Hegel's Critique of Kant—From Dichotomy to Identity

Sally Sedgwick presents a fresh account of Hegel's critique of Kant's theoretical philosophy. She argues that Hegel offers a compelling critique of and alternative to the conception of cognition that Kant defended in his "Critical" period. The book examines key features of what Kant identifies as the "discursive" character of our mode of cognition, and considers Hegel's reasons for arguing that these features condemn Kant's theoretical philosophy to scepticism as well as dualism. Sedgwick goes on to present in a sympathetic light Hegel's claim to derive from certain Kantian doctrines clues to a superior form of idealism, a form of idealism that better captures the nature of our cognitive powers and their relation to objects.

Sally Sedgwick is Professor of Philosophy and Affiliated Professor of Germanic Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She received her PhD from the University of Chicago in 1985, and until 2003 was on the faculty at Dartmouth College. She has held visiting positions at Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and the universities of Bonn, Bern and Luzern. She has been awarded grants by NEH, ACLS, DAAD, and the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung. Her publications include numerous essays on Kant and Hegel, and the monograph, Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: An Introduction. She is editor of The Reception of Kant's Critical Philosophy: Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. In the academic year of 2009-10, she was President of the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association.