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It is not enough to merely locate objects and concepts (properties) at the level of reference. If these are not to be merely two different kinds of thing-in-itself, we also need to locate propositional combinations of objects and concepts at that level. It is argued that semantical and metaphysical considerations oblige us to take this step beyond Frege. We should recognize the existence of both true and false propositions at the level of reference, and identify the world with the level of reference, so understood. That yields a good sense in which the world ‘speaks its own language’, an idea McDowell mentions only to reject. The resulting linguistic idealism, provides the only safe context in which a genuinely minimal empiricism can thrive.

This chapter considers in more detail the charge of arbitrariness lodged against Frege's philosophical grammar in Chapter 3. Frege conceives expressions and their referents to be arranged in linguistic and ontological hierarchies with saturated expressions (referents) located at the zeroth level. But rival linguistic and ontological hierarchies to Frege's can be constructed, which reverse the positions in the linguistic hierarchy of proper names and monadic concept-expressions, and correspondingly reverse the positions in the ontological hierarchy of their referents. This alternative strategy is connected with the Montague tradition in semantics. The relevant contributions of Ramsey and Dummett are discussed, answering the latter's objections to the viability of the alternative strategy to Frege's strategy (called the ‘anti-Fregean strategy’). Dummett's qualms are traced to a suspect conception of the relation between language and world, conflicting with the theoretical status of the reference relation and with linguistic idealism. In the remainder of the chapter, the so-called syntactic priority thesis is discussed, distinguishing it from linguistic idealism, and arguing that it is empty.

This chapter explores Hegel’s broad and unusual definition of idealism. Owing to the long history and varied subtypes of idealism furnished by preceding philosophers, much of Hegel’s energies are focused on contextualizing these various forms. Thus this chapter begins with a broad sketch of that project, showing how Hegel disentangled and crystallized various strains of thought on this subject. However, when it comes to the idealism of Hegel’s own time, his project is the opposite; he tries to run together approaches that are, even on the surface, not only different but opposed to one another. At its conclusion this chapter contemplates Hegel’s emphasis on the importance of linguistics in shaping cognition. This view—linguistic idealism—redirects philosophy’s search for origins away from transcendental faculties and toward the history not of what we can know but of what we can say: toward the evolution of our basic words.

The chapter offers an account of the rational application of a concept that respects the intuitive idea that rational judgement results from the interaction of understanding or grasp, together with background information and the thinker’s perceptions. The account is a form of truth-conditional account, on which understanding consists fundamentally in tacit knowledge of fundamental reference rules for concepts. The chapter argues for the explanatory power of such an account. The account also provides the resources for replying to Wright’s arguments that the intuitive conception is erroneous. It makes possible an account of the first-person phenomenon of knowing what one means. It allows us to steer a middle course between the two very unattractive positions of extreme Platonism and linguistic idealism. It leaves room for substantive philosophy of particular concepts and particular types of concepts.

This chapter introduces some concepts from the philosophy of language that will be important in the book: the theoreticity of the reference relation, the context principle; the distinction between sense and reference; and linguistic idealism. A provisional defence of linguistic idealism is given, and it is argued that this position is compatible with a common-sense realism about our answerability to the world; the favoured form of linguistic idealism is distinguished from pragmatism. The key point is that the world, though not textual, as some literary theorists have suggested, is propositionally structured, and so in some sense (a transcendental, not an empirical sense) a product of language. It consists of meanings, not signs (vehicles of meaning).

This chapter looks at poststructuralism: this tendency has two distinct strands, a meaning-theoretic one, namely deconstruction, and an ideological one, in the form of political (usually Marxist) criticism. The differences between linguistic idealism and deconstruction are revisited, and the question is addressed whether modern literary theory has lowered intellectual standards. Finally the issue of the politicization of literary criticism is reviewed, and it is argued that this trend wrongly instrumentalizes the study of literature. That study is a cognitively valuable activity which we should pursue in the confidence that all knowledge is grist to our mill; we should not elevate literary understanding above scientific understanding, but nor should we undervalue its benefits.

This chapter treats of deconstruction, which is distinguished from linguistic idealism. It is argued that deconstruction, unlike the linguistic idealism that the book favours, takes an implausible anti-realistic approach to both truth and meaning. Derrida’s conception of understanding is criticized in the context of an exposition of Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations. There is a discussion of the confusion between mention and use that is so prevalent in literary-theoretical works, and the curious reversion of deconstructionist critics to a Cartesian privacy about the mental. It is argued that the idea that readers are in dialogue with texts ignores the fact of the fixity of works and their meanings before readers read them: the business of establishing the text curtails some of the wilder flights of deconstructionist imagination. The procedure of fixing the text is illustrated from Horace, and the chapter concludes by showing that this process involves the hermeneutic circle, though not in a problematic way.

Hegel’s criticisms of Kant’s views on ontology often seem to obfuscate the source material or miss Kant’s point entirely, which has been duly observed by Barbara Herman, Karl Ameriks, and John Rawls among others. Yet many of these attempts to understand Hegel’s critique of Kant have viewed Hegel’s criticisms piecemeal, and on Kant’s terms. A more coherent path to understanding Hegel’s commentary on Kant must position his critique in the context of Hegel’s overall philosophical project. His stance on Kant indicates how he stands with respect to himself, and if his critique of Kant’s theoretical philosophy achieves nothing else, it teaches us about Hegel. That it achieves nothing else may indeed by the case.