Elevating the Determinations of Thought Above this Anxious, Incomplete Standpoint: On Kant’s Concept of an Intuitive Understanding and its Articulation in Hegel’s Objective Thought

Abstract

In this paper, we show that Kant’s complex concept of an “intuitive understanding” (or in a broader sense “superior understanding”), which operates in his work as a tool for defining the peculiar character of our (human) understanding, is critically absorbed by Hegel’s concept of “objective thought.” By means of this concept, Hegel first rejects the representational (and classificatory) conception of thought that is implied by the Kantian concept of an intuitive understanding and, second, he proposes a way of comprehending thought that allows a new conception of the relationship between the subject and reality.