The Great Financial Crisis that broke in 2008 and the Great Recession that followed has led many to question the very structure of contemporary economies. Some argue that the economic model of the past forty years is now broken. Criticism has also been directed at the orthodoxies of economics. For example, neoclassical equilibrium economics, the mainstream economics of the day, is accused of failing to understand some of the most basic aspects of the modern economy (debt and money), of supporting policies that have led to the economic breakdown (deregulation), and of failing to see the crisis coming (Bezemer 2012, Keen 2011). Consequently, heterodox thinking in economics is getting a hearing as never before. Heterodox economics offers itself as the requisite radical reconstruction of the science of economics and also proposes policies for the radical reconstruction of the major economics.

Yet to talk of the reconstruction of the modern market economy is at the same time to raise the ethical question: what shape ought the market economy to take? Heterodox economics may acutely analyse the inadequacies of real economies and propose plausible reforms, but as an essentially descriptive science there will be limits on its ability to state what ought to be. Rather, what is required seems to be a systematic prescriptive ethics. In other words, recent events in the world of economics have provided an opening for what ethical philosophy should be best at providing. Determining whether a specific ethical philosophy, to be identified shortly, has the capacity to address the questions raised by heterodox economics is the task of this paper.

In this paper it is argued that the conceptions of embodied meaning and of intuition that Hegel appeals to in the Aesthetics anticipate some of Merleau-Ponty’s insights concerning the distinctive character of pre-conceptual, sensuous forms of meaning. It is argued that, for Hegel, our aesthetic experience of the beautiful is such that we cannot readily differentiate in it the purportedly distinct roles that sensation and thought play, and so that the account of sensuous intuition operative here differs from the one appealed to in more familiar, ‘intellectualist’ conceptions that are premised upon our being able to make such a distinction. Some of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological insights are brought to bear to help support and illuminate some of the implications of Hegel’s conception of such sensuously embodied meaning.

Hegel's relation to Kant is often portrayed in terms of epistemic impatience. For W.H. Walsh, for example, whereas Kant seeks to ‘demonstrate that certain kinds of thing [cannot] be objects of human knowledge’, and thus that there are ‘limits to men's cognitive aspirations’, Hegel issues the ‘demand that thought be free to range unchecked wherever it chooses’ and claims the ‘Absolute’ as an object of human knowledge. There are two flaws in this standard account. First, it underestimates the cognitive confidence of Kant's project of a critique of pure reason. Central to this project is the idea that reason has the resources to adjudicate its own claims and thus to know itself. Second, it neglects Hegel's conception of dialectic as the inner discipline of thought. I shall deal with each of these issues in turn. The first part of the paper examines the intellectual commitments entailed by the very idea of a critique of pure reason; the second part addresses the boundary-determining function of dialectic. A fuller understanding of what is meant by ‘critique’ and ‘dialectic’ should enable us not only to re-assess Hegel's relation to Kant, but also to retrieve their shared conception of philosophical reflection as rational self-knowledge. The aim of this paper therefore is to highlight the common ground between the two projects, rather than to emphasise their critical distance. I seek to show that Hegel shares Kant's conviction that ‘philosophy consists in knowing its bounds’ (seine Grenzen zu kennen), even though he accords such knowledge a different status from Kant.

In his debate with Dreyfus McDowell defends the ‘pervasiveness thesis’, the thesis that rational mindedness pervades the lives of rational animals, their perceptual experiences and exercises of agency. To counter this idea, Dreyfus introduces the notion of ‘social standing’: the culturally inculcated yet non-conceptual sense of the appropriate distance that one should stand from another person. McDowell claims that social standing is not a counter-example to the pervasiveness thesis because it stands altogether outside of it. In this paper I argue that this response is a misstep, that we should see social standing as falling within the pervasiveness thesis. While such phenomena do not normally fall within the scope of a subject's practical self- knowledge they are still pervaded by rational mindedness. They are because the dispositions and habits that comprise our second nature, although not the realization of an exercise of conceptual capacities, can be brought within the scope of a subject's practical self-knowledge and in fact changed, and this is enough to establish that they are pervaded by rational mindedness. I argue that we can find a picture like this in a Hegelian-pragmatist account of our habitual second nature.

This paper argues that Hegel’s account of subjectivity and agency as historically coined is essential to an accurate understanding of his theory of tragedy. Focusing on Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, I argue that Hegel’s historical account of agency is necessary for understanding his theory of the ancient tragic hero. Although Hegel’s theory of ancient tragedy is often described in terms of a conflict between ethical spheres embodied in two individuals, the conflict in Oedipus is between Oedipus’ deeds and his later knowledge of what has actually occurred. I show how this seemingly subjective conflict is in keeping with Hegel’s theory. Further, while Hegel sees Oedipus as wrong to take full moral accountability for the consequences of his deeds, at the same time, for Hegel, this is the right action for a tragic hero, and the very thing that renders Oedipus timelessly and tragically heroic, rather than a mere victim of fate.

This article examines Hegel's use of the distinction between ‘artist’ (Künstler) and ‘artisan’ (Werkmeister) in light of recent discussion about the ‘end’ of art and the distinction betweeen art and craft that, as some have argued, has been central to the concept of the fine arts since the eighteenth century. Hegel does employ an important distinction between artist and artisan, but he does so within a larger account of the continuum of forms of human making that can take into consideration the importance of the artisan's work as well as the artist's. Hegel's account involves two distinctive features not always at issue in the artist/artisan distinction: the stress on the social changes required for new forms of art to emerge and an embrace of the human being as the essentially retrospective and interpretive animal in whom the decisive intersection of content and form finally makes art what it is.

In this paper, I explore the question of the reality of God for Hegel. I first consider the contemporary interpretative debate on Hegel’s metaphysics and the implications of this debate for the Hegelian conception of God. I then advocate a ‘qualified revisionist’ approach to Hegel, and, as a further qualification to such an approach, I suggest an interpretation of the objective reality that Hegel attributes to God as mediated objectivity. I analyse how Hegel’s ‘mediated objectivity’ applies to religious representations, suggesting that a figural reading of the kind theorized by philologist Erich Auerbach should be adopted. Finally I reconstruct Hegel’s distinction between the image (Bild) of God, the concept (Begriff) of God, and the Idea (Idee) of God, and I argue that the answer to the question of the objective reality of God in Hegel’s philosophy of religion can be retrieved in the process according to which the concept turns into the Idea.

In the 1930s, C. I. Lewis, who was responsible for the revival of modal logic in the era of modern symbolic logic, characterized ‘intensional’ approaches to logic as typical of post-Leibnizian ‘continental philosophy’, in contrast to the ‘extensionalist’ approaches dominant in the British tradition. Indeed Lewis’s own work in this area had been inspired by the logic of his teacher, the American ‘Absolute Idealist’, Josiah Royce. Hegel’s ‘Subjective Logic’ in Book III of his Science of Logic, can, I suggest, be considered as an intensional modal logic, and this paper explores parallels between it and a later variety of modal logic—tense logic, as developed by Arthur Prior in the 1950s and 60s. Like Lewis, Prior too had been influenced in this area by a teacher with strong Hegelian leanings—John N. Findlay. Treated as an intensional (with an ‘s’) logic, Hegel’s subjective logic can be used as a framework for addressing issues of intentionality (with a ‘t’)—the mind’s capacity to be intentionally directed to objects. In this way, I suggest that the structures of his subjective logic can clarify what is at issue in the ‘Psychology’ section of the Encyclopaedia Philosophy of Subjective Spirit.

I begin by identifying an ambiguity in the post-Hegelian literature on Immanent Critique, distinguishing two possible definitions: (a) judging an object against its ‘internal’ norms; and (b) accounting for one’s own standpoint with reference to the object. I then claim that both definitions are represented in Hegel’s Phenomenology, and develop extended interpretations of material from the Introduction in order to clarify and substantiate this thesis. This yields revisionist readings of the famous ‘internal criteria’ and ‘self examination’ tropes. My discussion builds towards elucidating the relation between the two definitions of Immanent Critique I have distinguished, as it is developed in the Phenomenology.

Does Hegel's social philosophy leave sufficient room for individual agents, or does the Hegelian vision of self-actualising Geist ultimately swallow up individuals in an over-collectivist and all-too-metaphysical system? It depends of course on what is ‘sufficiently’ individualist and what is ‘too’ collectivist or ‘too’ metaphysical. It is common knowledge that Hegel at least tries to avoid one-sided extremes: with concepts like recognition, ethical life and objective spirit, Hegel tried to develop a view, which gives both individuality and sociality their due. To judge how well Hegel succeeds is a matter of detailed analyses. In this paper I focus on one specific topic: intentional action, or more specifically, Hegel's views on the idea of retrospective and intersubjective determination of intention.

The main point is to distinguish four perspectives on human action: 1) The agent's ‘moral’ perspective and the understanding and description under which the agent acted; from this perspective we can thematise the operative intention-in-action and distinguish ‘action’ from ‘deed’. 2) The agent's retrospective awareness and appropriation of the action: was what I did really justified and did it express my true goals? 3) The retrospective takes of others concerning the action, from within relevant social practices and the prevailing Sittlichkeit. 4) The perspective of Reason or Idea as emerging in world history.

Hegel was a systematic philosopher, who grounded his system on a speculative logic. But his greatest philosophical contributions lie in his reflections on human culture: ethics, social and political philosophy, aesthetics, religion and the philosophy of history. This fact poses a problem for anyone who accepts it and then attempts to provide a philosophical discussion of Hegel's thought with the aim of making it available to a later age.

There can be no doubt that any authentic treatment of Hegel's social and political philosophy must take account of Hegel's explicit intention to ground it in his logical system of thought-determinations. But if we simply take that intention at face value, we make our appropriation of Hegel hostage to his philosophical system and speculative logic, which now are at best outdated and, though they may themselves contain some insights of lasting philosophical value, are not of nearly as much philosophical interest as Hegel's thoughts about human culture, society and history. A Hegel whose ethical, social, historical and cultural insights could be appropriated only by those who accept his speculative logical system would be a Hegel few would ever read or learn from.

The other horn of the same dilemma is that those interpreters who are honest enough that they don't accept uncritically Hegel's own account of the structure of his philosophical accomplishments will inevitably be charged with doing violence to Hegel's thought, ignoring its true structure and unity. To quote a passage from Fred Beiser, which Thom Brooks uses to pillory all such Hegel scholarship: ‘We make Hegel alive and relevant, a useful contributor to our concerns; but that is only because we put our own views into his mouth.

On the cover of Thom Brooks's admirable Hegel's Political Philosophy is a picture, taken by the author, of Tynemouth Castle, near where he lives on the northeast coast of England. It is an attractive image, yet it also has significance in relation to the argument of his book —one that only emerges at the end of his narrative.

A basic question that faces all interpreters of The Philosophy of Right is: how far must we understand Hegel's views on politics in the light of his wider philosophical commitments? Behind that question lies a very simple argument:

(1) If we take Hegel at his word, and his political philosophy is indeed integrated within his broader philosophical system; and,

(2) if that philosophical system is a consistent realization of speculative idealism; then

(3) everything will depend on how we evaluate speculative idealism.

Hegel's ambitious metaphysics now finds few defenders, however. So, does his political philosophy fall with it?

To this there are two kinds of reply. The first would make a separation between the political doctrines advanced in Hegel's work and the philosophical framework within which they are embedded. The second, while accepting that Hegel's philosophy is meant to form an integrated whole, disputes the idea that, for that reason, the “dialectical” treatment of particular areas of life and experience depends on our final verdict on the system as a whole. It is possible to enter his system at any point and to continue piecemeal, treating its arguments on their own terms without concern for its final resting point. Against this, Brooks argues that the piecemeal approach fails to do justice to Hegel's text.

Like two heavyweight boxers exchanging punches, but neither landing the knock-out blow, Kantians and Hegelians seem to be in a stand-off on what in contemporary parlance is known as the Empty Formalism Objection. Kant's ethics is charged with being merely formal and thereby failing to provide the kind of specific guidance that any defensible ethical system should have the resources to provide. Hegel is often credited with having formulated this objection in its most incisive way, and a wealth of Kantian responses has been deployed to answer it. In this paper, I take up the objection as it appears in §135R of Elements of the Philosophy of Right in order to scrutinise the contemporary debate between the two camps. I propose that there are, in fact, three different, albeit connected objections and examine (what I take to be) the best Kantian replies to them. I will not adjudicate which of these replies is the most accurate interpretation of Kant's texts, nor trace the particular historical context in which Hegel takes up Kant's ethics, nor the way the Empty Formalism Objection fits into Hegel's wider system. This is partly because of constraints of space, and partly because many of the contemporary Kantian replies — for better or for worse — treat the Empty Formalism Objection as a self-standing philosophical problem, irrespective of its historical context or systematic place in Hegel's theory. My limited aim here is to show that, even if one grants — for argument's sake — the legitimacy of such a non-contextual approach, significant difficulties remain.

Hegel's phenomenological method allows and requires him to justify his own positive views only by thorough internal critique of the views he opposes; Hegel calls this ‘determinate negation’ (§1). Hegel's transcendental-pragmatic epistemology is sharply opposed to empiricism. One key tenet of Modern empiricism is aconceptual ‘knowledge by acquaintance’ of particulars. This view is deeply embedded in Hume's official ‘copy theory’ of sensory impressions and ideas. Both of these views are required by Hume's account of abstract general ideas. Both of these views saw widespread revival in twentieth-century empiricism. Can these views be criticised on strictly internal grounds, as Hegel requires? This paper answers in the affirmative. More thoroughly than any other philosopher, Hume attempted to analyse our conceptual, propositionally-structured thought solely in terms of our ultimate awareness of nothing but objects, whether they be sensory impressions or their copies, ‘ideas’. In this context, Hume's account of our ideas of space and time have long been regarded as anomalies in, if not exceptions to, his account of the generality of thought. I argue that these ideas are not anomalous, but rather are typical of Hume's account of the generality of thought, an account that ultimately undermines Hume's official empiricist account of the generality of thought, based on his copy theory. I reexamine Hume's ‘idea of existence’ to identify some key equivocations between ‘ideas’ as objects and ‘ideas’ as concepts that are crucial to Hume's attempt to account for the generality of thought. The main issue is clarified by placing it within its Modern context (§2). The key issues are then specified by considering Hume's idea of existence (§3). The fundamental role played in Hume's account by his equivocations are then developed in detail by examining Hume's accounts of abstract ideas (§4), of distinctions of reason (§5), of the idea of equality (§6), and of the ideas of space and time (§7). On this basis I contend that Hume's account of the generality of thought is fundamentally linguistic, and is rooted in judgmental discriminations of kinds that cannot be accounted for by appeal to impressions of sensation or reflection, nor their corresponding idea-objects. These conclusions are reinforced and extended by critical evaluation of Garrett's analysis and defence of Hume's account of abstract ideas (§8). Hume is thus not only the great Modern exponent of the copy theory of impressions and ideas, he is also its first and still one of its most profound critics (§9). To this considerable extent, not only are the most basic principles of Hume's empiricism subject to internal critique, as Hegel requires, but Hume himself provides all the essentials of such a critique. These results serve to substantiate and highlight the philosophical significance of Hegel's critique of ‘Sense Certainty’ (§10).

This article investigates Hegel's later theory of perception and cognition, identifying and analysing its general assumptions about the relation among the mind's activities. These often unremarked upon assumptions, I claim, continue to underwrite recent interpretive controversies. I demonstrate how a correct understanding of such assumptions points us toward an alternative interpretation of Hegel's model of the mind. I argue that this new model changes how we understand (a) Hegel's later notion of ‘non-conceptual content’ and (b) his distinction between human and animal minds—two areas that constitute the fault line dividing interpretations of late Hegel. To isolate the relevant assumptions, I use Matthew Boyle's influential conceptual distinction between ‘additive’ and ‘transformative’ models of rationality. I demonstrate that Hegel himself addresses the basic issues characterizing this distinction and clarify how approaching his work in these terms presents considerable interpretative and conceptual advantages, including allowing us to defend the position that Hegel adopts a ‘transformative’ framework of mind. To support this argument, this paper closely analyses Hegel's treatment of sensation (Empfindung), which has not yet been systematically addressed by scholars. I show how sensation can be best understood as part of Hegel's later ‘transformative’ framework for cognition. I also show how this framework can be extended to other parts of Hegel's theory.

Hegel's account of ethical life can be shown to contradict Aristotle's in two main ways: first, Hegel follows Kant in emancipating virtue/duty from the particularity associated with the content of motivational drives and with Aristotle's eudaimonia. Hegel thus rejects Aristotelian happiness as the final end of rational action and prioritizes duty. However, against Kant, Hegel unites (1) abstract duty and (2) determined drives within a speculative notion of ethical duty: rational agents find happiness in heeding duty's call. Second, Hegel follows Kant in emancipating agency's subjective dimension from the all-encompassing determinacy of Aristotelian substance metaphysics. At the same time and against Kant, Hegel unifies agency's undetermined, subjective dimension with the determinacy of objective norms and habitual praxis: ethical praxis must be animated by undetermined subjectivity whilst being determined. In both cases, Hegel goes beyond Aristotle by resting his argument on the speculative structure of ‘the concept of the will’.

Above all else, Hegel can be said to be the master of context, the philosopher who insisted that properly understanding anything involves putting it in its full context, reconstructing its development and its relation to all that is around it. From the beginning of his career, Hegel did not hesitate to put into its place the work of his fellow philosophers; his analysis, critique, and supersession of them occurred all at once, and culminated when he located them within his Phenomenology of Spirit and the final system of his Encyclopedia. Long after Hegel's own era, and even after the sharp decline in the appeal of his specific system and of ambitious systematic philosophy in general, a looser form of Hegel's contextual approach remains very popular, and with good reason. Without giving in entirely to this approach, it is hard to resist the temptation to turn the tables on Hegel himself a bit. Hence, in casting a philosophical glance at the specific phenomenon of Hegel's own aesthetics, in an attempt to begin to evaluate just a few of its most distinctive characteristics (in part 2), I will proceed by first offering a sketch of how I believe his philosophy as a whole should be situated in the context of its own age and the development of German philosophy in general (in part 1).

Of course, my own interpretive perspective has its own context, external and internal. The external context is furnished by two other accounts providing slants on Hegel's aesthetics, slants that I believe are very understandable but in the end inadequate. The first of these slants is given by what I will call the “standard account,” which buys into most of Hegel's own characterization of his aesthetics (like his philosophy in general) as largely a welcome “objective” corrective to the supposedly “subjective” approach of Kant and the allegedly even more radically “subjectivistic” and arbitrary approach of the German Romantics. The second slant is to be found in Jean-Marie Schaeffer's recent book, Art of the Modern Age: Philosophy of Art from Kant to Heidegger. Schaeffer accepts much of the standard account, but he goes on to argue in an original way that the main aesthetic tradition of Germany — after Kant, from the early Romantics to Hegel and others until Heidegger — shares a large set of influential and highly questionable “speculative” presumptions, and that the sharing of this speculative approach is far more significant — and unfortunate — than whatever incidental differences can be found between various figures within this tradition.