Hegel and the transformation of philosophical critique

In Part One, I reconstruct Hegel's objection to Kant's critical project by uncovering a relation between Kant's subjectivism and his methodological innovation of critique. By "subjectivism," I mean the relativization, in Kant's idealism, of our knowledge of objects to objects as they are for us, while things as they are in themselves (and, with them, the "objects" of metaphysics) are unknowable by us. Critique is pure reason's skeptical reflection on the standards of its knowledge, in advance of--as a prior condition of--the science of metaphysics. Hegel objects that Kant's subjectivism--and the corresponding skepticism regarding metaphysics--is not so much the result as the implicit presupposition of Kant's critical procedure.;In Part Two, I show how Hegel's epistemological project develops in response to Kant's critique. Initially, in his early Jena writings, Hegel simply rejects the epistemological demands of critique as inherently subjectivist. This rejection of critique is part of a rejection of what he identifies as characteristically modern epistemological practice in favor of an ancient model. Hegel's opposition to subjectivism is initially an opposition to the modern as such in philosophy.;However, in what constitutes a decisive turn in his thought, Hegel comes to recognize that Kant's critical demands arise from his discovery of subjectivity as self-legislating. Hegel recognizes that distinctively modern ideals of freedom which he endorses are implicated in the epistemological demands. Hence, critique becomes necessary for Hegel, and the problem with Kant's critique becomes that it fails, by presupposing subjectivism, to be fully critical.;I interpret Hegel's Phenomenology as the attempt to provide a complete critique. Hegel attempts to redeem the Kantian discovery of subjectivity as self-legislating from Kantian subjectivism. I argue that, in order for critique to avoid presupposing subjectivism, it is necessary that the standards we employ in the critical investigation be open to transformation through the investigation itself. The distinctive structure of Hegelian critique arises from this necessity. Since we are constituted through the laws of reason determined or legislated through this procedure, Hegel's critique requires that we be open to transformation through this self-reflection. I interpret Hegel's critique, against Kant's, as transformative.