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Hegel's Critique of Kant
In this paper I present a reconstruction of Hegel’s critique of Kant. I try to show the continuity of that critique in both theoretical and practical philosophy. I argue that this continuity is to be found in Hegel’s criticism of the dualism of form and matter. In theoretical philosophy, this dualism creates a cognitive gap between ‘concepts’ and ‘data’ that Kant can only bridge by introducing a unifying whole that he calls apperception. In practical philosophy, Kant’s insistence that moral actions can only be performed out of an interest in their form leaves him unable to explain why an agent might ever take any interest in acting morally. In other words, it creates a gap between the agent and his motivations, a gap which Kant tries to solve with an appeal to a ‘fact of reason.’ Hegel is much more sympathetic to Kant’s response to this dualism in theoretical philosophy and he credits Kant with ‘discovering’ here that thinking is an activity that always takes place within a greater whole (apperception). He, however, argues that the consequences of this are much more significant than Kant suspects and that, most importantly, the model of cognition in which thought (form) confronts something non-thought (matter) is unsustainable. This leads to Hegel’s appropriation of Kantian reflective judgements, arguing that the greater whole in which thinking takes place is a socially shared set of meanings, what Kant calls a sensus communis. From here, it is not far to Hegel’s Geist, which eventually gains self-consciousness when it recognizes the inherently social character of all judgments. In practical philosophy, Hegel argues for the importance of situating oneself within a similar set of social meanings, what he here calls Sittlichkeit, in order to attain the self-knowledge required for autonomous, or ethically required, action. For this to happen, he claims, Kantian Moralität needs to recognize its status as a form of Sittlichkeit or social practice. This would justify our practices without an appeal to a ‘fact of reason’ and also allow a wider range of actions that could count as autonomous.