concerning the identity and individuation of concepts? From a contemporary point of view, the idealist semantic thesis is bound to appear initially as something between unpromising and crazy. My claim here will be that the idealist thesis is way of making the interpretive Hegel’s pragmatist thesis workable, in the context of several other commitments and insights. My claim here will be that we actually have a lot to learn from this strategy about philosophical contemporary semantic issues that we by no means see our way to the bottom of otherwise. In the space of this chapter, I cannot properly justify the first claim textually, nor the second argumentatively. I will confine myself of necessity to sketching the outlines and motivations for the complex, sophisticated, and interesting view on the topic I find Hegel putting forward. I The topic to which that view is addressed is the nature and origins of the determinate Of course Hegel talks about of other things. This is contents of empirical conceptual norms. lots merely the strand in his thought going to pursue here. But it may seem perverse to identify I’m this as so much as of concerns. After all, what he spends most of his pages talking one Hegel’s about (in both of the books he published during his lifetime, the and the Phenomenology Science is the or concepts (the pure form-determinations of the Concept), of Logic) pure, logical, formal that are the successors in his scheme to categories: concepts such as particularity, Kant’s and and the distinction between what things are themselves and universality, individuality in what they are consciousness or for another. But one of the overarching methodological for commitments that guides my reading of Hegel is that the of developing an adequate point understanding of these categorical concepts is so that they can then be used to make explicit how ordinary empirical concepts work. I would say the same thing about Kant. And I think that one of the things that makes these philosophers hard to understand is that they devote relatively too
concerning the identity and individuation of concepts? From a contemporary point of view, the idealist semantic thesis is bound to appear initially as something between unpromising and crazy. My interpretive claim here will be that the idealist thesis is Hegel’s way of making the pragmatist thesis workable, in the context of several other commitments and insights. My philosophical claim here will be that we actually have a lot to learn from this strategy about contemporary semantic issues that we by no means see our way to the bottom of otherwise. In the space of this chapter, I cannot properly justify the first claim textually, nor the second argumentatively. I will confine myself of necessity to sketching the outlines and motivations for the complex, sophisticated, and interesting view on the topic I find Hegel putting forward. I The topic to which that view is addressed is the nature and origins of the determinate contents of empirical conceptual norms. Of course Hegel talks about lots of other things. This is merely the strand in his thought I’m going to pursue here. But it may seem perverse to identify this as so much as one of Hegel’s concerns. After all, what he spends most of his pages talking about (in both of the books he published during his lifetime, the Phenomenology and the Science of Logic) is the pure, logical, or formal concepts (the pure form-determinations of the Concept), that are the successors in his scheme to Kant’s categories: concepts such as particularity, universality, and individuality and the distinction between what things are in themselves and what they are for consciousness or for another. But one of the overarching methodological commitments that guides my reading of Hegel is that the point of developing an adequate understanding of these categorical concepts is so that they can then be used to make explicit how ordinary empirical concepts work. I would say the same thing about Kant. And I think that one of the things that makes these philosophers hard to understand is that they devote relatively too
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