Sublating Kant and the Old Metaphysics: A Reading of the Transition from Being to Essence in Hegel's Logic

Kant’s “transcendental” or “critical” philosophy is an instance of what can be called the “critique of immediacy.” As part of his critical project, Kant argues that one cannot merely assume that there is a reestablished harmony between thought and being. Instead, one must effect a “return to the subject” and examine the forms of thought themselves, in order to determine the extent to which thought and being are commensurable. As a result of his “transcendental turn,” Kant concludes that what at first appears as immediately given to thought is always already (at least partly) the result of some kind of activity or mediation on the part of the thought itself. Hegel approves of Kant’s critical orientation: Kant correctly demanded to know “how far the forms of thought were capable of leading to the knowledge of truth,” and correctly concluded that “the forms of thought must be made into an object of investigation.” However, for Hegel, the problem with Kant was that he aimed to examine the forms of thought as if they were necessarily separated from being itself. Thus the Kantian strategy, for Hegel, led to a twofold absurdly.