Published in: Logical Analysis and History of Philosophy, 18, 2015, pp. 179-198.

IS HEGEL’S THEORY OF SENSATION COMMITTED TO METAPHYSICS?

A COMPARISON BETWEEN HEGEL AND MCDOWELL ON PERCEPTUAL
KNOWLEDGE

Federico Sanguinetti
Rio de Janeiro State University / University of Padua

ABSTRACT: The main aim of this paper is to analyse Hegel’s theory of cognitive reference to the
world and, in particular, Hegel’s theory of sensation (Empfindung), in order to verify whether it
implies metaphysical commitments (and, if so, to what extent). I will pursue my goal by
investigating the problem of sensation in Hegel’s philosophy starting from McDowell’s conception
of the relation between mind and world and from his theory of perception. In my view, this strategy
offers a threefold advantage that will enable us to do the following: i) persuasively interpret the
Hegelian theory of sensation; ii) better understand the authenticity and the limits of McDowell’s
‘Hegelianism’; iii) place the Hegelian theory of sensation within the complex contemporary debate
on the status of sensible experience.

0. Introduction

One of the core issues in the contemporary analytic debate on the interpretation of Hegel’s
philosophy is the question of whether the Hegelian system should be understood as an essentially
metaphysical one, or whether it can be read in a way that avoids metaphysical commitments. 1 The
main aim of this paper is to analyse Hegel’s theory of cognitive reference to the world and, in
particular, Hegel’s theory of sensation (Empfindung), in order to verify whether it implies

1
For an overview on this debate see Redding 2012 and Kreines 2006. Hegel Without Metaphysics? will also be the title
of the next Conference of the Hegel Society of America, 2014.

1
metaphysical commitments (and, if so, to what extent).
In the present context it is not possible to reconstruct in detail the Hegelian theory of sensation and
the systematic context in which it is situated. Therefore I will not offer an exhaustive internal
analysis of the Hegelian account of sensation and of the role it plays in the speculative economy of
the system. This task would require a longer examination. Rather I will adopt a different
methodological strategy. I will pursue my goal by investigating the problem of sensation in Hegel’s
philosophy starting from McDowell’s conception of the relation between mind and world and from
his theory of perception. Even though McDowell’s philosophy can be situated within the analytic
tradition, it shares many similarities with some important aspects of Hegel’s philosophy. Moreover
McDowell himself seems to aim at representing a modern version of ‘Hegelianism’.2
In my view, this strategy offers a threefold advantage that will enable us to do the following: i)
persuasively interpret the Hegelian theory of sensation; ii) better understand the authenticity and the
limits of McDowell’s ‘Hegelianism’;3 iii) place the Hegelian theory of sensation within the complex
contemporary debate on the status of sensible experience.
I will thus proceed as follows.
1. I will sketch McDowell’s epistemological proposal on perceptual experience; 2. I will briefly
reconstruct the outlines of Hegel’s account of sensation—which in my view shares some interesting
similarities with McDowell’s proposal; 3. I will then try to make certain aspects of Hegel’s theory
of sensation explicit through a comparison with McDowell’s theory of perception. These aspects go
beyond the ‘minimal’ and ‘therapeutic’ character of McDowell’s proposal and clearly imply a
commitment not only to a ‘constructive’ but also to a ‘metaphysical’ position.4

2
See McDowell 2003a, 78.
3
In regards to the Hegelian tendencies in McDowell’s proposal, R.J. Bernstein has noted that, beyond McDowell’s
creative appropriation of some fundamental aspects of Hegel’s thought, there is a large part of it that is indigestible
from a McDowellian point of view—see Bernstein 2002, 10. Westphal 2008, 140, stresses persuasively that
McDowell’s references to Hegel are vague and undetermined and hide an ambiguous attitude between constructive
philosophy (which aims at radicalising Kantian insights) and therapy.
4
The choice to assess the metaphysical commitments of Hegel’s philosophy in the light of his theory of sensation may
seem unmotivated at first glance. On the contrary, I believe that this project is both justified and fruitful. It is justified to
the extent that it will be shown that Hegel’s theory of sensation cannot be correctly understood apart from notions like
“universal natural soul” and “Idea”. These notions are interpreted here as irreducible to any non-metaphysical
framework that does not imply, at the same time, an oversemplification or a misunderstanding of them. Moreover, this
project is fruitful to the extent that Hegel’s commitment to metaphysical assumptions is shown to be part of his theory
of knowledge, which is to be found in Hegel’s Encyclopedia. In contrast to this view, Hegel’s theory of knowledge has
often been sought in the Phenomenology of 1807. Furthermore, it has often been interpreted as inserted in an anti-
metaphysical post-Kantian framework—more specifically, as a radicalisation of Kant’s insights. Both these latter views
seem to be endorsed by McDowell and will be (at least partially) criticized in this paper. My analysis, therefore, 1) aims
at representing a further, unexplored argument which corroborates a metaphysical interpretation of Hegel’s system. At
the same time, 2) it aims at highlighting an essential difference between Hegel’s philosophy and McDowell’s alleged
‘Hegelian’ proposal.

2
1. McDowell’s minimal empiricism

McDowell challenges both the idea of an immediate, non-conceptual, and justificatory impact of the
world on our senses, and the idea of a gap between our thought and the rational constraint provided
by the world itself. On the one hand, thought’s answerability to the world cannot rest on a mere
given, which is completely heterogeneous to our conceptual capacities. This is because the non-
conceptuality of the given implies its justificatory inefficacy. On the other hand, normative and
justificatory validity cannot be a prerogative of self-conscious, active, and linguistic thought,
because it would lose the grasp of the informative contents that our perception provides.
McDowell’s proposal is a minimal empiricism. The idea is that the contents of our perceptual
experiences must already be normatively structured to count as reasons within the logical space of
justification and, at the same time, they must be answerable to how things are in the world. Thus,
with his minimal empiricism, McDowell holds that perceptual experience is the tribunal of our
beliefs insofar as it makes states of affairs directly present to us.5 But in order to play its role as
tribunal of conceptual thought, it must be already conceptually and normatively shaped.

A good way into the picture I offer is to consider the plausibility of a minimal empiricism.
To make sense of the idea of a mental state’s or episode’s being directed towards the world, in the way in
which, say, a belief or judgement is, we need to put the state or episode in a normative context […]. This
relation between mind and world is normative, then, in this sense: thinking that aims at judgement, or at
the fixation of belief, is answerable to the world—to how things are—for whether or not it is correctly
executed.6

α) In this picture perceptual experiences are already shaped through the normative rationality which
characterizes conceptual thought and judgements. Human thought is characterized by spontaneity.
But that does not mean that it is completely free from constraint. As a matter of fact, thought is free
insofar as it is subject to its own laws—which it recognizes as such—not as free from every sort of
lawfulness. McDowell’s idea is that the free lawfulness of thought is always already present in
perception. The same conceptual capacities that allow us to be answerable to norms are already at
work in receptivity.7
5
MW, XII: “That is what I mean by ‘a minimal empiricism’: the idea that experience must constitute a tribunal,
mediating the way our thinking is answerable to how things are, as it must be if we are to make sense of it as thinking at
all”.
6
MW, XI-XII.
7
McDowell criticizes the interpretation of normativity as result of social and reciprocal recognition between individuals
(as Pippin and Brandom claim). As a matter of fact, McDowell holds that the norms which constrain our thought are not

3
In this account, the content that perception offers to conceptual thought must be at least potentially
conceptually shaped. That is, it must show in itself the normative dimension which characterizes
conceptual and linguistic thought. If considered that way, the contents of perception can function as
reasons. And this is possible only if conceptual capacities are already present and operative in the
receptivity of perception.

The relevant conceptual capacities are drawn on in receptivity […]. It is not that they are exercised on an
extra-conceptual deliverance of receptivity.8

In perceptual experience we are passive with respect to a series of contents, which present
themselves immediately to us. However, according to McDowell, perceptual content (with respect
to which we are passive) is not heterogeneous to the content of our beliefs and our judgements.
Conceptual capacities do not apply externally to non-conceptual content which affects the subject.
Rather they are already passively operative in the receptivity of the content itself 9 and that content is
already conceptually shaped: “Experiences already have conceptual content [...]”.10 This could
suggest a picture in which perceptual experiences are only inferior manifestations of a sort of
spontaneous, conceptually structured intentionality which stretches out toward the world without
grasping it. Nevertheless McDowell stresses the necessity of submitting this “expansive
spontaneity” to a kind of “control”:

We need to conceive this expansive spontaneity as subject to control from outside our thinking, on pain of
representing the operations of spontaneity as a frictionless spinning in a void.11

In this picture, the grip is provided by perceptual experience itself, which—by virtue of its passive
character—plays its constraining role on the spontaneity of thought.

reducible to intersubjective interactions. Norms and reasons are therefore to a certain extent independent from our
practical and cognitive activity. In this sense, McDowell speaks of a naturalized Platonism of norms (see MW, 91-92). It
is not possible here to focus more specifically on the matter of human capability of grasping norms and on McDowell’s
account of Bildung. The thesis that I suggest here is that McDowell does not develop a persuasive ontological theory,
which is able to offer a convincing account of how we can conceive norms as both independent and accessible to human
thought. The broadening of the concept of nature through the introduction of a specifically human second nature, which
should make norms available, seems not to solve the problem. Hegel engages the question in a more radical way in his
system, exposing himself to a different kind of criticism—as I will suggest in the conclusions.
8
MW, 9. See also McDowell 2003a, 77.
9
See MW, 10.
10
MW, 10. In some more recent essays McDowell has proposed his thesis of the conceptuality of perceptual content in
weaker terms than in his previous works—see McDowell 2009, 259ff. Perceptual contents are not conceptual in the
sense that they are already linguistically and propositionally structured, but they are conceptual insofar as they are
homogeneous to the spontaneous faculty of judgement.
11
MW, 11.

4
 Experiences are indeed receptivity in operation; so they can satisfy the need for an external control on our
freedom in empirical thinking.12

β) But what ensures us that the contents of our perceptual experiences are not mere subjective
contents, lacking any objectivity?
This question leads McDowell to endorse another thesis, that of our direct openness to the world:
there is no hiatus between experience and world. Experience makes states of affairs directly present
to us, and the states of affairs are conceptually shaped. According to McDowell, perceptions are not
to be conceived as images or simulacra of the things existing in the world or as interfaces which
divide us from it. If the perceptual capacity is correctly exercised in a non-defective way,
perceptions make states of affairs directly present to us. 13 In this sense, McDowell denies that there
is an ontological distance between the facts in the world and the perceptions which make them
available to the subject.

[T]here is no ontological gap between the sort of thing one can mean, or generally the sort of thing one
can think, and the sort of thing that can be the case. When one thinks truly, what one thinks is what is the
case. So since the world is everything that is the case […], there is no gap between thought, as such and
the world.14

McDowell’s thesis of the subject’s openness to the world has generated a lot of criticism. In
particular McDowell has been charged of the coherentism and—at least in some sense—idealism
that he critically attributes to Davidson.15 Nevertheless, McDowell wants to reject the one-sidedness
of Davidson’s coherentism and of the philosophies of the Given. At the same time he accepts, from
the former, that a mere causal and non-conceptual sensible impact cannot justify our beliefs, and
from the latter, that the world in itself represents a decisive factor of answerability determining the
correctness of our beliefs.

12
MW, 24.
13
As noted by Baird 2006, McDowell’s framework is transcendental—see for example McDowell 2000; McDowell
1996a, 232; McDowell 2002, 287, where McDowell defines his theory as “transcendental empiricism”. Nevertheless,
McDowell does not intend to draw a position which is incompatible with the epistemological framework of direct
realism and common sense. An important feature of this project is his disjunctive theory of perception—see McDowell
2008. On the problematic issue of a conciliation between idealism and common sense in McDowell, see Haddock 2008.
14
MW, 27. See also MW, 10.
15
See Willaschek 2000, in particular 37-38. Willaschek holds that McDowell’s thesis of the “unboundedness of the
conceptual” is essentially a metaphysical thesis which fundamentally undermines the thesis of the mind-independence
of reality. A charge of idealism against McDowell is also raised by Engel 2001 and Ayers 2004.

5
 That things are thus and so is the conceptual content of experience, but if the subject of the experience is
not misled, that very same thing, that things are thus and so, is also a perceptible fact, an aspect of the
perceptible world.
Now it can seem that this refusal to locate perceptible reality outside the conceptual sphere must be a sort
of idealism, in the sense in which to call a position ‘idealism’ is to protest that it does not genuinely
acknowledge how reality is independent of our thinking. If that were right, my affirmation of reality’s
independence would be disingenuous, mere lip-service. But though this objection is easy to understand,
and even to sympathize with, it is wrong. It reflects the conviction that we have to choose between a
coherentist denial that thinking and judging are subject to rational constraint from outside, on the on hand,
and an appeal to the Given as what imposes the constraint, on the other. If someone takes it that those are
the only options, and if she has a firmer grip on the defects of unconstrained coherentism than she has on
the uselessness of the Given, then anything short of believing in the Given will strike her as slighting the
independence of reality. But the point of the third option, the option I am urging, is precisely that it
enables us to acknowledge that independent reality exerts a rational control over our thinking, but without
falling into the confusion between justification and exculpation that characterizes the appeal to the
Given.16

Thus according to McDowell the fact that perception is always already conceptually shaped does
not imply a sort of idealistic subjectivism, according to which objects would be the result of a
projection or a construction of our thought.
It is interesting to note that McDowell, when defending that thesis, makes reference to Kant and to
his connection between receptivity and spontaneity.17

Objects come into view for us in actualizations of conceptual capacities in sensory consciousness, and
Kant perfectly naturally connects sensibility with receptivity. If we hold firm to that, we can see that the
presence of conceptual capacities in the picture does not imply idealism, in the sense in which Sellars
means invoking idealism to frighten us. If we conceive subjects as receptive with respect to objects, then,
whatever else we suppose to be true of such objects, it cannot undermine our entitlement to the thought
that the objects stand over against them, independently there for them.18

The refusal of subjective idealism—which is implicit in the thesis β)—is closely related to α) the
thesis of the non-heterogeneity and cooperation of active spontaneity and passive receptivity in

16
MW, 26-27. See also MW, 21: “In the case of ‘outer sense’, the idea is that the Given mediates between the
experiencing subject and an independent outer reality, of which the subject is aware through this mediation. If we reject
the Given, we are not thereby abolishing the outer reality, but merely obliging ourselves not to suppose that awareness
of it is mediated in that way”.
17
See McDowell 2009, 3.
18
McDowell 2009, 43.

6
experience.
Referring to the Sellarsian reading of Kant, McDowell finds in a passage of the Critique of the Pure
Reason the key to understanding how the content of passive perception is always already available
for judgements, because concepts are always already at work in empirical receptivity itself.
In the section On The Pure Concepts of Understanding Kant writes:

The same function that gives unity to the different representations in a judgment also gives unity to the
mere synthesis of different representations in an intuition.19

Sensibility and understanding, receptivity and spontaneity do not provide separate contributions—
as Kant seems to assert in other passages—but are already intertwined at the level of the subject’s
first reception of perceptual content.
According to McDowell, β) perception makes states of affairs in the world directly present to us,
ensuring a real grasp of the world. α) On the other hand, our perceptual grasping of the world is
already conceptually shaped. This ensures that our reflexive knowing is not heterogeneous to the
content of perceptions. In this way, perceptions can be used as reasons for our beliefs about the
world.

[α), FS] Experiences already have conceptual content, so this last step does not take us outside the space
of concepts. But it takes us to something in which sensibility—receptivity—is operative, so we need no
longer be unnerved by the freedom implicit in the idea that our conceptual capacities belong to a faculty
of spontaneity. [β), FS] We need not worry that our picture leaves out the external constraint that is
required if exercises of our conceptual capacities are to be recognizable as bearing on the world at all.20

2. Hegel on Sensation

Like McDowell, Hegel also rejects the idea of an immediate and irrational imposition of the world
on human knowing, as well as the idea of an unbridgeable distance between our epistemic attitude
towards the world and the world as it is in itself.21 In particular, Hegel’s theory of sensation

19
Kant 1787, A79/B104-105. On McDowell’s interpretation of this Kantian thesis see McDowell 2009, in particular
Chapter 2, The Logical Form of an Intuition, 23-43.
20
MW, 10.
21
In this sense, Hegel’s discussion of the Third and the Second Attitude of Thought Toward Objectivity can be read in a
parallel way to McDowell’s criticism of the Myth of the Given and to Davidson’s coherentism. A similar comparison is
expressed in strong terms by Quante 2011, 37-63. Quante refers specifically to the three attitudes of thought towards

7
(Empfindung)—outlined in the §§ 399-402 of the Anthropology in the Encyclopedia22—aims at
accounting for the possibility of objective reference to an external and mind-independent world (i.e.
nature).23 Hegel’s aim, like McDowell’s, is to show how it is possible that empirical determinations
coincide with determinations of reality and, at the same time, are conceptually informed.
Nevertheless, this thematic core is hidden within a very complex dialectical movement, the
comprehension of which is made even more difficult by Hegel’s cryptic prose.
The peculiar and decisive aspect of Hegel’s concept of sensation is its treatment as the first concrete
realization of the universal natural soul (allgemeine natürliche Seele) in epistemic activity.24 But
what does this mean? What does the universal natural soul mean for Hegel?

objectivity, which he interprets “as a diagnosis and a description of the historical genesis” ( my translation) of the
problem regarding the relation between mind and world, as McDowell formulates it.
22
Anthropology is the first part of the Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, which is in turn the first part of the Philosophy of
Spirit in Hegel’s Encyclopedia.
23
A reasonable objection could be that Hegel’s treatment of sensation in the Anthropology section is not a suitable place
for a comparison with McDowell’s concept of perception. As a matter of fact, Hegel discusses his theory of knowledge
(Erkennen) in the Psychology section of the Philosophy of Subjective Spirit—in particular, in the section entitled
Theoretical Spirit. Nevertheless, in my view, Hegel does not want to restrict his epistemology to the section devoted to
the Theoretical Spirit. Indeed, Hegel’s thesis of the “concreteness” of spirit (see ES, § 380) implies that the various
moments and stages of spirit’s development cannot be seen as separate and independent, or simply modularly organised.
This implies that the epistemic stages discussed in the Anthropology are integrated—not excluded—with respect to the
activities discussed in the Psychology. This is, in particular, the case of sensation. Sensation constitutes the starting
point of Theoretical Spirit (see ES, §§ 446-447)—even though in the first paragraphs there is a sort of confusion
between the uses of the terms “sensation” (Empfindung) and “feeling” (Gefühl). Nevertheless, it is not in the
Psychology, but in the Anthropology, that sensation is described by Hegel as the epistemic form which accounts for the
passive reference of the subject to the contents existing in the external natural world. The specificity of the
anthropological sensation is its passive and receptive character—and it is this passive character that justifies the
comparison with McDowell’s concept of perception. As a matter of fact, in the Psychology section there is no
occurrence of the term “passivity” with respect to the epistemic ‘faculties’ discussed there: feeling, intuition,
recollection, representation, memory, thought are all ‘activities’. This is because in the Psychology section we are not
presented with the relation of the epistemic subject with the determinations of an external, natural world, but we are
presented with the relation of spirit with itself. The externality of the natural world and of the contents existing in it
have already been sublated by the previous stages. As Hegel writes: “Only soul is passive, the free spirit is essentially
active, productive.” (ES, § 444, Zusatz). I will therefore argue that the concept of sensation discussed in the
Encyclopedia Anthropology—not the epistemic activities described in the Psychology section—conveys the features of
the natural environment to the epistemic subject in a passive form (even though Hegel, like McDowell, does not
conceive of sensation as merely passive), and, at the same time, that this does not imply that one must step outside the
space of concepts. At the level of the Psychology section, the passivity of the subject with respect to the world is already
presupposed and sublated. As a matter of fact, Hegel says that the content of the activities of spirit discussed in the
Psychology is not the world nor nature anymore, but sensations themselves, which must be elevated to the form of
thought (see ES, § 440, Anmerkung: “The content that is elevated to intuitions is its sensations; similarly it is its
intuitions that are transformed into representations, and its representations that are transformed again into thoughts,
etc.”). For these reasons, it is possible to understand how the determinations of sensation coincide with objective
determinations of the external natural world only by analysing the concept of Empfindung in the Anthropology section.
Like McDowell’s concept of perception, Hegel’s discussion of the concept of Empfindung in the Encyclopedia
Anthropology should account for the fact that the empirical contents of our epistemic determinations are contents
existing in the external world, with which we are passively saddled, and, at the same time, that they are always already
conceptual (at least potentially).
24
Sensation is the third moment γ) Sensation of the natural soul, as concrete realization of α) Natural Qualities and β)
Natural Changes.

8
The universal natural soul represents for Hegel the mediation between nature and spirit. 25 It is
described on the one hand as a) the “truth […] of everything material”,26 that is the being in itself,
the “universal immateriality” of nature. On the other hand, it is described as b) the basis
(Grundlage) and possibility (Möglichkeit) of every further determination of spirit. It is the material
(Stoff) of the cognitive determination of spirit itself.

The soul is not only immaterial for itself. It is the universal immateriality of nature, its simple ideal life.
Soul is the substance, the absolute foundation [absolute Grundlage, FS] of all the particularizing and
individualizing of spirit, so that it is in the soul that spirit finds all the stuff of its determination, and the
soul remains the pervading, identical ideality of this determination.27

To put it in other terms, the universal natural soul simultaneously holds in itself:
a) the determinacy of things, which have an independent existence in the external world (i.e., in
nature);
b) the universal possibility of thought, its pure potentiality, its capability of being everything.

This universal structure is described by Hegel through an important analogy (which cannot be
exhaustively analysed here) as:

the sleep of spirit—the passive nous of Aristotle, which is potentially all things.28

Thus, with the words of Ferrarin, the universal natural soul is “openness to the world, the world
itself in potentiality”.29 The universal natural soul is therefore the structure which plays the role of
justifying the absence of an ontological gap between states of affairs and epistemic determinations.
The universal natural soul, to put it in McDowellian terms, is the concept that exemplifies in
Hegel’s system the thesis according to which the world is not external to the space of reasons.
Given this background, sensation is defined as the cognitive actualization of a determinacy which is
b) potentially present (as thinkable) in the universal natural soul as passive nous—passive nous
which is potentially all things. And a) that determinacy coincides with one existing in the external

25
Hereafter, the German word “Geist” will be translated as “spirit” instead of “mind”, as Inwood does in his revised
translation.
26
ES § 406, Zusatz, 102.
27
ES, § 389, 29. For a detailed commentary on this paragraph see Wolff, 1992.
28
ES, § 389, 29. It is not possible to analyse more specifically Hegel’s reading of Aristotelian epistemology, and, in
particular, Aristotle’s account of sensation. On this topic, see Ferrarin 2001 and 2004. See also Kern 1971 and Wiehl
1988.
29
Ferrarin, (forthcoming).

9
world. Therefore sensation can be conceived as a subjective-objective determination. Both sides of
the determination of the soul are not conceived as autonomous members of an external relation, but
are originally conceived as aspects of a unity. There is no dualism between existing determinacy
and cognitive determinacy. Both coincide in an ‘immediately mediated’ way in sensation.
The unity of the two sides of the soul—a) and b)—has its justification in the highest result of the
Hegelian ontological logic, namely the Idea. From a global systematic standpoint, Hegel asserts in
many places that the ontological structure of the Idea (namely, the Absolute, “what is true in and for
itself, the absolute unity of Concept and objectivity”30) represents the principle of mediation
between its two ‘real’ (real) manifestations, nature and spirit. Nature and spirit are not two opposed
substances (like res cogitans and res extensa in the Cartesian tradition), but are related to one
another as internal manifestations of the one absolute Idea. The Idea is the unitary and rational root
of reality (Wirklichkeit): nature and spirit must be conceived as configurations and expressions of it,
i.e. as forms of its realization. Spirit and nature are different modalities of the Idea’s existence and
are reciprocally related only by virtue of the mediation of the Idea itself, conceived as the rational
element in its ontological purity. This mediation of the Idea is posited as the highest truth at the end
of the Encyclopedia, in the form of the third syllogism of § 577. This is the syllogism that defines
the structure of true philosophy, according to which the self-knowing Idea mediates between nature
and spirit.31 For this reason, the mediating role which the universal natural soul plays between
nature and spirit seems to be the expression of the fundamental mediation of the Idea. 32 The Idea as
common root of nature and spirit is represented in the Realphilosophie by the universal natural soul,
which encompasses in itself both the totality of nature and every determinacy of spirit.

Der Geist als abstracte Naturseele ist [...] der einfache bewußtlose Gedanke, der als dieß allgemeine
Wesen, die innre Idee ist und seine Wirklichkeit an der inter ihm liegenden Aeusserlichkeit der Natur hätte

30
EL, § 213, 286.
31
See ES, § 577, 276: “The third syllogism is the Idea of philosophy, which has self-knowing reason, the absolutely
universal, for its middle, a middle that divides into spirit and nature, making spirit the presupposition, as the process of
the Idea’s subjective activity, and nature the universal extreme, as the process of the Idea that is in itself, objective. The
self-judging of the Idea into the two appearances (§§ 575, 576) determines them as its (self-knowing reason’s)
manifestations, and in it a unification takes place: it is the concept, the nature of the subject-matter, that moves onwards
and develops, and this movement is equally the activity of cognition. The eternal Idea, the Idea that is in and for itself,
eternally remains active, engenders and enjoys itself as absolute spirit”.
32
I claim that the mediatory activity of the Idea is implicitly operative in the realization of the soul as sensation
(empfindende Seele), though Hegel does not spend many words in order to better define the relation between the soul
and the Idea. Hegel stresses explicitly that the universal natural soul (although playing the ‘ideal’ role of mediation
between nature and spirit) cannot be immediately identified with the Absolute. It is rather only its potential basis, which
does not yet exist for-itself. The universal natural soul is the Absolute only as the ‘object’ of itself, not yet the self-
thinking Absolute. This universal natural soul is only the “internal Idea”, which is still self-enclosed in itself.
Nevertheless it is already both the universal totality of nature and the ‘simple unconscious thought’.

10
 […].33

As a matter of fact, the universal natural soul is defined by Hegel (like the Idea) as the universal
structure that mediates in itself the separation of nature and spirit.
But how is the notion of universal natural soul related to sensation in Hegel’s system?
If we read the concretization of the universal natural soul as sensation by referring to the thought
determinations of Hegel’s logic, we can see that Hegel describes sensation as the reunification in a
‘syllogism’ of the ‘judgement’ of the universal natural soul, which is in turn defined as the ‘concept’
(the ‘concept’ which represents indeed the ‘skeleton’ and the formal structure of the Idea).
Through sensation, the unity of the universal natural soul as the not yet self-conscious ‘concept’
(ES, § 389)—i.e., the identity in itself (ansichseiende Einheit) of objective determination of the
thing and epistemic determination—is restored in the ‘syllogism’ of sensation (ES, § 399, Zusatz)
after the ‘judgement’/separation (Ur-teil) between subjective intentionality and the world, a
separation which Hegel explains with a metaphor about sleep and waking (ES, § 398).34 This means
that sensation is the mediation, the middle term, the link between (potentially) conceptually shaped
epistemic activity and the content existing in the world.
Through the identification of the soul—as (a) totality of nature and (b) substance and absolute
foundation of spirit—with the ‘concept’35—as “absolute unity of being and reflection”36—it is
possible to ascribe to Hegel the thesis of material normativity. By material normativity I mean an
epistemological view according to which the normative constraint on knowledge is not merely
semantic and does not depend on intersubjective and socio-cultural practices. Rather, the normative
constraint is provided by the ontological determinacy of the world.37 According to Hegel, every
33
E 1817, § 311, 185. The universal natural soul is therefore the Idea existing in itself, the still unconscious rationality,
which will be brought to the transparent consciousness of itself in absolute spirit. In order to further justify the
identification between the universal natural soul and the Idea existing in itself, it is useful to look at Hegel’s manuscript
notes to the § 311 of the 1817 Encyclopedia, where he describes the universal natural soul as follows: “Das Ansich der
Natur—noch nicht ALS Geist—aber Denken. Auch oft Gott genannt—Als die EINE durchdringende Idee—Natur in
Gott—Wesen—Eins pulsirt durch alles. Welt Seele—der reine substantielle Gedanke—nicht entgegengesetzter nicht
selbstbewußter Gedanke—die schlaffende Vernunft das Leben der allgemeinen Geseze—”. My claim, therefore, is that
the notion of universal natural soul and its mediatory role within the system can be understood only starting from
Hegel’s metaphysics of the absolute Idea.
34
The Hegelian term ‘judgement’ means here an extrinsic and negative relation between two terms—in this case the
subjective intentionality that contraposes itself to an external world. The Hegelian term ‘syllogism’ means here a three-
term relation among subjective intentionality, content existing in the world, and sensation. Sensation is here the link
which ties epistemic activity to the world, restoring and actualizing the immediate and potential unity of epistemic and
ontological determinations of the world—unity which was represented by the universal natural soul as ‘concept’.
35
See ES, § 403, Anmerkung, 88: “The soul is the existent concept, the existence of the speculative”.
36
SL II, 509.
37
See Hösle 2003, 311; Halbig 2002, Chapter 5; and Soresi 2010, 187-214. For material normativity I do not mean, in
this context, the ontological relation between a being and its concept, but the thesis according to which the object and
the content of epistemic activity constitute the norm of knowledge. The kind of normativity which characterizes the

11
epistemological theory which irreducibly separates the content existing in the world and epistemic,
normatively and conceptually structured activity implies the impossibility of accounting for
knowledge. Rather, knowledge must exhibit a normative force and this normativity must be
embodied in the ontological constitution of the object. Therefore, conceptual determinations do not
correspond to mere mental or semantic forms that apply to an extrinsic, non-conceptual content.
Rather, they coincide with ontological determinations of reality. That is to say: conceptual
determinations are both epistemic and ontological determinations. Insofar as they are embodied in
the world, these determinations exercise a rational constraint (at least potentially) on the various
epistemic forms of the subject, including sensation. According to this thesis, the ‘concept’,
unconsciously embodied in the universal natural soul, does not represent a mere semantic and intra-
linguistic notion, independently of its referential component. 38 Rather it encompasses two aspects
that define the two sides of the soul: a) the objective and existing nature of things and b) subjective
epistemic determinacies, which are potentially already conceptually and linguistically shaped.
This thesis is importantly analogous with McDowell’s thesis of the non-separatedness of subjective,
conceptually shaped and normatively structured epistemic activity and empirical content. As a
matter of fact, the embodiment of the ‘concept’ in the universal natural soul can be seen as the
Hegelian version of McDowell’s thesis of the “unboundedness of the conceptual”. 39 According to
McDowell, the knowing subject can use the contents of perception in order to justify his beliefs
about the world within a normative context, insofar as norms are embodied in the world and do not
depend only on subjective thinking or on intersubjective recognition. According to Hegel, in a
similar way, the twofold structure of the universal natural soul as embodied ‘concept’ between
nature and spirit implies that the subject senses (empfindet) the world itself and at the same time, at
least potentially, senses (empfindet) reasons.40
‘concept’ is not a formal one—neither a normativity which is dogmatically found as external to epistemic activity nor a
normativity which is merely posited by subjective reflection. Rather, the material normativity of the ‘concept’ coincides
with the unity of these two one-sided positions. I believe that this thesis has some important analogies to the
McDowellian thesis according to which norms are embodied in the world and available in experience—see fn. 7 above.
38
Brinkmann 2011, IX ff. and Chapter 4.2, argues that Hegel achieves a paradigm shift from a referential dimension of
thought to a non-referential and explicative one. According to Brinkmann, Hegel would replace the standard of
correctness with the standard of intelligibility. As Brinkmann highlights, Hegel rejects ab origine the dichotomy
between mind and world in favour of an idealism without boundaries, which interprets every opposition as internal to
thought without giving up the requirement of the objectivity of knowledge. Even though Brinkmann gives an interesting
and plausible interpretation of Hegel, I am not sure: 1) whether Hegel completely abandons a referential conception of
thought; 2) whether the ‘idealism without limits’ can provide adequate standards for the objectivity of knowledge.
39
See MW, Lecture II.
40
A problem with this view is that Hegel sometimes seems to conceive of sensation as a faculty without epistemic
significance. According to some passages, sensation refers to a merely corporeal dimension and it seems to be
something human beings have in common with animals (see for example ES, § 400, Anmerkung; ES, § 400, Zusatz).
Yet, there are other passages in which Hegel seems to argue in favour of a distinction between human and animal
sensation, as well as between human and animal soul (see for example FsG, p. 239). In my view, Hegel considers

12
As I have mentioned above, the universal natural soul embraces in itself the existence of things in a
way that is already meaningful and available for conceptual and self-conscious thought. Things in
the world do not exist beyond or outside the soul but are already contained and preserved in its
‘sleeping’ side—as Hegel puts it—and are founded (gefunden) and sensed (empfdunden) in the soul
itself. Thanks to the mediation of the universal natural soul, then, subjective intentionality is not
directed towards a noumenal and meaningless reality, which is always beyond the cognitive
possibilities of the subject, nor does it refer to a mere phenomenal interface of the world. Rather, it
grasps the meaningfulness of the world itself, something that is already present at the level of mere
sensation.41
Therefore, as for McDowell, according to Hegel the knowing subject perceives and senses
(empfindet) reasons (the forms, to express it according to the Aristotelian framework which
constitutes the background of the Hegelian theory).42 Thanks to the mediation of the universal
natural soul as (not yet self-conscious) ‘concept’, the sensed forms are real forms, existing in the
world and at the same time already homogeneous to the conceptuality of the self-conscious subject.
Through the mediation of the universal natural soul, then, β) the sentient subject grasps the very
meaningfulness of the external world and α) that meaningfulness is a manifestation of the

human soul (and its capacities) qualitatively different from animal soul (and its capacities), according to an Aristotelian
framework. By virtue of this qualitative difference between animal and human soul, animal sensation takes place
merely against the background of the process of the natural genus. Animal sensation remains a simple response to the
environment and does not assume a properly epistemic character. On the contrary human sensation, even in its corporeal
dimension, is always already permeated by thought, that is, the universal that is for itself. As a matter of fact, animal
sensation is not described as an actualization of a determinacy potentially present in the passive nous, which is a feature
exclusively of the human being. For this reason, animals do not sense reasons, while humans (at least potentially) do. In
sum, I don’t believe that Hegel interprets sensation as a sort of ‘highest common factor’ between animals and human
beings. According to Hegel, the ‘identity’ of human and animal sensation is only an analogical one, because human
sensation is always already permeated by thought. Moreover, I think that McDowell would agree—to a certain extent—
with this distinction: human nature is a second nature by virtue of the spontaneity of thought which pervades it. And the
human receptive faculty is different from the animal receptive faculty by virtue of the very same reason.
41
It is necessary to stress here that, while for McDowell perceptions are to be considered as a tribunal for knowledge
(and thus a verification principle of our beliefs), Hegel does not attribute a decisive function to sensation within the
knowledge process. He seems rather to criticize harshly those philosophies that consider sensation to provide the criteria
to justify a belief (see ES, § 400, Anmerkung, 70). On the anti-verificationist and anti-foundationalist character (in an
empiristic sense) of Hegel’s philosophy see Illetterati 2011. Nevertheless, even though sensation is not formally apt to
play a justificatory role for a belief, it is necessary to make the contents existing in the world available for the subject—
such contents will then be elaborated by the subject until they obtain the form of thought. On this issue, Houlgate 2006,
251, notices that Hegel himself seems to exclude sensation from the space of reasons. In my view, to conceive of
sensation as external to the space of reasons tout-court contrasts with Hegel’s thesis according to which the content of
sensation is a rational content, which is already included potentially in the universal natural soul qua passive nous. In
particular, Houlgate’s interpretation seems not to account for the Hegelian idea that thought penetrates all epistemic
activities (including sensation). However, it seems to me that this is actually a core problem of Hegel’s theory of
sensation, namely the oscillation between rationality (and conceptuality) and extra-conceptual immediacy of sensation.
42
I agree with Stern 1999, 251-252, in considering Hegel a suitable reference for McDowell to defend the thesis of a
minimal empiricism—against Friedman’s and Rorty’s interpretations (see Friedman 1996, 439-440; Rorty, 1998, 140).
But I am not so sure that McDowell is as thorough as Hegel in trying to avoid the risk of relativism implicit in
subjective idealism—see Stern 1999, 259.

13
‘concept’—it must be available for linguistic formulation and already situated in a normative
context.

3. The excess of Hegel’s theory of sensation compared to McDowell’s

minimal empiricism

Despite the above mentioned similarities, McDowell’s idea is not exactly the same as Hegel’s. 43 In
order to highlight the differences between these two positions, it is possible to extend Hegel’s
criticism of Kant in Faith and Knowledge to McDowell’s reinterpretation of the Kantian Clue.44
Hegel’s high appreciation for Kant’s thesis that sensibility and intellect should be understood as
originally synthesized and homogeneous, rather than absolutely separated faculties, is well known.45
And this non-heterogeneity of sensibility and intellect, which Hegel in Faith and Knowledge sees in
the synthetic activity of productive imagination, is exactly the same as what McDowell recognizes
in the Kantian Clue. As a matter of fact, McDowell quotes Kant’s Clue to exemplify his idea that
concepts and intuitions are not separated and heterogeneous faculties, but that thought’s
conceptuality is always already present in empirical receptivity.46
43
Houlgate 2006, 251, outlines a comparison between the theories of Hegel and McDowell concerning the subject’s
cognitive access to the world and the relation between world, sensation and thought. Houlgate finds three analogies
between Hegel’s position and McDowell’s: 1) they both think that our experiences “have their content by virtue of the
fact that conceptual capacities are operative in them” (MW, 66); 2) they both endorse the thesis that empirical concepts
are historical and liable to change; 3) they both endorse the thesis of the “unboundedness of the conceptual”. It is not
possible to discuss in detail Houlgate’s interpretation, which I find perspicuous, even though I have some reservations
about it. In particular, it seems to me that Houlgate’s interpretation of Hegel ends up separating the contribution of sheer
sensation from conceptual and linguistic thought (242), falling back into the pitfall of the Myth of the Given. More
generally, I find Houlgate’s interpretive perspective analogous to Brinkmann’s and Ferrarin’s. They all defend the idea
that conceptual thought has in itself the criterion of its own justification, which is provided by the objective character of
the logical determinations (that is, by the way, a substantial difference that Houlgate underlines between Hegel and
McDowell). Houlgate’s Hegel, more specifically, would criticize McDowell for his thesis that the external world
constitutes a tribunal of our knowledge (255).
44
Sedgwick 1997, 21, stresses that Kant represents an ambivalent figure in McDowell’s reading. On the one hand,
McDowell seems to consider Kant’s philosophy a suitable starting point for a promising philosophical answer to the
problem of the relation between mind and world; on the other hand it seems that Kant’s philosophy is still affected by
problems (e.g. a sort of exteriority of the forms of space and time to the space of concepts) which need to be corrected
by looking at Hegel’s philosophy. I think that McDowell’s attempt at ‘correcting’ Kant through his reference to Hegel is
not radical enough to avoid the risks of a subjectivistic account of the relation between mind and world. In this sense, I
think that McDowell remains tied to a substantially Kantian framework. Therefore, if Sedgwick 1997, 32,—legitimately
—uses Hegel’s and McDowell’s thesis of the “unboundedness of the conceptual” against Kant, in this paper I use
Hegel against Kant and McDowell in the attempt to justify the objective reference of thought to the world in non-
subjectivistic terms. In particular I suggest that Hegel (unlike Kant and McDowell) addresses such a question on a
constructive ontological and metaphysical level.
45
See Sedgwick 2001.
46
On the absence in McDowell of a theory of imagination as mediation between sensibility and concepts, see Corti

14
Nevertheless, Hegel criticizes Kant because the latter believed that a synthesis between two
cognitive faculties of the subject (that is, two aspects of the epistemic activity of the subject, namely
sensibility and understanding) is sufficient for knowledge—excluding the external world from this
synthesis. According to Hegel’s interpretation of Kant, sensibility and intellect, as well as
imagination, are faculties pertaining to the epistemic structure of the subject. Therefore, Kant still
cannot get beyond a subjective epistemological dimension, because the synthesis between intuitions
and concepts does not involve the independent existence of the world.
It seems to me that it is possible to extend, at least to a certain extent, Hegel’s criticism of Kant to
McDowell. Even though McDowell rejects all accusations of coherentism and idealism, I believe
that he does not give a convincing account of the ‘grip’ of the world vìs-a-vìs the nexus of sensible
receptivity and conceptual spontaneity. In my view, α) considering the unifying activity of the
conceptual intellect to be already present in empirical and sensible receptivity—that is, to see the
empirical manifold as already (or at least potentially) conceptually shaped—is different from
believing β) that the facts of the world represent an element of rational constraint with regard to the
sensible receptivity. The intertwining of sensible receptivity and conceptual intellect does not yet
say anything about the nature and the reality of the external object. To say that a perception of red
contains in nuce the judgement “I see something red” is different from—and does not involve—
saying that there is actually a red thing in front of me (or a corresponding state of affairs) which
play the role of tribunal of my belief.47
Therefore, it seems to me that McDowell, on the basis of his interpretation of the Kantian Clue, tries
to merge together two heterogeneous theses:
α) our sensible and passive experiences are already (potentially) conceptually shaped;
β) the facts themselves—and not only subjective sense-data—are the elements which ground and
anchor our experience in the world.

In a way we are now equipped to understand, given the conception of intuitions adumbrated in the
passage from the ‘Clue’, the guidance is supplied by objects themselves, the subject matter of those
conceptual representations, becoming immediately present to the sensory consciousness of the subjects of

2012, in particular 65-69.

47
For a criticism of McDowell’s thesis that facts (and not only mere subjective experience) are the content and the
justification of our perceptual beliefs, see Chen 2006, 248: “McDowell’s requirement, though plausible, fails to support
the move he wants to make from ‘rational constraint by facts’ to ‘rational constraint by experience’”. A related question
concerns the fallibility of perceptual knowledge and the possibility for it to provide an indefeasible warrant for our
beliefs—see McDowell 2011 and 2013. For other critical considerations against McDowell’s proposal on this issue see
Stroud 2002, 79-91; De Gaynesford 2004, 161-162; Gaskin 2006.

15
 these conceptual goings-on.48

Theses α) and β) are distinct.49 Moreover, only α) is implied in the Kantian Clue. The Clue contains
only the claim that perceptions are unified in the same way as concepts are unified in judgement. It
is not by accident that Kant introduces—controversially—the idea of a thing in itself, aiming to
‘sustain’ the grip that must be exercised on subjective epistemic activity if this is not to be
conceived as spinning in the void. Nevertheless, we cannot say anything concerning the
determination of the thing in itself. It is only a limit-concept.50
But which aspects of the Hegelian account are meant to solve this problem, and which represent the
‘excess’ of Hegel’s position in comparison to McDowell’s?
In my view, Hegel’s theory of sensation as realization and concretization of the ontological (and not
only epistemological) structure of the universal natural soul 51 aims at balancing the subjectivistic
aspects of Kant’s theory (and, at least to a certain extent, McDowell’s conception). Thanks to the
twofold structure of the universal natural soul, which realizes itself firstly in sensation, human
knowledge is open to the world. There is no distance between the two sides. The universal natural
soul, as a matter of fact, does not only represent α) the basis of the homogeneity of the different
spiritual determinations (the soul is “the substance, the absolute foundation of all the particularizing
and individualizing of spirit, so that it is in the soul that spirit finds all the stuff of its determination,

48
McDowell 2009, 39.
49
It is necessary to acknowledge that McDowell separates the two theses. The thesis α) of the conceptuality of
experience is an epistemological thesis, while β) the thesis of the direct openness to the world is more committed to
ontology—even though McDowell does not intend to attribute a constructive character to it. These theses are not in
principle incompatible. Nevertheless, on the basis of his interpretation of the Kantian Clue, it seems to me that
McDowell tends to conflate and make the thesis β) depend on the thesis α). On the contrary—as I will argue in the next
pages—Hegel maintains the epistemological and the ontological dimension always inseparably together in his system,
thanks to his theory of the universal soul as ‘concept’ and potential manifestation of the Idea. The epistemological and
the ontological dimensions are two aspects of the same process and not two separate theories. What I want to claim, to
put it in other terms, is that McDowell’s transcendental framework runs the risks of either dogmatically (not at all
therapeutically!) maintaining that the two sides are separate, or reducing the ontological to the epistemological
dimension.
50
It could be objected here that McDowell seems to recognize the Hegelian ‘sublation’ of the Kantian impasse by
referring and quoting the text of Faith and Knowledge. See McDowell 2004, in particular 199-200. Nevertheless, I think
that the way McDowell reads the Hegelian criticism against Kant in Faith and Knowledge is still ‘too Kantian’—it is
not fortuitous that McDowell sees the Kantian and the Hegelian positions as two versions of the same philosophical
approach (205-206). In other terms, McDowell himself seems to acknowledge that the Kantian attempt of reconciling
mind and world is still one-sidedly subjective (see McDowell 2003b, 466). Nonetheless, I think that McDowell’s
reading of Hegel’s ‘sublation’ of Kant—a reading which focuses on the criticism against the mere givenness of the
forms of space and time (476-477)—does not solve the problems inherited by Kant’s transcendental approach. On this
issue, see Rödl 2007.
51
It is not an accident that Hegel discusses the concept of soul for the first time in Logic and Metaphysics (1804-05) as
the first moment of the Metaphysics of Objectivity. On the analogies between the concept of soul in the Jena manuscript
and in the different versions of the Encyclopedia see, Chiereghin 1991.

16
and the soul remains the pervading, identical ideality of this determination” 52), but also β) the basis
of the homogeneity between the epistemic activities of the subject and the ontological
determinateness of the world (the soul is “unity of thinking and being”53).
The soul as universal substance (passive nous and universal container of the forms)54 establishes
ontologically (and not merely transcendentally) the realistic reach of our empirical judgements.
When describing the ‘syllogism’ of sensation as concrete restoration of the universal soul as
‘concept’ after its division in the ‘judgement’ between sleep and waking, Hegel defends the
possibility that empirical judgements have an authentic objective reach. This takes place at an
unconscious level, which precedes the opposition between the I and the world, between subject and
object.55 The universal natural soul, therefore, is the universal copula of every empirical judgement,
not as a formal copula, but as a copula which is already (potentially) full of content. Sensation is the
‘syllogistic’, pre-conscious realization of that copula, the link tying subject and object together
before they split (ur-teilen) according to the standpoint of conscience.
The structure of the universal natural soul (starting from which Hegel justifies the epistemic activity
of sensation in the system) does not correspond merely to an epistemological principle, but also to
an ontological and—I would say—metaphysical one. As a matter of fact, Hegel’s notion of soul is
tied to the Aristotelian notion of passive nous, which in Hegel becomes a sort of universal container
of potential forms (or reasons). These forms have, on one hand, independent existence in nature,
and on the other hand, a cognitive and explicitly linguistic dimension in human thought. This
function of the universal natural soul reinterprets and embodies in the mature system the Hegelian
need, expressed in Faith and Knowledge, of an objective reason which synthesizes—or, more
correctly, poses as originally unified—not only α) the various cognitive faculties of the epistemic
subject, but also β) his cognitive activity and the world. 56 This embodiment takes place at a pre-
conscious level, in which subjective intentionality is not yet separated from its content.
For this reason it seems important to underline that the metaphysical aspect of Hegel’s theory of the
universal natural soul as passive nous and Idea existing in itself is the ‘excess’ with respect to
McDowell’s perspective. McDowell, in turn, despite his self-proclaimed ‘Hegelianism’ would never
accept this explicitly metaphysical dimension.57 Not only at a meta-philosophical level, because of
52
ES, § 389, 29.
53
ES, § 389, Zusatz, 30.
54
See Ferrarin 2001, 313.
55
As noticed by Wiehl 1976, 439-441, the concept of universal natural soul ‘grounds’ the linguistic
‘judgement’/separation (Urteil) between the subject and the predicate.
56
Forman 2010, in particular 343-345, sees Hegel’s account of habit as a version of a Kantian synthesis of the
productive imagination and discusses this topic with respect to McDowell’s concept of second nature.
57
I agree with Stern 1999, 259-264. I see a difference between Hegel’s metaphysical and McDowell’s therapeutic

17
its constructive (and not merely ‘therapeutic’) character, but also because of the theory’s old-
fashioned aspects which can hardly be integrated in our contemporary image of the world.
Nevertheless, defining his proposal as ‘therapeutic’, McDowell tends to reduce the relation between
knowing and the world on the epistemological level. As a matter of fact, when McDowell seems to
go beyond his fundamental Kantianism and to incline towards an Aristotelian and Hegelian
framework, he quickly denies any ontological or metaphysical commitment in his claim about the
identity of thought (as true thinkables) and reality.58 In my view, McDowell presents thinkables as
objective through a claim that is not supported by a theory with constructive ontological
commitments (whereas Hegel relies on the metaphysical character of the universal natural soul and,
more fundamentally, on the theory of the Idea and of ‘objective thought’).
It is not an accident that, when McDowell makes reference to Hegelian philosophy, he mainly refers
to the phenomenological enterprise (even when he discusses perception59) and that he does not seem
to take into account the encyclopaedic system. Hegel’s Phenomenology, as a matter of fact,
develops from within the epistemological perspective of consciousness, even though this work is an
internal criticism of it. In the Phenomenology, thus, the object is not philosophically justified as an
autonomous being existing independently of consciousness. It is always already inserted within the
horizon of consciousness itself.60
That is exactly what Hegel criticizes in Kant: the attempt to solve the problem of the relation
between mind and world merely in epistemological terms, underestimating the properly ontological
and metaphysical side of the problem. On the contrary, Hegel’s Anthropology, in which the

approach to philosophy. See here, 260: “To put the contrast simplistically: while McDowell wants to vindicate common
sense, to put us back in touch with tables, cats and other people, and while Hegel is certainly no sceptic on this score,
Hegel wants much more—to vindicate a kind of conception of philosophy that Kant had thought was impossible, and
which would also appear to have no place in McDowell’s therapeutic, late-Wittgensteinian outlook”.
58
See McDowell 1996b, 284-285: “(1) Is it my view that the world consists of the totality of potential contents of (true)
thoughts? Yes. (‘We can just say the totality of true thoughts’, if we use ‘thoughts’ in the sense of thinkables rather than
episodes of thinking.) Do I have a reason for holding this view, apart from its helpfulness in getting out from under
philosophical anxieties? No; do I need one? Gibson suggests I do, on the ground that my picture of the world is
‘metaphysically substantial’. I am not sure what he means by this. The world is everything that is the case; that is,
everything that can be truly thought to be the case. There is a permanent possibility of having to decide we were wrong,
and that is enough to ensure that the world so conceived does not degenerate into a shadow or reflection of the norms
that, at any time, we take to govern our thinking—a junior partner in the interaction of mind and world. That is as much
‘realism’ about the world as I want; as far as I can see, it is as much ‘realism ’ about the world as it is sensible for
anyone to want”. On this aspect see Sedgwick 1997, 23.
59
It seems to me very significant that McDowell never seriously took into account Hegel’s concept of sensation
(Empfindung) and, in a broader sense, Hegel’s Philosophy of Subjective Spirit within the context of the Encyclopedia.
On this limit of McDowell’s approach to Hegel see Quante 2002. Here Quante exhorts McDowell to deal with Hegel’s
mature system. Also Houlgate 2006, 242 and 256 (endnote 3), seems to agree with Quante in considering the
Philosophy of Subjective Spirit the systematic place that allows a fruitful comparison between Hegel and McDowell.
60
The very structure of the Phenomenology lends itself is to be read as consciousness’ ‘therapeutic’ path through
different inadequate forms of thematizing the subject-object relation.

18
concepts of soul and sensation are discussed, represents the attempt to preserve the objectivity of
knowledge from the subjective one-sidedness of the perspective of consciousness.61 Indeed, the
historical and systematic genesis of Anthropology as philosophical science can be read as a
conceptual ‘deduction’ of the standpoint of consciousness from the ontological structure of the
universal natural soul. The latter simultaneously represents the object and the correlate of
consciousness as well as its substrate, avoiding both the reciprocal exteriority of subject and object
and the absorption of the object into the subjective horizon of consciousness.

Conclusions

In this paper I have tried to show how Hegel’s theory of sensation (like McDowell’s theory of
perception) aims to reconcile the idea of a realistic access to a mind-independent world and the
rejection of the heterogeneity of empirical content to the conceptual capacities of the subject. I have
also stressed that Hegel’s theory of sensation is essentially committed to the theory of the universal
natural soul as passive nous qua ontological container of all potential forms. These forms become
actual in sensation and in epistemic activity in general. In my view, the notion of universal natural
soul is a metaphysical (not only constructive) concept, which exceeds McDowell’s ‘therapeutic’
stance.62 This ontological and metaphysical excess of Hegel’s proposal seems to more radically
challenge the risk of subjectivism implicit in the Kantian perspective (to which McDowell seems
ultimately still tied).
This metaphysical commitment does not mean that Hegel rejects McDowell’s problem of a sensible
anchoring of our thinking to the outer world. Hegel does not say that metaphysics should simply
dismiss the necessity of an empirical constraint for thinking. Against McDowell, however, Hegel
holds that the epistemological side of this question is inseparable from a constructive ontologically
and metaphysically committed theory.63
61
On this issue, I find the interpretive thesis of Wiehl 1976, 440-446, persuasive. Wiehl sees in the unconscious and
substantial structure of the soul (and in its concretization into sensation) also a sub-conscious transcendental form.
Nevertheless, Hegel’s concept of soul does not reduce itself to a formal transcendental function. Rather, it represents an
ontological structure, which makes the realistic reach of the subject’s empirical knowledge possible.
62
On different meanings of ‘constructive’ and ‘therapeutic’ philosophy see Quante 2004.
63
It could be objected here that in Hegel the ‘empiristic’ tendency according to which the epistemic determinations of
the subject ought to sensibly anchor to an outer mind-independent world, is simply not present. Nevertheless, even
though Hegel in the Encyclopedia seems not to give much importance to sensation (see for example ES, § 400,
Anmerkung and Zusatz), it seems to me that a sound theory of sensation represents a decisive element of its absolute

19
However, Hegel’s position gives rise to a different sort of difficulty. Beyond underlining the old-
fashioned character of Hegel’s theory, I would like to point out an internal problem. This is the
problem of the ontological status of the universal natural soul and its controversial dependence on
the self-conscious rationality through the movement of positing and presupposing. As a matter of
fact, on the one hand Hegel seems to deny that the universal natural soul is a rigid substance or
substrate, which is absolutely independent from the activity of thinking. 64 On the other hand, the
treatment of the universal natural soul as self-presupposition65 and objectual correlate of the
absolute spirit (which becomes as such only through the individuals’ activity of thinking) seems to
undermine the realistic-externalistic reach of the epistemic activity of individual subjects and the
authentic mind-independence of the world.66
This problem should be discussed against the background of the ontological and metaphysical
relation between nature, soul, and spirit. However, this is beyond the aims of this contribution.
Nevertheless—regardless of the difficulties to which Hegel’s theory leads—his commitment to the
metaphysical theory of the universal natural soul as passive nous, and the commitment to the theory
of the Idea and of objective thought, are aspects that cannot be superficially overlooked by anyone
who considers his epistemological proposal as ‘Hegelian in spirit’—as McDowell seems to do67—as
well as by those who discuss Hegel’s position within the contemporary debate.68

idealism. This does not imply that Hegel attributes to sensation the role of justificatory tribunal of our beliefs in a
verificationist or even McDowellian sense (see fn. 41 above). Despite this, I think that Hegel’s system should also
account for the ‘empiristic’ dimension of knowledge in order to fulfill the programmatic requirements of absolute
idealism. Hegel’s metaphysical commitment does not mean that he shrugs his shoulders with respect to the problems of
empiricism or simply tries to dissolve them. On the contrary, Hegel’s metaphysical commitment should be understood
as an attempt to find a consistent solution to these problems. To put it in more general terms: I don’t believe that Hegel
completely dismisses the ‘empiristic’ dimension of knowledge in favour of a metaphysics that rejects the problems the
former poses. I believe that Hegel’s theory, by virtue of its very philosophical program, should convincingly account for
the problems which arise in relation to the experience of the external world.
64
It is important to notice that the universal natural soul cannot be conceived, according to Hegel, in a substantialized
and hypostatized form, as a world-soul. See ES, § 391, 35, and ES, § 390, Zusatz, 34.
65
See NG 1825, 211. See also ES, § 388.
66
It would be useful here to examine in depth Hegel’s conception of ‘thought’. Hegel holds that thought cannot be
reduced to its individual or intersubjective dimension and, at the same time, he hints at the sublation of a
dogmatic/theological thematization of it (like the thematization provided by the so called alte Metaphysik).
67
See for example MW, 44.
68
I would like to thank Luca Illetterati, James Kreines, Paolo Costa and Luca Corti for reading and commenting on
previous versions of this paper and the two anonymous referees for their careful reviews and constructive suggestions.

20
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