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Hegel, analytic philosophy and the return of metaphyiscs
Lumsden, Simon
Lumsden, Simon
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parrhesia11_lumsden.pdf
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"At issue in Paul Redding’s 2007 work, Analytic Philosophy and the Return of Hegelian Thought, and in a number of related papers that he has published since then is a very ambitious project: that analytic philosophy has to take a Hegelian turn if it is to resolve its own ongoing systemic problems. Since it was published, the book has had a considerable impact, such as an author-meets-critic session at the Pacific division of the APA in 2008 with Robert Brandom giving a long, generous, and very positive response. There have also been other panels on this work at other meetings of the APA since then. Paul’s research on the need for analytic philosophy to take its idealist turn, and his examination of McDowell and Brandom has continued to promote debate and interest amongst a cross-section of philosophers. I am personally indebted to Paul: since the publication of this book whenever my more analytically-trained colleagues have asked me, “Why do these perfectly respectable philosophers – Brandom and McDowell – have an interest in Hegel?” I am now spared having to give a brief summary of the animating problems of post-Kantian idealism and explaining how these connect to McDowell and Brandom’s thought. Now all have to do is direct them to Paul’s writings on this issue. As Redding sees it, the only way to overcome the intractable problems in analytic philosophy that Sellars and others had pointed out, but from which they could not escape, is for analytic philosophy to make a Hegelian turn. For this reason the neo-Hegelian thought of John McDowell and Robert Brandom is the way forward for analytic philosophy, since they both recognise that a core problem with the defining traditions of analytic philosophy has its roots in the response to Kant’s Critical Philosophy and they also think, in their own distinctive ways, the only correct response is a Sellarsian-Hegelian one. How successful they are in achieving this is not something I am capable of commenting on. The neo-Hegelianism of two of analytic philosophy’s leading contemporary figures is one of the great ironies in the history of philosophy. The creation myth of the analytic tradition is that its identity is taken to have been forged in opposition to the murky depths of Hegel’s thought."
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2011
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