Hegel's Anti-Reductionist Philosophy of Nature

I interpret Hegel’s philosophy of nature as a systematically anti-reductionist account of nature. That is, I argue that, for Hegel, there are multiple levels of nature which are not reducible to each other and require concepts appropriate for each level in order to fully understand phenomena characteristic for that level. In chapter 1, I trace the historical roots of Hegel’s philosophy of nature, starting from the problem with the status of organic phenomena in the eighteenth century science and in Kant’s philosophy. I also examine Schelling’s response to this problem and Hegel’s critique of Schelling. In chapter 2, I critically discuss some prominent interpretations of Hegel’s logic and, in chapter 3, I defend an interpretation of this logic as providing an account of the structure of the object at an abstract level. In chapter 4, I discuss general problems of Hegel’s philosophy of nature and the issue of its relation to his logic. I argue that it presents an a priori derivation of specifically natural-philosophical categories which capture determinations of natural objects starting from the more abstract to the more concrete. The next two chapters present, respectively, accounts of Hegel’s philosophy of inorganic and organic nature. In chapter 5, I argue that Hegel’s account of inorganic nature shows that the more abstract determinations of every natural object explanatorily depend on the more concrete determinations. Because of this, a reduction of the more concrete properties of objects to their more abstract properties is impossible. Hegel therefore rejects standard reductionist programs such as the mechanicist philosophy of the early modern period. In chapter 6, I discuss Hegel’s account of organic nature and show that the latter cannot be understood in terms of the categories proper to inorganic nature. Rather, it must involve teleological categories in order to fully capture what is intelligible about natural organisms. I compare Hegel’s position with Kant’s treatment of organisms, and show that, in its core, it is not vitalist. I finally argue that Hegel’s account provides a philosophical foundation for the anti-reductionist and pluralist position with respect to empirical sciences