/pragmatica/

I see Hegel, already in the Phenomenology of Spirit of 1807, wrestling with a core of issues that we only recovered access to recently, largely through the efforts of the later Wittgenstein. I have in mind issues concerning the possibility of understanding conceptual objectivity in the context of a social practice account of the norms implicit in concept use. I also read Hegel as offering an inferentialist view of semantic content—and consequently, as the first philosopher to struggle with the nature and consquences of semantic holism. My interest is not at all antiquarian: I think we have a lot to learn from Hegel on issues of the first importance—issues that we by no means see our way to the bottom of today.