Sinn und Begriff

What role does our conceptual capacity play in the constitution and articulation of meaning? The book pursues this question by bringing Hegel and Heidegger into conversation. To frame this debate, it articulates a theory of negativity shared both by Hegel and Heidegger according to which concepts are at once revealing and concealing. In other words, concepts render beings intelligible by making abstraction of the source of their intelligibility. But while Hegel holds that meaning is disclosed only through concepts, Heidegger claims that concepts are entrapped in a historical paradigm and cannot recover the source of meaning. The book critically engages with this claim by distinguishing between our conceptual capacity and a conceptual apparatus. Drawing on Hegel, it explains that while a given conceptual apparatus is as such oblivious of its sources, its assumptions can be revealed and overcome by conceptual articulation. Our conceptual capacity, even if dependent on a parochial apparatus, enables us to question the concepts we inherit. The book argues that the meanings constituting our world can be actualized and enriched only through the conceptual articulation of human experience.