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From Kant to Lévi-Strauss
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From Kant to Lévi-Strauss
The Background to Contemporary
Critical Theory
Edited by Jon Simons
Edinburgh University Press
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© The contributors, 2002
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
22 George Square, Edinburgh
Typeset in New Baskerville
by Norman Tilley Graphics, and
printed and bound in Great Britain by
Creative Print and Design, Ebbw Vale, Wales
A CIP record for this book is
available from the British Library
ISBN 0 7486 1506 7 (paperback)
The right of the contributors
to be identified as authors of this work
has been asserted in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Notes on Contributors ix
1 Introduction 1
Jon Simons
2 Immanuel Kant 17
Jon Simons
3 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 33
Matt F. Connell
4 Karl Marx 50
Simon Tormey
5 Friedrich Nietzsche 65
Jon Simons
6 Max Weber 81
John Ellis and Jon Simons
7 Sigmund Freud 97
Richard H. King
8 Georg Lukács 113
Stuart Sim
9 Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer 129
Matt F. Connell
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10 Edmund Husserl 146
William Hutson
11 Martin Heidegger 163
David Woods
12 Hans-Georg Gadamer 181
Nicholas H. Smith
13 Ludwig Wittgenstein 197
Simon Tormey
14 Hannah Arendt 213
Richard H. King
15 Claude Lévi-Strauss 228
Christopher Johnson
Names index 244
Subject index 247
Contents
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Acknowledgements
This volume, which I have edited, should be recognised as a collec-
tive effort. Without the expertise of the authors of the individual
chapters, there would simply be no book. My debt of gratitude to
the contributors is larger than that, however, as they have done
more than write their own chapters. I thank them for reading and
commenting on each other’s chapters, including my own, thereby
enhancing the quality of and coherence between the chapters. I am
also grateful to the contributors for their valuable comments on
both the introduction to the volume and on my brief introductions
to each chapter. Indeed, I had so much help from other contribu-
tors with those introductions that they should be considered as co-
authors of them, though I am responsible for any errors remaining
in the introductions. On behalf of all the contributors I would
like to thank David Owen for reading and commenting on all the
chapters with his usual insight and acuity. Jackie Jones at Edinburgh
University Press generously showed confidence in the original
proposal and guided it through until its acceptance, while the
production staff at the Press have made the publishing process as
smooth as possible.
The inspiration for producing this book has come from the
students at the University of Nottingham who have attended an
annual lecture series on the ‘Tradition of Critique’ which began in
1995. Students on the M.A. in Critical Theory, the M.A. in Archi-
tecture and Critical Theory, and more recently research students
from a variety of disciplines as well as a new M.A. in Cultural Studies
and Critical Theory have been engaged and enquiring audiences
vii
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for the lectures which are the basis for this book. All but two of the
chapters in this volume have been developed from lectures which
have benefited from the questions and comments of those students
over the years. Those students’ interest in and enthusiasm for the
‘Tradition of Critique’ has made this project worth while.
Jon Simons
January 2002
Acknowledgements
viii
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Notes on Contributors
Dr Matt F. Connell teaches social theory in the Department of
English and Media Studies at Nottingham Trent University. He has
published papers on Adorno and Freud in Body and Society, Theory,
Culture and Society and Radical Philosophy. He is currently working on
an introduction to Adorno for Pluto Press.
John Ellis teaches cultural studies, with special interests in design
and visual culture, at the Open University and Nottingham Trent
University. His current research is a comparative study of Weber’s
and Arendt’s approaches to modernity, with a particular focus on
the public sphere.
William Hutson is currently completing a Ph.D. on Husserl and
the question of history. In addition to Husserl and the phenomeno-
logical tradition, he is particularly interested in Heidegger and pre-
Socratic philosophy.
Professor Christopher Johnson is Professor of French at the Univer-
sity of Nottingham. He is author of System and Writing in the Philosophy
of Jacques Derrida (Cambridge University Press, 1993), and Derrida:
The Scene of Writing (Phoenix, 1997). He is currently preparing a
book on Lévi-Strauss and French anthropology. He is a member of
the editorial board of Paragraph: A Journal of Modern Critical Theory.
Professor Richard H. King is Professor of American intellectual
history in the School of American and Canadian Studies at the
University of Nottingham. He is the author of A Southern Renaissance
(1980), which focused, among other things, on the Freudian themes
ix
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of mourning and melancholy in classic writing from the US South,
and also of Civil Rights and the Idea of Freedom (1992), which addresses
Arendt’s notions of politics.
Professor Stuart Sim is Professor of English Studies at the University
of Sunderland. He has published widely on continental philosophy
and cultural theory. His most recent books are Contemporary
Continental Philosophy: The New Scepticism (Ashgate Press, 2000), Post-
Marxism: An Intellectual History (Routledge, 2000), and Lyotard and
the Inhuman (Icon Press, 2001).
Dr Jon Simons is Senior Lecturer in Critical Theory in the
Postgraduate School of Critical Theory and Cultural Studies at
the University of Nottingham. He is the author of Foucault and the
Political (Routledge, 1995) as well as many journal articles and
contributions to books on feminist, political and cultural theory. He
is currently working on a book, Critical Political Theory in the Media
Age, which will be published by Edinburgh University Press and New
York University Press. He is on the editorial board of the journal
Culture, Theory and Critique.
Dr Nicholas H. Smith is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Macquarie
University, Sydney, Australia. He is the author of Strong Hermeneutics:
Contingency and Moral Identity (Routledge, 1997), Charles Taylor:
Meaning, Morals and Modernity (Polity, 2002), and is the editor of
Reading McDowell: On Mind and World (Routledge, 2002).
Dr Simon Tormey is Senior Lecturer in Political Thought at the
University of Nottingham. He is the author of Making Sense of
Tyranny: Interpretations of Totalitarianism (Manchester University
Press, 1995), Politics at the Edge (co-edited with C. Pierson,
Macmillan, 1999), and Agnes Heller: Socialism, Autonomy and the
Postmodern (Manchester University Press, 2001).
Dr David Woods is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English
and Media Studies at Nottingham Trent University. He has written
on Derrida and Homi Bhabha and is currently planning a book on
continental philosophical approaches to notions of community.
Notes on Contributors
x
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1
Introduction
Jon Simons
This volume offers fourteen introductory essays on key thinkers in a
modern European tradition of thought, which is both critical itself
and also constitutes the intellectual background for many contem-
porary critical theorists. Critical theory in a broad sense includes
the trends of Marxism and post-Marxism, semiotics and discourse
analysis, structuralism and poststructuralism, ideology critique of all
varieties, deconstruction, feminism, queer theory, psychoanalysis,
postcolonialism, as well as the descendants of the Frankfurt School
of Critical Theory. Those critical tendencies can be found across all
the disciplines and interdisciplinary areas of the humanities, from
architecture to theology, from American Studies to visual culture.
The book is thus designed to be instructive for people with one
or two areas of interest, which are the critical tradition itself and the
contemporary theorists who are influenced significantly by their
precursors whose thought is the intellectual background to con-
temporary theory. This book is intended to be a good enough intro-
duction to the critical tradition that constitutes the background to
contemporary critical theory for readers to get going with an under-
standing of at least some of that immense intellectual background.
If this book succeeds in its aims, it will have whetted its readers’
appetites to learn more about the critical tradition it introduces.
The following section explains how best to use this book to satisfy
either or both of the interests mentioned above. The subsequent
sections of the introduction explain why the book has the scope it
has and what is meant by a ‘tradition of critique’.
1
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How to use this Book
As stated above, this book is intended to be helpful for people
with one or two areas of intellectual interest, which are the critical
tradition itself and the contemporary theorists who are influenced
significantly by it. Readers who are interested only in the critical
tradition can learn how it is characterised in the following sections
of the introduction, first in brief profiles about the domains and
means of each thinker’s critique, and then in relation to contem-
porary critical theory. There are also brief introductory sections to
each chapter (under the heading ‘[Name of thinker] in the Critical
Tradition’), which outline the relations between the thinkers in the
critical tradition who are included in the volume. Those intro-
ductions can do no more than indicate the bare bones of the con-
nections, which means that readers will have to look at the chapters
on all the thinkers in whom they are interested in order to under-
stand the intellectual relationships between them. Sometimes the
chapters include more details on the specific points of connection
raised in the introduction, but sometimes the brevity of the chapters
precludes such detail, leaving the reader to configure rather more
of the influence of thinkers on each other by comparing the
concepts and themes discussed in the chapters. Table 1 below
indicates the main connections between thinkers covered by this
volume.
Readers primarily interested in the tradition of critique itself
rather than in it as background to contemporary critical theory
would probably find it useful to work through the book more or less
in the order of contents, which is roughly chronological. There is a
discernible line of influence of and engagement with the tradition
from Kant through to Adorno and Horkheimer, which is why the
chapter on them is placed before those on Husserl and Heidegger.
Those two chapters and the one on Gadamer constitute a sub-
section about the phenomenological, existential and hermeneutic
tradition. Any readers particularly interested in that philosophical
tendency might find it helpful to read the chapter on Arendt along
with them, possibly immediately after the chapter on Heidegger,
with whom she has the strongest intellectual affinity. The chapters
on Wittgenstein and Lévi-Strauss do not connect as easily with other
chapters as is generally the case, but their place at the end of the
volume allows for their less obvious relations with the preceding
thinkers of the tradition to become more apparent. Having said
Jon Simons
2
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that, readers could also pick and choose in any order the thinkers in
whom they are most interested, while referring to the chapter intro-
ductions. Those introductions will enable readers to get some sense
of each thinker’s place in the tradition.
This volume is also designed to be helpful to those readers who
are being taught about or researching one or several contemporary
critical theorists, but do not have enough knowledge of their pre-
cursors. Indeed the main motivation for publishing this volume was
to meet the needs of students and researchers of contemporary
Introduction
3
Table 1 The intellectual relations between thinkers in the
critical tradition
Thinker Intellectual relationship with
Kant Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Weber, Adorno &
Horkheimer, Husserl, Heidegger, Gadamer,
Wittgenstein, Arendt
Hegel Kant, Marx, Nietzsche, Lukács, Adorno,
Husserl, Heidegger, Gadamer, Arendt
Marx Hegel, Marx, Weber, Lukács, Adorno &
Horkheimer, Arendt
Nietzsche Kant, Hegel, Marx, Weber, Adorno &
Horkheimer, Heidegger, Arendt
Weber Kant, Nietzsche, Marx, Lukács, Adorno &
Horkheimer
Freud Nietzsche, Marx, Adorno & Horkheimer,
Husserl, Heidegger, Arendt, Wittgenstein
Lukács Hegel, Marx, Weber, Adorno & Horkheimer
Adorno & Horkheimer Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Weber, Freud,
Lukács, Heidegger
Husserl Kant, Hegel, Adorno, Heidegger, Gadamer,
Wittgenstein
Heidegger Hegel, Nietzsche, Adorno, Husserl, Gadamer,
Arendt
Gadamer Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger,
Wittgenstein
Wittgenstein Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Husserl,
Gadamer
Arendt Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger
Lévi-Strauss Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger
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theorists who have not had the opportunity to study the intellectual
background on which contemporary theory is based. The volume
thus offers an overview of a representative sample of key thinkers in
the critical tradition by providing introductory chapters on those
key thinkers. Tables 2 and 3 below will be particularly helpful for
those who want to know which background thinker is most relevant
to which contemporary theorist, so that chapters can be read as
needed. Table 2 shows the lines of influence of each of the thinkers
included in this volume on contemporary theorists. Each of the
chapters also concludes with a section which explains how the
thinker in question has influenced the contemporary figures listed
in the table. Table 3 shows which thinkers of the tradition of critique
Jon Simons
4
Table 2 Significant influence of thinkers in critical tradition
on key contemporary critical theorists
Background thinker Contemporary theorists
Kant Deleuze, Foucault, Lyotard, Habermas, Rorty
Hegel Lacan, Derrida, Lyotard, Habermas, Jameson,
Taylor, Z

iz

ek
Marx Barthes, Baudrillard, Bourdieu, Derrida,
Foucault, Lyotard, Habermas, Jameson, Laclau
Mouffe, Spivak, Taylor, Z

iz

ek
Nietzsche Deleuze Guattari, Derrida, Foucault,
Habermas, Irigaray, Rorty, Taylor
Weber Bourdieu, Foucault, Habermas.
Freud Deleuze Guattari, Derrida, Foucault,
Habermas, Irigaray, Kristeva, Lacan, Laclau
Mouffe, Lyotard, Rorty, Spivak, Taylor, Z

iz

ek
Lukács Jameson, Laclau Mouffe
Adorno Horkheimer Habermas, Jameson, Z

iz

ek
Husserl Derrida, Habermas
Heidegger Bourdieu, Derrida, Foucault, Irigaray, Rorty,
Taylor
Gadamer Derrida, Habermas, Rorty, Taylor
Wittgenstein Habermas, Lyotard, Rorty
Arendt Derrida, Habermas, Lyotard, Taylor
Lévi-Strauss Barthes, Baudrillard, Bourdieu, Deleuze,
Derrida, Foucault, Guattari, Kristeva, Lyotard
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are relevant as intellectual background to a representative list of
contemporary critical theorists.
The chapters are intended to provide simplified but not reductive
accounts of the main themes, ideas and concepts of key figures in
the tradition of critique. Each chapter includes a short introduction
that provides biographical information about the thinkers and
places them in their intellectual context. It should go without saying
that each of the thinkers is more complex and their work more
extensive than can be presented in a chapter. These chapters can do
Introduction
5
Table 3 Key contemporary critical theorists and their main
influences from the critical tradition
Contemporary theorist Significant precursors
Barthes Marx, Lévi-Strauss
Baudrillard Marx, Lévi-Strauss
Bourdieu Marx, Heidegger, Lévi-Strauss
Deleuze Guattari Kant, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Lévi-Strauss
Derrida Hegel, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Gadamer,
Arendt, Lévi-Strauss
Foucault Kant, Nietzsche, Marx, Weber, Freud,
Heidegger, Lévi-Strauss
Habermas Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Weber, Freud, Adorno
Horkheimer, Husserl, Heidegger, Gadamer,
Wittgenstein, Arendt
Irigaray Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger
Jameson Marx, Hegel, Lukács, Adorno
Kristeva Freud, Lévi-Strauss
Lacan Hegel, Freud, Lévi-Strauss
Laclau Mouffe Marx, Freud, Lukács
Lyotard Kant, Hegel, Marx, Freud, Wittgenstein, Arendt,
Lévi-Strauss
Rorty Kant, Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, Gadamer,
Wittgenstein
Spivak Marx, Freud
Taylor Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Weber, Freud,
Heidegger, Gadamer, Wittgenstein, Arendt
Z

iz

ek Hegel, Marx, Freud, Adorno
01 pages 001-128 6/8/02 3:38 pm Page 5

no more than offer the gist of what each thinker writes and means,
which is why suggestions for further reading are given at the end
of each chapter. The aim of the chapters is also to present the work
of the thinkers in a fair and accurate way, which has left the authors
of the chapters with little or no room to present their own interpret-
ations. It should therefore not be assumed by readers that the chap-
ter authors agree with the thinkers whose work they present. There
has also not been much scope to present the main criticisms of the
background thinkers other than when a later thinker develops his or
her own ideas in contrast to an earlier thinker. More information
about the standard criticisms of the thinkers in the volume can be
found in the suggested further reading. Readers who are coming
to this book as a result of an interest sparked by a contemporary
theorist might be doing so because the contemporary theorist has
directly criticised a precursor, such as Derrida on Lévi-Strauss. The
book was written with such readers in mind, with the intention that
an understanding of the critical tradition will enrich their appreci-
ation of many contemporary theorists.
Domains and Means of the Tradition of Critique
Kant defines his mature work as critical philosophy, meaning that he
offers critical analyses of the capacities and limitations of human
mental powers or faculties. By focusing on critique, Kant suggests
a way in which the thinkers who constitute the intellectual back-
ground to contemporary critical theory can be compared and con-
trasted. The following section characterises the thinkers included
in this volume in terms of the domain of their critique, meaning
both that which they subject to critique and the ends that critique is
hoped or expected to achieve; and the means of critique, meaning
their critical method and mode. These brief profiles of each thinker
are also useful to readers who are unfamiliar with the tradition
of critique, as they offer a very condensed overview of what the
thinkers critiqued and how they went about it.
Kant’s immediate targets of critique are in the philosophical
domain, namely scepticism, rationalism and metaphysical specu-
lation in general. But in broader terms, he is critical of ‘immaturity’,
meaning unreflective reliance on intellectual traditions and auth-
orities. His critical philosophical stance has social and political rami-
fications, namely that no authority should be considered legitimate
if it cannot stand up to his mode of criticism. Kant’s manner of
Jon Simons
6
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critique could thus be characterised as one of legitimation, whether
that be legitimation of scientific knowledge, moral principles,
aesthetic judgements or political systems. His method of critique is
transcendental, meaning that he both deduces and analyses what
must be the case if humans have the knowledge, morality or
aesthetic judgements that they do. He asks which sort of mental
faculties humans must have as conditions of possibility for such
understanding and judgement. Freedom of relation between
human mental faculties and freedom for individuals to legislate
for themselves are the underlying conditions of possibility for know-
ledge and morality, so that the legitimation of human freedom is a
central aim of his philosophical critique.
The domain of Hegel’s critique is both philosophical and politi-
cal in a direct way, yet cultural and aesthetic considerations are also
central to his thought. Hegel is critical of Kant’s attempt to recon-
cile the differences between the mental faculties, which Hegel takes
to be a diremption of consciousness rather than a division of labour
between the faculties. He extends his critique of the way conscious-
ness is alienated from itself to a social and political critique of alien-
ation in the modern world, in which the harmony of traditional
community has been lost. Freedom, or the realisation of spirit, could
only be attained by consciousness becoming conscious of itself and
its role in the history of human activity, while social harmony could
be achieved only through direction by the modern constitutional
state. Hegel’s method of critique is dialectical, meaning that it
relates seemingly contradictory parts to a totality, which is under-
stood teleologically, according to the end towards which world
history develops. His manner of critique is historical, looking back
over human activity to trace an underlying logic according to which
the rational becomes real.
Marx’s domain of critique is primarily socio-economic and politi-
cal, but it also has a strong philosophical dimension in his criticism
of Hegel’s idealism. According to Hegel, consciousness determines
social being, whereas Marx’s historical materialism reverses the re-
lationship. The list of Marx’s critical targets is long: alienation of
workers from the products of their work and from each other, the
separation of mental and manual labour, the system of wage labour,
exploitation and the extraction of surplus value, commodification
of products and labour, bourgeois individualism; in brief, capital-
ism. His critique of capitalism also pitches him against versions of
socialism which fail to recognise the revolutionary transformation
Introduction
7
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required to end the capitalist mode of production, namely social
democracy and utopian socialism. His critical methodology is
historical materialism, which seeks material, generally economic
explanations for developments in human history. Insofar as it takes
the surface appearance of events and ideas to be less significant than
deeper process underlying them, the manner of Marx’s critique is
hermeneutic. The tone of his work is often polemic, while in its
emancipatory aim of a radically equal and free society in which
humans control their own destiny, Marx’s manner of critique is at
times prophetic.
In contrast to Marx’s critique of the socio-economic conditions of
modernity, the domain of Nietzsche’s critique is primarily cultural,
with a strong emphasis on the intellectual culture of which German
philosophy is a part. He criticises Western civilisation for having led
itself into a nihilistic crisis in which the grounds of belief required to
sustain the will to power, or life, have been undermined. Nietzsche
considers the character of his contemporaries to be mediocre and
devoid of spirit. In place of the ideals and values of Western civilis-
ation, such as scientific truth and universal moral principles,
Nietzsche called for a transvaluation of all values. Yet, Nietzsche’s
critique is ambivalent, in that civilisation has also demystified the
world to the point where those brave enough to do so can live
happily with the thought that there is no order to the universe
humans inhabit other than that which humans create for them-
selves. Nietzsche’s critical method is genealogical, meaning a form
of history which traces the way current conditions and ideas have
solidified over time. His critical manner is both hermeneutic, look-
ing below the conventional justifications of civilisation for messy
contingencies, and iconoclastic, smashing the idols of modern
culture and philosophy.
While Weber is, like Nietzsche, a cultural critic of modernity, his
domain of critique is substantially socio-political. His critical analysis
of modernity stresses its development into differentiated insti-
tutional social and value spheres as it becomes more complex,
a process which has resulted in the disenchantment of the world
in contrast to traditional, largely religious, holistic world-views.
Although he was not a Marxist, one of the main targets of his
critique is capitalism, which he regarded as a rationalised form of
economics, just as the modern state and bureaucracy are a ration-
alised form of politics. The problem with modern rationalisation is
the bifurcation between instrumental rationality and substantive,
Jon Simons
8
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value-oriented rationality, with the former dominating modernity at
the expense of the latter. Weber’s critical method is genealogical,
but in contrast to Nietzsche’s speculative approach Weber bases
his critique on extensive, often detailed, comparative historical work
about European as well as non-Western civilisations. Weber hopes
for some way of continuing ethical life under modern conditions,
though his tone often suggests that is more of a hope than an expec-
tation.
The domain of Freud’s critique appears different according
to whether psychoanalysis is being considered as a therapy or a
broader social diagnosis. As a therapist, Freud critically analyses
psychic dysfunctions, neuroses and psychoses, with a view to under-
standing, curing or alleviating them. Looking to the more general
significance of Freud’s work, he is a critic of the rationalist account
of self and society, in that he explains human behaviour in terms of
unconscious motives and drives. His view that civilisation necessarily
requires the repression of at least some libidinal drives also makes
him a critic of utopians of all kinds. His critical method is the one
he invented, namely psychoanalysis, which is also a hermeneutic
method to uncover the unconscious motives for behaviour. He
would certainly have liked to think of his methodology as rational
and scientific, but whether or not it is remains a matter of dispute.
As he was a Marxist, much of the domain of Lukács’ critique is the
same as that of Marx. Lukács’ concept of reification extends Marx’s
insights about commodity fetishism to explain the way in which
capitalist relations of production and exchange reduce people to
mere things, thereby alienating them from their consciousness. For
Lukács, the key to social transformation is collective proletarian
consciousness. His Hegelian and humanist interpretation of Marx
put him at odds with Soviet ‘scientific’ Marxism, as reflected in his
criticism of the Soviet imperialism under which he lived in post-war
Eastern Europe. As a literary critic, Lukács also objected to certain
literary trends which other Marxists of his time regarded as pro-
gressive, namely literary modernism and socialist realism. The
former he finds too self-absorbed and the latter too didactic to
project the utopian vision required to spark proletarian conscious-
ness. His historical materialist methodology of ideology critique
dialectically relates contradictory parts to a social totality, and
thereby mediates between subjective consciousness and objective
reality. When applied to realist novels, Lukács claims his approach
both reveals a true picture of capitalism and testifies to the potential
Introduction
9
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of creative, non-reified human relations. His literary criticism is thus
central to his project of raising working-class consciousness.
Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s domain of critique is socio-
economic, philosophical, cultural and psychological. Philosophi-
cally, they criticise the dialectic of Enlightenment as an expression
of the contradictions of capitalism, which result in an irrational
rationalism. The rationalised control of the object world is extended
to the domination of human affairs in the form of administrative
reason, which leaves no room for the conduct of life according
to substantive, ethical reason. The forms of individuality possible
under such conditions are at best attenuated, and at worst produce
authoritarian impulses that serve the most pathological embodi-
ment of administrative reason witnessed in the Holocaust. They also
develop a critique of the ideological forms of modern, mass society,
particularly the commodification of culture as entertainment under
the capitalist conditions of the culture industry. Their methodology
is dialectical ideology critique, and is thus hermeneutic in the same
sense as Marx’s. There is a strain of utopian hope for a truly eman-
cipated society running through their work, which, given their
largely pessimistic diagnosis of modernity, has a messianic tone to it.
Husserl’s domain of critique is predominantly philosophical,
directed against the scientific mode of German philosophy which
had become fashionable in his time in place of the critical tradition
begun by Kant. In particular, Husserl criticised the subject/object
dichotomy which had been a prominent issue in European philo-
sophy since Descartes and which positivist science did nothing to
resolve. His critical philosophical methodology is both phenom-
enological and transcendental, a way of attaining objective know-
ledge of the world through the active engagement of consciousness
in the world while also bracketing out everyday assumptions about
the world. His manner of philosophising is careful and rigorous, as
befits his aim of establishing a new epistemological methodology.
Like his teacher Husserl, the domain of Heidegger’s critique is
largely philosophical, his target being all of Western metaphysics
since Plato which has forgotten the question of being, or, at its
simplest, how strange it is that anything exists. In particular, he
is critical of the focus of modern philosophy on subjectivity. For
Heidegger these philosophical faults have deep social and cultural
ramifications for modernity as a fallen state of existence, which is
most clearly manifested in the technologisation of society and the
subjection of humanity to calculation. His philosophical method-
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ology is phenomenological but unlike Husserl his approach is both
existential and hermeneutic, in that humans are thrown into a
world whose horizons are inescapable, while the point of existence
is to understand the message that the world presents to humans.
Heidegger’s mode of writing is notoriously opaque, perhaps so that
reading his work requires the patience and hermeneutic effort that
he believes modern humanity needs to become receptive to a differ-
ent understanding of being, which is the aim of his work.
Gadamer’s domain of critique is also mostly philosophical, and,
as does Husserl, he targets scientific method and its prioritisation
of objectivity at the expense of subjective understanding. He is also
critical of Enlightened prejudices against tradition, which unlike
Kant he wishes to retrieve rather than constantly critique. His
methodology is hermeneutic, aiming for understanding which can
be achieved by dialogic interaction between the historical, cultural
horizons in the background of texts and readers. Dialogic under-
standing between people is also the wider, cultural impulse of
Gadamer’s work.
Wittgenstein is another thinker in the tradition of critique whose
domain is primarily philosophical. Rather like Heidegger, he has
objections to almost all preceding philosophy and metaphysics,
which in his view has gone astray and created puzzles for itself by
forgetting the ordinary language usage of philosophical terms. His
intellectual aim is therapeutic, to free philosophical thought from
the pictures of itself and the world by which it is trapped. Although
in his early work his tone is often iconoclastic, dismissing previous
philosophy as nonsense, in his therapeutic mode he tries to under-
stand and explain the motives that lead philosophers to become
captured by pictures.
Arendt returns us to a social and political domain of critique. Her
famous targets are racism, imperialism and all other modern politi-
cal phenomena that lead towards totalitarianism. More generally,
she opposed all modern political forms that stood in the way of the
expression of authentic human existence by obstructing political
action in the public sphere. Arendt rehabilitates political activity
in the tradition of critique in the face of a Marxist tendency to con-
sider it epiphenomenal and Heidegger’s view of it as inauthentic.
Although she was also critical of theoretically rather than practically
oriented political interventions, her analysis of modernity relies
heavily on large philosophical concepts such as natality and plural-
ity. At the same time, these general concepts are combined with
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insight gained from the study of particular historical events that
typify the sorts of politics she condemns or endorses. Her under-
lying concern is that political engagement is enhanced so that free-
dom can be put into practice.
Lévi-Strauss’ domain of critique might appear to be philosophi-
cal, in that his immediate targets are existentialism, phenomenology
and all forms of subject-centred philosophy which he encountered
during his intellectual formation. However, he regards philosophi-
cal humanism as simply the mythical or ideological expression of
modern Western civilisation, rather than a paradigm of universal
application. His semiological and structuralist analysis of non-
Western cultures, inspired by the scientific methodology of linguis-
tics, is intended to reveal universal cognitive features of the human
mind beyond the specifications of individual experience or cultural
norm. Moreover, his critique of Eurocentric and monocultural-
ist assumptions is accompanied by a call for a more universal
humanism integrating the totality of cultural experience available to
humankind.
Precursors and Contemporaries of Critical Theory
The intellectual tradition covered by the book could roughly be
defined as the thought or theory which has had a significant impact
on many theoretical innovations in today’s humanities and social
sciences. The thinkers included in the volume have been selected
for their influence beyond the professional boundaries of philos-
ophy. It is precisely because of that impact that so many non-philos-
ophers from such a range of disciplines and interdisciplinary fields
have an interest in the thinkers discussed in the volume, either
for themselves or for their influence over subsequent theorists. As
mentioned above, the most direct influences of the intellectual
precursors of contemporary critical theory are indicated in Table 2.
The selection for the volume has been made with two consider-
ations in mind, so that it provides adequate coverage both of a
modern European critical intellectual tradition and of the intellec-
tual background to contemporary critical theory. To some extent,
the definition of the former has been made retroactively, in relation
to the latter. Perhaps it is easiest to define contemporary critical
theory in the same way that it is taught and written about in the
Anglophone world, according to the names of generally acclaimed
and acknowledged theorists. In that case, the ‘contemporary’ scene
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might include Lacan, Barthes, Eco, Derrida, Levinas, Kristeva,
Cixous, Irigaray, Foucault, Deleuze, Guattari, Baudrillard, Lyotard,
Habermas, Taylor, Bourdieu, Hall, Jameson, Laclau, Mouffe, Rorty,
Said, Spivak, Vattimo and Z

iz

ek. It might certainly include others,
but that is a good enough indication of the range of theorists
mentioned in this volume who have been influenced by their
precursors in the critical tradition.
There are clearly some intellectual distinctions that combine to
form a more or less recognisable dividing line between the precur-
sors and the contemporaries. Habermas is quite a different type of
Frankfurt theorist to Adorno and Horkheimer, with more faith in
the Enlightenment and Arendt’s public sphere; Lacan’s introduc-
tion of structuralist linguistics into psychoanalytic theory marks him
off from Freud, whose Oedipal family Deleuze and Guattari rejected
as the very source of hierarchy and domination; Barthes leaves
behind in his later work his early, scientifically-oriented structuralist
semiotics developed under the influence of Lévi-Strauss among
others; Derrida deconstructs the structuralism of Lévi-Strauss as
part of a poststructuralist trend; Foucault takes up Nietzsche’s
genealogical critique of modernity but attends to its effects on the
weak rather than the strong; Baudrillard claims that Marx (not
to mention Foucault) is out of date, though Laclau and Mouffe’s
post-Marxism is less dismissive, and Jameson awaits a pedagogic
aesthetics of cognitive mapping for postmodern culture which
neither Lukács nor Adorno could envisage. There is something
‘post’ about the contemporary figures in relation to their precur-
sors, though neither of the terms ‘postmodern’ or ‘poststructuralist’
are adequate or even appropriate to characterise the distinction.
There are, however, some difficulties in any simple distinction
between the critical tradition and contemporary theory, or between
the latter and its background. First, the precursors of contemporary
theory can be deployed to as much critical effect today as in their
own time. Second, two of the background thinkers, Lévi-Strauss and
Gadamer, are still living at the time of writing this volume, whereas
some of those alleged to be more contemporary (Barthes, Lacan,
Deleuze and Guattari, Foucault and Lyotard) are dead. Third, there
is no convenient historical marker such as World War Two that
demarcates a transition from one mode of theory to another, and
indeed the active careers of several of the background thinkers
bridge that war. The list does exclude anyone born after World War
One began in 1914. Insofar as the long nineteenth century is said to
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have continued until then, and considering the enormous impact of
that horrendous war on European culture, a case could be made for
the tradition ending at the start of the twentieth century with those
for whom that war was part of Europe’s past rather than present.
For that case to be justified, some careful work in the history of
European ideas would have to be undertaken.
Another difficulty of categorising the precursors as the modern
intellectual background in relation to the contemporaries is that the
scope has to be restricted to prevent finite but considerable regress
by beginning with Kant. Already by limiting the background to the
modern period the selection rules out many ancient and medieval
thinkers and ideas from whom contemporary theorists draw inspi-
ration. For example, Foucault’s earlier work is based on a familiarity
with Renaissance as well as early modern thought, while his later
work delves into Greek, Roman and early Christian thought and
culture. Derrida’s deconstruction of Plato is as instructive as his
critique of Husserl or Freud, while both he and Levinas reach back
to Talmudic sources. There are also early modern thinkers who
are central to the concepts and themes of contemporary theorists.
Rousseau is the central figure in Derrida’s grammatology, as is
Spinoza for Deleuze’s concept of expression and Leibniz for his
concept of the fold. Derrida and Foucault argued about Descartes,
whose dualism of mind and matter continues to haunt contem-
porary theory as well as the critical tradition that preceded it. The
volume, then, cannot begin at the very beginning without going
back to the pre-Socratics, but Kant is as good a place as any to start
a volume that delineates a critical tradition in modern European
thought.
As well as the pre-modern and early modern thinkers who have
had a significant impact on contemporary critical theorists, there
are other figures in the critical tradition who would fit well in an
enlarged list and a longer volume. More space could have been
given to Western Marxism by including Gramsci, whose notion of
ideological hegemony is crucial to cultural studies as well as post-
Marxism. Chapters on Bloch and Brecht would have built up the
argument about politics and aesthetics which so engaged Lukács
and the Frankfurt School. That area would also be more rounded
with chapters on the Freudo-Marxist Marcuse and the idiosyncrati-
cally Marxist cultural critic Benjamin. Weber’s social and cultural
analysis could be compared helpfully with the earlier critique of
modernity by Simmel. More background could have been provided
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for contemporary French theorists such as Deleuze and Baudrillard
by chapters on the earlier figures Bergson and Bataille. More of the
structuralist and semiotic theories to which poststructuralism
responds could have been presented if one or more of Bakhtin,
Peirce, Jakobson or Saussure had been included. The coverage of
phenomenology and existentialism could have been expanded with
chapters on Merleau-Ponty, Sartre and Beauvoir, which in the last
case would have the added virtue of including another woman in the
volume.
It is inevitable that a book of this size is haunted by absences,
just as any quest to understand all of the intellectual background
of contemporary theory must remain incomplete. However, the
selection of thinkers included from the modern critical tradition
for this volume is intended to be sufficiently representative of differ-
ent intellectual tendencies such as Marxism, phenomenology,
hermeneutics, psychoanalysis and structuralism to provide enough
background to gain a sound understanding of contemporary devel-
opments. It also includes enough of the key philosophical figures
such as Kant, Hegel, Arendt and Wittgenstein, whose names or
concepts may not define contemporary theoretical tendencies, but
who have an enormous influence on contemporary theory.
The result of this mode of selection is a list which is almost entirely
Germanophone except for Lévi-Strauss, male except for Arendt,
and includes many thinkers with a Jewish background, though
some of them would not define themselves as Jewish. The Germano-
phone emphasis reflects the intellectual predominance of German
speakers in the period covered, in contrast to an earlier modern
time in which the French and also the Scots appeared to be the
philosophers of Enlightenment. The Germanophones were also the
precursors of the Francophones who predominate in contemporary
critical theory. As Vincent Descombes notes, post-war French philos-
ophy was first dominated by the ‘three H’s’, Hegel, Husserl and
Heidegger until 1960, and thereafter by the three ‘masters of
suspicion’, Marx, Nietzsche and Freud, thereby emphasising the
degree of Germanophone influence on French thought.1
The
absence of women is explained by their relative lack of access to
education, financial resources and academic positions, all of which
Virginia Woolf famously summed up as ‘£500 a year and a room of
her own’ in her explanation of why there had not been a female
Shakespeare.2
A list of contemporary critical theorists would include
more women, who, unlike Arendt, would also identify themselves as
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feminists. The thinkers included in the volume generally use the
term ‘man’ in a way that is now considered sexist, either because
it deliberately excludes women from humanity or because it uses a
male-gendered term to refer to all of humanity. As there is not space
in the book to explore the issue of sexism, the chapters often follow
the thinkers’ use of the term ‘man’ so that there is no attempt to
disguise the possibility of sexism on the part of the thinkers who are
discussed.
The relatively high proportion of thinkers with varying degrees
of Jewish backgrounds (Marx, Freud, Husserl, Lukács, Adorno,
Horkheimer, Wittgenstein, Arendt and Lévi-Strauss) can be ex-
plained in terms of what Arendt defined as the ‘pariah’ status of
assimilated Jews in modernising Europe.3
Assimilating European
Jews were both insiders and outsiders of modern culture, especially
Germanophone culture, and as such were placed for a time in par-
ticular social contexts in which the stresses and contradictions of
modernity could be experienced and reflected upon. Such pariahs
were the paradigmatic critical thinkers of their time. As is explained
in the preceding section, the main characteristic of the tradition of
critique which constitutes the background to contemporary critical
theory is that it was critical of different aspects of modernity.
Contemporary theorists continue that critique, even when they
criticise it as postmodernity or in postmodern ways, so the tradition
of critique continues.
Notes
1. Vincent Descombes, Modern French Philosophy, trans. L. Scott-Fox and
J. M. Harding (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 3.
2. Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own and Three Guineas (London:
Penguin, 1993), p. 3.
3. Hannah Arendt, The Jew as Pariah: Jewish Identity and Politics in the Modern
Age, ed. Ron H. Feldman (New York: Grove Press, 1978).
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2
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)
Jon Simons
Kant in the Critical Tradition
Kant’s critical philosophy is the most obvious starting point for the
European philosophical tradition that constitutes the background of
contemporary critical theory, in many ways setting the parameters
for subsequent debate. Kant himself is significant as a philosopher
who defends the principles of Enlightened reason against scepticism.
He argues for the validity of the knowledge accrued by the natural
sciences, but also for the possibility of reason legislating for both indi-
vidual moral action and the constitutional structure of the state and its
relations to other states. Kant’s critical philosophy inspired as much
criticism as admiration in the tradition of critique that followed him.
Hegel criticised Kant’s transcendent notion of reason and formalist
morality, arguing instead for the immanence of reason and ethics
to concrete practices and historical periods. For Hegel, as for Marx,
teleological judgement about human progress can be made only retro-
spectively, depending on whether a social or political development
actually contributes to the realisation of reason in human life.
One of Kant’s most productive moves is his analytical distinction
between different mental powers, especially theoretical understand-
ing and reason. The former relies on scientific rationality to gain
understanding of the natural world of objects which can then be
mastered technologically, while the latter is a version of Kant’s prac-
tical reason which deliberates about the ends and purposes of instru-
mental action. Kant’s philosophical system aims at mediation between
these two forms of reason, warning about the overextension of either
into the domain of the other. Subsequent thinkers, especially Weber
and the Frankfurt theorists, have reformulated that distinction as
one between two different types of rationality. As a result, Kant’s basic
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moral principles of respect for persons and autonomy underlie much
of the substance of the critical tradition.
Kant also explains how humans can be understood from the per-
spectives of both scientific rationality, as natural objects, and moral
reasoning, as free subjects. In spite of Kant’s attempt to mediate these
two incompatible perspectives, a good deal of critical thought has
been dedicated to asserting the latter in face of the former, especially
when the methods of the natural sciences have been deployed in the
domain of the human sciences. Moreover, phenomenologists such
as Husserl have elaborated ways of understanding the world which
require the perspective of subjective consciousness. Hermeneuticists
such as Gadamer have developed approaches to historical and social
enquiry which stress ethically directed human action. Weber is a key
figure in the interpretative turn in the social sciences that focuses on
the meaning of action, which is echoed by the later Wittgenstein’s
attention to meaning rather than truth in language. While Kant’s first
critique aims to establish the validity of natural scientific knowledge,
his philosophy, including the problems it fails to solve, has inspired
critical thinkers to ground the knowledge gained by the human
sciences.
Kant’s sustained attention to aesthetics and judgement has also had
its impact on the tradition of critique. According to Kant’s tripartite
division of what Weber calls value spheres, aesthetic production and
appreciation do not serve the purposes of theoretical understanding
and the moral reasoning. Accordingly, in a sense which is highlighted
by modernist sensibilities, art is autotelic, meaning that it gives its end
to itself. In a world dominated by instrumental reason and admin-
istration, certain forms of art can thus be valued by Adorno as a
privileged area of freedom indicating utopian possibilities. Nietzsche
regards artistic creativity as paradigmatic human action because
neither God nor the nature of the universe determine human pur-
poses. Rather, the human will imposes myths and metaphors on
existence in order to give it a manageable form, but Kant refuses
to acknowledge that only humans invest the world with purpose.
Nietzsche’s radical critique of Kantian reason speaks of the immaturity
humans have displayed by attributing the limits they have imposed on
the world to reason instead of admitting that they invented those
limits. In Arendt’s hands, by contrast, Kant’s notion of undetermined
judgement is closely linked to the sense of community that accom-
panies public expression of aesthetic taste, which in turn becomes the
grounds for political community.
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Introduction
Kant is the most influential of modern Western philosophers, whose
mature work, which he called critical philosophy, continues to shape
thought in general, including contemporary critical theory. He was
born in Königsberg, Prussia, in 1724, where he lived all his life until
his death in 1804. His Pietist (reformist Lutheran) family back-
ground, which stressed individual conscience and duty, left its mark
on his moral philosophy. Kant remained a bachelor, leading a very
regular life, which included entertaining for lunch a variety of
guests he came across in what was then quite a cosmopolitan port
city. Under the rule of Fredrick the Great (1740–86), Prussia enjoyed
an air of Enlightenment and religious toleration, but under the rule
of Fredrick William II he was bound to silence on his rationalist
views on religion. Although Kant had republican sympathies, he was
not one to confront political authority, keeping his criticism to
his writing. Until his appointment as Professor of Metaphysics and
Logic at the University of Königsberg in 1770, Kant’s lectures and
writing had been mostly about mathematics and physics, so it was
quite late in life that his mature philosophy took off as an effort to
establish the objectivity of the knowledge provided by the natural
sciences.
In this chapter Kant’s critical philosophy is presented as a system.
His main works were his Critique of Pure Reason (1781), Critique of
Practical Reason (1788) and Critique of Judgement (1790). In turn, they
analyse the capacities and limits of human mental powers, called
faculties, of theoretical or scientific understanding, moral reason
and both aesthetic and teleological judgement (meaning judge-
ment about ends or purposes). They are critical in that in each case
Kant assesses how far our faculties can take us in answer to the ques-
tions: ‘What can I know? What ought I to do? What may I hope?’1
Theoretical understanding gives us empirically-based, objective know-
ledge of nature, as established by Newtonian mechanistic physics,
but not of ‘things in themselves’ beyond our experience, or of meta-
physical entities such as the soul or God. Reason gives us a univer-
sally binding moral law, obedience to which constitutes freedom.
Each of the first two critiques is immensely significant in itself, but it
is the third which systematises Kant’s philosophy in that judgement
mediates between understanding and reason, indicating a finality or
purpose to the world according to which we can be both objects
under the laws of nature and free subjects of the moral law.
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The Rational Critique of Reason
Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is an answer to the question: what
can we know?, but also a rebuttal of both Hume’s empiricism and
Leibniz’s rationalism. Kant wished to avoid the contemporary philo-
sophical orthodoxy of dogmatic rationalism represented by Leibniz
and Wolff, according to which all true knowledge is derived from
the exercise of reason, following innate principles which are known
to be true independent of experience. Our subjective knowledge of
objects is guaranteed by a divine harmony of the universe between
ideas and things, which can be known by understanding the innate
principles, and which in turn give us knowledge of metaphysical
concepts such as the soul and God. Kant held that such metaphysi-
cal speculation was beyond the reach of human understanding,
leading instead to a series of antinomies, meaning apparent philo-
sophical paradoxes based on pairs of false assumptions. When pure
reason proceeds on the basis of unempirical ideas, it is being used
illegitimately.
At the same time, Kant did hold that if used legitimately, the ideas
of reason lead to objective knowledge. According to Hume’s philos-
ophy, the only reliable knowledge we have comes from sense im-
pressions, whereas what we consider to be valid scientific knowledge
is really nothing more than a habit of thought which subjectively
links experiences into regular successions. Although we believe we
know that causal necessity requires the sun to rise tomorrow because
it always has done so far, such habitual certainty that day always
follows night is merely a projection of the human mind. Kant agrees
with Hume that our human perspective on the world constitutes
knowledge and that no knowledge is possible without experience,
but does not accept Hume’s sceptical conclusions which deny the
possibility of objective knowledge, as given by common sense and
natural science. Instead, he regards the cognitive power of under-
standing as a higher form of knowledge that is required to order
experience but which goes beyond experience by establishing not
only a posteriori knowledge, meaning what is known from experi-
ence, but also a priori knowledge, which is valid universally and
necessarily, as under a law of nature.
In order to justify objective knowledge, Kant argues that it requires
a synthesis of reason and experience, of that which we know a priori
beyond experience and that which we know from experience. The
main difficulty is in establishing the first part, which Kant asks as:
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‘How are synthetic propositions a priori possible?’2
Synthetic propo-
sitions, or judgements, are distinguished from analytical or logical
propositions. In the latter, the predicate concept is contained in the
subject concepts, as in ‘all bachelors are unmarried men’. Synthetic
judgements tell us something about the world not given in the terms
or concepts of the proposition, such as ‘Kant was a bachelor’. But
how can a proposition be both a priori and synthetic? Put very simply,
Kant argues that we can know certain things by reasoning beyond
experience, such as that every event has a cause, because such con-
cepts are presupposed by or are conditions of possibility of experi-
ence and knowledge. Kant characterises his method for arriving
at these conditions as transcendental deduction, because we must
transcend our experience to deduce what makes it possible. These
presuppositions come in two forms. First, space and time are a priori
intuitions of perception, meaning that we can only experience
objects as existing in space and time, though we cannot know space
and time through our experience. Second, there are twelve a priori
categories or concepts of understanding, which are present in our
understanding before experience, such as the notion of causality,
or that objects exist as substance. These concepts give form to
our thoughts about experience in a way that makes our sense im-
pressions intelligible to us. The link between sense-perceptions
represented as intuitions in time and space and concepts, and hence
between empirical experience and reason that transcends experi-
ence, is made by the imagination, which is another faculty that
schematises by relating a diversity of sense-perceptions to concepts.
The faculty of understanding legislates over reason and imagination
to establish a determinate accord between the faculties.
Another aspect of the accord between our faculties is that it is
presupposed by self-conscious experience. It is another precon-
dition of knowledge that sense-intuitions must allow for the appli-
cation of the categories, which also means that if the world is
comprehensible it must appear to conform to the categories and
their schematisation as laws of nature, such as Newtonian physics.
This deduction of a priori principles is subjective rather than objec-
tive, because it refers to the perspective of human subjects. It is also
the grounds for Kant’s Copernican revolution, according to which
the condition of possibility of objective knowledge is that physical
objects must conform with our cognitive powers, not vice versa. Yet
this does raise the problem that Kant seems to presuppose a similar
harmony between a priori truths, or the ideas of reason, and the
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world, or between the capacities of the knower and the nature of the
known, as the one asserted by dogmatic rationalists. His justification
for the accord of the faculties with each other and the world does
not come until his third Critique.
The knowledge gained by our cognitive faculties is one of
phenomena, or physical objects as appearances, rather than
noumena, or things in themselves. Kant does not mean that reality
is hidden from us behind mere appearances, but that we cannot
aspire to knowledge of the world which is conceived apart from the
perspective of the knower. Nonetheless, our faculty of reason is
inevitably drawn to overextend itself by using concepts unempiri-
cally, applying them to transcendental objects such as the soul and
God that are knowable to thought alone. For example, we might
assume that because we are aware of ourselves as consciousness that
thinks and organises experience, we have knowledge of a substantial
and unified self. Kants warns that the Cartesian cogito is a perspective
that makes knowledge possible, not a known substance. The over-
extension of reason generates illusions when taken as descriptions
of empirical reality, illusions which supply the falsely contrasted
assumption of the antinomies of pure reason. For example, accord-
ing to theoretical understanding, everything in the world is causally
determined, which includes us as rational beings. On the other
hand, we presuppose in our actions that we have free will. The
apparent paradox disappears as in the first case moral agents
are conceived as phenomena, from the perspective of theoretical
understanding, and in the second case as noumena, from the per-
spective of reason. There is a gap between the two perspectives, but
it is a mistake to conceive the moral agent as a physical object.
Kant also sees much value in reason’s positing questions beyond
theoretical understanding, such as: what caused the world to exist?
First, it demonstrates the limits of our cognitive power, because we
cannot answer the question. Second, by pushing us to think about
the world as a totality, reason provides us with a regulative principle,
or a correct hypothesis, according to which we think of the world as
subject to universal and necessary laws. By presupposing a systematic
unity of nature, reason symbolises the accord between the content
of particular phenomena and the ideas of reason. Kant’s interest is
not only in establishing the illegitimacy of the use of reason beyond
certain limits as a way to justify natural science and debunk meta-
physical speculation, but also to establish the legitimacy of reason’s
interest beyond the phenomenal world.
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Moral Reason
Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason is so called because it is about the
application of reason to action or practice. Our faculty of desire
often operates according to natural causes such as instincts, desires
or feelings, allowing our will to be determined by heteronomous, or
external influences. In that case, reason is, as Hume put it, the slave
of passion, for our cognitive powers are limited to figuring out
instrumentally the best means to achieve our ends, not what our
ends or goals ought to be. But humans are not merely objects
governed by the laws of nature. The first Critique had already argued
that knowledge presupposes a unified consciousness that thinks
and transcendental freedom as cognitive deliberation, but under
the legislation of theoretical understanding nothing could be
known about the transcendental self which is not determined by the
laws of nature. Practical reason, which is the higher form of our
faculty of desire, is at work when we stop to reflect, asking ourselves,
‘What ought I to do?’ Practical reason is known itself through the
exercise of freedom, which is the only idea of reason that has an
objective reality, in human action. The central aim of the second
Critique is to show that there are objective and universal principles of
human action, in the form of a moral law. The moral law is synthetic
a priori practical knowledge based on reason alone. Kant does not
criticise practical reason for overstepping its proper limits, but
he does critique the impure exercise of practical reason when
heteronomous motives hold sway. In contrast, autonomy of the will
is the ability to be governed by reason or to will an end of action for
oneself. The faculty of understanding does play a role, in that it gives
us the form of conformity to law as the form of freedom, as we
can draw an analogy between the ‘suprasensible’ (meaning, non-
empirical) realm of freedom and the ‘sensible’ (empirical) world of
nature. Reason also adopts the notion of causality given by theor-
etical understanding, turning it into the notion of free causality. But
it is the faculty of reason that legislates for practical reasoning.
The idea of freedom as obedience to a law one makes for oneself,
or autonomy, came from Rousseau, who was a key influence on
Kant. Autonomy is also a question of maturity, an ability to abstract
away from one’s personal desires, interests and tastes as well as the
opinions of others. If one thinks as oneself only as a rational agent,
as free and unconditioned, reason will compel one to embrace duty
in the form of ‘categorical imperatives’, which are rules that all
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rational beings must obey without exception, in order to be true to
their nature as autonomous beings. In this Critique, Kant does not
have to prove that objective moral principles are true, but that they
are what rational beings must think when they think about universal
and necessary principles.
There are two basic formulations of the categorical imperative,
the first of which is: ‘Act only according to that maxim by which you
can at the same time will that it should become universal law.’3
Kant’s rule can be considered as a formalisation of the golden rule:
‘Do to others as you would have others do to you.’ For example, one
must always keep one’s promises, because one cannot break them
without undermining the very notion of a promise, and because one
would want others to keep their promises. Kant’s basic point is that
if every rational being would follow the same maxim, that is proof
that it is an exercise of autonomy, free from individual desires and
appetites. The second formulation is called the practical imperative:
‘Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or
in that of another, always as an end and never as a means only.’4
This seems like a particular application of the first formulation in
relation to human beings, commanding us to respect others as we
would have them respect us, acknowledging our capacity for free-
dom and autonomy. Yet it also contains the extremely significant
point that rational agents must be considered as ends in themselves,
because pure practical reason is not conditioned or determined by
anything other than itself. In other words, freedom is the goal of
rational agents capable of freedom.
The notion of reason and freedom as ends in themselves also
indicates a way out of the key problem for Kant’s system. How can
freedom be possible in a causally determined world? How can we
humans be both noumena and phenomena? How can the practical
knowledge we have of freedom be reconciled with the theoretical
knowledge we have of nature? Kant admits that, as a result of his first
two Critiques,
an immense gulf is fixed between the domain of the concept of nature,
the sensible, and the domain of the concept of freedom, the super-
sensible, so that no transition from the sensible to the supersensible …
is possible, just as if they were two different worlds.5
Kant’s full answer to the problem comes in his third Critique, but
in his discussion of practical reason he suggests that the realisation
of moral good presupposes an accord between nature and freedom,
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such that the ‘ought’ of the categorical imperative implies that it can
be fulfilled. That does not mean that we mere mortals are always
virtuous, but that the possibility of a ‘kingdom of ends’ in which
rational beings always act autonomously is given to us as an idea of
reason. In the case of practical reasoning, reason does not over-
extend itself when it extrapolates from our practical knowledge of
moral action. In this case, reason intimates a transcendental reality
populated by immortal souls aiming for moral perfection, and
created by God in a fashion that makes moral action in nature poss-
ible. The soul and God, which are postulates of practical reason, are
also its conditions of possibility. This is another aspect of Kant’s
Copernican revolution: it is not the idea of God and the soul which
provide us with morality, but the practice of freedom and morality
which leads us to the idea of a divinely ordained world. The ideas of
reason which lead to illusion from the perspective of theoretical
understanding of nature are rescued in the second Critique as the
basis for moral reasoning and freedom.
Aesthetic and Teleological Judgement
To complete his philosophical system by establishing a link between
freedom and nature, Kant needs his third Critique of Judgement: ‘the
family of our higher cognitive powers also includes a mediating link
between understanding and reason. This is judgement.’6
In particu-
lar, this Critique focuses on reflective judgement of which there are
two kinds, aesthetic and teleological, of which the first kind can be
about either beauty or sublimity. As well as dealing with judgement,
the third Critique also covers another faculty, namely the feeling of
pleasure or displeasure which lies between our cognitive faculty and
our faculty of desire. Just as each of those faculties has a higher
form, respectively theoretical understanding and reason, so does
feeling, in the form of judgement. Similarly, Kant is concerned to
establish a synthetic a priori of aesthetic taste, or a justification for
the possibility of aesthetic judgement.
The problem, characterised as the antinomy of taste, is that
aesthetic judgement involves both feelings related directly to sub-
jective experience, not conceptual thought, and judgement, for
which we give reasons and claim universal assent. Aesthetic pleasure,
claims Kant, presupposes that others ought to agree that ‘this rose
is beautiful’, or that there is a subjectively universal ‘common sense’
of beauty. The point is not that we should all recognise the same
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property of beauty in objects, but that we can all share the same feel-
ing. To feel beauty, Kant says we make a disinterested judgement,
which means that our feeling of pleasure may not be empirically
determined as sensory satisfaction or what feels agreeable to an indi-
vidual, as in ‘this rose smells beautiful’. Rather, we take delight in the
accord of nature’s beauty with our disinterested pleasure. Aesthetic
judgement is free of all individual inclination in the same way that
practical reasoning is, which is why we expect universal assent.
Already we can see one way in which, for Kant, beauty is a symbol of
the good, because we make aesthetic and moral judgements from
the same disinterested position.
Also, we judge beauty without applying concepts, so that what we
have in mind is not the concept of the rose but our intuition, or
perception, of the rose. In aesthetic judgement imagination is freed
from concepts, that is to say, from the task of bringing concepts to
bear on experience, as when we understand, ‘that red and green
thing is a rose’. Moreover, aesthetic judgement entails a free, unde-
termined accord between the faculties. Judgements of beauty always
concern singular perceptions, such as of the colour and shape of
a red rose. Yet, the imagination still brings concepts to bear on
experience, but in a free and undetermined way. Another way to put
this is that the faculty of judgement has an indeterminate concept
which serves as its a priori principle, in parallel to the principle
of ‘lawfulness’, or the systematic unity of nature, for the faculty of
understanding, and ‘final purpose’, or the realisation of freedom in
the ‘kingdom of ends’ for the faculty of reason.
The principle of judgement is ‘formal’ or ‘subjective purposive-
ness’, which means nature’s purposiveness for our power of judge-
ment considered from the subjective perspective of humans. Nature
lends itself to our judgement by manifesting regularity not only in
its universal laws but also in its particular and contingent arrange-
ments. We feel the pleasure of beauty when we apprehend how the
shapes and hues of a rose harmonise into a whole, but at the same
time we feel pleasure that nature produces beautiful forms that can
be reflected in our imagination. Moreover, the harmonious forms
in nature that we judge to be beautiful match both the lawfulness in
nature that is presupposed by understanding, but also the accord
between understanding and imagination which is a necessary con-
dition of cognition. The pleasure felt in contemplating beauty is
thus an awareness of the harmony of our faculties required for all
cognition and judgement. We project the harmonious working of
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our faculties on to the empirical world, finding in it the order which
our imagination apprehends in harmonious, aesthetic wholes. As all
humans are assumed to share the same conditions of cognition,
then even though aesthetic pleasure is particular and subjective, it is
at the same time a pleasure that is shared with all rational beings.
For the most part, Kant considers beauty only in relation to
nature, rather than art. He explains that pure judgements can be
made only about free beauty in contrast to beauty that is fixed by the
concept of a thing’s purpose. All fine art involves the concept of a
purpose, in that the artist has a purpose in creating it, though genius
can animate fine art by creating a second nature. Kant thus prefers
to focus on pure aesthetic judgements, but his focus on nature also
fits his philosophical system better, because it allows him to argue
that aesthetic judgement is universal because of its accord with
nature’s formal or subjective purposiveness. Judgements of beauty
also relate to nature’s real or objective purposiveness, which, accord-
ing to Kant, should properly be the subject of teleological judge-
ment. Nature’s objective purposiveness is not its suitability for
human cognition, but its end in itself or final purpose, which is
beyond theoretical understanding as it pertains to the ‘suprasen-
sible’ domain of freedom, not the ‘sensible’ empirical domain. The
end which we judge teleologically is the realisation of freedom in the
natural world, which presupposes that the world has a divinely
ordained order that ultimately enables us to be free and auton-
omous. According to the teleological principle that freedom is
humanity’s purpose, it is the highest good. Aesthetic judgement
mediates between the formal purposiveness of nature and its objec-
tive purposiveness because beauty consists in aesthetic harmony or
unity which has no empirical purpose, and is characterised by Kant
as ‘purposiveness without a purpose’.7
If something does not have a
purpose for anything else and yet seems to have been designed, it
leads us to the idea that the object has an end in itself.
The aesthetic idea of harmony and unity thus leads us to the idea
that nature and humans have a ‘suprasensible purpose’, a purpose
which is an end in itself. We cannot know the transcendental design
of nature, but aesthetic judgement intimates it by enabling us to feel
it. This intimation is similar to the way in which practical reason does
not give us knowledge of freedom as the final purpose, but our prac-
tice of morality enlarges that idea of reason that there is a harmony
between freedom and nature. Beauty symbolises good because it
leads us by analogy to the same idea. The free and indeterminate
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harmony of faculties in aesthetic judgement leads to the idea of
an undetermined accord between our faculties and nature, which in
turn leads to the idea that there is an objective purposiveness to
both that accord and the apparent design of nature, which is
freedom.
The impossibility of knowing rather than feeling the purposive
design of nature is brought very much to mind in judgements of the
sublime. We experience the sublime when confronted with some-
thing immense, such as a mountain range, or something powerful,
such as rolling waves on an ocean. The feeling of horror in the face
of the sublime which Burke identified is explained by Kant as the
failure of the imagination to apprehend it. The imagination is thus
forced to acknowledge its limits in fulfilling the demand of reason
to represent objects as wholes. There is also a subjective purposive-
ness to sublime judgement, in that the imagination learns of the
immense power of reason. It is not nature itself which is sublime,
but the power of the mind to present the idea of a suprasensible
purpose which is inaccessible to the imagination. That suprasensible
purpose is freedom, the idea of reason which is presupposed in our
moral actions. Judgements of the sublime are universal because they
are linked to awareness of the power of reason to legislate for itself
and to posit a purpose for nature and man.
The idea of a final end or purpose that is determined by reason is
a matter for teleological judgement. From the perspective of the
first Critique, it may seem that such judgements about a final end, a
purpose for which the universe was designed, belong to the realm of
metaphysical speculation. That would be the case if they were taken
as objectively known facts, rather than as necessary presuppositions
about the systemacity and unity of nature. Kant argues that we need
to use reason’s idea of objective natural purpose in order to under-
stand nature as an ordered, rule-governed system, which is different
from understanding it in terms of causal relations, the latter being
the only objective explanation of which theoretical understanding is
capable. Such judgements are used regulatively, as maxims, to allow
our faculties of understanding and reason to give us knowledge of
nature by operating as if it has natural purposes. If nature is organ-
ised systematically and purposively, it leads us to think of an in-
tentional cause beyond nature, a suprasensible cause of nature,
meaning God as the supreme cause. Moreover, if nature has been
created for a purpose, it must have a final purpose, which is to make
it possible for man to cultivate virtue in pursuit of freedom under
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the moral law. Teleology thus becomes moral teleology, leading us
to the same ideas as does pure practical reason. Neither can prove
the existence of God, which would be metaphysical speculation, but
each indicates that the idea of God is presupposed both by our
theoretical understanding of nature as a systematic whole subject to
the causal laws of nature, and by our reason, which give us practical
cognition of an unconditioned domain of freedom beyond nature.
Both understanding and reason have as their conditions of possi-
bility something akin to an enormous yet unknowable hypothesis
about the purpose of the ‘sensible’ natural domain and the ‘supra-
sensible’ domain of freedom. Aesthetic and teleological judgement
mediates between nature and freedom by reflecting on the unity,
wholeness and purposiveness of each domain, intimating that the
moral purpose experienced in practical action is the unknown
purpose that is felt aesthetically and presupposed theoretically. That
is the complex if not convoluted argument that must be followed if
judgement is to unite the three Critiques into a system, though there
is dispute about whether Kant succeeds.
Kant and Contemporary Critical Theory
Kant’s critical philosophy is more than ample fodder for criticism
by contemporary theorists, though some find his philosophical
method and system productive as much for its failures as its
successes. As a leading Enlightenment philosopher, Kant is often
attacked from various postmodern perspectives for the alleged
transgressions of modern thought. Most notably, Rorty regards Kant
as the arch-foundationalist philosopher, the architect of philosophy
that attempts to ground valid claims to knowledge and to rule out
invalid claims.8
Bauman also picks up on Kant’s terminology of
reason as legislator, criticising him for asserting the authority of
intellectuals to provide universal standards of truth, morality and
taste in alliance with modern state rulers in a joint effort to establish
modernity as a fundamentally ordered social and political system.9
Yet, Kant brings reason before its own tribunal, disallowing illegiti-
mate uses of it by debunking dogmatic rationalism. Kant is clearly
concerned with the limits of theoretical understanding and the
necessity of both moral reason and reflective judgement which
cannot be grounded epistemologically. Kant’s political theory of
constitutional republicanism and world peace might best charac-
terised as a framework to make morality and autonomy possible on
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a public scale, and is certainly not an attempt to apply a scientific
understanding of causality in the natural world to society.
Kant is also criticised by some feminists for positing what they take
to be male-centred norms and values of the self and reason as
universal, a criticism which is reinforced by Kant’s view that women
are not capable of maturity in the sense of moral autonomy.10
Gilligan’s feminist ‘ethic of care’ is posited as a contrast to a Kantian
‘ethics of justice’, which, allegedly, is based on a model of moral
development reflecting the experience of boys but not girls.11
Kant
is one of many male Enlightenment philosophers whose work is
subject to a feminist debate about whether such bias is inherent to
his philosophy, such that the notion of rational being cannot be
applied to women, or whether his chauvinist opinions can be edited
out to produce a gender-neutral philosophy.
Several other key contemporary theorists have critical relation-
ships with Kant which begin from the premise that Kant’s philo-
sophy fails as a system to achieve grounding or validate judgements.
Habermas follows the tripartite structure of Kant’s critical philo-
sophy by analysing the different bases for validity claims in three
value spheres: cognitive-instrumental, moral-practical and aesthetic
expressive. However, he rejects Kant’s notion of transcendental
reason, instead proposing a pragmatically based communicative
reason which must be presupposed for communication through
speech to be meaningful.12
Lyotard focuses on what he takes to be
Kant’s impossible attempt to bridge theoretical understanding and
practical reason through judgement, which he interprets as a par-
ticular instance of the impossibility of a universal discourse that
rules over heterogeneous discourses or ‘phrase regimes’. For
Lyotard the incommensurable difference and agonistic contest-
ation between discourses and social groups, rather than universality,
is the principle of justice.13
Lyotard also highlights Kant’s aesthetic
of the sublime as that which resists representation by totalising
discourse.14
If Lyotard has a postmodern Kant, Foucault’s attitude is
more ambivalent. On the one hand, he regards Kant’s philosophy as
the epitome of modern thought which is trapped in anthropologi-
cal slumber, unable to extricate itself from fundamental antinomies
such as between man’s empirical existence and transcendent
reason.15
On the other hand, he credits Kant with an admirable
philosophical ethos of critique of modernity as analysis and reflec-
tion on limits. But in a Nietzschean twist, Foucault historicises Kant’s
analysis of a priori conditions of knowledge, denying that they are
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universal and necessary and suggesting that limits be transgressed
rather than regarded as necessary conditions.16
Kant’s influence
on contemporary critical theory remains considerable, either as a
target of criticism or as inspiration for critical philosophy.
Notes
1. Kant, Pure Reason, A: 805; B: 833. (The references follow the custom of
giving the page numbers in the first and second German Akademie
editions, which are given on each page of the English translation.)
2. Kant, Prolegomena, p. 23.
3. Kant, Metaphysics of Morals, p. 39.
4. Ibid., p. 47.
5. Kant, Judgement, p. 14.
6. Ibid., p. 16.
7. Ibid., p. 65.
8. Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1979), p. 5.
9. Zygmunt Bauman, Intimations of Postmodernity (London: Routledge,
1992), pp. 116–20.
10. Jane Flax, ‘Postmodernism and Gender Relations in Feminist Theory’,
in Linda Nicholson (ed.), Feminism/Postmodernism (New York: Rout-
ledge, 1990), pp. 42–3; and Genevieve Lloyd, The Man of Reason, 2nd
edn (London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 64–70.
11. Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s
Development (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982).
12. Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume I, trans.
Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984).
13. Jean-François Lyotard, The Differend, trans. Georges Van Den Abbeele
(Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1988).
14. Jean-François Lyotard, ‘An Answer to the Question, What is the Post-
modern?’, in Julian Pefanis and Morgan Thomas (eds), Postmodernism
Explained (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1993), pp. 1–16.
15. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things, unidentified collective (trans.)
(New York: Vintage, 1973), pp. 303–43.
16. Michel Foucault, ‘What is Enlightenment?’, trans. Catherine Porter, in
Paul Rabinow (ed.), The Foucault Reader (New York: Pantheon, 1984),
pp. 32–50.
Major Works by Kant
Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (New York: St Martin’s
Press, 1965 [1st edn 1781; 2nd edn 1787]).
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Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics, trans. Peter Lucas (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1953 [1783]). A condensed version of the
first Critique.
Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Lewis White Beck
(Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1959 [1785]). Kant’s easier version of his
second Critique.
Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Lewis White Beck (New York: Macmillan,
1956 [1788]).
Critique of Judgement, trans. Werner Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987
[1790]).
Perpetual Peace and Other Essays, trans. Ted Humphrey (Indianapolis:
Hackett, 1983). Shorter essays on moral, historical and political themes.
Suggestions for Further Reading
Appelbaum, David, The Vision of Kant (Rockport, MA: Element, 1995).
Concise 50-page overview of Kant’s philosophy and selections from his
work.
Caygill, Howard, Art of Judgement (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989). Focuses on
the political implications of the third Critique.
Deleuze, Gilles, Kant’s Critical Philosophy, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and
Barbara Habberjam (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984).
A condensed essay which attempts to integrate Kant’s three Critiques
into an overall system by focusing on the faculties.
Guyer, Paul (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Kant (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1982). Useful but advanced collection of essays.
Hutchings, Kimberly, Kant, Critique and Politics (London: Routledge, 1996).
Concise summary of Kant’s critique, and chapters on Habermas, Arendt,
Foucault, Lyotard and feminism read through the problematique of
Kantian critique.
Körner, S., Kant (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1955). Exposition of Kant’s
philosophy which has stood the test of time.
Scruton, Roger, Kant (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982). Brief and
accessible account of Kant’s work.
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3
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
(1770–1831)
Matt F. Connell
Hegel in the Critical Tradition
Hegel is less convinced than Kant that Enlightened reason could solve
humanity’s problems. Whereas Kant enthuses about the rational ideals
of the French Revolution, Hegel’s enthusiasm is more measured.
Influenced by the German Romantics, Hegel comes to the view that
the rationalisation of reason into freedom is not a matter of abstract
theorising but of the historical development of possibilities inherent
in particular cultures. Thus he does not share an Enlightened disdain
for traditional forms of life, which all contain at least the seeds of
reason and freedom. Nor does he conceive of the individual self as
abstracted from culture but as embedded in it, so that even individ-
uality is a cultural achievement. In general, Hegel’s philosophical as
well as social and political orientations favour harmony rather than
the divisions and distinctions evident in the complexity of modern
society and the philosophical systems of his time.
Hegel’s philosophical system can be understood as a response to
Kant’s critical philosophy, in particular the attempts by figures after
Kant such as Fichte and Schelling to develop the method of ‘tran-
scendental idealism’. The key problem for those who came after Kant
was to elaborate the basic categories of experience in a way that
connected them both to each other and to the free, self-determined
human subject. Hegel criticised Kant and his followers for considering
such key issues as subjectivity from incomplete and undeveloped
perspectives, as a result of which philosophy ended up with a series of
dualisms or incompatible oppositions between terms such as freedom
and determinism. Hegel’s systematic concept of totality is conceived
as a way of overcoming dualisms such as those addressed by Kant’s
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antinomies, attempting to reach the whole of which terms such as
nature and human action are parts. The perspective from which the
whole can be perceived, so that free humans can be seen to be at
home in a causally determined world, is that of the history of human
experience. Rather than focusing on individual subjectivity and auto-
nomy, Hegel regards the proper subject of philosophy to be humanity
as a collectivity coming to self-consciousness. In a related contrast to
Kant’s moral philosophy, Hegel stresses the collective or institutional
nature of ethical life in the family, civil society and the state, all
of which ensure that duty does not conflict with individual free will.
He considers Kant’s moral law to be hopelessly abstract and formal,
unable to guide action while insisting on an unrealistic devotion to
duty. Hegel’s understanding of the strained interaction of personality
with modern social structure has some affinity to Freud’s notion of
ego alienation (though there is no evidence of a direct influence), as
well as to subsequent Freudo-Marxist deployments of the dialectic to
address the interaction.
Although Hegel’s approach remains idealist, in that the subject of
history is ‘spirit’ or Geist, his dialectical notion of totality became posi-
tively important for Marx’s historical materialism, as discussed in the
chapter on Marx. However, Hegelianism’s reception in Western
Marxism has been mixed. Whereas Lukács found the key to dialectical
thought through Marx’s appropriation of Hegel’s notion of totality,
Adorno rejected the totalitarian implication of Hegel’s ‘identity’
thinking, seeking instead to rescue the more fluid side of his philo-
sophy, as discussed in Chapters 8 and 9. Hegel thus appears in the
tradition of critique as both an ally in the critique of modernity and as
an advocate of modernity to be criticised.
Introduction
Hegel was born in Stuttgart in 1770, the same year as Beethoven,
Wordsworth and Hölderlin. He absorbed the Greek and Roman
classics alongside scientific ideas, immersed himself in the emerging
literature of Goethe and Schiller, trained as a Lutheran pastor
and engaged seriously with the German philosophical tradition,
especially post-Kantian idealism. As a young man, he was an enthusi-
ast for the Enlightenment and for the French Revolution, which
were to modernise the fragmented and still semi-feudal Germany
into which Hegel was born. He later developed a more tempered
assessment of the limits of both. The atmosphere of artistic and
philosophical ferment coupled with political upheaval and progress
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nevertheless had a profound impact on Hegel, who traced these
developments through the production of a philosophy capable of
demonstrating how they, and it, were the product of all prior forms
of thought, a living expression of the whole spirit of the age.
This chapter concentrates on Hegel’s first systematic book, the
Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), which is an introduction to the scope
and method of his whole project. Hegel’s grandest of grand narra-
tives is an exegesis of its own process of coming to be, dealing with
the development of self-consciousness, society, religion and culture
in an ambitious explication of the origin and goal of the free human
spirit.
Hegel’s Notions of Totality, Dialectic and Teleology
Hegel suggests one cannot understand any particular thing without
understanding everything else as well: the totality. Yet philosophers
are confronted with splits between alienated spheres of knowledge
and experience: natural science, art, religion, politics and the
various competing philosophies which try to order this fragmented
mélange. Hegel’s huge system uncovers interconnections which
resolve contradictory spheres of experience by reaching the whole
of which these are parts. Hegel’s slippery concept of Geist (spirit or
mind) links the disparate moments of historical existence together:
‘past existence is the already acquired property of universal Spirit
which constitutes the Substance of the individual’.1
Spirit is at work
behind our backs, propelling us on to the point where reason
becomes conscious through a process of dialectical development
and change which constitutes subjectivity in relation to the totality.
The notion of dialectics is now associated with Hegel above
all others, but comes from German philosophy’s long engagement
with the Greeks, especially the neo-Platonists. In Plato’s famous
dialogues, clashes between Socrates and his hapless debating part-
ners revealed the contradictions internal to various opposed philo-
sophical notions, contradictions which were resolved by Socratic
wisdom into a higher form of reason. In Kant, and especially Fichte,
we find a similar triadic structure. A thesis (1) and its opposing
antithesis (2) are transcended through a synthesis (3). Although
Hegel does not make much use of these terms, dialectical triads
dominate the structure of Hegel’s philosophy, as all the a, b cs and
1, 2, 3s of the contents pages of the Phenomenology reveal. Each new
synthesis emerges as the third term of a triad, becoming in turn the
first term of a new one, in a spiralling process of development, which
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in the end comes full circle as the whole movement completes itself
in a final shape of consciousness capable of expressing all the
moments without contradiction.
Hegel’s dialectic is teleological: the origin (archē ) of the move-
ment has its ultimate aim (telos) implicit within it, as a necessary part
of its full expression, just as the aim of a spear is implicit in the cast
that sets it in flight. The final resting place of reason is the necessary
completion of its first wavering motions. The whole truth is the
entire ‘process of its own becoming, the circle that presupposes its
end as its goal, having its end also as its beginning; and only by being
worked out to its end, is it actual’.2
The aim of the Phenomenology is to follow the linear movement of
the truth as it unfolds, with the eventual aim of escaping temporality
by setting out its moments in a circle. The paradox is that because
the self capable of this circular reflection via conceptual speculation
has no other source than the unconscious moments that have led up
to it, differentiated self-awareness must involve a surrender to the
immanent motion of those moments, not a hasty transcendence
of them. If we are to grasp the significance of an experience, state
of consciousness or phase of history as it appears, we must first
try to immerse ourselves within it. This immersion is what Hegel
means by phenomenology, ‘the Science of Knowing in the sphere of
appearance’.3
As an exegesis both of the coming to be of this Science of Know-
ing and of the subjects who know it, the Phenomenology has to juggle
several perspectives on the evolving states of being which lead up to
itself. Hegel’s text simultaneously tries to enter into the developing
modes of being which it takes as its object, to understand the way
each mode of being experiences its own objects and also to ascertain
to what degree and in what way each state of being is conscious of its
own workings. By reflecting on itself, Hegel’s text completes the
developments it explores, discovering its own dialectical method as
the principal of their movement. To use the complex Hegelian
terms, phenomenology may be carried out in the register of the
for-us, but this is always an account of experience as it is in-itself. The
moments of experience which Hegel presents are an ideal version
of them, restricted initially to their own immanent unfolding, that
being what is meant by the term in-itself. Of course, even in this
restriction we, the readers, recognise the presence of a developed
self-consciousness who has witnessed it for-us, which is a different
perspective within the dialectical process. We may feel that this ideal
Matt F. Connell
36
01 pages 001-128 6/8/02 3:38 pm Page 36

observer has been smuggled in by conceptual trickery. But Hegel
aims to show that this undifferentiated presence in the beginning of
the completed end is the reality of unfolding spirit, not only a pro-
jection of the phenomenologist. He asks us, in his preface, to accept
that this spirit will not stand as revealed in its actuality until the long
passage through the whole process has been completed. For-itself, the
experience has yet to catch up with us phenomenologists, and its
subject does not comprehend that the inclusive medium for the
movement of phenomena is the conceptual consciousness that allows
the whole movement to become explicit in-and-for-itself. This shifts
our focus from the moments which move on to the movement itself.
As in a piece of music by Beethoven, the early movements of the
Phenomenology hint at things which are only fully developed later on,
after many detours have brought spirit to the point where what is
latent within it may become manifest. Hegel’s recapitulation of the
adventures of spirit periodically explicates its early episodes through
an awareness of the later ones, jumping backwards and forwards
through the history of philosophy and the experiences it seeks to
articulate. The discontinuities and transitions that make real history
so confusing are overcome by a mode of presentation which allows
the phenomenologist to take advantage of the totality that only
emerges at the end of the whole movement. Historical processes
and conceptual ideas of them, which at first appear to be chaotic
and erroneous, are an essential component of the ultimate truth,
which ‘includes the negative also, what would be called the false, if
it could be regarded as something from which one might abstract’.4
The categories ‘true’ and ‘false’ are therefore a form of intellectual
myopia that fails to grasp the bigger picture in which the dichotomy
is resolved in an ultimate unity. This is a good example of Hegel’s
key notion of a self-conscious dialectical Aufhebung of the estranged
sides of a conceptual dichotomy. This is a ‘sublation’, ‘supersession’
or ‘sublimation’ (the nearest English translations of Aufhebung) of
those sides which both destroys and conserves them as moments
of a progressive process.
Some Dialectical Models from Hegel’s Phenomenology
The idea of dialectical development is explicated below by using a
tiny selection of models from the Phenomenology, which makes no
attempt to take the whole road traversed by Hegel. Since a sketch of
the whole would provide an illusion of completeness only by sacri-
37
01 pages 001-128 6/8/02 3:38 pm Page 37

ficing the details which render the movement convincing, I look at
a few stages of the journey in enough depth to capture the method
by which Hegel propels himself, following his earlier signposts with-
out covering all the ground which leads to their destination.
At the beginning of the Phenomenology, Hegel introduces the
notions of teleological progression and dialectical completion
through a botanical model drawn from Aristotle:
The bud disappears in the bursting-forth of the blossom, and one might
say that the former is refuted by the latter; similarly, when the fruit
appears, the blossom is shown up in its turn as a false manifestation of
the plant, and the fruit now emerges as the truth of it instead. These
forms are not just distinguished from one another, they also supplant
one another as mutually incompatible. Yet at the same time their fluid
nature makes them moments of an organic unity in which they not only
do not conflict, but in which each is as necessary as the other; and this
mutual necessity alone constitutes the life of the whole.5
The whole life of the plant is not expressed by each stage in iso-
lation, even though the flower is potential in the seed: the truth of
it can only be expressed by a concept of the plant which can theor-
etically recapitulate all the phases of its development. Only the
knowing human subject can step outside of time through a recol-
lection of all the moments, negating the contradictions of the par-
ticulars and reconstructing the positive life of the whole, holding
the separate stages together in a speculative idea which can articu-
late difference within its own unity. The novel property of human
subjectivity is that it, unlike a plant, is potentially capable of render-
ing conscious in-and-for-itself the various stages of its own historical
development, hinting at the telos of the identity of concept and
object towards which spirit moves.
Hegel begins the odyssey of human consciousness with the basic
experience of ‘sense-certainty’. This is an initially undifferentiated
state which takes its certainty from its sensuous experience of the
world of objects. But the simple certainties of the senses have a habit
of changing on their own, like the plant. The basic experience of
what ‘is’ cannot avoid division into an ‘I’ and a ‘thing’ that lies
before it. Sense-certainty tries to maintain its stability by focusing on
‘this’ thing which confronts it, but the solidity of the ‘this’ sunders
into another duality: the ‘now’ and the ‘here’. Hegel further dis-
rupts the claim of sense-certainty to have grasped its essence in what
is immediately in front of it, by focusing on the incomplete nature
of each of these new moments.
Matt F. Connell
38
01 pages 001-128 6/8/02 3:38 pm Page 38

If one writes down the certain truth that it is now daytime, by the
time dusk falls that truth has fallen into darkness. The now persists,
but becomes what it was not. ‘Now’ is not immediate, but mediated
‘through the fact that something else, viz. Day and Night, is not’.6
So
the simple ‘now’ has a negative character, indifferent to its particu-
lar content: the now is a universal. The contradictory antithesis of
past and present is unified by the concept of an ever-recurring
universal now that is the temporal stage for the subject’s becoming.
Likewise, the ‘here’ is a universal based on a negation of the particu-
lar ‘this’. As one gazes around a house and garden, the simplicity of
the ‘here’ persists whatever the object of one’s glance: ‘“Here” itself
does not vanish; on the contrary, it abides constant in the vanishing
of the house, the tree, etc., and is indifferently house or tree.’7
In an inversion of the earlier positing of the object as ground, the
certainty of sense tries to retain a moment of immediacy by shifting
from the ‘this’, whose solidity has dissolved into the universals of
‘here’ and ‘now’, to the subject as the power that can hold them
together in a unity: ‘the vanishing of the single Now and Here that
we mean is prevented by the fact that I hold them fast’.8
But this
subjectively inflected certainty suffers the same divisive fate as the
previous objective ones:
I, this ‘I’, see the tree and assert that ‘Here’ is a tree; but another ‘I’ sees
the house and maintains that ‘Here’ is not a tree but a house instead.
Both truths have the same authentication, viz. the immediacy of seeing,
and the certainty and assurance that both have about their knowing; but
the one truth vanishes in the other.9
The particular certainty of the senses has to complicate itself with
the intersubjective idea of the I as a universal in order to express
its truth. A sense-certainty such as ‘this is a house’, which seems
immediate and solid, in fact deploys the universality of the here, the
now, and the I – ‘If you were sitting where I am now, you would see
that this is a house.’
Neither the ‘I’ nor its ‘this’ (the subject and the object) can
subsist alone:
neither one nor the other is only immediately present in sense-certainty,
but each is at the same time mediated: I have this certainty through some-
thing else, viz. the thing; and it, similarly, is in sense-certainty through
something else, viz. through the ‘I’.10
The truth of sense-certainty is not its perspective on either the
subject or the object, but the fact that this perspective is insufficient
39
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and yields, instead of a concrete particular, a set of conceptual
universals whose heart is the negative itself.
Showing how rarefied philosophical speculation about basic
experience may be expressed in developed forms of culture, Hegel
here makes one of his characteristic leaps by drawing on religious
examples. The mysteries of Ceres, Bacchus and the Christian com-
munion initiate consciousness into the knowledge that certainty in
the objects of sense voids itself into nothing, through a transmu-
tation and destruction of material substances that also profoundly
transform the initiate himself. At a basic level even animals grasp
this: ‘they do not just stand idly in front of sensuous things as if these
possessed intrinsic being, but, despairing of their reality, and com-
pletely assured of their nothingness, they fall to without ceremony
and eat them up’.11
This animalistic perspective introduces the
notion of desire into Hegel’s considerations. Any particular life
can never be self-sufficient, must transform itself through the over-
coming of otherness, and can only be comprehended as part of the
totality of all the interacting negations of each transient living par-
ticularity. Hegel transposes this observation into a meditation on
what happens when rather than an animal eating the object of its
desire, we are faced with a confrontation between two humans who
each desire the recognition of the other.
The dialectic of lord and bondsman12
sets out an archetypal
encounter between hostile subjects, who try to force the desired
recognition out of each other. But the victor of a battle to the death
is faced with a corpse who can recognise nothing: if the I destroys
the other vital for self-consciousness, the I destroys itself, so the best
way to obtain the recognition of the loser is to enslave them instead.
This arrangement affords the lord advantages in his relations with
the objects of his desire, because now the bondsman can be used to
procure and refine them, leaving the lord free to enjoy the fruit
of the bondsman’s labour without getting his own hands dirty. In
accepting servitude before death, the bondsman admits his depen-
dency, setting aside his potential for free action in a submission
based on fear. However, the lord now faces the same problem as
confronted him with the corpse, for he has reduced the bondsman
to a dependant whose recognition is not worth having because it
does not match up to the concept of self-consciousness. The truth of
the lord is therefore ‘the servile consciousness of the bondsman’,
who turns out to have the key to independence in what apparently
encumbers him: his fear of the ‘absolute Lord’, death, and his
Matt F. Connell
40
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Ptolemy
Woodford Sydenham Grey, N. R. O John Thomson
Woodham Blanchard Perth, S. R. O Jonathan
Shier
Woodhill Toronto Gore Peel O Thomas Ward
Woodlands Osnabruck Stormont O R. H. Stewart
Wood Point,
W. O.
Westmoreland N B S. Outhouse
Woodside Halifax Megantic Q Thomas Wood
Woodslee Maidstone Essex O W. S. Lindsay
* Woodstock Blandford Oxford, N. R. O G. Alexander
Woodstock Carleton N B James Grover
Woodstock Road
Station, W. O.
Carleton N B John S.
Leighton
* Woodville Eldon Victoria, N. R. O John C.
Gilchrist
Woodville, W. O. Hants N S Shubael
Parker
Wooler Murray Northumberland,
E. R.
O Lorenzo F.
Gould
Wotton Wotton Wolfe Q Benjamin
Milette
Wreck Cove,
W. O.
Victoria N S John Morrison
Wright Wright Ottawa Q Joshua Ellard

* Wroxeter Howick Huron, N. R. O George A.
Powell
Wyandot Maryboro’ Wellington, N. R. O J. D. Johnson
Wyebridge Tiny Simcoe, N. R. O Daniel
McGregor
* Wyoming Plympton Lambton O John
Anderson
Yale Yale B C
Yamachiche Machiche St. Maurice Q Arthur Lacerte
Yamaska Yamaska Yamaska Q L. H. Lafleur
Yarker Camden, East Addington O J. A. Shibley
Yarm Clarendon Pontiac Q Robert
McJanet
Yarmouth Yarmouth N S A. J. Hood
Yarmouth Centre Yarmouth Elgin, E. R. O William Mann
Yelverton Manvers Durham, E. R. O James A.
Curry
Yeovil Egremont Grey, S. R. O Joseph
Bunston
Yoho, W. O. York N B Wm. Arbuckle
* York Seneca Haldimand O Hy. A. Duggan
York Mills York York, E. R. O William Hogg
York River Faraday Hastings, N. R. O J. C. George
Yorkville York York, E. R. O James Dobson
Young’s Cove,
W. O.
Queen’s N B R. Snodgrass
Young’s Point Smith Peterborough,
W. R.
O Patrick Young
Zealand Oso Addington O Joseph Davis

Zephyr Scott Ontario, N. R. O Manuel N.
Dafoe
Zetland Turnberry Huron, N. R. O L. J. Brace
Zimmerman Nelson Halton O Robert Miller
Ziska Monck Muskoka O W. H. Spencer
Zurich Hay Huron, S. R. O Robert Brown

[1] Late Six mile Cross.
[2] Late Spring Hill Road, W. O.
[3] Closed during Winter.
[4] Late Cameron, W. O.
[5] Late Channel Islands, W. O.
[6] Late Allendale Mills.
[7] Late McNab, Glengarry.
[8] Late Grass Pond
[9] Late “Evangeline.”
[10] Late Balmer’s Island.
[11] Late “Foster’s Cove, W. O.”

List of Post Offices closed and not
subsequently re-opened, between
the 1st of July, 1871, and the 1st of
July, 1872.
NAME OF OFFICE. ELECTORAL DISTRICT. DATE OF CLOSING.
Borelia Ontario, N. R. O 1st March, 1872.
Chamcook, W. O. Charlotte N B 1st July, 1872.
Country Harbour, W. O. Guysborough N S 1st July, 1872.
Digdeguash, W. O. Charlotte N B 1st October,
1871.
Dornoch Oxford, S. R. O 1st April, 1872.
Drury Simcoe, N. E. O 1st March, 1872.
Felton Russell O 1st July, 1872.
Gold Mines, Mount
Uniacke, W. O.
Hants N S 1st July, 1872.
Green Point Prince Edward O 1st February,
1872.
Indian River Peterborough,
E. R.
O 1st September,
1871.
Lameque, W. O. Gloucester N B 1st January,
1872.
Largie Elgin, W. R. O 1st September,
1871.
Latimer Frontenac O 1st June, 1872.
Leavens Grey, N. R. O 1st January,
1872.

Lower Hillsborough,
W. O.
Albert N B 1st May, 1872.
Mathers Peterborough,
E. R.
O 1st April, 1872.
Mekinac Champlain Q 1st July, 1872.
Middleton, W. O. Westmoreland N B 1st January,
1872.
Mount Webster Leeds, S. R. O 1st February,
1872.
Pelham Union Monck O 1st December,
1871.
Plumweseep, W. O. King’s N B 1st August,
1871.
Ullyatt Grey, N. R. O 1st September,
1871.
Wayside, W. O. Cumberland N S 1st July, 1872.
Willowgrove Haldimand O 1st June, 1872.
Woodbury Brant, S. R. O 1st June, 1872.
Woods Harbour, W. O. Shelburne N S 1st April, 1872.

List of changes in the names of Post
Offices, between the 1st of July,
1871, and the 1st of July, 1872,
inclusive.
LATE NAME OF OFFICE. ELECTORAL DISTRICT. NEW NAME OF OFFICE.
Allendale Mills Peterboro, E. R. O Lang.
Balmer’s Island Renfrew, S. R. O Stewartville.
Cameron, W. O. Inverness N S Emerald, W. O.
Channel Islands, W. O. Cape Breton N S Eskasoni, W. O.
Evangeline Stanstead Q St. Hermenegilde.
Foster’s Cove, W. O. Victoria N B Three Brooks, W. O.
Grass Pond Brome Q St. Etienne de Bolton.
McNab—Glengarry Glengarry O Lochinvar.
St. Etienne St. Maurice Q St. Etienne des Grés.
Six Mile Cross Huntingdon Q Anderson’s Corners.
Spring Hill Road, W. O. Cumberland N S Athol.

POST OFFICE TRANSACTIONS FOR
THE MONTHS OF AUGUST AND
SEPTEMBER, 1872.
NEW POST OFFICES ESTABLISHED.
NAME OF POST
OFFICE.
TOWNSHIP OR
PARISH.
ELECTORAL DISTRICT. POSTMASTER.
AUGUST.
Bardsville Monck Muskoka O Charles Bard.
Batchewana Fisher Algoma O W. J. Scott,
jun.
Cambridge
Station, W. O.
King’s N S John C.
Neiley.
Condon
Settlement,
W. O.
King’s N S Wm.
McConnell.
Esquimaux
Point
Saguenay Q D. B. McGie.
Factory Dale,
W. O.
King’s N S Robert R.
Ray.
Forest City,
W. O.
York N B William R.
Cully.
Grande Vallée Gaspé Q Louis
Fournier.
[12] Harlock Hullett Huron, C. R. O Thomas
Neilans.

Harmony,
W. O.
King’s N S Austin
Spinney.
Jackson Road,
W. O.
King’s N S Alexander
Nichol.
Lake George,
W. O.
King’s N S A. P.
Hudgens.
Little Ridge,
W. O.
Albert N B Benjamin
Bray.
Magpie Saguenay Q Peter Skelton.
Mascouche Mascouche L’Assomption Q J. O.
Lamarche.
Midland, W. O. King’s N B W. Mitchell
Case.
Mill Cove,
W. O.
Queen’s N B Mrs. Nancy
Sparks.
Mingan Saguenay Q Benjamin
Scott.
Natashquan Saguenay Q C. A.
Deschamps.
Palmer Rapids Raglan Renfrew, S. R. O H. F.
McLachlin.
Pemberton
Ridge, W. O.
York N B Cyrus B.
McKenney.
Perm Mulmur Simcoe, S. R. O Paul
Gallagher.
Pleasant Vale,
W. O.
Albert N B R. Alder
Colpitts.
Prosser Brook,
W. O.
Albert N B David H.
Beeman.
St. James’
Park, (sub)
Westminster Middlesex, E. R. O John Taylor.

St. Mary’s,
W. O.
Kent N B Olivier
LeBlanc.
Sheldrake Saguenay Q John Collas.
Upper Bedford Stanbridge Missisquoi Q N. C. Martin.
Upper
Hampstead,
W. O.
Queen’s N B Reuben G.
Cameron.
Urquharts,
W. O.
King’s N B Nathaniel
Urquhart.
Waterside,
W. O.
Albert N B George
Coonan.
Whitney, W. O. Northumberland N B James
Russell.
Willowgrove
(re-opened)
Oneida Haldimand O Hugh Stuart.
SEPTEMBER.
Allan Mills Burgess, N Lanark, S. R. O William Allan.
Avondale,
W. O.
Carleton N B John E.
McCready.
Clinch’s Mills,
W. O.
St. John N B Chas. F.
Clinch.
French Lake,
W. O.
Sunbury N B A. H. Smith.
Reedsdale Inverness Megantic Q James Reed.
Richibucto
Village, W. O.
Kent N B Urbain Breau.
Seely Brunel Muskoka O Obadiah
Seely.
Spence Spence Muskoka O F. W.
Ashdown.

Uphill Dalton Victoria, N. R. O Joseph
Calhoun.
[12] This office was reported as having been established on
the 1st June 1872, but did not go into operation until the 1st
August, 1872.
CHANGES IN POST OFFICES ALREADY
ESTABLISHED.
Office Closed.
La Tortue, Co. Laprairie, Q.
Name Changed.
Mascouche, Co. l’Assomption, Q., to Mascouche Rapids.

POST OFFICES IN CANADA,
ON THE 1st JULY, 1872,
ARRANGED ACCORDING TO
PROVINCES AND ELECTORAL
DISTRICTS.
POST OFFICES
IN THE
PROVINCE OF ONTARIO,
ARRANGED ACCORDING TO
ELECTORAL DISTRICTS AND TOWNSHIPS.
ADDINGTON.
Abinge.
Vennachar.
Anglesea.
Cloyne.
Ashby.
—

Barrie.
Hardinge,
Harlowe.
Bedford.
Fermoy,
Glendower.
Camden, East.
Camden, East,
Centreville,
Colebrook,
Croydon,
Desmond,
Enterprise,
Moscow,
Napanee Mills,
Newburgh,
Overton,
Yarker.
Canonto, South.
—
Clarendon.
Ardoch,
Buckshot.
Denbigh.

Denbigh.
Effingham.
—
Hinchinbrooke.
Deniston,
Parham.
Kaladar.
Flinton,
Glastonbury,
Kaladar.
Kennebec.
Arden.
Loughboro’.
Desert Lake,
Lapum,
Loughboro’,
Railton,
Spaffordton,
Wilmur.
Miller.
Gemley.
Olden.

Long Lake,
Mountain Grove.
Oso.
Deerdock,
Zealand.
Palmerston.
Ompah.
Portland.
Bellrock,
Harrowsmith,
Hartington,
Murvale,
Petworth,
Verona.
Sheffield.
Clareview,
Erinsville,
Tamworth.
ALGOMA.
Assiginack.
Manitowaning.
Fisher.

Batchewana.
Howland.
Little Current.
Korah.
Sault Ste. Marie.
Neebing.
Fort William.
Parke.
Pointe aux Pins.
The following Post Offices are in the unsurveyed portion of Algoma:—
Bruce Mines,
Collin’s Inlet,
Garden River,
Killarney,
Michipicoten River,
Silver Islet,
Spanish River,
Thunder Bay.
BOTHWELL.
Camden.
Croton,

Dawn Mills,
Dresden,
Thamesville.
Dawn.
Rutherford.
Euphemia.
Florence,
Shetland,
Sutherland’s Corners.
Howard.
Botany,
* Morpeth,
Ridgetown,
Selton.
Orford.
Clachan,
Clearville,
Duart,
Highgate.
Sombra.
Baby’s Point,
Becher,
Port Lambton,
Sombra,
Wilkesport.

Zone.
* Bothwell.
BRANT, NORTH RIDING.
Brantford, East.
Cainsville.
Dumfries, South.
Glen Morris,
Harrisburg,
* Paris,
Paris Station,
Rosebank,
St. George.
Onondaga.
Onondaga,
Tuscarora.
BRANT, SOUTH RIDING.
Brantford, West.
* Brantford,
Burtch,
Falkland,
Langford,
Mohawk,
Mount Vernon,
Newport.

Burford.
Burford,
Cathcart,
Fairfield Plain,
Harley,
New Durham.
Oakland.
Oakland,
Scotland.
Tuscarora.
—
BROCKVILLE, TOWN.
Elizabethtown.
Addison,
* Brockville,
Fairfield, East,
Greenbush.
* Lyn,
New Dublin,
Whitehurst.
BRUCE, NORTH RIDING.
Albermarle.
Colpoy’s Bay,
Mar.

Amabel.
Allenford,
Park Head,
Skipness,
Wiarton.
Arran.
Arkwright,
Burgoyne,
Elsinore,
Invermay,
Tara.
Bruce.
Glammis,
Gresham,
Inverhuron,
North Bruce,
Tiverton,
Underwood.
Bury.
—
Eastnor.
—
Elderslie.
Carnegie,

Chesley,
Dobbington,
* Paisley,
Williscroft.
Lindsay.
—
Saugeen.
Dumblane,
Normanton,
* Saugeen,
West Arran.
BRUCE, SOUTH RIDING.
Brant.
Dunkeld,
Ellengowan,
Elmwood,
Malcolm,
Maple Hill,
Outram,
Scone,
Vesta,
* Walkerton.
Carrick.
Ambleside,
Carlsruhe,
Formosa,

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