Title: Reason in the World: Hegel's Metaphysics and Its Philosophical Appeal
Abstract: James Kreines's Reason in the World is a welcome and exemplary text in the midst of increasing interest in Hegel's Science of Logic for scholars working in English. Combining historical scholarship with contemporary issues in analytic metaphysics, Kreines argues not only that Hegel's Logic successfully responds to the metaphysical and epistemological problems faced by his predecessors, but more ambitiously, that the positive account of metaphysics developed in the Logic remains the best of our live options today. As the title of the book suggests, Kreines defends a Hegel whose primary philosophical contribution is a thesis about the metaphysics of reason in the world, which “addresses the most general and direct questions about why or because of things…the explanatory reasons why things do what they do, or are as they are” (3). Hegel, according to Kreines, offers two types of answers. First, Hegel defends a view in which explanatory reasons are to be found in “immanent ‘concepts’ (Begriffe), akin to immanent universals or kinds (Gattungen)” (22). Second, Hegel, perhaps unsurprisingly, defends the strongest possible version of the metaphysics of reason in the world, which seeks not only explanatory reasons in immanent concepts, but complete or absolute reasons, known traditionally in philosophy as the unconditioned. In developing his positive account of the absolutely unconditioned, Kreines argues that Hegel takes his lessons primarily from Kant's Transcendental Dialectic, and not from Spinoza or even Aristotle, as is usually assumed by metaphysical readings of Hegel.Kreines's highly ambitious and meticulously argued book is divided into three parts. Part 1 provides a defense of the idea of immanent concepts as Hegel's answer to the problem of explanatory reasons. First, Kreines takes up the two most prominent alternatives that speak against the idea of immanent concepts: pure or “conceptless” mechanism, and empiricism. He argues that both positions assume an objective account of explanation that cannot be vindicated on its own terms. Second, Kreines provides a positive account of explanatory reasons, which requires a defense of natural teleology. The part/whole, type/token relationships exhibited in living organisms provide the basis for an understanding of immanent concepts or kinds, and, in this context, Kreines takes up the important dispute between Kant and Hegel concerning the knowability of natural purposes, or Naturzwecke. Against Kant's “full” inflationary view of natural teleology that results in his denial that we can ever have genuine knowledge of life, Kreines argues that Hegel reintroduces an Aristotelean way of thinking about biological type and token in an attempt to counter Kant's skepticism (89, 93).Part 2 argues that Kant's Transcendental Dialectic and its treatment of the problem of the unconditioned is the most important point of reference for understanding Hegel's metaphysical project. Kreines interprets Kant's Dialectic as putting forward, roughly, an argument of the following form: (1) reason guides theoretical inquiry by seeking complete explainers or the unconditioned; (2) in seeking the unconditioned, reason is inevitably led to the objects of rationalist substance metaphysics (most notably a bare substratum), which leads to internal conflicts and antinomies; (3) given these antinomies, knowledge must be restricted to the bounds of sensibility, and reason remains unsatisfied in its quest for the unconditioned, leaving metaphysical questions unresolved. It is clear that on any interpretation (3) will be rejected by Hegel, even if accounts vary on the exact nature of his rejection. Kreines argues that Hegel accepts (1) and, further, that reason's quest for the unconditioned should be seen as the most important common denominator between Kant and Hegel and the fundamental organizing focus of Hegel's metaphysically oriented philosophy. Hegel's innovations will be seen most clearly in his approach to (2), wherein he will reject rationalist substance metaphysics, replace it with an account of immanent concepts based in natural teleology, and find a new approach to resolving Kant's antinomies based on an account of real contradiction and the absolute idea (150). Kreines's interpretation of Hegel's approach to (2) is taken up in part 3 of the book.In part 3, Kreines argues that Hegel's account of complete explanation can be seen in his theory of the “absolute idea,” which offers a definitive critique of all bare substratum metaphysics. Kreines's critique of notions of bare substance is powerful, and out of this critique he makes a case for one of the most original contributions of the book, namely, that Hegel should be read as an ontological or metaphysical pluralist, and an epistemological monist. This is highly unusual, since most metaphysical readings of Hegel assume that he is an ontological monist in a manner similar to Spinoza. Kreines argues, however, that, ontologically speaking, there are three kinds of stuff in the world, with varying degrees of explicability: the lawful, treated by Hegel under the headings of mechanism and chemism, which are incompletely explicable; the living, whose teleological organization offers the basis for an understanding of immanent concepts, and are, relative to the lawful, more completely explicable on account of having an immanent end (most notably self-preservation); and spirit or Geist, namely us, minded beings, who are what Hegel calls “the absolute idea,” and who have the immanent end of freedom (220). Although the more completely explicable remain dependent on the incompletely explicable, intelligibility runs upward toward the absolute idea, such that “the intelligibility of anything depends on its relation to the absolute idea, in one all-encompassing system of knowledge” (235; my emphasis). Hegel, according to Kreines, thus remains an epistemological monist and idealist, even while insisting on varying degrees of explicability with respect to varying kinds of stuff in the world.Kreines's arguments are detailed and sophisticated, and his book demonstrates the enduring insight of Hegel's discussions, not only in speaking to ongoing debates in metaphysics, but in going quite far to resolving them. In what follows I raise some critical questions concerning what Kreines defends as the organizing focus of Hegel's project, the metaphysics of reason in the world. In insisting on the priority and fundamentality of metaphysics, understood in terms of explanatory reasons, Kreines rejects what he calls “epistemology-first” approaches to Hegel, construed broadly to include approaches that take Hegel to be primarily interested in knowledge and justification, and approaches like Robert Brandom's that are oriented by semantics, including issues of “aboutness” and “intentionality” (15). One can raise two sorts of issues regarding Kreines's delimitation of metaphysics and epistemology and his insistence on the priority of the former over the latter. The first concerns whether or not Hegel himself would affirm the delimitation as put forward by Kreines. While there is no doubt that Hegel spoke highly of metaphysics, Hegel ties his metaphysical project to a science of logic such that “logic coincides with metaphysics, with the science of things grasped in thoughts that used to be taken to express the essentialities [Wesenheiten] of things.”1 Here Hegel suggests that what Kreines calls the why or because of things (their Wesenheit: their essentiality, being, or substance) is fundamentally tied to logic or the forms of thought, including their modes of justification. While Kreines does not deny that Hegel may also be making epistemological claims in his philosophy, he insists for reasons of systematic unity that metaphysics must be the more fundamental issue, the organizing focus, lest Hegel's system become merely an aggregate of various unrelated philosophical topics (12). But a more Hegelian answer to this worry about systematic unity is not that Hegel must view metaphysics as having primacy over epistemology, but that he sublates the difference between them. The Logic can then be read as the outcome of this sublation, a new approach that combines metaphysical and epistemological issues, issues of explanation and justification, demonstrating their essential and necessary interrelation. Kreines's own defense of epistemological monism perhaps moves in this direction (233–35), but then the insistence on the fundamentality of metaphysics seems to me either unnecessary or undermined. Kreines's near exclusive focus on the “Objectivity” section of the Begriffslogik and his silence on the “Subjectivity” section where Hegel discusses judgment and inference further highlight the potential problems with his delimitation and prioritization.2The second issue concerns the aim of what Kreines rightly identifies as Hegel's critique of certain epistemology-first views, which he sums up under the heading of the “swimming argument” (13). Throughout his philosophy, Hegel criticizes the idea that philosophy cannot begin before acquiring assurance about the possibility of knowledge or justification, the thought that before we can begin the business of knowing, we need to become acquainted with our instrument of knowing. Hegel compares this type of approach with trying to learn how to swim before getting into the water, and this argument plays an important role in orienting his own philosophy. But I want to suggest that Hegel's aim in resisting certain epistemology-first approaches is neither to reject epistemological questions nor to defend the fundamentality of metaphysics. Rather, and quite consistently throughout all his major texts, Hegel rejects these types of epistemology-first approaches in order to defend what he takes to be the necessary unity of theoretical and practical questions, and arguably, even a certain primacy of the practical. The practical here denotes, broadly, questions of rational, self-determined agency, where for Kant and the post-Kantians, this is always framed through the problem of freedom. Although Kreines construes Hegel's (and Kant's) metaphysics primarily in terms of theoretical questions, he comes closest to discussing the practical side of metaphysics when he discusses the interest of reason in Kant, and the absolute idea in Hegel, which is defined by having freedom as its immanent end. For Kant, reason's interest in the unconditioned and its pursuit of unanswerable metaphysical questions is not only about finding complete explanations but, more importantly, about securing the possibility and reality of freedom. For Hegel, the rejection of epistemology-first views is not only due to the fact that they often fail to live up to their explanatory pretensions but, more importantly, because they fail to see the ways in which knowledge is bound up with human aims and purposes, especially the aim of freedom. Two central moments from Hegel's texts are worth noting here: first, the transition from consciousness to self-consciousness in the Phenomenology of Spirit, where Hegel ties the problem of explanation to satisfaction, and the epistemological orientation of consciousness is sublated into the analysis of self-consciousness as oriented by desire (Begierde); second, the conclusion of the Science of Logic in which the freedom of the absolute idea is construed in terms of the unity of the theoretical and practical drives (Triebe). While Kreines surely knows these moments well, and indeed, he acknowledges the importance of freedom for Hegel especially in the last two chapters of his book, I think he underplays the complications brought by the practical for his defense of an “objective account of explanation” (55). Although I do not think that the introduction of human purposes and an interest in freedom make impossible explanatory relevance conditions that are objective, I do think it changes our account of such conditions such that they can no longer be understood primarily or exclusively in terms of metaphysics.Kreines has written an extraordinary and highly original book that tackles some of the most difficult aspects of Hegel's philosophy, doing a great service in particular for those interested in finding new life in his Science of Logic. The issues raised by Reason in the World will surely be debated by scholars for years to come, and the book is a must-read for anyone interested in Hegel or metaphysics.
Publication Year: 2018
Publication Date: 2018-07-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 3
AI Researcher Chatbot
Get quick answers to your questions about the article from our AI researcher chatbot