Grounds of Pragmatic Realism: Hegel's Internal Critique and Reconstruction of Kant's Critical Philosophy(20 Critical Studies in German Idealism)

Grounds of Pragmatic Realism argues that Hegel’s philosophy from the 1807 Phenomenology of Spirit through his last Berlin lectures on philosophical psychology demonstates how Kant’s critique of rational judgment across his Critical corpus can be disentangled from Kant’s failed Transcendental Idealism and developed into a cogent, pragmatic realism, within which the social and historical aspects of rational inquiry and justification are shown to justify realism about the objects of empirical knowledge. Hegel’s demonstration reveals how deeply contemporary epistemology remains beholden to pre-Critical options, none of which are adequate to the natural sciences, nor to commonsense. Hegel recognised and justified (independently) Kant’s semantics of singular cognitive reference to particulars within space and time. Hegel’s analysis of mutual recognition develops Kant’s insights into the self-critical and inter-subjective aspects of rational judgment and justification, to show that none of us can be properly rational judges, nor can we properly justify our judgments rationally, without constructive self-criticism and without acknowledging and benefitting from constructive critical assessment by others.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Note on Sources and Citations 1 Introduction Part I: HEGEL’S CRITICAL RECONSIDERATIONS OF METAPHYSICS AND EPISTEMOLOGY 2 Henry Harris and the Spirit of Hegel’s 1807 Phenomenology 3 Idealism: Transcendental or Absolute? 4 Hegel’s Early Critique of Kant’s Critical Foundations of Physics 5 The Transcendental, Formal and Material Conditions of the ‘I Think’ 6 The Fate of ‘the’ Intuitive Intellect in Hegel’s Philosophy 7 Hegel’s Post-Kantian Epistemological Reorientation PART II: HEGEL’S CRITICAL EPISTEMOLOGY IN THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT 8 Hegel’s Manifold Response to Scepticism in the 1807 Phenomenology of Spirit 9 Hegel’s Pragmatic Critique and Reconstruction of Kant’s System of Principles I: The 1807 Phenomenology of Spirit 10 Hegel’s Solution to the Pyrrhonian Dilemma of the Criterion 11 Hegel’s Transcendental Proof of Mental Content Externalism 12 Mutual Recognition and Rational Justification in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit 13 Mutual Recognition and Rational Justification in Substantive Domains PART III: HEGEL’S SYSTEMATIC CRITICAL PRAGMATIC REALISM 14 Hegel’s Critique of Intuitionism: Encyclopaedia §§61–78 15 Analytic Philosophy and the Long Tail of Scientia: Hegel and the Historicity of Philosophy 16 Hegel’s Pragmatic Critique and Reconstruction of Kant’s System of Principles II: the Science of Logic and Encyclopaedia 17 Science and the Philosophers 18 Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature: Its Aims, Scope and Significance 19 Cognitive Psychology, Intelligence and the Realisation of the Concept in Hegel’s Encyclopaedic Epistemology 20 Robust Pragmatic Realism in Hegel’s Critical Epistemology: Synthetic Necessary Truths 21 Autonomy, Freedom and Embodiment: Hegel’s Critique of Contemporary Biologism 22 Appendix Analytical Contents Bibliography Index of Names Index of Subjects

About the Author :
Kenneth R. Westphal, PhD, Boğaziçi Üniversitesi (İstanbul); his books include Hegel’s Epistemological Realism (1989), Hegel, Hume und die Identität wahrnehmbarer Dinge (1998), Kant’s Transcendental Proof of Realism (2004) and How Hume and Kant Reconstruct Natural Law: Justifying Strict Objectivity without Debating Moral Realism (2016); he edited Realism, Science & Pragmatism (2014).