusual way? The second will be of particular interest to the Hegelian community: to what extent is Hegel’s conception of reason itself historical? Does it make sense to anchor in historical experience the rational instruments that enable us to give meaning to experience?
Sally Sedgwick seems to be incapable of writing dull books, and she has once again given proof of this. She has written a short but very ambitious book, nominally on Hegel’s philosophy of history, but really about Hegel in general and how we should understand him. Her idea is that Hegel’s philosophy of history is a special entry point to Hegel’s thought as a whole so that instead of Hegel-the-philosopher-of-the-necessary-Absolute, we should see Hegel as fundamentally a philosopher of finitude, a proponent of the contingency and historical situatedness of all of our thoughts, who, as a philosopher of finite humility, did not think that we could ever assume the viewpoint of God as he is sometimes alleged to have tried to do.
