Hegel's Critique of Kant

Hegel's Critique of Kant
Author(s): John E. Smith

Reviewed work(s):
Source: The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 26, No. 3 (Mar., 1973), pp. 438-460
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HEGEL'S CRITIQUE OF KANT
JOHN E. SMITH
v/ne of the peoblems to be faced anyone to under

by seeking
stand and to evaluate Hegel's treatment of other philosophers is
that he never seems to regard their thought as having any tenure
beyond the framework of his own philosophical account of the his

tory of philosophy.1 All philosophical standpoints and systems
are understood by him in terms of his own comprehensive philoso
phy of spirit. To a large extent, of course, every philosopher pro
ceeds in this way; how else are we to interpret and assess a given
position except in terms established by our own view of what is

real and what is true? But in Hegel's case which is, admittedly,
extraordinary because of his having made history decisive for
philosophy, one feels both the presence and the force of his philo
sophical vision to a peculiar degree at just those points where he
considers the thought of others. His treatment of Kant is no ex
ception, and, in fact, he sees Kant as most penetrating in his under
standing at precisely those points where he most nearly approxi

mates Hegel's own position. For example, according to Hegel, the
singular merit of Kant's Critique of Judgment is that in his treat

ment of the Ideas of nature
and freedom, he approached genuinely
"speculative" thought, in contrast to criticism, and at the same
time caught a glimpse of the Idea as a self-determining reality.
Or again, he claims that Kant was, in his treatment of the cate
gories, closest to the truth when he grasped their interrelationships
1 are found
References to Hegel's Geschichte der Philosophie in
Werke, ed. Hermann Glockner, Stuttgart, 1959, vols. 17-19 ; the correspond
ing English references are found in Hegel's Lectures on the History of
Philosophy, edited and translated by E. S. Haldane and F. H. Simson,
3 vols., London, 1896. The text of the Logik which forms the first part of
Hegel's Enzyklop?die is found in Glockner, vol. 8; references are to the
numbered sections in the original and the corresponding English references
are found in The Logic of Hegel, trans. W. Wallace, 2nd ed., Oxford, 1892.
References to Glauben und Wissen are to the Felix Meiner edition. All
references to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason are to the Kemp-Smith trans
lation.

HEGEL'S CRITIQUE OF KANT 439
and attributed their triadic arrangement to the fact that the third
category results from the application of the first category to the
second, which, if we take the unity, plurality, totality triad as an
example, means that as we proceed in the analysis of something

from unity to plurality, we must understand its totality as the
unity of the plurality which resulted. It is clear that Hegel ap
proved of Kant's account because it is in accord not only with his
own self-reflected triadism, but also with Hegel's persistent at
tempt to develop the categories from each other based on his de

mand that they not
be accepted from without "as they are classi
2
fied in ordinary logic."
I am calling attention at the outset to Hegel's procedure in
interpreting the thought of others not to suggest that he simply

failed to represent their views, but rather to indicate that he in
variably sets them down in the midst of his own systematic ideal
ism and judges them in accordance with the adequacy of their
response to questions posed by his own position. One consequence
of this approach is that Hegel views a philosophical position not
primarily in terms of its own unifying intention, but from the
standpoint of the Idea and his own logic of the Notion plus the
assumption that this logic is working itself out through the history
of thought. If we apply this principle to his treatment of Kant, it
becomes clear that the central point of Hegel's critique must be
that Kant failed to hold fast to the actuality of reason and the
2 trans. Haldane,
History of Philosophy, Glockner 19.567; English
438.9. It is worth noticing on this point that despite Kant's claim of com
pleteness for the table of categories (B 105-107), there is very little indi
cation in the Critique as to how one would even go about answering the
question, "Why these categories and no others?" Hegel, on the other hand,
although we may find fault with his particular results, does propose to
answer this question through the "labor of the notion," i.e. by "showing"
through the actual development of the categories from each other in the
dialectical attempt to think Being, how the totality of Being is actually
articulated through those categories and no others. In the end, of course,
the argument takes the form of claiming "this or nothing" and, on his
view, anyone who objects then has the task of providing an alternative
"this," that is, an alternative system of categorial articulation. But in
any case the actual working out of a consistent and coherent, all-encompass
ing scheme with a set of categories does provide some ground for answering
the initial question; one can say, "Look, we have articulated the whole with
these categories and no others are required because there is nothing more
to include."

440 JOHN E. SMITH
force of the Idea because he opted for the primacy of the under
standing and its knowledge of finite reality over all speculative

thought. In short, Kant was attacked for subordinating what
Hegel made paramount. In this sense the ultimate validity of
Hegel's critique of Kant is made to depend on the viability of

Hegel's own system.
Hegel's examination of Kant's philosophy is spread over
many of his writings starting with Glauben und Wissen. Major

comments are found in Phenomenology, the Encyclopedia, in the
Lectures on the History of Philosophy and in the Philosophy of
Right. I shall have to limit myself and, therefore, I have decided
to confine attention to the treatment of theoretical reason and to
exclude the moral philosophy, not because that criticism is not also
instructive but rather in view of the fact that it follows largely
from principles developed by Hegel in his analysis of Kant's
theory of knowledge based on the distinction between understand
ing and reason. Moreover, in the interest of focusing issues for
discussion, I shall not attempt an historical account of the devel
opment in Hegel's treatment of Kant from beginning to end. The

central points stand out in the later writings through repetition,
although it is clear that certain points much emphasized in Glauben
und Wissen such as the identification of the transcendental imagi
nation with "reason itself," do not figure largely in Hegel's later
discussion of Kant's thought.
In what follows, three basic issues will be presented and,
while in the nature of the case, they are not independent of each
other, they can be given separate treatment. First, there is the

matter of Hegel's understanding of Kant's enterprise including
the question whether there can be a critique of knowledge and, if
so, how it is to be carried out. Second, there is Hegel's criticism
"
of the "thing-in-itself doctrine and the consequent charge against
Kant of "subjectivism," which Hegel sometimes expressed in the
thesis that the Kantian categories are "meaningless" (bedeu
tungslos) apart from the materials of sense. Third, there is the
examination of the grounds upon which Kant opted for the priority
of the finite knowledge of the understanding over the claim of
reason, which at the same time raises the question of the relation
between experience and the transcendental ideas. Limitations of
space do not permit an equally detailed account of all these issues,

but each is important and must figure to some extent in any dis
cussion of Hegel's critique of Kant.
One of Hegel's most fundamental criticisms of Kant concerns

the basic enterprise of making a critique of the cognitive faculty
itself as distinct from, in Hegel's language, proceeding at once to
think the Absolute.3 It has been suggested that what divides the
two thinkers can be summed up by saying that Kant believed in
the priority and necessity of criticism, whereas Hegel did not and
consequently was forced to proceed with his own system in a

fashion which, in Kant's view, could only be described as dogmatic.
This summary is not entirely correct ; a more adequate expression
of the relation between the two positions on this head would make
it clear that both believed ' 'the forms of thought must be made an
object of investigation,4 but that they differed considerably in their
conceptions of the manner in which the investigation should be
carried out. And since the two alternatives they manifest reflect a
fundamental division in modern philosophy, some consideration of
this issue will at the same time call attention to the contemporane
ity of both thinkers.

In the Lectures on the History of Philosophy,5 Hegel credits
Kant with having taken an important step forward in focusing on
knowledge as a subject for analysis. And he expresses a similar

view in the long Zusatz to Section 41 of the Encyclopedia, com
mending Kant for making the concepts through which the old
metaphysics was
expressed the subject of criticism. Hegel, there
fore, was by no means opposed to the aim of making thought and

its categories the object of critical scrutiny. But, as was sug
gested previously, everything depends upon how this is to be done.
"In particular," says Hegel, "he [Kant] demanded a criticism of
6
the faculty of cognition as preliminary to its exercise." But, he
continues, there at once arises the "misconception of already
knowing before you know," since on Hegel's terms the analysis of
8
See Glauben und Wissen, Meiner edition, p. 14.
4
Encyclopedia 41 Wallace
; p. 84.
6
6Glockner, 19.556 ;English trans., p. 429.
Ibid.

442 JOHN E. SMITH
knowledge and the faculty of cognition must itself constitute an

instance of cognition. This
point is, of course, crucial for the
Kantian program; what, it may be asked, is the logical status of
criticism, and, more specifically, of the conclusions arrived at by

transcendental philosophy with regard to such issues as the rela
tion between the categories and the sensible manifold, the relation
between understanding and reason, and, finally, the limitation of
reason's legitimate employment to the empirical sphere? Al
though Kant regarded criticism as proceeding with

certainty be
cause its problems can be stated and resolved from the standpoint
of the rational faculties themselves, it is curious that there are not
many passages in the Critique where its pronouncements are spe
cifically referred to as "knowledge." And, indeed, he must have

been aware that critical philosophy itself does not locate itself
within the confines of either of the two bodies of thought?mathe
matics and general science of nature?which stand for him as the
paradigms of actual knowledge. Critical philosophy, presumably,

is on another level from that occupied by the knowledge which
stands in need of justification,7 and its own justification must rest
in the end on the claim that it marks out those necessary conditions
without which there could be no experience at all. Kant could re
ply to Hegel's charge that we are seeking to know before we know

in the Kantian enterprise by saying that this preliminary "know
ing" represents a peculiar mode of cognition vis a vis, for example,
knowing a proposition describing the behavior of a physical sys

tem or knowing that a given geometrical theorem can be deduced
from Euclid's axioms. The peculiarity would consist in the fact
that the critical knowing purports to specify the conditions requi
site for all knowing. But Hegel insists that the knowing involved
in the examination of knowledge, whatever particular form it may
take, be an actual knowing and not merely a propaedeutic to actu
ally knowing.
The dividing line between the two thinkers, however, need not
be drawn at the "knowing before you know" issue ;more important
7There
is, of course, a problem involved in speaking of "justification"
since Kant did not regard mathematics as standing in need of a certificate
from philosophy (B 199fi\), but it is clear that, in the case of knowledge
involving the dynamical categories, he thought otherwise.

is Hegel's objection to the separation of the activity of criticism

from what might be called the "first order" knowing which is the
subject of criticism. This, I take it, is Hegel's more fundamental
objection to Kant's procedure. He interpreted Kant's analysis of
judgment and of the table of categories derived therefrom as an
attempt to find the ground of knowledge in universal and neces
sary conditions which are, in the nature of the case, abstract and
separated not only from their content, but from their activity in
constituting what we have called "first order" knowing as well.
Hegel, by contrast, claimed that criticism and the knowing which

is under criticism must be together in a dynamic process of devel
opment. The point is well expressed in the same passage of the
Encyclopedia to which we have referred :
So that what we want is to combine in our process of inquiry

the action of the forms of thought with a criticism of them. The
forms of thought must be studied in their essential nature and com
plete development: they are at once the object of research and the
action of that object. Hence they examine themselves: in their own
action they must determine their limits, and point out their defects.
This is that action of thought, which will hereafter be especially con
sidered under the name of Dialectic, and regarding which we need
only at the outset observe that, instead of being brought to bear upon
the categories from without, it is immanent in their own action.8
Hegel's fundamental complaint, then, is that Kant analyzed

the categories as functions of thought, not
they when were func
tioning in actual knowing, but only in their status as necessary

conditions for knowing contained in the formal structure of the
understanding for the purpose of providing the ground upon which
objectivity is based. Hegel wanted to see the categories at work,

as it were, in the determination of what is to be known, whereas on
his view, Kant considered them only when they were "idling" in
the understanding as conditions for the possibility of experience
without exhibiting themselves as operative in actual knowing.
Criticism, for Kant, had a positive and a negative side ; on the
positive side it meant the transcendental determination of those
a priori elements which guarantee objectivity in knowledge by
virtue of the fact that nothing can be thought as an object except
8
Encyclopedia 41, Wallace, pp. 84-5. Emphasis added.

444 JOHN E. SMITH
through the one universal and necessary set of categories which

structure the faculty of understanding possessed by the transcen
dental subject. On the negative side, criticism has to set the limits
of knowledge and of the employment of human faculties and also
explain satisfactorily how it happens that reason finds itself inevi
tably asking questions which it is unable to answer in a cognitive
form. Kant clearly regarded criticism as a preliminary to the
further exercise of our rational faculties in knowing what is other
than themselves and this point is established by his claim that in
transcendental philosophy we consider
questions "obliquely" and
are not directly concerned with knowledge of objects, but rather
with the relation between an idea and an object insofar as it can be
thought a priori. For Hegel, on the other hand, criticism is no
preliminary, but an immanent affair in which the meaning, scope

and validity of a category are to be determined by discovering
what feature and how much of reality it can express in relation to
other categories through the actual process of knowing the world.
The difference between them is quite fundamental and presents
itself as a gulf which seems impossible to span. Kant, not unlike
Descartes, is a foundationalist who demands criteria and wants to

establish knowledge on the universal and necessary, albeit in
transcendental terms, which means the argument to the conditions
rather than any appeal to the intuitively self-evident. By con
trast, Hegel looked to outcomes and results so that for him the
emphasis in criticism falls not on the structure or contemporane

ous pattern of cognitive faculties, but rather on the action of
thought in actually interpreting reality and

in expressing its intel
ligible structure. In the former case one looks not to the particu
lar content manifested in some actual process of knowing, but to
formal and transcendental criteria which are meant to define
knowing as such. In the latter case, one starts with particular

determinations of things for the purpose of discovering, through
a critical analysis of the interrelation between the categories in
volved, just what and how much of reality these categories actually
express. An atomistic philosophy, for example, has, from this
standpoint its element of truth, but its inadequacy and relative

abstractness is brought to light only when it is forced to face the
task of expressing the whole of reality including actual together
nesses of things which manifiest the organic feature of existence.

The Kantian type of criticism focuses on the entrance require
ments to the arena of knowledge, the Hegelian type on the critical
examination of actual interpretations that have already been
entered.
The truth in the Kantian approach is that no philosophical
position can remain naive and avoid the exposure and critical ex
amination of either its fundamental categories or its basic pro
gram. The Kantian insight exposes the error of those who claim
that they are just "doing" philosophy and who stare in amaze
ment at anyone who asks for a critical account of what they are
doing or of what they assume. But the chief difficulty of the

Kantian approach is the risk of never reaching the discussion of
actual philosophical theses, since all the dialectic is devoted to con
sideration of the preliminaries in the form of what you would,
could, might mean or know if you were to propose any such theses
?which you often do not. The truth in the Hegelian approach is
that it sees the necessity of proceeding directly to die Sache selbst,
since there is no presuppositionless philosophical preliminary
which is neutral with respect to the question of the nature of
knowledge or indeed of anything else. The problem posed by this
approach is that it may fail to make explicit the existence of imma
nent criteria?concreteness, consistency, comprehensiveness?
which are indeed invoked by the system, and were this not the
case, there would be no ground for judging the outcome of a
process of thought.
Another facet of Hegel's treatment of the critical philosophy
as a program is represented by his persistent of it to
lumping
gether with the epistemology of Locke and describing both as
"empirical psychology." Hegel was, I contend, mistaken in this
view, even if it is true that Kant retained some of the assumptions
of the classical empiricism he aimed to attack. In Glauben und
Wissen9 Hegel describes Kant's task as identical with Locke's,
namely, to discover the limits of understanding so that it will not
become hopelessly involved in matters which it does not have the
power to resolve. Moreover, throughout the exposition of Kant in
that work, Hegel calls his position "psychological" idealism.
9
Meiner edition, p. 15.

446 JOHN E. SMITH
Much later in the History of Philosophy, Hegel was still claim

ing that Kant proceeds "psychologically, i.e., historically, in de
X1
scribing the modes of the knowing faculty." And in reference
to Kant's categories, Hegel contends that Kant accepted both the
12
forms of intuition andthe categories "in an empiric way." Still
further on in the discussion of Kant's treatment of reason, Hegel
claims that Kant is still following the "psychological method"
and that consequently he comes upon reason by the merest chance
as if it made no difference whether it were a reality or not.13 Ex
actly the same point is made in Introduction to the Encyclopedia,

but there the emphasis falls on the order of Kant's exposition of
the a priori elements of thought; this order, Hegel claims, "is
' '14
solely based on psychological and historical grounds.
Now it is obvious that no full scale account of what it is to be
a transcendental philosophy as over against a "psychological"
theory is possible here, but several crucial points may be made

which will serve to place Kant's unique enterprise in proper per
spective. Despite the force of current attacks on the viability of
transcendental arguments, it cannot be denied that Kant had hit
upon an ingenious and entirely novel approach to the nature of
knowledge in terms that go beyond and between an ontologically

rooted position like that of Leibniz and Spinoza, and a psychologi
cally oriented approach like that of Hume and Locke. In
seeking
to delineate what Paton has called a "metaphysic of experience,"
Kant was defining knowledge in terms of a validity furnished by a
priori elements without which there could be no experience at all.
The approach is not to be confused with a genetic account and it
is erroneously called "psychological" as was made clear by Kant
in the statement, "though all of our knowledge begins with
(anheben) experience, it does not follow that it all arises out of
(entspringen) experience."15 The key question concerning the
10 19.561 ;English trans, pp. 432-33.

Glockner,
11 ac
Hegel's description harks back to Locke's "plain, historical
count" of knowledge in terms of a literal tracing of ideas to their origins
in both sensation and reflection.
12 19.567 ;English trans, p. 439.
Glockner,
13 19.573 ;English trans, p. 443.
14Glockner,
Encyclopedia, Section 41 Wallace,
; p. 84.
15Bl;cf.B166.

a priori synthetic, moreover, points to the uniqueness of the

Kantian position in attacking the dogma, based on a complete dis
junction between reason and experience, that what is necessary

cannot be empirical and what is empirical cannot be necessary.
The idea that experience may have a necessary structure to be
possible at all is not something which occurred to Kant's prede

cessors and it has been persistently misunderstood by many of
his successors because they have tried to understand the purport
of the "transcendental" in terms merely of some dyadic distinc
tion between the "logical" and the "empirical," or even worse,
between the "factual" and the "linguistic." The mark of this
confusion coincides with the conflation of "a priori" and "ana
lytic" which at once reduces to nonsense Kant's fundamental
question. No justice can be done to Kant's position if it is ap

proached on the basis of a dyad ; a triadic distinction is necessary
involving (a) material of sense, (b) formal logic represented by
the principle of contradiction and (c) the transcendental elements
which one hesitates to call "logic" because of possible confusion.
The crucial point is that (b) and (c) must neither be confused nor
lumped together. The best way to clarify the special character of
''
the transcendental approach is to point out that the concepts ob
ject" and "object of knowledge"16 do not properly occur within

the framework of formal logic as conceived by Kant. Formal
logic is a necessary condition for all thought, but it is not a suf

ficient condition for determining what is meant by an "object" in
the quite fundamental sense which the term assumes in the Kantian
theory of knowledge. The entire transcendental apparatus of the

esthetic and analytic is meant to be definitive of what it is to be an
object. This apparatus cannot and must not be put down merely
to the "logical" side in contrast with the sensible material taken
as "empirical," because the analysis of being an object issues at
the same time in the delineation of the general shape of experience,
and that is not a matter of formal logic alone. Kant's deduction
may be declared invalid, the transcendental approach may be re
jected, but the fact remains that Kant's attempt to mark out the
necessary conditions which must be met if there is to be any ex
16
It seems clear that for Kant the two concepts must ultimately coin
cide.

448 JOHN E. SMITH
perience at all, not only distinguishes his view from all "histori
cal" or genetic accounts, but it also defies legitimate interpretation
in terms of a simple "logical"/"empirical" dichotomy. The nec
essary conditions are transcendental which means they are

that
neither purely "logical" in the sense of past or present formal
logic, nor again are they "empirical" in the sense of sensible ma

terial. It is not clear that Hegel fully appreciated Kant's unique
conception of the transcendental17 as fitting neither into the
"logical"/"psychological" dyad nor the "logical"/"empirical"
disjunction, and, therefore, he was content to describe Kant's
approach as "psychological" and "historical." Such a charac
terization, however, does not do justice to the Kantian position.

Perhaps the explanation is that Hegel was less concerned with the
justification of empirical knowledge as such and more interested
in criticizing Kant for having acknowledged the unity of reason as
an idea at the same time that he denied its actuality.
If, however, Hegel's description of Kant's view as "psycho
logical" and "subjective" is seen as a fundamental rejection of

the thesis that knowledge is confined to "appearance," that is an
other matter and the issue should be discussed without turning
Kant's theory into something other than itself. For the peculiar
fact about the doctrine of appearance in Kant is not only that the
conditions for appearance are said to be universal and necessary,
but the object of knowledge (B 236) is defined by him as that in
the appearance which determines that it will be apprehended (i.e.,
judged) in accordance with universal rules. The point is that
Kant's domain of appearance does not have to do with bent sticks
in the water or with round coins which "look" elliptical from a
certain perspective. In short, Kant's view on this head should not
be discussed in the context of Locke and Hume and Hegel had a
tendency to interpret Kant in that way.
II
That Hegel was opposed to Kant's doctrine of the thing-in

itself and his consequent limitation of human knowledge to the
17 seems also not to have grasped the force of the problem to

Hegel
which Kant was addressing himself when he insisted on the synthetic char
acter of mathematical judgments. Hegel accepted them as analytic without
extended discussion.

sphere of Erscheinung is well known and has often been repeated.

The limitation in question forms the basis of Hegel's repeated
charge of "subjectivism" and his claim that, for Kant, knowledge
fails to include the things of the world. Hegel was, in this regard,
a thorough-going realist: what we know is the things themselves,
their properties, unities and relations. For Hegel, the real is not
"behind" or "beyond," but actually present in what we appre
hend. From this essentially Aristotelian vantage point, Hegel
declared Kant's domain of Erscheinung insubstantial and subjec
tive. The charge is familiar and does not need to be labored.
There is, however, an aspect of Hegel's criticism with regard
to Kant's treatment of things which has not been given the atten
tion it deserves. When, says Hegel, Kant proposed to interpret
knowledge of an object in terms of an identity of consciousness
and sensible appearance, he in fact failed to include the things
themselves because in attributing to consciousness the properties
of the thing, the thing itself is reduced to a mere abstract form of
unity. But, Hegel contends, the properties are as essential to the
thing as the unity. "It is more reasonable," says Findlay repre

senting Hegel's view, "to treat the 'I' of self-consciousness as a
self-reflected unity indifferent to what it cognizes, than to do so in
' '18
the case of the thing and its properties. Although Kant was un
doubtedly correct in insisting on the spontaneity exhibited by the

experiencing subject in contrast to those accounts
of experience
which reduce the knower to a passive recipient, there is reason to
believe that he exaggerated what appeared to him as a clear asym
metry in the subject thinking the object. The subject judges the
object in accordance with the a priori categories of the under
standing and the unity, identity and objectivity of the object

thought is established through the transcendental unity of apper
ception. The subject, in short, thinks or judges, and the object is
thought or judged. While, however, it is true that the object does
not "think" the subject, it is also true that only through thinking
the object does the subject apprehend itself as a unified thinking
subject capable of exercising the functions represented by the
categories in the formation of judgments. The subject, according
to Kant, cannot legitimately think of itself as an object, but only
18 A Re-examination,
Findlay, Hegel, London, 1958, p. 202.

450 JOHN E. SMITH
as subject?a point on which Hegel in many places expressed

agreement with Kant?and it is able to grasp itself as subject only
to the extent that it finds that very subjectivity reflected in the
transcendental analysis of the subject thinking or judging an
object. Hegel's point is that a mutual or reciprocal relation should
be acknowledged in which there is due recognition of the "I" of
self-consciousness as a self-reflected unity which comes to light in
the thinking of the object, whereas Kant placed all the emphasis
on the unity bestowed on the object in virtue of its being thought
by the subject. The unity of the subject for Kant, the unity of
apperception which, as he says, is higher than the category of
unity, is in fact a reflected unity apprehended solely through

transcendental A proper regard for this fact, on Hegel's
analysis.
view, would have enabled Kant to do greater justice to the things
themselves, both their unity and their properties, precisely
because the spontaneous activity of the subject would then be
counterbalanced by a recognition of the role played by objets in
bringing the reflected unity of self-consciousness to light. When,
moreover, undue emphasis is placed on the one-way relationship of
the subject thinking the object, the relations of the things them
selves to each other are likely to fall from sight and these relations
form an important means whereby the unity and properties of the
things become manifest.

Another feature of Hegel's indictment of the Kantian position
as "subjectivism" is expressed in his oft repeated claim that the
are "meaningless" (bedeutungslos) apart from the
categories
sensible manifold to which they are applied. Whereas I find my
self in agreement with much of Hegel's critique of Kant, I do not
believe that Hegel was entirely correct in this charge and I am
prepared to break a lance in Kant's behalf even if it becomes
necessary at the same time to defend Kant against himself. For
what complicates the situation is that Kant provided some of the
evidence to be used against himself when, at times, he described
the pure concepts of the understanding as "purely logical" (or as
sinnlos apart from the empirical manifold) when he should have
written "transcendental." Let us with Hegel's own state
begin
ment from the Lectures on the History of Philosophy :
For their own part, the categories are empty, unfilled, and they
belong to thought. In order for them to be filled, material is re

quired. They have content (Inhalt) only through the given manifold
material of intuitions . . . and they have meaning (Bedeutung) only
through their combination with this material.19
The principal question to be raised is whether Hegel means to

assert that meaning is identical with reference or with the existence
of the sensible content to which the category is applied. It would
seem more plausible to say that for Kant, while the category is
"empty" without intuition, it is not thereby meaningless, as if its

meaning were indeed identical with the existence of the sensible
content.
In B 284 Kant draws a clear distinction between the "formal
conditions of experience" and some particular perception for the
purpose of explaining that whatever is in agreement with these

conditions is possible, whereas the actual requires, in addition, a
connection with perception. We need not concern ourselves here
with problems peculiar to the modal categories; the important
point is that there is no warrant forsupposing the "meaning"
that
of the elements expressing the a priori conditions?the forms of
intuition and the categories?is uniquely furnished by the singular
perception as if these elements had no meaning apart from their
instantiation. Again, in B 252 (=A 207) where Kant is discussing
the second analogy, he distinguishes the form of alteration from a
specific content. He writes, "But apart from

all question of what
the content of the alteration, that is, what the state that is altered,
may be, the form of every alteration . . . can still be considered
a priori according to the law of causality and the conditions of
''
time. From this it would seem clear that the concept of causality
is not "meaningless" apart from its application to particular,
actual forces. And, indeed, were this not the case, it would make
no sense to distinguish, as Kant did at many points, between
thinking and knowing an object (e.g., B 146, among many). Though
no sensible intuition were actually given, we can still think and
understand the general form or shape of experience. To adopt an
example suggested by Bussell, we do not know whether in the year

2000 there will be any people in London, but if there are and any
three of them stand in a row, one of them will be "between" the
19 19. pp. 568-69.

Glockner,

452 JOHN E. SMITH
other two. This assertion is perfectly intelligible quite apart from

reference to actual individuals standing in that relation. The
meaningfulness of the pure spatial concept is not identical with

the intuitional material which instantiates it on some actual occa
sion.
On the other hand, it must be admitted, there are passages in
Kant which seem to point in the opposite direction. In B 298 Kant
says that, with regard to every concept,20 we grasp its "logical
form" and consider the possibility of its having an object. Refer
ring to the concept, Kant says, "In the absence of such object, it
has no meaning (Sinn) and is completely lacking in content
21
(Inhalt)." Further along in the same discussion, he points out
that the categories, apart from intuition, "have even less meaning
(Bedeutung) than the pure sensible forms."22 The category,

understood as a mode of combination by the understanding, Kant
declares, nothing at all" (gar nichts bedeutet), when no

"signifies
manifold is given.23 Here Kant confuses meaning and reference,24
and writes as if the "meaning" of a category is identical with its
reference to an object, but surely he cannot mean to assert this
since apart from the sensible manifold, the a priori con
identity,
ditions of both sense and understanding retain their
meaning as
expressing the necessary shape of experience. Without the sen

sible manifold, the categories may be "empty," but they are not
on that account meaningless. Kant does greater justice to his
position when he writes, "The pure categories, apart from formal

' '25
conditions of sensibility, have only transcendental meaning.
20 it clear that categories and principles are involved

B 300 makes
along with empirical concepts.
21B 298.
22B
306.
23
Ibid.
24 It The
is difficult to find terminology which will not be misleading.
particular version of the Sinn/Bedeutung distinction offered by Frege and
familiar to us, was, of course, not available to Kant and we must not as
sume it.
26B
305; cf. B 166 n. where Kant wants to stress the point that "for
thought" the categories are not limited by the conditions of sensible intu
ition; it is the "knowledge" claim that requires limitation to intuition.
"In the absence of intuition," he continues, "the thought of the object
may still have its true and useful consequences...."

But it is precisely this meaning which defines the generic structure

of experience.
When Hegel declared that Kant's categories are "meaning
less" in the absence of the intuitional
manifold, he was correct
only if he meant that

the categories under those circumstances are
empty. If, however, he meant to deny their transcendental mean
ing in calling the empty categories meaningless, he was mistaken.

It would, however, be unfair to Hegel on this point if we did
not take into account the curious section 43 of the Encyclopedia,
where the question of the nature of the cat?gories is central. There
the categories are said to be both the means by which the percep
tions of sense reach objectivity, and unities of consciousness which
have "nothing of their own" because they are conditioned by the
material given to them. In the Zusatz, however, Hegel writes :"to
assert that the categories taken by themselves are empty can
scarcely be right, seeming that they have a content at all events,

' '26
in the special stamp and significance which they possess. This
content is not perceptible since it belongs to thought, and Hegel
goes on to describe a book or a speech as "full of content" in
proportion to the number of "thoughts and general results" con

tained in it. The categories, it would appear, have "content" in
being thoughts which unify data. On the other hand, Hegel can
then go on to write: "it is not wrong ... to call the
altogether
categories of themselves empty, if it be meant that they and the
logical they are the members,
idea, of which do not constitute the
whole of philosophy,
but necessarily lead onwards in due progress
' '2T
to the real departments of Nature and Mind.
On the basis of these comments, it is not altogether clear that
Hegel appreciates the uniqueness of Kant's idea that the signifi

cance of the categories as such consists in their helping to define
the transcendental shape of experience. Hegel was preoccupied
with the fact that, for Kant, the categories stand related to a con
tent which is heterogeneous, given from the outside, and not to be
developed from these categories themselves. For if the categories
are "empty" in the sense of needing to be filled by the "real de
28 8.132.
Glockner,
17
Wallace, p. 91.

454 JOHN E. SMITH
partments of Nature and Mind," it would appear that, for Hegel,

having "content" means developing the content from the cate
gories themselves rather than coming into possession of a content
"originally foreign" to the categories. Hegel should have taken

his own advice; on numerous occasions he claimed that Kant
asked the wrong question?that, for example, he did not ask for
the Begriff of space and time, but only whether they are subjective
or objective. Hegel should have been less concerned to brand
Kant's categories as "subjective"28 and more concerned to dis
cover their Begriff in Kant's thought, i.e., that they contribute to
defining a metaphysic of experience which is basically misunder
stood if it is taken either as a Lockean psychology or a Leibnizian
ontology. Moreover, it will not do to say?even if Kant sometimes
puts it this way himself?that the categories apart from the sensi
ble manifold have only a "logical function" because this language
is likely to obscure the transcendental meaning which goes beyond
the general or formal logic to the concept of an "object," a con
cept which does not occur at the level of formal logic. No criticism
of Kant should be allowed to obscure the concept of transcendental
meaning; it was his unique contribution.
Ill
Kant himself raised with admirable clarity the question con
cerning the relation between the transcendental idea and experi
ence which is at the heart of Hegel's fundamental criticism. In
his discussion of the cosmological antinomies (B 517-18), Kant
writes :
We have said that in all these cases the cosmical idea is either too
large or too small for the empirical regress, and therefore for any
possible concept of the understanding. We have thus been maintain
ing that the fault lies with the idea, in being too large or too small for
that to which it is directed, namely, possible experience.
Having declared that the fault is with the idea, Kant goes on to ask
whether he might not have opted for the opposite position, finding
fault not with the idea but with the empirical regress as providing
28
Cf. Encyclopedia, 42 Wallace,
; p. 90.

an empirical concept which is always too small for the idea.

Kant's answer is clear, though Kant was probably not fully aware
of the gravity of his choice in determining which of the two?the
idea and the empirical regress?exists for the sake of the other.
"Possible experience," he says,
is that which can alone give reality to our concepts; in its absence a
concept is a mere idea, without truth, that is, without relation to any
object. The possible empirical concept is therefore the standard by
which we must judge whether the idea is a mere idea and thought
entity, or whether it finds its object in the world.
Here, it is clear, Kant chooses finite, empirical knowledge as that

to which the idea must adapt itself. If, as in the half-humorous
case of the ball which cannot pass through the hole, no priority is
established, it makes no difference whether we say that the ball is
too large or that the hole is too small. But, to use Kant's other
example of the man and his coat, we do not say that the man is too
tall for the coat, but that the coat is too short for the man, imply
ing, of course, that the coat exists for the man and not vice versa.
Having established the priority of the empirical concept over the

idea on the ground that possible experience is the only standard
for determining the truth of any concept, Kant can say that the
fault lies with the idea in being too large for what the understand
ing can furnish. But it is precisely the establishment of this
priority which Hegel contests on the ground that it represents a
dogmatic preference for understanding and empirical knowledge
over the claims of reason. Why, Hegel asks, may we not maintain
the validity of the idea while at the same time pointing out that it
cannot be exhibited in the world of sense? The purported "ob
ject" of the cosmological idea is obviously not to be found "in the
world" which, according to Kant's statement above, is where it
would to be found if the idea is to be other than a mere
have
thought-entity. And, we must add, Hegel is not without help from
Kant's own doctrine in advancing his criticism. For had Kant not
allowed as legitimate the demand of reason to seek the uncondi
tioned? Had he not claimed that the transcendental ideas "neces
sarily" arise as the result of reason's demand on the understand
ing? Moreover, had Kant not said that the ideas can be thought
even if they cannot be known to denote realities? On all these
heads, Kant is on shakier ground vis a vis Hegel's position than

456 JOHN E. SMITH
are classical empiricists and positivists who, armed with a sense

bound criterion of meaning and a proper disrespect for the "de
29
mands of reason," can simply declare the Hegelian philosophy of
spirit and the notion to be meaningless. This Kant on his own

terms could not do because, though he severely restricted the scope
of theoretical reason, he nevertheless recognized its reality above
and beyond sense and understanding. Having so, however,done
he was forced to absolutize the understanding, thereby establish
ing mathematics and natural science as the paradigms of knowl
edge in order to restrict reason to its purely regulative function.
Hegel's claim is that if the reality of reason is once acknowledged

as Kant had indeed done, the only way in which it can be deprived
of its proper status and function in philosophical thought is
through the dogmatic claim that understanding and empirical con
cepts have priority over the idea. Nor is Hegel satisfied with
reason being confined to a regulative function since that once
again makes it thoroughly subordinate to understanding. Findlay

has expressed this point precisely and forcibly in his critical com
parison of Kant's and Hegel's treatment of the Idea. "But while
he [Hegel] agrees with Kant that the Idea has no full expression
in sense says Findlay, "he refuses to treat it as a
experience,"
merely regulative conception, something which it is profitable to
aim at, but not possible to reach." "The Idea," Findlay con
tinues, "is in fact what all things truly are, and to the extent that
sensible things fall short of it, it is they, not the Idea, which are
defective in 'truth' and reality."30 In Hegel's early critique of
Kant expressed in Glauben und Wissen, he claims that an under
standing which knows

things only as appearance, is itself only an
appearance and nothing in itself (Meiner, p. 23.). He takes Kant's
position, as implying the opposite ; he writes :

however, precisely
"But the understanding which knows discursively becomes, on
the contrary, something in itself and absolute and the knowledge
29 critical treatment of Kant's dialectic in The Bounds

See Strawson's
of Sense, London, 1966 (pp. 157ff). This sort of criticism serves to point
out the precariousness of Kant's position in allowing, on the one hand, the
legitimacy of reason as a source of ideas and principles and as a demand
for completeness while on the other hand claiming that reason as such has
no cognitive reach beyond the sphere of what intuition can supply.
80
J. N. Findlay, Hegel, p. 253.

of appearances is dogmatically considered to be the only mode of
knowing, while rational cognition (Vernunfterkenntnis) is de

nied" (Meiner edition, p. 23). Hegel's aim here is to expose the
presence in Kant's view of a selective and differential philosophi
cal claim which might not be identified and evaluated as such be
cause critical philosophy is supposed not to be treating issues
directly and "objectively," but obliquely in terms of the pre-con
ditions for the legitimate exercise of our faculties. "That, how
ever, the understanding is absolute with regard to the human
mind," says Hegel, "is something about which Kant never ap

peared to have the slightest doubt ; on the contrary, understanding
is the absolutely fixed, not to be transcended finitude of human
reason" (Meiner edition, p. 23). Further along in his examina
tion of Kant's position in Glauben und Wissen, Hegel emphasized
again the choice (Wahl) manifested by Kant when, after acknowl
edging the necessity of the idea of an intuitive understanding, he

set it aside in favor of a faculty of cognition which knows only
appearances wherein possibility and actuality are separated.
What troubled Hegel in all this was Kant's repeated acknowledg
ment of
the necessity of the idea of reason, on the one hand, and
his denial, on the other, that this necessity has any force in deter
mining the real. "Here," he writes, "Kant has both before him,
the idea of a reason in which possibility and actuality are abso
lutely identical, and the appearance of reason as a faculty of
knowledge in which the two are separated. He finds in the ex
perience of his thinking both thoughts ; in the choice between the

two, however, he scorned his disposition to think the necessity,
the rationality, of an intuitive spontaneity and simply decided for
the appearance" (Meiner edition, p. 34.). And, according to
Hegel, Kant had no other ground whatever for making this choice
'' '' '' ''
but experience and empirical psychology.
It is clear that in referring to Kant's position as a "choice,"
Hegel was pointing to a problem at the heart of a critical or trans

cendental philosophy. At times Kant described the critical tri
bunal of the first Critique as marking out a standpoint from which
"all disputes of pure reason" can be adjudicated. And Kant
made strong claims for this tribunal. In B 512 we are told that
critical questions can be resolved with "complete certainty;" in
B 697 it is asserted that "the highest tribunal" which is the criti

458 JOHN E. SMITH
cal standpoint cannot possibly be the source of illusions and de
ceptions ; and in B 779 the superiority of this tribunal is said to

consist in the fact that it is not itself involved in disputes "which
are immediately concerned with in short,
objects." Criticism,
enjoys advantages denied to reason in its supposedly dogmatic
employment.
From these claims it seems clear that Kant was taking trans
cendental philosophy as occupying a standpoint above and beyond
any standpoint from which differential, "dogmatic" metaphysical

theses would be advanced. If, for example, someone were to assert
with Leibniz that there must be simples because there are com
plexes, Kant would take that assertion, coming as it does without

the benefit of prior "criticism," as a prime illustration of a dog
matic thesis directly concerned with objects. And he would re
gard it as incapable of being established on the basis of our human
knowing apparatus.81 But it is clear that while Kant was viewing
dogmatic philosophical standpoints as hopelessly involved in mak
ing transcendent claims about the nature of things, he was also
regarding his critical standpoint as immune from criticism.

Transcendental statements about the nature of knowledge, it would
appear, somehow escape involvement in any dialectic, and they

exist in another dimension than that of the metaphysics which it
was the aim ofthe Critique to examine. And here Kant exhibits
in his own thought what must beregarded as a major paradox in
the development of modern philosophy, a paradox of which Hegel
was fully aware because it is represented in his criticism of Kant
from beginning to end. The variety of epistemological examina
tions of reason which we associate with the Enlightenment and
aimed at the determination of the nature, scope and limitations of
man's rational capacity, all come together in one point. From dif
ferent standpoints and on different grounds the Enlightenment phi
losophers set forth the limits of reason as coinciding with the
bounds of sense and confidently challenged the validity of the great
311 am assuming here, of course, that in the discussion of the question

of simples (or any others) in the Antinomy, Kant was manifestly not at
tempting to resolve the antithetic problems in an "objective" way, but
rather to illustrate his thesis that this cannot be done which is why the dis
cussion of the antinomies does no more than illustrate the natural dialectic
''
of human reason.

philosophical systems of the rationalist tradition. But somehow the

form of thought operative in these critical enterprises themselves
managed to escape judgment and remain unaffected by the scepti
cal conclusions thus attained. The critical philosophies, in short,
asserted the limitation of reason without limitation. And this was
possible because of the assumption not clearly recognized that the
analysis of understanding, reason represents a peculiar

thought,
case quite different from what is involved in first-order knowing
of things and events. The official conclusion of such epistemology
is that reason has limits, but this assertion itself was put forward
as a certainty that is without limit. It was the merit of Hegel's
critique to call attention to this outcome, and in two principal
respects. First, he pointed to Kant's introduction into the critical
philosophy itself of his choice of the appearance of reason in the
faculty of cognition which knows only appearances, over the idea
of the intuitive understanding, a choice which can be justified ulti
mately on no other ground than the doctrine of possible experience
which in turn presupposes that knowledge is confined to mathe
matics and natural science. It is Hegel's thesis that in making
this claim, critical philosophy assumes a dogmatic stance which
absolutizes the understanding. Second, Hegel called attention to
the problem implicit in determining the cognitive status of the
thesis that the unity of reason is merely subjective and assumes
the form of a postulate. He was unwilling to accept this thesis
merely as part of a prolegomenon which aims at knowing before

one knows. Instead, in Glauben und Wissen, he inquired into the
nature of a postulate as a means of understanding what the sub
jectivity of reason amounts to in Kant's thought. Before attend
ing to that section, it is important to notice that Hegel is not here

appealing to the well-known and formal argument that to have
knowledge of a limitation is ipso facto to be "beyond" that limita

tion. Here he is concerned rather with the purported knowledge
and the ground upon which the limitation itself is asserted. At the
end of his discussion of Kant in Glauben und Wissen, Hegel com
mends Kant for remaining within the limits of his postulates as,
so Hegel claims, Fichte did not. But Hegel wants to know more
precisely what is meant by a postulate, particularly with regard to
faith and subjectivity. Hegel's analysis is clear and expresses the
heart of his criticism. The entire passage is well worth repro

460 JOHN E. SMITH
ducing :
According to Kant himself the postulates and the faith they

involve are something subjective; now the only question is how this
subjectivity is to be taken. Is it that the identity of infinite thought
and being, of reason and its reality, is something subjective, or is it
only the postulation and the faith in it [which is subjective] ? Is it
the content or the form of the postulate? It cannot be the content
because its negative content is at once the cancellation (Aufhebung)
of all subjectivity; therefore it is the form and this means that it is
something subjective and accidental that the idea is only something
subjective.32
As was pointed out previously, Hegel is directing attention ex
clusively to the basis upon which Kant declares the subjectivity of

reason, and he came to the conclusion that the ground of Kant's
position consists entirely in his having opted for understanding

and possible experience over the claim of reason, despite the fact
that he saw the necessity of that claim in the idea of the intuitive
understanding. Hegel's conclusion at that point is that if the
subjectivity of reason depends in the end on a choice and a postu
late, it cannot be as well founded a thesis as the critical tribunal

is supposed to deliver.
Yale University
32Meiner
edition, p. 39.


Hegel's Critique of Kant

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Hegel's Critique of Kant

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v/ne of the peoblems to be faced anyone to under

beyond the framework of his own philosophical account of the his

position except in terms established by our own view of what is

ception, and, in fact, he sees Kant as most penetrating in his under

standing at precisely those points where he most nearly approxi

singular merit of Kant's Critique of Judgment is that in his treat

gories, closest to the truth when he grasped their interrelationships

This content downloaded on Sun, 16 Dec 2012 09:43:00 AM

example, means that as we proceed in the analysis of something

tempt to develop the categories from each other based on his de

interpreting the thought of others not to suggest that he simply

This content downloaded on Sun, 16 Dec 2012 09:43:00 AM

standing and its knowledge of finite reality over all speculative