From domination to dialectic: An analysis of the critique of the Understanding in the early Hegel

This thesis attempts to trace the origin and development of the Hegelian critique of the Understanding as it appears in his early writings beginning from his studies in Tubingen up to the early Jena period, before the writing of the Phenomenology of Spirit. We examine the parallels that Hegel develops between the categories of the Understanding as first elaborated by Kant, and the genesis of specific forms individual and political self-understanding that become dependent upon them. Hegel's critique is an exposition of the domination of the subjective categories of the Understanding over the realms of nature and more relevant for this thesis the moral-political dimensions of life.;Next the focus moves to a detailed analysis of Hegel's Jena criticism of Kantian and Fichtean transcendental idealism. The concentration is on the categories of Relation and more specifically the category of Causality. Hegel is highly critical of the way that the Causality relation has infiltrated into and shaped the logical underpinnings of moral (Kant) and political discourse (Hobbes) including the institutional manifestations of these theories. Hegel sees the Understanding as a faculty of division and separation but is, at the same time, inwardly compelled towards identity by the latent power of Reason. The Causality relation, (only a relative identity), is at the source of relations of inequalities of power, of independence and dependence, forming the ultimate logical basis of the master-slave relation.;Finally, the thesis concludes by showing how Hegel comes to see these relations dialectically as a moments in a systematic whole, but in his quest for system, I argue his philosophy loses much of its critical force.;In chapter one the focus is on the Tubingen-Berne period where an examination is made of Hegel's emerging pantheistic concept of Life and its antipode the Understanding. We follow the development of this idea as it originates in confrontation with Kant's moral philosophy Judaeo-Christian theology. Then an examination is made of the ramifications of Hegel's attempt to find a religious solution to this opposition.