HCJ Lecture Two Kant and Hegel

Bertrand Russell doesn't believe that Immanuel Kant is one of the greatest modern philosophers, but does say that he would be "foolish not to recognise his great importance". Kant wrote the well known book, "Critique of Pure Reason" and his purpose was to prove that our knowledge is in part 'a priori' and not inferred inductively from experience. Kant states that if we include existence in the defintion of something then claiming it exists is a reptition of an idea.

Russell goes on to say "Kant accepted the view that the law of causality is synthetic, but nevertheless maintained that it is known a priori"-a priori is defined as knowledge or justification independent of experience, or a justification which makes reference to experience, but it concerns how one knows the proposition or claim in question. Russell goes on further to say that Kant claimed the outer world causes only the matter of sensation, and supplies the concepts by means of which we understand experience.

Kant's fourth section of the Critique proves that there is, and is not an absolutely necessary being-this greatly influenced Hegel (whose dialectic proceeds wholly by way of antinomies). Kant sets out to "demolish" all the purely intellectual proofs of God's existence, and he does say he has other reasons for believing in God, but for the sake of his book his purpose and belief was purely negative.

Regarding space and time, Kant holds that immediate objects of perception are due partly to external things and partly to our own perceptie apparatus. To prove that space and time are a priori forms, Kant has two classes of argument: Mataphysical and transcendental. Metaphysical relates to the idea that it is possible to imagine nothing in space, but impossible to imagine no space. Kant also used this argument to claim space is an intuition, not a concept. Kant uses transcendental argument to analyse geometry. He claims on one hand there is pure geometry, then on the other hand there is geometry as a branch of physics.


Hegel (1770-1831) set forth political doctrines which influenced the course of history. Even though it is believed his doctrines were false, he still retains historical and political importance. One difficult aspect of Hegel's work is his "innovation of logic" and in response to Kant's challeneg to the limits of Pure Reason, Hegel developed a new form of logic called Speculation (or today most known as "dialetics"). Speculation is a method of argument consisting of a dialogue between two or more people who hold different ideas and wish to persuade each other.

Russell states that Hegel understands logic as the same thing as metaphysics. His view is that "any ordinary predicate, if taken as qualifying the whole of Reality, turns out to be self-contradicting".
A few examples of Hegel's dialectic method may serve to make it more intelligible-he begins the argument of his logic by the assumption that 'the absolute is pure being' but pue being without any qualities is nothing, therefore we are led to the anti-thesis (non-existence)-this process, according to Hegel is essential to the understanding of te result. Each later stage of the dialectic contains all the earlier stages, as it were in solution: none of them is 'wholly' superseded. It is imposible to reach the truth except by going through all steps of the dialectic.

Though he was often critical of Kant, Hegel's philosophy wouldn't exist without Kant - "The nature of Reality can be deduced from the sole consideration that it must be not self-contradictory"

Russell criticises Hegel as "the hardest to understand of all the great philiosphers". Russell considered much of Hegel's philosophy to be an elaboration of the mystic theories to which hegel was attracted to in his younger years. Bertrand also attacked Hegel's "obscure" logic and "metaphysically impossible" attempt to get rid of the "in-itself". Hegel argues that in his science of logic, that the German language was particularly conducive to philosophical thought and writing.