Hegel’s Critique of Kant and the Limits of Reflection

Abstract

The following is a study of two of G. W. F. Hegel’s major works of the Jena period. The essay The Difference between the Fichtean and Schellingian Systems of Philosophy (1801) and the book Faith and Knowledge (1803) both provide us with insights into what Hegel takes to be the project of philosophy in Germany after the emergence of the Kantian philosophy. A careful study of both of these early texts is necessary for understanding the general epistemological ambitions of Hegel’s mature philosophy. The critique of Immanuel Kant in Faith and Knowledge is especially important because it shows the way in which Hegel anticipates the nature of his mature thought as something that directly answers to the impasses of the Kantian philosophy. Yet such a study of Faith and Knowledge remains incomplete without first laying out the orientation to his contemporaries that Hegel establishes in the Differenzschrift. A study of these two texts makes clear the way in which Kant’s philosophy stands as a backdrop against which Hegel sees German Idealism develop.