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On Hegel, James and Kant


William James once offered the following summary of his critique of Hegelian philosophy:

1. We cannot eat our cake and have it; that is, the only real contradiction there can be between thoughts is where one is true, the other false. When that happens, one must go forever, nor is there any 'higher synthesis' in which both can wholly revive.
2. A chasm is not a bridge in any utilizable sense; that is, no mere negation can be the instrument of a positive advance in thought.
3. The continua, time, space, and the ego, are bridges because they are without chasm.
4. But they bridge over the chasms between represented qualities only partially.
5. Their partial bridging, however, makes the qualities share in a common world.
6. The other characteristics of the qualities are separate facts.
7. But the same quality appears in many times and space. Generic sameness of the quality wherever found becomes thus a further means by which the jolts are reduced.
8. But between different qualities jolts remain. Each, as far as the other is concerned, is an absolutely separate and contingent being.
9. The moral judgment may lead us to postulate as irreducible the contingencies of the world.
10. Elements mutually contingent are not in conflict, so long as they partake of the continua of time, space. etc., -- partaking being the exact opposite of strife. They conflict only when, as mutually exclusive possibilities, they strive to possess themselves of the same parts of time, space, and ego.
11. That there are such real conflicts, irreducible to any intelligence, and giving rise to an excess of possibility over actuality, is an hypothesis, but a credible one. No philosophy should pretend to be anything more.

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Six years ago, at Quora, I offered this list when a fellow Quofant had asked, simply, "Why is Hegel wrong?" Another Quorant responded to me, saying: "Interesting how many of James’ nuggets here hinting at a 'positivist truth' are speculative, though I like the fact that he posed number 9 as contingent on 'moral judgment' showing his Kantian prejudice." He signed himself James Cook.

I agree with Mr Cook that James' philosophy resides in a sort of thematic space in between positivism and Kantianism, and is anti-Hegelian for a combination of the reasons one finds anti-Hegelian views in both of those camps.  To Mr. Cook, it appears, that was a bug. To me, it was and is a feature. 


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