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Articles

Method in Kant and Hegel

Pages 255-270 | Received 13 Nov 2017, Accepted 26 Jul 2018, Published online: 16 Oct 2018
 

ABSTRACT

For Kant as for Hegel method is not a structure or procedure imported into philosophy from without, as, e.g. a mathematical demonstration in modern physics or in the proof-structure of philosophies such as Spinoza’s or Wolff’s. For both Hegel and Kant method is the arrangement that reason gives its contents and cognitions; for both, that is, method and object do not fall asunder, unlike in all disciplines other than philosophy. For Kant method is the design and plan of the whole, the scientific form that guides the organization of cognitions (KrV A 707/B 736, Ak 24, 780). Likewise, Hegel writes that method is the consciousness of the form of its inner movement (WL 1, 49, SL 53, W 3 47, PhS 28). Unfortunately, Hegel never considers Kant an example or a precursor or a positive role model. It is important to ask why Hegel never takes seriously Kant’s Doctrine of Method. Why, if he shares so many central points with the Architectonic of the first Critique, does he never acknowledge Kant as a possible ally? Why does he misunderstand Kant on analysis and synthesis as he does? These are some of the questions I plan to discuss in this paper.

Notes

1 For a list of abbreviations to be used in this paper, see the bibliography at the end.

2 This phrase recurs at several points (e.g. A 4/B 8, A 39/B 55).

3 See Ferrarin, ‘Construction and Mathematical Schematism’, 131–74, and The Powers of Pure Reason, 137–69.

4 I am thinking of Reflexion 903, Ak. 15, p. 395. For commentary, see Ferrarin, ‘The Unity of Reason’, 213–28 and The Powers of Pure Reason, 60–6.

5 ‘Method may appear at first as the mere manner [Art und Weise] peculiar to the process of cognition’ (WL 2, 550–1, SL 825). See also this passage in the Introduction to the Phenomenology:Diese Darstellung, als ein Verhalten der Wissenschaft zu dem erscheinenden Wissen und als Untersuchung und Prüfung der Realität des Erkennens  … ’ (W 3, 75; Miller does not translate the Verhalten).

6 For a detailed discussion, see J. Klein, ‘Die griechische Logistik und die Entstehung der Algebra’, Lachterman, The Ethics of Geometry, and Ferrarin, Galilei e la matematica della natura, 84–90.

7 Strikingly, Kant’s distinction between cognitio ex datis and ex principiis, which is the target of Hegel’s sharp irony at W 4, 411–12, repeats virtually verbatim Descartes’ words at AT X 367.

8 See Ferrarin, The Powers, 231–6. On method in Kant the secondary literature is replete with important essays. See, among others, Tonelli, ‘Analysis and Synthesis’, 176–213; Tonelli, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. A valuable recent addition to the bibliography on analytic and synthetic method is Gava, ‘Kant’s Synthetic and Analytic Method’, 1–22.

9 On all these notions of analysis and synthesis see Engfer, Philosophie als Analysis. See also Arndt, Methodo scientifica pertractatum.

10 See Ferrarin, ‘Pure Intuition in Mathematics’, 31–44.

11 On the Idea of Cognition in Hegel see A. Di Riccio’s excellent book I modi del conoscere, Pisa 2018. A. Nuzzo’s essays are the most valuable among the works I know about the Hegelian notion of absolute idea. See the bibliography for a list of her titles.

12 I think that what Hegel says on method in the Phenomenology of Spirit is in no way independent of the speculative treatment of the logic. There is nothing like a phenomenological method as opposed to a logical-speculative method, as it were. The movement of shapes of consciousness which the Phenomenology calls the self-fulfilling scepticism – the adequation of certainty and truth, consciousness’ progressive realization of truth – is run through by a logical method which Hegel’s later philosophy construes as the dialectic of logical determinations. The introduction of the question of method in the Phenomenology reads as follows: ‘the method of this movement, i.e.,  …  of science  …  and its proper exposition belongs to Logic, or rather it is Logic. For the method is nothing but the structure of the whole set forth in its pure essentiality’ (W 3, p. 47, PhS, p. 28).

13 For a fuller treatment of Kant and Hegel on reason and science, see Ferrarin, Thinking and the I, Chap. 5.

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