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Books by Christopher Yeomans
Georg Lukács wrote that "there is autonomy and 'autonomy.' The one is a moment of life itself, th... more Georg Lukács wrote that "there is autonomy and 'autonomy.' The one is a moment of life itself, the elevation of its richness and contradictory unity; the other is a rigidification, a barren self-seclusion, a self-imposed banishment from the dynamic overall connection." Though Lukács' concern was with the conditions for the possibility of art, his distinction also serves as an apt description of the way that Hegel and Hegelians have contrasted their own interpretations of self-determination with that of Kant. But it has always been difficult to see how elevation is possible without seclusion, or how rigidification can be avoided without making the boundaries of the self so malleable that its autonomy looks like a mere cover for the power of external forces.
Yeomans explores Hegel's own attempts to grapple with this problem against the background of Kant's attempts, in his theory of virtue, to understand the way that morally autonomous agents can be robust individuals with qualitatively different projects, personal relations, and commitments that are nonetheless infused with a value that demands respect. In a reading that disentangles a number of different threads in Kant's approach, Yeomans shows how Hegel reweaves these threads around the central notions of talent and interest to produce a tapestry of self-determination. Yeomans argues that the result is a striking pluralism that identifies three qualitatively distinct forms of agency or accountability and sees each of these forms of agency as being embodied in different social groups in different ways. But there is nonetheless a dynamic unity to the forms because they can all be understood as practical attempts to solve the problem of autonomy, and each is thus worthy of respect even from the perspective of other solutions.
"Everyone recognizes the importance of Hegel's critique of Kantian morality as empty, but until now there has not been a fully worked out presentation of how Hegel's views in his discussion of Sittlichkeit actually provide the missing content. Yeomans has finally provided us with a reconstruction of Hegel's mature position that makes good on all the promissory notes that Hegel (and his commentators) gives in his famous descriptions of his alternative to Kantian ethics. Yeomans offers a compelling account of Hegel's view of individuality, societal differentiation and its roots in Kantian and Fichtean moral theory. The book will be a major contribution to the scholarship on Hegel's practical philosophy."-Dean Moyar, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Johns Hopkins University
"Yeomans' book is a subtle, detailed and original explication of some key ideas having to do with how Hegel's general philosophy of action (or theory of the nature of agency) relates to his social and political philosophy. It is attentive to Hegel's texts, and it ties its discussions into all the relevant contemporary themes in philosophy. It is very ambitious in its attempt to make Hegel's theory into a real competitor to other views that are currently in wide play in the philosophical world. It will very likely become one of the key texts in the secondary literature on Hegel."-Terry Pinkard, University Professor of Philosophy, Georgetown University
Hegel's Logic reveals an insightful and subtle engagement with the traditional problem of free wi... more Hegel's Logic reveals an insightful and subtle engagement with the traditional problem of free will as it emerges from our basic commitment to the explicability of the world. While the dominant current interpretations of Hegel's theory of agency find little of significance in the Logic and suggest that Hegel avoided the traditional problem, I argue both that the problem is unavoidable, and that the two versions of the Logic fruitfully engage the tensions between explicability and both the control and alternate possibilities constitutive of free agency. In particular, I examine Hegel's response to three different versions of the principle of sufficient reason that have historically seemed to make free will problematic. For each, I first explore the nature of its challenge to free will with glances both at Hegel's precursors and contemporaries and at the philosophy of action of our own time. Then I delve into the arguments of Hegel's Logic to see how he construed the problematic concepts in question. Finally, I return to the issue of free will to bring Hegel's interpretations of the concepts in the Logic together with elements of his moral psychology to show how the problem of free will can be resolved, and to trace in outline the shape of free will that such resolution produces. The connection between the Logic's reflections on the form of explanation and the practical philosophy's theory of the will is that both attempt to do justice to the mutual necessity of self-determination and external influence.
Papers by Christopher Yeomans
My contribution to the Oxford Handbook of Hegel. It includes themes from my two books but extend... more My contribution to the Oxford Handbook of Hegel. It includes themes from my two books but extends them to characterize Hegel's multiple conceptions of agency as different bait-and-switch routines by which agents are motivated.
Most philosophers of action generally assume that there is a single phenomenon under discussion a... more Most philosophers of action generally assume that there is a single phenomenon under discussion and a single (proper) conceptualization of notions such as agency, responsibility, and free will. But a strong minority tradition deserves recognition, one that emphasizes the essential role of plurality in the phenomena of agency. This tradition collects together philosophers as diverse as G.W.F. Hegel, Bernard Williams, Gary Watson, Hannah Arendt, and Robert Kane. In fact, one could even include Aristotle on this list, since he distinguishes between virtues of character and virtues of thought on the basis of which parts of the soul are involved, and further between virtue and continence as forms of successful agency. After an inquiry into the qualitative significance of this quantitative difference in the work of Kane, Arendt, and Hegel we will end up with an appreciation of the value of a generalized form of what Wilfrid Sellars called the stereoscopic vision.
For Central APA Author-Meets-Critics Session, 2014
Rather than approaching the question of the constructive or therapeutic character of Hegel’s Logi... more Rather than approaching the question of the constructive or therapeutic character of Hegel’s Logic through a global consideration of its argument and its relation to the rest of Hegel’s system, I want to come at the question by considering a specific thread that runs through the argument of the Logic, namely the question of the proper understanding of power or control. What I want to try to show is that there is a close connection between therapeutic and constructive elements in Hegel’s treatment of power. To do so I will make use of two deep criticisms of Hegel’s treatment from Michael Theunissen. First comes Theunissen’s claim that in Hegel’s logical scheme, reality is necessarily dominated by the concept rather than truly reciprocally related to it. Then I will consider Theunissen’s structurally analogous claim that for Hegel, the power of the concept is the management of the suppression of the other. Both of these claims are essentially claims about the way in which elements of the logic of reflection are modified and yet continue to play a role in the logic of the concept.
“Introduction” to selections from Marx in Idealism and its Critics: An Anthology of 19th-Century ... more “Introduction” to selections from Marx in Idealism and its Critics: An Anthology of 19th-Century Philosophy, ed. Benjamin Crowe. Forthcoming in 2015 from Routledge Press.
Hegel Bulletin, May 2013
One of the reasons why there is no Hegelian school in contemporary ethics in the way that there a... more One of the reasons why there is no Hegelian school in contemporary ethics in the way that there are Kantian, Humean and Aristotelian schools is because Hegelians have been unable to clearly articulate the Hegelian alternative to those schools’ moral psychologies, i.e., to present a Hegelian model of the motivation to, perception of, and responsibility for moral action. Here it is argued that in its most basic terms Hegel's model can be understood as follows: the agent acts in a responsible and thus paradigmatic sense when she identifies as reasons those motivations which are grounded in his or her talents and support actions that are likely to develop those talents in ways suggested by his or her interests.
A primary fault line in the analytic philosophy of action is the debate between causal/Davidsonia... more A primary fault line in the analytic philosophy of action is the debate between causal/Davidsonian and interpretivist/Anscombian theories of action. The fundamental problem of the former is producing a criterion for distinguishing intentional from non-intentional causal chains; the fundamental problem of the latter is producing an account of the relation between reasons and actions that is represented by the ‘because’ in the claim that the agent acted because she had the reason. It is argued that Hegel’s conception of teleology can be used to develop the interpretivist position by solving both its and the causal theory’s fundamental problems.
Contrastes, Jan 1, 2010
One of the most difficult problems in Hegel’s moral psychology is trying to understand the relati... more One of the most difficult problems in Hegel’s moral psychology is trying to understand the relation between motivations and the rational will on Hegel’s account. Rather following Kant in seeing free will as stepping back from natural desires to reach a purely rational perspective, Hegel holds that rationality is internal to desiring, a way of desiring well. Motivations have a rational form when we are able to flexibly navigate within their field of possible objects, means, and forms of significance. This is why Hegel claims that the free agent experiences their drives as the rational system of the will itself.
Mind, Jan 1, 2010
David Gray Carlson's Commentary has some important limitations, and they should be admit... more David Gray Carlson's Commentary has some important limitations, and they should be admitted at once. It is very much a commentary rather than an interpretation: there is no framing at the beginning of the text to orientate the reader, no attempt to develop and sustain a ...
Abstract: My dissertation provides a brief interpretation of Hegel's theory of the will,... more Abstract: My dissertation provides a brief interpretation of Hegel's theory of the will, and then proceeds to reconstruct a defense of that theory against skeptical objections. Hegel's theory of the will revolves around the conditions under which the agent can properly identify with ...
Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, Jan 1, 2006
This paper reconstructs Reid’s responses to regress arguments against the possibility of free wil... more This paper reconstructs Reid’s responses to regress arguments against the possibility of free will, highlighting the role played by long-term decisions (“general fixed purposes”) in the explanation of paradigmatic free actions on Reid’s account. In addition to reconstructingReid’s response to the two versions of the regress argument that he explicitly discusses, I also construct a Reidian response to Galen Strawson’s contemporary version of the regress argument. The depth of Reid’s position is most apparent in the resources it provides for responding to this sophisticated articulation of a traditional argument against freedom of the will.
Drafts by Christopher Yeomans
Hegel Bulletin, 2017
When it comes to social criticism of the economy, Critical Theory has thus far failed to discover... more When it comes to social criticism of the economy, Critical Theory has thus far failed to discover specific immanent norms in that sphere of activity. In response, we propose that what is needed is to double down on the idealism of Critical Theory by taking seriously the sophisticated structure of agency developed in Hegel’s own account of freedom as self-determination. When we do so, we will see that the anti-metaphysical gestures of recent Critical Theory work in opposition to its attempts to develop immanent critique. In this paper we first briefly review Axel Honneth’s project as it concerns economic institutions and then respond by returning to the problem of freedom and articulating a view according to which the problem of individual self-determination and the problem of social production are the same problem seen from different angles. Then we briefly present Hegel’s own social theory from this perspective before moving on to trace the outlines of such a critical theory of contemporary capitalism
Georg Lukács wrote that "there is autonomy and 'autonomy.' The one is a moment of life itself, th... more Georg Lukács wrote that "there is autonomy and 'autonomy.' The one is a moment of life itself, the elevation of its richness and contradictory unity; the other is a rigidification, a barren self-seclusion, a self-imposed banishment from the dynamic overall connection." Though Lukács' concern was with the conditions for the possibility of art, his distinction also serves as an apt description of the way that Hegel and Hegelians have contrasted their own interpretations of self-determination with that of Kant. But it has always been difficult to see how elevation is possible without seclusion, or how rigidification can be avoided without making the boundaries of the self so malleable that its autonomy looks like a mere cover for the power of external forces.
Yeomans explores Hegel's own attempts to grapple with this problem against the background of Kant's attempts, in his theory of virtue, to understand the way that morally autonomous agents can be robust individuals with qualitatively different projects, personal relations, and commitments that are nonetheless infused with a value that demands respect. In a reading that disentangles a number of different threads in Kant's approach, Yeomans shows how Hegel reweaves these threads around the central notions of talent and interest to produce a tapestry of self-determination. Yeomans argues that the result is a striking pluralism that identifies three qualitatively distinct forms of agency or accountability and sees each of these forms of agency as being embodied in different social groups in different ways. But there is nonetheless a dynamic unity to the forms because they can all be understood as practical attempts to solve the problem of autonomy, and each is thus worthy of respect even from the perspective of other solutions.
"Everyone recognizes the importance of Hegel's critique of Kantian morality as empty, but until now there has not been a fully worked out presentation of how Hegel's views in his discussion of Sittlichkeit actually provide the missing content. Yeomans has finally provided us with a reconstruction of Hegel's mature position that makes good on all the promissory notes that Hegel (and his commentators) gives in his famous descriptions of his alternative to Kantian ethics. Yeomans offers a compelling account of Hegel's view of individuality, societal differentiation and its roots in Kantian and Fichtean moral theory. The book will be a major contribution to the scholarship on Hegel's practical philosophy."-Dean Moyar, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Johns Hopkins University
"Yeomans' book is a subtle, detailed and original explication of some key ideas having to do with how Hegel's general philosophy of action (or theory of the nature of agency) relates to his social and political philosophy. It is attentive to Hegel's texts, and it ties its discussions into all the relevant contemporary themes in philosophy. It is very ambitious in its attempt to make Hegel's theory into a real competitor to other views that are currently in wide play in the philosophical world. It will very likely become one of the key texts in the secondary literature on Hegel."-Terry Pinkard, University Professor of Philosophy, Georgetown University
Hegel's Logic reveals an insightful and subtle engagement with the traditional problem of free wi... more Hegel's Logic reveals an insightful and subtle engagement with the traditional problem of free will as it emerges from our basic commitment to the explicability of the world. While the dominant current interpretations of Hegel's theory of agency find little of significance in the Logic and suggest that Hegel avoided the traditional problem, I argue both that the problem is unavoidable, and that the two versions of the Logic fruitfully engage the tensions between explicability and both the control and alternate possibilities constitutive of free agency. In particular, I examine Hegel's response to three different versions of the principle of sufficient reason that have historically seemed to make free will problematic. For each, I first explore the nature of its challenge to free will with glances both at Hegel's precursors and contemporaries and at the philosophy of action of our own time. Then I delve into the arguments of Hegel's Logic to see how he construed the problematic concepts in question. Finally, I return to the issue of free will to bring Hegel's interpretations of the concepts in the Logic together with elements of his moral psychology to show how the problem of free will can be resolved, and to trace in outline the shape of free will that such resolution produces. The connection between the Logic's reflections on the form of explanation and the practical philosophy's theory of the will is that both attempt to do justice to the mutual necessity of self-determination and external influence.
My contribution to the Oxford Handbook of Hegel. It includes themes from my two books but extend... more My contribution to the Oxford Handbook of Hegel. It includes themes from my two books but extends them to characterize Hegel's multiple conceptions of agency as different bait-and-switch routines by which agents are motivated.
Most philosophers of action generally assume that there is a single phenomenon under discussion a... more Most philosophers of action generally assume that there is a single phenomenon under discussion and a single (proper) conceptualization of notions such as agency, responsibility, and free will. But a strong minority tradition deserves recognition, one that emphasizes the essential role of plurality in the phenomena of agency. This tradition collects together philosophers as diverse as G.W.F. Hegel, Bernard Williams, Gary Watson, Hannah Arendt, and Robert Kane. In fact, one could even include Aristotle on this list, since he distinguishes between virtues of character and virtues of thought on the basis of which parts of the soul are involved, and further between virtue and continence as forms of successful agency. After an inquiry into the qualitative significance of this quantitative difference in the work of Kane, Arendt, and Hegel we will end up with an appreciation of the value of a generalized form of what Wilfrid Sellars called the stereoscopic vision.
For Central APA Author-Meets-Critics Session, 2014
Rather than approaching the question of the constructive or therapeutic character of Hegel’s Logi... more Rather than approaching the question of the constructive or therapeutic character of Hegel’s Logic through a global consideration of its argument and its relation to the rest of Hegel’s system, I want to come at the question by considering a specific thread that runs through the argument of the Logic, namely the question of the proper understanding of power or control. What I want to try to show is that there is a close connection between therapeutic and constructive elements in Hegel’s treatment of power. To do so I will make use of two deep criticisms of Hegel’s treatment from Michael Theunissen. First comes Theunissen’s claim that in Hegel’s logical scheme, reality is necessarily dominated by the concept rather than truly reciprocally related to it. Then I will consider Theunissen’s structurally analogous claim that for Hegel, the power of the concept is the management of the suppression of the other. Both of these claims are essentially claims about the way in which elements of the logic of reflection are modified and yet continue to play a role in the logic of the concept.
“Introduction” to selections from Marx in Idealism and its Critics: An Anthology of 19th-Century ... more “Introduction” to selections from Marx in Idealism and its Critics: An Anthology of 19th-Century Philosophy, ed. Benjamin Crowe. Forthcoming in 2015 from Routledge Press.
Hegel Bulletin, May 2013
One of the reasons why there is no Hegelian school in contemporary ethics in the way that there a... more One of the reasons why there is no Hegelian school in contemporary ethics in the way that there are Kantian, Humean and Aristotelian schools is because Hegelians have been unable to clearly articulate the Hegelian alternative to those schools’ moral psychologies, i.e., to present a Hegelian model of the motivation to, perception of, and responsibility for moral action. Here it is argued that in its most basic terms Hegel's model can be understood as follows: the agent acts in a responsible and thus paradigmatic sense when she identifies as reasons those motivations which are grounded in his or her talents and support actions that are likely to develop those talents in ways suggested by his or her interests.
A primary fault line in the analytic philosophy of action is the debate between causal/Davidsonia... more A primary fault line in the analytic philosophy of action is the debate between causal/Davidsonian and interpretivist/Anscombian theories of action. The fundamental problem of the former is producing a criterion for distinguishing intentional from non-intentional causal chains; the fundamental problem of the latter is producing an account of the relation between reasons and actions that is represented by the ‘because’ in the claim that the agent acted because she had the reason. It is argued that Hegel’s conception of teleology can be used to develop the interpretivist position by solving both its and the causal theory’s fundamental problems.
Contrastes, Jan 1, 2010
One of the most difficult problems in Hegel’s moral psychology is trying to understand the relati... more One of the most difficult problems in Hegel’s moral psychology is trying to understand the relation between motivations and the rational will on Hegel’s account. Rather following Kant in seeing free will as stepping back from natural desires to reach a purely rational perspective, Hegel holds that rationality is internal to desiring, a way of desiring well. Motivations have a rational form when we are able to flexibly navigate within their field of possible objects, means, and forms of significance. This is why Hegel claims that the free agent experiences their drives as the rational system of the will itself.
Mind, Jan 1, 2010
David Gray Carlson's Commentary has some important limitations, and they should be admit... more David Gray Carlson's Commentary has some important limitations, and they should be admitted at once. It is very much a commentary rather than an interpretation: there is no framing at the beginning of the text to orientate the reader, no attempt to develop and sustain a ...
Abstract: My dissertation provides a brief interpretation of Hegel's theory of the will,... more Abstract: My dissertation provides a brief interpretation of Hegel's theory of the will, and then proceeds to reconstruct a defense of that theory against skeptical objections. Hegel's theory of the will revolves around the conditions under which the agent can properly identify with ...
Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, Jan 1, 2006
This paper reconstructs Reid’s responses to regress arguments against the possibility of free wil... more This paper reconstructs Reid’s responses to regress arguments against the possibility of free will, highlighting the role played by long-term decisions (“general fixed purposes”) in the explanation of paradigmatic free actions on Reid’s account. In addition to reconstructingReid’s response to the two versions of the regress argument that he explicitly discusses, I also construct a Reidian response to Galen Strawson’s contemporary version of the regress argument. The depth of Reid’s position is most apparent in the resources it provides for responding to this sophisticated articulation of a traditional argument against freedom of the will.
Hegel Bulletin, 2017
When it comes to social criticism of the economy, Critical Theory has thus far failed to discover... more When it comes to social criticism of the economy, Critical Theory has thus far failed to discover specific immanent norms in that sphere of activity. In response, we propose that what is needed is to double down on the idealism of Critical Theory by taking seriously the sophisticated structure of agency developed in Hegel’s own account of freedom as self-determination. When we do so, we will see that the anti-metaphysical gestures of recent Critical Theory work in opposition to its attempts to develop immanent critique. In this paper we first briefly review Axel Honneth’s project as it concerns economic institutions and then respond by returning to the problem of freedom and articulating a view according to which the problem of individual self-determination and the problem of social production are the same problem seen from different angles. Then we briefly present Hegel’s own social theory from this perspective before moving on to trace the outlines of such a critical theory of contemporary capitalism