Brandoms Hegel: Squaring the Phenomenology with Semantic Pragmatism

Paul Giladi Robert Brandom has claimed that Hegels Phenomenology of Spirit is the forerunner of normative inferentialism. It would come to no surprise that this is a very contentious interpretation of the 1806 work. What Brandom has written about Hegel is complex and reasonably unclear. Hegels putative relationship with semantic pragmatism and inferentialism is alluded to only in a few pages of Brandoms published works and in several interviews. It would seem then that philosophers interested in Brandoms reading of Hegel have to patch his comments together to form his interpretation. Some, however, complain about such a task. As Rockmore writes, though somewhat too acerbically, ... the little [Brandom] says about Hegel only arouses suspicion. Brandom always, or almost always, reads Hegel through the positions of leading analytic philosophers, in practice Quine and Sellars, and never, or almost never, reads Hegel directly.1 I do not wish to level such vitriolic and frankly unprofessional polemic.2 In this paper, I shall (i) reconstruct Brandoms claim that Hegel is a proto-pragmatist and inferentialist and about conceptual norms. I shall (ii) argue that Brandoms interpretation faces the difficulty of how to reconcile Hegels notions of progress, history and actuality with the (relativistic) conventionalism of semantic pragmatism. I shall (iii) argue that another problem for the pragmatist interpretation is that it seems to be in conflict with (a) key concepts of Hegelian logic; (b) with Hegels concern in the Phenomenology about how philosophical concepts must undergo dialectical reformation, so that man can reconcile himself with the Absolute; and (c) with the self-transformational aspect of Hegelian epistemology. I shall conclude that I agree with Brandom that Hegel is partly concerned with how concepts function as normative characters, but I disagree with Brandom that Hegels understanding of the conceptual pushes him into later Wittgensteinian or even Sellarsian pragmatism.

I
First, some theories and their definitions: (i) (ii) Semantic pragmatism: the meaning of a word is determined by how the word is used in social practice. Expressivism: words and other linguistic particles have their meaning or use in their being expressed.

T. Rockmore, Brandom, Hegel and Inferentialism, in International Journal of Philosophical Studies, Volume 10, Issue 4 November (2002), pp.429-447, p.434. 2 That Rockmore claims that Brandom has teased the reader and has levelled several ad hominem insults at Brandom suggests that the former is not willing to respect the latters thesis.

(iii) (iv) (v)

Rationalist pragmatism: reasoning plays a central role in what it is to say or do something. Romantic expressivism: when something is made explicit i.e. when something is said or done the subject is expressing inner feeling. Rationalist expressivism: when something is made explicit i.e. when something is said or done the subject is expressing a concept or belief that is inferentially significant. The subject is expressing a concept or belief that plays an inferential role as either premise or conclusion.

Brandom suggests that (a) Hegels [project] is a rationalist pragmatism ... [Hegel] gives pride of place to reasoning in understanding what it is to say or do something. 3 This puts Hegel in opposition to (iv). I take this as to indicate that Hegel rejects the Romanticism of Novalis, Schlegel, Schiller and Schelling. 4 Secondly, Brandom claims that (b) Hegel introduced the Sellarsian idea that something is meaningful ... in terms of its role in inference.5 I take this to indicate that, according to Brandom, Hegel considers meaning as being constituted by the use of normative rules of commitments and entitlements. The sort of logical vocabulary that Brandom uses to account for conceptual content here is that of classical first-order logic, particularly the logic of negation and material implication. Thirdly, with regard to Hegels discussion of consciousness and self-consciousness in the Phenomenology, Brandom writes, (c) [Hegels account] offers an account of a kind of consciousness, awareness in the sense of sapience, which underwrites a corresponding account of a kind of self-consciousness: semantic or conceptual self-consciousness.6 We need to unpack these three claims. (a) can be regarded as the claim that Hegel believes that reasoning plays a central role in making a proposition, etc. explicit . In other words, Hegel is interested in how reasoning or conceptual articulation relates to forms of expression: i.e. how reasoning relates to speech-acts or behavioural dispositions. (b) can be regarded as the claim that Hegel is the first to reject truth-conditional semantics 7 in favour of inferential role semantics. This means that Hegel established the theory that for something to be meaningful it must occupy a role of either premise or conclusion i.e. that meaning is
3 4

R. B. Brandom, Articulating Reasons: An Introduction to Inferentialism, p.34. This is controversial. When philosophers claim that Hegel rejected Romanticism, they mean that he rejected the theory of intuition, the supernatural, the primacy of art over philosophy and Wissenschaft (Science), and Jacobis critique of reason. However, certain Romantic elements were incorporated in Hegels philosophy, namely the vitalist or organic conception of nature, a hermeneutical relationship between mind and world and the critique of mechanistic reason. Like Romantics, Hegel was critical of the cognitive reach of Verstand (understanding), but unlike them, he did not reject Vernunft (Reason) in favour of intellectual or aesthetic intuition. In fact, Hegel maintained that only Reason could lead to absolute knowledge. Given all this, one may regard Hegels work as the Romanticisation of Aufklrung values. (Cf. the Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Volume III, p.385.) As Gardner (2007) writes, The methods considered in chapter V [of the Phenomenology of Spirit] proceed from a conception of reason, associated with the Enlightenment, which is in Hegel's view naive and undeveloped ... The conception of reason that we are supposed to move onto is the creative, organic, collective, developmental reason of Hegel's metaphysics Reason as Spirit.
5 6

AR, p.35. Ibid., p.35. 7 This comes under what Brandom calls representationalism.

determined by inferential articulation of certain conceptual norms which govern linguistic practice. A colleague of mine, Florian Demont, at a research seminar, elegantly phrased it in the following manner: the inferential structure of practice has at its base the idea that logical vocabulary ... encodes (or expresses) various constellations of incompatible and compatible moves in that practice. (c) can be regarded as the claim that Hegels Geisteswissenschaften offers an account of the mind as a social and normative consciousness. In other words, Hegel claims that the mind is not the passive mirror of nature, but something socially active which structures its content both implicit and explicit in accordance with specific norms of reflection. Concepts understood to be formal rules and not representations are the atomic units of experience.8 Hardly anyone can doubt that Hegel gives pride to reason ( Vernunft) in his philosophy. However, what we understand by reasoning in Hegelian philosophy normally refers to how consciousness reflects on its own nature, its objects, and its relation with the Absolute. The dialectic from sense-certainty to absolute knowledge i.e. the experience ( Erfahrung) of consciousness is a teleological movement from the most primitive form (gestalt) of worldview consciousness (die Weltanschauung des Bewusstsein) through superior (yet still incorrect) forms to finally the correct form. As Hegel writes, this last shape of Spirit the Spirit which at the same time gives its complete and true content the form of the self and thereby realises its Notion as remaining in its Notion in this realisation this is absolute knowing; it is Spirit that knows itself in the shape of Spirit, or a comprehensive knowing. (PS, p.427.) The quote denotes something very elaborate. It is a Romantic rationalism, as Beiser (2005) would have it. Brandom, however, seems to regard Hegels account of reason in a more anodyne manner. Prof. Brandoms focus is on how the Hegelian conception of reason relates to forms of expression. How, in other words, reason relates to speech and behaviour. Let us call this thesis the Hegelian account of cognitive linguistics and cognitive behavioural psychology. Prima facie, this is highly controversial. Hegel is not a philosopher known for such projects. Rockmore, for instance, even suggests that Brandoms thesis ... is implausible on even a charitable interpretation.9 I shall return to this claim in due course. It seems reasonable to assert that much textual evidence seems to thwart Brandoms interpretation. For example, Hegels methodological critique of Kant, Hegels theory of systematicity, the Aristotelian account of actuality, the theory of the unhappy consciousness, alienation, Sittlichkeit and absolute knowledge all seem to suggest that Hegel is not concerned with pragmatics. Rather, his concern is more abstract: it is metaphysical, epistemological, or hermeneutical. As OConnor writes, Hegels account of experience of the progressive, superseding forms of knowledge pertains rather to the fundamental concepts that determine the forms of how human beings relate to and construe their world.10 And as Bristow puts it, Hegels Phenomenology consists in a sequence of stages on the journey of the knowing subject that beings at the standpoint of natural or ordinary
8 9

This relates to (a) as well. Rockmore, p.439. 10 B. OConnor, Hegels Phenomenology and the Question of Semantic Pragmatism, pp.1-2.

consciousness and ends at the standpoint of philosophy ... The knowing subject reflects on its knowledge and compares its claims to knowledge with its criteria for knowledge claims.11 However, this is too quick to refute Brandoms thesis. I have neglected to mention a key Hegelian notion that Brandom explicitly refers to: Geist. He claims that this concept focuses on providing the ... semantics [that] goes with the pragmatics of reciprocal recognition.12 His textual support for this is the claim that sprache is ... the existence [dasein] of Spirit. (PS, p.395.) The quote is obscure; as is also how the text supports Brandoms claim. But this does not mean that what Brandom says is meaningless: dasein can be translated as being, and given that being may have essentialist overtones to it, the claim may be somewhat elucidated by regarding it as Language is the essence of Spirit. Spirit may be interchangeable with the term active social consciousness though I stress that this is a controversial move. So, what Hegel seems to be claiming is that Language is the essence of an active social consciousness. As such, if something is capable of discursive speech or communication, then it is Geist. Geist principally consists in sociality, namely awareness of others as equals and the necessity of such awareness to realise self-consciousness. Brandom wants to claim that awareness of others as equals emerges from the use of concepts in a specific social practice, namely the game of giving and asking for reasons. This is effectively the exchange of inferentially structured beliefs and the commitments and entitlements attached to these articulated beliefs through conversation. As he writes about conversation in general, [Two speakers] typically have different sets of collateral commitments if they do not, communication would be superfluous. Second, the inferential significance of a claim (what its consequences are and what would count as evidence for it) depends on what auxiliary hypotheses are available to serve as collateral premises. So differences in background beliefs mean that a remark may have one inferential significance for the speaker and another for [his fellow speaker] ...13 As he would phrase it, the game of giving and asking for reasons is the essence of linguistic practice, which is itself the social articulation of individual inferential practices that enables speakers to move in the (normative) space of reasons. To put it less obscurely, giving and asking for reasons is the driving force of conversation. Brandom then claims that one of Hegels great insights was that normative statuses are social statuses.14 Indeed, Brandoms interpretation would have it that the collapse of the master/slave relationship comes about from how the two persons through conversation rearticulate certain concepts, such as self and other. Self for instance, was used to mean or signify that being which conforms objects to its will. The self was the agent who aimed to achieve independence over the world by suppressing nature, artifice and other entities. The norms of reflection in this form of life consisted in the belief that the self was only
11 12

W. F. Bristow, Hegel and the Transformation of Philosophical Critique, p.13. R. B. Brandom, Untimely Review of Hegels Phenomenology of Spirit, p.5. 13 R. B. Brandom, Making It Explicit, p.475. 14 AR, p.34.

independent if it made everything outside of it dependent on it. Its suppression of the external world was seen in its biological acts, the formation of technology and the battle for recognition. To put it another way, the norms of reflection were made explicit by being translated into normative attitudes: for instance, belief in the formal difference between subject with object was translated into regarding the subject as in opposition to the world. However, by moving through the space of reasons, self acquired a new use, namely to refer to an egalitarian gestalt of consciousness signifying the being(s) that participated in reciprocal recognition. Hence, according to Brandom, the idea of Geist is the whole system of social practices of the most inclusive possible community. 15 As such, his interpretation seems to be consistent with Hegels claim that Geist as social consciousness or consciousness in and for itself (an und fr sich) establishes the belief that the self is at home (bei sich) in the world. This in turn translates into regarding oneself at harmony with the world.

II
What we may draw from this discussion is the following set of principles: (a) Every form of consciousness contains norms of reflection. (b) Norms of reflection consist of beliefs about how the world is and how the self relates to the world. (c) Norms of reflection bring about normative attitudes. (d) Normative attitudes consist of social behavioural dispositions which are based on norms of reflection. I believe that Hegel would be comfortable with these claims about the Phenomenology. However, it seems to me that he would want the following principle to be added: (b*) Beliefs that comprise a norm of reflection are not formed by fixed inferential rules. Rather, they are based on a dynamic conception of consciousness. I.e. a self-critical way of conceiving ones place in the world. (e) There is teleological necessity in the development of norms of reflection and normative attitudes. This rational progression is determined by phenomenological scrutiny. (f) Meaning is not fixed by use and inferential rules, but rather unfolded through dialectics. Brandom, though, if he wants his interpretation of Hegel as a rationalist pragmatist to succeed, will need to reject (b*), (e) and (f), and add the following principles: (i) These beliefs (i.e. the ones mentioned in (b)) are conceptually articulated. (ii) They are conceptually articulated by a (Sellarsian) linguistic affair.
15

R. B. Brandom, Tales of the Mighty Dead, p.227.

I believe that the first difficulty facing Brandoms interpretation here is that his picture of Hegel as a pragmatist i.e. someone who regards linguistic use in social practice as the determination of meaning seems to be inconsistent with what would be Hegels opposition to the Wittgensteinian and Sellarsian claim that to grasp a concept, C, one must master the social use of the word, C. This is because to grasp a concept, according to Hegel, is to grasp the dialectical movement of that concept i.e. its move from potentiality to actuality rather than grasping what the concept is used for in a social context. However, this appears to be inconsistent with how Brandom conceives of Hegels understanding of conceptual norms, as Brandoms interpretation holds that, for Hegel, conceptual content is fixed by a set of normative relations inferential rules which do not require phenomenological reflection. More specifically, in reading Hegel through inferentialist lenses, Brandom ... offers no consideration of the resultant nature of knowledge in Hegels position. 16 Consider the following passage: [The historical arises] because negotiating and adjudicating the claims of reciprocally conditioning authorities, administering conceptual norms by applying them in actual cases (to particulars that immediately present themselves), is a process. In that process of experience, conceptual norms develop, along with the body of claims or judgments expressing the commitments that arise from applying those concepts. This developmental process of progressively determining the content of concepts by applying them in concert with their fellows is to be understood as the way determinately contentful conceptual norms are instituted.17 If I understand Brandom correctly here and I stress the antecedent what his interpretation appears to be claiming is that history or historical development arises from playing the game of giving and asking for reasons at the institutional level and then putting the theoretical commitments and entitlements into practice. However, for Hegel, as OConnor writes, ... progress is meant here the increasing revelation of truth as ultimately the absolute grounds of experience become transparent.18 The progression from the master/slave form to Geist does not arise from a Sellarsian linguistic affair of giving and asking for reasons. Nor does the progression to Reason arise from such a social practice that is implicitly relativistic and not historicist. This is because this social practice, wherein speakers share discursive commitments and entitlements, does not appear to have any teleological aspect to it. That the progression from one form of historical consciousness to the next is dialectical means that the progression is teleologically structured, for as one moves from one form to the next, consciousness is in the process of realising or actualising its form its Begriff. Its form, understood as an Aristotelian formal-final cause (cf. Beiser (2005)), is that which structures the organism in such a manner, so that the organism can flourish. It is far from obvious that a linguistic affair or a somewhat similar social convention can establish historicism and teleological necessity. To put the argument crudely, Brandoms pragmatist reading of Hegel, though it alludes to the importance of rules in experience (as transcendental operators, for
16 17

OConnor, p.16. TOTMD, p.229. 18 OConnor, p.16.

instance) does not respect the features of the Hegelian dialectic, which is opposed to pragmatist conventionalism.

III
However, consider the following from Brandom: The contents of concepts are identified and individuated by the functional roles they play in historically evolving webs constituted by relations of mediation and determinate negation, that is, by their material inferential and incompatibility relations to each other.19 In the above passage, Brandom claims that Hegelian logic is inferentialist. He defines mediation as the ground of inferential articulation. 20 This is obscure. It is certainly true that mediation is related to the notion of articulation. Vermittlung is tied to conceptualisation and reflection, like articulation. However, there are some difficulties for Brandom: firstly, it is not clear how mediation relates to inferentialism. It is certainly true that mediation is tied to holism, and it does seem to be true that inferentialism entails holism. As he succinctly writes, on an inferentialist account of conceptual content, one cannot have any concepts unless one has many concepts. For the content of each concept is articulated by its inferential relations to other concepts.21 However, Brandom needs to explain how mediation entails inferentialism. Secondly, Brandom has neglected to explicitly refer to sublation, the key Hegelian concept of which mediation and determinate negation are constituents. However, he has discussed the latter two notions. In The Science of Logic, Hegel defines sublation (aufheben) as on the one hand it means to preserve, to maintain, and equally it also means to cause to cease, to put an end to. Even 'to preserve' includes a negative element, namely, that something is removed from its influences, in order to preserve it. Thus what is sublated is at the same time preserved; it has only lost its immediacy but is not on that account annihilated. (SL, p.107.) Sublation is to be regarded as the motor of Hegels dialectic, in that it is the process which starts the mediation between concepts via their determinate negations, i.e. their contraries which do not ... entail a sideways movement to another concept ... [but rather] forces knowledge into a distinctive new form.22 The logical movement, for Hegel, is logically preservatory. This means that, in the case of the phenomenological subject, the sublation of a previous form of consciousness reveals aspects of that gestalt are false, whereas other aspects have some truths; and these truths are pre-requisites for moving onto the next form or stage. Brandoms account leaves an explanatory gap: he wants to explain how two key features of Hegelian logic anticipate certain aspects of inferentialism. Determinate negation and mediation, though, are necessarily tied to the concept of sublation. However, Brandom has
19 20

MIE, p.92. Ibid., p.92. 21 AR, pp.15-16. 22 OConnor, p.13.

not in fact mentioned how sublation is tied to mediation and determinate negation, and he has not discussed how sublation is tied to inferentialism. Secondly, Brandom defines determinate negation as the material incompatibility relations among concepts.23 However, Brandom interprets Hegel as focussing on how determinate negation plays a role in everyday concepts, such as colours. Viz., Brandom (2002), p.223. This interpretation, however, seems to conflict with how Hegel presents determinate negation as that which leads to the formation of a true or fully developed, perfected cognition. (PS, p.43.) This epistemic state or knowledge item, i.e. die gebildete und vollstndige Erkenntnis, is the result of the compulsion of rationality24 that goes over the knowledge claims of ordinary consciousness in everyday social practice. It consists in reattaining ... the satisfaction and security of the certainty that consciousness then had of its reconciliation with the essential being. (PS, p.4.) However, this does not mean that absolute knowledge is knowledge of something beyond experience. Rather it is recollection of the experience of consciousness in the natural world. As Hegel writes, the experience of itself which consciousness goes through, can in accordance with its Notion, comprehend nothing less than the entire system of consciousness. (PS, p.56.) It seems clear then that Hegels determinate negation is not what Brandom would have it to be, namely something logically anodyne. More specifically even, Brandoms interpretation of Hegels determinate negation, because it seems to remove its metaphysical content, neglects that the notions of an-sich and fr-sich are to be read in terms of dunamis and energeia. Thirdly, Brandoms interpretation seems to have ignored how Hegels determinate negation is tied to the self-transformational aspect of Hegelian epistemology, in that the path of critical reflection is self-transformational in the sense that our self-conception and our conception of the ultimate rational norms change radically through the inquiry. 25 For instance, the philosophical problem facing the phenomenological subject in Consciousness was the result of the subject thinking about objects qua the formal dualism of subject and object an account of knowledge as a kind of passive, direct awareness of objects as authoritative.26 However, as the subject reflects on his experience, he finds that knowledge is not simply an epistemic relation between subject and object; rather, knowledge also involves a way in which we establish a relation with the world and ourselves that involves both the kinds of ends we pursue and the kinds of subjects we take ourselves to be. To understand what we take to be valid claims to knowledge is to come to understand the kinds of persons we take ourselves to have become.27 The path to absolute knowledge i.e. the complete cognition of experience cannot be mediated by a linguistic affair, but only through the historical development of consciousness and subject-hood through their dialectical Begriffe. --

23 24

TOTMD, p.223. OConnor, p.7. 25 Bristow, p.14. 26 T. Pinkard, Hegels Phenomenology: The Sociality of Reason, p.79
27

Ibid., p.44.

I agree with Brandom that Hegel is partly concerned with how concepts function as normative characters. However, if my argument is successful, this does not mean that Hegels understanding of the conceptual pushes him into later Wittgensteinian or Sellarsian pragmatism. In other words, I reject Brandoms pragmatisation of the Geisteswissenschaften as having their proper aim the study of concept use and things made possible by it.28 I have argued that Brandom has tried to de-Romanticise Hegel, in the sense that he has interpreted Hegel as being concerned in the Phenomenology with the relationship between inferential rules and everyday conceptual content. If my critique of Brandoms interpretation is correct, then it indicates that the essential problem with Brandoms thesis is that it puts its Hegel at odds with the actual Hegel, because the former would be interested in natural or ordinary consciousness, given the interest in semantic pragmatism, whereas the latter is precisely opposed to ordinary consciousness.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
28

AR, p.23.

Beiser, F. C. 2005. Hegel. New York & London.: Routledge. Brandom, R. B. 1994. Making It Explicit. Cambridge, Mass. / London.: Harvard University Press. Brandom, R. B. 1999. Some Pragmatist Themes in Hegels Idealism: Negotiation and Administration in Hegels Account of the Structure and Content of Conceptual Norms, in European Journal of Philosophy 7: 164-189. Brandom, R. B. 2000. Articulating Reasons: An Introduction to Inferentialism . Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Brandom, R. B. 2002. Tales of the Mighty Dead. Cambridge, Mass. / London.: Harvard University Press. Brandom, R. B. Untimely Review of Hegels Phenomenology of Spirit: http://www.pitt.edu/~brandom/ Bristow, W. F. 2007. Hegel and the Transformation of Philosophical Critique . Oxford.: Clarendon Press. Hegel, G. W. F. 1969. Science of Logic. Miller, A. V. trans. London.: Allen and Unwin. Hegel, G. W. F. 1977. Phenomenology of Spirit. Miller, A. V. trans. Oxford.: Oxford University Press. OConnor, B. Hegels Phenomenology and the Question of Semantic Pragmatism : www.ucd.ie/philosophy/staff/oconnor/hegelphen.pdf Pinkard, T. 1994. Hegels Phenomenology: The Sociality of Reason. Cambridge.: Cambridge University Press. Rockmore, T. 2002. Brandom, Hegel and Inferentialism, in International Journal of Philosophical Studies 10: 429-447. Sellars, W. 1997. Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

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