Published Articles
I argue that Hegel explains recognition as a kind of interaction (Wechselwirkung). Specifically, I argue that both interaction and recognition are reciprocal activities that cannot be decomposed into one-way activities and that the activities involved in each perpetuate themselves, or are such as to have no termination (unless interrupted). Reflecting on these shared features, I explain Hegel’s claim that necessity unveils itself as freedom by arguing that interaction, as the highest form of necessity, does not provide the conceptual resources required to stably individuate the interacting substances, while recognition does. Thinking through what recognition has that (mere) interaction lacks, I show that the required resources to stably individuate the interacting individuals must consist in those individuals acting through the concept of themselves so as to negate that which differentiates them from one another. Acting through one’s concept is freedom, and so necessity unveils itself as freedom. I then use this analysis to explain Hegel’s claim that the individuals that engage in recognitive relations are (as he notoriously claims) accidents relative to the substantial ethical powers, but that they are the kind of accidents that have as their task ceasing to be accidents by acting in light of the concepts of themselves provided by those ethical powers. In ceasing to be accidents, free individuals (people) retain their centrality for Hegel’s political philosophy.
From Interacting Substances to Recognizing Persons: On the Logical Foundations of Hegel’s Theory of Recognition
Forthcoming in The Philosophy of Recognition: Expanded Perspectives on a Fundamental Concept, edited by Matt Congdon and Thomas Khurana. Routledge Press
A draft is available here
Cognizing Coexistence: Perceptions and their Synthetic Unity in Kant’s 3rd Analogy
Published in Journal of Modern Philosophy, 5.6
Available here.
In the 3rd Analogy, Kant claims that I can perceive that things coexist by synthesizing my perceptions in an order-indifferent way. Reigning orthodoxy holds that I first successively perceive different things, and then (through some further act) determine that the things I perceive coexist. Focusing on prominent examples of this approach, I argue that these accounts fail to do justice to the order-indifferent synthesis that Kant describes: Strawson explains the synthesis in a way which renders Kant’s argument in the 3rd Analogy obviously unconvincing, Watkins makes the synthesis irrelevant to Kant’s argument, while Longuenesse and Allison make the unity of the synthesis obscure. The problems with these views, I contend, show that Kant thinks the rule for synthesizing my perceptions is already operative in the successive perceptions, such that all acts of perception already involve ‘objective time-determinations.’ This connects with the recent dispute about whether Kant is a conceptualist: my argument provides additional evidence that Kant is a conceptualist, while also extending the conceptualist reading to the 3rd Analogy in a novel way. For those who think conceptualism is wrong, my argument serves as a critical notice that non-conceptualists have yet to offer a satisfying interpretation of the 3rd Analogy.
A Hegelian Response to Disjunctivism
forthcoming in the Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism and Analytic Philosophy, edited by Jim Conant and Jonas Held
A draft is available here.
According to epistemological disjunctivism, perceiving that P puts one in a position to know that P and to know that one has a truth-guaranteeing ground that P. Together, these two claims obviously disarm Cartesian skepticism. Critics of epistemological disjunctivism typically fail to notice that the departure is justified not by what is required to avoid Cartesian skepticism, but rather by what is required to avoid Kantian skepticism as well. After clarifying this argument in favor of epistemological disjunctivism, I draw on Hegel’s writings about skepticism to formulate a novel argument against epistemological disjunctivism which shows that, by its own lights, it fails as a response to Kantian skepticism.
A prevailing view in the literature on Hegel’s dialectical method is that employing it involves advancing a false account and then modifying it to be closer to the truth. I will call this the Modification View. In this essay, I argue that the Modification View is incorrect. Hegel’s insight, I show, is that one can only explain the objective validity of a form of cognition through employing that very form. Consequently, the dialectical method cannot relate to its subject matter as something given to it, and so cannot involve advancing and then correcting errors in one’s account.
Hegel’s Dialectical Method: A Response to the Modification View
*Published in the Canadian Journal of Philosophy (peer-reviewed); Vol. 50 #6 (Aug 2020): 767-784.
Available here.
Hegel on Kant's Analytic-Synthetic Distinction
*Published in European Journal of Philosophy (peer-reviewed), Vol. 26 #1 (May 2017): 502-524.
Available here.
In this paper I argue, first, that Hegel defended a version of the analytic/synthetic distinction – that, indeed, his version of the distinction deserves to be called Kantian. For both Kant and Hegel, the analytic/synthetic distinction can be explained in terms of the discursive character of cognition: insofar as our cognition is discursive, its most basic form can be articulated in terms of a genus/species tree. The structure of that tree elucidates the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments. Second, I argue that Hegel has an interesting and so far unexplored argument for the analytic/synthetic distinction: Hegel argues that the systematic relationship between concepts expressed in a genus/species tree can only be expressed through synthetic judgments. Third and finally, I explore some of the implications that the arguments in the first two parts of the essay have for understanding the way in which Hegel differs from Kant. I argue that Hegel accepts Kant’s point that discursive cognition cannot be used to cognize the absolute. However, Hegel thinks that we can, nevertheless, cognize the absolute. I explore the character of this non-discursive cognition and argue that we can understand Hegel’s glosses on this form of cognition – as simultaneously analytic and synthetic and as having a circular structure – through contrasting it with his account of discursive cognition. As a consequence, I argue that we must give up on the attempts to understand ‘the dialectical method’ and ‘speculative cognition’ on the model of discursive cognition
For two hundred years, people have been trying to make sense of Hegel’s so-called “dialectical method”. Helpfully, Hegel frequently compares this method with the idea of life, or the organic (cf., e.g., PhG 2, 34, 56). This comparison has become very popular in the literature (in, e.g., Pippin, Beiser, and Ng). Typically, scholars who invoke the idea of life also note that the comparison has limits and that no organic analogy can completely explain the nature of the dialectical method. To my knowledge, however, no scholar has attempted to explain exactly where or why the organic analogy falls short. In this paper, I propose to remedy this lack by exploring in depth two different organic models. In brief, I argue that both versions of the organic model require an appeal to something external to the organism, and no such appeal can be made sense of within the dialectical method.
Reviews
Kant and His German Contemporaries ed. by Corey W. Dyck, Falk Wunderlich (review)
*Published in the Journal of the History of Philosophy, Volume 57 #1 (Jan 2019): 173-174.
Available here.