Philosophy and Social Science: An Inquiry into Hegelian Methodology

FAIN: FR-10370-78

E. Stuart Dalrymple
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Newark (Newark, NJ 07104-3010)

To do a study of Hegel who, of all the social philosophers in early 19th century Germany, was the one most concerned with the unity of philosophy and empirical knowledge and the analysis of social phenomena. Marx, for all his empirical powers, never clarified his philosophical presuppositions. Kant remained trapped between apriori and aposteriori, regulative and constitutive principles. Hegel alone attempted a methodology in which empirical data was, in part, constitutive of philosophical theory. Study is prompted by fact that in many Marxist circles there has been a return, if not to Hegel, at least to general idealistic roots.