McDowell’s Hegel: Quietism versus the Dialectic

John McDowell interprets Hegel from his Wittgensteinian quietist position. McDowell’s quietism, unlike some past versions, does not see philosophical problems as pseudo-problems but as real problems which vanish when sufficiently worked through. McDowell’s application of this to the “Consciousness” and “Self-Consciousness” sections of the Phenomenology are revealing, but they founder ultimately on Hegel’s conception of self-consciousness as “infinity.” In part, this fails because it pushes him, as it has many interpreters of Hegel who wish to make him representative of some other favored philosophical approach, into seeing Hegel’s arguments as only “allegories” of favored philosophical positions.