Sally Sedgwick presents a fresh account of Hegel's critique of Kant's theoretical philosophy. She argues that Hegel offers a compelling critique of and alternative to the conception of cognition that Kant defended in his 'Critical' period, and explores Hegel's claim to derive from Kantian doctrines clues to a superior form of idealism.

From the various discussions of Kant’s theoretical philosophy throughout Hegel’s works, it is not difficult to come away with the impression that Hegel thinks that the Kantian categories are derived from experience, and that the method of a “transcendental” investigation of the forms of subjectivity is nothing other than that of generalization upon observation. As early as the 1802-03 essay, Faith and Knowledge, for example, he characterizes the critical philosophy as the “completion and idealization” of Lockean “empirical psychology.” In § (...) 41 of the Encyclopedia he tells us that Kant’s systematization of the “special forms of the a priori element … of thought … is solely based upon psychological and historical grounds.” Moreover, in the Lectures on the History of Philosophy, he refers to Kant as going “psychologically,” i.e., “historically,” to work in his accounts of intuition, understanding, and reason in a manner that is “entirely empirical, and not developed out of the concept.”. (shrink)

In paragraph 135 of the Philosophy of Right Hegel formulates his well-known objection to the" empty formalism" of Kant's theory of morality:"[I] f the definition of duty is taken to be the absence of contradiction," he tells us,"... then no transition is possible to the specification ..