The Owl of Minerva

Volume 42, Issue 1/2, 2010/2011

Hegel and Analytic Philosophy of Action

A primary fault line in the analytic philosophy of action is the debate between causal/Davidsonian and interpretivist/Anscombian theories of action. The fundamental problem of the former is producing a criterion for distinguishing intentional from non-intentional causal chains; the fundamental problem of the latter is producing an account of the relation between reasons and actions that is represented by the ‘because’ in the claim that the agent acted because she had the reason. It is argued that Hegel’s conception of teleology can be used to develop the interpretivist position by solving both its and the causal theory’s fundamental problems.