Post-Kantian European Philosophy Seminar (Tuesday - Week 4, TT24)
Tuesday 14 May, 16:00 - 18:00
Ryle Room, Faculty of Philosophy
Eliza Little (University of Warwick): 'How to Acquire the World: Hegel's Pragmatic Theory of Figurative Synthesis and Kant's Doctrine of Right'
Abstract: This paper reconsiders Hegelian pragmatism. I argue that prominent commentators like Brandom have not properly identified Hegel’s decisive account of empirical cognition: on my reading, the later Philosophy of Spirit, rather than the earlier Phenomenology of Spirit, is the place to look for Hegel’s theory of empirical concept formation. I take up the Philosophy of Spirit account and show that it contains a pragmatic theory of imaginative synthesis that revises Kant’s theoretical philosophy using resources from his practical philosophy. Specifically, I show that Kant’s Doctrine of Right account of how we come to have rightful possession of physical objects serves as a model for Hegel’s view of how we come to have rightful possession of empirical concepts. I discuss the details of this view and some potentially interesting consequences.
