THE UNITY OF IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE AS THE ...

directions. While philosophers such as Lukács, Adorno, Kojeve, Habermas, and Wood
himself have developed Hegel’s thought in various broadly Marxist directions, other
philosophers, including Brandom, Pippin and the later Pinkard, have presented interesting
non-metaphysical interpretations of Hegel that emphasize various pragmatist and post-
Kantian epistemological themes. 3
1.2) Hegel’s Immanent Metaphysics
Despite the weight of historical precedent Wood’s somewhat plausible suggestion
about Hegel’s intellectual development, in this dissertation I will present an explicitly
metaphysical interpretation of certain key Hegelian themes, and I will argue that these
themes provide an indispensable basis for understanding the central arguments presented
in the Philosophy of Right. Hegel is, first and foremost, a metaphysician interested in
various pre-Kantian themes. This manner of stating the problem may be somewhat
prejudicial, since “pre-Kantian” may be taken to mean “pre-critical,” “non-critical,” and
3 In his widely influential interpretation of Hegel’s theoretical and practical philosophy, Robert
Pippin presents Hegel as an explicitly post-Kantian philosopher, as a philosopher who radicalizes and
develops the subjectivity and spontaneity at the heart of Kant’s Copernican revolution. At the beginning of
his book on Hegel’s theoretical philosophy, entitled Hegel’s Idealism: The Satisfaction of Self-
Consciousness, Pippin states his basic thesis as follows: “I shall claim that these…references to Kant’s
critical idealism are indispensable for a proper understanding of Hegel’s position, and that they point to the
basic Kantian issue that clarifies the important ways in which Hegel’s position extends and deepens Kant’s
antiempiricist, antinaturalist, antirationalist strategies. That issue, as Hegel himself again tells us, is the
apperception theme, Kant’s claim about the ‘self-conscious,’ ultimately the ‘spontaneously’ self-conscious,
character of all possible human experience” (6). Pippin argues that Hegel continues Kant’s basic project of
uncovering the necessary conditions of empirical experience, and that he does so in way that (a) radicalizes
the role of spontaneity, that (c) denies the ultimate legitimacy of the distinction between the understanding
and intuition, that (d) rejects the thing in itself, and that (e) emphasizes the role of history and intersubjectivity
in the determination of the non-empirical conditions of experience. In numerous essays, Pippin
extends this same basic framework to Hegel’s practical philosophy. See, for instance, “Hegel’s Ethical
Rationalism,” “Hegel on the Rationality and Priority of Ethical Life,” and “Naturalness and Mindedness:
Hegel’s Compatibilism.” In his book, Hegel’s Phenomenology: The Sociality of Reason, Terry Pinkard
develops this line of interpretation in relation to the Phenomenology. For a criticism of these
epistemological/pragmatic interpretations of Hegel, see Karl Ameriks’ “Hegel and Idealism,” Frederick
Beiser’s “Hegel, A Non-Metaphysician?” and Rolf-Peter Horstmann’s “Substance, Subject and Infinity: A
Case Study of the Role of Logic in Hegel’s System.”
3