A Spirit of Trust

What a feat: an interpretation of G. F. W. Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit that is longer than the Phenomenology of Spirit itself! With 757 pages of text, and reportedly a work that took Robert B. Brandom over 40 years to write, A Spirit of Trust accomplishes much and offers an interpretation of Hegel's Phenomenology that mixes epistemology, ethics, and the philosophy of mind.Hegel scholars will be discontent with Brandom's heavily analytic interpretation of Hegel's Phenomenology. Analytic philosophers will be discontent with attributing to Hegel arguments and insights often attributed to Frege (this happens so often one reviewer says of Brandom's book that he should call Hegel Fregel—a mix of Frege and Hegel). Scholars of American Philosophy might be the most excited by reading Brandom's A Spirit of Trust because he goes out of his way to put Hegel in conversation with Donald Davidson, W. V. O. Quine, Wilfred Sellars, and others who are part of the American philosophical tradition.Such excitement, however, might eventually be tempered when one realizes that Brandom is no defender of philosophical naturalism in A Spirit of Trust. Indeed, waiting until page 499, Brandom claims that the remainder of the book (another 250 pages) involves telling the story of how Hegel connects alienation with reductive naturalism. Brandom's story involves developing a “nonreductive account of how we should understand the place of norms in the natural world” (499). Once we understand norms in a way that avoids or eschews naturalism, then we overcome the problem of alienation. Whereas Karl Marx blames alienation on capitalism, Brandom blames alienation on naturalism.In addition to the adjective “reductive,” Brandom offers three other adjectives for naturalism: “disenchanted” (see 263), “normative” (see 558), and “scientific” (see 661–65). According to Brandom, the dominance of scientific naturalism is one of the reasons his interpretation of Hegel's Phenomenology is required right now. Brandom thinks scientific naturalism has a stronghold on contemporary philosophy, and Hegel's Phenomenology offers a corrective to this mistake in contemporary philosophy. Let us take each of these naturalisms in turn.1. Disenchanted Naturalism. Situating Hegel's Phenomenology in relation to the problems Hegel wanted to address in his own day, Brandom claims: “Another strand of the early modern tradition that Hegel takes up and develops is the disenchanting naturalism about norms”—which is “most evident in the British sentimentalists . . . who give explanatory pride of place to practical attitudes of normative assessment, of reflective approval or disapproval by a distinctive moral faculty, which they see as . . . rooted in a characteristic sentiment, typically . . . benevolence” (263). Brandom admits that Kant also repairs the tradition of British sentimentalism, but one of the themes of Brandom's A Spirit of Trust involves how Kant's emphasis on autonomy itself gets repaired by Hegel's focus on recognition. Hence Kant's repair of disenchanted naturalism remains necessary but insufficient. On Brandom's interpretation, Hegel's theory of recognition properly repairs both disenchanted naturalism and Kant's theory of autonomy.2. Normative Naturalism. Staying with Hegel's repair of Kant's philosophy, Brandom finds a version of naturalism in Kant's thinking as well. This version is normative naturalism, which attempts to “integrate reasons and causes” (558). Brandom claims, “This project, broadly construed, is to provide a response to Kant's Third Antimony—the challenge to integrate reasons and causes. A significant proportion of Hegel's claim . . . should be seen as deriving from his response to this issue of normative naturalism. So the stakes are very high” (558). Brandom's rhetoric here reflects one of the annoyances of the book: every problem driving Hegel's Phenomenology is the most important problem driving Hegel's Phenomenology. The stakes are always high, and Brandom does not signal to the reader any way to rank the problems Hegel addresses in Phenomenology.According to Brandom, Hegel repairs Kant's normative naturalism by separating reasons from causes. For Hegel, reasons become connected with what “I deliberate and decide about” in relation to “what claims to make and what practical projects to undertake” (559). This differs from “assessing the truth of what I have said and the success of what I have done” (559). In other words: I am in control of reasons, but I am not in control of causes. Within normative naturalism, however, reasons and causes become integrated—which also leads to confusion between them, and this confusion leads to alienation.3. Scientific Naturalism. Stating it as clearly as possible, Brandom thinks Hegel's role in twenty-first-century philosophy involves correcting scientific naturalism: “The final contemporary philosophical expression of . . . alienation I want to point to is reductive scientific naturalism about norms” (663). Prior to this statement, Brandom claims: “Reductive scientific naturalism is familiar . . . because it is a ubiquitous presence in the contemporary philosophical scene” (661). How does Hegel offer a corrective to this? Brandom argues: “The scientific naturalism version excludes from the realm of facts whose best explanation need appeal only to attitudes facts such as that murder is wrong. Indeed, descriptions such as that, couched in normative terms, are not available in the language of natural science. But the normative attitudes for which explanations are sought and in terms of which explanations are to be given must then themselves be specifiable in that same language of natural science” (665). Hegel corrects the problems of scientific naturalism because of his “positive account of the reciprocal relation between normative attitudes and normative statuses,” and he “offers a detailed account of how things actually work” (665). Reductive scientific naturalism causes or contributes to alienation because it polices out any language discounted by the natural sciences, and Hegel corrects this policing out by arguing for two kinds of norms: “normative attitudes and normative status” (see 665). Contemporary philosophy—philosophers in the 21st century—have the tendency to allow only normative attitudes determined by the language of the natural sciences. In this sense, contemporary philosophy either leads to or unintentionally promotes the problem of alienation. Hegel offers a way out of this problem; or, better put, Brandom's interpretation of Hegel's Phenomenology offers a way out of the problem of alienation forced upon us by scientific naturalism.Philosophers committed to naturalism will quibble with Brandom that, although he offers different adjectives for distinguishing between naturalisms, he tends to discuss only reductive versions of naturalism. Brandom does not allow for a Hegelian naturalism to arise from his 757-page treatment of Hegel's Phenomenology (because of this deficiency in Brandom's book, some readers might find Terry Pinkard's Hegel's Naturalism: Mind, Nature, and the Final Ends of Life a more helpful interpretation).Starting on page 666, Brandom develops and explores Hegel's idealism—which immediately follows his arguments against scientific naturalism. I think it fair to say that Brandom sees Hegel's idealism as the correct alternative to naturalism. In this sense, Brandom pits Hegel's idealism against philosophical naturalism and sticks to the position that Hegel does not mediate between these two positions.Although I appreciate Brandom's engagement with American philosophers such as Davidson and Sellars, the fact that he refuses to allow a Hegelian naturalism to arise means that he might have chosen the wrong American philosophers as his interlocuters for his reading of Hegel's Phenomenology. Charles Sanders Peirce, for instance, demonstrates why we do not need to choose between Hegelian idealism and naturalism; we need both idealism and naturalism, and wisdom can be found in both positions depending upon one's inquiry. John Dewey built his pragmatism from Hegel's idealism (as John Shook and others have demonstrated), and Dewey worked diligently to defend his naturalism alongside his understanding of Hegel's idealism. The question is not whether to choose Hegelian idealism or philosophical naturalism but, rather, how these positions can complement one another.I conclude my review where Brandom concludes his book: with the ethical implications of Hegel's Phenomenology. Indeed, Hegel's Phenomenology aims to be ethical all the way down. This is where we find Brandom's strong emphasis on forgiveness, recognition, and trust. Instead of rehearsing what Brandom means by these significant terms, I wish to place Brandom in a tradition of Hegelian interpretation of which he neither admits nor seems to recognize (pun intended). You see, Brandom's reading of Hegel's Phenomenology is not original. Rather, it ought to be considered the lengthiest treatment of Hegel's Phenomenology that is part of a tradition of reading Hegel on the same terms that Brandom does. I trace this tradition of interpretation back to Gillian Rose's Hegel contra Sociology (1981)—though there are probably earlier treatments of Hegel emphasizing forgiveness, recognition, and trust. Robert Williams has published at least three books offering a similar interpretation to Hegel's Phenomenology to that of Brandom's. More recently, Liz Dizley and Molly Farneth have articulated similar interpretations. None of these other interpreters of Hegel's Phenomenology make an appearance in Brandom's A Spirit of Trust, but they all offer shorter versions making similar arguments to Brandom.Even Brandom has published a shorter version of his argument: Heroism and Magnanimity: The Postmodern Form of Self-Conscious Agency (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2019). Only 85 pages in length, it explains in enough detail what Brandom means by forgiveness, recognition, and trust. My recommendation is for professors to read Brandom's A Spirit of Trust but to assign to undergraduate and graduate students Brandom's Heroism and Magnanimity. Any questions that arise from reading Brandom's Heroism and Magnanimity certainly will have its answer in Brandom's A Spirit of Trust

Epistemology · Hegelianism · Linguistics · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Philosophy

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