SSStttooonnnyyy BBBrrrooooookkk UUUnnniiivvveeerrrsssiiitttyyy The official electronic file of this thesis or dissertation is maintained by the University Libraries on behalf of The Graduate School at Stony Brook University. ©©© AAAllllll RRRiiiggghhhtttsss RRReeessseeerrrvvveeeddd bbbyyy AAAuuuttthhhooorrr... Once Again From the Beginning: On the Relationship of Skepticism and Philosophy in Hegel’s System A Dissertation Presented by Miles Martin Hentrup to The Graduate School in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy Stony Brook University December 2016 Stony Brook University The Graduate School Miles Martin Hentrup We, the dissertation committee for the above candidate for the Doctor of Philosophy degree, hereby recommend acceptance of this dissertation. Dr. Allegra de Laurentiis – Dissertation Advisor Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy Dr. Alan Kim – Chairperson of Defense Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy Dr. Jeffrey Edwards Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy Dr. Klaus Vieweg Department of Philosophy, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena This dissertation is accepted by the Graduate School Charles Taber Dean of the Graduate School ii Abstract of the Dissertation Once Again From the Beginning: On the Relationship of Skepticism and Philosophy in Hegel’s System by Miles Martin Hentrup Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy Stony Brook University 2016 This dissertation examines the relationship of skepticism and philosophy in the work of G.W.F. Hegel. Whereas other commentators have come to recognize the epistemological significance of Hegel's encounter with skepticism, emphasizing the strength of his system against skeptical challenges to the possibility of knowledge, I argue that Hegel develops his metaphysics in part through his ongoing engagement with the skeptical tradition. As such, I argue that Hegel's interest is not in refuting skepticism, but in defining its legitimate role within the project of philosophical science. Hegel finds that historical forms of skepticism have misunderstood their own activity and thus have drawn the wrong conclusions from the epistemological challenges that they raise. For Hegel, these challenges lead not to the suspension of judgment, as many skeptics have assumed, but to an insight into the fundamental nature of reality itself. For this reason, I argue that it is important to distinguish between historical forms of skepticism (e.g., Pyrrhonism) and the "self-completing skepticism" that Hegel describes in the Phenomenology of Spirit. It is the latter sense of skepticism, I argue, that one finds at work in Hegel's own philosophical project at nearly every stage of his career. iii Table of Contents Introduction 1 1. Hegel on the Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Skepticism a. Introduction 13 b. Part One: Hegel’s Critique of Schulze 15 c. Part Two: Hegel’s Critique of Kant 27 2. Hegel’s “Self-Completing Skepticism” a. Introduction 48 b. Part One: The Dogmatic Character of Modern Skepticism 50 c. Part Two: The Sublation of Pyrrhonism 60 d. Part Three: Self-Completing Skepticism in the Phenomenology of Spirit 66 3. The Problem of Presuppositionlessness and the Path of Rational Proof: Skepticism In Hegel’s Logic a. Introduction 76 b. Part One: The Proof of the Understanding 81 c. Part Two: The Path of Rational Proof 93 d. Part Three: The Self-Sublation of the Finite 101 4. History and Skepticism: The Philosophical Basis for Hegel’s Interpretation of the Parmenides a. Introduction 110 b. Part One: Hegel’s Reading of the Parmenides 113 c. Part Two: History and Skepticism 129 Bibliography 146 iv List of Abbreviations CPR Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Paul Guyer and Allen Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. ENC Hegel, G.W.F. Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Basic Outline, Part I: Science of Logic. Translated by Klaus Brinkmann and Daniel O. Dahlstrom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. LHP I Hegel, G.W.F. Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Volume I: Greek Philosophy to Plato. Translated by E.S. Haldane. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995. LHP III Hegel, G.W.F. Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Volume III: Medieval and Modern Philosophy. Translated by E.S. Haldane and Frances H. Simson. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995. LHP I 25-6 Hegel, G.W.F. Lectures on the History of Philosophy, 1825-6, Volume I: Introduction and Oriental Philosophy. Edited by Robert F. Brown. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. LHP II 25-6 Hegel, G.W.F. Lectures on the History of Philosophy, 1825-6, Volume II: Greek Philosophy. Edited by Robert F. Brown. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. LPWH Hegel, G.W.F. Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, Volume I: Manuscripts of the Introduction and The Lectures of 1822-3. Edited by Robert F. Brown and Peter C. Hodgson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. OS Sextus Empiricus. Outlines of Scepticism. Edited by Julia Annas and Jonathan Barnes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. PS Hegel, G.W.F. Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A.V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. RSP Hegel, G.W.F. "Relationship of Skepticism to Philosophy, Exposition of its Different Modifications and Comparison to the Latest Form with the Ancient One.” In Between Kant and Hegel: Texts in the Development of v Post-Kantian Idealism, 311-62. Edited by George di Giovanni and H.S. Harris. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985. SL Hegel, G.W.F. The Science of Logic. Translated by George di Giovanni. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. vi Introduction The philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel is often suspected of an unrelenting dogmatism. It appears that Hegel continually refuses to take the necessary steps to justify even his core philosophical claims. For all of the effort that Hegel takes to construct his intricate philosophical system, it appears that he never seriously questions whether it has any bearing on empirical reality. Similarly, in his engagement with texts in the history of philosophy, Hegel seems unwilling to read these texts on their own terms, insisting instead on reading them in light of his own philosophical project. Indeed, it would appear that Hegel foists his philosophical system onto whatever object he examines, each laid to waste by his stubborn drive toward totality. As such, it can easily seem to readers that Hegel’s philosophy lacks any sensitivity to the limits of human cognition and, therefore, marks an unfortunate regression to pre-Critical metaphysics. This reputation, however, is undeserved. Upon careful examination of his work, one finds that Hegel takes questions of justification very seriously and indeed goes to great lengths to justify each part of his philosophical system. This is especially hard to miss when one considers Hegel’s careful engagement with the traditional problems of skepticism which raise difficult questions about the possibility of knowledge. Indeed, in taking up the challenges raised by the ancient Pyrrhonists, Hegel takes on arguably the most radical form of skepticism to emerge within the Western philosophical tradition. The most well-known of Hegel’s treatments of skepticism can be found in the Phenomenology of Spirit and Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy. In the Phenomenology, Hegel examines skepticism as one pattern of consciousness that spirit passes 1 through on its way toward absolute knowing.1 Similarly, in the Lectures on the History of Philosophy, skepticism appears as a stage in the historical development of the concept of philosophy.2 However, in this dissertation, I show that Hegel is in fact engaged with skeptical challenges to the possibility of knowledge at nearly every stage of his career. The seriousness of Hegel’s concern with skepticism is already evident in the review he writes for the Critical Journal in 1802 about the neo-Humean skeptic, Gottlob Ernst Schulze, where he argues that “without the determination of the true relationship of skepticism to philosophy, and without the insight that skepticism itself is in its inmost heart at one with every true philosophy [. . .] all the histories, and reports, and new editions of skepticism lead to a dead end.”3 It is here that Hegel first articulates what he sees as skepticism's legitimate role within the project of philosophical science. This becomes a guiding thread in the development of Hegel’s philosophical project thereafter, as this dissertation aims to show. Hence, one finds the topic of skepticism at issue throughout Hegel’s corpus. This is, as I argue, because it is in part by grappling with the problems of skepticism that Hegel develops his system of philosophy.4 It is not simply that he subjects his system to skeptical challenges in order to demonstrate its legitimacy, nor that he perfects his system prior to his encounter with the 1 G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 123-26. 2 G.W.F. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy 1825-6, Volume II: Greek Philosophy, trans. Robert F. Brown (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 294-316. 3 G.W.F. Hegel, "Relationship of Skepticism to Philosophy, Exposition of its Different Modifications and Comparison to the Latest Form with the Ancient One," in Between Kant and Hegel: Texts in the Development of Post-Kantian Idealism, ed. George di Giovanni and H.S. Harris (Albany: SUNY Press, 1985), 323. Hereafter cited parenthetically as RSP. 4 In Philosophie des Remis: der junge Hegel und das ‘Gespenst des Skeptizismus,’” Klaus Vieweg convincingly shows the significance of skepticism for Hegel's early intellectual development. The present treatment adds to Vieweg's important study by showing that skeptical concerns about the possibility of knowledge continue to influence Hegel throughout his career. See Klaus Vieweg, Philosophie des Remis: der junge Hegel und das ‘Gespenst des Skeptizismus,' (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1999). 2 skeptical tradition. Rather, I argue, his philosophical project develops as he thinks through skeptical challenges and grapples with the difficult questions these pose about the possibility of knowledge.5 Michael Forster argues in his popular study, Hegel and Skepticism, that Hegel specifically designed his philosophical system around the epistemological concerns raised within the skeptical tradition. While I agree with Forster that Hegel's system grew out of an attempt to think through these classic epistemological concerns, I find it misleading to suggest that Hegel's primary interest in considering these arguments was to construct "an elaborate network of defenses erected to protect his philosophical system against them."6 I take issue with Forster's claim for two reasons. First, to suggest that Hegel sought to protect his system from skeptical challenges is to suppose that he had already devised his system prior to his encounter with the skeptics. I find this claim to be untenable on both historical and philosophical grounds. Second, if Hegel was concerned to protect his system against skepticism, he was only able to accomplish this task through integrating skeptical arguments into his system. To recognize that Hegel's strategy for meeting the epistemological challenges raised by the skeptics involves the integration of these challenges into his system is, however, already to acknowledge that he was not simply concerned with overcoming these difficulties. While Hegel’s continual engagement with skepticism shows him to be deeply concerned with classic epistemological problems, this is not the only way that skepticism is relevant to his 5 In Hegel's Epistemology, Kenneth R. Westphal offers an instructive account of how Hegel develops a model of justification that is able to meet the challenge posed by Sextus Empiricus' Dilemma of the Criterion. Sextus' challenge, in brief, is to develop a non-dogmatic criterion for the evaluation of all claims to knowledge. Westphal shows in his study how Hegel attempts to answer this difficulty in the Phenomenology of Spirit; however, in this project he does not acknowledge the important steps that Hegel takes to address this same difficulty in the Science of Logic. See especially Chapter Five in Kenneth R. Westphal, Hegel's Epistemology: A Philosophical Introduction to the Phenomenology of Spirit (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2003). 6 Michael N. Forster, Hegel and Skepticism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), 102. 3