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Empty, Useless, and Dangerous? Recent Kantian Replies to the Empty Formalism Objection*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2013

Fabian Freyenhagen
Fabian Freyenhagen*
Affiliation:
University of Essex, f.frey@essex.ac.uk

Abstract

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Like two heavyweight boxers exchanging punches, but neither landing the knock-out blow, Kantians and Hegelians seem to be in a stand-off on what in contemporary parlance is known as the Empty Formalism Objection. Kant's ethics is charged with being merely formal and thereby failing to provide the kind of specific guidance that any defensible ethical system should have the resources to provide. Hegel is often credited with having formulated this objection in its most incisive way, and a wealth of Kantian responses has been deployed to answer it. In this paper, I take up the objection as it appears in §135R of Elements of the Philosophy of Right in order to scrutinise the contemporary debate between the two camps. I propose that there are, in fact, three different, albeit connected objections and examine (what I take to be) the best Kantian replies to them. I will not adjudicate which of these replies is the most accurate interpretation of Kant's texts, nor trace the particular historical context in which Hegel takes up Kant's ethics, nor the way the Empty Formalism Objection fits into Hegel's wider system. This is partly because of constraints of space, and partly because many of the contemporary Kantian replies — for better or for worse — treat the Empty Formalism Objection as a self-standing philosophical problem, irrespective of its historical context or systematic place in Hegel's theory. My limited aim here is to show that, even if one grants — for argument's sake — the legitimacy of such a non-contextual approach, significant difficulties remain.

Type
Research Article
Information
Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain , Volume 32 , Special Issue 1-2: Special Issue on Kant and Hegel , 2011 , pp. 163 - 186
Copyright
Copyright © The Hegel Society of Great Britain 2011

Footnotes

*

This paper substantially overlaps with my, ‘The Empty Formalism Objection Revisited: §135R and recent Kantian responses’, in T. Brooks (ed.) (2011), Hegel's Philosophy of Right: Essays on Ethics, Politics, and Law. Oxford: Blackwell. For comments and criticisms on earlier drafts, my thanks go to audiences at talks in Newcastle, Stirling, and Dublin, as well as at the Hegel Society of Great Britain and UK Kant Society 2010 Joint Conference in Oxford. Special thanks are due to Thom Brooks, Rowan Cruft, Katerina Deligiorgi, Wayne Martin, David McNeill, Bob Stern, Lea Ypi, and the fellow members of the Cambridge Forschungskolloquium (Manuel Dries, Martin Eichler, Raymond Geuss, Michael Hampe, Richard Raatzsch, Jörg Schaub, and Christian Skirke).

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