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Abstract
Robert Brandom, John McDowell, and other recent analytic philosophers take Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s philosophy seriously. Brandom especially interprets Hegel as a pragmatist. According to Brandom’s critics, however, his pragmatic interpretation of Hegel’s philosophy is not accurate. They claim he ignores Hegel’s speculative logic which is usually understood as metaphysics. I agree with this criticism. In order to interpret Hegel’s philosophy as pragmatism, it is necessary to engage with his logic. In this article, I will therefore elucidate some of the pragmatic aspects of Hegel’s logic by examining his critique of traditional metaphysics and his interpretation of “Judgment (Urteil)” and “Notion (Begriff)” in the Science of Logic. I will highlight some common characteristics of Hegel’s pragmatic philosophy, including anti-mentalism, anti-representationalism, and anti-foundationalism. To conclude, I will suggest an interpretation of Hegel’s concept of “Notion” as social praxis which illustrates some commonalities between Hegel and the late Ludwig Wittgenstein.