The Limits of (Non-)Conceptualism: Hegel’s Theory of Cognition in the Philosophy of Subjective Spirit

This paper assesses Hegel’s theory of cognition within the context of the (non-)conceptualism debate, originally sparked by John McDowell’s engagement with Hegel and recently extended to his Philosophy of Subjective Spirit. Rather than aligning with either conceptualism or non-conceptualism, we argue that Hegel’s conception of cognition challenges both positions. In §1, we reconstruct the (non-)conceptualist debate as it relates to Hegel. We then show that both approaches assign a paradigmatic role to sensation, the initial stage of Hegel’s Anthropology, and thereby risk offering a distorting picture of the role of the Psychology: in §2, we critique non-conceptualist readings for treating sensation as an isolated and self-sufficient level of cognition; in §3 we argue that conceptualist readings elevate sensation to a transcendental precondition for the understanding of higher cognitive functions. In the final section (§4), we turn to ‘intuition’ (Anschauung), the first stage of Theoretical Spirit, to offer a preliminary account of Hegel’s dynamic account of the relationship between mind and world – a process of co-constitution of conceptual capacities and ontological structures of objectivity that transcends either position.