Hegel, Idealism, and Analytic Philosophy

Hegel, Idealism, and Analytic Philosophy

Tom Rockmore

Language: English

Pages: 286

ISBN: 0300104502

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


In this book—the first large-scale survey of the complex relationship between Hegel’s idealism and Anglo-American analytic philosophy—Tom Rockmore argues that analytic philosophy has consistently misread and misappropriated Hegel.
According to Rockmore, the first generation of British analytic philosophers to engage Hegel possessed a limited understanding of his philosophy and of idealism. Succeeding generations continued to misinterpret him, and recent analytic thinkers have turned Hegel into a pragmatist by ignoring his idealism. Rockmore explains why this has happened, defends Hegel’s idealism, and points out the ways that Hegel is a key figure for analytic concerns, focusing in particular on the fact that he and analytic philosophers both share an interest in the problem of knowledge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

abroad, which, as a result of their domestication had roughly since British idealism’s emergence in the latter half of the nineteenth century become entirely British. There is much truth in the view that the way that idealism entered British philosophy was wholly continuous with the English-language philosophical tradition.67 G. R. G. Mure, who sees even Hegel, suitably interpreted, as continuous with the English philosophical tradition,68 is followed by Jean Pucelle, who picks out as specifically

it fails there is nothing interesting to say about knowledge. Classical and analytic neopragmatists tend to differ on the proper attitude to take toward realism. Classical American pragmatists staunchly resist metaphysical realism. Analytic pragmatists are divided on this topic. Analytic neopragmatists seem widely favorable to metaphysical realism, to forms of the canonical epistemological claim that to know is to know the mindindependent world as it is, and hence are not opposed to, but rather in

considerations derived from the philosophy of language, which is understood as prior to epistemology and metaphysics,208 and also as taking a verificationist line that is in itself not novel. Dummett objects to realism, McDowell says, ‘‘in the sense of the idea that someone’s understanding of a language might engage the world by way of conditions that can transcend her ability to ascertain whether or not they obtain.’’ 209 In coming to grips with Dummett, McDowell seems to shuttle back and forth

left out of the discussion, someone on the wrong track whose theories should not be espoused, imitated, or further developed but rather exposed, ridiculed, and combated. StekelerWeithofer believes that the negative attitude toward Hegel virtually throughout analytic philosophy indicates that analytic philosophy has largely misunderstood, or misunderstands, itself. According to Stekeler-Weithofer, the consciously negative analytic relation to Hegel is subtended by an unconscious positive

of subjectivity as incompatible with knowledge worthy of the name. Philosophical anthropology is misunderstood as marking the downfall of philosophy. Heidegger is right that taking the subject seriously leads to philosophical anthropology, but wrong to think that after Descartes philosophy disintegrates into sociology. For as Descartes already saw, without an appropriately robust conception of subjectivity there is no access to objectivity. The problem, which is always the same, is not how to

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