What must we recognize? Brandom’s Kant and Hegel

Abstract

In this paper I comment on Brandom’s interpretation of Kant and Hegel. I intend to show its reductionism. Kant’s supposed normative turn which plays an important role for Brandom rests largely on a notion of judgment that falls short of Kant’s substantially more complex notion of the power of judgment (Urteilskraft). I then turn to an examination of Brandom’s thesis that Hegel overcomes Kant through a naturalization of conceptual norms. What Brandom calls the rational integration of commitments in a recognitive community is based on an exclusively theoretical and abstract interpretation of the chapter on self-consciousness in the Phenomenology of Spirit that cannot account for the primacy of desire and the will.