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Hegel, Naturalism and Transcendental Philosophy
Hegel, naturalismo y losofía trascendental
-
tem as conditional upon a synthesis of naturalism and transcendental philosophy, the
general features of which shall be elaborated. Despite his long-standing reputation as a
between philosophy and empirical science cannot be easily accommodated within the for-
philosophical reason with a synthetic function which few contemporary naturalists would
recognise. As such, Hegel’s methodology combines features of philosophical persuasions
often considered fundamentally irreconcilable.
Such a synthesis of naturalism and transcendental philosophy is made possible by
an autonomous rational freedom, and his proposal that mind or Spirit be understood as
conformity to rational principles of synthetic unity need not be explained as necessarily
conditional upon a priori criteria of intelligibility originating in a non-natural subject.
Rather, Hegel maintains, nature grounds the ontological possibility of a Spirit which
grounds the possibility of nature, so that nature and Spirit ground one another.
Keywords:
subjectivity, a priori, absolute idea, absolute idealism.
características generales serán elaboradas. A pesar de su reputación de larga data como
-
horizontes formalistas del trascendentalismo kantiano. Al mismo tiempo, sin embargo,
1
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-
poráneos reconocerían. Como tal, la metodología de Hegel combina características de las
Hegel de cualquier dicotomía kantiana entre una naturaleza animal heterónoma y una li-
bertad racional autónoma, y su propuesta de que la mente o el espíritu se entiendan como
la ‘verdad’ o la autorrealización de la naturaleza. en lugar de su antítesis. Para Hegel,
entonces, la conformidad de la naturaleza con los principios racionales de unidad sintética
no necesita explicarse como necesariamente condicionada a criterios a priori de inteligi-
bilidad que se originan en un sujeto no natural. Más bien, sostiene Hegel, la naturaleza
fundamenta la posibilidad ontológica de un Espíritu que fundamenta la posibilidad de la
naturaleza, de modo que la naturaleza y el Espíritu se fundamentan mutuamente.
Palabras clave: -
tividad, a priori, idea absoluta, idealismo absoluto.
Introduction
-
te to him a pre-Critical dogmatic metaphysics of almost comical grandiosity,
scholars of his thought remain divided over the extent to which he may be
which is vital to making sense of Hegel’s relevance to contemporary philoso-
relationship between Hegel and the Critical philosophy. To those for whom
-
-
tonomy with which the rational subject legislates to the object, Hegel is a more
Naturphilo-
sophie, which de-centres the constitutive function of the subject with respect to
-
subjectivity from objectivity. Any adequate treatment of his relation to the Cri-
understood as its organic self-development, or as the self-overcoming of its
own incomplete development. As such, it would seem, Hegel must understand
his own idealist position both
more ‘embryonic’ transcendental philosophy, and as the refutation of trans-
25
Hegel, Naturalism and Transcendental Philosophy
cendentalism. For Hegel, then, transcendental philosophy must somehow be
something preserved, developed, and, at the same time, overcome.
-
phy is further complicated, however, by the related issue of his proximity to
Prolegomena to any Future
Metaphysics
2
without, therefo-
re, needing to rest upon the a priori constitutive activity of the transcendental
subject. As a number of scholars, such as Pinkard and DeVries, have remarked,
Hegel shares much in common with certain forms of naturalism, particularly
in terms of his apparent commitment to the continuity of humanity with the
natural domain. However, insofar as naturalism is widely understood to be
antithetical to transcendental philosophy, it may seem that the closer Hegel
comes to either position, the further he must therefore depart from the other.
Whereas transcendentalism is generally associated with a commitment to the
naturalism is frequently thought to champion the continuity of philosophical
and empirical modes of understanding and explanation. Transcendentalists
often lean towards a species of idealism and are dubious of the prospects avai-
lable for a naturalistic understanding of consciousness and representation,
whereas naturalists are typically inclined towards forms of realism and are
more willing to treat mind and meaning as natural phenomena. In these res-
pects and others, naturalism and transcendental philosophy appear entirely
incompatible, and to defy even Hegel’s impressive capacity for the synthetic
integration of apparently opposed positions.
integrate naturalist and transcendentalist themes within his overarching sys-
tem of absolute idealism. Special emphasis is given to how Hegel proposes
-
supposes an Absolute viewpoint which he does not properly make thematic.
-
ce between nature and subjectivity is overcome, so that there is no dramatic
separation between the naturalist and transcendentalist perspectives. Ultima-
transcendental project from within
reason aspires may be achieved and the radical duality of subject and object
overcome in the unity of the Absolute Idea.
2
, Prolegomena to Any Future Metapysics, translated by James W. Ellington,
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1. Naturalistic Interpretations of Hegel
In a remarkable reversal of interpretations of his work standard, at least
amongst analytically-trained commentators, since the early twentieth cen-
who renounces supernatural entities of every description and seeks to ac-
commodate rational norms, processes and ideals entirely within the scope of
the natural domain. Whereas Taylor’s landmark 1975 study is characteristic
of a period during which even those who were sympathetic to Hegel unders-
tood his idealism as a speculative metaphysical position which downgrades
the ontological status of natural phenomena to mere appearances ancillary
to the super-sensible process of an Absolute Mind’s self-articulation, such
‘spirit monist’ interpretations are very much out of favour amongst contem-
porary Hegelians.
3
Far more representative of current trends in Hegel scho-
larship is Pinkard’s account of Hegel’s idealism as a naturalistic position
concerning the social and historical operations by which agents are able to
emerge from within the natural domain and develop a self-conception, all
without recourse to super-sensible agencies, whether divine or otherwise.
4
For Pinkard and other such ‘naturalistic’ interpreters of his system, Hegel
to agents by means of sensible experience, nor does he recognise any demand
for noumenal or intelligible characteristics of the subject in order to account for
intended to safeguard practical reason and moral agency against intrusions
from a deterministic natural domain, are redundant, it is maintained, given
at least outside of his Critique of Judgement, and it is therefore unnecessary to
look elsewhere than to naturally- originating explanatory resources in order
to make sense of how freedom and responsibility are possible. According to
such naturalistic interpretations, nature need not be understood as a by-pro-
duct of an Absolute Mind’s self-contemplation in order for it to be recognised
as accommodating, rather than foreign to, reason and rational norms.
All the same, even the most enthusiastic champion of a naturalistic inter-
pretation of Hegel would acknowledge that Hegel’s naturalism is importantly
distinct from that which is standardly opposed to transcendental philosophy,
at least amongst contemporary analytic philosophers. Certainly, it is very mis-
leading, to say the least, to claim Hegel as an ancestor of Quine, whatever
3
, Hegel, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.
4
See, for instance, , Hegel’s Naturalism: Mind, Nature, and the Final Ends of Life,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
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Hegel, Naturalism and Transcendental Philosophy
-
deed, where commentators have spoken of Hegel’s ‘naturalism’, they have
very often distinguished between ‘conservative’ or ‘exclusive’ and ‘liberal’ or
‘inclusive’ naturalist positions, identifying Quine with the former and Hegel
5
According to McDowell, for instance, in terms of its anti-no-
minalistic and anti-scientistic credentials, Hegel’s naturalism has far more in
common with Aristotle’s than with Quine’s.
6
Even assuming that his naturalism is of a more inclusive and reconci-
liationist variety does not, however, by itself eliminate the aforementioned
concern about Hegel’s relationship to transcendental philosophy, for there
remain several issues upon which the transcendentalist and the liberal na-
turalist appear to be at odds and to resist the general Hegelian integrationist
strategy. One particular point of contention concerns the relation of philoso-
phy to the empirical sciences. As DeVries noted as long ago as 1988:
and right Hegelians, which centred on religious and social issues, but a new
-
pirical sciences. The disagreement is over whether philosophy itself emerges
out of them and depends on them in some real sense (this would be the po-
sition of the Hegelian left, I suppose) or comes to the empirical sciences from
outside, with a fund of knowledge both independent of and superior to that
of the empirical sciences (the position of the right).
7
After declaring for what he here presents as ‘the Hegelian left’, DeVries
announces that “I read Hegel as a great naturalist, as one who saw man as
arising out of and continuous with nature and capable of being understood
8
This, presumably, would leave a priori trans-
cendentalist interpretations of Hegel’s position with respect to the natural
sciences occupying what DeVries indicates to be ‘the Hegelian right’. Cer-
-
losophy of nature and its relation to his philosophy of spirit. Here Stone’s
‘strong apriorist’ interpretation of Hegel’s philosophy of nature may be con-
trasted with Pinkard’s a posteriori approach for a helpful indication of the
5
See, for instance, y, Naturalism in Question, Harvard, M.A.: Har-
vard University Press, 2008, for comparisons between naturalism of ‘conservative’ and ‘libe-
ral’ forms.
6
See, for instance, McDowell (1994) and McDowell (2009).
7
DeVries (1988) xii.
8
DeVries (1988) xii.
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9
Such disagreement might also serve
even within Hegel’s omnivorous system.
2. Hegel and Kant
Hegel’s debt to the Critical philosophy is well-captured in Moore’s obser-
vation that:
Hegel believes, just as Fichte believed, that a bald naturalism cannot do jus-
tice to the phenomenon of subjectivity. For subjectivity cannot be understood
merely as an epiphenomenon of objectivity, certainly not of the objectivity
the objectivity of the natural world must itself be understood as grounded in
The natural world is itself constituted in part, by the concepts that we use in
thinking about it. To deny this would in Hegel’s view be retrograde.
10
According to Moore (who describes Hegel’s metaphysics as ‘transcen-
dentalism cum naturalism’), Hegel applauds the object-constitutive function
-
numental advance in the philosophical understanding of humanity’s awa-
reness of its own autonomous and self-determining status. What is more,
insofar as the concepts in terms of which the natural world is intelligible to
of a logic which precedes the philosophy of nature in Hegel’s system, this too
marks a point of continuity between Hegel and transcendentalism. As Stone
explains in her ‘strong apriorist’ approach to Hegel’s philosophy of nature,
Hegel may be understood therefore as identifying certain a priori conceptual
forms to which natural phenomena must conform while remaining at liberty
to introduce into such outlines an a posteriori content of their own.
Moore is quick to point out, however, that the subjectivity in which the
ascribed to that which is not limited by something ‘other’ to itself than to
9
See , Petried Intelligence: Nature in Hegel’s Philosophy, Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press,
2005; and , Hegel’s Naturalism: Mind, Nature, and the Final Ends of Life, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2012.
10
, A.W., The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics: Making Sense of Things, Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2012, p. 167.
29
Hegel, Naturalism and Transcendental Philosophy
Hegel means for it to be understood as ‘including’ nature within itself, ra-
Such an understanding of subject and object as non-oppositionally rela-
of how it might be possible for Hegel to integrate features of both natura-
lism and transcendentalism and how, depending upon the perspective from
which Hegel’s system is examined, he might be claimed either as a naturalist
is, for Hegel, a species of transcendentalism and a properly developed trans-
cendentalism is a species of naturalism. Whether one begins from the pers-
pective of the object or from that of the subject then, one shall, according to
Hegel, be naturally led to the other. Hegel’s philosophy of nature is inten-
ded, of course, to trace the logical process by which object-centred thought
becomes subject- centred, and hence of why one cannot properly conceive
of nature without giving an account of the subject. For Hegel, however, one
can no more give an account of the subject without giving an account of na-
ture than one can give an account of nature without giving an account of the
subject. Hence, it is important to make sense of why, according to Hegel,
the subject-centric perspective must transform itself into an object-centric
philosophy. This, however, is very close indeed to explaining why Hegel un-
3. Hegel’s Idealism as the Self-Completion of Kant’s
It is a central commitment of the Critical philosophy that human reason
assigns itself tasks the solutions to which it is absolutely incapable of provi-
predicament of seeking to determine the unconditional grounds of empirical
phenomena when the scope of its possible knowledge is necessarily restric-
ted to the domain of appearances conditioned by the subject’s a priori forms
of sensible intuition. What is more, it is not because of any faulty reaso-
it is precisely because of humanity’s capacity for reason that it experiences
the temptation to explain the ultimate conditions of the synthetic unity of
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-
against its own boundaries. Reason’s only consolation in the unenviable sce-
-
yment of its ideas of the unconditioned, and hence to think of the world ‘as
approximate an ideal of complete systematic unity, which must nonetheless
remain as a target to be approached but never reached.
For Hegel, of course, such an account of reason’s predicament is wholly
inadmissible, and reason sets itself no tasks which it cannot accomplish. That
when Hegel remarks, in the Science of Logic, that:
In reason, the highest stage of thought, one ought to have expected the No-
tion to lose the conditionedness in which it still appears at the stage of under-
dialectical,
and indeed takes the result of this dialectic to be the innite nothing- just that
-
prived of the synthesis, and with it the beginning […] of a speculative, truly
-
tive unity of the systematic employment of the understanding. It is declared to be
an abuse when logic, which is supposed to be merely a canon of judgement, is
regarded as an organon for the production of objective insights. The notions
of reason in which we could not but have an intimation of a higher power
constitutive character as
do the categories, they are mere Ideas; certainly we are quite at liberty to use
them, but by these intelligible entities in which all truth should be completely
revealed, we are to understand nothing more than hypotheses, and to ascribe
absolute truth to them would be the height of caprice and foolhardiness, for
they- do not occur in any experience.
11
For Hegel, it would seem, to admit for reason no more than a regulati-
ve status is to concede the impossibility of completing the task of synthesis
which conceptual thought assigns itself in the face of any manifold. The Ideas
in his view historically contingent representations but originate a priori in the
capacity for rational thought and form a part of the thinking subject’s concep-
tual inventory because they are necessary to complete the work of synthesis
11
, G.W.F., Hegel’s Science of Logic, translated by A.V. Miller, Amherst, N.Y: Humanity
Books, 1969, pp. 589-90.
31
Hegel, Naturalism and Transcendental Philosophy
which begins with the faculties of sensibility and understanding. By refusing
-
ces a position which is, in Hegel’s view self- frustrating and a classic example
of the internal tensions which must befall any philosophical outlook short of
which it sets for itself. Thankfully, according to Hegel, the key to overcoming
position, and needs only to be further developed and elaborated. Once this is
done, however, and it is seen how reason is not prevented from completing
its self- assigned tasks, transcendental philosophy need no longer be unders-
tood as necessarily opposed to naturalism.
Hegel, is to recognise that the very project of self-limitation by means of which
domain of which one can know nothing is itself self-undermining. In Hegel’s
view, the cognitive capacities by means of which a boundary is drawn between
the knowable and the unknowable cannot themselves fall within the boundary
in question, so that the very act of drawing such a boundary implies that one
must have done so from a perspective external to that boundary. Hence Hegel
the innite
12
With the recognition, however, that reason can-
of metaphysical understanding there are no grounds to suppose that reason
is necessarily incapable of completing its self-assigned task of grounding the
synthetic unity of the system of nature in unconditional grounds.
-
rate within at a certain time and place must be the result of reason’s not yet
yet being for-itself what it is in-itself.
With the achievement of such an absolute standpoint, however, and the
transcendental philosopher, it enjoys in relation to the object, both being
12
, G.W.F., Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature, translated by A.V. Miller, Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1970, p. 385.
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grounded in a deeper source of synthetic unity. Contrary to the allegations
transcendental idealism not by resorting to a pre-critical dogmatic metaphy-
sics but rather by seeing the transcendental project through to completion in
-
timately realised in Hegel’s own system is not therefore, according to He-
gel, a spirit monism which eliminates the independence of nature. Rather,
overcome from within and its unity with nature grasped as grounded in the
unconditioned Idea. Indeed, according to Hegel, the supposed dichotomy
between naturalism and transcendental philosophy is, like that alleged to ob-
tain between liberalism and communitarianism, a mere appearance resulting
from the failure to recognise the unconditional grounds of the synthetic unity
of two positions which, viewed independently of such grounds must seem
incompatible with one another. Far from belonging to an antiquated era of
speculative metaphysical excess then, Hegel is directly relevant to on-going
debates between naturalists and transcendental philosophers and, it might
be hoped, be able to contribute much of value in mediating a viable reconci-
liation between contemporary forms of naturalism and transcendentalism.
Bibliography
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Humanity Books, 1969.
, G.W.F., Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature, translated by A.V. Miller, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1970.
, Prolegomena to Any Future Metapysics, translated by James W.
, A.W., The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics: Making Sense of Things, Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
, Hegel’s Naturalism: Mind, Nature, and the Final Ends of Life, Ox-
ford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
, Petried Intelligence: Nature in Hegel’s Philosophy, Albany, N.Y.:
SUNY Press, 2005.
, Hegel, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.
