Philosophie nach Kant (Neue Wege zum Verständnis von Kants Transzendental- und Moralphilosophie) || Hegel’s Critique of Kant in the Introduction to the Phenomenology of Spirit (§§73–80)

Eric Watkins

Hegel’s Critique of Kant in the Introductionto the Phenomenology of Spirit (§§73–80)

In the Introduction to the Phenomenology of Spirit Hegel hopes to accomplishthree main aims in the course of setting up and motivating the philosophicalproject that he then attempts to carry out in the main body of that work. (1)He begins by arguing against the “natural thought” (natürliche Vorstellung) ad-vanced by several of his modern predecessors, including Kant, that one must in-vestigate one’s cognitive faculties before making any claims to knowledge, andhe does so on the grounds that, in one way or another, the natural thoughtseems to undermine itself and is thus absurd. His desire to avoid such a self-defeating position leads him to identify several presuppositions of the naturalthought that he will then reject so as to be able to articulate the fundamental fea-tures of his own alternative account of knowledge, which he calls Science (§§73–76).¹ (2) In light of the difficulties that arise with respect to the most straightfor-ward ways of justifying Science, Hegel then describes the distinctive philosoph-ical method of the Phenomenology of Spirit, which, if carried out properly, is ableto provide a non-question-begging justification of Science (§§76–80). (3) Finally,Hegel shows how one can, at least in principle, resolve a fundamental problemthat arises for his method, a problem that bears a striking resemblance to what isoften referred to by epistemologists today as the problem of the criterion (§§81–87).

In what follows, I provide an interpretation of §§73–80 of the Introductionthat pays special attention to how it offers extended critical engagement withKant. In the first section, I reconstruct Hegel’s argument against the naturalthought and show how it applies to Kant’s position. Given the surprising lackof attention to the precise nature of Hegel’s arguments in these first paragraphs,it can be tempting to think, at the one extreme, that Hegel has attained a level ofreflection that will allow him to convincingly demonstrate the falsity of Kant’sposition or, at the other extreme, that Hegel is so thoroughly immersed in hisown standpoint that he is unable to do anything other than talk past Kant. Bycontrast, I argue that Hegel’s ultimate goal in these paragraphs is the more mod-

I refer to passages from Hegel’s Phänomenologie des Geistes on the basis of the paragraphnumbers in which the passage in question occurs. Though I have made some changes, I refer,whenever possible, to Miller’s translation (G.W.F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, translatedby A.V. Miller, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977).

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est, but also more reasonable one of showing that neither the philosophical ap-proach Kant adopts nor the position he ends up with as a result must be viewedas the only possibilities.² Specifically, though Hegel presents some objectionsthat can seem to apply to Kant’s position, he also recognizes some of the subtle-ties of Kant’s position and how they are relevant to these initial objections. As aresult, he offers his reflections in the hopes of showing that one is not forced intoaccepting Kant’s approach, but rather ought to be open to a broader range ofepistemic possibilities than those envisioned by the natural thought, and thatwhether or not Kant’s position is tenable turns on issues that cannot be coveredsufficiently in the Introduction. In the second section, I briefly present Hegel’saccount of the philosophical method that must be used to justify Science, notinghow it entails that at some point later in the Phenomenology of Spirit he mustshow that Kant’s position, like all other alternatives to his own, is incoherent.In this way we can see how it is that in the Introduction, Hegel begins his criticalengagement with Kant’s position in a manner that is both fair and defensible,namely by calling into question the necessity of one of Kant’s main methodolog-ical assumptions (yet without going so far as to attempt to definitively refute it),while reserving his most fundamental criticism of Kant’s theoretical philosophyfor the main argument of the Phenomenology of Spirit.³

It is striking that many major Hegel commentators do not attempt to reconstruct Hegel’sarguments in the Introduction to the Phenomenology of Spirit. For example, Charles Taylor 1975,p. 128, spends only one page on the argument of the Introduction, while Hyppolite (1974) skips italtogether. The volume on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit in the Klassiker Auslegen series(2006) skips both the Preface and the Introduction. Robert Stern 2002, pp. 36–42, has a moredetailed (and useful) interpretation, but is less focused on providing a detailed analysis ofHegel’s arguments and of how they relate to Kant’s position. (But see note 28 below.) Stewart2000, pp. 32–52, esp. p. 49–51, also offers a helpful account of some of the main claims of theIntroduction, though his interest is directed primarily at the overall structure of the Pheno-menology of Spirit rather than at providing an analysis and critical evaluation of its argumentand of how it relates to Kant’s position. I consider aspects of the interpretations offered by SallySedgwick and William Bristow below (in notes 11 and 20). Gräser (1988) provides an extremelydetailed, primarily historical and textual commentary on a wide range of phrases that Hegel usesin the Introduction (but does not provide a continuous reconstruction of Hegel’s argument). Consideration of Hegel’s detailed criticisms of Kant’s theoretical philosophy in the Science ofLogic is a distinct project.

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1. Hegel against the Natural Thought (§§73–76)

1.1. The Natural Thought and its Consequences (§73)

Hegel begins the Introduction by identifying a natural thought that one mighthave when beginning a systematic project in philosophy, and noting two reasonsthat might plausibly be offered in support of that thought. The thought concernsa certain methodological priority in philosophy: It is natural to think that oneshould investigate what one’s concept of cognition is, what one’s cognitive capa-bilities⁴ are, and what they would be able to contribute to cognition, before oneactually makes any claims about “what truly is” (§73). For example, Descartesinvestigates the principles underlying his beliefs so that he can reject all thosethat can be reasonably doubted before identifying what can be known with ab-solute certainty, Locke begins with a survey of the store of the understanding’sideas before examining what can (and cannot) be known by means of suchideas, while Kant provides a detailed critique, or analysis, of the faculty ofpure reason, including sensibility and the understanding, before determiningwhether or not we can have cognition of things in themselves such as the objectsof traditional metaphysics (e.g., God, freedom, and the immortality of the soul).⁵Thus, despite the considerable differences between the projects undertaken byDescartes, Locke, and Kant, they all agree on the methodological priority thatfinds expression in the natural thought Hegel identifies.⁶

Hegel cites two main reasons in support of this methodological priority.First, if we have a number of cognitive capabilities, we should investigatewhat distinguishes them so that we are in a position to see which are best suitedfor what kind of cognition. That is, if in general one should act in efficient ways,then we should investigate our different cognitive faculties and representationsto determine which ones offer the most reliable path to knowledge of differentkinds of objects. In this way,we can avoid the “feeling of uneasiness” (Besorgnis)that comes from using something without having previously determined whether

By the term “cognitive capabilities” I intend either faculties, such as sensibility and theunderstanding, or the representations these faculties are responsible for, such as concepts andintuitions. It is crucial that cognition of things in themselves is at issue here, for Kant assumes at the startof his analysis of the conditions of the possibility of experience that we at least have cognition inthe form of experience. Though Kant distinguishes cognition (Erkenntnis) and knowledge (Wissen), it is less clear thatHegel does the same, as he often seems to use them interchangeably. I shall largely adhere toHegel’s practice in this paper.

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it is really well suited to what we hope to accomplish with it. Second, if our cog-nitive capabilities are finite (in virtue of being of a “determinate kind andscope”), it may be that they are not in a position to justify claims about certainkinds of objects (e.g., if those objects are infinite or unconditioned in some re-spect and thus have experience-transcending features). As a result, we shouldinvestigate the nature and limits of our cognitive capabilities first if we are toavoid error; if we were to use them without such an investigation, “we mightgrasp clouds of error instead of the heaven of truth” (§73).

While Hegel’s description of this natural thought and its various justifica-tions employs terms that may not always be entirely neutral, it is clear that heis accurately picking up on at least part of what motivates the projects of Des-cartes, Locke, and Kant. Descartes’s use of the method of doubt—asking us toreject any belief if we can find a reason to doubt the principle on which it isbased—is clearly motivated by a desire to avoid error, since he is concerned toevaluate the epistemic reliability of our cognitive faculties so that he is thenable to eliminate the very possibility of a mistaken first belief that might theninfect other beliefs that are based on it. Similarly, Locke’s rejection of innateideas and his acceptance of the claim that all of our ideas derive from experience(whether it be sensation or reflection) are the result of his survey of our humanunderstanding, which he undertakes primarily so as to be able to determine thedegree, extent, and reality of our knowledge and thus to avoid error. Kant like-wise asks us to consider our most basic cognitive faculties—sensibility, under-standing, and reason—and their distinctive kinds of representations—intuitions,concepts, and ideas—so that we can discover not only that space and time arenothing more than sensibility’s forms of intuition and that the categories areforms of discursive thought, but also that these different kinds of representations(intuitions and concepts) must work together for substantive cognition of objectsto be possible, which supports his ultimate conclusion that we cannot have cog-nition of things in themselves, since they do not satisfy all the necessary condi-tions for cognition.

Though Hegel’s initial articulation of this natural thought and of the reasonsthat support it accurately expresses the method and motivations of several of hismodern predecessors, he goes on to provide two further specifications of the nat-ural thought that are more controversial. First, he conceives of our cognitive ca-pabilities as means and cognition as the end for which these means are neces-sary. This distinction between means and end (including the dependence of theends on the means) justifies the temporal priority expressed in the naturalthought, that is, explains why it is natural for the natural thought to maintainthat one ought to investigate the means before one attempts to attain the end.If the means are to be truly necessary for the attainment of the end, one must

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first achieve clarity about what means are available and what ends they can andcannot attain. Second, he thinks that our cognitive capabilities must take thespecific form of an active instrument or a passive medium. Though he providesno explicit argument for adopting these metaphors (of instrument and medium),he may well think that they are justified because activity and passivity constitutean exhaustive disjunction and nothing significant is added in calling what is ac-tive an instrument and what is passive a medium.

Yet Hegel’s further specification of the natural thought may not apply to Des-cartes’s position especially straightforwardly. For it is not clear that Descartes’sfaculty of intellect and its clear and distinct perceptions are properly character-ized as means (even if both are necessary for cognition), nor that they can bethought of either as an active instrument or as a passive medium.⁷ Howeverthat may be, it is clear that Hegel has at least Kant’s position squarely inmind in adopting these terms.⁸ For Kant explicitly characterizes the understand-ing as a spontaneous and active faculty by means of which objects are thought,while sensibility is conceived of as a passive faculty through which objects ofcognition are given. Since Kant investigates both (passive) sensibility and the (ac-tive) understanding to see if they are conditions of cognition, and concludes thatthey are, it is natural to infer that they are, for him, the means that are necessaryfor the end of cognition, that the one is an active instrument, and that the otheris a passive medium, just as Hegel specifies the natural thought.

After developing the natural thought in this way and explaining the reasonsthat support it, Hegel turns his attention to raising a fundamental objection to it.Regardless of whether our cognitive capabilities are taken to be an active instru-ment or a passive medium, it leads, he thinks, to absurdity. If our cognitive ca-pabilities are an instrument that one uses on the object one hopes to know, thenthe use of that active instrument will change the object in some way and thuswill “not let it be what it is for itself” (§73), which contradicts its fundamentalgoal (of achieving knowledge of the object in its original state). In otherwords, the very idea of an active instrument suggests that whatever the instru-ment is used on must be different as a result of that instrument’s activity, butif that is the case, then that very activity precludes our cognitive capabilities

Perhaps the intellect is passive and the will is active, but then knowledge occurs only throughsome complex interaction of the two such that there is no simple dichotomy between the two. I set aside here the interesting historical question of whether Hegel had in mind other figures,such as Reinhold. As various scholars (Dieter Henrich, Manfred Frank, and Eckart Förster) haveshown in great detail, the reception of Kant in the 1790 s and the development of independentimpulses (such as Spinoza or anti-foundationalist early Romantics) complicate the historicallines of influence.



from capturing the object as it is on its own (or before the activity changes it),and skepticism ensues. Or if the cognitive capability in question is supposedto be a passive medium, then we do not represent the object as it is in itself,but rather only how it exists in the medium through which it is given, and,again, skepticism results regarding the object as it exists on its own. That is, ifthere is a distinction between the way in which an object exists on its ownand the way in which it exists in a medium, then, even if the medium is passive,the way in which the object exists in that medium is still different from the wayin which it exists outside of that medium, and that difference is inconsistent withthe attainment of cognition.⁹ As a result, whether one understands our cognitivecapabilities as an active instrument or as a passive medium, they prevent us fromobtaining knowledge of objects as they exist independently of our cognitive fac-ulties. As Hegel puts it: “Either way, we employ a means which immediatelybrings about the opposite of its own end” (§73). If our cognitive capabilitiesare to be thought of as means to cognition and if they must take the form of ei-ther an active instrument or a passive medium, skepticism follows, which is theopposite of the intended goal of cognition.¹⁰

Just as the natural thought accurately captured the method underlyingKant’s approach, Hegel’s objection that the natural thought leads to skepticismcan also seem to apply to Kant’s position in a relatively straightforward way. ForKant does in fact accept a certain skeptical conclusion insofar as he maintainsthat we cannot have cognition of things in themselves. That is, Kant holdsthat the objects that are both given to us through our passive faculty of sensibil-ity and thought through our active understanding are only appearances, i.e.,things as they appear to us, and not ultimate reality, or things as they are in

We have reason to return to this distinction below. Hegel’s use of the metaphors of active instrument and passive medium makes it moredifficult to see the fundamental flaw in his objection. If one distinguishes between re-presentations and the objects which those representations represent, it becomes a simple matterto acknowledge that the cognitive subject forms representations only on the basis of the activeand passive cognitive capabilities while at the same time denying that those capabilities haveany effect on the objects themselves. For one can say that the objects are what they are and thatwe employ the faculties we have at our disposal to represent them accurately. As a result, theactivity or passivity of our cognitive capabilities affects only our representations, not the objectsthemselves. Matters are complicated if one allows for the possibility of cognition of appearances,since, according to phenomenalist interpretations, they are simply representations, i.e. notdistinct from the objects. (For a somewhat different, but still related analysis of Hegel’s use ofthese metaphors, see Gräser 1988, p. 42–3 and p. 46.)

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themselves.¹¹ Further, at times, Kant can seem to endorse the basic assumptionsunderlying the arguments that Hegel presents in support of his objection. ForKant does think that sensibility’s forms do not leave what is given to us throughthese forms unaffected, but rather transform this content such that the non-spatio-temporal things in themselves that affect us provide us with a contentthat, due to these forms, we must represent as spatio-temporal. Also, the under-standing’s categories do actively combine a multiplicity of disparate appearan-ces into one coherent experience that has a single spatio-temporal world as itsobject. In fact, even at a more general level Kant famously holds that any objectswe could know must conform to our mode of cognition (i.e., our forms of intu-ition in sensibility and our forms of thought in the understanding) rather thanhaving our mode of cognition conform to the object, as was maintained priorto his so-called Copernican Revolution in philosophy. As a result, Kant wouldagree not only that skepticism regarding things in themselves is correct, butalso that this skeptical position can be seen to follow from a prior analysis ofour cognitive capabilities—though he would also hasten to add that whatwould establish this kind of skeptical position is hardly the “short” argumentthat Hegel describes in a single paragraph and that employs the relatively simplemetaphors of instrument, medium, and means, but rather must be a “long” argu-ment, one that is developed over the course of several hundred pages of denseargumentation in the Critique of Pure Reason.¹²

At the same time, it is crucial to note that Kant does not think either that oneis driven to a complete skepticism or that the limited kind of skepticism that hedoes adopt is untenable or destructive of his most basic philosophical concerns.For Kant clearly maintains that we can have knowledge of appearances, and itwould be dogmatic for Hegel to insist, without argument, that cognition mustbe exclusively of things in themselves, and, by the end of the first Critique,Kant holds that the most important part of his project, namely maintainingthe possibility of freedom and morality, is not threatened by, but actually re-

Though this particular formulation suggests that Kant holds an “ontological” interpretationof Transcendental Idealism, an interpretation that Hegel seems to share, this point holds for“epistemological” interpretations as well. Cf. Ameriks 2003, chap. 5. For a version of such a short argument, see Sedgwick 2011, 158,who argues that Hegel’s objection turns on Kant thinking that we are able to exercise“extraordinary abstractive powers” by means of which we can abstract an independent formfrom whatever sensory content is given through that form. Sedgwick supports the assumptionthat we do not have such a power of abstraction by claiming that “critical reflection occursalways ‘within’ some ‘shape of consciousness’ [… and] is invariably carried out in partial dar-kness”.



quires a skeptical position with respect to things in themselves.¹³ Thus Hegel’sobjection, at least as formulated so far, does not truly target Kant’s actual posi-tion. Since Hegel returns to the question of whether cognition of appearances istenable only two paragraphs later (in §75), it is both plausible and charitable toHegel to hold that he recognizes the limitations of the intended scope of this firstline of objection.

Before turning to these other aspects of Kant’s position, however, Hegel con-siders how one might respond to the objection that the natural thought necessa-rily undermines itself by leading to skepticism. The main idea behind the re-sponse he considers is that if one becomes acquainted with the means (i.e.,the cognitive capabilities) that one is attempting to use to obtain one’s end (i.e., cognition), then one could use that knowledge to subtract the contributionmade to the object by one’s cognitive capabilities, which would then leave onewith what one was originally seeking, namely the object as it is in itself.Hegel first considers how this response would work if our cognitive capabilitiesare conceived of as an active instrument. In this case, such an instrument eitherdoes or does not change the object. If it does change the object and one knowshow it does so, then one could simply take the relevant changes away and onewould have knowledge of the object as it is in itself. If, by contrast, the instru-ment does not in fact change the object (or its intrinsic properties), but insteadsimply alters some external circumstance (e.g., by bringing it closer, as onemight do by using a trap to catch a bird, though without harming it in anyway) and if one knows what the instrument does, then one would know thatone does not have to subtract any changes to have knowledge of the object asit is in itself. Either way, familiarity with the activity of the instrument and theeffects it does or does not have lets one either restore the object to its originalstate or recognize that nothing needs to be done to represent it in that state,and knowledge of the object is possible. Alternately, but also analogously, ifour cognitive capabilities are conceived of as a passive medium, awareness ofwhat the medium passively contributes to the object would allow one to subtractthat contribution and one would be able to represent the object as it was in thefirst place, independent of the medium, which would, again, allow one to avoidskepticism.

Yet Hegel rejects this response in all of its variants. If our cognitive capabil-ities were an active instrument that changed the object we hope to know bymeans of it and if we were to obtain knowledge of the object as it is in itself sim-

For the purposes of this paper, I do not consider Kant’s (or Hegel’s) account of practicalcognition.

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ply by removing any changes that our active capabilities were responsible for,then it would be “superfluous” (überflüssig) for us to have employed these cog-nitive capabilities in the first place.¹⁴ Why add the changes to the object if onethen has to immediately remove every trace of them? If, by contrast, our cogni-tive capabilities were an active instrument that did not change the object wehope to know (but rather simply brought it closer), then the activities of our cog-nitive capabilities would, like a “ruse” (eine List), seem to be doing somethingentirely different from what they are in fact accomplishing. For it is claimedthat they are necessary for cognition of the object, but since they do not actuallychange the object and thus do not contribute to cognition, they would not in factbe necessary for this end.

Alternately, if we were to conceive of our cognitive capabilities as a passivemedium, it would be “useless” (es nützt nichts) to subtract what the mediumcontributes from the end result. As Hegel puts it: “For it is not the refractionof the ray, but the ray itself whereby truth reaches us, that is cognition; and ifthis [refraction] were removed, all that would be indicated would be a pure di-rection or a blank space” (ibid.). The difficulty that Hegel expresses throughthe somewhat confusing metaphor of the ray of light is that removing the refrac-tion would be useless not because we would merely have taken away what wehad added in the first place nor because we would have an improper conceptionof cognition (by claiming that we are doing something necessary that is not), butrather because what would be left after we had removed the law of refractionwould be empty, or devoid of content (when our cognition is supposed tohave content). For if the refraction is the necessary medium through which theray can reach us, then if we take away the refraction, we have also taken awaythe necessary condition of our awareness of the ray, which leaves us with pre-cisely nothing.¹⁵ That is, if the medium is the necessary condition of objects

It is important to note here that because of his response to this line of argument, Hegel isconceding that skepticism is not the inevitable result of the natural thought. For if one acceptsthis line of response, the problem that arises is not skepticism, but rather an untenable con-ception of the method of attaining knowledge. An analogous point holds for Hegel’s nextresponse. Hegel’s text here is a bit hard to parse. It might seem as if he meant to say that removing theray would leave us with a pure direction or blank space. For, if we think about such a claimusing Kant’s model of cognition, where space is a pure form of intuition, emptied of empiricalcontent, then removing the ray that is transmitted through space would leave us with nothingmore than an empty space, a three-dimensional manifold of points that have three directions ofspatial orientation. However, the problem with such a reading, other than the grammaticalproblem of forcing “sie” (feminine) to refer to “Strahl” (masculine), is that it is unclear why one



being given to us, taking away that necessary condition immediately entails thatwe cannot have any cognition of objects, and skepticism ensues. In short, re-gardless of the response, something goes awry.

Again, even if Hegel’s argument here were entirely successful, it is difficult tosee that it would apply to Kant’s position.¹⁶ For Kant never suggests that the wayto obtain cognition would be by subtracting the contribution made either by theunderstanding and its activities or by sensibility and its forms. Indeed, exactlythe opposite is true insofar as Kant insists on the necessity of both sensibilityand the understanding for cognition.¹⁷ Specifically, without the understandingand its concepts, one could have an intuition, but it would be “blind” (i.e., un-intelligible to us), whereas without an object being given through sensibility, onecould still have thoughts, but no reason to think that such thoughts wouldamount to cognition of objects, since they would be entirely “empty”, and with-out both, one would have nothing at all, just as Hegel concludes in rejecting theresponse to his original objection. Thus, just as was the case above, the objectionthat Hegel directs against the natural thought does not target Kant’s position,since Kant would agree with Hegel that we cannot have cognition of things inthemselves, and simply maintain that whether we can have cognition of appear-ances is a separate question.

1.2. The Natural Thought and its Motivations and Assumptions(§74)

In §74 Hegel steps back from the consequences that seem to him to follow fromthe natural thought and focuses instead on (i) the motivation that is used to sup-port it and (ii) the assumptions on which it is based. If what motivates one toaccept the natural thought is a desire to avoid error or, as Hegel puts it, a fearof error, but the natural thought undercuts itself by not being able to deliver

would think that one should remove the ray in the first place, since the ray is not the medium ofcognition and thus should not be taken away. Given that this line of thought is foreign to Kant’s own position, it does raise the question ofwho Hegel has in mind here. Granted, if one were to maintain that the only kind of cognition that deserved the name wascognition of things in themselves, then it would be natural to think that the most plausible wayin which a Kantian might try to obtain this kind of cognition would be to try to infer fromappearances to the nature of things in themselves by abstracting the contributions made by ourcognitive faculties (which turn what we have into cognition of appearances as opposed to thingsin themselves). And if one were to pursue this strategy, then Hegel’s objections to the responseenvisioned enjoy a certain kind of plausibility (though see note 9 above).

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what it promised, “it is hard to see why we should not turn around and mistrustthis very mistrust. Should we not be concerned as to whether this fear of error isnot just the error itself?” (§74). Hegel is making three distinct points here. Thefirst and most straightforward point is that it might simply be a mistake totake our fear of error seriously; some fears are unjustified phobias, and philo-sophical fears, such as this one, might seem to be no different, for in thiscase, the self-stultifying nature of what follows from the natural thought couldeasily lead one to infer (via modus tollens) that the fear that gives rise to it can-not be justified.¹⁸

Second, the motivation that supports the natural thought can itself be calledinto question on self-referential grounds. It is legitimate to “mistrust the verymistrust” that led one to the natural thought in the first place, for if a fear oferror motivates one to question the adequacy of any feature of the cognitive pro-cess that is supposed to be necessary for cognition (on the grounds that it mightbe mistaken), then that same fear should also force one to question the motiva-tion that supports the natural thought (since it too is a feature that is relevant tothe cognitive process under consideration). Given that the fear of error is the mo-tivation that Hegel uses to support the natural thought, one should call it intoquestion. That is, the mistrust that we might have of our cognitive facultiescan just as easily be directed at itself, in which case this mistrust underminesitself.

Third, that Hegel refers to the motivation that supports the natural thoughtas a fear naturally calls to mind other fears that could beset us.¹⁹ Specifically, ifone fear is that we might assent to a proposition that turns out to be false, an-other fear is that we might not assent to a proposition that turns out to be true.Yet the natural thought privileges one fear over the other without providing anyexplicit argument that would compare and contrast the epistemic costs and ben-efits of taking each fear seriously.²⁰ In short, Hegel is pointing out that no justi-fication has been offered for the natural thought restricting our methodologicalpractice in the way it does and thus that we are faced with a wider range of epis-temic possibilities than the natural thought suggests.

In §74 Hegel also argues that the natural thought is committed to three sig-nificant assumptions. One assumption, already discussed at some length above,

An analogous point holds for desires. Just as not all fears are justified, not all desires oughtto be satisfied, especially if the desire in question has untoward consequences. Again, an analogous point holds for desires. An argument could be made that assenting to falsehoods is, all things considered, worsethan not assenting to truths, but the point here is simply that an argument would have to bemade, and Hegel’s predecessors have not done so.



is that our cognitive capabilities are either an instrument or a medium, that is,active and passive means for obtaining cognition. A second assumption, alsonoted above, is that “there is a difference between ourselves and this cognition”(ibid.), that is, that the means for cognition, i.e., our cognitive capabilities, areone thing, and the end, namely our cognition, is another, and that it is thereforepossible to investigate the one prior to attempting the other (as happens whenone considers the means before turning to the end). If they were not distinct,one could not investigate the one without the other. The third, and, Hegel sug-gests, most important assumption is that “the Absolute” and cognition are “sep-arate” (getrennt). The full meaning of this claim about separateness is a matter ofcontention in the literature and could be fully clarified only with a firm grasp ofHegel’s positive view, but the main thrust of his idea is presumably that the cog-nitive subject may not be something independent of, and unlike, the object thatit attempts to know, for the cognitive process takes place in time, is part of real-ity, and can be affected by what is related to it just as much as the object it istrying to know can be.²¹

The fact that the natural thought is committed to these three assumptions,presumably without argument, implicitly raises the possibility of other assump-tions and other approaches. However, rather than pursuing such alternativeshere, Hegel focuses on difficulties with the third assumption, difficulties thatHegel thinks would apply to Kant.²² Specifically, he claims that, on the approachfavored by the natural thought, cognition, “which, since it is excluded from theAbsolute, is surely outside the truth as well, is nevertheless true” (§74). In short,Hegel is claiming that this third assumption is self-contradictory, since it is com-mitted to the claim that cognition both must be true (to enable cognition) andcannot be true (since prior to any truth claims). For if one is supposed to inves-tigate one’s own cognitive capabilities so that one can determine whether thosecapabilities suffice for cognition, one must be making a truth claim about one’scognitive capabilities (about what they are and are not capable of). However, themethodological priority expressed by the natural thought asserts that one cannotmake truth claims before one has investigated one’s cognitive faculties. As a re-

For interestingly different lines of interpretation of these distinctions, see Bristow (2007, esp.chap. 5), and Brandom (unpublished manuscript, chap. 2, 27–29). I note, however, that it is byno means obvious how the natural thought is truly committed to this assumption. With this third assumption, Hegel may be picking up on a charge that he levels against Kantmuch more explicitly in the Encyclopedia Logic (in §10). I will not go into this charge here,because the point Hegel is making in the Encyclopedia Logic must be understood in the largercontext of that work.

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sult, the natural thought is committed to its cognition being both true, but alsoprior to any claim to truth.²³

Whether this criticism actually applies to Kant’s position, however, is a com-plicated issue, since determining that would require having an adequate under-standing of the resources at his disposal and of the methodology he employs inhis project.²⁴ For one, the objection may fundamentally misunderstand Kant’sproject insofar as Kant assumes that we have cognition and seeks the conditionsthat make it possible. In that sense, Kant does investigate our cognitive abilitiesso as to determine whether they suffice for cognition (of one kind), but he doesso on the assumption that we already have cognition (of another kind). For an-other, Kant (i) distinguishes between empirical claims and philosophical claims,(ii) argues that the epistemic conditions he identifies (regarding sensibility andthe understanding) are conditions only on the possibility of cognition of objectsand not on the possibility of philosophy itself, and (iii) maintains that philo-sophical claims are ultimately analytic (based on transcendental argumentsand an analysis of the concept of experience, along with any concepts containedin it, such as space and time, and the faculty of reason), given that we have ex-perience. Thus, consideration of several aspects of Kant’s position shows thatwhether one of the natural thought’s assumptions is necessarily inconsistentis by no means obvious, though it can raise several interesting issues.²⁵

In §74 Hegel also refers, rather obliquely, to his own positive conception ofcognition. Specifically, he refers to Science, which, “in the absence of such scru-ples [that motivate the natural thought] gets on with the work itself, and actuallycognizes something” (ibid.). That is, Hegel introduces the idea of what he callsScience, which is a kind of cognition for which it is not necessary to distinguishbetween the means and the end of cognition or between subject and object in away that gives priority to one over the other. As a result, Hegel’s reference to Sci-ence reveals that he is objecting not to the very idea that we have cognitive ca-pabilities, which would be an absurd claim, but rather to the idea that we couldfruitfully investigate such capabilities prior to and independent of the cognitionof the world that we would use them to attain. In Science itself, we would con-

This objection is, I take it, a version of the “meta-critique” objection originally raised againstKant by Hamann. See also Sedgwick 2011, 147– 150. Hegel may well have early German Romantics in mind when criticizing the conception of theAbsolute involved in this assumption. It is true that Kant does not speak frequently of theAbsolute as such, but Hegel frequently uses his own terminology to describe the views of others,and I am inclined to think that his use of the Absolute is meant to apply to what Kant callsthings in themselves. Gräser 1988, 31 f., raises similar objections to Hegel’s criticism.



sider our cognitive capabilities and the objects of cognition at one and the sametime and as interdependent factors (that are both inter-related parts of the Abso-lute). At the same time, §74 does not focus on Hegel’s positive account of cogni-tion, but rather simply points in its general direction.

1.3. The Natural Thought and its Alternatives (§75)

In §75 Hegel immediately acknowledges that the objection to the third assump-tion described above is premised on the assumption that “the Absolute alone istrue, or the truth alone is absolute” (§75), an assumption that one might not beinclined to accept. For example, one could claim instead that cognition need notbe directed solely at the Absolute, or at things in themselves, but could also aimat “other kinds of truth” (ibid). Though Hegel does not explicitly mention Kant, itis plausible to think that he is returning to the idea he had implicitly set aside in§73, according to which what is known in cognition is not things in themselves,but rather appearances. That is, cognition of things in themselves would be onekind of truth, while cognition of appearances would be another, given that ap-pearances have a fundamentally different (ontological and epistemological) sta-tus than things in themselves.

Hegel then raises several objections to this kind of position. First, Hegel re-fers to the kind of distinction that Kant draws between cognition of things inthemselves and cognition of appearances as “hazy” (trüb) and he suggeststhat those who want to make use of the terms needed to draw that distinctionpresuppose that they have well-understood meanings, when they must still beclarified. Specifically, Hegel objects to terms such as “absolute”, “cognition”,“objective”, and “subjective”, as terms that would presumably need to be ap-pealed to when distinguishing between different kinds of cognition. Withoutclear meanings for such terms, any cognition of appearances would lack an ad-equate foundation.

Second, Hegel attacks the idea that cognition of appearances could be cog-nition in a genuine sense. In the first half of §76, which continues the line of ar-gument begun in §75, Hegel suggests that the kind of cognition that cognition ofappearances would be an example of would “constitute merely an empty ap-pearance of knowing” (§76).²⁶ Here Hegel’s charge is not that it is unclear how

There are other possible interpretations of this phrase. For example, Hegel may be referringback to the natural thought as something that is an empty appearance of knowing, because,though it claims to be interested in providing knowledge, it is ultimately bankrupt and thusmerely appears to deliver the kind of knowledge it promises.

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to understand the terms that would be used to define cognition of appearances,but rather that even if these terms were clear, cognition of appearances wouldfall short of genuine knowledge, since, lacking real objects, it would be emptyand thus merely appear to be knowing rather than be actual knowledge. ThoughHegel does not clarify why that would be the case, one might think that if ap-pearances are subject-dependent entities (as they are in some sense for Kant),then knowledge of something that depends on cognitive subjects of a certainsort for its existence is inferior to knowledge of something that exists completelyindependently of such subjects (much as Plato privileges knowledge of the formsover other kinds of ‘knowledge’).

Third, Hegel suggests that the cost of focusing on the terms involved in thiskind of defective knowledge is, in effect, that it keeps one from getting on withthe business of Science. By allowing oneself to be distracted with this emptykind of knowledge, one ends up “warding off Science itself” with, in effect,“an attempt to avoid the main problem” (§76). This analysis suggests that onecould simply dispense with the unnecessary (and possibly even deceptive)tasks of drawing distinctions between different kinds of truth and clarifyingthe meanings of the terms that would be required to draw these distinctions;we could spare ourselves the task of “troubling ourselves”, “putting up with ex-cuses”, and “bothering to refute [these] ideas” (§76). Instead, we could straight-away engage in Science itself and achieve cognition of the Absolute. Thus, evenif one could pursue cognition of appearances and hope that, when adequatelyclarified, it would not suffer from the deficiencies that Hegel foresees, itwould clearly be better if one could have cognition of ultimate reality, i.e., theAbsolute. Why settle for what is clearly second choice in place of what is, byall accounts, the most desirable kind of cognition?

Now a defender of Kant’s position would take a rather dim view of Hegel’sfirst two objections. For one, Hegel does not take into consideration the definingfeatures of Kant’s account of how we can know appearances. On Kant’s view, tosay that we can have knowledge of appearances is to say that everyone who isendowed with spatio-temporal forms of intuition and a discursive understandingought to judge appearances in the same way and on the basis of reasons that areavailable to all (even if those who lack such cognitive capacities would not). In-sofar as appearances are objects that are constituted by such cognitive subjects,appearances do exist as publically accessible objects and can be what makejudgments true (or false), even if they are not ontologically fundamental.²⁷ As

Mathematical knowledge is commonly thought of as true, even if the ontological status of



a result, on Kant’s account knowledge of appearances involves normativity, jus-tification, and truth. Accordingly, to claim that a view such as Kant’s relies on ahazy distinction is not an especially powerful philosophical objection unless it isbacked up with further argument (that would show the distinction to be incoher-ent in some way). For another, to claim that knowledge of appearances is a mereappearance of knowledge and second-rate presupposes that we are in fact pos-session of a superior kind of knowledge, but that is a presupposition that has notbeen supported with any argument at this point in the Phenomenology. Thus, nei-ther of these first two objections represents a well-founded objection to Kant’sposition once some of the resources that support it have been brought to light.

The third objection, by contrast, is more interesting. Kant undertakes the Cri-tique of Pure Reason in response to a specific historical circumstance, namely, acrisis in metaphysics. He responds to that crisis by undertaking an analysis ofthe faculty of reason so as to be able to determine the possibility, principles,and domain of a priori cognition, since that promises to allow one to learnwhether we can have cognition in metaphysics. Of course, he could have re-sponded to other philosophical problems instead. For example, he could haveattempted to refute radical skepticism, and that would have led him to undertakea different philosophical project. Since Kant’s own project is just one amongmany, he does not have an argument that entails that one must accept the nat-ural thought to the extent that he does and everything that goes along with it.But if that is the case, he also cannot object in advance to Hegel’s proposal ofsimply getting on with the business of Science. Kant, or a defender of Kant,must concede that it can make sense for Hegel to pursue his own project (espe-cially if it remains an open question at this point as to whether the position heends up with coincides with Kant’s).²⁸

As a result, Hegel’s objections to Kant in §§73–75 of the Introduction are bestseen not as an attempt at a decisive refutation of Kant’s position, but rather as a

the objects that make it true is different from that of, say, empirical objects. Cf. Ameriks 2012,chaps. 3 and 4. This assessment is complicated by the fact that Kant does devote considerable attention(e.g., in the Transcendental Dialectic) to establishing that we cannot have cognition of things inthemselves, which is the rough equivalent of Hegelian Science, or knowledge of the absolute.Thus, it would be appropriate for a defender of Kant to claim that Hegel’s own positive projectattempts something that Kant has already shown to be impossible, and to insist that Kant hasthus already ruled out the project Hegel is trying to motivate. At the same time, and in line withmy overall thesis in this paper, Hegel could reasonably respond that the place to engage Kant’sdetailed arguments is not the Introduction, but later in the Phenomenology of Spirit. For dis-cussion of Hegel’s specific responses to Kant’s discussion in the Antinomies and Paralogisms,see Ameriks 2000, 301–308.

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series of critical reflections that are intended to do no more than to call intoquestion the necessity of the natural thought that Kant accepts.²⁹ What these re-flections reveal is that the natural thought as articulated by Kant (i) rests on cer-tain motivations and assumptions, which could look arbitrary compared to abroader set of choices, (ii) demands philosophical clarification of certainterms, and (iii) could have unappealing implications (such as skepticism), de-pending on how the view is worked out. Accordingly, judged in this light, it isopen to Hegel to suggest his own approach as a genuine alternative, onebased on different assumptions and motivations, with a distinct set of potentialconsequences. This interpretation of Hegel’s critical engagement with Kant in§§73–75 has the virtue of being based on a close and continuous reading ofthe text and also advances a position that would not be blatantly question-begging against Kant. At the same time, if Hegel hopes to present a philosophicalposition that is ultimately superior to Kant’s, the Introduction has not establish-ed any such superiority.³⁰ It is thus appropriate that Hegel’s critical engagementwith Kant continues on into the main argument of the Phenomenology of Spirit.

2. How Science Appears, or the Method of thePhenomenology of Spirit (§§76–80)

As we have just seen, in the middle of §76, Hegel suggests that having dispensedwith the necessity of the natural thought, we simply get on with the business ofScience since its knowledge of the absolute is superior to “an empty appearanceof knowing” (i.e., cognition of mere appearances as maintained by Kant’s posi-tion), which merely gets in the way of Science. However, Hegel recognizes that hecannot simply introduce Science as superior to all other accounts, since theclaims of Science are not immediately self-evident; instead, Science “comes on

Stern 2002, 40, similarly argues that one can read Hegel more charitably by taking his claimin a weaker fashion, namely as asserting merely that “there is little reason to adopt the criticaltheorist’s approach as a ‘natural assumption’ at the outset, prior to philosophical inquiry […].What is significant, therefore, is that Hegel undermines the status of the critical epistemicmethod as a ‘natural assumption’, even if some of its proponents (such as Kant) could have hadother, philosophically more substantive, reasons for adopting it”. It is difficult to rule out the possibility that Hegel thinks that the argument of the In-troduction shows not merely the lack of necessity of the natural thought, but also the superiorityof his own method of determinate negation (on the assumption that the method of determinatenegation can deliver what it promises). However, I have argued that it is at least not necessary toread Hegel as committed to such a philosophically uncharitable interpretation of Kant.



the scene [and] is itself an appearance” (§76) just like any other claim to know-ledge. As a result, Science must demonstrate that its claims are in fact superiorto other claims to knowledge (such as Kant’s), which it can do only by “turningagainst” such claims (instead of merely leaving them behind). Thus, if his discus-sion of the natural thought in §§73–75 showed that the natural thought is not theonly possible option, he now explicitly recognizes that his own option is, at thispoint, simply one among many and that one needs a further justification to viewany of the available options as genuine Science (or knowledge of the Absolute).

In the second half of §76, Hegel considers and rejects two ways in which Sci-ence might try to assert its superiority over “untrue” competitors to knowledge,such as Kant’s. First, Science might simply assure us that it is better than its com-petitors, but “untrue knowledge” can make an analogous assurance, and “onebare assurance is worth just as much as another” (ibid.). That is, simply claimingthe superiority of one option does not demonstrate the superiority of that option.Second, Science might assert that the “vulgar view”, which involves knowledgeof appearances, implicitly acknowledges the possibility of a better option, name-ly knowledge of the ultimate reality that underlies and gives rise to appearances.Accordingly, Science would be justified insofar as it is a superior form that is en-tailed by the inferior form of knowledge of what appears to us. However, in ad-dition to the fact that this claim is still just an assurance that one set of claims isbetter than another, there is the problem that the justification of Science in thiscase would have to appeal to “an inferior form of its being, to the way it appears”(ibid.) and therefore to something that is a mere appearance of itself, which isnot justified, rather than to what is justified. That is, it seems highly counter-intuitive, if not contradictory, to appeal to what is unjustified (namely the ap-pearance of Science) rather than to what is in fact justified (namely Science)to provide a satisfactory justification of Science. Given the failure of these twoways of justifying Science and in light of the fact that both Science and its com-petitors “appear” on the scene and make knowledge claims, Hegel infers that hemust appeal to a different form of justification, one that considers not the justi-fications that would be appropriate if one were to grant one’s own claims, butrather “how knowledge makes its appearance” (ibid.), that is, a kind of justifica-tion that draws on how the knowledge claims “appear” in consciousness and isthus properly called a “phenomenology”.

Over the course of §§77–79 Hegel then lays out the phenomenological meth-od that he maintains is required to justify Science. Stated abstractly, the methoddictates that one start with how Science would appear to consciousness (albeitinitially in an inadequate form, though without consciousness immediately see-ing its inadequacy), and then that one advance on “a path of natural conscious-ness” through a series of “configurations” or “shapes of consciousness” that are

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determined “by its own nature”, until it reaches “completeness”, which occurswhen it attains an “awareness of what it really is in itself” (§77), i.e., the statusof genuine Science.³¹ That is, one starts with natural consciousness, i.e., a firstmodel of what might initially appear to be knowledge, and then moves through aseries of intermediate models each of which is designed so as to avoid the prob-lems encountered by the previous model until one reaches a final model that iscomplete and incapable of being improved upon. Further, because the method isphenomenological, consciousness must experience the inadequacy of its ownmodel at each stage. For this reason the method by which the inadequacies ofeach non-ultimate model are revealed is “regarded as the pathway of doubt(Zweifel), or more precisely as the way of despair (Verzweiflung)” (§78). That is,because these doubts force consciousness to see the inadequacy (or untruth)of its own model, consciousness experiences these doubts and inadequaciesas leading to a state of despair.³² However, because consciousness movesthrough a series of increasingly sophisticated models and, at the end, is sup-posed to arrive at a satisfactory model, consciousness can, in the end, experi-ence its path as “the education of consciousness itself to the standpoint of Sci-ence” (ibid.).

Three features of Hegel’s phenomenological method are distinctive. First,the path is necessary in the sense that there can be only one starting point(since there can be only one simplest natural shape of consciousness), andthen it proceeds by way of necessary steps by adding, at each stage, the smallestpossible bit of complexity that is required to reach the next model.³³ Second, thetransition from one stage to the next proceeds by way of what Hegel calls “de-terminate negation” (§79). Not only are both the beginning model and the tran-

This statement is not only abstract, but also extremely compressed. Unfortunately, spaceconstraints prevent me from attempting either to describe the basic features of Hegel’s view indetail or to provide any kind of textual justification. Hegel notes that the doubts raised in this case are not like other doubts, which are such that,once removed, one can hold fast to one’s initial belief. Instead, the doubts Hegel has in mindforce one to reject one’s original beliefs for good (e.g., that natural consciousness might possessgenuine knowledge). Pippin 1989, 108, distinguishes between stronger and weaker kinds of transition. Thestronger version, which I have described above, claims that an ensuing stage follows necessarilyupon a preceding stage as the only possible resolution of the difficulties that the preceding stageencounters. The weaker version Pippin identifies states that it is enough if the ensuing stagedoes actually resolve the difficulties that have arisen, even if that leaves open the possibility thatthere may be other possible resolutions. Pippin argues in favor of the second option on thegrounds that the former is “hopelessly ambitious”, while the latter still suffices for at least “agood deal of what is important about” Hegel’s idealism.



sition from each model to the next necessary, but what makes each transitionnecessary is the fact that consciousness discovers an internal incoherence inevery case that “negates” the model that is under consideration. But unlike “nor-mal” cases of negation, determinate negation is not merely negative, but alsogenerates a “content” or “a new form”; it entails what new element must beadded in each case to reach the next model (one that can avoid the incoherenceof the previous model). In short, with determinate negation one learns some-thing positive from each failure such that one knows how to move on to thenext simplest possibility. In this way, one comes to know not only that a givenform of consciousness is inadequate, but also what would be minimally neces-sary to remedy the inadequacy that had become evident to consciousness and,as a result, what must be added to the model at the next stage. Third, the methodrequires “the completeness of the series” (§79). That is, eventually consciousnesswill have considered all of the possibilities and reached a stage of “absoluteknowledge” where it is impossible to conceive of a better view, since there is anecessary coincidence or fit of the model’s various elements, with no possibilityof any incoherence or mismatch. This final view is Science and it is justified be-cause all possible competitors are internally incoherent while it is necessarilyconsistent.

This description of Hegel’s phenomenological method reveals that it is ex-tremely ambitious and potentially quite powerful, since it promises to deliversubstantive philosophical results that would be superior to every other possibleoption. At the same time, it is correspondingly difficult to evaluate his method inthe abstract, independently of the way in which it is applied throughout thecourse of the Phenomenology of Spirit.³⁴ For how could one know that onlyone starting point can be the simplest, without knowing which model Hegelhas in mind? Further, few are likely to favor internal incoherence, but howwould one know at any given stage that only one positive element can removethe incoherence,without investigating all the different transitions that Hegel pro-poses? Finally, what assurance could one have that no possibilities have beenoverlooked and that the final stage is in fact necessarily adequate if one hasnot actually surveyed all of the possibilities and investigated the details ofwhat he claims is the final model? As a result, it is difficult to know how onecould develop a proper evaluation of Hegel’s distinctive method without consid-ering how he carries it out throughout the Phenomenology of Spirit.

However, for present purposes, it suffices to note that Hegel’s adoption of hisphenomenological method requires that he identify further reasons for rejecting

See, for example, Ameriks 1992, 177–202, esp. 181 and 194–95.

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Kant’s position (that is, reasons in addition to those articulated in §§73–75). Thatis, since Hegel’s method requires that he demonstrate the internal incoherence ofevery alternative to his own, it immediately follows that he must, at some pointin the main argument of the Phenomenology of Spirit, also show that Kant’s po-sition is incoherent (insofar as Kant’s position is in fact different from Hegel’s).Insofar as the form of consciousness under consideration in Sense-Certaintymaintains that our senses suffice for knowledge and Kant maintains that the un-derstanding must supplement sensibility for cognition, it is clear that Kant is justas critical of the position represented in Sense-Certainty as Hegel is. Similarly,insofar as the model investigated in the various twists and turns of Perceptioninvolves only (various combinations of) simple sensible universals and notmore complicated notions of force or law, Kant will again agree that such amodel is insufficient for cognition in a sufficiently rich sense. As a result, oneespecially promising place to look for Hegel’s critical engagement with Kant’sposition in theoretical philosophy is in “Force and the Understanding”, thoughwe are not able to consider that issue here.³⁵ Instead, we can hold onto thefact that Hegel’s phenomenological method commits him to providing a power-ful criticism of Kant’s position, according to which it must be shown to be inter-nally inconsistent, even if he need not have provided that criticism in the Intro-duction to the Phenomenology of Spirit.³⁶

3. Conclusion

What we thus find in the Introduction to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit is anextended critical treatment of Kant’s position that is both balanced and nuanced.The considerations that Hegel raises against the motivations, assumptions, andconsequences of the natural thought (to which Kant is committed) are not bestunderstood as an (overly ambitious) attempt at directly refuting Kant’s position,since, as we have seen, Kant is in a position to reply to Hegel’s specific objec-tions. Instead, they plausibly show that Kant’s starting points, project, and (pos-

For a brief treatment of this issue, see Watkins 2012, 228–250. Further, even if one grantsthat Hegel criticizes Kant’s position in theoretical philosophy in “Force and the Understanding”,that does not rule out the possibility that Kant’s position (e.g., in practical philosophy) iscriticized elsewhere as well. Other passages that would require careful scrutiny are those sec-tions of the Phenomenology that treat of reason as lawgiver and reason as testing laws. Whether this conclusion is true depends on Kant’s and Hegel’s solutions to the so-calledproblem of the criterion in the final §§ of the Introduction. If Hegel were to have a significantadvantage on that score, even the Introduction alone might tip in Hegel’s direction.



sibly) conclusions are not inevitable, since one can reject the presuppositions ofKant’s project and, as a consequence, the position he ends up with. As a result,Hegel is clearly well within his rights to propose and pursue a different philo-sophical project, namely that of attempting to justify Science. At the sametime, even if no refutation of Kant is forthcoming in the argument of the Intro-duction, Hegel is not thereby weakened to such an extent that he must silentlyaccept Kant’s position as a competitor to his own. In fact, quite the contrary isthe case. For Hegel argues that the kind of philosophical method that his ownproject of attaining absolute knowledge involves requires that, in the course ofdemonstrating his philosophical system, he show that all alternative accountsare incoherent. Thus, somewhere Hegel must establish that Kant’s position can-not be tenable on Kant’s own terms.While one might have had greater hopes forthe Introduction, it is perhaps not surprising to learn that, in the end, the weightof Hegel’s engagement with Kant does not lie in an introductory section (even ifit sets the stage for it), but rather in the detailed investigation of the specificforms of consciousness that constitutes the bulk of the Phenomenology of Spirit.³⁷

Bibliography

Ameriks, Karl (1992): “Recent Work on Hegel: The Rehabilitation of an Epistemologist?”,Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 52. pp. 177–202.

Ameriks, Karl (2000): Kant and the Fate of Autonomy, New York: Cambridge University Press.Ameriks, Karl (2003): “Kant and Short Arguments to Humility” in: Interpreting Kant’s

Critiques, Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 135–157.Ameriks, Karl (2012): Kant’s Elliptical Path, Oxford: Clarendon Press.Brandom, Robert (unpublished manuscript): In the Spirit of Trust.Bristow, William (2007): Hegel and the Transformation of Philosophical Critique, Oxford:

Oxford University Press.Gräser, Andreas (1988): Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Einleitung zur Phänomenologie des

Geistes. Kommentar, Stuttgart: Reclam.Hegel, G.W.F. (1977): The Phenomenology of Spirit, translated by A.V. Miller, Oxford: Oxford

University Press.Hyppolite, Jean (1974): Genesis and Structure of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, Evanston:

Northwestern University Press.Köhler, D. & O. Pöggeler, O. (eds.) (2006): Hegels Phänomenologie des Geistes, Berlin:

Akademie Verlag.

I thank Karl Ameriks for extremely insightful lectures on Hegel years ago, which haveinfluenced me in many ways, and Peter Thielke, Clinton Tolley, and Peter Yong for helpfulcomments on the penultimate version of this paper.

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Pippin, Robert (1989): Hegel’s Idealism: The Satisfactions of Self-Consciousness, New York:Cambridge University Press.

Sedgwick, Sally (2011): Hegel’s Critique of Kant, New York: Oxford University Press.Stern, Robert (2002): Hegel and the Phenomenology of Spirit, New York: Routledge.Stewart, Jon (2000): The Unity of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit: A Systematic

Interpretation, Evanston: Northwestern University Press.Taylor, Charles (1975): Hegel, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Watkins, Eric (2012): “Kraft und Gesetz: Hegels Kant-Kritik im Kapitel ‘Kraft und Verstand’ der

Phänomenologie des Geistes,” in: International Yearbook for German Idealism /Internationales Jahrbuch für Deutschen Idealismus. pp. 228–250.




Documents

Philosophie nach Kant (Neue Wege zum Verständnis von Kants Transzendental- und Moralphilosophie) || Hegel’s Critique of Kant in the Introduction to the Phenomenology of Spirit (§§73–80)