Brandom

Week 9
Introduction : I am developing, as promised, a semantic reading of Hegel: a
reading of the Phenomenology as a semantic allegory. But the semantics in question is to
be (astonishingly) an edifying semantics. Edification here is a practical, recognitive and
cognitive achievement: maing oneself a better person by coming to understand
something.
!raditional and modern practical understandings are alie in taing it that if
norms e"ert authority over attitudes, then attitudes cannot e"ert authority over norms, and
vice versa. Either norms are independent of attitudes and attitudes dependent on norms,
or attitudes are independent of norms and norms are dependent on attitudes. (#$)
%o the claim is first that &hen the hyper'objectivity about norms characteristic of
immediate %ittlicheit is shattered by a practical reali(ation of the essential role played by
the normative attitudes of individual sub)ects in instituting norms, the result is a
complementary hyper'subjectivity: alienation. *nd second, that &hat drives that
pendulum from the one e"treme to the other is failure to appreciate the mediated structure
of reciprocal sense'dependence of the concepts of dependence and independence, that is,
responsibility and authority. (#+)
I. Actual and Pure Consciousness
Hegel introduces his discussion of ,%pirit alienated from itself- in terms of the
concept of culture .Bildung/. (#0)
*lienation is the inability to bring together these t&o aspects of Bildung: that self'
conscious individuals acno&ledging the norms as binding in our practice is &hat maes
those selves &hat they are, and that self'conscious individuals acno&ledging the norms
as binding is &hat maes the norms &hat they are. !hese are the authority of the
community and its norms over individuals (their dependence on it), and the authority of
individuals over the community and its norms (its dependence on them), respectively.
(#1)
naturalistic reductionism, in the form of commitment to an e"planatory
frame&or that eliminates reference to norms entirely, in favor of attitudes, is a principal
e"pression of the alienation of the modern &orld. (#2)
H distinguishes t&o aspects of the normative structure of the modern &orld of
culture: actual consciousness and pure consciousness. *ctual consciousness comprises
social institutions, the norms they embody, and individuals playing roles and engaging in
practices governed and articulated by those norms. (#3)
4ure consciousness is the &ay norms are conceived or conceptuali(ed. 4ure
consciousness mediates the relation bet&een actual individual selves and the norms it
theori(es about. In traditional society, as opposed to modern culture, the norms implicit
in %itte, in customs, are immediate5not the sub)ect of conceptuali(ation or
themati(ation, not made explicit, and hence not sub)ect to critical scrutiny. Immediate
%ittlicheit has a purely practical, implicit, non-conceptual conception of norms, and so
has no analogue of pure consciousness. 4ure consciousness is a distinctively modern
form of self'consciousness, a manifestation of the rise of sub)ectivity. It is a ne& &ay the
norms implicit in the practices of actual consciousness can be something e"plicitly for
consciousness. (#3)
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!he t&o sides of &hat Hegel calls ,actual consciousness- accordingly correspond
to the t&o aspects of individuality: particularity and universality. 6ealth .Reichtum/ is
the thic institutional form in &hich the particular aspect of the certainty of individual
self'consciousness is e"pressed by becoming actual or public, acquiring its truth in
practical activity. %tate po&er .Staatsmacht/ is the thic institutional form in &hich the
universal aspect of the certainty of individual self'consciousness is e"pressed or becomes
actual or public, acquiring its truth in practical activity. (#7)
8ould also call this ,actual %pirit.- It &ould then contrast &ith ,pure %pirit-: *rt,
9eligion, and 4hilosophy.
6ealth is the individual as having authority over the application of concepts, and
%tate 4o&er is the individual as being responsible to the conceptual norms. !he division
of these, their conflict, is the paradigmatic institutional form of alienation. (2+)
.Modern liberalism, and Rorty, on the public-priate split !solidarity and
irony"./
II. #an$ua$e
:ne of the distinctive features of modernity is that language mediates the
relations among individuals, their acts and attitudes, and their norms, institutions, and
communities. ;anguage becomes the medium of recognition. ,!his alienation taes
place solely in language, &hich here appears in its characteristic significance.- .4< 2$=/
!hat ,characteristic significance- is, as he puts the point else&here, that
,language is the e"istence .>asein/ of <eist.- .4< 320/ (20)
!o say that the content of recognitive attitudes is also linguistic in the modern era
is to say that adopting the distinctively modern recognitive attitudes is performing speech
acts. language and the linguistic utterances and the relations among them is the medium
in &hich recognition taes place. ,In speech, self'consciousness, qua independent
separate individuality-5the individually self'conscious self, the one characteristic of
modernity5,comes as such into e"istence, so that it e"ists for others.- !hat is the
petitioning for recognition. (2#)
.Ho& &ealth sees state po&er as putting attitudes over norms (acting
unheroically): !he structural alienation of modern actual consciousness sho&s up in the
fact that the avatars of 6ealth, those &ho actuali(e the particular aspect of recognitive
processes, refuse to recogni(e the avatars of %tate 4o&er as identifying &ith the norms
they to &hich they profess allegiance. 9ather than genuine identification, they see only
the pursuit of the private interests and motives of the holders of state office, under cover
of their roles as officials. !he flatterer makes true &hat 6ealth finds true of the agents of
%tate 4o&er. ?or flattery of a superior is the pursuit of personal advantage in the guise of
sacrifice of it.
Ho& state po&er sees &ealth as doing that: /
!he %itty talk5&hich ,no&s ho& to pass )udgement on and chatter about
everything-5denies the correctness of tal of ho& things are in themselves, seeing only
ho& they are for consciousness. !he practical understanding this disrupted consciousness
has of its o&n attitudes is ironic. It still maes distinctions and employs concepts, but it
does not tae its commitments seriously, does not tae itself to be undertaing
responsibilities by its tal. ,!he content of &hat %pirit says about itself is thus the
perversion of every @otion and reality, the universal deception of itself and others.- .4<
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200/ ,In that vanity, all content is turned into something negative &hich can no longer be
grasped as having a positive significance.- .4< 203/ %o the attitude of this ,lacerated-
consciousness to its o&n attitudes must be distanced and remote. Its ironic stance
consists in not identifying even &ith its o&n attitudes, &hich it no&s to be in the end
vain and contentless, never mind &ith the norms to &hich those attitudes on their face
profess allegiance. Its merely ironic, moc renunciation and sacrifice is no genuine
recognition at all. It is a petition to be recogni(ed as not recogni(ing. It is accordingly
visible as a strategy of Aastery. (30'1)
?ocusing on the lin$uistic character o& modern reco$nitie processes5the
practices of adopting specific recognitive attitudes, that is, of acno&ledging and
attributing conceptually contentful commitments, responsibilities, and licensings5
provides a ne& perspective on the notion of freedom, &hich is characteristic of Bernunft.
(37)
:ne &ay in &hich the model of lan$ua$e helps us thin about the possibility of
overcoming alienation, then, is that it e"hibits an unalienated combination of authority of
individual attitudes and their responsibility to genuinely binding norms. ?or linguistic
practice e"hibits a social division of labor. It is up to each individual &hich speech acts
to perform: &hich claims to mae, &hich intentions and plans to endorse. !he original
source of linguistic commitments is the acts and attitudes of individual speaers. In
undertaing those commitments, those speaers e"ercise a distinctive ind of authority.
But in doing so, as an unavoidable part of doing so, they mae themselves responsible to
the norms that articulate the contents of the concepts they have applied. (C$)
III. 'aith and (nli$htenment
*s actual consciousness is divided into %tate 4o&er and 6ealth, pure
consciousness is divided into ?aith and Enlightenment. *s those competing practical
normative structures of individuals, norms, and institutions line up &ith the t&o poles of
recognition, agency, logic, and form, so too do the competing theoretical normative
structures:
Pure
Consciousness
Actual
Consciousness
Reco$nition A$ency #o$ic)
Content*'orce
'orm
?aith %tate 4o&er 9ecognitive 8ommunity !at: *gent'
9esponsibility
Dniversal E
@ecessary
(@orm)
In itself:
:b)ectivity
Enlightenment 6ealth 9ecogni(ingE9ecogni(ed
Individual %elf'
8onsciousnesses
Handlung:
*gent'
*uthority
4articular E
8ontingent
(4erformance)
?or
consciousness:
%ub)ectivity
?aith and Enlightenment are not )ust theories of normativityF they are institutionalized
theories. (C3)
.!rinity (C=)/
!he lesson &eGre supposed to learn about &hat he insists is the common topic of
?aith, under the heading of the religious absolute, and of Enlightenment, under the
heading of reason: @ormativity, universality, is not to see that as some ind of a thing,
either over there or in individual human beings, but rather as implicit in the articulation of
individuals in a community, their recognitive interplay, and the utterances and attitudes
that actuali(e and e"press.
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EnlightenmentGs critique of ?aith sho&s some understanding of this lesson. *s
Hegel reconstructs that critique, it is a three'pronged attac. !here is an ontolo$ical
claim, an epistemolo$ical claim, and a practical, moral, claim.
+ntolo$ical mistae: It thins that something e"ists, &hen it does not. (=$)
!he epistemolo$ical ob)ection of Enlightement to ?aith is that even if there &ere
such an ob)ect, &e could not come to no& about it in the &ay ?aith claims to no&
about <od.
!hird, enlightenment accuses faith of bad intention or motivation or errors of
action, of immoral activity. !he priests are accused of tricery, the pretense of insight
and no&ledge, using that as a means to amass po&er. (=+)
Hegel: Enlightenment is fundamentally misunderstanding ?aith by seeing it as in
the first instance standing in a cognitive relation to some thing5as consisting at base in a
claim to knowledge of the *bsolute. It is not a kind o& cognition, but a kind o&
reco$nition, and there&ore a kind o& self-constitution. <enerically, it is the
identification of the individual self &ith its universal rather than its particular aspect.
!hat identification &ith the universal taes the form of sacrificing particular sub)ective
attitudes and interests through service and &orship. (=0)
Identification through sacrifice: by being &illing to live for it, by submerging
particular desires to the communal norms. !hat is the sacrifice of service and &orship.
In that &ay, lie the first sort of Aaster, believing consciousness succeeds in maing
itself something other than &hat it already &as, constitutes itself as something more than
that. !hat is &hat faith really consists in. !he reason the criticisms of ?aith by
Enlightenment miss their mar is that the self'conception to &hich a community is in this
&ay practically committed to reali(ing is not the having of a belief that could turn out to
be radically false. It does not stand in that sort of a relation to its &orld. It is a doin$,a
makin$, not a takin$. ItGs a recognition, ind of self'constitution, not a ind of
cognition. 6hat it is about, the truth that the certainty of the believer is ans&erable to, is
not something distinct from the believer in the communityF it is something that if all goes
&ell, the believers make true of themselves. (=1)
6hat is constituted by ?aith is a certain ind of self'conscious individuality. !he
recognitive account of self'consciousness tells us that this is possible only if a
corresponding ind of reco$nitie community is instituted at the same time. !he
religious community is established by individualsG reciprocal recognition of each other as
serving and &orshipping, &hich is to say as identifying &ith the norms through sacrifice
of merely particular, sub)ective attitudes and interests of the individuals they &ould
other&ise be. -his reco$nitie relation .e$el calls /trust0 12ertrauen3.
6homsoever I trust, his certainty of himself is for me the certainty of
myselfF I recogni(e in him my o&n being'for'self, no& that he
acno&ledges it and that it is for him purpose and essence. .4< 2#7/ (=#)
6hat trust brings about is the ,unity of abstract essence and self'consciousness-, of the
norms believing individuals identify &ith and those believers. !hat unity, Hegel claims,
is the ,the absolute Being of ?aith,- that is, the distinctive object of religious belief.
!he absolute Being of faith is essentially not the abstract essence that
&ould e"ist beyond the consciousness of the believerF on the contrary, it is
the %pirit of the .religious/ community, the unity of the abstract essence
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and self'consciousness. It is the spirit of the community, the unity of the
abstract essence in self'consciousness. .4< 2#7/
:n his vie&, the real ob)ect of religious veneration, %pirit, is not a <od in the
form of a distinct thing that causally creates human beings, but the religious
community that believers create by their recognitive identification &ith it and
&ith each other. !hat, after all, is the lesson of his reading of the real lesson of
the 8hristian !rinity: <od the ?ather is the sensuously clothed image of the norm'
governed community synthesi(ed by reciprocal recognitive attitudes (having the
structure of trust) among self'consciousness individuals. (=3)
8onclusion : Both ?aith and Enlightenment have a cognitive, theoretical
dimension, and a recognitive, practical dimension. ?aith is &rong in its cognitive
attitudes, misunderstanding its ob)ect and its relation to that ob)ect. But it succeeds &ith
its recognitive practices, creating a community of trust. Enlightenment is right in its
cognitive attitudes, correctly seeing that the normativity both are concerned &ith is not
something independent of our attitudes and activities. But it fails on the recognitive,
practical side. Because it creates a community &ith the reciprocal recognitive structure
of trust, ?aith acno&ledges norms that can have some determinate contentF they are
contentful norms because a community lie that can actually institute, sustain, and
develop determinately contentful conceptual norms. But Enlightenment creates no such
community. :n the cognitive side, it sees that contentful norms cannot simply be read
off of the &ay the &orld simply is, independently of the attitudes, activities, practices,
and capacities of the creatures &ho are bound by them. 9ationality is a human capacity.
But Enlightenment is stuc &ith a purely formal notion of reason. It can critici(e the
contents ?aith purports to find, but cannot on its o&n produce replacements. (7$)
6hen pure consciousness in the form of Enlightenment is the self'understanding
of actual consciousness in the institutional form of %tate 4o&er (the practical recognitive
e"pression and actuali(ation of a theoretical cognitive vie&), the result is the !error,
&hose paradigm is the final bloodthirsty death'throes of the ?rench 9evolution. *bsolute
!error is &hat happens &hen the authority of individual self'consciousness to institute
norms is conceived and practiced as unconstrained5as a matter of independence &ithout
correlative dependence. (7#)
%ummary:
?aith and Enlightenment are each one'sided appreciations of the true nature of norms in
relation to attitudes. 'aith is on the right trac on the practical recognitive dimension of
self'consciousness, but has the &rong theoretical cognitive tae on the side of
consciousness. ?aith is right in &hat it does: to give the norms determinate content by
building a community. It builds a community of trust, &hich can develop and sustain
determinately contentful norms. It is right to see that its relation to the norms should be
one of acknowledgement and service. It is &rong to thin that private conceptions and
concerns must or can be totally sacrificed to mae that possible. ?aith is &rong to tae
over the traditional immediate conception of its relation to the norms: to ontologi(e, and
in a sense naturali(e them. It does not recogni(e itself in those norms. @either its
community, nor its individual activities are seen as essential or as authoritative &ith
respect to those norms.
(nli$htenment is right that the norms depend for both their force and their content on
the attitudes and practices of the very individuals &ho become more than merely
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particular, natural beings by being acculturated, that is, by being constrained by those
norms. It is &rong to thin that all &e contribute is the form. *nd it is &rong in the
practical recognitive consequences of its insight into our authority over the norms. It is
right in its criticism of ?aithGs metaphysics, but &rong to thin that undercuts its form of
life. :n the recognitive side of constituting communities and self'conscious individuals,
the contrast bet&een the !error and the community of trust could not be more star. %o
&hat is needed is to combine the humanistic metaphysics of Enlightenment (&ith its
cognitive emphasis on the contribution of the activity of individual self'consciousnesses)
&ith the community of trust of ?aith (&ith its practical emphasis on the contribution of
the activity of individual self'consciousnesses through acno&ledgement of, service to,
and identification'through'sacrifice &ith the norms). (72'3)
I2) Moralit4t und 5e%issen
(nli$htenment cannot understand the norms as both bindin$ and content&ul,
and 'aith cannot understand the role %e play in institutin$ them) making them
bindin$ and content&ul. !he tas is to reconcile the sittlich acno&ledgment of the
authority of the norms &ith the modern acno&ledgment of the authority of sub)ective
attitudes. !he e"plicit aspiration to do that, &hich is the bridge for&ard from modernity
to a ne& epoch in the development of %pirit, Hegel calls ,Moralit4t-. Hant is its
prophet. (73)
Aorality ultimately reveals itself as a form of the contraction strategy for
understanding agency, &hich &e e"amined in connection &ith the honest
consciousness. . In shrining &hat the agent is genuinely responsible for to a pure act of
&ill, uncontaminated by particular sensuous inclinations, it precludes itself from
understanding agents as having any genuine authority over &hat actually happens in the
ob)ective &orld. !he failure to mae intelligible the content of the norms agents bind
themselves by in its purely formal terms that is implicit in the metaconception of morality
becomes e"plicit in the metaconception of the relation bet&een norms and attitudes that
Hegel calls IconscienceG .5e%issen/.
!hought of from the side of recognition (and so of self'consciousness), morality
and conscience are structures of )ustification and appraisal. (7C)
Aorality sees to combine the universal applicability of moral principles
(consequences of the applicability of a rule) &ith their origin and validation in the free
commitment of an independent individual agent to the principles as universally binding
(grounds of the applicability of a rule). 6hile the requirement of universality represents
moralityJs attempt to reachieve %ittlicheit, its recognition of the role of the individual in
constituting the appropriatenesses so acno&ledged consists in its account of ho&
universal principles become validated. ?or moralityJs claim (HantJs claim) is that &hat
ultimately legitimates the constraint of principles is their appropriation as binding
because e"pressive of oneJs self as rational) by the individuals bound. ?reedom and
acting right coincide, and consist in acting according to principles one has chosen to be
bound by as universal. !his is the Hant'9ousseau criterion of demarcation of the
normative in terms of autonomy. (77)
Morality reconciles )ustification and appraisal only for each agent, but not in
itself or for all in their interaction. ?rom the agentJs point of vie&, then, )ustification and
appraisal appeal to )ust the same principles, and donJt stand in any &holesale opposition
or conflict of principle. But securing this lac of opposition for each agent'appraiser is
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not enough. In actual social practice those individual points of vie& must also cohere,
since )ustifying and appraising must in general be the actions of different individuals.
!his social coordination is not achievable on Hantian principles. (+$0)
Conscientious consciousness also attempts to reconcile universal responsibility
to norms &ith the constitution of those norms by their acno&ledgement and
appropriation by individuals. !he form of all )ustifications of actions is no& e"plicitly
understood to be: the action &as appropriate because it &as performed in accord &ith the
conviction on the part of the agent that it &as an appropriate action. !hat attitude
institutes the norm. 8orresponding to this approach to )ustification is an approach to
appraisal. !he appropriateness of actions is to be evaluated solely on the basis of &hether
the agent acted out of a conviction of the appropriateness of the action. *cting according
to duty is acting according to &hat one takes to be duty, both on the side of )ustification
and on the side of appraisal. (+$1)
4roblem: !hus even if an appraiser disagrees &ith a )ustifying agent about &hat is in fact
appropriate or required by duty in a particular situation, they can still agree that the agent
acted appropriately, so long as the appraiser attributes to the agent the conviction that
appropriateness demanded the action &hich &as in fact performed or intended.
!he seeds of the parado" of the conscientious consciousness are already apparent in this
formulation. *n appeal to conscience as the )ustification of an action presupposes the
e"istence of duties or appropriatenesses that are constituted independently of the appeal
to conscience. !he attempt to generate the duties or appropriatenesses themselves
entirely on the basis of the legitimacy of such appeals is incoherent. *ppeals to
conscience of this sort provide a &ay of dealing &ith the occasional epistemic
inaccessibility of duty in the primary sense. *ction &ith may not accord &ith duty is
e"cused as falling short only on the side of no&ledge of that duty, not on the side of the
&ill or intent to perform that duty. *llo&ing secondary appeals to conscience as an
e"cuse for failure to do oneGs duty, to fulfill oneGs actual obligations, are a &ay of
acno&ledging the rights of intention and no&ledge &ithout maing those rights fully
definitive of duty.
!he essential point is that appeals to conscience of this sort presuppose an
independently constituted notion of duty or appropriateness that can transcend the
individual agentJs capacity to no& &hat is appropriate in a particular case. :nly against
the bacground of the possibility of the failure of the individual to grasp correctly &hat is
in fact appropriate, independently of &hat he taes to be appropriate, does this form of
appeal to conscience have a coherent content. %o appeals to conscience are in principle
parasitic on practices of appealing to duties &hich are not constituted by appeals to
conscience (that one tried to do oneJs duty, or did &hat seemed to one to be oneJs duty).
8onscience'tal presupposes an antecedent stratum of appropriateness'tal, as seems'tal
presupposes is'tal and tries'tal presupposes does'tal, and for )ust the same reason. %o
the mistae of the conscientious consciousness is structurally the same as that of the
honest consciousness and of consciousness understanding itself as sense certainty. It is in
each case a mistae to tae an idiom that qualifies or &ithholds a commitment, as to
&hether something is really oneJs duty, &hether things are as theyJre taen to be, &hether
&hat is accomplished &as &hat &as intended, and erect it in to an autonomous stratum of
discourse in &hich the only commitments possible are the hedged or minimal ones &hich
are in fact defined only in relation to their more robust antecedents. (+$2)
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2. -%o Meta-Attitudes, 'our Species o& 6iedertr4chti$keit
*n important perspective on the concept of alienation is provided by t&o meta'attitudes
that are in play throughout the final t&o thirds of the Spirit chapter. HegelGs terms for
these attitudes is Iedelm7ti$G and Iniedertr4chti$G. Ailler translates these as InobleG and
IbaseG (or IignobleG). I &ill argue that a better &ay to thin about the contrast is as that
bet&een IgenerousG and Imean'spiritedG, or ImagnanimousG and IpusillanimousG
(literally: Igreat'souledG and Ismall'souledG). (+$C)
!he edelm7ti$ meta-attitude taes it that there really are norms that attitudes are
directed to&ards and ans&er to. It treats norms as genuinely efficacious, as really maing
a difference to &hat individuals do. *ttitudes5paradigmatically the acno&ledgment of
a norm as binding, taing oneself or another to be committed or responsible, practically
distinguishing bet&een performances that are appropriate and those that are not5are the
&ay the norms are actuali(ed, the &ay they become efficacious, ho& they mae things
happen in the causal order.
!he niedertr4chti$ meta-attitude sees only normative attitudes. !he norms are
construed as at most adverbial modifications of the attitudes: a &ay of taling about the
contents of those attitudes. @iedertrKchtigeit is the purest e"pression of the alienated
character of modern normativity (hence culture, self'consciousness, and community).
(+$C)
!he t&o meta'attitudes of EdelmLtigeit and @iedertrKchtigeit are initially both
manifestations of alienation because they sei(e one'sidedly on the unity of no&ing'and'
acting consciousness, in the one case, and the distinction that it involves, on the other.
%ince the defining fla& of modernity is its failure to get the unity and the distinction that
no&ing'and'acting consciousness involve in focus together in one picture, the &ay
for&ard to the re'achievement of unalienated %ittlicheit is a ind of higher
EdelmLtigeit. :n the theoretical side, that is coming to apply metaconceptual categories
of Bernunft, rather than those of Berstand. (+++)
?amous passage about ,playing the moral valet.- IBaletG is IHammerdienerG, and
I &ill call this absolutely crucial stretch of te"t ,the 8ammerdiener passa$e-. It
e"presses a cardinal form of 6iedertr4chti$keit, holding fast to the disparity that action
involves:
it holds to the other aspectMand e"plains .the action/ as resulting from an
intention different from the action itself, and from selfish motives. Nust as
every action is capable of being looed at from the point of vie& of
conformity to duty, so too can it be considered from the point of vie& of
the particularity .of the doer/F for, qua action, it is the actuality of the
individual. !his )udging of the action thus taes it out of its outer
e"istence and reflects it into its inner aspect, or into the form of its o&n
particularity. If the action is accompanied by fame, then it no&s this
inner aspect to be a desire for fame. If it is altogether in eeping &ith the
station of the individual, &ithout going beyond this station, and of such a
nature that the individuality does not possess its station as a character
e"ternally attached to it, but through its o&n self gives filling to this
universality, thereby sho&ing itself capable of a higher station, then the
inner aspect of the action is )udged to be ambition, and so on. %ince, in the
action as such, the doer attains to a vision of himself in ob)ectivity, or to a
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feeling of self in his e"istence, and thus to en)oyment, the inner aspect is
)udged to be an urge to secure his o&n happiness, even though this &ere to
consist merely in an inner moral conceit, in the en)oyment of being
conscious of his o&n superiority and in the foretaste of a hope of future
happiness. @o action can escape such )udgement, for duty for dutyJs sae,
this pure purpose, is an unrealityF it becomes a reality in the deed of an
individuality, and the action is thereby charged &ith the aspect of
particularity. 6o man is a hero to his alet9 not, ho%eer, because the
man is not a hero, but because the alet,is a alet, &hose dealings are
&ith the man, not as a hero, but as one &ho eats, drins, and &ears clothes,
in general, &ith his individual &ants and fancies. !hus, for the )udging
consciousness, there is no action in &hich it could not oppose to the
universal aspect of the action, the personal aspect of the individuality, and
play the part of the moral valet to&ards the agent. .4< 332/ (++0'++1)
8onsider the official &ho e"ercises state po&er. He has committed
himself to act purely according to universal interests or norms. !hat is, he
commits himself to doing only &hat acno&ledgement of the norms requires. But
every actual performance is a particular doing, and incorporates contingency. It is
al&ays more than )ust the acno&ledgment of a norm, and may &ell also be less
than that. (I can never just turn on the light or feed the poor5I am al&ays also
doing other things, such as alerting the burglar, or cutting the education budget or
raising ta"es.) 8ontingent motives and interests &ill al&ays also be in play. !hus
it &ill al&ays be possible for the niedertrKchtig consciousness to point out the
moment of disparity, the particularity and contingency that infects each action. It
is never just an instance of the universal. !he Hammerdiener can al&ays e"plain
&hat the hero of service did in terms of self'interested (hence particular,
contingent) motives and interests, rather than as a response to an acno&ledged
normative necessity. !here is no action at all that is not amenable to this sort of
reductive, ignoble description. (++2)
2.:" !he issue being raised concerns the relations bet&een norms and
attitudes quite generally. !he Hammerdiener does not appeal to norms in his
e"planations of behavior. !he attitudes of individuals are enough.
..arman/
2.;" !he HammerdienerGs meta'attitude esche&s &hat are sometimes
called ,e"ternal reasons.- (++C)
!he selfish particular motives that are all the Hammerdiener attributes are
independently authoritative attitudes that can be reflected only in statuses such as
usefulness to private purposes, not in statuses such as duty, or being
unconditionally obligatory5in the sense that the obligatoriness is authoritative
for attitudes, rather than conditioned on them, as in the hypothetical, instrumental
imperatives arising from prudent pursuit of privately endorsed ends. !he
Hammerdiener banishes tal of values that are not immediate products of
individual valuings. (++7)
2.<" !here is a third, still more general issue being raised by the
HammerdienerGs meta'attitude, beyond treating attitudes as independent of norms
(&hich remain in the picture only in an adverbial capacity, in an ultimately
7
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unsuccessful attempt to individuate the contents of the attitudes). !hat concerns
the relation bet&een reasons and causes generally, or, still more abstractly, the
place of norms in nature. ?or the Hammerdiener essentially treats the hero of
duty as a merely natural being. the most general issue Hegel is addressing in his
discussion of the Hammerdiener is that of reductive naturalism about
normatiity. (+0+)
-he 8ammerdiener stands &or a niedertr4chti$, relentlessly
naturalistic alternatie to this edelm7ti$, normatie description o& concept
use. In place of the picture of IheroicG practical sensitivity to norms5trying, in
deliberation and assessment, to determine &hat really is correct, &hat one ought
to do, &hat one is obliged to do (&hat IdutyG consists in), acno&ledging genuine
normative constraint on oneGs attitudes5this meta-attitude appeals only to
attitudes, &hich are not construed as the acno&ledgment of any normative
constraint on or authority over those attitudes. 9easons are traded for causes. It
is this large'scale, fundamental disagreement bet&een the reductive naturalist and
the rational'normativist that Hegel is committed to resolving in his discussion of
&hat the Hammerdiener gets right, &hat he gets &rong, and &hat lessons &e
should learn from him. !his pro)ect, broadly construed, is to provide a response
to HantGs !hird *ntinomy5the challenge to integrate reasons and causes. (+01)
2.=" !he general thought is that the possibility of offering a certain ind
of genealogical account of the process by &hich a conceptual content developed
or &as determined can seem to undercut the rational bindingness of the norms
that have that content. !his is a form of argument that &as deployed to
devastating effect by the great unmasers of the later nineteenth century. 6e
appear to have reasons for our deliberations and assessments, and it may be
comforting to ourselves to thin that is &hy they have the contents they do. But
tal about &hat reasons there are for adopting one attitude rather than another is
unmased by a convincing genealogy of the process as a mere appearance. !he
genealogy tells us &hat is really going on, by presenting the underlying
mechanism actually responsible for our taing this rather than that as appropriate,
fitting, or correct. (+1$) .Witt$enstein/
!he strategy of the genealogical argument is to find some fact f such that f
is not evidentially related to p5there are no true or plausible au"iliary hypotheses
&hich, &hen con)oined to f, yield an argument for p. If one can then sho& that
SGs believing that p is sensitive to the obtaining of f5ideally, that fGs obtaining
provides a sufficient explanation for SGs believing that p (thought of as an event)
5then one can argue that the belief is not rational, for it does not sho& the
requisite sensitivity to the truth of p, via evidence for p. S cannot claim to have
been acting according to the norm, to have her belief governed by the norm, to be
acknowledging the norm (even though her belief may &ell be correct, and so be as
the norm would dictate)5she cannot claim to be applying or assessing according
to the norm, to be sensitive to the norm5if she can be sho&n to be sensitive to f.
!he genealogical (aetiological) reali(ation saps the rational credibility or
credence of the belief in question. !he authority it &ould other&ise have as an
application of a conceptual norm is thro&n into doubt. (+1#)
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I thin the later 6ittgenstein &orried about this issue. I thin he sa& the
temptation to see a demonstration of the parochiality of the content of a norm5its
dependence on or reflection of certain inds of contingent features of the
practitioners and their practices5as undercutting the intelligibility of that norm as
genuinely binding, as being a real norm, as having normative force. . !he effect
of the demonstration of the parochiality and contingency of the practices in &hich
our norms are implicit is not meant to be normative nihilism. 9ather, space is to
be opened up for ne& &ays of construing the relations bet&een genealogy and
)ustification. (+17)
2I) 'our Meta-Meta-6ormatie Attitudes to the -%o Meta-6ormatie
Attitudes
2I.:" !he &irst &ay of understanding the relation bet&een the edelmLtig
normativist and the niedertrKchtig naturalist is as a cognitive disagreement about a
matter of ob)ective fact. !hey disagree about the correct ans&er to the question:
*re there norms, or notO If one maes an e"haustive catalogue of the furniture of
the universe, &ill one find norms on it, or only normative attitudesO (+##)
2I.;" !his ob)ectivist &ay of understanding the status of the t&o meta'attitudes
to&ards norms and normative attitudes is not the only one available, ho&ever. It
is possible to adopt instead an almost diametrically opposed sub)ectivist meta'
meta'attitude. *ccording to this &ay of thining, the normativist and the
naturalist employ different vocabularies in describing the &orld. Dsing one rather
than the other is adopting a stance. !he t&o stances are incompatibleF one cannot
adopt them both. :ne either uses normative vocabulary or one does not. But
both of them are available, and both of them are legitimate. (+##)
*s for the legitimacy of the reductive, niedertrKchtig attitude, Hegel
acno&ledges that the Hammerdiener is not wrong. ,6o action can escape such
>ud$ement,-
there is no action in &hich it could not oppose to the universal aspect of
the action, the personal aspect of the individuality, and play the part of the
moral valet to&ards the agent. .4< 332/.
Every intentional action is ,charged &ith the aspect of particularity,- in that the
agent must have had some motive for performing it, some attitude that &as
efficacious in bringing it about. @orms are efficacious only through attitudes
to&ards them. (+#2)
Nust so, ,eery action is capable o& bein$ looked at &rom the point o& ie% o&
con&ormity to duty,- that is, in the edelmLtig normative vocabulary. 6hat
sho&s up in the causal'psychological vocabulary of the Hammerdiener is nature,
natural beings, and natural processes: the &orld of desire. 6hat sho&s up in the
normative vocabulary of the hero is %pirit, geistig beings, and discursive
practices: the &orld of recognition. !he realm of %pirit comprises e"perience and
agency. It is a structure articulated by relations of authority and responsibility, of
commitment and entitlement, of reasons and concepts &ith the obligations and
permissions that they involve and articulate. !his normative, discursive realm of
%pirit is HegelGs topic. It, too, is real. *ccording to the stance stance (meta'meta'
attitude), the reductive naturalist is &rong to tae it that the e"planatory
completeness of the naturalistic'causal vocabulary in its o&n terms indicates its
++
Brandom
e"pressive completeness5so that any claims it cannot e"press cannot be true.
?or it must leave out concept'use as such (and hence the &hole geistig dimension
of human activity), even though every application of concepts in )udgment and
action can be e"plained in naturalistic terms, if it is described in naturalistic terms
of noises and motions. But the normative vocabulary is also sovereign and
comprehensive &ithin its domain, and can achieve a corresponding e"planatory
equilibrium. ?or it is a vocabulary for describing the use of vocabularies5
including the vocabulary of natural science. Everything the scientist does, no less
than the activities and practices of other discursive beings, can be described in the
language of )udgment, intentional action, and recognition. !he HammerdienerGs
attitude, too, is a discursive attitude. (+#=)
(+) and (0) are purely cognitive meta'meta'attitudes.
2I.<" *dopting the niedertrKchtig normative meta'attitude institutes a ind of
normativity that has a distinctive, defective structure. !o say that is to say that
@iedertrKchtigeit is in the first instance a ind of recognition, rather than of
cognition. *dopting the niedertrKchtig meta'attitude not only ,holds fast- to the
,disparity of the action &ith itself,- but ,divides up the action- and ,produces-
the disparity. !his sounds much more practical than cognitive5a matter of
making something, rather than finding it. (+2$)
!he moral valet does not )ust notice or point out the disparity that action and
consciousness involve, he identifies &ith it. ?or his recognitive act is also a
recognitive sacrifice. 6hat the Hammerdiener gives up is the possibility of a
certain ind of self'consciousness: consciousness of himself as genuinely bound
by norms. !he principled grounds he has for refusing to recogni(e the hero as a
norm'governed creature apply to himself as &ell. His position is that the idea of
someone practically acno&ledging a norm as binding is unintelligible. (+20)
!he third construal of the niedertrKchtig and edelmLtig meta'attitudes to&ard
norms and normative attitudes is then that they are recognitive attitudes that have
the effect of practical commitments. *dopting the edelmLtig stance of spirit is
committing oneself to making &hat &e are doing being binding ourselves by
conceptual norms, so acno&ledging the authority of such norms, by practically
taking it that that is &hat &e are doing5by recognitively treating ourselves and
our fello&s as doing that. :n this vie& normativity (&hich, because the norms in
question are for Hegel all conceptually contentful, is the same phenomenon as
rationality) is not feature of our practices independent of our meta'attitude to&ard
it. ,-o him %ho looks at the %orld rationally, the %orld looks rationally
back,- Hegel says .the Spie$eleier slogan/. 6ormatiity and rationality are
products o& our edelm7ti$ meta-attitudes, o& our practically takin$ or treatin$
%hat %e are doin$ !reco$ni?in$ each other" as ackno%led$in$ rational
commitments. Spirit e@ists inso&ar as %e make it e@ist by taking it to e@ist) by
understanding &hat &e are doing in normative, rational terms. 6e mae the
&orld rational by adopting the recognitively structured constellation of
commitments and responsibilities I have5follo&ing HegelGs usage in connection
&ith the community ?aith is committed to instituting5denominated trust. (+21)
!his third understanding of the meta'attitudes of @iedertrKchtigeit and
EdelmLtigeit, as practical, recognitive, hence community' and self'constitutive,
+0
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lie the second, still presents them as options aailable &or the sub>ect &reely to
choose bet%een. It is up to us &hether to mae ourselves into merely natural or
genuinely normative beings.
2I.=" * fourth &ay of understanding the status of these t&o stances is that %e
hae al%ays already implicitly committed ourseles to adoptin$ the
edelm7ti$ stance, to identifying &ith the unity that action and consciousness
involve, to understanding ourselves as genuinely binding ourselves by conceptual
norms that &e apply in acting intentionally and maing )udgments. ?or &e do
)udge and act, and &e cannot avoid in practice taing or treating those )udgments
and actions as being determinately contentful5as materially incompatible &ith
certain other )udgments and actions, and as materially entailing still others. 6e
count some )udgments as reasons for or against others, and some intentions and
plans as ruling out or requiring others as means. Even the Hammerdiener and his
resolutely reductive naturalist generali(ation offer contentful accounts of our
doings (performances and attitudes), accounts that aim to satisfy the distinctive
standards of intelligibility, adequacy, and correctness to &hich they hold
themselves. If the determinate contentfulness of the thoughts and intentions even
of the niedertrKchtig is in fact intelligible only from an edelmLtig perspective,
then anyone &ho in practice treats &hat he is doing as )udging and acting is
implicitly committed thereby to EdelmLtigeit. !he semantic theory that I have
been e"tracting from the Phenomenology has as its conclusion the antecedent of
that conditional. (+2#'2)
!he apparent parity of the t&o meta'normative stances is an illusion. @o
genuine choice bet&een them is possible. By taling (engaging in discursive
practices) at all, &e have already implicitly endorsed and adopted one of them,
&hether &e e"plicitly reali(e that or (lie the Hammerdiener) not. :n this
reading, &hat Hegel is asing us to do is only explicitly to acno&ledge
theoretical and practical commitments &e have already implicitly undertaen )ust
by taing part in discursive practices5&hich is to say, by being acculturated
.gebildet/. :ur e"plicitly adopting the edelmLtig practical'recognitive attitude is
accordingly )ust achieving a certain ind of self'consciousness: reali(ing
something that is already true of ourselves. %o the issue is, in the end, a broadly
cognitive one: a matter of finding out ho& things in some sense already are. But
the achievement of this definitive ind of self'consciousness is also, as must be so
according to HegelGs social account of &hat self'consciousness consists in, the
adoption of a distinctive ind of recognitive relation to others and to oneself.
(+22)
*bout the relation bet&een the third and fourth construals of
@iedertrKchtigeit and EdelmLtigeit: *ccording to the final one, normative
statuses are made by (reference'dependent upon) normative attitudes (including
the meta'normative attitudes of @iedertrKchtigeit and EdelmLtigeit), &hile
conceptual norms are found (reference'independent of normative attitudes,
including the meta'normative ones). Because ob)ective conceptual norms are
(reciprocally) sense'dependent on the normative statuses of sub)ects (ob)ective
idealism), the niedertrKchtig reductive naturalist is &rong to thin that he can
deny the intelligibility (his reason for denying the e"istence) of normative statuses
+1
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and still be entitled to treat the ob)ective &orld as a determinate ob)ect of potential
no&ledge. ,@o cognition &ithout recognitionP- is the slogan here. Because
normative attitudes and normative statuses are both reciprocally sense'dependent
and reciprocally reference-dependent, the attempt to entitle oneself to tal about
determinately contentful normative attitudes &hile denying the intelligibility and
(so) e"istence of normative statuses is bound to fail. 6e sa& Hegel mae
arguments to the effect that normative attitudes must be thought of as contentless
if normative statuses are taen out of the picture, at various places in the te"t,
such as the discussion of septicism, of the honest consciousness, and of the
conscientious consciousness. >enying the intelligibility of normative statuses5
denying that genuine authority and the bindingness of commitments can be made
sense of5is alienation. *sserting the sense' and reference'dependence of
normative statuses on normative attitudes5in this dual sense denying that
normative statuses are independent of normative attitudes5is the core insight
behind the modern rise of sub)ectivity. 6e are accordingly no& in a position to
see ho& that insight can be reconciled &ith the overcoming of alienation. (+3$)
@iedertrKchtigeit is a pure e"pression of alienation, &hile EdelmLtigeit
sho&s a &ay for&ard from the impasse of modernity. !he progression through
the four, ever more sophisticated, meta'meta'normative &ays of understanding
these meta'normative attitudes trac the principal stages in the development of
%pirit.
+) !he &irst, ob>ectie*co$nitie construal runs together normative statuses and
conceptual norms by in effect assimilating the former to the latter. !hey are either )ust
there, independently of our (meta'normative) attitudes to&ard them, or they are not. !his
corresponds to the traditional, pre'modern attitude to&ard norms.
0) !he stance stance, &hich sees a free choice bet&een t&o &ays of taling, &ith
either meta'normative attitude available for adoption by sub)ects as a theoretical
commitment corresponds to the modern, sub)ectivist attitude to&ard norms, as that
attitude is epitomi(ed by Enlightenment. !his second rendering runs together normative
statuses and conceptual norms by in effect assimilating the latter to the former by seeing
conceptual norms as instituted by normative attitudes in the &ay normative statuses are
(the principle of utility).
1) Anderstandin$ the stances and the choice bet%een them as a matter o&
adoptin$ a practical commitment, as producing the unity it discerns, hence
ultimately as a recognitive matter o& community- and sel&-constitution corresponds
to the response .e$el makes to (nli$htenment0s misunderstandin$ o& the nature o&
the community o& trust, on 'aith0s behal&. !hat is, these t&o construals correspond to
the t&o alienated institutional forms of characteristically modern understandings of
norms, statuses, and attitudes.
#) Dnderstanding the edelmLtig attitude as a practical'recognitive commitment that
has al&ays already implicitly been undertaen as a pragmatic condition of semantically
contentful cognition and agency (of determinate sub)ective attitudes) then corresponds to
breaing through the confines of alienated modernity into the form of self'consciousness
Hegel calls ,*bsolute Hno&ing-.
*t the &irst sta$e, in &hich necessity is construed as ob)ective necessity,
the norms are found. ?or normative statuses (duty, propriety, &hat one is committed to
+#
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do, &hat one is responsible for doing) reflect and are determined by ob)ective (attitude'
and practice'independent) norms. In the middle, modern sta$e, in &hich necessity is
construed as sub)ective necessity, normativity and reason must be made by our attitudes
and practices, rather than being found. *t the pro>ected post-modern third sta$e,
finding and maing sho& up as t&o sides of one coin, t&o aspects of one process, &hose
t&o phases5e"perience and its recollection, lived for&ard and comprehended bac&ard,
the inhalation and e"halation that sustain the life of %pirit5are each both maings and
findings. In e@perience, error is found and a ne& phenomenon is made. In recollection,
a rational selection and reconstruction of an e"pressively progressive tra)ectory of
e"perience is made, and an implicit noumenon is found. %enses are made, and referents
found. !he unity, the identity of content, that consciousness and action involve must be
made, and the complementary disparity is found. *bsolute Hno&ing is comprehending
the &ay in &hich these aspects mutually presuppose, support, complement, and complete
one another. (+30)
+2