Hegel Workshop: Pinkard

Terry Pinkard's paper, "Transcendental Philosophy, Naturalism and Hegel's Alternative", interpreted Hegel's conception of experience in the Phenomenology, as rejecting a Kantian conceptualism by making a sharp distinction between (perceptual) recognitional capacities and conceptual capacities. Recognitional capacities are inherently normative and form part of what Hegel calls 'subjective spirit'. From this 'middle level of meaning' emerges our fully self-conscious, normative life. Pinkard also argued that Hegel's naturphilosophie must be seen as an attempt to avoid a priori legislation for science. Hegel distinguished between mechanical, chemical and biological explanations, and he held to a form of biological holism. Subsequent scientific developments have invalidated much of this, but actually support the general account of nature as 'pure externality'. It is against this background that we have to understand the account of subjectivity's normativity and freedom.

In discussion, queries were raised about how this interpretations sit with texts other than the Phenomenology, notably the Logic; about whether Hegel was in fact not more Kantian than suggested in holding that some concepts are necessary for recognitional capacities; and about whether the three part division was really a division within science or rather within the philosopher's attempt to understand science.