hegelian metaphysics jul 2009

[...]... enough What, then, might be the Hegelian answer to the concerns raised above against metaphysics? ⁶ I am thinking in particular of E J Lowe and Michael Loux See, for example, Lowe’s The Possibility of Metaphysics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) and his The Four-Category Ontology (Oxford: Oxford, 2006), and Loux’s Substance and Attribute (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1978) and Metaphysics: A Contemporary... remarks in defence of metaphysics as a form of inquiry in the contemporary context, see E J Lowe, A Survey of Metaphysics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 1–22, and Loux, Metaphysics, 3–18 For a more recent contribution, see Timothy Williamson, The Philosophy of Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008) 4 Introduction Put very briefly, I take Hegel’s response to the demand that metaphysics should be... to describe a world and a subject’s experience of it Hence descriptive metaphysics does not aim to How is Hegelian Metaphysics Possible? 7 On this sort of view, the ambitions of philosophy in the traditional manner have been abandoned, where rather than giving us direct rational insight into the ‘fundamental features of the world’, metaphysics is seen as involving an investigation of our conceptual scheme,... Collingwood’s distinction between ‘ontology’ and metaphysics in An Essay on Metaphysics, rev edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); the Kantian background to Collingwood’s position is explored in Guiseppina D’Oro, Collingwood and the Metaphysics of Experience (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), esp chs 1 and 2 ¹⁸ Cf CPR B370 Cf also Kant, ‘What Real Progress Has Metaphysics Made in Germany Since the... not in a How is Hegelian Metaphysics Possible? 13 needs an argument against ontology or metaphysica generalis, even if this counts against metaphysica specialis by depriving this form of metaphysics of its objects of investigation.³⁴ However, this then leads to a second objection: namely, if we do take the Kantian to be proposing an error theory here, why isn’t this a contribution to metaphysics qua... over into the discussion of John McDowell’s work, whose Hegelian critique of Kant is accused by Kantians of suffering from the same lack of nuance; for references and some further discussion, see my ‘Going Beyond the Kantian Philosophy: On McDowell’s Hegelian Critique of Kant’, European Journal of Philosophy, 7 (1999), 247–69, 255–9 How is Hegelian Metaphysics Possible? 23 The first of these concerns relate... assumptions, whether explicitly or implicitly, in proposing and testing their theories—assumptions which go beyond anything that science itself can legitimate’ (Lowe, The Possibility of Metaphysics, 5) How is Hegelian Metaphysics Possible? 5 net which holds together all the concrete material which occupies us in our action and endeavour But this net and its knots are sunk in our ordinary consciousness... University Press, 1982–); references to volume and page number Introduction: How is Hegelian Metaphysics Possible? If it is remarkable when a nation has become indifferent to its constitutional theory, to its national sentiments, its ethical customs and virtues, it is certainly no less remarkable when a nation loses its metaphysics, when the spirit which contemplates its own pure essence is no longer... conceptual scheme, and its fundamental features, which then shape reality as we see it The inspiration for this sort of move away from traditional rationalistic metaphysics is often taken to be Kant, who is viewed as adopting a ‘critical metaphysics or a metaphysics of experience’ instead, along the following lines: Kant replaces appeals to a speculative realm of transcendent objects with claims about the... area are discussed in Henrich and Horstmann (eds.), Metaphysik nach Kant? How is Hegelian Metaphysics Possible? 3 this way, and who will persist in questioning the credentials of metaphysical inquiry; but it could plausibly be argued that the tide of history has turned against them, at least for now Thus, unless Hegel’s metaphysics turns out to be somehow radically different in its aim and methods from .