Hegel is usually thought of as defending an obscure metaphysics that claims reality is the manifestation of a collective mind, Geist. But, as Terry Pinkard argues, Hegel has a lot in common with the more "down-to-earth" movement of pragmatism. Geist doesn't need to be interpreted as one gigantic metaphysical entity, but as the collection of self-conscious individuals whose practices reveal that they are part of something greater. Following this approach, Hegel's idealist view of history as the development of our collective self-consciousness begins to make a lot more sense.

This is the second installment in our series on idealism, Mind & Reality, in partnership with the Essentia Foundation. Read the previous installment of the series, Parmenides: the first Idealist.

Hegelianism is often thought of as the super-theoretical German mishmash of absolutist philosophy that is great in theory but ridiculous in practice, whereas pragmatism is often thought of a kind of philosophical version of “who cares whether it’s true, the question is whether it works,” which is enough for some to reject it as crass and unphilosophical. Or, to reverse the joke ascribed to Sidney Morgenbesser: The problem with pragmatism is that it is great in practice but not in theory.

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Hegel often spoke as if he were a pragmatist avant la lettre. What we do with the words and thoughts makes an enormous difference to the very meaning of the concepts themselves.

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Given the diametrically opposed reputations these philosophical movements have, it might come as a surprise to many people just how close the two schools of thought actually are. Sure, people might know that Hegel influenced many of the early pragmatist thinkers, but the suggestion that he himself was a pragmatist of any sort has until very recently been out of bounds. That has all changed in the last couple of decades as many non-Hegelian pragmatists have been taking a new look at Hegelian thought, and Hegelians have been enticed to start working out an updated Hegelianism via a refreshed investigation of twentieth century pragmatism. Most recently, the noted contemporary philosopher of language, Robert Brandom, has taken to describing his own analytical work as pragmatist and Hegelian, a combination that only a few decades ago would have resulted in strict social sanctions against such intellectual heresy.

But this turn of fortune shouldn’t actually surprise anybody. If anything, Hegel shares with the pragmatists an opposition to misplaced abstraction in philosophical thought. "Man" as such doesn’t exist, he would tell his students, and “laws and principles have no immediate life or validity in themselves. The activity that puts them into operation … has its source in the needs, impulses, inclinations and passions of man.”