Introduction

In the wave of response to the Critical Philosophy, it was Hegel who produced the most ambitious and interesting take on Kant’s theoretical philosophy. Indeed, such was the grand nature of his project that naturally “as a thinker who suffered more than most from superficial criticism, Hegel was right to think that others would find it easier to attack him than to take trouble to understand him fully.”
Such derision has principally emanated from accepting the traditional interpretation of Hegel’s idealism as a thesis claiming that there is a single super-individual entity, Geist, and that all else that exists is to be thought of as part of the conscious development of this being. However, as Wartenburg astutely wrote, “if Hegel’s idealism is understood in this manner, then it will simply not wash as a position of relevance to contemporary philosophy”. Accepting the traditional interpretation, moreover, would crucially fail to account for the Kantian influence at the centre of Hegel’s transcendental phenomenology, epistemology, and theory of subjectivity. Consequently, this serious error would prevent anyone from taking Hegel’s critique of Kant with enough critical attention.
Therefore, the purpose of this dissertation is (i) to illustrate the ways in which Hegel was following in the Kantian tradition, and also the ways in which he was opposing the Critical Philosophy; (ii) to investigate Hegel’s critique of Kantian apperception; (iii) to argue that Hegel’s critique of Kant’s theory of experience is motivated on an anti-Kantian assumption, and that this unmotivated assumption is a weakness in Hegel’s argument.

I
Hegel: the putative Kantian

Robert Pippin has claimed that “many references to Kant’s critical idealism are indispensable for a proper understanding of Hegel’s positions,” for Hegel “is committing himself to the necessity of nonempirically derived and so [for Hegel] “self-determined” conditions for the intelligible experience of any object.” Following from Pippin’s suggestion, the question arises as to what extent Hegel’s philosophy ought to be aligned to transcendental idealism.
I shall argue that since Hegel was not a transcendental idealist, we need to discern in what sense we may still understand his philosophical position as a broadly Kantian one. Before one attempts to articulate the relationship with Hegel and Kant, we need to explain what it takes for a thinker to be ‘Kantian’ with regard to metaphysics and epistemology. I believe that such a term carries several different connotations: ‘holds that transcendent metaphysics, and anything related to transcendent metaphysics are impossible’, ‘holds that rationalist axiomatic foundationalism is methodologically incorrect’, ‘holds that space and time are transcendentally ideal’, ‘holds that the Categories are objectively valid’, ‘agrees with the claims of Kantian transcendental psychology’, and ‘shares Kant’s understanding of transcendental reflection’.
Given what the term ‘Kantian’ with regard to metaphysics and epistemology can mean, I shall like to suggest that if a thinker takes himself to be a Kantian, then he must share all of Kant’s negative claims, and the majority of Kant’s positive claims – principally, the transcendental ideality of space and time.
We shall first consider reasons that support Hegel’s putative Kantianism with regard to Kant’s negative claims, namely the claim that transcendent metaphysics is impossible, that intellectual intuition cannot serve as a valid form of knowledge acquisition, and that rationalist foundationalism is methodologically incorrect.

The Rejection of Transcendent Metaphysics

In the ‘Transcendental Dialectic’, Kant had sought to establish that transcendent metaphysics is impossible, since the critique of the metaphysical tradition will expose “the illusory appearance in transcendent judgements, and, at the same time, taking precautions that we be not deceived by it.” (CPR, A297/B354.) Any knowledge-claims about noumenal entities, or the conflation of appearances with things-in-themselves will necessarily involve paralogisms, amphibolies, and antinomies. Therefore, for Kant, the only kind of metaphysics that is possible is an immanent or naturalistic metaphysics, a philosophia prima which can be curbed to “stay within the bounds of experience, only through scientific instruction and hard work.” (PAFM, 4:333.)
Like Kant, Hegel rejected transcendent ‘first philosophy’. Writing to Goethe, he announced that “we philosophers have a common enemy, metaphysics”. Indeed, Hegel dismisses transcendent metaphysics, on grounds that

“where that ‘other’ is sought, it cannot be found, for it is supposed to be just a beyond, something that can not be found.” (PS, p.131.)

By virtue of its meaning, namely, something beyond our cognitive reach, the transcendent cannot be grasped. Consequently, for Hegel, appeal to the transcendent must be rejected.
Another aspect of Hegel’s allegiance to Kant’s critique of classical metaphysics is in the section of the Phenomenology of Spirit devoted to the notion of the ‘inverted world’, where Hegel believes that an absurd consequence follows from deriving the sensible from the suprasensible. As he writes,

“… What is despised in the former [the sensible world] is honoured, and what in the former is honoured meets with contempt. The punishment which under the law of the first world disgraces and destroys a man is transformed in its inverted world into the pardon which preserves his essential being and brings him to honour.” (PS, p.97.)

According to Hegel, because “the understanding looks through the mediating play of Forces into the true background of Things” (PS, p.86) i.e., it attempts to transcend the bounds of sense, it ‘inverts’ the world. It attempts to explain the phenomenal with reference to the noumenal; to explain change with reference to the immutable; to explain predication with reference to the non-predicable. Indeed, the logic of this form of metaphysical enquiry is similar to Kant’s claim that “reason, which can never be fully satisfied with any use of the rules of the understanding in experience, because such use is always conditioned, requires completion of the chain of conditions.” (PAFM, 4:333.) But, given that “changeless [Platonic] Forms are the last kind of thing to explain change,” any transcendent metaphysics that grounds the sensible on the suprasensible is misguided.
However, for all of Hegel’s espousal of immanent metaphysics, it does not follow that Hegel was a Kantian. We need much more than simply rejecting transcendent metaphysics to be a necessary condition of being a Kantian.

The Rejection of Intellectual Intuition

Like Kant before him, Hegel claims that ‘intellectual intuition’ cannot serve as a valid instrument for knowledge acquisition. As such, in his mature work, he rejected the following claims:

(a) “Intellectual intuition [intellektuelle Anschauung] is the absolute principle of philosophy, the one real ground and firm standpoint”. (DFS, p.172.)

(b) “One cannot philosophise without intuition”. (DFS, p.111.)

For Hegel, given that intellectual intuition is non-conceptual, how is it possible to identify the object of intuition without applying concepts to it, for it is only through concepts that we can determine what a thing is? It would seem then that intellectual intuition will be at best ineffable and, at worst, empty. Given its ineffability and its epistemic emptiness, then it seems that it cannot be the absolute principle of philosophy. The line of criticism is further developed in the Phenomenology, where Hegel claims that

“… If we apprehend a demand of this kind in its broader context, and view it as it appears at the stage which self-conscious Spirit has presently reached, it is clear that Spirit has now got beyond … the satisfaction and security of the certainty that consciousness then had of its reconciliation with the essential being.” (PS, p.4.)

At the heart of Hegel’s obscure point is the spirit of critical idealism, for the dogmatic metaphysician goes “beyond the satisfaction and security of the certainty that consciousness then had of its reconciliation with the essential being.” In other words, for Hegel, in trying to attain knowledge of some transcendent ‘other’ through intuition, man ignores the proper subject of philosophical enquiry – the universe. Not only does he not think about the world correctly, he is also unable to reconcile himself with the Absolute, the “essential being”. Therefore, if man is to avoid this state of epistemic confusion, then he must not reflect in accordance with intellectual intuition.
Again, these claims are still not enough to claim that Hegel is a Kantian, not in the least because Hegel brings God into the metaphysical picture, something which Kant would have seriously prescribed against. All that has been done is list another negative claim on which both thinkers agree, namely the incorrect form of epistemic practice.

The rejection of Rationalist Foundationalism

Like Kant, Hegel claims that rationalist foundationalism is methodologically incorrect. Hegel explicitly rejects any axiomatic, foundationalist programme of beginning with some self-evident first principle, and then deriving from it all our fundamental beliefs about the world. As he writes,

“No philosophical beginning could look worse than to begin with a definition as Spinoza does… founding and grounding… the laborious reduction of all philosophy to the ‘highest facts of consciousness’, etc.” (DFS, p.105.)

However, for all of Kant’s and Hegel’s attempts to reject axiomatic foundationalism, it seems that their own methodologies rest on such deductive principles. For example, “one can interpret the Transcendental Deduction of the first Kritik as a form of foundationalism, since it appears to begin with the self-evidence of the ‘I think’ and then to derive the application of the categories to experience.” Moreover, Hegel’s absolute idealism seems to rely on metaphysical principles, such as “the finite has no veritable being” (Science of Logic, p.154.), from which all our fundamental beliefs about the world are derived.
The objection, though, fails to recognise that Kant’s first Kritik does not give the ‘I think’ of the Cogito a privileged epistemic position, by arguing that “self-consciousness is no more certain than the awareness of objects in space outside me.”
With regard to the charge of adopting foundationalism, Hegel is severely critical of Reinhold’s methodology in the Differenzschrift, as Hegel rejects any “founding and grounding”; in other words, any attempt to begin philosophical enquiry with deriving self-evident first principles. Though Hegel did endorse philosophical systematicity, this does not entail that he was a rationalist foundationalist, for “he forswore any attempt to base [systematicity] upon the geometric method.”
Although Hegel’s anti-rationalist foundationalism seems to ally him with Kant, it still does not follow that he can be labelled as a Kantian. Simply agreeing with Kant’s negative claims is not enough to support Pippin’s suggestion, for at the centre of Kant’s theoretical philosophy is a rather dense amount of positive claims.

Positive claims

We previously stated that to be a Kantian with regard to metaphysics and epistemology, a thinker must share all of Kant’s negative claims, and the majority of Kant’s positive claims.
We have seen that Hegel satisfies the first condition, namely he shares all of Kant’s negative claims. However, though Hegel may accept Kant’s critique of transcendent and axiomatic metaphysics, if Hegel rejects the majority of Kant’s positive claims, then claiming that Hegel is a Kantian is incorrect.
Now, Hegel does not believe that Kant successfully proves the transcendental ideality of space and time, for, according to Hegel, Kant’s argument fails to explain “why space and time should be the particular forms of our intuitions.” And since the claim ‘space and time are not properties of things-in-themselves’ is such a key doctrine of transcendental idealism, it seems perfectly plausible that rejecting it would be a very anti-Kantian line of philosophical thought.
Secondly, Hegel does not believe that Kant establishes the objective validity of the Categories. Like Kant accused Aristotle’s derivation of his ten categories of being arbitrary, Hegel levels the same objection to Kant’s twelve categorical concepts, claiming they were “taken merely from observation and so only empirically treated.” (EPSO, §42, p.69.) Again, if Hegel denies the objective validity of the Categories, then he is clearly distancing himself from Kant.
Thirdly, Hegel is highly critical of Kant’s transcendental unity of apperception, as he claims that the ‘I’ of Kant is “empty” (PS, p.29), since representations are being “merely accompanied by a mind”; by this, Hegel aims to reject an understanding of the ‘I’ which reduces it to the formalism of an epistemic operator. However, despite this criticism, Hegel does not reject the Kantian claim that the transcendental unity of apperception is the supreme condition of possible experience, for he does hold that “the force of [an object’s] truth thus lies in the ‘I’.” (PS, p.61.)
We can perhaps begin to see what Hegel means by claiming that Kantian apperception is ‘empty’. The dialectic in the Phenomenology of Spirit from ‘Consciousness’ to ‘Self-Consciousness’ establishes that self-consciousness, i.e., awareness of oneself as a subject, requires an expansion of the ‘I’ of Kant’s ‘I think’. All consciousness is mediated by the form of how the subject takes itself to represent objects; how the ‘I’ reflects on what it takes itself to be authoritative and how it “must reflect on the accounts it gives itself”.
The philosophical difficulty faced by the phenomenological observer in ‘Consciousness’ was the result of the subject thinking about objects qua the dualism of subject and object – “an account of knowledge as a kind of passive, direct awareness of objects as authoritative.” Instead, Hegel suggests that knowledge is not simply an epistemic relation between subject and object; rather, knowledge also involves “a way in which we establish a relation with the world and ourselves that involves both the kinds of ends we pursue and the kinds of subjects we take ourselves to be. To understand what we take to be valid claims to knowledge is to come to understand the kinds of persons we take ourselves to have become.”
Now, although “the ‘I’ is now given a very specific power, one which is to go beyond the mere designating of a representation as one’s own”, it does seem that Hegel has adopted a Kantian positive claim, since he at least holds apperception to be central.
However, even though Hegel does applaud Kant for emphasising apperception as an epistemic principle, we have seen that Hegel’s account is “very far from Kant’s own understanding of apperception.” For, rather than understanding the ‘I’ qua an epistemic operator or logical function, Hegel’s notion of apperception seems to go beyond the sphere of synthesis of the manifold, contra Kant’s insistence. As such, Hegel adheres to the general notion of apperception, namely that a particular genus of self-conscious reflection is a necessary condition of experience, but he merely pays lip-service to the Kantian notion of apperception concerned with idealism about the subject.
With regard to the antinomy concerning infinity, Hegel does seem to agree with Kant’s insight into the necessity of the contradictions of the understanding (Verstand). Moreover, Hegel agrees with Kant about the structure of the antinomies: there is a thesis that postulates something unconditioned, and an antithesis that postulates a condition for everything.
However, for all this agreement, Hegel crucially differs from Kant in his solution to the antinomies, particularly his solution to the final two: for Kant, the only way to escape the internal contradictions is to divide the world into noumena and phenomena, the respective realms of the unconditioned and conditioned, where the theses hold for the noumenal realm and the antitheses for the phenomenal realm. Regarding the infinite/finite distinction, Kant accords infinity as noumenal, whereas finitude is accorded phenomenal status.
However, consider the following from Hegel:

“[It is said that] the infinite, one the one side, exits by itself, and that the finite which has gone forth from it into a separate existence …; but it should rather be said that this separation is incomprehensible. Neither such a finite nor such an infinite has truth; and what is untrue is incomprehensible. But equally it must be said that they are comprehensible, to grasp them even as they are in ordinary conception, to see that in the one there lies the determination of the other … is to see the simple insight into their inseparability … This unity of the finite and infinite and the distinction between them are just as inseparable as are finitude and infinity.” (SL, pp.153-154.)

From the previous passage, we can re-construct the following argument.

(1) That which is noumenal is, by virtue of meaning, separate from the phenomenal.

(2) The infinite is noumenal.

(3) The finite is phenomenal.

(4) Therefore, the infinite is separate from the phenomenal.

(5) But, if (4) is true, then the infinite cannot be infinite, since something exists outside of it.

(6) But, the infinite has to be infinite, by virtue of meaning.

(7) Therefore, (4) is false.

(8) Therefore, (2) is false.

However, if Hegel claims that his anti-Kantian account of conceptual (and ontological) interdependence establishes that consciousness, or for that matter any ordinary concept, requires the existence of something contrary to it, then he makes a crucial error. This can be seen by considering two versions of Kant’s transcendental argument in the ‘Refutation of Idealism’.

First version:

(1) “I am conscious of my own existence as determined in time.” (CPR, B275.)

(2) “All determination in time presupposes something permanent in perception.” (B275.)

(3) “This permanent cannot, however, be something in me, since it is only through this permanent that my existence in time can itself be determined.” (B275.)

(4) “Thus perception of this permanent is possible only through a thing outside me; and consequently the determination of my existence in time is possible only through the existence of actual things which I perceive outside me.” (B275-6.)

Second version:

(1) “Consciousness [of my existence] in time is necessarily bound up with consciousness of the [condition of the] possibility of the time determination.” (B276.)

(2) “And it is therefore necessarily bound up with the existence of things outside me, as the condition of time-determination. In other words, the consciousness of my own existence is at the same time an immediate consciousness of the existence of other things outside me.” (B276.)

Both Kant and Hegel hold that there is a necessary condition for something, p, being possible: for Kant, the necessary epistemic condition of self-consciousness is awareness of something permanent outside of the mind; whereas for Hegel, as we have seen, the necessary ontological condition for the infinite’s being infinite is that it is not separate from the finite.
What we can establish from Hegel’s argument and Kant’s argument in the ‘Refutation’ is that the concepts that are claimed to be ‘bound up’ with each other in some way are contrasting concepts, e.g. inner appearances/outer appearances. As Kant wrote,

“In the above proof [of the interdependence of self-consciousness and consciousness], it has been shown that outer experience is really immediate, and that only by means of it is inner experience … possible.” (B276-7.)

However, the fact that Hegel uses this kind of argument with regard to the metaphysics of infinity does not entail that Hegel’s understanding of infinity is Kantian, for Hegel and Kant are not in agreement about the nature of the infinite. The point that I wish to make is that the Hegelian programme of determining genuine statements about infinity and finitude is formally similar to Kant’s negative programme of demarcating between ‘dogmatic’ and ‘critical’ propositions. Hegel is concerned with dismissing claims of pre-Kantianism as metaphysical conjecture, since if the infinite were understood in opposition to the finite, then the infinite would be finite itself, because it would be limited by the finite. “There would then be per impossibile a greater reality than the infinite. Hence, the true infinite must therefore include the finite.”
With regard to transcendental reflection, it is true that both Kant and Hegel claim that philosophy ought to investigate the necessary conditions of possible experience. However, by ‘necessary conditions’, Kant means the a priori forms of sensibility and judgement; and by ‘experience’, he principally means ‘knowledge of objects’. For Hegel, though, the necessary conditions do not refer to the forms of thought, but rather to the forms (Gestaltungen) of consciousness as developed in the Phenomenology of Spirit.
Given the important difference between their views, it seems reasonable to say that Hegel merely pays lip-service to the Kantian definition of transcendental condition, namely the formal account of reflecting on the necessary conditions of possible experience. For that matter, taking into account what we have established about Hegel’s relationship with Kant, it would be incorrect to claim that Hegel is a Kantian.
However, given that Hegel was not a transcendental idealist, it does not follow that we cannot understand his philosophical position as a broadly Kantian one. We have seen that the style of transcendental argument of the ‘Refutation’ is adopted by Hegel, that Hegel acknowledges Kant’s claim that transcendental unity of apperception is the supreme condition of experience, and that Hegel agrees that the task of philosophy is to investigate the necessary conditions of possible experience.
Taking into account both his adoption and criticism of Kantianism, we can conclude that Hegel’s philosophical position ought to be seen as one which principally aims to remove the formal restrictions imposed by Kant on the notions of apperception and subjectivity, transcendental reflection and reason, while at the same time, expanding on these notions and preserving their critical status.

II
Apperception

One important area of relation between Kantian and Hegelian idealism is the theory of apperception, principally the understanding of subjectivity and the criteria of subject-hood. Recognising Kant’s development of transcendental psychology, Hegel wrote,

“It is one of the profoundest and truest insights to be found in the Critique of Pure Reason that the unity which constitutes the nature of the Notion is recognised as the original synthetic unity of apperception, as the unity of the I think, or of self-consciousness.” (SL, p.584.)

The importance of transcendental apperception may be seen where Kant suggests that

“There can be in us no modes of knowledge, no connection of unity of one mode of knowledge with another, without that unity of consciousness that precedes all data of intuition, and by relation to which representation of objects is alone possible.” (CPR, A107.)

“As my representations… they must conform to the condition under which alone they can stand together in one universal self-consciousness, because otherwise they would not all without exception belong to me.” (B131-3.)

In both passages, Kant is concerned with transcendental claims about what a subject of experience must be to have experiences. In other words, Kant is concerned with establishing the necessary conditions for both subject-hood and experience. In considering the former, we find identity, unity, and self-consciousness are features of transcendental consciousness, in that if a subject of experience is to be a subject, such a subject must be an identical subject through time. For any ‘I’ to have experiences of any kind, the experiences must belong to that ‘I’, otherwise the ‘I’ cannot be considered as a subject, nor can the myriad of his representations be considered as experiences. Without such identity, “the synthetic reproduction and reidentification that Kant has already argued are necessary for experience could not occur.”

Secondly, for there to be unity of representations in a single subject, that subject must actively unify them, since

“the transcendental unity of apperception forms out of all possible appearances, which can stand alongside one another in experience, a connection of these representations according to laws.” (CPR, A108.)

In other words, to bring the manifold of intuitions, which in themselves have no unity, under synthetic unity, the subject must impose the schema of unity onto objects, otherwise “there would be only associative unities, and so no unity of experience and no possible experience [erfahrung] at all.”

Finally, experience – as opposed to simply a collection of representations not belonging to a subject – would be impossible if the subject was not self-conscious of himself as a subject, as

“it must be possible for the ‘I think’ to accompany all my representations; for otherwise something would be represented in me which could not be thought at all, and that is equivalent to saying that the representation would be impossible, or at least would be nothing to me.” (CPR, B132.)

From these passages, we can re-construct the following argument.

(1) To have an experience, the subject of experience must bring the myriad of intuitions under synthetic unity to his consciousness, otherwise the myriad of intuitions cannot be considered as an experience.

(2) Synthetic unity consists in bringing the myriad of intuitions under an identical, unified and self-conscious subject.

(3) Therefore, bringing the myriad of intuitions under an identical, unified and self-conscious subject is a necessary condition of possible experience.

(4) Therefore, subjectivity is a necessary condition of possible experience.

What we can draw from the above argument, and in fact Kant’s transcendental epistemology itself, is that the intelligibility of the world is determined by the conceptual apparatus of the mind. In other words, if there were no minds, then the notion of a world of bodies in coherent spatio-temporal relations and causal interaction would not exist. As a result, apperception and the objective validity of the Categories (together with the a priori forms of sensibility and the schematism) establish that experience, that is, empirical knowledge, itself is always subject to these subjective conditions, rendering our epistemic appreciation of the world ideal. As such, for Hegel,

“The word ‘I’ expresses the abstract relation-to-self; and whatever is placed in this unit or focus is affected by it and transformed into it … and to this end the positive reality of the world must be as it were crushed and pounded, in other words, idealised.” (EPSO, §23, p.69.)

For Hegel, the Kantian understanding of the ‘I’ is highly problematic, since its conception of the self as something fundamentally distinct from the world which somehow serves as a systematising principle of unity fails to establish any harmony between self and world. Apperception, serving as the supreme condition of possible experience, idealises all the world, by conforming objects to the mind – and, in doing so, Hegel claims it ultimately ends in solipsism. Such philosophical difficulties, for Hegel, stem from the apparent formalism of the Kantian ‘I’, since the transcendental consciousness is apparently defined as an epistemic operator or logical device. The ‘I’ has no substantial content, but merely abstract and formal. Understood in the Kantian sense, Hegel holds that the self – or consciousness in the general sense – is consciousness-in-itself, because it is considered separately from other things, and (in the case of a form [gestalt] of consciousness) when it is unreflective. That is why, for Hegel, the ‘in-itself’ (an-sich) is mere potentiality: actuality, understood as the ‘for-itself’ (für sich), requires determination, negation, and relations with other things.
Taking into account the programme of Hegel’s analysis of the self in the Phenomenology of Spirit, and his distinction between consciousness-in-itself and consciousness-for-itself, we can establish that, for Hegel, the Kantian account of human subjectivity restricts itself to the point of view of consciousness-in-itself, alone, and so, does not understand subjectivity as it should be, as ‘spirit’ (Geist), which grasps consciousness as consciousness-for-itself. As Pippin has argued, to see how, if at all, this is possible, we can notice how “[Hegel] proposes to alter the aspect of Kant’s idealism that he found so otherwise attractive: Kant on the apperceptive nature of experience.” As Hegel wrote about Kant’s theory,

“Since the ‘I’ is construed not as the Notion, but as formal identity, the dialectical movement of consciousness is not construed as its own activity, but as in itself; that is, for the ‘I’, this movement is construed as a change in the object of consciousness.” (BP, p.11.)

Although Hegel’s language is obscure and seemingly impenetrable, what he means to say is that the Kantian ‘I’ does not do justice to the active characteristics of consciousness. For Hegel, because the Kantian ‘I’ is unreflective and in-itself, such a ‘passive’ state of consciousness renders the possibility of experience, “taken in its literal meaning: a journey or adventure (fahren), which arrives at a result (er-fahren), so that ‘Erfahrung’ is quite literally ‘das Ergebnis des Fahrts’” impossible. As Hegel writes,

“The experience of itself which consciousness goes through, can in accordance with its Notion, comprehend nothing less than the entire system of consciousness.” (PS, p.56.)

If consciousness is purely formal, unreflective, and fundamentally distinct from its objects, then such an epistemological journey could not occur.
The “entire system of consciousness” is synonymous with the “dialectical movement of consciousness”, which understands the relation of the ‘I’ to other concepts necessary for its own application, “concepts that might originally have appeared ‘other’, or the contrary of the original” as one of interdependence.
However, for all this critique, it seems that Hegel’s argument for viewing self-consciousness as dialectical (i.e. ‘for-itself’) is firstly obscure, and secondly, marks a return to the pre-paralogism position of rational psychology, wherein “a feature of self-consciousness (the essentially subjectival, unitary and identical nature of the ‘I’ of apperception) gets transmuted into a metaphysics of a Cartesian mental substance or mental state that is ostensibly known through reason alone to be substantial, simple, identical, etc.”
To be in a pre-paralogism position, Hegel would have to accept the Cartesian view of consciousness as “private, inner, or a spectator of itself and world.” However, his notions of dialectic, ‘for-itself’ and Geist are in opposition to the rational psychologist’s claims, since Hegel asserts consciousness is communal, public and even socially interactive. As such, if anything, Hegel is directly opposed to the pre-paralogism position.
However, though we may assert that Hegel is opposed to rational psychology, he seems to reject the Cartesian tradition for non-Kantian reasons, in that Hegel does not believe that the philosophical errors of the rationalists are derived from subreption and fallacious hypostatisation: “Kant argues against the inference to the simplicity of the mind, by remarking that the psychologist here is surreptitiously deducing the actual simplicity of a metaphysical object simply from the formal features of subjectivity.” Furthermore, Kant holds that the idea of the mind, although it is one to which we are naturally led in our quest for the unconditioned ground of thought, does not correspond to any object that is (or could be) actually given to us in intuition. The hypostatisation of this idea, therefore, although it may be natural, is deeply problematic. Because the idea of the mind does not yield, by itself alone, any knowable object, the arguments about it, although they may have the appearance of being legitimate, in fact involve fallacious applications of concepts.
It seems then that Hegel’s objection to Kantian apperception is not based on a return to noumenalism, but rather on attacking Kant’s insistence that

“we can assign no other basis for this teaching [about psychology] than the simple, and in itself completely empty, representation ‘I’; and we cannot even say that this is a concept, but only that it is a bare consciousness which accompanies all concepts.” (CPR, A346/B404.)

Hegel’s critique is that Kant seems to make the error of arguing that if the ‘I’ is a form of thought (a transcendental consciousness), then the ‘I’ must be empty and purely formal.
But again, this rather obscure objection needs to depend on a plausible construal of a genuine failing in the Kantian thesis. For that matter, perhaps the best way of understanding Hegel’s objection is by analysing the following text:

“On one side there is the Ego, with its productive imagination or rather with its synthetic unity which, taken thus in isolation, is formal unity of the manifold. But next to it there is an infinity of sensations … A formal idealism which in this way sets an absolutely Ego-point and its intellect on one side, and an absolute manifold, or sensation, on the other side, is a dualism.” (F & K, pp.76-78.)

For Hegel, this ‘dualism’ is the conception of the ‘I’ as purely ‘in-itself’, with a distinct manifold of empirical intuitions. He seems to claim that there seems to be no way that the ‘I think’ can actually engage with its objects. Under the Hegelian analysis, this dualism shows that the epistemic necessity of apperception being the supreme condition of possible experiences can in fact be denied, because of the heterogeneity of the ‘I’ and the manifold. Therefore, for Hegel, the ‘I’ must be conceived as Geist or ‘for-itself’ if it is to engage with its objects. Taking into account the various Hegelian passages that we have discussed, we can construct his argument.

(1) To engage with its objects, the ‘I’ must be related to its objects.

(2) To be related to its objects, the ‘I’ must not be ‘in-itself’.

(3) Therefore, to be related to its objects, the ‘I’ must be ‘for-itself’.

(4) Being ‘for-itself’, the ‘I’ reflects on both itself and its objects, and as such is conceived as a Notion.

(5) Conceiving of itself as a Notion, and conceiving of itself as ‘for-itself’ is to conceive of itself as Geist.

(6) Therefore, to engage with its objects, the ‘I’ must conceive of itself as Geist.

We previously remarked that for Hegel, experience (Erfahrung) was an epistemological adventure through the development of the forms of consciousness. As he added in his lectures on the philosophy of history, “the empirical is not only mere observing, hearing, feeling, perceiving particulars, but it also essentially consists in finding species, universals and laws.” (LHP, XX 79/III, p.176.) Given this dialectical account of empirical knowledge, the formalism of the Kantian ‘I’ means that the self cannot reflect on the entire history of its experience, because such a form of reflection requires the self to not be empty and abstract.

Accounting for consciousness as ‘for-itself’ and as Geist involves viewing the ‘I’ not as immediate formal consciousness, but as a developing and self-examining consciousness. For that matter, ascribing a dialectical Begriff to the ‘I’ sees the ‘I’ not as simply accompanying its representations to establish metaphysical unity amongst the manifold, rather such a dialectical presence establishes that the ‘I’, while accompanying its representations, is critically reflecting on all its experience – i.e., engaging in absolute knowledge. As Hegel writes,

“This last shape of Spirit – the Spirit which at the same time gives its complete and true content the form of the self and thereby realises its Notion as remaining in its Notion in this realisation – this is absolute knowing; it is Spirit that knows itself in the shape of Spirit, or a comprehensive knowing.” (PS, p.427.)

We can now re-phrase Hegel’s argument against Kant.

(1) Experience (Erfahrung) requires the ‘I’ to be Geist.

(2) Absolute knowledge is the reflection on the history of the experience of the ‘I’ (the subject of experience.)

(3) To have absolute knowledge requires the ‘I’ (the subject of experience) to be Geist.

(4) The Kantian ‘I’ is not Geist.

(5) Therefore, under the Kantian I, absolute knowledge is impossible.

(6) Therefore, under the Kantian ‘I’, experience is impossible.

In assessing this argument, particularly the assumption that Kant confines experience to merely sense-perception, let us consider the following passage:

“The unity of reason is the unity of system; and this systematic unity does not serve objectively as a principle that extends the application of reason to objects, but subjectively as a maxim that extends its application to all possible empirical knowledge of objects … Our sole purpose is to secure that systematic unity which is indispensable to reason, and which while furthering in every way the empirical knowledge obtainable by the understanding can never interfere to hinder or obstruct it.” (CPR, A680-1/B708-9.)

Given Kant’s assertions about the ‘unity of reason’, ‘systematic unity’, and his meta-epistemological concerns about empirical knowledge and its necessary schematisation, it seems that, contra Hegel, experience, which Kant also equates with empirical knowledge, is not simply sense-perception. As such, Hegel’s comment that Kant arbitrarily restricted the meaning of experience to the banality of “here is my lighter and there is my tobacco tin” can be dismissed.
Secondly, given that Kant’s conception of experience is, so to speak, quite ‘thick’ one could argue that it seems to be quite close to Hegel’s account. Both philosophers seem to stress that critical reflection on one’s way of thinking about the world is central to harmonising oneself with the world.
However, this point fails to address the fundamental area of opposition between Hegel and Kant, namely that the former chastises Kant for the (supposed) formality of his theory of subject-hood. Though Kant certainly does have a ‘thick’ account of experience, and so does not equate experience with sense-perception, terms such as ‘systematic unity’, though verbally similar to Hegelian neologisms, are not the same as these. By Erfahrung, Kant does not mean the journey through the Gestaltungen of consciousness, but rather an epistemic relation with objects that brings intelligibility to the world. Secondly, Kant’s theory of the regulative employment of reason is principally concerned with the epistemology of science, and the establishment of methodological rules that govern rational enquiry. Though the Kantian ‘I’ may be able to have ‘thick’ experience, it cannot have experience qua the Hegelian sense: The dialectical movement of consciousness necessarily requires more than the formality of Kantian apperception to fit with this account of experience, as such, Hegel’s argument is immune from objections claiming that the Kantian ‘I’ is in fact dialectical (in some respects). To reject Hegel’s argument, we would have to determine that his account of experience, which necessarily carries with it the obscure idea of ‘notionality’, is not compelling.

III
The status of reason

In the previous section, we concluded that if we want to assess Hegel’s critique of Kant’s treatment of subject-hood, we need to examine Hegel’s conception of Erfahrung. I shall now like to argue that Hegel’s theory of experience is highly questionable, because it seems to be tied to a problematic account of reason, and to a misunderstanding of Kant’s conception of reason.
According to Hegel,

“Because of [Kant’s understanding of reason] nothing remains for Reason but the pure emptiness of identity… after abstracting both from the content that the linking activity has through its connection with the empirical, and from its immanent peculiarity as expressed in the dimensions [forms of sensibility and judgement, perhaps], the empty unity [that remains] is Reason.” (F & K, p.80.)

“And the result of all is that Reason supplied nothing beyond the formal unity required to simplify and systematise experiences, it is a canon, not an organon of truth, and can furnish only a criticism of knowledge, not a doctrine of the infinite.” (EPSO, §52, p.86.)

For Hegel, as I read him, Kant’s ‘limited’ account of Vernunft sees reason “subject to the limitations inherent in the other faculties that supply its subject-matter.” Rather than making reason cognitively supreme as the sovereign of the world, as Hegel would have it, Kant seems to make reason dependent on sensibility, and so epistemically impotent. As a result, under Kant’s thesis, Hegel insists that reason cannot grasp ultimate reality or reality in itself.
Guyer seems to reject Hegel’s critique of Kant’s conception of reason on grounds of obscurity (cf. Guyer, 1993, p.196). However, contra Guyer, I believe that we can ‘de-mystify’ and re-construct Hegel’s argument, and that the problem for Hegel’s argument is not its putative obscurity, but rather its epistemological assumption that reason is a ‘doctrine of the infinite’ – i.e. that reason must be able to grasp reality in itself.

(1) Reason must be able to grasp reality in itself.

(2) If reason cannot grasp reality in itself, then reason must be limited or conditioned.

(3) If reason can grasp reality in itself, then reason must not be limited or conditioned.

(4) Therefore, reason must not be limited or conditioned.

If this is correct, then Hegel’s argument seems to depend principally on premise (1), which itself seems to depend on the claim that belief in reason’s inability to grasp the fundamental nature of things is philosophically unpalatable. For Hegel, it would seem that any threat to (absolute) knowledge would, following Fichte, “destroy all philosophy and replace it with the most soulless scepticism.”
However, I believe that this epistemological principle is unfounded, in that Hegel seems to treat epistemological optimism with regard to knowledge of reality in itself as a (dogmatic) given. He does not give any proof to show that “in fact, the true situation is that the things of which we have immediate knowledge are in themselves” (EPR, §45), but just asserts this claim.
Secondly, the thrust of Hegel’s critique seems to be that Kant mistakenly conceives of reason as ‘the empty unity’. However, I believe that because Hegel has labelled Kant’s conception of reason as ‘the empty unity’, this seems to convey that Hegel has in fact misunderstood Kant’s positive treatment of reason (cf. CPR, A651-52/B679-80) and the notion of a critique of pure reason.
Though Kant did not allocate reason the same kind of epistemic power that the Rationalists gave it, it does not follow that he thought reason to be epistemically impotent, which is something that Hegel appears to accuse Kant of doing. In fact, Hegel seems to completely ignore Kant’s aim to give “philosophy a new and more fruitful role, particularly in relation to the sciences”. In other words, Hegel’s claim that Kant rejects metaphysics misses Kant’s claim that he is putting metaphysics on the “sure road to science.” (CPR, Bxv.)
Of course, Kant’s ‘scepticism’, so to speak, would deny the possibility of absolute knowledge, because such knowledge requires the subject to grasp reality in itself, which although does not allude to knowledge of a transcendent Divine Mind, does allude to grasping the rationality of the universe as a whole. However, Kant’s epistemology certainly does not rule out all claims of knowledge, since he insists that we can know the claims of empirical realism, and ‘frame’ knowledge of things-in-themselves as ideals of human cognition. So, while Kant insists on the criticism of knowledge, what his account of reason seems to provide is an organon of what can be known, and how metaphysics should be ‘revolutionised’. Consequently, because of Hegel’s apparent misunderstanding of Kant, we may claim that Hegel’s critique of Kant’s conception of reason is groundless; and because we may claim that Hegel’s critique of Kant’s conception of reason is groundless, we may claim that Hegel’s theory of experience ought to be rejected.

-

Matthews wrote that “the point of the Copernican revolution is to remind philosophers that they are not gods.”
Hegel conceived of man as a lesser god; whereas Kant viewed man as a fallible rational animal. Though both accounts of human subjectivity have their respective strengths and weaknesses, I would side with Kant.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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