Hegel’s Reception and critique of Locke’s Metaphysics and Epistemology

Abstract

This article aims to understand Locke’s position in Hegel’s history of philosophy and to explain some of the most important criticisms which are addressed at him. We try to understand the ambivalent position Locke occupies in Hegel’s history, insofar as he is not considered as an empiricist opposed to rational metaphysics, but rather as instantiating a type of metaphysical empiricism. When treating Locke not as a representative of this type of empiricism, Hegel is mostly critical of Locke as an individual philosopher. This article attempts to unpack Hegel’s rejection of Locke’s understanding of mind, ideas and method. Whilst Hegel’s reading is not always entirely charitable, these criticisms enable us to understand why Locke’s theory of experience and understanding are a counter-model for Hegel’s own theory of cognition and epistemology. Like empiricism more generally for Hegel, Locke is interested in universals, however we will show, that his conceptions of the mind, its operations, and the methods of philosophy, entail a rather poor conception of generality, a self-contradictory stance for empiricist realism and thus a lack epistemological self-reflectivity.