Abstract

This thesis examines the necessity inhering in the organizing principles of thought. Traditionally that which achieves this function is the category. Hegel transforms this notion with a conception of immanent determination. The procedure for this undertaking is a comparison of Kant's deduced category with Hegel's transformation in which the conception of the unity of self-consciousness is pivotal to the divergence in their respective positions. ;The first half presents an exposition of Kant's transcendental deduction of the categories. The division of the classes of categories into mathematical and dynamical is found to have special significance for the effective force of the deduction. Since only the mathematical classes determine the object for knowledge through their unification of the sensuous manifold and the establishment of precisely this activity is the achievement of the deduction, the dynamical categories derive their necessity from another source, unexplicated by Kant. ;The second half of the thesis shows how Hegel's conception of the unity of self-consciousness enables the generation of content for thought about itself. This is denied to Kant by his restriction to the unification of the sensuous manifold, in other words, mathematically synthesized unification, for the source of legitimate content for knowledge. Hegel's universalization of the unifying activity of thought subverts the significance of Kant's mathematical/dynamical distinction, creating the possibility for a grounded science of thought