Hegel’s grounding of philosophy Open Access
Vieyra Ramirez, Ana Z (Spring 2025)
Abstract
The present dissertation defends an interpretation of G.W.F. Hegel’s project in the Science of logic as having a foundational role within his concept of philosophy. Hegel understands philosophy as the activity of truth-aiming cognition. In line with Immanuel Kant’s ‘critical’ turn, which centers on the requirement of demonstrating the very possibility of metaphysics, I argue that Hegel’s Logic offers a grounding for the appropriate categories for the kind of thinking at stake in philosophy: speculative cognition. Since logic is the discipline of thinking, the exhibition of legitimate categories for philosophy falls within the project of a ‘reformed’ logic.
I argue that Logic’s grounding rests on an expository and an evaluative function. Its expository function is to provide an immanent derivation exhausting the possibilities of intelligibility. The ‘immanence’ derives from the requirement to examine thought’s pure content in terms of itself. Thus, the Logic aims to offer a ‘true critique’ of the determinations of thinking by exhausting the formal possibilities of the logical space through a categorical evaluation that considers the content of such determinations. This expository function is subservient to the evaluative function: the determination of categories which are true ‘in and for themselves’ –inherently true categories. Through a reading of the Doctrine of the Concept, I show how the inherently true category of the idea grounds the philosophies of reality by demonstrating the possibility of a categorically adequate cognition of nature and spirit as forms of realized purposiveness.
My dissertation proposes an alternative to both ‘transcendental’ and ‘metaphysical’ accounts of categorical justification. Under my reading, a category’s claim to inherent truth can rely neither on its being the ultimate condition of possibility or the intelligibility of reality or experience, nor on its claim to a ‘mind-independent’ standing. To argue for the sense of ‘objectivity’ at stake in the Logic, I provide a reading of the Subjective Logic where (1) conceptual thinking stands at the ground of the truth-functional engagement with reality; (2) concepts concretize themselves by modifying externality through purposive activity, which answers the problem of how pure thinking can be categorically adequate for the cognition of certain real structures.
Table of Contents
Table of contents 1
Abbreviations 3
General introduction 5
§ 10
§§ 14
Chapter 1 18
0. Introduction 18
1.1 21
1.2. 25
1.3 28
1.4 31
1.5. 47
1.6. Conclusion 52
Chapter 2 55
0. Introduction 55
2.1 57
2.2. 59
2.3 63
2.4 68
2.5. Conclusion 77
Chapter 3 79
0. Introduction 79
3.1. 80
3.2. 84
3.3. 99
3.4. 111
3.5. Conclusion 124
Chapter 4 127
0.4 Introduction 127
4.1. 129
4.2. 141
4.3. 146
4.4. 164
4.5. 173
4.6. 189
4.7. Conclusion 192
Chapter 5 196
5.0 Introduction 196
5.1. 198
5.2. 207
5.3. 214
5.4. 232
5.5. Conclusion 241
Chapter 6 247
6.0. Introduction 247
6.1. 248
6.2. 260
6.3. Life 269
Problem 283
6.4. Cognition 286
6.5. The absolute idea 296
Problem 307
6.6. Conclusion 312
General Conclusion 314
§ 314
§§ 319
§§§ 321
About this Dissertation
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