We are pleased to inform that the 4th call for paper for the special issue of the International Journal of Philosophical Studies (2019) on the topic “Hegel and Sellars” is open.

The submission deadline is 31st July 2018.

You can find below the text of the call.

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In his well-known essay Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, Sellars notes that a logical positivist would see his project as “Méditations Hegeliennes”. This phrase, and the idea that Hegel precedes Sellars as a critic of the Myth of the Given, strongly suggest a close affinity between Hegel and Sellars. This affinity has been particularly influential for Robert Brandom, John McDowell, Willem deVries, Terry Pinkard, Paul Redding, and Kenneth Westphal.

Yet the affinity has been more often suggested than articulated in much detail, and the neo-Hegelianism of Brandom and McDowell might be seen as a radicalisation of Sellars’s more Kantian position in philosophy of mind and of language, rather than already implicit in Sellars himself.

We are interested in exploring the relation between Hegel and Sellars with regard to these issues.

In what sense is Sellars a Hegelian? To what extent is his work a continuation, expansion, or correction of Hegel? Are the similarities between them more superficial than deep? What might we learn from reading Hegel in light of Sellars, or conversely?

Possible topics may include:

1. To what extent (if any) is Hegel himself still committed to the Myth of the Given, as Sellars claims?

2. Why does Sellars think that a positivist would accuse him of being a Hegelian? To what extent does Sellars endorse or disavow that interpretation?

3. Do Brandom and/or McDowell develop a Hegelian critique of Sellars’s Kantian position? Or do they build on what is already Hegelian in Sellars?

4. In what ways does Sellars’s early analytic commitment to overcoming British idealism influence or shape his reading of Hegel?

Confirmed contributors: Willem deVries, Paul Redding, Luca Corti, Italo Testa, Dionysias Christias, and Carl Sachs.

Papers should be 9000 words maximum, exclusive of references, prepared for anonymous review with a separate cover page, and accompanied by an abstract of no more than 200 words.

The submission deadline is 31st July 2018. Please feel free to contact either of the guest editors in advance of submission: Paul Giladi (Manchester Metropolitan University); Carl Sachs (Marymount University).