Abstract

In Hegel's Faith and Knowledge (Glauben und Wissen) he argues that Kant's critical system is unable to defend the assumptions that underlie its analysis of our cognitive faculties; Kant has begun his investigations by presupposing the distinction between our finite faculties, those “in which possibility and actuality are distinguished” (“in welcher Möglichkeit und Wirklichkeit unterschieden werden”), and those of a being possessing an “intuitive understanding” (“intuitiven Verstand”), for whom cognition is not limited to the sensibly given. In so defining our cognitive faculties as finite Kant is able to distinguish our dependence not merely on the understanding as the locus of concepts, but so too on sensibility as the source of intuition. Cognition is thus limited to those thoughts that offer beyond their conceptual consistency the possibility of empirical givenness, and so define their actuality in terms of sensibility. And yet, it would seem, as Hegel argues, that