Hegel's conception of immanent critique

its sources, extent and limit

Karin de Boer

pp. 83-100

in: Karinde Boer, Karin de Boer, Ruth Sonderegger (eds), Conceptions of critique in modern and contemporary philosophy, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012

Abstract

Throughout the twentieth century, many philosophers have implicitly or explicitly assumed that it is possible to criticise a particular philosophical, political or cultural paradigm — be it modernity as such — in the name of a criterion that such a paradigm contains within itself. There is no doubt that this method has been extremely productive. I take it, however, that it also contains an illusory element. In order to shed light on the force and limits of the method that has become known by the name of immanent critique I will, in this chapter, examine Hegel's conception of philosophical critique. To be sure, Hegel never referred to his method as immanent critique. Yet the self-criticism of reason introduced by Kant and further elaborated by Hegel has originated many modes of philosophy that, implicitly or explicitly, presented their method in these terms. At least in modern philosophy, it was Kant who first conceived of critique as a form of reflection that draws its criterion from reason itself, that is, from the form of thought that faces the task of judging its prevailing mode of appearance — Wolffian metaphysics — as inadequate.

Cited authors

Kant Immanuel

Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich