Abstract

Agreeing that Hegel is a realist, I take issue concerning how Hegel establishes realism. Westphal’s Hegel develops a Kantian formal-transcendentalphilosophy founded in an epistemology which establishes how consciousness apprehends a given world. My account contends that Hegel has moved beyondfoundational epistemology, beginning philosophical science in a logic which develops conceptual self-determination independently of and prior to any assumptions about consciousness and world. This methodological idealism leads to metaphysical realism in that the completion of logic’s selfdeterminationnecessitates the subsequent consideration of the nonlogical in the Realphilosophie. This reconciles Hegel’s insistence that philosophy be thoroughly self-grounding with his recognition of a world beyond thought which philosophy conceptualizes realistically as a distinct domain that is neither thought itself nor thought-like.