Argumenta – Journal of Analytic Philosophy

 

Hegel’s Naturalism, the Negative and the First Person Standpoint [Special Issue]

Issue: Issue 08 • Author/s: Stefan Bird-Pollan
Topics: History of Analytic Philosophy, Metaphysics

In this paper I attempt to move the discussion of Hegel’s naturalism past what I present as an impasse between the soft naturalist interpretation of Hegel’s notion of Geist, in which Geist is continuous with nature, and the opposing claim that Geist is essentially normative and self-legislating. In order to do so I suggest we look to the question of value which underlies this dispute. While soft naturalists seek to make sense of value as arising from material nature, those who support the autonomy thesis propose that value is something…