University of South Carolina Scholar Commons Theses and Dissertations Summer 2019 On the Criticism of Hegelian Necessity Rosa Turrisi Fuller Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd Part of the Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Fuller, R. T.(2019). On the Criticism of Hegelian Necessity. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/5481 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you by Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. On the Criticism of Hegelian Necessity by Rosa Turrisi Fuller Bachelor of Science University of North Carolina at Wilmington, 2002 Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy College of Arts and Sciences University of South Carolina 2019 Accepted by: Leah McClimans, Major Professor Martin Donougho, Committee Member Heike Sefrin-Weis, Committee Member Meili Steele, Committee Member Cheryl L. Addy, Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School © Copyright by Rosa Turrisi Fuller, 2019 All Rights Reserved. ii Dedication To Evram. iii Acknowledgements I am grateful to Martin Donougho for sharing his insights into Hegel research and for his constructive criticism of my work. I would also like to thank Leah McClimans, Heike Sefrin-Weis, and Meili Steele for providing a philosophically informed perspective on my work outside of the specialty of Hegel research. In addition, I am grateful to my family for their continual support and confidence in me without which I could not have completed this project. iv Abstract According to Hegel, there are no intrinsic limitations on the extent of human knowledge and reason, and one of the prerequisites of overcoming their relative limits is a logic that is capable of grasping the intrinsic contradictions in things. Hegel claims that his Logic shows that these contradictions are immanently necessary. By means of a close reexamination of Hegel’s own texts, I defend this claim against two of his most prominent nineteenth century critics, Schelling and Trendelenburg, who hope to undermine Hegelian rationalism and defend the more modest Kantian outlook. I also show that a school of interpretation that I call intuitionism fails in its attempt to defend Hegelian necessity. In Part 1, I address Schelling’s claim that Hegel’s Logic cannot be necessary because it relies on presuppositions. I also show that the intuitionist interpretation of Hegelian necessity is both self-defeating and textually inaccurate. Contrary to Schelling and the intuitionists, I argue that Hegelian necessity must be grasped as logical necessity in accordance with the principle of non-contradiction, but that the application of this principle produces other principles, the principle of contradiction and the principle of the unity of opposites, which express its intrinsically limited scope. In Part 2, I address Trendelenburg’s claim that Hegel’s Logic cannot be necessary because, as himself Hegel insists, it relies on a posteriori knowledge. The intuitionist Houlgate, like many other Hegel interpreters, attempts to defend the Logic against the v intellectual descendants of Trendelenburg’s criticism by reducing Hegel’s absolute idealism to Kantian subjective idealism. I refute this interpretation and show that, according to Hegel, Kant’s subjective idealism is grounded in a prejudice against contradiction, a prejudice that Trendelenburg shares and on which his criticism of Hegelian necessity is based. vi Table of Contents Dedication ......................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................... iv Abstract .............................................................................................................................. v Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 1 Part 1 ................................................................................................................................ 11 Chapter 1: Schelling’s Criticisms of Hegelian Logical Necessity .................................... 11 Chapter 2: The Intuitionist Defense of Hegelian Necessity ............................................. 29 Chapter 3: An Interpretation of the Immanent Logical Necessity of Hegel’s Logic ...................................................................................................................... 84 Chapter 4: The Demystification of Hegel’s Logic: An Answer to Hegel’s Critics and Defenders...................................................................................................... 131 Part 2 .............................................................................................................................. 168 Chapter 5: Trendelenburg’s Criticisms of Hegelian Logical Necessity ........................ 168 Chapter 6: Houlgate’s A Priori Interpretation of Hegel’s Logic .................................... 179 Chapter 7: A Defense of Hegelian Dialectical Logical Necessity against Kantian Subjective Idealism .............................................................................. 198 Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 242 vii Introduction G. W. F. Hegel had the rare personal good fortune of being alive when his philosophy reached the height of its popularity. His lectures at the Berlin University enjoyed enormous popularity up until his death in 1831. However, by the second half of the nineteenth century, the period following the Prussian Reform movement, Hegel’s philosophy had been from toppled its place of prominence and something approaching a consensus had developed in the academy that his philosophy was misguided and unreasonable and, in a word, false. Some scholars have interpreted the decline in its popularity as evidence that the discipline of philosophy had finally come to its senses. In their accounts, one reads an almost audible sigh of relief that the inexplicable state of hypnosis engendered by the foolish Hegelian philosophy was ultimately so short-lived. For instance, Frederick Beiser calls the second half of the nineteenth century “the age that cured itself of Fichtean and Hegelian jargon” and “realized all too well the great bane of needless technicality and the great value of clarity and common sense.”1 However, a shift this profound requires a serious explanation. It cannot be chalked up either to the fickleness of philosophers or transparently obvious errors at the heart of Hegel’s system. Moreover, such explanations are out of all proportion with the character of Hegel’s philosophy itself, which was too 1 Beiser, After Hegel, 7. 1 systematic and thorough to have been a mere fad or to have been refuted so easily. Moreover, such explanations also downplay the significance of a political shift in nineteenth century Germany that led to the exclusion of Hegelians from academia. By the early 1840s, Hegel’s ambitious rationalist project had become a pole of attraction for the criticism of the religious authority on which the state relied for its legitimacy. Moreover, Hegel’s great intellectual prestige and influence made it difficult for the government to rely on a purely brute force approach to the disciples of the great master, so, in 1841, Schelling, Hegel’s former friend, was brought to Berlin and was appointed to Hegel’s old chair at the Berlin University for the purpose of attacking Hegel’s system, and above all his Logic.2 This unleashed one of the most important debates in German intellectual history. The debate over Hegel’s philosophy that took place in Berlin in the 1840s, shook German intellectual life. It was one of those rare moments in the history of philosophy when the passions and intellect of leading academics in other fields as well as religious and political figures and ordinary citizens were roused and engaged by a philosophy. Schelling had not published a single work since 1804. However, the prestige of his philosophy of nature was still enormous, and news of his animosity toward Hegel’s philosophy had spread to Berlin. As early as the Erlangen lectures in 1820, Schelling had 2 In this study, I adopt the convention of shortening the title of Hegel’s Science of Logic to Logic. 2 criticized Hegel’s philosophy. In his lectures in Munich in the 1830s, Schelling further developed these criticisms. Even before Schelling came to Berlin, another Berlin University professor, Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg, set himself the task of refuting Hegel’s Logic. Trendelenburg’s work, Logische Untersuchungen, which has never been translated into English in full, has been assigned an important historical role in turning the tide against Hegelianism. Beiser credits Trendelenburg rather than Schelling with providing “a devastating critique” of Hegel’s dialectic.3 Both Schelling and Trendelenburg disputed the grounds on which Hegel based his rationalist optimism. Hegel insisted that there was nothing that is in principle unknowable by the human mind, and he claimed that his own philosophy provided the key to illuminating questions that had vexed philosophers for centuries. This key was his dialectical logic, which, he