Routledge History of Philosophy Volume VI The Age of German Idealism - Robert C.Solomon

Routledge History of Philosophy Volume VI The Age of German Idealism - Robert C.Solomon

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Routledge History of Philosophy
Volume VI
The turn of the nineteenth century marked a rich and exciting explosion of
philosophical energy and talent. The enormity of the revolution set off in
philosophy by Immanuel Kant was comparable, by Kant’s own estimation,
with the Copernican Revolution that ended the middle ages. The
movement he set in motion, the fast-moving and often cantankerous
dialectic of “German Idealism,” inspired some of the most creative
philosophers in modern times: including G.W.F.Hegel and Arthur
Schopenhauer as well as those who reacted against them—Marx and
Kierkegaard, for example.
This volume traces the emergence of German Idealism from Kant and
his predecessors through the first half of the nineteenth century, ending
with the “irrationalism” of Kierkegaard. Each chapter has been written by
a distinguished scholar in the field, and contributors include Lewis White
Beck (on the German background), Daniel Bonevac, Don Becker, Patrick
Gardiner (on Kant), Daniel Breazeale (on Fichte and Schelling), Robert
C.Solomon, Willem deVries and Leo Rauch (on Hegel), Kathleen
M.Higgins (on Schopenhauer), Robert Nola (on the Young Hegelians,
including Marx) and Judith Butler (on Kierkegaard).
The Age of German Idealism provides a broad, scholarly introduction
to the period for students of philosophy and related disciplines, as well as
some original interpretations of these authors. It includes a glossary of
technical terms and a chronological table of philosophical, scientific and
other important cultural events.
Robert C.Solomon is Quincey Lee Centennial Professor of Philosophy
at the University of Texas at Austin. Kathleen M.Higgins is Associate
Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin.

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Routledge History of Philosophy
General editors—G.H.R.Parkinson and
S.G.Shanker
The Routledge History of Philosophy provides a chronological survey of
the history of Western philosophy, from its beginnings in the sixth century
BC to the present time. It discusses all major philosophical developments
in depth. Most space is allocated to those individuals who, by common
consent, are regarded as great philosophers. But lesser figures have not
been neglected, and together the ten volumes of the History include basic
and critical information about every significant philosopher of the past
and present. These philosophers are clearly situated within the cultural
and, in particular, the scientific context of their time.
The History is intended not only for the specialist, but also for the
student and the general reader. Each chapter is by an acknowledged
authority in the field. The chapters are written in an accessible style and a
glossary of technical terms is provided in each volume.

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Routledge History of Philosophy
Volume VI
The Age of German
Idealism
EDITED BY
Robert C.Solomon
and
Kathleen M.Higgins
London and New York

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First published 1993
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004.
© 1993 Robert C.Solomon, Kathleen M.Higgins, and individual contributors
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Age of German Idealism—(Routledge History of Philosophy Series; Vol. 6)
I. Solomon, Robert C.
II. Higgins, Kathleen M. III. Series 190.9
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
The Age of German idealism/ed. Robert C.Solomon and Kathleen M.Higgins
p. cm.—(Routledge history of philosophy; v. 6)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Philosophy, German—18th century. 2. Philosophy, German—19th
century. 3. Idealism—History—18th century. 4. Idealism—
History—19th century. I. Solomon, Robert C. II. Higgins,
Kathleen Marie. III. Series.
B2615.A35 1993
141'.0943–dc20 92–32040
ISBN 0-203-03061-3 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-06007-5 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-05604-7 (Print Edition)

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Contents
General editors’ preface
vii
Notes on contributors
x
Chronology
xiii
Introduction
Robert C.Solomon and
Kathleen M.Higgins
1
1 From Leibniz to Kant
Lewis White Beck
5
2 Kant’s Copernican revolution
Daniel Bonevac
40
3 Kant’s moral and political philosophy
Don Becker
68
4 Kant: Critique of Judgement
Patrick Gardiner
103
5 Fichte and Schelling: the Jena period
Daniel Breazeale
138
6 Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit
Robert C.Solomon
181
7 Hegel’s logic and philosophy of mind
Willem deVries
216
8 Hegel, spirit, and politics
Leo Rauch
254
v

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CONTENTS
9 The Young Hegelians, Feuerbach, and Marx
Robert Nola
290
10 Arthur Schopenhauer
Kathleen M.Higgins
330
11 Kierkegaard’s speculative despair
Judith Butler
363
Glossary
396
Index
404
vi

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General editors’ preface
The history of philosophy, as its name implies, represents a union of two
very different disciplines, each of which imposes severe constraints upon
the other. As an exercise in the history of ideas, it demands that one
acquire a “period eye”: a thorough understanding of how the thinkers
whom it studies viewed the problems which they sought to resolve, the
conceptual frameworks in which they addressed these issues, their
assumptions and objectives, their blind spots and miscues. But as an
exercise in philosophy, we are engaged in much more than simply a
descriptive task. There is a crucial critical aspect to our efforts: we are
looking for the cogency as much as the development of an argument, for
its bearing on questions which continue to preoccupy us as much as the
impact which it may have had on the evolution of philosophical thought.
The history of philosophy thus requires a delicate balancing act from its
practitioners. We read these writings with the full benefit of historical
hindsight. We can see why the minor contributions remained minor and
where the grand systems broke down: sometimes as a result of internal
pressures, sometimes because of a failure to overcome an insuperable
obstacle, sometimes because of a dramatic technological or sociological
change, and, quite often, because of nothing more than a shift in
intellectual fashion or interests. Yet, because of our continuing
philosophical concern with many of the same problems, we cannot afford
to look dispassionately at these works. We want to know what lessons are
to be learned from the inconsequential or the glorious failures; many times
we want to plead for a contemporary relevance in the overlooked theory
or to reconsider whether the “glorious failure” was indeed such or simply
ahead of its time: perhaps even ahead of its author.
We find ourselves, therefore, much like the mythical “radical
translator” who has so fascinated modern philosophers, trying to
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GENERAL EDITOR’S PREFACE
understand an author’s ideas in his and his culture’s eyes, and, at the same
time, in our own. It can be a formidable task. Many times we fail in the
historical undertaking because our philosophical interests are so strong, or
lose sight of the latter because we are so enthralled by the former. But the
nature of philosophy is such that we are compelled to master both
techniques. For learning about the history of philosophy is not just a
challenging and engaging pastime: it is an essential element in learning
about the nature of philosophy—in grasping how philosophy is intimately
connected with and yet distinct from both history and science.
The Routledge History of Philosophy provides a chronological survey
of the history of Western philosophy, from its beginnings up to the present
time. Its aim is to discuss all major philosophical developments in depth,
and, with this in mind, most space has been allocated to those individuals
who, by common consent, are regarded as great philosophers. But lesser
figures have not been neglected, and it is hoped that the reader will be able
to find, in the ten volumes of the History, at least basic information about
any significant philosopher of the past or present.
Philosophical thinking does not occur in isolation from other human
activities, and this History tries to situate philosophers within the cultural,
and in particular the scientific, context of their time. Some philosophers,
indeed, would regard philosophy as merely ancillary to the natural
sciences; but even if this view is rejected, it can hardly be denied that the
sciences have had a great influence on what is now regarded as
philosophy, and it is important that this influence should be set forth
clearly. Not that these volumes are intended to provide a mere record of
the factors that influenced philosophical thinking; philosophy is a
discipline with its own standards of argument, and the presentation of the
ways in which these arguments have developed is the main concern of this
History.
In speaking of “what is now regarded as philosophy”, we may have
given the impression that there now exists a single view of what
philosophy is. This is certainly not the case; on the contrary, there exist
serious differences of opinion, among those who call themselves
philosophers, about the nature of their subject. These differences are
reflected in the existence at the present time of two main schools of
thought, usually described as “analytic” and “continental” philosophy. It
is not our intention, as general editors of this History, to take sides in this
dispute. Our attitude is one of tolerance, and our hope is that these
volumes will contribute to an understanding of how philosophers have
reached the positions which they now occupy.
One final comment. Philosophy has long been a highly technical
subject, with its own specialized vocabulary. This History is intended not
only for the specialist but also for the general reader. To this end, we have
viii

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GENERAL EDITOR’S PREFACE
tried to ensure that each chapter is written in an accessible style; and since
technicalities are unavoidable, a glossary of technical terms is provided in
each volume. In this way these volumes will, we hope, contribute to a
wider understanding of a subject which is of the highest importance to all
thinking people.
G.H.R.Parkinson
S.G.Shanker
ix

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Notes on contributors
Lewis White Beck is Burbank Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the
University of Rochester. His works include A Commentary on Kant’s
Critique of Practical Reason (1961), Studies in the Philosophy of Kant
(1965), Early German Philosophy: Kant and his Predecessors (1969), The
Actor and the Spectator (1975), Critique of Practical Reason and Other
Writings in Moral Philosophy (1976), and Essays on Kant and Hume
(1978).
Daniel Bonevac (Ph.D. Pittsburgh, 1980) is Professor and Chair of the
Department of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the
author of Reduction in the Abstract Sciences (1982), Deduction (1987),
and The Art and Science of Logic (1990); the editor of Today’s Moral
Issues (1991); and a co-editor of Beyond the Western Tradition (1992). He
has published articles on Kant, metaphysics, semantics, and philosophical
logic.
Donald Becker is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Texas at Austin.
Patrick Gardiner is an Emeritus Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and
a Fellow of the British Academy. His publications include The Nature of
Historical Explanation (1952), Schopenhauer (1963), and Kierkegaard
(1988). He has edited Theories of History (1959), Nineteenth-Century
Philosophy (1969), and The Philosophy of History (1974).
Daniel Breazeale is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Kentucky.
His publications include Philosophy and Truth: Selections from
Nietzsche’s Notebooks of the Early 1870s (1979), and Fichte, Early
Philosophical Writings (1988).
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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Robert C.Solomon is Quincy Lee Centennial Professor of Philosophy at
the University of Texas at Austin. His publications include In the Spirit of
Hegel (1983), From Hegel to Existentialism (1987), Continental
Philosophy since 1750 (1988), and A Passion for Justice (1990).
Willem deVries is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of
New Hampshire. He is author of Hegel’s Theory of Mental Activity: An
Introduction to Theoretical Spirit (1988).
Leo Rauch is Professor of Philosophy at Babson College. His publications
include The Political Animal: Studies in Political Philosophy from
Macbiavelli to Marx (1981), Hegel and the Human Spirit: A Translation
of the Jena Lectures on the Philosophy of Spirit (1805–6) with
Commentary (1983), and Introduction to the Philosophy of History, with
Selections from The Philosophy of Right (1988).
Robert Nola teaches philosophy at the University of Auckland. Most of
his published work is in the philosophy of science. He has also published
several papers on Plato, Marx, Nietzsche, and the sociology of scientific
knowledge.
Kathleen M.Higgins is Associate Professor at the University of Texas at
Austin. She is author of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra (1987) and The Music of
our Lives (1991). She is also co-editor of Reading Nietzsche (1988), The
Philosophy of (Erotic) Love (1991), and Thirteen Questions in Ethics
(1992).
Judith Butler is Professsor of Humanities at Johns Hopkins University and
the author of Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-
Century France (1987), and Gender Trouble: Feminism and the
Subversion of Identity (1990).
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Chronology
Unless otherwise specified, the dates assigned to books or articles are the
dates of publication, and the dates assigned to musical or stage works are
those of first performance. The titles of works not written in English have
been translated, unless they are better known in their original form.
xiii

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CHRONOLOGY
xiv

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CHRONOLOGY
xv

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CHRONOLOGY
xvi

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xvii

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xviii

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CHRONOLOGY
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CHRONOLOGY
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CHRONOLOGY
xxi

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CHRONOLOGY
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CHRONOLOGY
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CHRONOLOGY
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CHRONOLOGY
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Introduction
Robert C.Solomon and Kathleen
M.Higgins
The turn of the nineteenth century marked one of the richest and most
exciting explosions of philosophical energy and talent, perhaps even
comparable to the generation that gave birth to Socrates, Plato, and
Aristotle. The enormity of the revolution set off in philosophy by
Immanuel Kant was comparable, by Kant’s own estimation, to the
Coperaican revolution that ended the Middle Ages. The movement he set
in motion, the fast-moving and often cantankerous dialectic of “German
Idealism,” inspired some of the most creative philosophers in modern
times, including G.W.F.Hegel and Arthur Schopenhauer, not to mention
the philosophers he inspired in opposition to him (Kierkegaard and Marx,
for example) and virtually every major movement in the twentieth century,
including analytic philosophy and idealism in Britain and America,
phenomenology and existentialism in France and Germany, and much of
the recent philosophy in Japan. Kant is often depicted as appearing
virtually out of nowhere (in the far East Prussian town of Kønigsberg) to
resolve several long-standing disputes in French and British philosophy,
embracing the competing traditions of rationalism and empiricism. But the
philosophical climate in German-speaking Europe was as vibrant with
conversation and controversy as the more cosmopolitan centers of London
and Paris, and one can fully understand the excitement and the brilliance
of the birth of German Idealism by first appreciating the intellectual fervor
surrounding and preceding Kant. The chapter that opens this volume, by
the distinguished Kant scholar Lewis White Beck, explains that fervor and
the philosophers who were part of it. It is in that context, too, that one
can appreciate the continuing debates and battles that follow Kant.
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THE AGE OF GERMAN IDEALISM
Indeed, much of the history of nineteenth-century philosophy in Germany
can be summarized as the attempt to continue,improve on, defend, or
demolish the philosophical rationalism established by Kant.
Kant’s first appearance in philosophy was a professional but not
particularly distinguished dissertation published in 1770, when the
philosophy professor was already nearing 50. It caused some local
controversy, but it is remembered and of interest today only in the
reflected light of the great works that were to follow. Among these were
three remarkable and remarkably difficult Critiques, the Critique of Pure
Reason (1781), the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), and the Critique
of Judgment (1790). The first Critique examined the capacities and
limitations of reason and the necessary conditions for knowledge. The
second explored and defended the concept of morality and autonomy in
human action. The third, intended to be a synthesis of the first two and
bring “the entire critical undertaking to a close,” included wide-ranging
discussions of aesthetic taste, and the concept of teleology in the biological
sciences. Together, the three Critiques established philosophy as a new
profession, and it is often said that Kant was its first true professor. The
difficulty of the Critiques was more than compensated for by their
brilliance and their importance. The Critique of Pure Reason in particular
has often been called the most important philosophical text of modern
times. Daniel Bonevac, in his essay on the first Critique, suggests that no
one can call him-or herself a philosopher today without first mastering, or
at least coming to terms with, that book.
Kant was an unabashed rationalist, a designation that will be explored
in some depth in the chapters to follow. Although his first Critique
announces itself as a “criticism” that is intended to show the limits of
reason, he leaves no doubt that he is, first and foremost, a defender of
reason, the essentially human faculty. But Kant’s rationalism and the
various conceptions of reason and rationality explored by the various
German Idealists must be viewed against a background of religious piety
and, in some instances, anti-rationalism. Kant himself was a pious
Lutheran and sought to bring reason and faith together, defending faith
itself as a rational attitude. But surrounding Kant were several
philosophers who denied both the supremacy of reason and the rationality
of faith, among them Jacobi and Hamann, who was one of Kant’s best
friends in Kønigsberg. So, too, that movement called “the Enlightenment,”
which took reason as its guide and found in Kant its most eloquent
German defender, encountered stiff resistance and opposition in Germany.
Herder attacked the Enlightenment in the name of what we would now
call “multiculturalism,” defending the distinctive features of German
culture. Many of the German Idealists following Kant nevertheless turned
a skeptical eye on the Enlightenment, which many of them considered
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INTRODUCTION
overly utilitarian and insufficiently attentive to spiritual matters. Early in
the nineteenth century, Fichte and Hegel would defend their concepts of
reason against a growing school of romantic philosophers, incorporating
many of their ideas and images in their philosophy. Their colleague
Friedrich Schelling would actually join and lead the romantics in their
critique of the Enlightenment, and by the end of the first decade or so of
the new century the concepts of both reason and Enlightenment had been
hopelessly muddied. By the middle of the century, Kant’s celebrated
faculty of reason had been attacked from all sides, by his self-proclaimed
followers who altered it beyond recognition, by the young materialists
Feuerbach and Marx who insisted that reason was secondary to the
necessities of life even in the realm of thought, by the German Idealist
Arthur Schopenhauer who demonstrated at great length the primacy and
the irrationality of the Will, by the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard who
rejected the very idea of a rational explanation of human life or a rational
defense of Christianity. Indeed, if there is a single concern that ties
together all of the figures and the chapters of this volume, it is the nature
and place of reason in human affairs.
In the chapters to follow, we have allowed each author their own voice.
As the themes, the philosophers, and their books vary, so do the
approaches and styles that seem appropriate. Thus the chapter on German
philosophy before Kant by Lewis White Beck is historically oriented, while
Daniel Bonevac’s chapter on Kant’s first Critique is an unusually clear
exposition and explanation of the strategy and difficulties of that text.
Don Becker interprets Kant’s well-known moral philosophy in the context
of his less familiar political philosophy, while Patrick Gardiner explains
how Kant attempts to bridge the “two jurisdictions” of the first two
Critiques with his aesthetic conception of universal subjective judgments
and teleological explanations in the Critique of Judgment. Daniel
Breazeale introduces the complex philosophy of Fichte and Schelling,
emphasizing the early works in Jena, the site of many of the new century’s
most dramatic philosophical innovations, and Robert Solomon traces a
path through Hegel’s notoriously labyrinthine Phenomenology of Spirit.
Willem deVries describes Hegel’s attempt to derive metaphysics from logic,
traces the development of that logic, and evaluates its success. Leo Rauch
explores Hegel’s “philosophy of objective spirit” and the emergence of
freedom and reason through history, especially in his Philosophy of Right.
Robert Nola describes the philosophical turmoil following Hegel’s death
in 1831 and the emergence of “the young Hegelians,” especially Marx and
Feuerbach. Kathleen Higgins sympathetically discusses the pessimism of
the crankiest Kantian, Arthur Schopenhauer, and, finally, Judith Butler
discusses the despair of the Danish “existentialist” Søren Kierkegaard.
While the chapters were prepared separately, there are many points of
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THE AGE OF GERMAN IDEALISM
contact and contrast—for instance, between the logical analysis of
concepts in Kant, Fichte, and Hegel, the aesthetics of Kant, Schopenhauer,
and Kierkegaard, and the political philosophies of Kant, Hegel, and Marx.
We are deeply indebted to all of our contributors and grateful both for
their good scholarship and for their respect for our deadlines. The volume
is, we think, a feast of interpretation and commentary, and we hope that
the reader enjoys reading it as much as we have enjoyed putting it
together.
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CHAPTER 1
From Leibniz to Kant
Lewis White Beck
INTRODUCTION
Had Kant not lived, German philosophy between the death of Leibniz in
1716 and the end of the eighteenth century would have little interest for
us, and would remain largely unknown. In Germany between Leibniz and
Kant there was no world-class philosopher of the stature of Berkeley,
Hume, Reid, Rousseau, Vico, or Condillac. The life and philosophy of
Kant, however, raised some not-quite-first-class philosophers to historical
importance. The fame of these men is parasitic upon Kant’s greater fame.
There were philosophers who did not achieve even this derivative fame,
for not all roads led from Leibniz to Kant. I think, nevertheless, that we
can best orient ourselves in a brief account of eighteenth-century German
philosophy by seeing it as a preparation for Kant.
Leibniz was the last great philosophical system-builder of the
seventeenth century, and his bold speculations and systematic wholeness
were more characteristic of the seventeenth- than of the eighteenth-
century philosophers. His peers were Descartes, Malebranche, Arnauld,
Hobbes, Locke, and Spinoza, and in comprehensiveness and variety of
genius he surpassed each of them. His system had an answer to almost
every question put to it; he was said to be “an academy of science all by
himself,” and the principal objection to his grand baroque philosophical
system was that it was—simply unbelievable. To accept it all would have
required a speculative faith and a blind confidence in the metaphysical
powers of the human mind that few philosophers of the eighteenth century
could muster.
Christian Wolff, his most important disciple, did not make a summa of
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THE AGE OF GERMAN IDEALISM
Leibniz’s philosophy, but both his followers and opponents saw Wolff as
doing precisely that. They accordingly called his philosophy the
“Leibniz-Wolffian philosophy,” a name which has become fixed in spite of
both Leibniz and Wolff ’s renunciation of it. Modern scholarship shows
the degree to which this tide is inappropriate,1 yet the Leibniz-Wolffian
philosophy was the dominant intellectual system and movement in
Germany from about 1720 to about 1754, the death of Wolff, and it
provided the main opposition to Kant’s philosophy until near the end of
the century. The rise and fall of the Leibniz-Wolffian philosophy in its
controversies with its opponents is the subject matter of this chapter. I deal
almost exclusively with topics now important chiefly for an understanding
of Kant and German Idealism.
But before we turn to these topics, something must be said about the
general climate of opinion in Germany at this time. In all Protestant
countries of western Europe, there was an intellectual awakening called
the Enlightenment. “Enlightenment,” Kant wrote, “is man’s release from
his self-incurred tutelage.” Tutelage is allowing or requiring someone else
to do one’s thinking, and it is self-incurred because most human beings do
not develop the skill and the courage to use their own reason. They
surrender their freedom to those who will think for them in matters
political, religious, and moral. Kant did not believe he lived in “an
enlightened age,” but did say he lived in an “age of enlightenment” when
progress was being made to independent thought. But the specific forms
that Enlightenment took varied from country to country; it depended
upon the particular form of tutelage in each country, from which thinkers
strove to emancipate themselves.
The German Enlightenment took place in a feudal environment of scores
of small absolute monarchies in which Lutheran passive obedience and the
eye of the local monarch ensured that the established order of things was
regarded with sacred awe by the Bürger.2 While the philosophes of France
were not merely anti-clerical but also antireligious (materialists, atheists,
freethinkers, skeptics), what was unique to the German Enlightenment was
that it originally had a profoundly religious motive.
Pietism was a religious awakening at the end of the seventeenth century
which had much in common with the persecuted Jansenist sect in France
and the Methodist movement still to come in England. Pietism meant a
return to a simpler form of Lutheranism, emphasizing the emotional and
moral rather than the ritual and dogmatic aspects of the established
churches. Instead of churches, there were evening gatherings in the homes
of individual Pietists for communal devotion; every man was a priest,
drawing inspiration from his own reading of scripture and applying its
lessons to everyday life. Though the movement was not free of irrational
elements, it was enlightened in encourag-ing its members not to defer to
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FROM LEIBNIZ TO KANT
someone else who would do their thinking for them. Naturally all this
produced plurality of opinion and diversity of faith, but its emphasis upon
good works (establishing schools and orphanages, for instance) brought it
in line with the Enlightenment movement in other countries where the
motivation was perhaps more intellectual and political.
There were, in fact, two Enlightenments in Germany. Besides the
intellectual Enlightenment pursued by the Leibniz-Wolffian philosophers,
there was also a Pietistic Enlightenment. Surprisingly they both originated
in the same place, the University of Halle, a Pietistic institution founded by
the Elector of Brandenburg primarily for the training of the bureaucracy
required by this largest and most important German state.
The father of the Pietistic Enlightenment was Christian Thomasius
(1655–1728), who had been banished from Saxony on religious grounds.
Thomasius was an active reformer but not a deep philosopher. His ideal of
education was that it raise not the cloistered scholar but the honnête
homme, imitating France in “polite learning, beauty of mind, good taste,
and gallantry.” In order to reach a larger audience, he lectured and wrote
most of his books in German, not Latin. He claimed academic freedom,
taught religious toleration, and attempted to reform legal practices by
outlawing torture and removing heresy and witchcraft from the reach of
the law. As a Pietist he did not doubt the authority and authenticity of
revelation, but he established the basis of law in ethics, ultimately in
reason and experience. Pietism is almost always associated with an occult
and quasi-mystical philosophy of nature, and this kept the German
Enlightenment Pietists from participating in the great scientific revolution
at the end of the seventeenth century.
Unfortunately Wolff and Thomasius were on a collision course.
Intellectually they were not in serious disagreement on most substantive
questions (though their interests were widely divergent). Personally their
relations were correct, though not close. Thomasius apparently took no
part in the ignoble campaign which drove Wolff from Halle just as he had
himself been driven from Leipzig. But their disciples carried on a running
controversy for the next forty years, and it was marked by odium
theologicum and general nastiness on both sides.
WOLFF
Life and works
Christian Wolff was born in Breslau in 1679. With support from Leibniz
he was appointed lecturer in mathematics at the University of Leipzig in
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THE AGE OF GERMAN IDEALISM
1702 and, four years later, professor of mathematics at the University of
Halle. Wolff was no creative mathematician, but he found in mathematics
the model for rigorous thinking in other fields. In this he simply followed
the lead of Descartes and Leibniz.
Soon Wolff was teaching and writing philosophy, philosophy then
meaning both the natural sciences and the subject which is today called
philosophy. He published copiously on the experimental sciences and also
on logic, metaphysics, cosmology, psychology, political theory, and natural
theology in a series of large German books, most of which were entitled
Vernünftige Gedanken (“Rational Thoughts”) on the different areas of
knowledge.3 The contents and expository skill of these books led to their
widespread acceptance as textbooks. His successes in publishing
extensively used books, and his victories in the annual competition for
paying students, incited intense rivalry between Wolff and the less
successful Thomasian Pietist professors. They seized the opportunity to
charge Wolff with heresy when he held, in a public lecture as rector of the
university, that the resemblances between Chinese and Western ethics
showed that ethics was based on universal human reason and human
nature, not on divine revelation vouchsafed only to Western civilization.
They represented to the King of Prussia, Frederick William I, that Wolff ’s
determinism and fatalism meant that he should not punish deserters from
his army because, being determined, they could not have helped doing
what they had in fact done.
Enraged by this lèse-majesté, the choleric King dismissed Wolff and
threatened to hang him in forty-eight hours if he was still on Prussian soil.
Wolff had already received a call from the Calvinist University of Marburg,
which he now accepted. He taught in Marburg for seventeen years. Heard by
an international student body, more of whom could understand Latin than
German, he repeated and expanded his series of Vernünftige Gedanken into
large volumes of scholastic Latin addressed to an international readership. So
great was his fame, and so scandalous had been the behavior of Frederick
William I and his “Tobacco Cabinet,” that efforts were repeatedly made to
recall him to Prussia. He returned only in 1740 when the new King, Frederick
the Great, made him chancellor of the University of Halle and granted him a
patent of nobility and a large stipend. At the time of his death in 1754 he was
certainly the best-known thinker in Germany, fully deserving the honorific
title of Praeceptor Germaniae.
The mathematical ideal in philosophy4
Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz all shared a common ideal for
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philosophy, that it should attain the clarity and certainty hitherto available
only in mathematics. Wolff is quite explicit about the relation of
mathematics to philosophy. “The rules of mathematical method,” he says,5
are the same as the rules of philosophical method…. The identity of
philosophical and mathematical method will be a surprise only to
one who does not know the common source from which the rules of
both mathematics and philosophy are derived.
This common source is “true logic” or “natural logic” of the workings of
the human mind, not a finished logic which is itself a science.
Lest the identity of philosophy and mathematics appear to be wholly
quixotic, it is essential to remember that “philosophy” and “mathematics”
did not then mean exactly what they mean now. Philosophy, well into the
eighteenth century, included the sciences; and though work of the highest
kind in pure mathematics was being performed by Leibniz and Lambert
and others, the mathematics that was the cultural model for the
Enlightenment was applied (or, as it was then called, “mixed”)
mathematics. Wolff’s mathematical works contain far more information
about astronomy, meteorology, geodesies, and even architecture than they
do topics in pure mathematics. The root idea of the mathematical model is
that computation and measurement are essential to any body of advanced
scientific knowledge.
In the true method, formulated by Descartes and followed with little
change by Wolff, everything certain in our thoughts depends upon the
order of our thoughts, a step-wise procedure of moving from the simplest
and most indubitable to the less certain and more problematical.
Mathematics begins with définitions, proceeds to fundamental principles
(axioms), and thence to theorems and problems (constructions). The
product of a définition is a clear and distinct idea, evident to attention and
communicable to others. Mathematical theorems are demonstrated by
analysis of the contents of definitions and axioms, demonstration taking
the form of showing that an alternative to a true theorem is self-
contradictory or contradictory to another established truth.
In the syllabus for his mathematics lectures in 17316 Wolff tried to
show both the importance and the inadequacy of mathematical
knowledge. Mathematics deals only with the observable phenomena in
space and time (which are subjective), and it operates with images;
ontology, on the other hand, deals with being qua being and replaces
images with exact concepts.
How well did the mathematical ideal stand? In 1762 the Royal
Academy of Sciences in Berlin offered a prize for the best essay on the
question: ‘Whether metaphysical judgments generally, and in particular
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the fundamental principles of natural theology and morals, are capable of
proofs as evident as those of geometry?” A disciple of Wolff, Moses
Mendelssohn, took the prize with an essay giving an affirmative answer,
with which Wolff would have agreed. The runner-up, with a negative
answer, was the unknown Immanuel Kant. In this respect history has
followed Kant, not Wolff and Mendelssohn.
The marriage of reason and experience
One of the perennial problems of philosophy is to determine the roles of
reason and experience in knowing. In the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries it was the subject of controversy between philosophers we now
call rationalists and those we call empiricists. Among the empiricists we
count Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Reid, and Condillac; among the
rationalists, Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza, and Leibniz.
Wolff is sometimes considered the arch-rationalist, but we must enquire
into the kind of rationalist he was.7 A rationalist like those just listed
believes that reason alone, or rational intuition, is able to discover truths
that are independent of experience and that could not be learned from
experience, but that necessarily apply to experience. Such truths have been
called, especially since Kant, a priori, in contrast to truths a posteriori, i.e.
truths learned only from experience.
Wolff frequently insists that there are no a priori truths in this sense; he
says that there is no human pure reason devoid of sense content; he agrees
with the Scholastic teaching, “There is nothing in the intellect that was not
first in sense.” He rejects the theory of innate ideas, which has always
been one of the principal tenets of the rationalist school. Hence Wolff may
seem to be no rationalist at all; he is not a rationalist in the strictly defined
sense of the preceding paragraph, but his style and vocabulary give a
rationalistic veneer to his thoughts because he seems to generate a priori
knowledge by improving upon empirical knowledge.
He attempted (successfully, in his own judgment) to derive the principle
of sufficient reason from the law of contradiction.8 Leibniz had attempted
to keep these two principles separate and independent of each other, and
had ascribed each to a very different metaphysical source (respectively the
will and the intellect of God). Wolff, on the contrary, contends that it is a
logical truth that every true judgment has a sufficient reason for being
true. Though Wolff does not claim to derive empirical truths from the
principle of sufficient reason (and, ultimately, from the law of
contradiction), he does claim (and makes good his claim) to be able to give
a rational account of what was originally perceived empirically.
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He does so by drawing a distinction between two kinds of knowledge,
which he calls historical and philosophical knowledge.9 He does so in
parallel with Aristotle’s distinction (Posterior Analytics, Book I, ch. 13)
between knowledge of fact and knowledge of reasoned fact. Historical
knowledge is knowledge based on the perception of a raw fact, something
existing or happening. But by memory, classification, measurement,
hypothesis-formation, and perhaps simple experiments we clarify our
knowledge of a fact by seeing it as a “certain kind” of fact. The ideas of
sense become ideas of reason (the vernünftige Gedanken of Wolff’s book
titles), reason being the capacity for “seeing with the mind’s eye” the
connections of ideas and their sufficient conditions. All the knowledge that
reason has or produces comes from experience - historical knowledge is
the basis of philosophical knowledge—but it is so processed by reason into
definitions, principles, axioms, probable hypotheses, and well-tested laws
of nature that a subtle change is introduced into our historical knowledge
of fact: knowledge of fact becomes knowledge of reasoned fact. Going
beyond what has been actually observed, knowledge of reasoned fact
extends to facts not yet experienced. Wolff likes to say that there is a
marriage of reason and experience (connttbium rationis et experientiae)
which he does not wish to disturb.
There are two movements in knowledge. The ascent from knowledge of
fact to principles and reasons is the analytical method of Descartes (Kant’s
regressive method); the descent from reason to experience is Descartes’s
synthetic (Kant’s progressive) method. The knowledge of reasoned fact
was commonly in Wolff’s day called a priori knowledge10 (knowledge from
reason, not experience), even though for Wolff its ultimate and
irreplaceable source is experience.
We can now summarize Wolff’s kind of rationalism. He is not a
rationalist in the sense of the belief that pure reason without need of
experience can produce a priori knowledge (in mathematics and
metaphysics, for example). He is a rationalist in a loose sense in that he
emphasizes the function of reason in converting raw data of the senses into
reasonable knowledge. With his armies of syllogisms in valiant array, Wolff
demonstrated everything from the existence of God to theories in
astronomy; he proves that German coffee houses should be modeled after
those of England. No wonder Wolff is generally thought of as a rationalist!
Ontology and special metaphysics
The keystone of Wolff’s stupendous edifice is his First Philosophy, or
Ontology, published in Latin in 1729. In 1720 he had published a volume
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sometimes known as the German Metaphysics whose accurate and
instructive title is Rational Thoughts on God, the World, the Soul of Man,
and All Things in General.
The subject matter of ontology is being in general, demonstrative
knowledge of what it is that makes something possible if it is possible and
actual if it is actual. It is like Aristotle’s “First Philosophy” which deals
with being qua being (Metaphysics, Book IV, ch.1). Ontology deals with
questions and concepts common to all branches of knowledge.
Questions about the various kinds of being are reserved for the several
volumes on special metaphysics, viz., the being of God, the existence of
whom follows only from his possibility (the ontological argument), the being
of the soul, and the being of the world. The actual world and the actual soul
are made actual by “a complement of possibility”11 which renders possible
things actual. Kant destroyed this connection of possibility and actuality by
asking the question: Is the complement possible? If it is not, it is impossible
and cannot serve the purpose. If it is, it is just another possibility and
contributes nothing toward actuality. There is no valid inference from
possibility to actuality. The converse inference, from existence to possibility,
is explored by Lambert, Crusius, and Kant.
Many of the 964 articles in the Ontology give definitions of
metaphysical terms such as being, existence, possibility, essence, condition,
thing, attribute, simplicity, substance, space, time, cause, quality, etc.
These concepts are shuffled, combined and separated, contrasted, and
compared in an almost mechanical procedure.
One of the most important concepts is that of substance, defined as
follows: “What contains in itself a principium [roughly: a cause] of
changes is a substance.”12 Each substance contains in itself a sufficient
condition for a change in itself or in other substances. If the change is
motion, the monad is a physical substance; if the change is mental, the
monad is a spiritual substance. Only one substance contains the cause of
its own being, and that substance is God. Thus arise the three divisions of
special metaphysics: rational theology, rational psychology, and rational
cosmology. It will be noticed that Wolff is closer to Descartes than to
Leibniz, who had asserted that all substances are spiritual and had denied
that one substance could cause a change in another. Wolff, very
tentatively, holds the doctrine of pre-established harmony only for the case
of relations between mind and body monads.
Wolff follows Leibniz in denying absolute Newtonian space, and agrees
with Leibniz that space is a subjective order of appearances of substances.
He holds a mechanical view of nature, which consists of simple
unextended physical monads interacting by contact with each other, the
whole showing intelligent design and especially purposiveness for human
benefit.13 The soul is a simple substance with a vis repraesentativa or a
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power of being conscious; the soul is immortal and the will free. Like
Leibniz in his Theodicy, Wolff strove to reconcile freedom and necessity,
but with equal ill-success.
Moral philosophy
Wolff wrote more on practical philosophy (ethics and law) than on any
other subject. There is little new in Wolff’s theory, but it is superbly
organized and undoubtedly influenced Kant’s articulation of ethical theory
in his Metaphysics of Morals. Kant cites Wolff as the exemplary
representative of the best of the four types of heteronomous ethics, the
ethics of perfection.14
The intellect conceives of a perfection, which is the value aspect of truth
as the perfect harmony and interconnection of the essential attributes of a
thing following from its intrinsic essence. True being (as object of
knowledge) and true good (as object of desire) are identified. The will
necessarily strives for a perfection which the intellect has discerned.
Rational willing is definitive of morality. The achievement of a perfection
is attended with pleasure, but the test for an action is not its consequent
pleasure, but its rational motivation and justification.
Natural law requires that each person strive to achieve their own
perfection and also that of others. Revelation is not required to teach men
their duties, nor is the promise of divine reward needful to move people to do
the good.
The completion of Wolff’s system in aesthetics
A great gap in Wolff’s system was the lack of a theory of beauty and fine
art. The last decade of Wolff’s life was a time of extensive literary
dispute concerning matters of taste. There were controversies between
defenders of the classical forms and harbingers of the romanticism that
was yet to come. There was great competition between those who would
emulate French drama and those in favor of English models, and still
others (e.g. Lessing) who wanted to develop a native drama with
German themes.
It is easy to see why a comprehensive philosophical movement like
Wolffianism should be concerned to develop a theory of art, in spite of the
fact that there certainly are few philosophical theories less likely than
Wolff’s to be fruitful concerning beauty and art. Wolffian theories of art
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were produced by two disciples, Alexander Baumgarten of Halle (later
Frankfurt on the Oder) and Moses Mendelssohn of Berlin. .
Baumgarten15
In Leibniz-Wolffian philosophy the perfection of sense would be achieved
when a sensuous idea was so clarified and rendered so distinct that it would
become an abstract intellectual idea. Indeed the entire Wolffian program
may be summed up in Wolff’s efforts to replace facts given in sense with
reasoned facts from which the unique, ineffable content of sense had been
evaporated. The perfection of sense is reason, and there is only a difference
of degree between the clarity of reason and obscurity of sense. To raise the
perfection of sense means: to replace percepts with concepts.
This feature of Wolffian rationalism made it indifferent to the arts, for
the artist is one whose skill makes it possible to achieve a perfection of sense
which is the object of a perfect, direct intuition, not object of abstract
thought got at by omitting the specificities of a singular perception.
According to Baumgarten sensation can be perfected by so enhancing its
vividness and clarity that there will be pleasure in its mere contemplation.
The irreducible sensory component in such a perception is called the
aesthetic and the intuitive by Baumgarten. Sense, which is the lower
cognitive faculty, is the higher faculty in the contemplation of beauty. A
perfection (of form, color, sound) apprehended by sense instead of by
reason is beauty. Aesthetics is the “science of the beautiful.”
Mendelssohn
In 1755 Moses Mendelssohn published On Feelings (Empfindungen), a
modification of Baumgarten’s views which marks a sharp advance in the
direction of Kant’s mature aesthetic theory and the aesthetic theory of the
later idealists and romantics.
The human mind, he holds, is too limited to be able to sensuously
observe the variety-in-unity of ontological perfections, which is discernible
only by reason. Thus far Mendelssohn stands with Wolff and Baumgarten,
but he now adds: we can sensuously contemplate the variety in unity of
the mind’s own acts and passions, sensations, thoughts, and emotions. He
calls this the “harmony of the powers of the soul.” The directly felt
perfection of perceiving, not the perception of an antecedent perfection in
the perceived object, gives rise to disinterested aesthetic pleasure in the
harmonious play of our faculties. Mendelssohn here makes an important
and permanent contribution to the history of art and aesthetic theory. He
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teaches that beauty is not predicated upon an objective perfection (of
color, design, morals, or whatever is found in the work of art); it is a
perfection of perception, not a perception of perfection.
Pleasure usually accompanies the satisfaction of some previously
existing desire, but art and beauty are not normally enjoyed because of the
pleasure they afford by satisfying some antecedent desire. In addition to
perception and will, each with its own attendant pleasure, there is another
faculty of the mind which has its own peculiar pleasure. This faculty
Mendelssohn calls feeling or approval (Billigungsvermögen) by which we
experience “disinterested pleasure,” a pleasure different from that of
satisfied desire or curiosity.
Mendelssohn explains this pleasure by our satisfaction in the
harmonious function of all the Seelenkräfte, when feeling and willing and
perceiving go together to produce a delectable state of mind. Each person’s
taste will be affected by their physical and even physiological make-up,
but with the advance of education and general culture more pervasive
satisfactions will replace the doctrine of à chacun son gout. This harmony
of the powers of the soul is involved in both the enjoyment of art and its
creation by genius. Genius is an “imitator of divinity,” a “second creator.”
CRUSIUS
The Pietist campaign against Wolff was fought on two levels. Motivated
by odium theologicum, envy, and nepotism as well as by genuine concern
incited by Wolff ’s apparent affinity with Spinozistic pantheism and
fatalism, the Halle Thomasians Budde, Lange, and Walch conducted a
dirty campaign that continued even after Wolff had been banished. But
these Thomasians, like Thomasius himself, were not systematic
philosophers of Wolff’s caliber; they found fault with Wolff, but offered no
interesting alternative. The most important alternative was that of
Crusius.
Christian August Crusius was born in Leuna near Merseburg (Saxony)
in 1715 and died in Leipzig in 1775. Almost all the men in his family were
Lutheran clergymen, and he held professorships in both philosophy and
theology and was a pastor holding important posts in the Lutheran
hierarchy. About 1750 he gave up philosophical work altogether and
devoted himself to theological and biblical studies and the care of souls.
In place of mathematics,16 Crusius thought of theology as the science
whose relations to philosophy must be understood. Philosophy, according
to him, is not a sufficient ground for religious faith and human virtue; it is
not even essential to the conceptualization of theological truth, since the
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truths established in philosophy may be overturned by the greater
authority of theology. “We cannot think something” was the mark for the
impossible among most Enlightenment philosophers, but for Crusius there
were conditions under which the inference from inconceivability to
impossibility may be suspended: if the thing inconceivable by us may be
conceivable by a more perfect mind, or if “We recognize an obligation to
regard something inconceivable as possible or actual in order not to act
contrary to the most important rules of human perfection” (which include,
of course, revelations of the commands of God).17
From all this it is easily seen how opposed Crusius was to Wolff. Wolff
as a leader of the intellectual Enlightenment was bent upon extending the
scope and power of human reason and denying any constraints upon it;
Crusius as a leader of Pietistic thought was more concerned to restrain the
ambition to explain everything; he tried to determine and fix the
boundaries of human intellect when dealing with the brute facticity of the
contingent world and the mysteries of religion. That he did so without the
obscurantism of the early Thomasians, by developing a sophisticated
epistemology as an alternative to Wolff, is a mark of near greatness in this
almost forgotten man.
Ontology and theory of knowledge
For Crusius existence, not possibility, is the fundamental concept. In this
he differs markedly from Wolff, who asks what is the ground of the
possibility of something prior to asking what it is that makes it actual if it
is actual. Wolff’s answer to this question concerns logical possibility, i.e.
non-self-contradictoriness. Crusius’s ontology is to challenge Wolff’s
account of the role of logical possibility in the explanation of existence.
We reach the concept of possibility by first finding existent things and
then, by “an abstraction from existence” (the reverse of the “complement
of possibility”), we find that whatever exists is also possible, but not the
converse. If nothing existed, nothing would be even possible. The concept
of possibility requires the concept of existence, but not the converse.18
Crusius is here speaking, obviously, of what he calls real possibility, not
ideal possibility (i.e. possibility of being thought, because
noncontradictory). Real possibility is the possibility inhering in things that
might exist outside and beyond our thought of something merely
noncontradictory. There can be this real possibility only if there are in the
world existing things with forces adequate to bring about the actualization
of this possibility.
Understanding has the inexplicable faculty of being conscious of ideas.
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Reason is the perfection of understanding, consciously recognizing truth as
truth. Two activities of reason are to be distinguished; reason in concreto,
which is the capacity functioning in a single individual with their various
quirks and dispositions; and reason in abstracto, which is the “complex”
of the essential forces of human understanding in general. Only reason in
abstracto is capable of objective knowledge.19
By a kind of denudation we find simplicity and clarity in sensations and
other representations. We remove in thought all accidental properties of
things, and we are left only with the essential relations that things
necessarily bear to one another. Besides noncontradiction and identity
there are relations that show the ultimate unanalyzable real forces of
things. There is intuitive knowledge of simple, clear, and necessary
relations of ideas stated by Crusius as basic laws of thought. Instead of
Wolff’s single supreme condition (law of contradiction) and its corollary
(law of sufficient reason), Crusius states five laws:
(a) The law of inseparables: Whatever cannot be conceived without
something else cannot exist without that other (Metaphysics, § 15); (b)
The law of incompatibles: Whatever cannot be thought in connection with
another thing cannot exist with that thing (§ 15); (c) The law of space:
Everything that is is somewhere in space (§ 48); (d) The law of time:
Everything that is is somewhen or at some time (§ 48); (e) The law of
contingence: That whose nonbeing may be conceived may at some time
have not existed (§ 33).20
These laws are based upon “the nature of human ” which is “the
supreme criterion of possible and actual things.”21 Kant thinks that
Crusius’s epistemological principles can correspond to ontological truths
only if there is a pre-established harmony between the knower and the
known.22 Crusius, of course, will not accept this Leibnizian theory, but he
states repeatedly that God has “placed the marks of truth in the human
understanding.”23
Freedom and the principle of sufficient reason
The principle of sufficient reason is not listed among the basic laws of
thought. Though a valid principle it is not an independent principle; it is,
rather, a corollary deduced from the law of the inseparable. Crusius, who
certainly had not read Hume, states that we cannot think of a happening
or a coming-to-be without associating it, in intuition, with some other
precedent event. (Hume, of course, about the same time flatly denied this
impossibility.)24 But Crusius says: “Anyone who observes himself clearly
sees that nothing that comes to be may be thought except when one at the
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same time admits that there is another thing that has power sufficient to
produce it.”25 He concludes, like Hume, that causation is neither
analytically necessary nor an empirical generalization, but he does not
draw Hume’s skeptical conclusion.
For any coming-to-be we search for a substance or thing that has the
force or power (otherwise inscrutable) to bring this about. Reason must
accept the forces and powers it empirically discovers in nature without
thinking that they are logically necessary.26
The law of efficient causation shown in the previous paragraphs to be a
corollary of the law of the inseparable has several corollaries of its own,
and they may be collectively called the law of sufficient reason. Crusius’s
Latin Dissertation on the Use and Limits of the Principle of Determining
Reason, Commonly Called Sufficient Reason (1743) is based on his
unwavering adherence to the freedom of the will, but uncompromising
rejection of any theory of freedom of the will compatible with the
Wolffian principle of sufficient reason. He distinguishes between
determining reason and sufficient reason. The former is a reason which
makes its consequence uniquely necessary, and that principle underlies
determinism and fatalism. But that principle, he holds, is not demonstrable
by the principle of contradiction, and therefore is not universally valid. A
sufficient reason,27 on the contrary, may have diverse consequences, and is
compatible with freedom of the will.
Crusius’s “solution” to the problem of free will is one of the standard
ones: nature is the realm of strict determinism, but man is an exception to
this rule of the law of determining reason. He believed that the will is free
and therefore believed he had to relax the strict principle of determinant
reason and accept the looser condition of sufficient reason. Then the same
conditions may be “sufficient” for me to do A or to do B, and whichever I
do I freely do because these reasons for A or B are supplemented by a free
human decision. But it is patently wrong to call the conditions “sufficient”
when they must be supplemented by a free act of will.
Here we have a fine example of Crusius’s modifying epistemological
conclusions when they conflict with faith and morals. This was not the
first time, nor will it be the last, when moral conviction takes precedence
over logical analysis.
Virtue is the agreement of human actions with the commands of God.28
Hence Kant correctly lists Crusius as the exemplary representative of
“theological moralists” who hold (correctly) that there is an objective
standard of morality but also (incorrectly) that the standard lies in the will
of God instead of in the rational will of man.29
Having established (to his satisfaction) the freedom of the will as the
capacity for absolute spontaneity of action, Crusius believed that he had
established the only possible foundation for imputing responsibility and
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for justifying reward and punishment. The duty of man is to obey God,
not directly to seek perfection and pleasure.30 The love of God is the pure
moral motive, like respect for the moral law in Kant. For guidance in
morality man has an inborn conscience and a will to virtue. Since mankind
and its moral perfection are the final end of God, we human beings can
believe that obedience to and love of God will in fact lead to blessedness,
even if only in another world.
With these views and his Pietist habitus it is not hard to see why the
young Crusius gave up his philosophical career after only twelve years.
Theology’s gain was philosophy’s loss.
LAMBERT
Johann Heinrich Lambert was born in Mühlhausen, Alsace, in 1728.
Unlike Wolff he was a creative mathematician; he was the first to
demonstrate that e and π (pi) are irrational numbers, and he was a pioneer
in non-Euclidian geometry. He is generally regarded as the father of the
science of photometry, and his name is commemorated in the “Lambert-
Beer law” of the absorption of light, and in the name of a fundamental
unit of illumination, the “lambert.”
Mathematics and simple ideas
Lambert speaks as an almost fanatical mathematician when he says:
“What cannot be weighed and calculated doesn’t concern me. I understand
nothing of it.” “One will not give the name of ‘perfect scientific knowledge’
to philosophy when it is not at the same time completely mathematical.”31
“Wolff brought about half of mathematics into philosophy; now it is a
matter of bringing the other half.”32 The half Wolff had brought in was the
method of definition and proof, but he did not bring to philosophy the part
of mathematics which concerns intuition, postulation, hypothesis, and
construction; by taking arbitrary definitions “as it were, gratis,” “without
noticing it he hid all the difficulties in them.”33
When Lambert first read Euclid, long after he had studied Wolff’s
theory of geometry, he was astonished, he says,34 to find that Euclid had
begun with simple, clear, and distinct intuitions of lines, points, and
angles, and not (as Wolff had done) with nominal definitions, the
applicability of which to figures in space was at least questionable. He
thought that Wolff had done nothing to establish die truth of his premises
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and correspondence between theorems and the actual structure of figures
in space. Still, “The honor of bringing the right method into philosophy
was reserved for Wolff,” he says. “Whoever wants to profit most from
Wolff’s writings should begin with them, and then survey writings which
more or less diverge from his. I do not hesitate to include here [the works
of] Darjes35 and Crusius.” But the most Wolff could establish was the
possibility, not the necessity and objective reference, of mathematical
knowledge. There was a gap between logical truth and experience,
between possibility and existence.
How is a priori knowledge possible?
To fill this gap Lambert, like Wolff, distinguished between ordinary and
scientific knowledge of things.36 Scientific knowledge establishes clear and
distinct ideas of experience and supplements them with hypothetical
Lehrbegriffe. Lambert then asks: to what extent can scientific knowledge
be a priori?, using the term a priori in a stricter sense than Wolff, and
approximating Kant’s usage to refer to concepts that could not have arisen
out of experience.37 Experience is only the occasion of our having a priori
knowledge,38 but it is experience that gives existential reference to a priori
knowledge which, without experience, is limited to the possible and the
necessary. Though we suppose that it applies to the actual, the specificities
of the actual - i.e. which possibilities are actual in this world—are not
known a priori. But we have a priori knowledge of the contents (objects)
of simple ideas and not just of their formal relations to each other.
In giving the “mechanism,” so to speak, of a priori knowledge, that is,
in explaining how we know anything a priori, Lambert turns to the
“anatomist of ideas,” Locke, for the theory of simple ideas of which, and
by means of which, Lambert believes we have a priori knowledge.
Simple ideas are said to have only one (atomic) predicate; they are
equivalent to their Merkmal (sign or criterion) with no hidden predicates,
and they have insufficient complexity to be liable to self-contradiction
(and for that reason they are possible). Simple ideas are clear even in the
mind of a solipsist, and so are not dependent on the real existence of their
objects. What is most important about simple ideas is not their identities
but their necessary and possible connections such as “what is solid is
extended” and “cogito ergo sum.” It is by virtue of these relations that we
escape from an endless series of mere tautologies and, through combining
them, formulate the sets of simple ideas which underlie, a priori, the
various sciences. In true Leibnizian spirit of the ars characteristica, the
more we can analyze empirical concepts into simple ones and empirical
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judgments into tautologies or possible combinations, the more our
knowledge is a priori. The relations of simple ideas through comparison
and combination are submitted to the criterion of thinkability
(Gedenkbarkeit, like Crusius’s inseparability—which Lambert calls
combinability—and incompatibility), and each combination can be the a
priori foundation of some science; each actual science can be submitted to
the analytical discovery of what its simple, a priori ideas are. These simple
ideas are called Grundbegriffe. Geometry is the science of simple ideas of
extension in space; chronometry the science of simple ideas in duration;
phoronomy the science of simple ideas in both space and duration; etc.
The Vernunftlehre—science of the operations of the mind—depends on
simple ideas of a thinking being and Locke’s ideas of reflection. This gives
rise to metaphysical knowledge which in point of certainty is on a par
with geometry.39
Lambert and Crusius were the first among our philosophers to see the
problematic aspect, yet also the extreme importance, of understanding
necessary relations between simple ideas. No longer can the Wolffians
equate impossibility with logical contradictoriness. Not all opposition is
opposition of contradictories.40 The necessity dependent upon the
principle of contradiction is confined to the components of complex ideas,
established by arbitrary definitions. It was the Wolffians’ goal to show
that all necessity was logical necessity, and all impossibility was logical
incompatibility; but they failed to achieve it. To have seen the problem,
which arises in trying to account for all necessities by means of identities,
was the eminent contribution of Crusius and Lambert. Lambert confesses
“that the fons possibilitatis duos ideas combinandi (the origin of the
possibility of combining two [simple] ideas) has not been fully
discovered.”41 It had hardly even been noticed, and it will not have been
“fully discovered” until Kant will have generalized the problem into the
question: How are synthetic judgments a priori possible?
Lambert himself attempted to find the fons of the necessary connections
among simple ideas. There is in our minds, he held, an actus reflexus, a
comparing of simple ideas which, in some unexplained way, gives rise to
knowledge of their possible and/or necessary connections and combinations.
Comparison is the fundamental actus reflexus of mind which is involved in
analysis and synthesis of ideas.42 In ways Lambert does not explain, out of
the similarity and difference of simple ideas there issue necessary relational
ideas, which indicate which simple ideas are validly synthesizable with
others. This is not logical inference (where “synthesizable with” means “not
contradictory to”); it involves an intuition, and in so concluding Lambert
makes little or no progress beyond Crusius.
Nor were Lambert’s efforts to avoid phenomenalism (and indeed
solipsism) any more successful. Holding that possibility presupposes the
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actual existence of something, Lambert fallaciously thinks that it must be
existence extra mentem.43 He eventually follows Malebranche in calling
upon God to give metaphysical status to some of our ideas.44 In spite of
the influence of Locke and his proximity to Kant, Lambert is a
metaphysician in the grand style, and his epistemological acuteness does
not restrain his speculative passions.
Lambert’s correspondence with Kant
Lambert published his Cosmological Letters in 1761. It has a rather
curious history. It was a product of a sudden aperçu which Lambert had
into the structure of the heavens. He saw analogies between planetary
systems and galaxies. Kant had presented somewhat the same plan in his
Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (1755) but had
introduced a cyclical evolutionary dimension on the origin and dissolution
of astronomical structures. This theory is now known as the Kant-LaPlace
hypothesis on the origin of the solar system. This classic in the history of
astronomy was almost unknown at the time because of the bankruptcy of
Kant’s publisher. When Lambert read Kant’s Only Possible Premise for a
Demonstration of the Existence of God (1764), which contained a brief
account of Kant’s astronomical views, he wrote to Kant exculpating
himself for the apparent plagiary, expressed contempt for the belletrist
philosophers in Berlin, and invited Kant to enter a philosophical
correspondence with him. Lambert really does philosophy in his letters
and is anxious to involve Kant in his plans; Kant, always a reluctant letter
writer, fills his letters with politesse but does not engage with Lambert in
any serious philosophical rumination.
In September 1770, Kant sent Lambert a copy of his Inaugural
Dissertation, On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and Intelligible
World. In his covering letter (2 September 1770) he spoke of having
“arrived at a position that, I flatter myself, I shall never have to change.”
Little did he know!
Lambert replied on 13 October in a long, somewhat repetitious letter
which shows that he had a good understanding of Kant’s Inaugural
Dissertation. In it he disagreed with Kant on the nature of time and on the
method to be followed in metaphysics.
The Kantian position to which Lambert objected was very briefly this.
We have sensible representations of things as they appear to us
(phenomena) and intellectual representations of things as they are in
themselves (noumena). It is an error in philosophy to apply predicates of
sensible knowledge to objects of intellectual representation; there is (in
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Lambert’s terminology) an absolute gap between ontology and
phenomenology. Time and space are a priori forms of both pure and
empirical sensible knowledge; therefore neither space nor time nor any
predicates presupposing space or time may be applied to the reality of
things as they are in themselves.
Lambert’s most explicit objection was to the “unreal” state to which time
was condemned in the Dissertation.45 He tells Kant: “If time is unreal, then
no change can be real…. Till now I have not been able to deny all reality to
time and space, or to consider them mere images and Schein.”46
To his regret, Kant did not answer Lambert’s letter, but after Lambert’s
death in 177747. he replied, in § 7 of the Critique of Pure Reason, saying:
“I grant the whole argument. Certainly time is something real, namely die
real form of inner intuition.” If, on the other hand, we take time and space
to be transcendentally real, the status of bodies in time and space is
“degraded to mere illusion (Schein)” and “the good Berkeley cannot be
blamed” for so degrading diem.48 Kant’s response to lambert in the
Critique is to show that the transcendental reality of time, which lambert
desiderated, leads to subjective idealism (illusionism) which lambert
rejected.
Lambert’s second major objection to the Inaugural Dissertation
anticipated a major shift of view between the Dissertation and the first
Critique. Anticipated, yes; occasioned, perhaps not, though we do not
know. Lambert’s assertion of continuity between phenomenology and
ontology conflicted with what Kant called “the all-important rule” in
metaphysical thinking: “Carefully prevent the principles proper to
sensitive cognition from passing their boundaries and affecting intellectual
cognition.”49
This rule was rescinded in the Critique of Pure Reason in the famous
sentence: “Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without
concepts are blind.”50 Here “content” means sensible intuitions, and Kant
is here saying that no exertion of thought can produce knowledge if there
is no sensible intuition. The most decisive factor in this reversal was Kant’s
discovery (aided no doubt by his reading of Tetens) that without sensible
intuition there can be no synthesis of concepts and hence no judgments.
The Inaugural Dissertation had kept separated what the first Critique
would tightly bind together. So much, then, for Kant’s thinking that he
would never have to change what he thought in 1770!
Whether Lambert’s obiter dicta had anything to do with this turnabout
in Kant’s thinking is doubtful, yet the weighty remark of a man Kant so
much admired may have had an influence on him. Lambert says:
It is also useful in ontology to take up concepts borrowed from
appearance (Schein), since the theory must finally be applied to
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phenomena again. For that is how the astronomer begins, with the
phenomenon: deriving his theory of the construction of the world
from phenomena, he applies it again to phenomena and their
predictions in his ephemerides. In metaphysics, where the problem of
appearance (Schein) is so essential, the method of the astronomer
will surely be the safest.51
Could there here lie the seed of Kant’s Copernican analogy?
TETENS
Johann Nicolaus Tetens was born in Schleswig in 1736 or 1738. His
teacher at the University of Kiel, Johann Christian Eschenbach, was the
German translator of Berkeley, and from him must have come much of the
extensive knowledge of, and sympathy for, British philosophy which
Tetens so obviously shows. Tetens was professor at Kiel from 1776 to
1789, when he entered the service of the King of Denmark. He had a
distinguished career as a minister of finance until his death in 1807.
Tetens’s empiridstic orientation
Tetens was sometimes alluded to as “the German Locke.” He repeatedly
says that “We must go back to the path trodden by Locke” and build on
his “physiology (Physic) of the human understanding.”52 He thought that
Locke’s “plain, historical method” must be practiced, deriving all our
ideas from experience. But he also thought that the British (especially
Bacon, Locke, and Hume) had interpreted empirical knowledge as a mere
collection of observations, had minimized the role of theory and logical
form in their theories of knowledge, and had never been able to develop a
systematic speculative philosophy or ontology. Reid, Oswald, and Beattie
likewise had failed to develop an ontology which would enable them to
systematize their common-sense philosophy, and this had kept them from
penetrating very deeply into explanations of the mental process underlying
common-sense knowledge and everyday practice. Tetens does not oppose
the common-sense philosophers as he does Hume, but sees his own task
rather to be that of securing and clarifying the philosophy of common
sense. He is so committed to Locke, however, that he never concerns
himself with Reid’s opposition to “the new way of ideas,” which is Reid’s
preeminent claim to historical importance. Tetens writes contentedly of
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impressions and ideas just as if Reid had never thrown doubt on the entire
movement from Descartes to its denouement in Berkeley, Hume, and
unnamed “solipsists” in France.53
The possibility of metaphysics
In his Universal Speculative Philosophy Tetens asked the fundamental
Kantian question: Is metaphysics possible? He asked: “Are the times right
for systems of philosophy? Can one be more than an observing
philosophical raisonneur?”54
Since Wolff, special metaphysics had been about either spiritual
substances (God and the soul) or material substance. Rational theology,
rational psychology, and rational cosmology each has its own fundamental
concepts and principles, but they share some in common. Tetens calls the
study of these common elements transcendent philosophy because it
transcends the three divisions of special metaphysics.55 It is first
philosophy, ontology, Grundwissenschaft. Transcendent philosophy,
however, is no longer to be the abstract, formal, almost lexicographical
ontology of Wolff. It is, rather, epistemology (though the word did not
exist in Tetens’s lifetime). It is an empirical science, even though practiced
in the armchair. What begins in the empirical sciences may end up in the a
priori science of ontology.
When Tetens says, for instance, that “Nothing comes from nothing,” he
is formulating an objectively necessary principle of transcendent
philosophy. But he sees the same judgment as an assertion of his reason,
and he interprets it as an empirical proposition asserting only that his
reason cannot think that something comes from nothing.56
How can this empirical, contingent judgment (even if true) serve (as it
did for Crusius and Lambert as well as for Tetens) as a warrant for the
objective principle expressed in the same words? For Tetens, the
determination of the conditions of knowledge of the objective principle is
itself an explicitly empirical task. Tetens believed that necessities of our
mental operations, though discovered empirically, became necessities of
transcendent philosophy. He asks us to consider whether “Nothing comes
from nothing” is just a quirk of his individual mind; do others agree with
him in asserting that nothing comes from nothing? These are all empirical
questions that can be answered; but it is not obvious how a true and
favorable answer to these questions has any standing when it is a question
of ontology: Can something come from nothing?
Neither Crusius, Lambert, nor Tetens seems to have seen the
problematical character of efforts to base the a priori claims of our
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cognitions upon contingent facts of psychology. Kant characterizes such
efforts as “getting water from a pumice stone.” Let us see how Tetens
proceeds.
The cognitive faculties
Tetens draws a line between the active and the receptive powers of the
soul. The active power is the will and the faculty of thought; the receptive
faculty is feeling or sense. Cognition occurs only when the former works
upon the latter. The first product of this working is the capacity to form
representations and concepts; there are already impressions of sense and
feeling, but these are brought to consciousness as representations only by
the basic power of making representations and concepts; a representation
is the first object of consciousness, but it is not an impression or a copy of
an impression. Thought is necessary to form a representation as a sign of
sensation; the sensations must be “run through” and “held together” in a
certain way57 by thought before they become representations of an object.
The power of imagination (Dichtkraft) creates generic images of sensible
abstracta such as space and time. When representations refer to things in
space and time which resumably give rise to them, we are said to perceive
objects, and we il to notice that we have only representations of objects,
not objects themselves. We identify and reidentify objects, associate them
with one another, make abstractions from and classify them. In short, we
obtain or form a concept of an object that can function in knowing in a
way that a mere image cannot.
When representations become distinct concepts and their original felt
association is replaced by a connection which is thought, there arises a
concept of relation (Verhältnissbegriff) between concepts. Relational
concepts are not confined to specific pairs of representations but may
remain the same even when the specific content of the representations is
different. Such concepts are the fundamental concepts of transcendent
philosophy. Among them are sameness and difference, coexistence and
succession (space and time), inherence of a property in a substance, and
dependence of one thing on another (echoes of Hume’s list of
“philosophical relations,” anticipations of Kant’s categories). The
relations among these concepts are a priori, because they are not restricted
as to the empirical content of the representations related to each other.
Since they are relations implicit in the formal structure of judgments and
inferences, they are found in and apply to all knowledge.
We have seen repeatedly how Crusius and Lambert recognized a class
of necessary judgments which are not based on logical necessity according
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to the laws of identity and contradiction. They tried to establish the
objectivity of such judgments. Generally, they tried to do so by appealing
to the fact (if it is a fact) that these judgments express a necessity of
thought, not a logical necessity: one just must see that some things cannot
be thought to coexist. That, however, is a fallible, contingent truth if it is
true at all. What they needed was a proposition with the apodeictic
certainty of the law of contradiction yet one that could not be proved by
the law of contradiction. (In a word, they needed to recognize what Kant
will later call synthetic a priori judgments.)
Tetens was keenly aware of the problem in 1776. The truths of
geometry are necessarily true, but not because they depend on identity and
contradiction; they are necessarily true of space as we constitute the
abstracta of space by the functioning of our cognitive faculties. The laws
of identity and contradiction are “mere ways of thinking without
reference to what is peculiar to the ideas related,”58 but the laws of
mathematics deal with what is peculiar to space and time. Where the
necessity of a judgment does not depend on the merely formal relationship
between subject and predicate or the particular empirical content of the
two concepts, it must depend upon “what is, in respect to certain general
classes of representations (or objects), necessary and natural to the
understanding.”59 What the features are that are necessary and natural to
the understanding must be discovered, according to Tetens, empirically,
though the relations themselves are a priori necessary.
The objective reference of perception
It is a quite different thing to show that a judgment is an expression of
thought natural to our understanding, and to show that the judgment is
objectively true. Tetens made an original and significant change in the
mode of examining this question of subjectivity and objectivity.
Sensations and impressions are not normally objects of consciousness.
They lack referentiality or intentionality. They get intentionality from being
ingredient in representations, representations in our consciousness being
representations of something. Tetens claims that this is a better account of
the origin of our belief in external, independent objects than the different
ones offered by Hume and Reid. But he also confesses,60 however, that it
does not touch the question: Is objective reference veridical?
Tetens does not have an answer to the demand for justification of
objective knowledge-claims, regarded as a question of metaphysics.
Epistemologically, however, he gives a criterion of objectivity which is
independent of the ontological status of minds and objects.
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Tetens examines the way some ideas are endowed with objective
reference without presupposing an answer to the question of the ontology
of subject and object. He empirically distinguishes the unchangeable
subjective and the changeable subjective,61 and sees that the former
captures the empirical and methodological, if not the ontological, meaning
of “objective.” Similarly there is the distinction between the
intersubjective and the subjective, where the former is ordinarily called the
objective.
This is as close as a writer of an empirical theory of knowledge can come
to the Kantian divisons between judgments of perception and judgments of
experience and between unattainable knowledge of transcendent objects
and attainable knowledge of objects immanent in experience.
Kant’s friend Hamann said that Kant had Tetens open upon his desk
while writing the Critique of Pure Reason. Kant regretted that this
powerful and original thinker did not review his Critique of Pure Reason
when it was published in 1781. We can be sure that the second edition
(1787) would have been improved if Kant had had the benefit of Tetens’s
criticisms. There is a certain melancholy in some of Kant’s remarks about
Tetens—how close he had come to what Kant saw as truth, and yet how
far short of it he had fallen. He wrote:
Tetens investigated the concepts of reason subjectively, I objectively.
His analysis is empirical, mine transcendental. No one considered the
possibility of such a priori knowledge [ingredient in and presupposed
by empirical knowledge] although Herr Tetens could have given rise
to it.62
THE MENDELSSOHN-JACOBI
CONTROVERSY63
The philosophers we have been studying raised objections to Wolff’s
philosophy, but with the possible exception of Crusius they did not bring
much against his Weltanschauung. They were all men of the
Enlightenment. They all were quite “safe” on the big issues of
philosophy—God, freedom, and immortality—while they disputed
technical points such as the logical status of the principle of sufficient
reason.
A little after 1780 the pax philosophica was shattered by a controversy
that left its mark on Kant, Herder, Goethe, and the early German Idealists
such as Schelling. It was a turning point in German philosophy and
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cultural life. If one decides that Jacobi was the “victor,” one can say that
the Enlightenment in Germany was finished.
Moses Mendelssohn was a faithful disciple of Wolff and won the prize
essay contest of the Berlin Academy by defending the Wolffian
mathematical ideal, defeating Immanuel Kant. Kant praised the elegance
of his literary style, and in fact he is the best stylist among German
philosophers before Schopenhauer. He was an intimate friend of Lessing’s
and was the model of the wise man in Lessing’s drama, Nathan der Weise.
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi was born into a rich Pietistic family in
Düsseldorf in 1743. He reacted against the naturalistic, empiricistic
education he received in Switzerland and became a religious enthusiast
(Schwärmer). Faith and feeling were the watchwords of his philosophy.
The conception of Spinoza as an atheist or pantheist, a blind fatalist, a
destructive critic of Scripture who denied its authority, and a revolutionary
political thinker was almost universally accepted in Germany. Wolff wrote
extensively in criticism of Spinoza,64 but nonetheless he was accused of
Spinozism by his Pietist colleagues at Halle. Mendelssohn in his
Philosophical Conversations (1763) pleaded for a better and more fair-
minded appraisal of “the accursed atheist of Amsterdam,” without, of
course, taking any step that committed him to Spinozism and without
effecting any change in the almost unanimous condemnation of Spinozism.
Imagine the shock, then, when it became known shortly after his death
in 1781 that Lessing had been a Spinozist. Lessing—Germany’s greatest
man of letters, Germany’s greatest thinker between Leibniz and Kant, a
man whose character after more than two centuries still awakens feelings
of affection and respect—a Spinozist? In conversations with Jacobi,
Lessing had made this confession. Through mutual friends Jacobi
imparted this information to Mendelssohn, ostensibly to contribute to a
biography of Lessing that Mendelssohn was working on. Naturally the
secret could not be kept; party lines were drawn.
There was a complicated exchange of letters through intermediaries,
some of whom egged on one or the other of the protagonists. Finally there
were publications in which spleen was hardly covered by civility: Jacobi’s
On the Doctrine of Spinoza, in Letters to Moses Mendelssohn (1785),
Mendelssohn’s Morning Lessons or Lectures on the Existence of God
(1785), Mendelssohn’s To the Friends of Lessing (posthumous, 1786), and
Jacobi’s Against Mendelssohn’s Accusations in his “To the Friends of
Lessing” (1786). To these should be added David Hume on Belief (1787)
since it develops Jacobi’s “philosophy of faith and feeling” which underlies
the conversations with Lessing and the correspondence with Mendelssohn.
Nothing shows better the ill-nature of this controversy than the
accusations that Jacobi was responsible for Mendelssohn’s death in 1786
at the climax of the debate.
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For three reasons what might have been a quiet Auseinandersetzung
between two scholars was raised to the level of a public scandal. The first
was the eminence of the recently deceased Lessing. Any surprising secrets
about that good and famous man were bound to be objects of public
curiosity. Second, there were many who hoped it was true that Lessing had
been a Spinozist. These crypto-Spinozists were more numerous than
anyone had reckoned, and with Lessing’s Spinozism established they could
come out of the closet.
Then there were the personal motives and traits of the principals. Fritz
Jacobi was a name-dropper and a tuft-hunter. He prided himself on
knowing everybody. (Goethe told Eckermann that Jacobi lacked
something necessary for a poet or philosopher, but that he would have
made a good ambassador.) Pride and snobbery were mixed in him with a
genuine religious concern.
Mendelssohn was not shocked by Spinozism, as we have already seen.
But it was a personal wound to him that Lessing, his intimate friend of
thirty years, should have concealed his Spinozism from him and revealed it
to some young man he hardly knew. At first he doubted the truth of what
Jacobi said about Lessing; then he doubted the truth of what Lessing may
have said about himself, citing as explanation Lessing’s love of paradox,
irony, and persiflage.
Much has been written about the strategy and tactics of the contestants,
detailing how Jacobi laid traps for Mendelssohn, how these were dodged
by Mendelssohn who was laying traps of his own, etc. Neither of the
principals came out with clean hands. The stakes were too high for either
man to be punctilious about the ethics of publication of personal
documents. The stakes were the validity of the whole philosophical
enterprise.
Jacobi saw the issue as a choice between the nihilistic Spinoza-Leibniz-
Wolffian Enlightenment and the absolute but irrationalistic claims of faith
and feeling. Jacobi’s target was something even bigger and grander than
Lessing and Spinoza: he aimed to overthrow the Enlightenment’s
rationalism and intellectualism and ideal of demonstrable metaphysical
and theological truth. He tried to show that any system of demonstrations
had to go in the direction of Spinozism; minor criticisms of Wolff had to
give way to a frontal assault on the entire enterprise of philosophy as an
intellectual discipline. Mendelssohn’s strategy was to construct a form of
Spinozism which Lessing might have held and which did not have the fatal
consequences that Jacobi had found in his interpretation of Spinoza. In
this way he could free the Leibniz-Wolffian philosophy of the atheism,
pantheism, nihilism, and fatalism that Jacobi said it shared with Spinoza.
When Lessing remarked of Spinoza’s substance “that we can think
nothing about it doesn’t imply its impossibility,” Jacobi replied: “You go
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even farther than Spinoza. For him understanding is worth more than
anything.” Lessing replied: “For men only. Spinoza was far from thinking
our miserable human acting for purposes was the best method, and far
from making thought supreme.”65
After an excursus in which Jacobi tries to show that Leibniz and hence
the Leibniz-Wolffians were in essential agreement with Spinoza, Jacobi
returns to his theme of the impotence and inferiority of abstract thought:
In my judgment the greatest service of the enquirer is to uncover and
reveal being (Daseyn). Explanation is only the means and the way to
the goal; it is neither the next nor the ultimate goal. The final goal is
what does not let itself be explained: the irresolvable, the immediate,
the simple…. Since we only put together and hang together what is
explainable in things, there is a certain illusion (Schein) in the soul
which blinds more than it reveals…. [When we enquire] we close the
eye of the soul with which the soul sees itself and God, so that by
greater concentration it can see with the eye of the body.66
We do not, therefore, approach truth by rational thinking; rather, we embrace
it in spite of rational thinking. A mortal leap (salto mortale) is needed. (An
almost exactly parallel move can be found in Kierkegaard’s distinction
between approximation to the truth and appropriation of the truth.) But
Jacobi was unable to persuade Lessing with his “tired head and old legs” to
take the plunge; Lessing remained a Spinozist. Others who professed
adherence to Spinozism, however, embraced a very different Spinozism from
that of rationalism and geometrical rigor. For men like Herder,67 Schelling,
and Goethe, an organic, holistic, romantic conception of oneness replaced the
quasi-mathematical perfection of Spinoza’s substance. Spinoza came into his
own, paradoxically, when rationalism was on the wain.
Having held Spinozistic nihilism (Jacobi’s own word) to be the natural
and inevitable last stage in the evolution of Enlightenment, it was to be
expected that Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, published the year of
Lessing’s death, should come under criticism from Jacobi. But instead of
appealing directly to religious “faith and feeling,” he allied himself with
David Hume. He appealed to Hume and to Hume’s critic, Thomas Reid,
to justify his doctrine of the impotence of reason even in the simplest
actions of everyday life. Hume substituted belief for unattainable
knowledge, and Reid found belief essential in establishing the existence of
external objects when all that analytical reason could show was only
impressions and ideas.
In his Morning Lessons (Morgenstunden) (1785) Mendelssohn does
two things. First, he reasserts the correctness of Wolff ’s deism and its
superiority over Spinoza’s pantheism. He points out what seems to him to
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be a myriad of errors in Spinoza’s philosophy. He shows, to his own
satisfaction, that the demonstrative method does not necessarily produce
the Spinozistic conclusions of pantheism and fatalism.68
Second, he formulates, in the name of his friend Lessing, a system of
“purified pantheism” which Lessing might have held and which would not
have the evil consequences that Jacobi thought were indigenous in
Spinozism. Specifically, in the fourteenth Lesson he makes of substance a
spiritual being endowed with intellect and will but not extension. Then the
question whether God is the world (pantheism) or the world stands
outside God (deism) does not have the portentous consequences which
follow from identifying the human mind with a mode of substance whose
essence is necessity, extension, and oneness.
In his To the Friends of Lessing (1786) Mendelssohn tries a new
gambit. He commends “sound human understanding” (common sense in
the Scottish philosophy) when high speculations like Spinozism or purified
pantheism, formulated by fallible human reason, conflict or do not carry
conviction. He says:
When I speak of rational conviction… I am not speaking of
metaphysical argumentation…or of scholastic demonstrations which
have stood the test of the most subtle skepticism; rather, I speak of the
expressions and judgments of simple and sound human understanding
which directly grasps and contemplates things. I certainly respect
demonstrations in metaphysics… but my conviction of religious truths
does not depend so completely upon metaphysical argumentations
that it would have to stand or fall with them. One can raise doubts
about my arguments and show fallacies in them, and yet my
conviction remains unshaken…. For the true and genuine conviction
of natural religion…these artificial methods [of metaphysical
speculation] are of no use. The man whose reason is not debauched by
sophistry needs only to follow his own good sense.69
This was the state of things at the end of the Mendelssohn-Jacobi dispute:
the proponent of faith and feeling sees his rationalist enemy take refuge in
common sense. On both sides, reason has taken a beating. That is how it
appeared to one man, Immanuel Kant, in an apostrophe to Jacobi and
Mendelssohn:
Men of intellectual power and broad minds! I honor your talents
and love your feeling for humanity. But have you considered what
you do, and where you will end, with your attacks on human
reason?…Friends of the human race and of that which is holiest to
it!…do not wrest from reason that which makes it the highest good
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on earth, the prerogative of being the ultimate touchstone of
truth.70
German Idealism proper may be said to have begun when leading
philosophers heeded Kant’s words and made reason “the highest good on
earth” and “the ultimate touchstone of truth.”
NOTES
1 See, for instance, C.A.Corr, “Christian Wolff and Leibniz,” Journal of the
History of Ideas, 36 (1975): 241–62.
2 W.H.Bruford, Germany in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1965), p. 222.
3 Wolff’s Gesammelte Werke, ed. J.Ecole, J.E.Hofmann, et al. (Hildesheim:
Olms, 1962–), are currently being published, but there is little Wolff in
English. There is Preliminary Discourse on Philosophy in General, trans.
R.G.Blackwell (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963); selections from
Vernünftige Gedanken von Gott, der Welt, der Seele des Menschen, auch allen
Dingen überhaupt in Eighteenth Century Philosophy, trans. L.W.Beck (New
York: Free Press, 1966); selections from Vernünftige Gedanken von der
Menschen Thun und Lassen in Moral Philosophy from Montaigne to Kant,
trans. J.B.Schneewind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
4 See T.Frangsmyr, “Christian Wolff’s Mathematical Method and its Impact on
the Eighteenth Century,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 36 (1975): 653–68.
5 Wolff, Preliminary Discourse on Philosophy in General, op. cit., §139.
6 Wolff, Von dem Unterschiede metaphysischer und mathematischer Begriffe…,
in Gesammelte Werke, op. cit., Series I, Vol. 22, pp. 286–343, esp. § 14.
7 J.Ecole, “En quel sens peut-on dire que Wolff est rationalist?” Studia
Leibnitiana, XI (1979): 45–61.
8 Wolff, Prima Philosophic sive Ontologia, in Gesammelte Werke, op. cit.,
Series I, Vol. 2, §§ 70, 288–319; Vernünftige Gedanken von Gott…, op. cit., §
30. Wolff’s “deductions” are so patently question-begging that it is not
worthwhile repeating them.
9 Wolff, Preliminary Discourse on Philosophy in General, op. cit., §§ 7 ff.
10 Wolff defines a priori as follows: “Whatever is known a priori is elicited by the
power of the intellect.” “Whatever becomes known to us by ratiocination is
said to be known a priori.” Psychologia Empirica, in Gesammelte Werke, op.
cit., §§ 438, 434.
11 Wolff, Ontologia, op. cit., § 174; Vernünftige Gedanken von Gott…, op. cit.,
§14. Kant’s rejection of the complement of possibility is in Critique of Pure
Reason, A 231, B 284. On this difficult point, see C.A.van Peursen, “Wolff’s
Philosophy of Contingent Reality,” Journal of the History of Philosophy, 25
(1987): esp. 75–6.
12 Wolff, Ontologia, op. cit., § 872.
13 Wolff tediously recites the benefits that earth-dwellers enjoy by virtue of the
sun’s existence, e.g. without the sun there could be no sundials and we could
not detect compass deviations. What about suns (i.e. stars) that do not benefit
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THE AGE OF GERMAN IDEALISM
earth-dwellers? There must be inhabitants of their planets, who do benefit
from their suns. See also the exciting chapter on the benefits we have from the
existence of air. Vemünftige Gedanken von der Ahsicht der natürlichen
Dingen, in Gesammelte Werke, op. cit., §§ 28, 44, 46, 60, 85, 91, et
passim.
14 Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, trans. L.W.Beck (New York: Macmillan,
1993), P. 41.s
15 Baumgarten’s Latin Wolffian textbooks were used by Kant in his lectures. One
book has been translated into English under the name Reflections on Poetry,
trans. K.Aschenbrenner and W.B.Holtker (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1954).
16 Crusius, Weg zur Gewissheit und Zuverlässigkeit der menschlichen Erkenntnis
(1747), §§ 5, 9, 10 (hereafter referred to as Logic); Entwurf der notwendigen
Vernunftwahrheiten (1745), § 234 (hereafter referred to as Metaphysics). All
citations are to C.A.Crusius, Die philosophischen Hauptwerke, ed. G.Tonelli,
4 vols (Hildesheim: Olms, 1987).
17 Crusius, Metaphysics, op. cit., § 14.
18 Ibid., §§ 56, 57. This startling thesis was accepted by Lambert and by the
precritical Kant in his Only Possible Premise for a Demonstration of the
Existence of God, trans. G.Treash, Part I, Observation 2 (New York: Abaris,
1979), p. 69; also New Exposition of the First Principles of Metaphysical
Knowledge, in Kant’s Latin Writings, 3rd edn (New York: P.Lang, 1993), p.
52.
19 Crusius, Logic, op. cit., § 62. Kant does not believe that the Crusian
distinction permits an escape from psychological subjectivity.
20 All of these laws except the first two are rejected as “subreptitious axioms” in
Kant’s Inaugural Dissertation. They result from the application of sensible
concepts to intelligible objects and are therefore invalid.
21 Crusius, Metaphysics, op. cit., §15.
22 Kant’s letter to Herz, 21 February 1772, in Kant’s Philosophical
Correspondence, ed. A.Zweig (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967),
pp. 72–3. Crusius may have been the target of Kant’s attack on
“preformationism” in Critique of Pure Reason, B 167–8; see G.Treash, “Kant
and Crusius: epigenesis and preformation,” Proceedings of the Sixth
International Kant Congress, II (1989): 95–108.
23 Crusius, Logic, op. cit., § 185.
24 Crusius is closer to Hume when he speaks of “feeling a compulsion to grant
another thing from which one thing comes” (Metaphysics, op. cit., § 63) but
does not draw Hume’s skeptical conclusion.
25 Crusius, Metaphysics, op. cit., § 31.
26 This is the principal theme of Kant’s Essay towards Introducing Negative
Magnitudes into Philosophy (1764), the work that shows more than any other
the Crusian influence on Kant.
27 Crusius, Dissertatio philosophica de usu et limitibus principii rationis
determinantis, vulgo sufficientis, §§ II, III.
28 Crusius, Anweisung vernünftig zu Leben (1744), § 175.
29 Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, op. cit., p. 41.
30 Crusius, Anweisung vernünftig zu Lehen, § 176.
31 Lambert, Anlage zur Architektonic, § 683. This work, published with Kant’s
aid in 1765, aimed to be an ontology for all the sciences, but it lacks the
architectonic, systematic order which might have come from the successful
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application of Lambert’s adaptation of Leibniz’s ars characteristica. It is to be
found in Lambert’s Philosophische Schriften, ed. H.W.Arndt (Hildeshcim:
Olms, 1965), Vols 3 and 4.
32 Lambert, “On the Improvement of Method of Proof in Metaphysics,
Theology, and Morals,” p. 5. This was an uncompleted draft of a paper
Lambert apparently intended to submit to the Berlin Academy in the prize
competition of 1762. It was first published as the Kant-Studien
Ergänzungsheft (1918). It shows some remarkable kinship with Kant’s prize
essay.
33 Lambert to Kant, 3 February 1766, in Kant’s Philosophical Correspondence,
op. cit., p. 51.
34 Lambert, Abhandlung von Criterium veritatis (1761), § 79, first published in
Kant-Studien Ergänzungsheft, 36 (1915).
35 Joachim Georg Darjes (1714–63), professor in Jena and later in Frankfurt/
Oder; originally a disciple of Wolff, he was influenced by Crusius. The
quotation is from Lambert, Anlage zur Architektonic, op. cit., § 11.
36 Lambert, Neues Organon, Dianoiologie, §§ 601–5. This work was published
in two volumes in 1764 and is reprinted as Lambert’s Philosophische
Schriften, op. cit., Vols 1 and 2.
37 Ibid., § 639.
38 Ibid., §§ 656–7.
39 Ibid., Dianoiologie, § 662.
40 This is the subject matter of Kant’s Essay towards the Introduction of
Negative Magnitudes in Philosophy, written under the Crusian influence
before Kant had read Lambert.
41 Lambert, On the Improvement of the Method…, op. cit., § 19 µ; see Lambert,
Abhandlung von Criterium veritatis, op. cit., § 92.
42 Ibid., notanda 4.
43 Lambert, Anlage zur Architektonic, op. cit., § 297.
44 Lambert, Neues Organon, op. cit., Alethiologie, § 234a.
45 See L.Falkenstein, “Kant, Mendelssohn, Lambert, and the Subjectivity of
Time,” Journal of the History of Philosophy, 29 (1991): 227–52.
46 Kant’s Philosophical Correspondence, op. cit., pp. 63, 66.
47 Until Lambert’s death it had been Kant’s intention to dedicate the Critique of
Pure Reason to him.
48 Quotations from Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A 37, B 53, B 71.
49 Kant, On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and the Intelligible World, §
24, in Kant’s Latin Writings, op. cit., p. 148.
50 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A 51=B 75.
51 Kant’s Philosophical Correspondence, op. cit., p. 65.
52 Tetens, On Universal Speculative Philosophy (1775), pp. 57, 66–7, in Tetens,
Philosophische Versuche über die menschliche Natur und ihre Entwickelung
(Berlin: Kant Gesellschaft, 1913). Both of Tetens’s works cited are included in
this volume.
53 The pervasive influence of the Scots on Tetens has been studied by M.Kuehn in
his comprehensive Scottish Common Sense in Germany, 1768–1800
(Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1987), ch. 7.
54 Tetens, On Universal Speculative Philosophy, op. cit., p. 66.
55 Ibid., p. 40. A like use of “transcendent” is found in Lambert (Neues
Organon, op. cit., Alethiologie, § 48; Anlage zur Architektonic, op. cit., §
301). “Transcendent” is not to be confused with Kant’s “transcendental.”
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THE AGE OF GERMAN IDEALISM
56 Tetens, On Universal Speculative Philosophy, op. cit., p. 27. There is a marked
resemblance to Crusius here.
57 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A 99.
58 Tetens, On Universal Speculative Philosophy, op. cit., pp. 33–4.
59 Ibid., p. 28. Tetens accepts Kant’s distinction between the necessity inherent in
intuition and that belonging to “the transcendent principles of reason.” Thus
he is at one with Kant in asserting the discontinuity of mathematical and
metaphysical reasoning, citing Kant’s Inaugural Dissertation. See ibid., pp.
21–2 n.
60 Tetens, Philosophical Essays (1777), in Philosophische Versuche…, op. cit., p.
393.
61 Ibid., p. 527
62 Kants gesammelte Schriften, 29 vols, ed. Deutsche (formerly Königliche
Preussische) Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin: de Gruyter [and
predecessors], 1902–), Reflexion 4901, and Vol. 23, pp. 23, 57.
63 The best collection of documents is H.Scholz (ed.), Die Hauptschriften zum
Pantheismusstreit (Berlin: Kant Gesellschaft, 1916). Selections from Scholz
have been translated as The Spinoza Conversations between Lessing and
jacobi, trans. G.Vallée et al. (Canham, Md: University Press of America,
1988).
64 Wolff, B.von S.Sittenlehre widerleget von…Christian Wolff (Leipzig, 1744);
Theologia naturalis (1749), Vol. II, §§ 671–716.
65 The Teaching of Spinoza in Letters to Moses Mendelssohn, in Scholz, op. cit.,
pp. 82–3.
66 Ibid., p. 91.
67 See, for example, Herder’s God, Some Conversations (1787) (New York:
Hafner, 1940).
68 Mendelssohn, Morgenstunden, Lesson XIV; Scholz, op. cit., p. 15.
69 Scholz, op. cit., p. 307.
70 Kant, “What is Orientation in Thinking?” in Kant’s Critique of Practical
Reason and Other Writings in Moral Philosophy (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press 1949), PP. 303, 305.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
1.1 Allison, H.E. Lessing and the Enlightenment, Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1968.
1.2 Anchor, R.E. The Enlightenment Tradition, New York: Harper & Row,
1967.
1.3 Baeumler, A. Das Irrationalitätsproblem in der Aesthetik und Logik des
achtzehnten Jahrhunderts. Darmstadt: Wissen-schaftliche
Buchgesellschaft, 1967. (Originally published as Kant’s Kritik der
Urtellskraft, Ihre Geschichte und Systematik, Halle, 1923.)
1.4 Beck, L.W. Early German Philosophy: Kant and His Predecessors,
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969. Chs XI–XVI.
1.5 Beck, L.W. Essays on Kant and Hume, Yale University Press, 1978. Ch. 5:
“Analytic and Synthetic Judgments before Kant.”
1.6 Beiser, F.C. The Fate of Reason. German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte,
Harvard University Press, 1987.
1.7 Bossenbrook, W.J. The German Mind, Detroit: Wayne State University Press,
1961.
1.8 Bruford, W.H. Germany in the Eighteenth Century. The Social Background
of the Literary Revival, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1935
(reprinted 1965).
1.9 Cassirer, E. Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der
neueren Zeit, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1971.
Volume II.
1.10 Cassirer, E. The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1951.
1.11 Copleston, F. A History of Philosophy, London: Burns & Oates, 1960.
Volume 6: Wolff to Kant.
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1.12 Edwards, P. (ed.) The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, New York:
Macmillan and Free Press, 1967, 8 volumes. (Contains scholarly
articles and bibliographies on all the philosophers mentioned in this
chapter.)
1.13 Gawlik, G. and Kreimendahl, L. Hume in der deutschen Aufklärung,
Stuttgart: Fromman Hoolzboog, 1987.
1.14 Hillebrand, K. German Thought from the Seven Years’ War to Goethe’s
Death, New York: Holt, 1880.
1.15 Kantzenbach, F.W. Protestantisches Christentum im Zeitalter der
Aufklärung, Gütersloh: Mohm, 1965.
1.16 Kuehn, M. Scottish Common Sense in Germany, 1768–1800, Kingston and
Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1987.
1.17 Petersen, P. Geschichte der aristotelischen Philosophie im protestantischen
Deutschland, Leipzig: Meiner, 1921.
1.18 Philipp, W. Das Werden der Aufklärung in theologiegeschichtlicher Sicht,
Göttingen: Vanderhoek aund Ruprecht, 1957.
1.19 Philipp, W. (ed.) Das Zeitalter der Aufklärung, Bremen: Schünemann, 1963.
1.20 Sutton, C. The German Tradition in Philosophy, London: Weidenfeld &
Nicolson, 1974.
1.21 Tonelli, G. “La Philosophie Allemande de Leibniz á Kant.” In Histoire de la
Philosophie, ed. Y.Beleval, vol. ii, pp. 728–85. Paris: Encylopédie de
la Pléiade, 1973.
1.22 Wolff, H.M. Die Weltanschauung der deutschen Aufklärung, Bern: Francke,
1949.
1.23 Wundt, M. Die deutsche Schulmetaphysik im Zeitalter der Aufklärung,
Tübingen: Mohr, 1945.
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1.24 Zeller, E. Geschichte der deutschen Philosophie seit Leibniz,
München, 1873.
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CHAPTER 2
Kant’s Copernican revolution
Daniel Bonevac
Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason was to transform the
philosophical world, at once bringing the Enlightenment to its highest
intellectual development and establishing a new set of problems that would
dominate philosophy in the nineteenth century and beyond. As Richard
Rorty has observed, Kant would turn philosophy into a profession, if for no
other reason than that, after 1781, one could not be called a philosopher
without having mastered Kant’s first Critique—which, in the words of
Kant’s famous commentator, Norman Kemp Smith, “is more obscure and
difficult than even a metaphysical treatise has any right to be.”1
The Critique’s central character is “Human reason,” which, Kant
begins his first edition’s preface by noting,
has this peculiar fate that in one species of its knowledge it is
burdened by questions which, as prescribed by the very nature of
reason itself, it is not able to ignore, but which, as transcending all
its powers, it is also not able to answer.
(A vii)2
Reason develops principles to deal with experience; within the realm of
experience, those principles are well justified. Reason finds itself driven,
however, to ask questions extending beyond that realm. The very
principles it has developed and upon which it properly continues to rely in
dealing with experience there lead it “into darkness and contradictions”
(A viii). Metaphysics, once Queen of the Sciences, now surveys the
battlefield on which these principles clash and mourns. Kant’s aim in the
Critique is to rescue metaphysics, “to secure for human reason complete
satisfaction” (A 856, B 884) by defining its proper sphere of application.
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KANT’S COPERNICAN REVOLUTION
Kant’s means for achieving this end is the critical method. The title of
the work is ambiguous in both English and German: Pure reason may be
the agent or the object of the critique.3 In fact, it is surely both. The
critical method requires reason to critique itself, to determine its own
limits, and then to devise rules for staying within them. This, Kant thinks,
is the key to reason’s “complete satisfaction”: “there is not a single
metaphysical problem which has not been solved, or for the solution of
which the key at least has not been supplied” (A xiii).
Understood in this way, Kant’s critical method hardly seems
revolutionary. It had been exemplified already in Locke’s Essay concerning
Human Understanding and Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature. Both were
attempts to define the limits of human knowledge by employing reason in
a reflective act of self-criticism. Kant’s most important contribution is not
the general idea of the critical method, but the specific form that method
takes, for which he often uses the adjective transcendental rather than
critical. Kant claims that he uses the transcendental method and
establishes the truth of transcendental idealism.
What, then, is the transcendental method? To understand it, we need to
focus on what, in the preface to the second edition of 1787, Kant
considers the key to his advance: his Copernican revolution in philosophy.
“[T]he procedure of metaphysics,” Kant writes, “has hitherto been a
merely random groping, and, what is worst of all, a groping among mere
concepts” (B xv). Kant finds himself capable of setting metaphysics upon
the secure path of a science by advancing a hypothesis analogous to that
of Copernicus.
Hitherto it has been assumed that all our knowledge must conform
to objects. But all attempts to extend our knowledge of objects by
establishing something in regard to them a priori, by means of
concepts, have, on this assumption, ended in failure. We must
therefore make trial whether we may not have more success in the
tasks of metaphysics, if we suppose that objects must conform to our
knowledge.
(B xvi)
Copernicus explained the motions of the heavenly bodies as resulting,
not just from their own motion, but also from the motion of the
observers on earth. Just as he sought “the observed movements, not in
the heavenly bodies, but in the spectator” (B xxii n.), so Kant seeks the
laws governing the realm of experience not in the objects themselves but
in us: “we can know a priori of things only what we ourselves put into
them” (B xviii).
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THE PLATONIC HERITAGE
Kant is a rationalist. We might define a concept rationalist as one who
believes in innate concepts—that is, that we have first-order cognitive
abilities that we do not derive from experience—and a judgment
rationalist as one who believes that we can know some synthetic truths a
priori that is, that we can know independently of experience some truths
that are not merely linguistic or verbal, that are not automatically true or
false because of the meanings of the words that constitute them. Kant is
plainly a rationalist in both senses. He argues that we can deduce pure
concepts of the understanding a priori, independently of experience, from
the mere possibility of experience, and moreover that there are synthetic a
priori truths—that is, truths that we can know independently of
experience but that are not merely verbal. Indeed, the establishment of
rationalism in both senses seems to be a major goal of the Critique.
Like many rationalists, Kant understands himself as working within the
Platonic tradition. The central problems he attacks and his solutions to
them stem directly from that tradition. To understand Kant’s Copernican
revolution, therefore, we must consider the framework in which his
thought is embedded.
Consider a judgment of perception, for example, (said pointing to a
figure drawn on a blackboard) ‘This is a triangle.’ According to Plato, at
one very influential stage of his thought, at least, the mind so judging is
Janus-faced. It is turned toward a perceptual object, a triangle, if it judges
correctly. It is also turned toward the abstract form of a triangle. Both the
object and the form have real causal or explanatory power. The object is
causally responsible for our perception of it. But we are able to perceive it
as a triangle because we apprehend the general form of triangularity. The
form of a triangle is exemplified in the triangle itself, which in turn is an
instance of, or, in Plato’s technical language, participates in, the form.
The forms constitute the most distinctive feature of Plato’s philosophy
of mind. They explain our ability to think general thoughts; they account
for regularities as well as changes in experience; they explain how
different people (or the same person at different times) can think the same
thought; and they explain how thoughts can be veridical. We may think
general thoughts, for example, by thinking about the forms and how they
relate. Regularities in experience involve constant relations of forms;
changes occur when an object of sense stops participating in one form and
begins participating in another. Two different people can think the same
thought by attending to the same forms. Finally, thoughts can depict
reality accurately by involving the forms that are actually instantiated.
But the forms also generate a serious epistemological puzzle. By
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definition, the forms are not themselves objects of experience; we do not
perceive triangularity as we perceive individual triangles. How, then, do
we know anything about them? How is the realm of forms, which Philo of
Alexandria later termed “the intelligible world,” intelligible? In an
Aristotelian philosophy of mind, we generate our own general concepts
from experience through a process of abstraction. A Platonist may borrow
this account for certain general concepts, but cannot use it for all, because
it is central to Platonism that some forms are ultimately responsible for
our abilities to think the corresponding thoughts. On Plato’s view, we do
not abstract the idea of a pure triangle from triangular objects we
perceive; indeed, we never encounter a pure triangle in experience.
Instead, we recognize objects as triangular because we apprehend the form
of pure triangularity and recognize that the objects approximate that pure
form. In this sense, the forms have causal power; we are able to think of
things as triangular by virtue of our apprehension of the form.
Unfortunately, Plato has no theory that explains our interaction with
the forms. He relies on two metaphors. In the Meno, he speaks of
recollection; we apprehend the forms by recalling a time before birth when
our souls were united with them. In the Republic, he speaks of the form of
the Good as analogous to the sun, shedding light on the realm of forms
and making possible our apprehension of them. Neither metaphor yields a
satisfactory theory within the limits of Platonic metaphysics. Neither,
moreover, seems to explain our apprehension of forms without begging
the question. The Meno metaphor explains the causal efficacy of the forms
now by appealing to their efficacy at some earlier time; the Republic
metaphor, by appealing to the efficacy of the form of the Good. The
Neoplatonic theory of emanation, according to which the entire realm of
forms is ordered, with the causal efficacy of higher levels making lower
levels possible and intelligible, does little to change the central
epistemological difficulty.
Augustine, however, solves Platonism’s epistemological problem by
going beyond the resources of the original theory. To put it crudely, he
adopts the Republic’s solution, but replaces the form of the Good with
God. It is not clear why the form of the Good should be more causally
efficacious than any other form. Causal efficacy, in contrast, is not a
problem for God, who can do anything. Augustine thus follows Philo in
identifying the forms with ideas in the mind of God, and describes the
process by which we apprehend the forms as illumination, an act of
revelation by which God allows us to make use of a portion of divine
mental resources and by which, therefore, God makes our minds resemble
the divine mind. We have innate cognitive capacities that reflect the
principles according to which God created the world.
Platonism remained Augustinian throughout the medieval debates
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concerning realism and nominalism arising from the conflict between
Platonic and Aristotelian theories of substance and knowledge. Descartes,
however, advanced a new kind of skeptical argument that forced a change
in Platonism and that brought the theory of knowledge to center stage in
modern philosophy. He added to the traditional arguments of Sextus and
Cicero the possibility of an evil deceiver, who systematically misaligns our
minds to reality. This extends farther than traditional skeptical arguments,
for it raises the possibility that not only sensible knowledge but even logic
and mathematics might be mistaken. It thus challenges the Augustinian
solution to Platonism’s epistemological problem. Why should illumination
produce veridical knowledge? Why should we believe that God reveals the
portion of the divine mind relevant to the construction of the world, and
not some counterfeit of it? Why should our innate ideas, and the a priori
knowledge arising from them, have anything to do with the world?
Kant sees the force of this difficulty, and thinks that, within the Platonic
framework, it is insoluble. He divides previous philosophers into
dogmatists and skeptics (A ix; A 856, B 884). Dogmatists like Descartes
and Leibniz assume that human reason can comprehend ultimate reality.
Their dogmatism involves three factors:
1 Realism. Human thought can discover the nature of objective reality.
2 Transcendence. Real knowledge is capable of extending beyond
experience to the supersensible. (See A 295–6, B 352.)
3 Rationalism.4
Descartes, for example, tries to demonstrate that God guarantees the
veridicality of our a priori judgments by arguing that God exists and is
entirely good. A good God, surely, would not be a deceiver. Granting
Cartesian rationalism, we may see the problem generated by the possibility
of the evil deceiver as precisely that of realism: Why should we believe that
our thinking can discover the nature of objective reality? Descartes’s
solution relies on transcendence. We may take the form of thought implicit
in the cogito, namely, the method of clear and distinct ideas, and apply it
beyond the realm of our own thinking to reality—indeed, to reality that
transcends all possible experience. But this, Kant sees, is just what is at
issue. If realism is false—if our minds cannot discover the nature of
objective reality—then why should we expect our modes of thinking,
applied to the nature of that reality, to be reliable? It will not do to appeal to
transcendence to justify realism, for the only argument for transcendence
presupposes realism. For example, Descartes’s third Meditation, arguing for
the existence and moral excellence of God, appeals to the premise that there
is at least as much reality in the cause as in the effect.5 Why, given only the
certain knowledge that I think and I exist, should I accept this principle as
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certain? Descartes derives it by applying the method of clear and distinct
ideas beyond the mental realm of the cogito, which first justified it, to the
realm of external, objective reality. Kant, for this reason, among others,
rejects Descartes’s proof. But his reasoning is broader. Any argument for
realism within the dogmatist’s framework will rely on transcendence and
make a similarly illegitimate move.
Skepticism, as Kant conceives it, also involves three factors:
1 Subjectivism. Knowledge of objects reduces to knowledge of sense.
2 Immanence. Real knowledge is limited to the sphere of sense
experience.
3 Empiricism. (The denial of rationalism in either of its forms.)
Skepticism, too, encounters difficulties. If dogmatism extends our
knowledge too far and too uncritically, skepticism seems unable to
account for the knowledge we do have. Hume’s scandal of induction, for
example, illustrates that we cannot justify any causal knowledge we claim
to have. It would have to reduce to a knowledge of items directly
presented in sensation, but, as Hume shows, it does not.
Kant’s critical philosophy shares the immanence of skepticism, but also
the rationalism of dogmatism. It transcends the distinction between
realism and subjectivism, holding that in a sense each is correct. Kant’s
synthesis of dogmatism and skepticism comes at the cost of distinguishing
between the world of appearance—the phenomenal world—and the world
of things-in-themselves—the noumenal world. The former is essentially
sensible, and human thought can discover its nature. Things-in-
themselves, in contrast, lie beyond our cognitive capacities. The dogmatist
is right about the possibility of knowledge of objects, even a priori
knowledge of them; the skeptic is right about the limitation of knowledge
to the realm of experience.
Both, however, misunderstand the status of objects of experience,
thinking that they are in themselves as they appear to us. The phenomenal
world is both sensible and knowable; the noumenal world is neither. With
respect to phenomena, therefore, the skeptic is vanquished; we can have a
priori knowledge of objects of experience. With respect to noumena,
however, the skeptic triumphs, for we can have no knowledge of things-in-
themselves.
Kant’s solution to the epistemological problem of Platonism goes
beyond the distinction between phenomena and noumena. It would be
easy to build that distinction into Descartes’s metaphysics, for example,
without thereby making any headway on the skeptical problem. The key
to Kant’s solution resides in two additional changes to the traditional
framework. First, Kant explains the causal efficacy of the forms by
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transforming them into categories, pure concepts of the understanding.
They are innate cognitive capacities of a very general kind, but they are
wholly mental; the question of their correspondence to abstract, mind-
independent forms cannot arise. Without such forms there remains, of
course, the possibility that the categories do not correspond to objective
and concrete reality. So, second, Kant reverses the traditional conception
of the relation between thought and its object, or, as he puts it, between
object and concept. The Platonist traditionally sees the object as causally
responsible for the veridical, perceptual thought of it. Kant’s Copernican
revolution is precisely to reverse this understanding, maintaining instead
that thought is causally responsible for constituting the object. The result
is not anarchy, a circumstance of “thinking making it so,” for the
constitution of objects proceeds according to the categories in a rule-
governed way. The rule-governed character of the construction makes
knowledge of objects possible. More, it makes a priori knowledge of them
possible, for we can understand what we put into them—we can discover
the rules according to which we constitute them. In this way Kant justifies
his realism with respect to the phenomenal world without any appeal to
transcendence—indeed, in the face of its outright denial.
THE CATEGORIES
Kant’s first change to the traditional Piatonistic framework is to substitute
for the forms the categories, pure concepts of the understanding. These are
innate ideas of the kind smiled upon by every concept rationalist. But
there is no abstract realm of forms to which they must correspond. Their
independence dissolves the epistemological difficulty arising for the aspect
of the mind turned toward the forms in Platonic theories of mind.
All knowledge, Kant observes, involves concepts; all concepts, in turn,
“rest on functions,” “bringing various representations under one common
representation” (A 68, B 93). The representations united in a concept may
be sensible intuitions or other concepts. Kant here makes an important
concession to empiricists such as Hume: the content of concepts traces
ultimately to sensation. Kant makes much of this in the Transcendental
Dialectic to refute the transcendence thesis. In deriving the categories,
however, he focuses on the mediate character of concepts. Concepts of
objects always relate to those objects indirectly:
Since no representation, save when it is an intuition, is in immediate
relation to an object, no concept is ever related to a concept
immediately, but to some other representation of it, be that other
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representation an intuition, or itself a concept. Judgment is therefore
the mediate knowledge of an object, that is, a representation of a
representation of it.
(A 68, B 93)
This has the consequence, critical to the Copernican revolution Kant
means to effect, that both judgments and objects are products of synthesis.
Knowledge, Kant contends, always takes the form of judgments. (This is
true at least for discursive knowledge, that is, knowing that, as opposed to
knowing how or knowing to.) Judgments are combinations of concepts,
which, in turn, are rules for synthesis, bringing together various sensations or
concepts. Concepts relate to objects because they are such functions of
synthesis. To discover the pure concepts of the understanding, therefore, we
must find the functions of synthesis with a priori rather than empirical origins.
The content of judgments, we might say, always has an empirical
source, for the content of the concepts that comprise them arises
ultimately from sensation. A concept unites sensible intuitions or other
concepts that themselves unite sensible intuitions or other concepts. The
chain cannot proceed to infinity; at some point, it terminates in intuition.
This may suggest that there are no pure concepts. But not all functions of
synthesis operating in a judgment comprise part of its content. A judgment
has both a content and a form. The content stems from experience, but the
form does not. We can identify the pure concepts of the understanding,
then, by examining the forms of judgment. Fortunately, there is already a
science that abstracts from the content of judgments and examines only
their forms—logic.6
Kant, using Aristotelian logic, derives the following table of judgments
(A 70, B 95):
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Every judgment, Kant contends, has a quantity, a quality, a relation, and a
modality. In quantity, it is either universal (‘every metal is a body,’ for
example), particular (‘some metals are yellow’), or singular (‘Socrates is a
philosopher’). In quality, it is either affirmative (‘Socrates is mortal’),
negative (‘Socrates is not mortal’), or infinite (‘Socrates is immortal’). In
relation, judgments may be categorical (‘gold is a metal’), hypothetical (‘if
every metal is a body, gold is a body’), or disjunctive (‘gold is a metal or a
rare earth’). And, in modality, judgments are problematic (‘gold may be a
metal’), assertoric (‘gold is a metal’), or apodeictic (‘gold must be a
metal’). The table of judgments thus gives what Kant takes to be an
exhaustive account of the forms of judgment.
From the perspective of modern logic, the table seems incomplete. It
does not include the quantity of ‘most metals are heavy’ or ‘many metals
oxidize’; it omits the modality of ‘Socrates ought to avoid hemlock.’ It has
no place for judgments with complement clauses, such as ‘Socrates knew
that the hemlock would kill him,’ and makes no provision for the
abstraction relating ‘kind’ and ‘kindness,’ ‘friend’ and ‘friendship.’ It is
silent about verb tense and aspect. (Kant considers time a form of
sensibility, not of judgment, and so considers it beyond the province of
logic.) It omits identity. Kant’s table is not only incomplete from a modern
point of view; it is redundant. Many entries can be derived from others
with the help of forms recognized by contemporary logicians. There is no
consensus on exactly what such a table would need to reflect all the forms
of possible judgment. Kant is surely correct, however, that what we now
call quantifiers, connectives, and modalities are required.
The functions of judgment are not themselves the pure concepts of the
understanding, but they correspond to them one-to-one. Kant lists the
pure concepts of the understanding in his table of categories (A 80, B 106):
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Some of these relate directly to a corresponding entry in the table of
judgments—‘Negative’ and ‘Negation,’ for example, or ‘Problematic’ and
‘Possibility—Impossibility.’ Other connections—‘Disjunctive’ and ‘Of
community,’ for instance—seem tenuous. How does Kant derive the table
of categories? His detailed arguments are not terribly important, for, as we
have seen, the entries on the table of judgments reflect an outdated logic.
But it is important to understand what the categories are.
Roughly speaking, what the table of judgments is to judgments, the
table of categories is to objects. Just as the table of judgments outlines the
possible logical forms of judgment, so the table of categories outlines the
possible logical forms of objects. This explains, for example, why,
corresponding to the assertoric modality, we find ‘Existence-nonexistence’
rather than Truth-falsehood.’ Synthesis of the manifold of intuition is
essential to concepts. But synthesis alone does not suffice for knowledge.
Knowledge of objects requires a unification of the pure synthesis of the
sensible manifold. That is, the concept of an object is special: It is the
concept of a unified thing. In different terminology, concepts of objects not
only tell us when a certain predicable or general term applies, but also
when it is being applied to one and the same thing.7 The pure concepts of
the understanding “apply a priori to objects of intuition in general” (A 79,
B 105); they spell out the possible forms of such objects by indicating the
possible kinds of unity.
Kant’s key assumption in deriving the categories in this way is that
“The same function which gives unity to the various representations in a
judgment also gives unity to the mere synthesis of various representations
in an intuition” (A 79, B 105). Each such unity is a pure concept of the
understanding. Why are the unifying functions in judgments and objects
the same? We have seen above that judgments and objects are both
products of synthesis. Moreover, knowledge is always knowledge of
objects through judgments. This suggests that judgments, at least of the
sort appropriate to knowledge, are possible only by virtue of the unifying
activity of the categories. Still, this does not suffice to establish the identity
of function. It shows that the unifying activity in a judgment presupposes
the unifying activity in an intuition, not that they have the same form.
Kant’s argument turns on his notion of a concept. The unity of
judgments and objects alike is a unity in a concept. This not only explains
the link between the table of judgments and the table of categories; it also
explains why the pure concepts of the understanding have a priori validity,
avoiding the challenges of the skeptics.
Concepts of objects in general thus underlie all empirical knowledge
as its a priori conditions. The objective validity of the categories as a
priori concepts rests, therefore, on the fact that, so far as the form of
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thought is concerned, through them alone does experience become
possible. They relate of necessity and a priori to objects of
experience, for the reason that only by means of them can any object
whatsoever of experience be thought.
(A 93, B 126)
To understand the role that concepts play in Kant’s theory of mind,
however, we must examine his account of the kinds of synthesis.
THE SUBJECTIVE DEDUCTION
Kant’s argument for the first key to his solution to the problems arising
from the Platonic framework—the pure concepts of the understanding—
also defends and develops the second key, the Copernican revolution. The
argument occupies the portion of the Critique he entitles “The
transcendental deduction of the pure concepts of the understanding.”
There are, however, two very different versions of this argument in the
first and second editions of the Critique. The first edition version presents
a model of how the mind constructs objects from the data of sense,
arguing that the pure concepts of the understanding are essential to the
process. The second version presents no model, but analyzes the
implications of the “I think.” The general strategy, however, remains the
same. The categories are “concepts of an object in general” (B 129); they
are “a priori conditions of the possibility of experience” (A 94, B 126). We
are able to experience objects, that is, only because we have the concept of
an object. We do not derive this concept from experience, for we could not
experience anything as an object without already having the general
concept of an object.
The transcendental deduction of the first edition is notoriously difficult;
Kant apparently pieced it together from four manuscripts composed at
different times and reflecting four different stages of his thinking.8 It
moreover includes two arguments: an “objective” deduction seeking to
establish “the objective validity of a priori concepts,” and a “subjective”
deduction investigating “the faculty of thought” (A x–xi).
The subjective deduction outlines a three-part model of mental
activity—specifically, of the generation of a judgment of experience such
as ‘This is a triangle.’ This model shows, in Kant’s view, how judgments of
experience require the categories. Kant defines a pure concept of the
understanding as a concept without any empirical content, that is, as one
that “universally and adequately expresses…a formal and objective
condition of experience” (A 96). His strategy is to “prove that by their
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means alone an object can be thought” (A 97). This, he says, “will justify
their objective validity,” for, if the categories are necessary conditions of
experience, nothing could be an object of experience without complying
with the categories.
Sensation, Kant holds, is a manifold. It bombards us with a plethora of
possible sources of information. Out of this multiplicity we synthesize
representations, concepts, and judgments. The first act of synthesis is that
of apprehension in intuition. All sensations occur in time.9 We bind the
multiplicity sensation offers into unified items of sense. A sensation of a
triangle, for example, may consist of various visual and tactile impressions
received over a short interval of time. We experience it as a single
sensation, usually without being aware of its complex nature. In short, we
organize the data of sense into discrete sensations. This organization is the
synthesis of apprehension in intuition.
The second act is the synthesis of reproduction in imagination. Kant
argues that “experience as such necessarily presupposes the reproducibility
of appearances” (A 101–2). His premises concern pure intuitions of space
and time—drawing a line in thought, for example, or thinking of a
number—which, he maintains, are possible a priori. Kant’s theory of pure
intuitions is controversial and somewhat obscure. But we can argue the
point on other grounds. Sensations, considered individually, are not full-
blown objects of experience. We can have many sensations of the same
object. We might view a triangle, for example, from many different
perspectives. To make any judgment about such an object of experience,
we must relate sensations to each other, being capable of recognizing them
as sensations of the same object. How we do this is of course an empirical
question. But do it we must if we are ever to form concepts of objects of
experience.
That brings us to the third act, the synthesis of recognition in a concept.
Throughout this discussion, Kant seems to operate with two ideas of what
concepts are. The awareness of the unity of various sensations, Kant says,
is a concept—etymologically, a “thinking together.” Having related
sensations in the synthesis of reproduction in imagination, we form a
concept through our consciousness of their unity as an object. But Kant
also speaks of a concept as a rule: “a concept is always, as regards its
form, something universal which serves as a rule” (A 106). Specifically, a
concept is a rule for the synthesis of the manifold of intuition. These two
notions of concepts are intimately connected:
the unity which the object makes necessary can be nothing else than
the formal unity of consciousness in the synthesis of the manifold of
representations. It is only when we have thus produced synthetic
unity in the manifold of intuition that we are in a position to say that
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we know the object. But this unity is impossible if the intuition
cannot be generated in accordance with a rule by means of such a
function of synthesis as makes the reproduction of the manifold a
priori necessary, and renders possible a concept in which it is united.
Thus we think of a triangle as an object, in that we are conscious of
the combination of three straight lines according to a rule by which
such an intuition can always be represented. This unity of rule
determines all the manifold, and limits it to conditions which make
unity of apperception possible.
(A 105)
Essential to recognizing something as an object, then, is a consciousness of
its unity. But this consciousness is possible only if the object is constructed
according to a rule. We can recognize a collection of intuitions as
constituting a single object only by having a rule for uniting them into that
object. We take a triangle as a single object rather than three distinct line
segments that happen to intersect because we have a rule for uniting those
segments. Without such a rule, we would be left with a manifold. The two
notions of concept are connected, then, in that we are aware of unity
(concept in sense one) according to a rule (concept in sense two).
The rule-governed character of object construction brings with it a kind
of necessity. To count as a triangle, for example, something must be a
plane figure with three sides and three angles. So, it is a necessary truth
that triangles have three sides and three angles. This, it might seem, is not
the sort of necessity that interests Kant; ‘triangles have three angles’ is
analytic. But when we ask what necessary truths stem, not from the rule
for constructing triangles or any other kind of object, but from the rule-
governed constructions of objects in general, we obtain a more interesting
answer. All objects must be unified, for example; the concept of an object
is the concept of a single thing.
Necessity, in turn, implies transcendental conclusions about our
contributions to objects.
All necessity, without exception, is grounded in a transcendental
condition. There must, therefore, be a transcendental ground of the
unity of consciousness in the synthesis of the manifold of all our
intuitions, and consequently also of the concepts of objects in
general, and so of all objects of experience, a ground without which
it would be impossible to think any objects for our intuitions.
(A 106)
Kant’s argument begins with the premise that necessity is grounded in a
transcendental condition. He does not argue for it because he takes it as
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evident from Hume’s writings. Necessary connections, Hume observes,
cannot be found in experience. We are directly aware of a succession of
things but not of the connections between items of the sequence. (In Frank
O’Malley’s words, “Life is just one damned thing after another.”) Our
concept of necessity, Hume concludes, must come from us, not from what
we experience. So far, Kant agrees. But Hume goes on to attribute the
source of our concept of necessity to the passionate side of our nature, to
a feeling of expectation. Kant, in contrast, finds necessity’s source in the
unity of objects. We experience objects, not just a whirling mass of
sensations. And, as we have seen, it is a necessary truth that all objects are
unified. Kant concludes that there is a transcendental ground of that unity.
The source of the unity of objects, moreover, is also the source of the
concept of an object in general; it thus underlies our experience of any
object.
The transcendental ground of the unity Kant terms transcendental
apperception. When we reflect on the contents of our own consciousness,
as Hume stresses, we are aware only of a succession of mental states; we
do not confront a unified self. The contents of consciousness are always
changing: “No fixed and abiding self can present itself in this flux of inner
appearances” (A 107). Thus, we find no unity in what Kant calls empirical
apperception or inner sense. But there must be a ground of unity in us.
This brings us to Kant’s key contention: The ground of the consciousness
of unity is the unity of consciousness. The source of our consciousness of
the unity of objects is the underlying unity of our consciousness itself. This
unity of apperception is “the a priori ground of all concepts” (A 107), for
all concepts unify the manifold of sensibility into objects. The most
general concepts, relating to the form of an object in general, are the
categories. The unity of apperception and with it the categories underlie
the lawlike connections we find among objects of experience and the
synthetic a priori knowledge we have of them.
The subjective deduction, then, means to spell out Kant’s Copernican
revolution in subjective detail. We can know certain truths about objects
independently of experience, for we can uncover the pure concepts of the
understanding relating to the form of an object in general. These concepts
do not arise from experience; they underlie the possibility of experience.
So, we can know a priori that any experience will conform to them. This
establishes realism, the view that we can attain knowledge of objective
reality, within the realm of objects of experience. It also establishes
concept rationalism. Most importantly, it solves the traditional Platonic
problem of the conformity of the world to our innate ideas without
invoking God, ex caelo or ex machina.
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THE OBJECTIVE DEDUCTION
Kant nevertheless views the subjective deduction as inessential to the success
of the critical enterprise. He needs to establish the objective validity of the
categories; he does not need to spell out the subjective details of the faculty
of thought. Kant is trying to show that the categories underlie our
judgments about objects. Judgments, however, are the products of the three-
stage model of mental activity outlined in the subjective deduction, and the
categories enter the model only in the third stage. The first two stages are
thus inessential to the argument. The subjective deduction, moreover, treats
the crucial third stage cursorily, leaving the role of the categories unclear. So,
Kant begins another argument, the objective deduction, to treat only the
relation between judgments and the categories. In the second edition, Kant
omits the subjective deduction entirely and elaborates the objective
deduction of the first edition.
Kant begins, not by considering the process of transforming the data of
sense into judgments, but by reflecting on the form of sensibility itself.
“We must begin with pure apperception,” he says. “Intuitions are nothing
to us, and do not in the least concern us if they cannot be taken up into
consciousness” (A 116). That is, the model of mental activity presented in
the subjective deduction presupposes, even at its earliest stage, the unity of
consciousness. It relates the data of sense to a single consciousness or mind
in which reside the faculties of sensibility, imagination, and understanding.
For the manifold representations, which are given in an intuition,
would not be one and all my representations, if they did not all
belong to one self-consciousness. As my representations (even if I am
not conscious of them as such) they must conform to the condition
under which alone they can stand together in one universal self-
consciousness, because otherwise they would not all without
exception belong to me.
(B 132–3)
The unity of consciousness thus underlies the possibility of sensation and
thought. Kant obtains “the transcendental principle of the unity of all that
is manifold in our representations, and consequently also in intuition” (A
116), which he terms “the highest principle in the whole sphere of human
knowledge” (B 135). All representations are representations precisely
because they can be represented in empirical consciousness. But an
empirical consciousness requires a transcendental consciousness, for it is
unified without containing its unity as an element. All representations
therefore presuppose the transcendental unity of apperception.
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To put Kant’s argument differently: Empirical consciousness, as far as
its contents are concerned, is a mixed bag. We cannot discover its unity
from its contents. Nor can we determine that a given succession of mental
states is unified into a single empirical consciousness by examining the
contents of those states: “the combination (conjunctio) of a manifold in
general can never come to us through the senses, and cannot, therefore, be
already contained in the pure form of sensible intuition” (B 129). That a
given representation is Jones’s representation, therefore, we cannot
analyze by appeal to monadic properties of that representation. We cannot
analyze it by appeal to relations among representations. We must instead
analyze it by appeal to a relation between the representation and
something else. Whatever is responsible for the unity of consciousness is
not to be found in empirical consciousness but in the relation between its
contents and something else, outside and underlying empirical
consciousness. That is the transcendental unity, “that which itself contains
the ground of the unity of diverse concepts in judgment, and therefore of
the possibility of the understanding, even as regards its logical
employment” (B 131). At one point Kant even identifies the
transcendental unity with the understanding (B 134 n.). The
transcendental unity of apperception manifests itself in the ‘I think’ that
we can append to all our judgments and representations:
It must be possible for the ‘I think’ to accompany all my
representations; for otherwise something would be represented in me
which could not be thought at all, and that is equivalent to saying
that the representation would be impossible, or at least would be
nothing to me.
(B 132)
This argument for the transcendental unity of consciousness allows Kant
to speak of a transcendental principle: “a principle of the synthetic unity
of the manifold in all possible intuition” (A 117). The principle of the
unity of consciousness itself is analytic, roughly of the form ‘I am I’ (B
135). But the transcendental principle Kant obtains from it is nonetheless
synthetic. We have seen that a sensation is part of Jones’s empirical
consciousness if and only if it stands in the appropriate relation to Jones’s
transcendental unity of apperception. This, Kant insists, is a necessary
truth about our kind of consciousness, one which permits a priori
knowledge of the unity of consciousness without manifesting that unity
explicitly in its contents. It follows that Jones can receive a sensation only
if it stands in relation to Jones’s transcendental unity. We can know a
priori, then, that any sensation must relate to the transcendental unity:
“all the manifold of intuition should be subject to conditions of the
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original synthetic unity of apperception” (B 136). This proposition,
furthermore, is synthetic. We derive it, not by analyzing the concept of
sensation or even the concept of the transcendental unity, but by
connecting the two by way of the transcendental argument just reviewed.
As we might expect concerning the argument for any synthetic truth, it
rests on experience. But it permits a priori knowledge, knowledge that can
be derived independently of experience and that holds necessarily, because
it concerns the form of any possible experience.
Kant is driving toward the conclusion that “appearances have a
necessary relation to the understanding” (A 119). Appearances, he says,
are “data for a possible experience”; they therefore have to relate to the
understanding. The transcendental unity of apperception is responsible for
what Kant calls the affinity of our representation—that is, their being our
representations, their constituting a single empirical consciousness—and
also the rule-governed character of the synthesis of the manifold of
intuition. If that synthesis were not rule-governed, the combination of the
data of sense would not yield knowledge but random and “accidental
collocations” (A 121) such as the products of imagination in the usual
sense. We may freely combine concepts, to form the notion of a three-
headed dragon or a golden mountain, but we gain no knowledge of what
is actual from exercising that freedom. We attain knowledge of objects
because the construction of objects actually presented in experience is rule-
governed.
Sensibility presents us with the data of experience, giving it the form of
space and time; the understanding formulates judgments. The rule-
governed synthesis linking the two is a product of the imagination and is
unified by pure apperception. Our perception of a triangle, for example, is
rule-governed; we cannot connect any sensations we like, label them a
triangle, and obtain knowledge. The rule, in this case, is quite specific
about geometrical form. Underlying such specific rules, Kant points out, is
a general set of rules for generating concepts of objects. We can call
something a triangle only if it has three sides and three angles. More
broadly, we can call something an object only if it meets certain
conditions, that is, satisfies certain rules. Those rules are specified by the
categories. Kant therefore characterizes the understanding as the faculty of
rules.
The objective deduction, Kant maintains, shows that we can know
objects because we construct them: “Thus the order and regularity in the
appearances, which we entitle nature, we ourselves introduce. We could
never find them in appearances, had not we ourselves, or the nature of our
mind, originally set them there” (A 125). The understanding,
consequently, is nothing less than “the lawgiver of nature” (A 126). This
follows from Kant’s argument, for it has shown that the transcendental
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unity is “an objective condition of all knowledge. It is not merely a condition
that I myself require in knowing an object, but is a condition under which
every intuition must stand in order to become an object for me” (B 138).
THE DIALECTIC
The Transcendental Analytic and related portions of the Critique attempt
to justify Kant’s rationalism. The Transcendental Dialectic, which
comprises most of the second half of the book, tries to justify Kant’s thesis
of immanence. As Kant puts it, the topic of the Dialectic is illusion.
Certainly, he means to show that the hope of extending knowledge beyond
the realm of sense experience is illusory. But he uses the term ‘illusion’ in a
more specific sense: “an illusion may be said to consist in treating the
subjective condition of thinking as being knowledge of the object” (A 396;
see A 297, B 353–4). The key to the Analytic is the Copernican revolution,
the idea that the faculty of thinking constitutes objects. This should not
tempt us to conclude, however, that subjectivity and objectivity—thinking
and knowing—match effortlessly. Clearly we may think of things that are
not objectively real through imagination. We may also make mistakes.
Most seriously, our thinking extends easily beyond the realm of sense
experience. We may engage in metaphysical contemplation, arguing about
the freedom of the will, the existence of God, and the mortality or
immortality of the soul. But Kant denies that we can attain any real
knowledge of these matters.
Kant differentiates thinking and knowing, subjectivity and objectivity,
by distinguishing the transcendental unity of apperception from the
subjective unity of consciousness. To understand the distinction, we must
return to the argument of the Transcendental Deduction, which uses the
subjective unity to argue for the transcendental unity. The subjective unity
of consciousness is a determination of inner sense. The manifold of
intuition is given to us in experience, and our experience constitutes a
single experience; this is the subjective unity. The manifold of intuition is
united in the concept of an object through the transcendental unity. The
subjective unity of consciousness is a condition of all thinking; the
transcendental unity is a condition of all knowing.
This distinction is extremely important for Kant; transcendent
metaphysics results from its confusion. We may think whatever we like in
imagination. We may connect concepts and intuitions freely without
concern for their presence in experience. The transcendental unity,
however, directs our thought toward an object and toward reality. We can
know a synthetic judgment only by some connection with experience. This
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is why we cannot have knowledge that transcends experience: “The
possibility of experience is, then, what gives objective reality to all our a
priori modes of knowledge” (A 156, B 195). Indeed, it explains Kant’s first
example of a synthetic a priori principle: “every object stands under the
necessary conditions of synthetic unity of the manifold of intuition in a
possible experience” (A 158, B 197).
Kant’s distinction between the transcendental and subjective unities has
two important consequences. First, a rational psychology—a discipline
taking the ‘I think’ as its sole text (A 343, B 401) and amounting to a
theory of the soul—is impossible. One might suppose, given the account of
the transcendental unity, that the “I,” or, to use Kant’s term, the soul, is a
simple, unified substance, and that we can discover this a priori. This,
however, is a confusion. One can argue that the representation of the “I”
is a representation of a substance, of something simple and unified. But to
deduce that the “I” is a substance, simple and unified, is to commit a
fallacy.10 In fact, it is to invite the skeptic’s objections all over again.
Nothing here guarantees the veridicality of our representations. From the
perspective of transcendental (rather than rational, that is, rationalist and
transcendent) psychology, the “I” is “completely empty”: “it is a bare
consciousness which accompanies all concepts. Through this I or he or it
(the thing) which thinks, nothing further is represented than a
transcendental subject of the thoughts=X” (A 346, B 404).
As with the self, so with things-in-themselves. The second consequence
of Kant’s distinction is thus that knowledge of things-in-them-selves is
impossible; knowledge is limited to the sphere of experience. The limits of
knowledge become clear in thinking about the role of the categories. The
pure concepts of the understanding are conditions of the possibility of
experience. They have a priori validity, against the claims of the skeptic,
because “all empirical knowledge of objects would necessarily conform to
such concepts, because only as thus presupposing them is anything
possible as an object of experience” (A 93, B 126). Objects of experience
must conform to the categories. Objects beyond the realm of experience,
however, face no such constraint. In fact, we have no reason to believe
that the categories apply to them at all. The categories conform to objects
of possible experience because we synthesize those objects from the data
of sensibility. What lies beyond sensibility lies beyond the categories, for
we have no reason to believe that it results from such a process of
synthesis.
This means that transcendent metaphysics is impossible. Metaphysical
knowledge, to be interesting, must be knowledge of the world; it cannot be
merely verbal. So, it must consist of synthetic propositions. Moreover, it
cannot rely on experience; to be necessary and nonempirical, it must be a
priori. Kant, as a rationalist, is committed to the possibility of synthetic a
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priori knowledge. But such knowledge is possible only transcendentally,
that is, through the contemplation of what makes experience possible. We
secure the possibility of synthetic a priori knowledge by arguing for the
categories. They apply, however, only to objects of possible experience.
Kant derives rationalism, therefore, only by undercutting transcendence.
No other objects, besides those of the senses, can, as a matter of fact,
be given to us, and nowhere save in the context of a possible
experience; and consequently nothing is an object for us, unless it
presupposes the sum of all empirical reality as the condition of its
possibility.
(A 582, B 610)
We can witness Kant’s application of his principle of immanence in his
refutation of the cosmological argument for the existence of God. That
argument appears in Aquinas, for example, as follows:
In the observable world causes are to be found ordered in series; we
never observe, or even could observe, something causing itself, for
this would mean that it preceded itself, and this is impossible. Such a
series of causes, however, must stop somewhere. For in all series of
causes, an earlier member causes an intermediate, and the
intermediate a last (whether the intermediate be one or many). If you
eliminate a cause, you also eliminate its effects. Therefore, there can
be neither a last nor an intermediate cause unless there is a first. But
if the series of causes goes on to infinity, and there is no first cause,
there would be neither intermediate causes nor a final effect, which is
patently false. It is therefore necessary to posit a first cause, which all
call “God.”11
Kant’s transcendental critique of this argument alleges “a whole nest of
dialectical assumptions,” of which he points out several: (a) The argument
assumes that each event in the observable world has a cause. Kant agrees;
he regards it as a synthetic a priori truth. But, as such, “This principle is
applicable only in the sensible world; outside that world it has no meaning
whatsoever” (A 609, B 637). (b) Why can’t a series of causes go on to
infinity? Kant finds nothing to justify this assumption even in the sensible
world, (c) Is it true that, if you eliminate a cause, you eliminate its effects?
Even if this holds in experience, we have no justification for extending it
beyond experience, (d) Finally, why should we identify the first cause as
God? Philosophers have understood God as the perfect being, “that, the
greater than which cannot be conceived,” the being more real than any
other, and the necessarily existent being. To conclude that the first cause is
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God, we must show at least that the first cause is perfect and necessary.
Nothing in the proof accomplishes this. Consequently, Kant maintains
that “the so-called cosmological proof really owes any cogency which it
may have to the ontological proof from mere concepts” (A 607, B 635),
for it assumes that perfection, necessity, and being the first cause all hold
of the same thing.
The ontological proof appears in Anselm in the following form:
Certainly, this being exists so truly that one cannot even think that it
does not exist. For whatever must be thought to exist is greater than
whatever can be thought not to exist. Hence, if that greatest
conceivable being can be thought not to exist, then it is not the
greatest conceivable being, which is absurd. Therefore, something so
great that a greater cannot be conceived exists so truly that it cannot
even be thought not to exist.12
The argument means to show that perfection entails necessity. That God is
perfect Anselm takes as an analytic truth, as following from a definition of
‘God.’ He concludes that God exists necessarily.
Kant’s assault on this argument is more complicated than his attack on
the cosmological proof, but also more illuminating. This proof is a
paradigm example of illusion, the mistaking of the subjective for the
objective. It tries to establish the necessary existence of God from the mere
concept of God. Kant is willing to grant that the argument shows that the
concept of God, so defined, includes the concept of existence. But he
denies that this implies anything at all about the existence of God in
reality.
The key to Kant’s attack on the ontological argument is his
contention that ‘being’ is not a real predicate. Kant defines a
determining predicate as “a predicate which is added to the concept of
the subject and enlarges it” (A 598, B 626). It follows that a judgment
with a determining predicate must be synthetic, for the predicate must
enlarge the subject; it cannot already be contained in it. “‘Being’,”
Kant insists, “is obviously not a real predicate; that is, it is not a
concept of something which could be added to the concept of a thing”
(A 598, B 626). A real predicate is capable of serving as a determining
predicate. ‘Being,’ evidently, is not.
We might be tempted to conclude that existential judgments such as
‘God is’ or ‘God exists’ are analytic, for ‘being’ cannot serve as a
determining predicate. But Kant clearly maintains that all existential
judgments are synthetic. He argues specifically that ‘God exists’ is not
analytic, and concludes, “as every reasonable person must, that all
existential propositions are synthetic” (A 598, B 626). It follows that
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‘being’ cannot be contained in the concept of a thing. But how can
existential judgments be synthetic if they lack determining predicates?13
A synthetic judgment is not merely verbal; its predicate, according to
Kant, must add something not already included in its subject. ‘Being,’
then, must add something to every subject concept. Yet it is not
determining; it does not add to and enlarge the subject concept. ‘Being’
adds something that does not enlarge the concept of the subject.
To understand how this is possible, we must return to Kant’s theory
of concepts. Concepts are functions of synthesis that organize and
unify the material of sense. They mold the data of sense into
perceptions of objects (A 68, B 93, B 95). Consequently, their content
relates essentially to the manifold of sense. In language and in thought,
we can manipulate items however we like. Only through links to
intuition, actual or possible, can we move from thinking to knowledge,
activating the transcendental unity and giving our thoughts objective
validity. (See A 155, B 194–5, B 146, B 165–6.) In short, concepts have
content by virtue of the patterns of possible intuitions falling under
them. This entails that ‘being’ is not a real predicate, for it lacks this
sort of content. It cannot enlarge a subject concept; any intuition
falling under the concept of a dollar falls under the concept of an
existing dollar, and vice versa (A 599–600, B 627–8). It follows,
moreover, that existential judgments are synthetic, for existence cannot
be part of the content of a subject concept (A 225, B 272).
If ‘being’ lacks content definable in terms of the manifold of sense, what
does it contribute to a judgment? Existential judgments do not enlarge or
alter a rule for the synthesis of the manifold of intuition, but express the
relation of the rule to the understanding. For Kant, then, ‘being’ is
relational. The same holds of possibility and necessity, which share the
fourth, “Modality” portion of the table of categories.14 Kant maintains
that the modality of a judgment adds nothing to the judgment’s content.
Instead, it determines the judgment’s relation to the understanding: “The
principles of modality thus predicate of a concept nothing but the action
of the faculty of knowledge through which it is generated” (A 234, B 286–
7). Existence and the other modalities contribute “a relation to my
understanding” (A 231, B 284), determining “only how the object,
together with all its determinations, is related to understanding and its
empirical employment, to empirical judgment, and to reason in its
application to experience” (A 219, B 266).
Kant compares the ‘being’ at stake in existential judgments to the
‘being’ of the copula (A 74, B 100; A 598–9, B 626–7). Both “distinguish
the objective unity of given representations from the subjective” (B 141–
2). Only by relating the terms of a judgment to the transcendental unity of
apperception
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does there arise from this relation a judgment, that is, a relation
which is objectively valid, and so can be adequately distinguished
from a relation of the same representations that would have only
subjective validity—as when they are connected according to the
laws of association.
(B 142)
‘Being’ in both roles distinguishes the subjective from the objective.
This is why the ontological proof is Kant’s paradigm case of dialectical
illusion. The advocate of the proof mistakes the subjective for the
objective, failing to recognize that God’s existence or necessity cannot be
established analytically, from the definition of ‘God’ alone. In saying that
something exists, we assert a relation to the understanding; we assert that
we may experience the object, or stand in relation to it by way of
empirical laws (A 219, B 266–7; A. 234 n., B 287 n.; A 616, B 644). And
this cannot be derived from concepts alone. It follows that nothing exists
with analytic or logical necessity:
If I take the concept of anything, no matter what, I find the existence
of this thing can never be represented by me as absolutely necessary,
and that, whatever it may be that exists, nothing prevents me from
thinking its nonexistence.
(A 615, B 643)
We can now see how Kant can practice the transcendental method while
rejecting transcendent metaphysics. The latter confuses the subjective and
the objective, failing to recognize that concepts have content only in
relation to experience. The transcendental method, however, focuses
directly on the relation to the understanding at stake in questions of
modality. Kant deduces the categories by reflecting on the sort of relation
that must hold if experience of objects is to be possible.
HUMANISM
Kant carefully distinguishes his view from the idealism of Berkeley, which
assails the notion of a reality beyond the realm of ideas. Kant’s solution to
Platonism’s problems relies on distinguishing phenomena from noumena.
Kant thus insists on the need to recognize nonmental objects, things-in-
themselves, of which our appearances are appearances.
Kant nevertheless realizes that his theory is a form of idealism—
transcendental idealism, he calls it—for truth, objectivity, and existence,
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within the theory, become fundamentally epistemic notions. The same
holds of all the modalities—possibility, truth or existence, and necessity —
for all have the same function of relating a judgment to the understanding.
Metaphysics is inseparable from epistemology; the root notions of
metaphysics are all, in the end, epistemological notions.
Kant’s epistemic conception of modality underlies his identification of a
priori and necessary judgments. Saul Kripke has attacked this identification,
pointing out that a prioricity is a matter of epistemology—can something be
known independently of experience?—while necessity is a matter of
metaphysics. Kripke has alleged, against Kant, that there can be contingent a
priori and necessary a posteriori truths.15 This seems plausible on the
metaphysical view of necessity that Leibniz and Kripke share, namely, that
necessity is truth in all possible worlds. But Kant rejects that view. A
judgment is a priori if it can be known independently of all experience; if, that
is, it holds no matter what experience might yield, or, to put it differently, if it
holds no matter what the world looks like. A judgment is necessary, on the
Leibniz-Kripke view, if it holds no matter what the world is like. Kant does
not confuse these notions; he rejects the latter precisely because it is
metaphysical in a transcendent sense. The truth of skepticism is that we
cannot know what the world is like. The only notion of modality we can use
is epistemic, in which we consider possible experiences rather than possible
worlds. On this conception, of course, the a priori and the necessary are not
only equivalent, but obviously so.
Moreover, it becomes possible to attain knowledge of necessary truths
about objects of experience. Reason gets itself into trouble when it tries to
leave the realm of possible experience. Kant is able to defend our
knowledge of necessary truths against skeptics such as Hume because, for
him, the a priori and necessary extend to the immanent sphere only, not to
the transcendent. They are limited to the realm of possible experience. If a
priori judgments were necessary in a strong metaphysical sense, then
Kant’s immanence thesis would be hard to understand.
The epistemic character of the basic notions of metaphysics—when
these notions and, correspondingly, metaphysics are properly construed—
is the central consequence of Kant’s Copernican revolution. It would
become fundamental to virtually all nineteenth-century approaches to
philosophy. Skepticism, perhaps the chief philosophical puzzle since
Descartes, would give way to puzzles arising from Kant’s uniquely
humanistic idealism. For Kant, as for the ancient Sophist Protagoras, man
is the measure of all things. Kant, of course, takes the definite article here
seriously. There is one and only one measure: the categories underlie all
possible experience. Not everyone would agree. The nature and especially
the uniqueness of the measure would define the chief battleground for
philosophers during the next two centuries.
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NOTES
1 R.Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1979), p. 149; N.Kemp Smith, A Commentary to Kant’s Critique of Pure
Reason (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1962), p. vii.
2 This and other citations from the Critique of Pure Reason are from the
translation of N.Kemp Smith (London: Macmillan, 1929; New York: St
Martin’s Press, 1965). Throughout, any emphasis in the quotations is Kant’s;
the pagination is that of the original first (A) and second (B) editions.
3 H.Vaihinger, Commentar zu Kant’s Kritik der Reinen Vernunft, Vol. I
(Stuttgart: Spemann, 1881), pp. 117–20.
4 The analysis is Vaihinger’s. See ibid., p. 50; Kemp Smith, op. cit., pp. 13–14.
5 Descartes, Meditations, III.
6 Kant often speaks of the content and form of judgments in just this way.
Introducing the table of judgments, he writes, “If we abstract from all content
of a judgment, and consider only the mere form of understanding,” we derive
the table (A 70, B 95). At other times, however, he treats the form and content
very differently. Modality, for example, differs from the other aspects of
judgment in the table in that “it contributes nothing to the content of a
judgment (for, besides quantity, quality, and relation, there is nothing that
constitutes the content of a judgment)” (A 74, B 100). These are plainly
inconsistent. In the former passage, Kant speaks of empirical content or, more
precisely, the content of the impure concepts in a judgment; in the latter, he
speaks of logical content. It is tempting to identify the form of a judgment
with its logical content, but Kant’s theory of the modalities makes that
impossible. See my “Kant on Existence and Modality,” Archiv für Geschichte
der Philosophie, 64, 3 (1982): 289–300.
7 That is, concepts of objects are rules of individuation as well as application.
For a sophisticated modern treatment of this distinction, see A.Gupta, The
Logic of Common Nouns (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984).
8 See H.Vaihinger, “Die transcendentale Deduktion der Kategorien,”
Gedenkschrift für Rudolf Haym (1902); Kemp Smith, op. cit., pp. 202ff.
9 Kant’s theory of time occupies part of the Transcendental Aesthetic. In brief,
time is the form of inner sense, the progression of sensations, thoughts, and, in
general, representations that constitutes empirical consciousness. Space and
time, Kant argues, are a priori forms of intuition, for they are necessary
conditions of sensation. We cannot sense anything without sensing it in space
and time, that is, as spatially and temporally located. Time is moreover the
form of inner sense because we cannot think anything without thinking it in
time, that is, without our thought being part of a temporal sequence.
10 See W.Sellars, “Some Remarks on Kant’s Theory of Experience” and “…this I
or he or it (the thing) which thinks…,” in his Essays on Philosophy and its
History (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1974), pp. 44–61, 62–92.
11 St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, la. 2; my translation.
12 St Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogion, III; my translation.
13 For more on this apparent contradiction, see J.Shaffer, “Existence,
Predication, and the Ontological Argument,” Mind, 71 (1962): 307–25;
W.H.Walsh, Kant’s Criticism of Metaphysics (Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 1975), p. 7; G.Vick, “Existence was a Predicate for Kant,”
Kant-Studien, 61 (1970): 357–71, esp. 363–4; R.Coburn, “Animadversions
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on Plantinga’s Kant,” Ratio, 13 (1971): 19–29, esp. 21–2; R.Campbell, “Real
Predicates and ‘Exists’,” Mind, 83 (1974): 96ff.; and my “Kant on Existence
and Modality,” op. cit., pp. 291–5.
14 One of the few commentators to observe this is H.Heimsoeth, Transzendentale
Dialektik (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1969), Vol. III, p. 480.
15 See S.Kripke, Naming and Necessity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1972, 1980), pp. 34–9.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Original language editions
2.1 Kant, I. Critik der reinen Vernunft, Riga: J.F.Hartknoch, 1781.
2.2 Kants gesammelte Schriften, 29 vols, ed. Deutschen (formerly Königlich
Preussische) Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin: de Gruyter (and
predecessors), 1902–.
2.3 Kant, I. Werke, Academie Textausgahe: Anmerkungen der Bande I-IX,
Berlin: de Gruyter, 1977.
English translations
2.4 Kant, I. Critik of Pure Reason, trans. F.Haywood, London: W.Pickering, 1838.
2.5 Kant, I. Critique of Pure Reason, trans. J.M.D.Meiklejohn, New York:
Colonial Press, 1899; London: J.M.Dent, 1934, 1940.
2.6 Kant, I. Critique of Pure Reason, trans. N.Kemp Smith, London: Macmillan,
1929; New York: St Martin’s Press, 1965.
2.7 Kant, I. Critique of Pure Reason, trans. W.Schwarz, Aalen: Scientia, 1982.
Books on Kant (in English)
2.8 Beck, L.W. Early German Philosophy: Kant and his Predecessors,
Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969.
2.9 Beck, L.W. Essays on Kant and Hume, New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1978.
2.10 Beck, L.W. (ed.) Kant Studies Today, La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1969.
2.11 Beck, L.W. (ed.) Kant’s Theory of Knowledge, Dordrecht: Reidel, 1974.
2.12 Broad, C.D. Kant: An Introduction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1978.
2.13 Cassirer, E. Kant’s Life and Thought, trans. J.Haden, New Haven and
London: Yale University Press, 1981.
2.14 den Ouden B.D., and Moen, M. (eds) New Essays on Kant, New York: Peter
Lang, 1987.
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2.15 Guyer, P. (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Kant, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1992.
2.16 Korner, S. Kant, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1955.
2.17 Scruton, R. Kant, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982.
2.18 Walker, R.C.S. Kant, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978.
2.19 Werkmeister, W.H. Kant, the Archetectonic and Development of his
Philosophy, La Salle, 111.: Open Court, 1980.
2.20 Wolff, R.P. (ed.) Kant: A Collection of Critical Essays, Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1968.
2.21 Wood, A.W. (ed.) Self and Nature in Kant’s Philosophy, Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1984.
Books on the Critique of Pare Reason (in English)
2.22 Allison, H.E. Kant’s Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and
Defense, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983.
2.23 Ameriks, K. Kant’s Theory of Mind, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982.
2.24 Aquila, R.E. Representational Mind: A Study of Kant’s Theory of
Knowledge, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983.
2.25 Bennett, J. Kant’s Analytic, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966.
2.26 Bennett, J. Kant’s Dialectic, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1974.
2.27 Brittan, G.G. Kant’s Theory of Science, Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1978.
2.28 Ewing, A.C. A Short Commentary to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason,
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1938.
2.29 Forster, E. (ed.) Kant’s Transcendental Deductions: The Three Critiques and
the Opus Postumum, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989.
2.30 Kemp Smith, N. A Commentary to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Atlantic
Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1962.
2.31 Paton, W.E. Kant’s Metaphysic of Experience, London: Allen & Unwin,
1970.
2.32 Prichard, H.A. Kant’s Theory of Knowledge, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1909.
2.33 Rescher, N. Kant’s Theory of Knowledge and Reality: A Group of Essays,
Washington: University Press of America, 1983.
2.34 Schaper, E., and Vossenkuhl, W. (eds) Reading Kant: New Perspectives on
Transcendental Arguments and Critical Philosophy, Oxford:
Blackwell, 1989.
2.35 Sellars, W. Science and Metaphysics: Variations on Kantian Themes, London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968.
2.36 Seung, T.K. Kant’s Transcendental Logic, New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1969.
2.37 Strawson, P.F. The Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Kant’s Critique of Pure
Reason, London: Methuen, 1966.
2.38 Walsh, W.H. Kant’s Criticism of Metaphysics, Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 1975.
2.39 Wilkerson, T.E. Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1976.
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2.40 Winterbourne, A. The Ideal and the Real: An Outline of Kant’s Theory
of Space, Time, and Mathematical Construction, Dordrecht:
Kluwer, 1988.
2.41 Wolff, R.P. Kant’s Theory of Mental Activity, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1963.
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CHAPTER 3
Kant’s moral and political
philosophy
Don Becker
Practical philosophy, for Kant, is concerned with how one ought to act.
His first important work in practical philosophy, Foundations of the
Metaphysics of Morals, provides Kant’s argument for the fundamental
principle of how one ought to act, called the “categorical imperative,”
which basically requires one to act only according to principles that are
themselves fit to be universal law. In Part I of this chapter we will focus on
Kant’s argument for the categorical imperative, and see how it functions as
the fundamental principle of his moral philosophy. In Part II we will look
at Kant’s political philosophy, seeing both that it is grounded in this
fundamental principle of how one ought to act, and that it gains support
from other aspects of Kant’s philosophical thinking.
PART I: KANT’S MORAL PHILOSOPHY
Inasmuch as Kant thinks that the fundamental principle of how one ought to
act must be capable of grounding a definitive answer in all circumstances, he
recognizes that no empirical study, which is dependent on the contingent
nature of the world as we experience it, can provide the sort of principle that
he seeks. Instead, Kant will proceed with an a priori study of how one ought
to act, which, insofar as it is independent of the contingent nature of the
world as we experience it, can provide a definitive principle. Two forms of a
priori study that Kant employs are the analysis of concepts and
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transcendental arguments. According to the former, insofar as some concept
applies, whatever is entailed in that concept is true. According to the latter,
insofar as some concept applies, whatever is a necessary condition of its
application is true. Thus, Kant begins with the two concepts that are
fundamental to his intended study, “morality” and “rational being,” and
determines that they reveal the truth of the categorical imperative.
(Although the concept “rational being” is really the fundamental concept
employed by Kant, the concept “morality,” which he could have derived
from the concept “rational being,” plays a central role in his presentation.)
Kant’s presentation includes two basic steps. First, he asks what is meant by
the concept “morality,” and argues that it entails rational beings acting in
accord with the categorical imperative. This, however, only answers the
question of what morality is on the assumption that morality exists. Kant
then considers the concept “rational being,” and argues that a necessary
condition of a being thinking that this concept applies to itself is that it think
of itself as free. Furthermore, since Kant equates freedom in this sense (i.e.
“positive freedom”) with what he calls autonomy, and autonomy with
subjection to the categorical imperative, it follows that beings who think of
themselves as rational must consider themselves to be subject to the
categorical imperative that he has described.1
“Morality” and “rational beings”
Kant engages in the a priori study of ethics, or metaphysics of morals,
because this is the only way to gain definitive knowledge of how one
ought to act. He proceeds by first considering what is meant by
“morality,” and determining that it means neither more nor less than
acting according to the categorical imperative (FMM, 58).2 Although more
must be said before it is possible to explain the categorical imperative
fully, and the exact nature of the moral principle that it designates,
nevertheless, if one merely considers the two words that make up the term,
an important aspect of its nature is revealed. “Categorical” means
absolute, without qualification or exception, and “imperative” refers to a
type of command. Thus, a categorical imperative is an absolute command.
According to Kant, “Everyone must admit that a law, if it is to hold morally
(i.e. as a ground of obligation), must imply absolute necessity” (FMM, 5).
Thus, Kant treats it as obvious to everyone that morality ultimately entails an
absolute command or categorical imperative. Furthermore, since nothing
absolute can be derived from something contingent, he argues that the only
way to determine the exact nature of this absolute command is to engage in the
a priori study of practical reason (i.e. reason related to acting):
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unless we wish to deny all truth to the concept of morality and
renounce its application to any possible object, we cannot refuse to
admit that the law is of such broad significance that it holds not
merely for men but for all rational beings as such; we must grant
that it must be valid with absolute necessity and not merely under
contingent conditions and with exceptions. For with what right
could we bring into unlimited respect something that might be valid
only under contingent human conditions? And how could laws of the
determination of our will be held to be laws of the determination of
the will of any rational being whatever and of ourselves in so far as
we are rational beings, if they were merely empirical and did not
have their origin completely a priori in pure, but practical reason?
(FMM, 24)
Kant holds that morality entails absolute laws; that, insofar as they are
absolute, these laws must hold not only for human beings but for all
similar, i.e. rational, beings; and that to have such general applicability
these laws cannot be learned through experience or any empirical study,
but must be derived through a purely a priori study.
Kant thinks that people, insofar as they are rational, are subject to an
absolute moral law. Kant thinks that the fact that rational beings are
subject to an absolute moral law is what fundamentally distinguishes them
from all of the other material things in the world, which he recognizes to
be subject to the laws of nature. Thus, Kant distinguishes physics, which is
concerned with those objects that are subject to the “laws of nature,”
from ethics, which is concerned with those objects that are subject to the
“laws of freedom” (FMM, 3). As will become clear, these laws of freedom
constitute the absolute moral law.
This distinction between physics and ethics can be somewhat confusing;
after all, isn’t everything subject to the laws of nature? Maybe not. Think
for a moment of a world in which everything were subject to the laws of
nature. This would be a world of strict causal determinism; everything
that happened would have followed inexorably from what preceded it.
Among other things, all human behavior would be completely determined
by these laws. But if all human behavior is causally determined according
to laws of nature, then in what sense could people be considered morally
responsible for their acts? Thus, if the concept “morality” is to make
sense, then it must be possible to think of people not only as common
physical entities subject to the laws of nature, but also, in another sense, as
rational beings, subject to the laws of freedom (see FMM, 68–73).
Kant thinks of people in just this dual way, as sensible or physical beings,
causally determined according to the laws of nature, and as intelligible or
purely rational beings, independent of causal determinism and capable of
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acting in accord with the laws of freedom. Accordingly, Kant suggests that the
human will is subjected to two influences (see e.g. FMM, 16, 42). As sensible
or physical beings, human beings have desires that arise from their physical
nature and corresponding physical needs, which Kant broadly characterizes
as the desire to be happy. This universal desire, as well as other
indiosyncratic particular desires, is the source of inclinations, which exert a
potentially controlling influence on the will. However, insofar as human
beings are intelligible or purely rational beings, they recognize the laws of
freedom, resist the force of inclination, and determine their will for
themselves, independently of external influences and inclinations.
Furthermore, and recognition of this is crucial for a correct understanding of
Kant’s moral philosophy, Kant thinks that all rational beings, insofar as they
determine their will for themselves independently of their inclinations, will
recognize the very same principle, the categorical imperative, as expressing
the law of freedom in accord with which they ought to act (FMM, 71).
Thus far we have seen that the concept of “morality” entails the notion
of an absolute law or “categorical imperative,” and that it can only apply
to (rational) beings who can resist their inclinations and choose to follow
such a law of freedom. Let us now look more closely at exactly what Kant
means by a “categorical imperative.”
Kant’s concept of a categorical imperative
Imagine that the human will were influenced only by pure reason.
Whatever pure reason recognized as right would necessarily be willed, and
whoever was possessed of pure reason would never do wrong. But Kant
has said that the human will is influenced by both reason and inclination.
Therefore, human beings don’t necessarily will (and consequently act) as
pure reason reveals is right, because they can be led astray by their
inclinations. Thus, if a human will is to be determined in accordance with
the objective moral law, it must be constrained. Kant calls the formula
that expresses the command that constrains this will an imperative. Kant
holds that there are two types of imperatives:
All imperatives command either hypothetically or categorically. The
former present the practical necessity of a possible action as a means
to achieving something else which one desires (or which one may
possibly desire). The categorical imperative would be one which
presented an action as of itself objectively necessarily, without regard
to any other end.
(FMM, 30)
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Two points that are rather important to Kant are expressed in this
passage.
First, Kant reveals the basic difference between hypothetical and
categorical imperatives. All imperatives determine the will to some good,
but hypothetical imperatives say only that some action is good given that
one has a particular purpose. Hypothetical imperatives reveal the means
to given ends. Since these ends are contingent, however, as are all the
ends that one commonly imagines (including the desire for happiness)
inasmuch as there is no necessity for human beings to be so constituted
that they have any of the particular desires that they experience, these
ends cannot give rise to a categorical imperative. A categorical
imperative, as Kant says, cannot depend on any contingent end, but
“would be one which presented an action as of itself objectively
necessary.”
Second, by saying of a categorical imperative that it “would be one…,’
Kant is making it clear that there may be no categorical imperative. Kant
is only talking about what a categorical imperative would be like if one
existed. This is very important, and is consistent with a point made earlier.
Human beings can only be subject to a moral law if they are capable of
resisting the influences of their inclinations, and determining their wills
through reason in accord with a principle or law that is known a priori.
There can be no moral responsibility for beings whose actions are all
causally determined. Thus, before Kant can actually assert that there is a
categorical imperative, he must first show that human beings have reason
to believe themselves capable of determining their wills through reason.
Nevertheless, Kant’s argumentative strategy is to hold off on the question
of whether human beings are actually subject to the categorical
imperative, and to first pursue the question of what a categorical
imperative would be, assuming that one exists.
The first formulation of the categorical imperative
Kant argues that there can be only one categorical imperative, and that,
from the very idea of a categorical imperative, one can deduce a formula
of the categorical imperative. Kant’s argument can be expressed as follows
(see FMM, 37–8). A categorical imperative is an absolute law. Although it
is obvious that a categorical imperative entails an absolute law, it is not at
all clear what this law will command. Imagine any possible content of this
law, say, to maximize human happiness. Insofar as what constitutes
human happiness is contingent (human beings could be constituted
differently), all that one can construct is a hypothetical imperative directed
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to a particular contingent end. Thus, a categorical imperative cannot be
directed to any particular contingent end.
But if the imperative cannot be directed toward any particular
contingent ends, then what is left? Although later a formulation of the
categorical imperative that is based on an end that is not contingent will
be considered, for now it seems that the imperative can require nothing
more than conformity to absolute law. But since there is nothing in
particular to which this absolute law can be directed, it can command only
that one act in a way that is at least consistent with the possibility of
absolute law. Kant expresses this categorical imperative as follows: “Act
only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that
it should become a universal law” (FMM, 38). This imperative does not
rely on any specific content, but states the formal requirement that one
always act in a way that one could will to be required to act by an
absolute law.
The application of the categorical imperative and the distinction
between perfect and imperfect duties
What does it mean to act only according to that maxim by which you
can at the same time will that it should become a universal law? First,
what is a maxim? A maxim is a general principle according to which an
individual acts. Thus, one might hold the maxim “I will watch television
when bored,” or “I will steal things when I desire more goods.” Kant
is saying that it is morally permissible to act according to one’s maxim
only if it is possible at the same time to will that it should become a
universal law.
One of the most famous examples that Kant uses to help make his point
clear is that of the maxim to make a false promise to honor one’s debt
when seeking a loan that one does not intend to pay back (see e.g. FMM,
18–19, 39). Can one hold this maxim and, at the same time, will that it
should be a universal law? Well, imagine that there were a universal law to
make false promises. In such circumstances, inasmuch as no one could be
trusted, the institution of promising itself could not exist. Now, since it is
logically impossible for one at the same time to will both to make a false
promise and that the institution of promising not exist, it is immoral to act
on the maxim to make a false promise when desirous of another’s money.
Thus, the categorical imperative, as well as stating a restriction on
permissible behavior, also provides a test of whether the restriction
applies. If one cannot conceive of acting on the maxim while, at the same
time, the maxim holds as a universal law, as is the case in the example
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of the false promise, then the maxim fails the test and may not be
acted upon.
Immediately after introducing the categorical imperative, Kant provides
four examples of its application, which are designed to represent a
common division of duties into four basic categories. Kant provides
examples of perfect duties and imperfect duties both to oneself and to
others, which can be classified as shown below.
Duty to oneself
Duty to others
Perfect duty
Do not commit suicide Do not falsely promise
Imperfect duty
Develop talents
Be beneficent
While the distinction between duties to oneself and duties to others
requires no explanation, this is not the case with the distinction between
perfect and imperfect duties. Kant was not the first to distinguish between
perfect and imperfect duties, but his distinction does not correspond
exactly with that of his predecessors (FMM, 38 n.). As Kant employs the
concepts, perfect duties are those with which one’s every action must
conform. Thus, in all but one special case (i.e. the duty to join the state),
perfect duties actually entail prohibitions against actions that should never
be performed under any circumstances, e.g. stealing and murder. Imperfect
duties, for Kant, entail principles that one must adopt, but that one need
not (and, in fact, cannot) act upon in every instance. One would not think
of another as moral who did not hold, and in some appropriate
circumstances act upon, the principle “Be beneficent.” However, it is also
clear that it is not possible for one’s every act to be the fulfillment of an
imperfect duty. For one thing, one’s every act cannot be, say, beneficent,
since one also must tend to one’s own physical needs. Even more
obviously, one’s every act cannot be one of beneficence, and also one of
developing talents, and also one that furthers every other imperfect duty.
Thus, Kant distinguishes between those duties with which one’s every act
must accord, and those duties that require one to adopt a principle, but
leave one leeway in deciding when to act upon it.
With this distinction between perfect and imperfect duties in mind, it is
important to look back to the categorical imperative, and to the test of the
permissibility of actions. There are two ways that a maxim can fail the test
of the categorical imperative. There are maxims for which it is logically
impossible, and thus inconceivable, for one to will the maxim and its
universalization at the same time, as in the false promise example
discussed above, and there are maxims for which there is merely a
contradiction in the will of an individual who wills both the maxim and its
universalization at the same time, as in the example discussed below. Kant
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recognizes that there is an exact correspondence both between the duties
generated by maxims failing the test of the categorical imperative in the
former manner and perfect duties, and between the duties generated by
maxims failing the test of the categorical imperative in the latter manner
and imperfect duties (FMM, 40–1).3 Both Kant’s test of duties entailed in
the categorical imperative and his reformulation of the distinction between
perfect and imperfect duties gain support from this correspondence.
Having already seen in the example of a false promise how perfect duties
are related to maxims for which it is inconceivable to will both the maxim
and its universalization at the same time, let us turn to an example of an
imperfect duty. Consider the maxim “I will not develop my talents when I
seem to be doing fine without bothering.” There is no logical contradiction
that results from holding this maxim and, at the same time, willing that it
should become a universal law. After all, one can very well imagine a rather
easy life on a tropical island where one need do nothing more than pick fruit
when hungry. Thus, adopting this maxim does not violate a perfect duty.
Remember, however, that the categorical imperative says to “act only
according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it
should become a universal law.” While the test of perfect duties focuses on
whether one can will that the maxim should become a universal law,
thereby focusing on the logical possibility of holding the maxim and its
universalization at the same time, the test of imperfect duties focuses on the
question of whether one can will that the maxim should become a universal
law. It may be logically possible to live a human life without developing
one’s talents, and yet it may be impossible, without contradiction, to will to
live such a life. Although Kant’s treatment of the examples of imperfect
duties is very unclear, I think that one can make the best sense of his
discussion if one reads him as saying that the human will is essentially
unlimited in that it can hold anything imaginable as its object, and that a
contradiction therefore results if one wills to place a limitation on one’s own
will. Thus, it is not logically impossible for people to will not to develop
their talents (it doesn’t violate a perfect duty) but it entails a contradiction in
their will, since, on the one hand, their wills are essentially unlimited, but,
on the other hand, willing the nondevelopment of one’s talents yields a
limitation on what one can effectively will. According to this analysis, it
follows that there is an imperfect duty to develop one’s talents.
The second formulation of the categorical imperative
Although Kant thinks that there is only one categorical imperative, he
thinks that it can be formulated in more than one way. Of course, any
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other formulation of the categorical imperative, if it is to be a formulation
of the same imperative, must require and prohibit exactly the same actions
as the first formulation. Although Kant maintains that the first
formulation discussed above is the most fundamental and precise, he
develops alternative formulations of the categorical imperative because
they make the demands of morality more intuitively plausible (FMM, 53).
The derivation of the first formulation of the categorical imperative can
be thought of as based on a consideration of the necessary form of a
categorical imperative. The idea is that the imperative must express an
absolute law, but, since the law cannot command any contingent particular
and still be absolute, all that can be commanded is that any particular
maxim to be acted upon must be of such a form that it could be universal
law. The second formulation of the categorical imperative, in contrast,
focuses on the proper content of one’s maxims (FMM, 48, 53). Kant bases
the second formulation of the categorical imperative on his view that
rational beings have absolute value as ends in themselves (FMM, 45–6).
Although Kant’s argument in support of this view of rational beings is
not very clear, it appears to rely on two fundamental claims. Kant has
elsewhere said that the only thing that is good without qualification is a
good will (since anything else can be put to a bad end, but not good
willing itself) (FMM, 9–10), and seems to allude to this position during the
argument. He also begins the discussion of which this argument is a part
by reminding his readers that only rational beings have a will (FMM, 44).
From these two claims it is reasonable to conclude that rational beings are
of absolute value because they are the only possible source of that which is
good without qualification. An imperative with content can therefore be a
categorical imperative, provided that the end of that imperative is for
rational beings to be treated as ends. Thus, the second formulation of the
categorical imperative is: “Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your
own person or in that of another, always as an end and never as a means
only”4 (FMM, 46). This imperative includes an absolute prohibition
against treating others as means only, and to do so would violate a perfect
duty. It also requires one actively to treat others as ends, and this
requirement is an imperfect duty. A reconsideration of the examples
introduced earlier will help make this clear.
Consider what happens when Mary makes a false promise to John, say
to pay back a loan when, in fact, she intends to flee to Brazil. Mary has
used John as a means for gaining the money she needs to go to Brazil. It is
true that virtually any time two people make an agreement they are
treating one another as means, but the important thing is that when the
agreement is honest they are not treating one another as a means only.
When making an honest agreement, people know more or less how they
are furthering the interests of another, and this furthering of the other’s
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interests is an explicit part of their own act. Thus, in honest agreements
people treat one another as means, but they also respect one another as
ends, insofar as the other has been able to make a free and informed
decision as to whether to participate in the agreement. However, when
Mary exploited John’s trust by making a false promise, she treated him as
a means only, in that he was not given the relevant information with
which to decide whether he wanted to provide the benefit to Mary that
she actually received. He was not treated as an end at all, in that he was
not provided the opportunity to embrace the results of their interaction as
an end of his own. Thus, Mary violated a perfect duty by treating another
rational being, not as an end, but as a means only.
Now imagine that Mary is a botanist fascinated by, and extremely
talented at, studying tropical deforestation, and she asks John, who won
$50 million in the lottery, to help fund a research trip to Brazil. Here there
is no question of perfect duties. Neither Mary’s request for support, nor
John’s either providing it or refusing to do so, entails treating a rational
being as a means only. But should John provide the support? Were John to
provide the funding, he would be treating Mary as an end, insofar as he
would be acting to facilitate her realization of her own ends. Of course, as
was pointed out in the previous discussion of imperfect duties, it is not
humanly possible for one’s every action to be one of actively treating (in
the sense of furthering) others as ends. Nevertheless, there is an imperfect
duty to hold the principle of actively treating or furthering others as ends,
and to act on this principle in appropriate circumstances. John may not be
specifically required to provide funding for Mary, but he does have an
imperfect duty, in a range of circumstances that seem appropriate to him,
to use his personal resources to actively treat or further other rational
beings as ends. Thus, it is a perfect duty never to treat oneself or another
rational being as a means only, and an imperfect duty to actively treat or
further all rational beings as ends in themselves.
The third formulation of the categorical imperative, the
principle of autonomy, and duty
Although Kant expresses his third formulation of the categorical
imperative in a number of ways, its clearest statement may be in the
“principle of autonomy.” According to this principle one is only subject to
the moral law that one has legislated for oneself: “Never choose except in
such a way that the maxims of the choice are comprehended as universal
law in the same volition” (FMM, 57). Although this principle seems quite
similar to the first formulation of the categorical imperative, the important
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difference is that this principle requires one to think of the universal laws
as issuing from one’s own volitions, and thus that the constraints to which
one is subject come from one’s own will. Kant’s point is that rational beings
are not merely subject to the moral law, but subject to the law because they
created it themselves, i.e. because the law comes from their own will.
To understand the importance of autonomy for morality one must
consider Kant’s views on “good will” and “duty.” While other things might
be good toward one end or another, or when employed in one way or
another, Kant says that the only thing that is good without qualification is
the good will (see FMM, 9–10). Kant then reveals the nature of the good
will in a discussion of duty (see FMM, 12–15). Kant argues that acts do not
have moral worth merely because they accord with duty, but only if they are
done from (the motive of) duty. For example, if a shopkeeper gives a young
child the correct change because they know that it is good for business, or
even if someone helps another in need because they like to be helpful,
although the acts accord with duty, they have no true moral worth. Kant is
not saying that it is bad for people to behave in these ways, but only that
they do not warrant moral esteem. In all the cases in which people behave in
accord with duty, but for reasons other than just the requirements of duty,
the person is moved by some particular interest, even if it is only the good
feeling that they get inside. In all of these cases the person is acting out of
some particular interest, and not merely manifesting a good will. The good
will is only manifest when one does one’s duty, not from any particular
interest, but precisely because it is one’s duty.
Now the importance of the principle of autonomy can be clear. Imagine
that rational beings were subject to a moral law that they had not created
for themselves. If the moral law did not come from the rational being’s
own will, then there would have to be some influence external to this
being that moved it to act in conformity to the law. Obedience to the
moral law would then be conditional on rational beings responding in a
certain way to this external influence. For Kant, however, this would be
antithetical to morality. Obedience might accord with duty, but it would
not be from duty, it would not manifest a good will, and it would have no
true moral worth.
Kant concludes that the principle of autonomy expresses the
fundamental claim of his moral theory:
That the principle of autonomy, which is now in question, is the sole
principle of morals can be readily shown by mere analysis of
concepts of morality; for by this analysis we find that its principle
must be a categorical imperative and that the imperative commands
neither more nor less than this very autonomy.
(FMM, 58)
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The concept of morality entails the idea of an absolute law, and, therefore,
the fundamental moral principle must be a categorical imperative. But
when one thinks about this imperative one recognizes that, since the
imperative must be absolute, it cannot be based on anything of
contingent interest. This requirement eliminates all principles that have
their source outside of the individual, and leaves only the principle of
autonomy.
Why people are subject to the categorical imperative
So far it has been shown that if there is such a thing as morality, then its
rule is expressed by the categorical imperative (in all of its alternative
formulations) that Kant has provided. What has not been shown is that
beings like ourselves are subject to this morality. Kant has shown that it is
essential to the concept of the categorical imperative, through the principle
of autonomy to which it leads, that, if there is to truly be a categorical
imperative, then it must be adopted by rational beings for themselves. But
why would rational beings adopt the categorical imperative? Kant’s
answer is that, insofar as rational beings take themselves to be rational,
they necessarily recognize the categorical imperative as a constraint upon
themselves. Kant is saying that a necessary component of the self-image of
rational beings is their recognition of the fact that they must constrain
themselves in accord with the categorical imperative. Here again one can
see that Kant is using an a priori argument based on the concept “rational
being” to support his moral theory.
Kant’s transcendental argument for his moral theory takes the
following form. First he argues that there is a relationship between
freedom and autonomy such that all beings who consider themselves free
must accept the principle of autonomy, which, as was previously
discussed, entails the categorical imperative (FMM, 64). Then he shows
that rational beings, because of how they experience the world, and,
specifically, their own activity in the world, must consider themselves free
(FMM, 65). Thus, it follows that rational beings must think of themselves
as constrained by the categorical imperative. An explanation of this
transcendental argument for the categorical imperative best begins with an
account of his view of freedom.
Rational beings have wills, and they cause things to happen in
the world through their wills. Kant says of the will of rational
beings that
freedom would be that property of this causality by which it can be
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effective independently of foreign causes determining it, just as
natural necessity is the property of the causality of all irrational
beings by which they are determined to activity by the influence of
foreign causes.
(FMM, 63)
This is Kant’s view of negative freedom, i.e. freedom from determination
by something external to the will. The idea is that if one’s will is free in
this negative sense, then, as opposed to existing merely as a sensible or
physical being, subject to strict causal determinism, one must also exist as
an intelligible or purely rational being that can have effects on the world
independently of any foreign influences one experiences.
Kant claims that this negative conception of freedom opens the door to
a positive one. Kant has said that the will is a kind of causality that, free in
the negative sense, is not determined by foreign influences. One must
recognize, however, that “the concept of a causality entails that of laws
according to which something (i.e. the effect) must be established through
something else which we call cause” (FMM, 63).
So how is a will that is free in the negative sense determined? It is clear
from the concept of “causality” that a free will must be determined in
accord with some law. This is also confirmed by common sense. To
imagine a will that is not determined in accord with some law, is to
imagine a will that is random. But a being whose will appears to be
random is not thought of as free, but is ushered away by people in white
coats. Such a will does not accord with the concept of “freedom.”
To be free, therefore, a will must be determined in accord with some
law. It cannot be determined by the laws of nature, for determination by
the laws of nature is exactly what accounts for the lack of negative
freedom in sensible or physical beings. Thus, a will that is free in the
positive sense must determine itself, it must act in accord with a law that it
adopts for itself, a law of freedom. This, however, is exactly what it is to
be autonomous, and therefore to recognize oneself as subject to the
categorical imperative. After all, the categorical imperative is the only
principle of the will that beings can adopt for themselves, since all other
imperatives are based on ends that are of contingent value, and, thus,
entail rational beings’ determination by things external to themselves.
Kant concludes this discussion by stating that “a free will and a will under
moral laws are identical” (FMM, 64).
Kant still hasn’t shown either that rational beings have free wills, or
that there are any beings in the world that are subject to the morality that
he has described. What has been shown is that only free beings can be
subject to morality, and, more importantly, that all beings that think of
themselves as free must think of themselves as subject to morality. Thus, if
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Kant demonstrates that rational beings necessarily think of themselves as
free, then he will have shown that rational beings must think of themselves
as subject to the categorical imperative. And if this demonstration is based
on the way that rational beings necessarily experience themselves in the
world, then Kant will have provided a transcendental argument that
rational beings are subject to the categorical imperative. So the question is:
Do rational beings experience themselves in the world in a way that
requires them to think of themselves as having a free will?5
What is it to think of oneself as a rational being? To think of oneself
as rational is to think that one applies reason (competently) when
making judgments. The following is an example of applying reason when
making a judgment: If a rational being knows that if statement P is true
then statement Q is true, and also knows that P is, in fact, true, then, if
it actually manifests its rationality, it will conclude that Q is true,
through the application of a certain, in this case obvious, principle of
logic. A being that came to hold that Q is true without having applied
the principle of logic, say because Q just popped into its mind, would
not be thought of as having made a rational judgment (regardless of the
truth of its belief). Furthermore, even a being who applied the principle
of logic, if it did so out of instinct, or because it was forced to by some
external power, would not be thought of as having (itself) made a
rational judgment. Calling a judgment rational, and, by extension, a
being rational insofar as it makes rational judgments, is only appropriate
when the being has itself adopted and correctly applied the relevant
principle of logic. If the being does not do this for itself then it is like a
simple computer (one for which there is no question of artificial
intelligence). It never deserves credit for the conclusions that it draws
because its application of logical principles is solely the result of forces
external to itself, e.g. the skill of its programmer.
Thus, with respect to logical judgments, a being can only think of itself
as rational if it thinks that it has adopted and applied the principles of
logic for itself. Of course, one can adopt and apply these principles for
oneself only if one is free in Kant’s positive sense. Thus, to think of oneself
as rational, at least in one’s logical judgments, one must think of oneself as
free, and as having freely adopted the laws of logic. Nevertheless,
although one must freely adopt these laws if one is to think of oneself as
rational, that does not necessarily mean that one could adopt some other
laws of logic and still think of oneself as rational. It is quite possible
(though there are some who would question this claim) that there is only
one set of fundamental logical laws that one can adopt without belying
one’s rationality. One’s freedom is still manifest, however, by the fact that
one has adopted the laws of logic for oneself, even though there is only
one set of logical laws that one can adopt as a rational being.
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The situation with regard to morality is analogous. To consider oneself
possessed of practical reason, i.e. to think that one applies reason in
determining one’s will and consequently one’s actions, one must think of
oneself as freely adopting one’s principles of action. In other words, one
must think of oneself as having a free will. However, the fact that one
must be free in adopting one’s principles of action does not mean that
there must be some range of options for one to select from among. As
appears to be the case with logic, in the case of morality, there is exactly
one fundamental principle of action that can be freely adopted, and that is
the categorical imperative.
These considerations lead to a common confusion with respect to Kant’s
views on freedom, which can be expressed in the following question: How is
it possible for one both to be free and to have to adopt the categorical
imperative? This question manifests a misunderstanding of what Kant
means by freedom. By freedom Kant does not mean the option of choosing
one thing or another (which one might also call liberty), but rather, the
power of self-determination (which can also be called autonomy).
Kant’s point is that if the moral law is truly to be freely adopted, then it
cannot get its force from any contingent conditions external to the individual.
However, the only principle of action that is independent of determination by
any contingent external influences is the categorical imperative. Therefore,
insofar as one thinks of oneself as a rational being, possessed of practical
reason, one must think of oneself as subject to the categorical imperative.
A second common confusion with respect to Kant’s views on freedom
is that he thinks that people are free only when they act in accord with
the categorical imperative. The concern is that Kant is claiming that
people are not acting freely on those occasions when they succumb to the
influence of their inclinations and act contrary to the categorical
imperative. If this were true it would raise quite a problem, because it
entails the claim that people who act immorally are not free, and
therefore cannot be held responsible for their actions. Kant, however,
thinks of all rational beings as free insofar as they recognize the
categorical imperative as a constraint upon their actions. Those who
violate this constraint, insofar as they are rational, recognize that they
have done wrong exactly because they recognize the categorical
imperative as a proper constraint upon their wills (FMM, 41). A being
who violates the categorical imperative, and does not recognize that it
has done wrong, must not have adopted the categorical imperative as a
constraint upon its will. Such a being cannot think of itself as rational.
Thus, the categorical imperative expresses the definitive principle of how
rational beings ought to act.
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PART II: KANT’S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
In his political writings Kant builds upon the foundations he established
principally in his moral philosophy to provide a rather strong argument
supporting the necessity and the legitimacy of the state. In particular, he
argues that there must be a single institution among a people, which he
calls the state, that has the authority to use coercion to force people to
leave others free to formulate and pursue the ends of their choice,
provided that they are not violating the similar freedom of another. Kant
argues both that morality requires people to exist within a state that
secures their freedom to formulate and pursue the ends of their choice,
provided that they do not violate the similar freedom of others, and that
morality permits people to use coercion to force others to be members of
such a state.
Kant suggests that his argument for the state grows out of the
consideration of how human beings are actually to apply the categorical
imperative (MM, 16).6 Nevertheless, this approach does not reveal all of
Kant’s concerns in his argument for the state. Accordingly, I will also
discuss Kant’s argument that people necessarily view themselves as having
a certain role to fulfill in the world, and that they can only perform this
role successfully if their freedom to formulate and pursue the ends of their
choice is secured within a state.
The domain of jurisprudence, the ends of nature, and the
value of external freedom
Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals addresses the issue of how the categorical
imperative is to be applied by human beings. This work is divided into two
parts: the “Doctrine of Right,” in which Kant expresses much of his
political philosophy, and the “Doctrine of Virtue,” which is concerned
exclusively with other aspects of his moral philosophy. Ostensively, the
basis for Kant’s division of the work is the difference between duties of
justice, juridical (legal) duties, and duties of virtue, ethical duties (MM,
18–21). Kant says that all legislation (juridical and ethical) consists of two
elements: the law, and the incentive to obey the law.
Although two different types of legislation may agree about the law,
e.g. both juridical and ethical legislation may prohibit murder, they can at
the same time differ with respect to their incentives:
If legislation makes an action a duty and at the same time makes this
duty the incentive, it is ethical. If it does not include the latter
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condition in the law and therefore admits an incentive other than the
Idea of duty itself, it is juridical.
(MM, 19)
Kant is distinguishing ethics, according to which one must always do one’s
duty exactly because it is one’s duty, and never for any other reason, from
jurisprudence, according to which one can have some other incentive for one’s
actions that fulfill one’s duties. In fact, Kant begins the “Doctrine of Right” by
defining jurisprudence as “the body of those laws that are susceptible of being
made into external laws, that is, externally legislated” (MM, 33)7 Thus, one
must determine exactly what laws can be externally legislated.
First we should consider the difference between perfect and imperfect
duties, and whether the laws that correspond with each of these can be
externally legislated. Perfect duties require the performance or
nonperformance of specific actions. It is easy to imagine how laws
corresponding to these duties could be externally legislated, as it is easy to
imagine how external incentives could be employed to coerce people either
to perform or to refrain from performing specifie actions.
It seems impossible, however, for external incentives to be employed to
coerce people to perform imperfect duties (MM, 45). After all, imperfect
duties require people to adopt certain principles (e.g. beneficence), and to
act on those principles in circumstances that they deem appropriate. But
people cannot be coerced either to adopt principles or to act on them.
Since people’s wills are always free, and adopting a principle is an act of
will, people cannot be forced to adopt principles. Furthermore, although
people can be coerced to perform acts that follow from specified
principles, since the act is merely a response to the coercion, it cannot be
construed as an attempt to act in accord with the specified principle. Thus,
people cannot be forced to act on a principle. Therefore, only imperfect
duties can be the subject matter of jurisprudence, imperfect duties cannot.
It might appear, then, that all perfect duties can be addressed by
jurisprudence. Actually, however, there is good reason to believe that Kant
means to exclude perfect duties to oneself from the domain of
jurisprudence.8 One clear statement to this effect follows: “The concept of
justice…applies only to the external and—what is more—practical
relationship of one person to another” (MM, 34). One can best
understand Kant’s political philosophy, and specifically his exclusion of
perfect duties to oneself from the domain of jurisprudence, by considering
the broadest concerns that motivate him to write about the state.
In a number of his writings, including some essays on history and, more
importantly, the Critique of Judgment, Kant reveals a great concern
for the development of humanity. In the Critique of Judgment, Kant’s
interest in the development of humanity is revealed in the context of an
extended discussion of teleology or purpose. He argues that people can
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only make sense of a thing insofar as they understand it in terms of its
purpose (CJ, 280).9 The notion of a thing having a purpose, however, is
ambiguous, raising two issues, each of which is relevant (CJ, 312–13).
Something can be organized in a way that manifests a purpose internal to
the entity, as a tree is organized to grow and reproduce, or the manifest
purpose can be external to the entity, as a tree is organized to help
maintain the proper oxygen level in the atmosphere for animals to survive.
When the question of purpose is asked of nature itself, the answer is
quite revealing about humanity. Kant thinks that the ultimate internal
purpose of nature is human culture, by which he means the ability of
human beings, as sensible or physical beings constrained by the laws of
nature, to formulate and pursue whatever ends they may set for
themselves (CJ, 317–21). But human culture in this sense can only develop
if people are secure from others interfering with their ability to formulate
and pursue the ends of their choice. Thus, the greatest development of
human culture, the ultimate end of nature, can only be realized if people
do not violate their perfect duties to others (“UH,” 45–6).10 However,
since the violation of perfect duties to oneself would also inhibit the
development of human culture, it is not yet clear why Kant restricts the
role of the state to include the enforcement of only perfect duties to others.
Kant’s reason for excluding perfect duties to oneself from the domain of
jurisprudence is revealed through the consideration of his views on the
final external purpose of nature (CJ, 322–3). The final external purpose of
nature can only be manifest in something that makes use of nature, but is
not itself a part of nature, i.e. is not subject to the laws of nature,
otherwise it would merely be one more internal purpose of nature. It is
human beings, insofar as they are intelligible, or purely rational, beings
subject to the moral law, who provide the final purpose for all that exists
within nature. However, to the extent that people are not acting on the
moral law, but are responding to their inclinations, nature is not being
used toward any ends that themselves come from outside of nature. Thus,
the final end of nature is only realized to the extent that humanity has
developed toward moral perfection.
Kant, however, thinks that the final end of nature cannot be realized so
long as people remain in the state of nature because morality is necessarily
inefficacious when people remain in this condition. Among people who
choose to remain in the natural condition, without a state that enforces
the fulfillment of perfect duties to others, it is as if they have agreed with
one another that anything goes:
If men deliberately and intentionally resolve to be in and to remain
in this state of external lawless freedom, then they cannot wrong
each other by fighting among themselves; for whatever goes for one
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of them goes reciprocally for the other as though they had made an
agreement to that effect.
(MM, 72)
In such circumstances, there is reason to believe that none of the duties that
people have to one another will be fulfilled. Thus, only if there is a state that
enforces the fulfillment of perfect duties to others is it possible that morality
will develop to the point that all duties to others can regularly be fulfilled.
Therefore, the existence of the state is viewed by Kant as a necessary
condition for the development of morality.
It is now clear that Kant requires a state that enforces at least the
fulfillment of perfect duties to others, but why should it not also enforce
the fulfillment of perfect duties to oneself? The problem is that the
enforcement of perfect duties to oneself would undermine the development
of the moral character necessary among people who are to fulfill all of
their ethical duties. Although the argument is too involved to pursue fully
here, the basic point is that one’s perfect duties to oneself are fundamental,
and only one who truly fulfills these duties, i.e. fulfills them precisely
because they are duties, can develop the character necessary for the
fulfillment of all of their duties. But if one is coerced to fulfill these duties
to oneself, instead of fulfilling them solely because they are one’s duties,
this will undermine the development of one’s character as one who fulfills
all one’s duties.11 Thus, although the external legislation of perfect duties
to oneself may facilitate the realization of the ultimate end of nature, it
would actually undermine the development of humanity toward moral
perfection, the final end of nature. Kant’s greatest interest, the
development of humanity toward both the ultimate and final ends of
nature, can be realized only within a state that enforces the fulfillment of
perfect duties to others, thereby securing people’s external freedom and
permitting them to formulate and pursue the ends of their choice, provided
that they leave a similar freedom for others.
External freedom and the concept of justice
Having, at least briefly, explained Kant’s non-political reasons for being
concerned with securing people’s external freedom, the foundation has
been laid for showing how Kant argues within his political philosophy
from the presumed value of external freedom to the necessity and
legitimacy of a state that uses coercion to force people to fulfill their
perfect duties to others. The outline of Kant’s argument is as follows:
1 People have an innate right to external freedom.
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2 The only legitimate limitation on this right to external freedom is the
right of others to a similar freedom.
3 The condition of the universal realization of this right to external
freedom is the condition of justice.
4 Justice entails the authorization to use coercion, as necessary, to
support the condition of justice.
5 The innate right to external freedom entails both
a the right to security in oneself, and
b the right to possess things external to oneself.
6 Someone who remains in proximity, and in the natural condition
relative to others, i.e. not in a state, interferes with their external
freedom by not providing them a guarantee of security with respect to
both
a their right in themselves, and
b their rightful possession of objects external to themselves.
7 Existing within a state, subject to juridical law, is the only way to
guarantee this security to others.
8 It is just to use coercion to force anyone in proximity into a state,
subject to juridical law.
Kant claims that there are two types of rights: innate rights and acquired
rights (MM, 43). Innate rights belong to people by nature, independently
of any act of law. Acquired rights, on the other hand, only come to exist
through an act of law. Since acquired rights are dependent on acts of law,
they cannot themselves provide the basis for considering people obligated
to accept the lawful authority of a state. Any right that is to provide a
legitimate basis for considering people obligated to accept the authority of
a state must be an innate right. The innate right of external freedom plays
this crucial role in Kant’s argument for the necessity and the legitimacy of
the state. Kant begins the section entitled “There is only one innate right”
as follows:
Freedom (independence from the constraint of another’s will),
insofar as it is compatible with the freedom of everyone else in
accordance with a universal law, is the one sole and original right
that belongs to every human being by virtue of his humanity.
(MM, 43–4)
The innate right to external freedom, therefore, is the only right that can
provide the justification for imposing a system of juridical law on others.
This innate right to external freedom provides the basis for Kant’s
conception of “justice,” which he defines as “the aggregate of those
conditions under which the will of one person can be conjoined with the
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will of another in accordance with a universal law of freedom” (MM, 34).
What are the conditions under which people’s wills can be conjoined in
accordance with a universal law of freedom? Kant thinks that two wills
can be conjoined if they include no incompatibility. But what does this
mean? Following Kant’s description of willing as “the summoning of all
the means in our power” (FMM, 10), two wills can be conjoined if each
will, while summoning all of the means in its power applicable toward its
end, does nothing incompatible with the activity of the other.
Suppose that two people will to hold the same political office. They will
both summon all of the means that are in their power to gain this office,
which, taken to its literal extreme, will undoubtedly include the violent
elimination of their rival. In this case their wills cannot be united since
each of them, by seeking to eliminate the other, is acting in a manner that
is incompatible with the other’s pursuit of the goal. It is not possible for
them jointly to will that they act in the manner described, since it entails
both of them willing their own death, and also willing to survive after the
death of the other.
The question of justice, however, is not merely whether their wills can
be conjoined, but whether they can be conjoined in accordance with a
universal law of freedom. This restricts the range of maxims upon which
they can will to act to those that are in accord with the universal law of
freedom, which, for human beings, is expressed in the categorical
imperative. If the rivals restrict their wills to maxims that meet this
requirement, then they each will act on no maxim (employ no means) the
universalization of which would be incompatible or inconsistent with the
freedom of the other to act on similarly acceptable maxims. If the
politicians so restrict themselves, then all of their acts, e.g. distributing
buttons, or advertising their virtues on television, will be compatible with
the like freedom of others. Their wills can be conjoined since there is no
incompatibility or inconsistency between their willing to act in this
restricted manner, and others willing to act similarly.
Although it was made to seem above, during the discussion of the
universal law of freedom and its relationship to the categorical imperative,
that justice requires one to act fully in accord with the categorical
imperative, it is clear from Kant’s definition of justice that it is limited to
perfect duties to others. The exclusion of duties to oneself is clear from the
reference to conjoining the will of one person with the “will of another.”
The exclusion of imperfect duties is entailed by the reference to the
conditions in which one person’s will “can be conjoined” with that of
another. When asking if the wills can be conjoined, one is asking only
whether it is logically possible for the maxims to hold at the same time,
the test for perfect duties, not whether one could will them to hold at the
same time, the test for imperfect duties.
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With this understanding of Kant’s conception of justice, it is easy to see
that it amounts to nothing more than the condition of the universal
realization of the innate right to external freedom. For all people to be
independent of the constraint of others’ wills, to the extent that this is
compatible with the freedom of everyone else in accordance with a
universal law, i.e. for the innate right to external freedom to be universally
realized, requires neither more nor less than that people be in a condition
in which their wills can be conjoined in accordance with a universal law of
freedom, i.e. that people be in a just condition. Thus, if Kant can argue
that the concept of justice logically entails the right to use coercion in
support of the condition of justice, then he will have shown that there is
no inconsistency in using coercion to support and maintain external
freedom.
Kant wants to show that such coercion as is truly employed in
opposition to injustice is itself consistent with justice (MM, 35–6). It
follows from Kant’s definition of justice that injustice would be any
condition in which one person’s will could not be conjoined with the will
of another in accordance with a universal law of freedom. This condition
cannot be eliminated, but can only be furthered, by an act that is itself
unjust. Since every unjust act entails a will that cannot be conjoined with
at least one other will in accordance with a universal law of freedom,
every unjust act itself necessarily furthers the existence of the condition in
which one person’s will cannot be conjoined with the will of another in
accordance with a universal law of freedom, i.e. the condition of injustice.
Thus, any coercion that actually opposes the condition of injustice must,
by definition, itself be just.
Kant goes on to argue that it is not merely just, but required by justice,
to use coercion against anyone who acts unjustly (MM, 36–7). Of course,
there are conditions on how that coercion is to be justly applied, but,
assuming that these conditions are met, the application of coercion in
support of the innate right to external freedom is itself a requirement of
justice. It is particularly important to Kant, in light of the broadest
concerns of his political philosophy, that external freedom can be
supported by coercion. He is concerned with external freedom because it
is a necessary condition for the development of humanity toward the final
end of nature, moral perfection. But if people have to be moral to respect
one another’s external freedom, then Kant would have a circular argument
in which the conditions for the development of morality were themselves
dependent on morality. Kant needs the condition in which people respect
one another’s external freedom to be established entirely independently of
the morality of the people. Thus, it is essential for Kant’s argument that
external freedom can be supported entirely by external legislation
(independent of people’s internal moral motivations).
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The components of external freedom
Having shown that coercion can and ought to be used in support of the innate
right to external freedom, the question of exactly what is entailed in this right
must now be addressed. Based on his definition of the innate right to external
freedom it is clear that Kant wants people to be independent of constraints
that come from the will of others, when they are formulating and pursuing the
ends of their choice in a manner consistent with others having a like freedom.
It would seem then that Kant thinks that the innate right to external freedom
entails independence from others willfully acting in a way that interferes with
one’s right to formulate and pursue the ends of one’s choice. A right to this
son of freedom may be commonly recognized, and may provide an adequate
basis for a derivation of the necessity and legitimacy of the state. However, it
is clear from Kant’s argument for the state that he has a significantly stronger
sense of “freedom” in mind. This freedom includes independence from others
willfully acting in a way that interferes with one’s right to formulate and
pursue the ends of one’s choice in a manner consistent with the similar
freedom of others, but it also includes independence from otherseven
willfully maintaining a condition that interferes with this right
(see MM,35).
If he is to provide an a priori argument for the necessity of the state, Kant
has to be concerned with the possibility of one’s external freedom being
interfered with by the conditions that others maintain, and not only by their
actions. Kant’s argument is dependent on the fact that someone who is in
proximity, and in the natural condition relative to others, necessarily
interferes with their external freedom. If Kant based his argument for the state
on the fact that people will commit acts that interfere with the external
freedom of others, then his argument for the state would be contingent on
people actually committing such acts. Thus, Kant says:
I am injured by the condition of other people who are in the natural
state. For [when others remain in the natural condition] I have no
security and my property is always in danger. I am not obligated to
remain in this fear.12
Kant’s point is that people who remain in proximity, and in the state of
nature relative to others, interfere with others’ freedom by interfering with
both their security in themselves and their right to things external to
themselves. Furthermore, one need not tolerate this situation of insecurity
that undermines freedom, because people can be forced to join the state, the
only condition in which freedom is guaranteed, without violating their
freedom.
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The last two sentences constitute, in effect, a restatement of steps 5–8
of Kant’s argument as outlined above. According to the innate right to
external freedom, people have the right to formulate and pursue the ends
of their choice, provided that they leave a similar freedom for others. Kant
thinks that this right entails both the right to security in oneself and the
right to possess things external to oneself.
Any violation of one’s right in oneself, which would seem necessarily to
involve some son of assault, clearly entails the victim’s being constrained
by the will of another (the perpetrator). Furthermore, Kant thinks that
even the threat of a violation of one’s right in oneself interferes with one’s
external freedom, as Hobbesian reasoning reveals. If people are in fear for
their personal security, they will have to focus a great portion of their
efforts on securing themselves, and will not be able to formulate and
pursue those ends that truly interest them. Thus, the innate right to
external freedom entails the right to security in oneself.
The explanation of why the innate right to external freedom entails the
right to possess things external to oneself is much more complicated. One
simple explanation that Kant alludes to at times is that human culture is
advanced through people engaging in complex projects, but people will
only engage in such projects if they have a fixed expectation of their
efforts being undisturbed, and of being able to work from the results of
earlier efforts in subsequent, more involved projects. Thus, the right to
possess things external to oneself is necessary for the development of
human culture, the ultimate end of nature. Kant’s more complicated
explanation of the right to property is basically that freedom can only be
restricted to preserve the like freedom of others, owning property does not
restrict the like freedom of others, and, therefore, freedom includes the
right to own property. Thus, to restrict the possibility of the rightful
possession of things external to oneself is to restrict freedom for something
other than freedom, which is necessarily inconsistent with the final end of
nature (MM, 52–3).
The necessary conditions of external freedom
What remains to be shown is that anyone who remains in proximity, and
in the natural condition relative to others, interferes with both of the
rights that are entailed in the innate right to external freedom. First we
shall look at Kant’s argument that such an individual interferes with
others’ right to possess things external to themselves. Kant maintains that
the right to possess anything, although land is the most important
example, depends on a relationship of the wills of all those who are in
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proximity (MM, 65). There are no material conditions, which could be
verified empirically, that constitute having a right to a thing. Although
Locke argued that one can make something one’s property by mixing
one’s labor with it, Kant would respond that this begs the question, since
it can now be asked: By what right does one mix one’s labor with
something?
Kant thinks that a person can rightfully possess something only if
everyone in proximity relinquishes their right to will the use of that thing.
Thus, one cannot take rightful possession of something through one’s own
will alone; there must be a union of wills manifesting the agreement of all
to respect the property of each:
Now, with respect to an external and contingent possession, a
unilateral Will cannot serve as a coercive law for everyone, since that
would be a violation of freedom in accordance with universal laws.
Therefore, only a Will binding everyone else—that is, a collective,
universal (common), and powerful Will—is the kind of Will that can
provide the guarantee required. The condition of being subject to
general external (that is, public) legislation that is backed by power
is the civil society. Accordingly, a thing can be externally yours or
mine only in a civil society.
(MM, 65)
For Kant, existing within a state is the form in which the people express
their mutual respect for one another’s rightful possession of things
external to themselves. What happens, however, if there are people in
proximity, and in the state of nature relative to the others? These people
are not parties to the union of wills by which each person’s rightful
possessions are guaranteed. These people are in a position to will the use
of things that would otherwise be rightfully possessed by others. But since
rightful possession depends on the agreement of the wills of all those in
proximity, the presence of these people who are outside the union of wills
makes rightful possession impossible, thereby interfering with the freedom
of those within the union. Thus, Kant concludes this discussion by saying
that if rightful possession must be possible (and it is entailed in the innate
right to external freedom), “then the subject must also be allowed to
compel everyone else with whom he comes into conflict over the question
of whether such an object is his to enter, together with him, a society
under a civil constitution” (MM, 65). In summary, Kant argues that the
innate right to external freedom includes the right to possess things
external to oneself; that this right can only be realized within a state; that
anyone in proximity and outside of the state interferes with this right; and,
therefore, that it is just to use coercion to force such people to enter the state.
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Kant also argues for the necessity and the legitimacy of the state from
the fact that the innate right to external freedom entails a right to security
in oneself that can only be realized within a state. While it is true that
everyone has an ethical duty to respect everyone else’s rights in themselves,
nevertheless, since people have no way of knowing the intentions of
others, they are not secure in their rights in themselves until such time as
they guarantee to one another that they will respect these rights:
The necessity of public lawful coercion does not rest on a fact, but
on an a priori Idea of reason, for, even if we imagine men to be ever
so good natured and righteous before a public lawful state of society
is established, individual men, nations, and states can never be
certain that they are secure against violence from one another.
(MM, 76)
Kant’s point is that, despite the requirements of morality, people’s rights in
themselves are insecure outside of a state. Paralleling his argument for the
state from the right to possess things external to oneself, Kant argues here
that the only way that the rights entailed in the innate right to external
freedom can be realized is if people make their will not to violate these
rights publicly known, and that the form of this mutual guarantee is the
state.
Kant’s argument that the necessity and the legitimacy of the state can be
derived from the fact that people have the right to security in themselves is
well summarized in the following:
It is usually assumed that one cannot take hostile action against
anyone unless one has already been actively injured by them. This is
perfectly correct if both partics are living in a legal civil state. For the
fact that one has entered such a state gives the required guarantee to
the other, since both are subject to the same authority. But man (or
an individual people) in a mere state of nature robs me of any such
security and injures me by virtue of this very state in which he
coexists with me. He may not have injured me actively (facto), but
he does injure me by the very lawlessness of his state (statu iniusto),
for he is a permanent threat to me, and I can require him either to
enter into a common lawful state along with me or to move away
from my vicinity.
(“PP,” 98 n.)13
The innate right to external freedom can be universally realized only
within a state, in which each person guarantees this right of everyone else
by participating in a union of wills resolved to use coercion in support of
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this right. Furthermore, since it is just to use coercion in support of the
innate right to external freedom, it is just to use coercion to force into the
state those people who would otherwise maintain a condition that
interferes with the external freedom of others (e.g. by remaining in
proximity and outside of civil society).
Kant on international relations
Before discussing Kant’s views on how one is forced to join a state, and the
version of hypothetical social contract theory toward which these
concerns lead Kant, it is interesting to consider the relationship between
Kant’s argument for the necessity of the state and his views on
international relations. Kant has argued that people who remain in
proximity, and in the natural condition relative to others, because they
necessarily interfere with the freedom of those others, may therefore justly
be forced to join together with them in a state that secures their freedom.
However, what if these people are already members of a state, but a
different neighboring state? Two related problems arise: First, the
members of each state interfere with the freedom of the members of the
other state just as they would if they were not members of a state at all: if
there is no formal relationship between the states, there is no guarantee
that the members of each state will respect the rights of the members of
the other state. Second, the two states, which can each be thought of as a
“moral person,” are in the state of nature relative to one another, and
suffer all the difficulties that led Kant to argue for the need for civil
society.
Kant recognizes that these are serious difficulties which, unchecked,
would very much undermine the possibility of the sort of human
development that he thinks should be facilitated. His solution to the
problem is to suggest that the same forces that lead individuals into a state
should lead states into a federation of states (“PP,” 102–5; “UH,” 47;
“TP,” 90).14 This federation of states would then fulfill the same role
among states that a state fulfills for its citizens, and would also provide the
necessary guarantee of external freedom among the citizens of different
states.
Although it is clear what Kant provides through his suggestion of a
federation of states, there is also a significant problem raised by this
suggestion: Who is ultimately sovereign? Since Kant argues that for a
state effectively to fulfill its role it must be ruled by an absolute
sovereign, it would seem to follow that the federation of states can
effectively fulfill its role only if it is ruled by an absolute sovereign. Thus,
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it appears to be a clear implication of Kant’s argument that there
should be a single world nation, without lesser sovereign states.
However, Kant never supports the notion of a single world state, and at
one point discusses the concern that such a world state “may lead to
the most fearful despotism” (“TP,” 90). Thus, while Kant was right to
recognize that his argument for the necessity and the legitimacy of the
state has important implications for international relations, he was
never able to give a clear and satisfactory account of how those
international relations should be organized.
Kant’s hypothetical social contract theory
Kant has shown that people who remain in proximity, and in the natural
condition relative to others, can be forced to join together with others in a
state. Before one can understand what Kant thinks is entailed in forcing
someone to join a state, one must understand what Kant thinks is entailed
in being a member of a state, and how this membership is manifest. These
issues are all addressed by what might best be described as a hypothetical
social contract theorist.
Kant’s hypothetical social contract theory follows from his a priori
reasoning about human beings, and his recognition of both the rights of
human beings, and the impossibility of realizing those rights outside of a
state:
A state (civitas) is a union of a multitude of men under laws of
justice. Insofar as these laws are necessary a priori and follow from
the concepts of external justice in general (that is, are not established
by statute), the form of the state is that of the state in general, that is
the Idea of the state as it ought to be according to pure principles of
justice. This Idea provides an internal guide and standard (norma)
for every actual union of men in a commonwealth.
(MM, 77)
Kant is concerned with the Idea of the state, which is based on a priori
necessary laws of justice, and thus ought to serve as the blueprint for all
actual states. It is the possibility of deriving the state a priori that grounds
the possibility of a hypothetical social contract theory.
Kant is a social contract theorist, maintaining that one’s political
obligations can only result from one’s having consented, along with
others, to be subject to the authority of the state. Kant, however, departs
from the more traditional social contract theorists in that he does not
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think that this consent is actual, either explicit or tacit. Thus, Kant’s
social contract theory is best described as hypothetical, to distinguish it
from those theories according to which people must actually manifest
their consent through their behavior. Under Kant’s hypothetical social
contract, human beings can be treated as if they have consented to the
social contract, because their consent is a necessary manifestation of
their humanity, i.e. it is known a priori that, inasmuch as a being is
rational, and one to whom the concept “human” applies, this being
necessarily consents to the social contract. Thus, Kant says that being a
member of a state is a “requirement of pure reason, which legislates a
priori” (“TP,” 73).
It is in accord with this pure reason that people are parties to the social
contract, and organize themselves into a state. Being organized into a
state, however, does not require that individuals actually apply their own
reason and recognize the necessity and the legitimacy of the state; rather,
the state is legitimate because a priori reason reveals it to be so: “The act
by means of which the people constitute themselves a state is the original
contract. More precisely, it is the Idea of that act that alone enables us to
conceive of the legitimacy of the state” (MM, 80).
Kant places himself in the contract tradition through his reference to
the “original contract.” However, he then avoids any reliance on the
actuality of this contract, and introduces what I have called a hypothetical
social contract theory. It is not any actual social contract, to which people
have actually consented either explicitly or tacitly, that lies at the
foundation of the state and accounts for its legitimacy. Rather, it is the
“Idea” of the original contract, a necessary idea of a priori pure practical
reason that must, therefore, necessarily be assented to by all human beings
inasmuch as they manifest their rationality, that provides the foundation
of the state, and accounts for its legitimacy.
All that is required for one to be a member of a state, remembering that
it requires no actual consent, is to exist in a condition in which each
individual has the rights and obligations that are necessary for the
maintenance of a just condition, and which are enforced by the state
through coercion. In fact, Kant argues that even if the state does not
enforce exactly those rights and obligations that are necessary for the
maintenance of a just condition, people must still accept its authority (for
reasons that will be revealed shortly). In any case, membership in the state
amounts to nothing more than the fact that citizens have an obligation to
obey the law, and will be punished if they do not. There is nothing that
manifests citizens’ membership in the state save the fact that a priori pure
practical reason requires people, as intelligible beings, to subject
themselves to this system of laws, and that people, as sensible or physical
beings, are actually subjected to the authority of the state.
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What about those people existing either within the borders of the
state, or otherwise in proximity, who, as intelligible beings, do not
recognize the a priori practical necessity of subjecting themselves to the
authority of the state, and, therefore, as sensible or physical beings, do
not necessarily obey the authority of the state? Kant has said that such
people can be forced to join the state. But, since there is no particular
behavior by which people actually manifest their consent to the social
contract, there is no act that people can be forced to perfom that will
manifest their joining the state.
In the end, what it is to force such people to join the state can be seen
by considering why it is necessary to do so. The fact that such people, as
intelligible beings, do not recognize the a priori practical necessity of the
state is irrelevant, since justice is concerned with only the external
relations among persons. The fact that such people, as sensible or physical
beings, do not obey the authority of the state, however, means that, were
they members of the state they would have been subjected to coercion, as
necessary, to maintain the condition of justice. Membership in the state
amounts to nothing more than being subject to the threat of coercion in
response to violations of the law. Kant’s claim, that people who do not
accept the authority of the state should be forced to join the state, really
amounts to the claim that, in accord with the hypothetical social contract
that they necessarily accept insofar as they are rational beings, they should
be treated as members of the state.
Kant on rebellion and resistance
Kant has argued from the fact that people have an innate right to external
freedom, and the fact that this freedom is not violated by the use of
coercion against someone who is violating the freedom of another, to the
fact that people can be treated as if they were parties to an original
contract by which they agreed to accept the authority of the state. The
idea of an original contract, however, not only explains the political
obligations of the members of a state, but also accounts for the limitations
that exist on the authority of the state:
[The original contract] is in fact only an idea of reason, which
nonetheless has undoubted practical reality; for it can oblige every
legislator to frame his laws in such a way that they could have been
produced by the united will of a whole nation…. This is the test of
the rightfulness of every public law. For if a law is such that a whole
people could not possibly agree to it…it is unjust; but if it is at least
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possible that a people could agree to it, it is our duty to consider the law
as just, even if the people is at present in such a position or attitude of
mind that it would probably refuse its consent if it were consulted.
(“TP,” 79)
The idea of the original contract, to which all human beings, insofar as they
are rational, necessarily consent, includes restrictions on the possible
legislation of a legitimate state. Basically, legislation is legitimate if it would
be possible for the people to consent to it. The fact that the people would be
likely to choose not to consent to a given piece of legislation is not relevant
to its legitimacy, provided that it does not require the violation of a perfect
duty, and, thus, could at least possibly receive the people’s consent.
Accordingly, it would not be surprising if Kant went on to argue that
rebellion and resistance against a state whose laws are legitimate is
absolutely prohibited, but that it is permissible to rebel against a state that
passes unjust legislation, or at least to resist the specific unjust laws. Such
a position would be consistent with the fact that Kant, on certain grounds,
applauded the French Revolution. This line of reasoning is also supported
by a passage in which Kant implies that resistance to illegitimate
legislation, which requires the violation of a perfect duty, is permissible, or
even required: “When men command anything which is itself evil (directly
opposed to the law of morality) we dare not, and ought not, obey them.”15
Despite this apparent endorsement of resistance to unjust legislation,
however, Kant repeatedly states that rebellion against states that enact
unjust legislation, and resistance to illegitimate legislation, are both
absolutely prohibited. At first blush this is rather surprising. After all,
Kant’s interest in the state is grounded in his concern for the development
of morality, which fundamentally entails the autonomy of the individual,
and, yet, submission to an unjust state seems undeniably to entail the
violation of morality and the denial of individual autonomy. Nevertheless,
Kant’s arguments for the absolute prohibition against rebellion and
resistance are well grounded in his most fundamental concerns.
Kant’s absolute prohibition against rebellion and resistance, while
holding a theory of illegitimate legislation, is evident. He says that “the
people too have inalienable rights against the head of state, even if these
cannot be rights of coercion” (“TP,” 84). Kant both recognizes that there
are things beyond the legitimate authority of the state, and asserts that the
people cannot use coercion in response to such transgressions. The
absolute nature of this prohibition is stated unequivocally: “it is the
people’s duty to endure even the most intolerable abuse of supreme
authority” (MM, 86). Another passage both expresses this absolute
prohibition, and begins to reveal Kant’s justification for it:
It thus follows that all resistance against the supreme legislative
power, all incitements of the subjects to violent expressions of
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discontent, all defiance which breaks out into rebellion, is the
greatest and most punishable crime in a commonwealth, for it
destroys its very foundations. This prohibition is absolute.
(“TP,” 81)
Kant not only thinks that the prohibition against rebellion and resistance
is absolute, but that it must be absolute, because rebellion and resistance
destroy the very foundations of a state. Even a state that is unjust must be
supported because the state is necessary for the realization of the innate
right to external freedom, and to rebel or resist any state is to act on a
maxim that makes all states insecure:
For such resistance would be dictated by a maxim which, if it
became general, would destroy the whole civil constitution and put
an end to the only state in which men can possess rights.
(“TP,” 81)
For such procedures, if made into a maxim, make all lawful
constitutions insecure and produce a state of complete lawlessness
(status naturalis) where all rights cease at least to be effectual.
(“TP,” 82)
In his political philosophy, Kant argues for the necessity and the
legitimacy of the state because, without a state, the rights that people
have under the innate right to external freedom cannot be secured, and
humanity will not progress toward the ultimate and final ends of nature.
Rebellion and resistance, however, entail the adoption of maxims that
make the state impossible, rights ineffectual, and the hope for human
progress vain. Thus, it is only if people live within secure states, that are
themselves members of a healthy federation of states, that humanity can
possibly progress toward the ultimate and final ends of nature, the
complete development of human culture and the attainment of moral
perfection.
NOTES
1 For Kant these identities are necessary, thus obviating the claim that he is
substituting into an intentional context.
2 FMM stands for Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, 2nd edn,
revised, trans. L.W.Beck (New York: Macmillan, 1959).
3 Kant wouldn’t consider this correspondence mere coincidence, but space does
not permit a discussion of its grounds.
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4 It is clear that by “humanity” here Kant is referring to rational beings generally.
5 Kant argues only that insofar as we think of rational beings as actors in the
world, i.e. from the point of view of practical philosophy, can we argue that
these beings are free. This argument does not constitute a theoretical proof of
the freedom of rational beings.
6 MM stands for Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, the Preface, Introduction,
and most of Part I (“Doctrine of Right”) of which constitute The Metaphysical
Elements of Justice, trans. J.Ladd (New York: Macmillan, 1965).
7 The word that is here translated as “jurisprudence” is the same word as is
translated “doctrine of right,” but the former corresponds to colloquial English.
Furthermore, the root of this word, “Recht,” can be translated as either “right”
or “justice” depending on the context. Thus, the “Doctrine of Right,” Kant’s
theory of jurisprudence, is concerned with those duties that are duties of justice.
8 There is rather good evidence both for and against this claim; however, I think
that much better sense can be made of Kant’s political philosophy on the
assumption that it is correct.
9 CJ stands for Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. W.S.Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987).
10 “UH” stands for Kant, “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan
Purpose,” in Kant’s Political Writings, 2nd edn, ed. H.Reiss, trans. H.B.Nisbet
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
11 Kant, Lectures on Ethics, trans. L.Infield (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1963), pp. 117–18.
12 Kant, Reflection 7647 (my translation), in Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, 29
vols, ed. Deutschen (formerly Königlich Preussische) Akademie der
Wissenschaften (Berlin: de Gruyter [and predecessors], 1902–), Vol. 19, pp. 476–7.
13 “PP” stands for Kant, “Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch,” in Kant’s
Political Writings, op. cit.
14 “TP” stands for Kant, “On the Common Saying: ‘This May be True in Theory,
but it does not Apply in Practice’,” in Kant’s Political Writings, op. cit.
15 Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, trans. T.M.Greene and H.
H.Hudson (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), p. 90 n.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Original language editions
3.1 Kants gesammelte Schriften, 29 vols, ed. Deutschen (formerly Königliche
Preussische) Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin: de Gruyter (and
predecessors), 1902–; the complete collection of Kant’s work.
English translations of Kant’s work
3.2 Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, trans. M.J.Gregor, The Hague: Nijhoff,
1974.
3.3 Critique of Judgment, trans. W.S.Pluhar, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987.
3.4 Critique of Practical Reason, trans. L.W.Beck, New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1956.
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3.5 Critique of Pure Reason, trans. N.Kemp Smith, New York: St Martin’s Press,
1965.
3.6 Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, 2nd edn, trans. L.W.Beck, New
York: Macmillan, 1990.
3.7 Lectures on Ethics, trans. L.Infield, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1963.
3.8 The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. M.Gregor, Cambridge: Cambridge
University, 1991.
Preface, Introduction, and Part I (“Doctrine of Right”), trans. J.Ladd, in The
Metaphysical Elements of Justice, New York: Macmillan, 1965.
Preface, Introduction, and Part II (“Doctrine of Virtue”), trans.
J.W.Ellington, in Ethical Philosophy, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983.
3.9 Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, trans. T.M.Greene and
H.H.Hudson, New York: Harper & Row, 1960.
3.10 “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose”;
3.11 “On the Common Saying: ‘This May be True in Theory, but it does not
Apply in Practice’” ;
3.12 “Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch”:
All appear in:
Reiss, H. (ed.) Kant’s Political Writings, 2nd enlarged edn, trans. H.B.Nisbet,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Humphrey T. (ed.) Perpetual Peace and Other Essays, Indianapolis, Hackett,
1983.
Commentaries on Kant’s moral and political philosophy
3.13 Allison, H.E. Kant’s Theory of Freedom, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1990.
3.14 Arendt, H. Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, ed.R.Beiner, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1982.
3.15 Aune, B. Kant’s Theory of Morals, Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1979.
3.16 Beck, L.W. A Commentary on Kant’s “Critique of Practical Reason”,
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960.
3.17 Carnois, B. The Coherence of Kant’s Doctrine of Freedom, trans. D.Booth,
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
3.18 Gregor, M.J. Laws of Freedom: A Study of Kant’s Method of Applying the
Categorical Imperative in the “Metaphysik der Sitten” [“Metaphysics
of Morals”], New York: Barnes & Noble, 1963.
3.19 Mulholland, L.A. Kant’s System of Rights, New York: Columbia University
Press, 1990.
3.20 Murphy, J.G. Kant: The Philosophy of Right, London: Macmillan, 1970.
3.21 Nell, O. Acting on Principle: An Essay on Kantian Ethics, New York:
Columbia University Press, 1975.
3.22 Paton, H.J. The Categorical Imperative: A Study in Kant’s Moral Philosophy,
London: Hutchinson, 1947.
3.23 Riley, P. Kant’s Political Philosophy, Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield,
1983.
3.24 Shell, S.M. The Rights of Reason: A Study of Kant’s Philosophy and Politics,
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980.
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3.25 Sullivan, R.J. Immanuel Kant’s Moral Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1989.
3.26 Williams, H. Kant’s Political Philosophy, Oxford: Blackwell, 1983.
3.27 Wolff, R.P. The Autonomy of Reason: A Commentary on Kant’s
“Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals”, New York: Harper &
Row, 1973.
3.28 Yovel, Y. Kant and the Philosophy of History, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1980.
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CHAPTER 4
Kant: Critique of Judgement
Patrick Gardiner
Kant’s third Critique, the Critique of Judgement, was published in 1790
and was intended—as he himself put it—to bring his “entire critical
undertaking to a close.” So conceived, it was certainly in part designed to
build upon and develop ideas that had already been introduced in its two
predecessors but which he had come to regard as requiring further
elaboration and supplementation. Thus Kant included in its ambitious
scope wide-ranging discussions impinging upon the spheres of scientific
enquiry, ethics, and religion, his aim being to approach these apparently
diverse realms within a perspective distinguishable in significant ways
from any he had hitherto adopted. At the same time, however, it should be
recognized that the book was composed not only in the light of theses he
had advanced in his own previous writings. For it may also be seen as
involving responses or allusions to positions that had been put forward by
other thinkers and which had attracted considerable attention among his
contemporaries. This was especially true in the case of aesthetics, an area
he had not so far subjected to systematic critical scrutiny; but they arose as
well both from developments in the emergent biological sciences and from
theoretical studies relating to history and to the nature of social change.
Further, and at a more general level, Kant was sharply aware of recent
contributions to the existing climate of opinion that had been made by
philosophers who wished to challenge many of the rationalistic
assumptions associated with the eighteenth-century Aufklärung,
particularly those felt to threaten or undermine cherished dogmas of
religious orthodoxy. All in all, German thought in the 1780s can be said to
have been the focus of a variety of competing intellectual preoccupations
and trends. Hence it is hardly surprising that his own treatise, appearing at
the end of an ideologically turbulent decade, bore the imprint of current
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controversies, some of which had indeed been sparked off by the
publication nine years earlier of the Critique of Pure Reason itself.
The outcome of these disparate concerns and influences was a complex
and seminal work. It was also, at least in certain respects, an elusive one.
The sections into which the Critique of Judgement is divided fall into four
main groups, each centering round a dominant topic or theme. But although
the individual subjects treated are of great intrinsic interest, they are apt to
strike the reader as belonging to markedly different categories; moreover, the
actual manner in which some of the constituent sections are suppose to fit
together is not always easy to discern. It may therefore be tempting to regard the
book from one point of view as amounting to a series of somewhat loosely
related essays rather than as representing a unified enquiry controlled by a single
overarching objective. Nonetheless, Kant makes it pretty clear at the outset that
this was not how he himself envisaged the project on which he was engaged.
Instead, he presents it as following a course determined by, and closely integrated
with, the overall plan informing his earlier investigations, the assumed
connection deriving from the theory of mental powers or faculties in terms of
which he tended to articulate the basic principles governing human thought and
conduct. The functions of two of those faculties—namely, understanding and
reason—had already been examined and their respective provinces charted.
Thus in the Preface he writes that his first Critique was largely devoted to
analyzing the role of the understanding in supplying the a priori principles
essential to our cognitive experience; while in the second he demonstrated how
reason—here identified in its practical employment as the source of moral
prescriptions—performed a comparable a priori role in legislating at the level of
human action and desire. He now maintains that a third faculty remains for
consideration which forms “a middle term” between the other two and whose
claims as a possible source of independent a priori principles have still to be
assessed. The faculty in question is the power of judgment (Urteilskraft), the
important issues its mediating position raises indicating that a further Critique is
called for. Accordingly, and with the completion of his system in mind, it is this
that Kant sets out to provide. Let us see how he proceeds, beginning with the
contents of the formidable Introduction which in effect constitutes the
first major division of his new work.
REFLECTIVE JUDGMENT AND THE
CONCEPT OF PURPOSE
Kant wrote two Introductions to the Critique of Judgement, discarding the
first as being “disproportionately extensive” and replacing it with the
shorter version he decided to publish in its stead. Even in its abbreviated
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form, however, it amounts to an involved and demanding piece of work,
containing retrospective references to conclusions so far reached in his
philosophy as well as anticipations of matters he intends to cover in the
main body of the text that is to follow. Since it is in terms of the former
conclusions that he offers a preliminary clue to what he conceives to be a
guiding concern of the present Critique, it will be best to start with his
somewhat condensed remarks in that connection. For they indicate that
his conception of judgment as playing a mediating role between
understanding and reason was intimately linked to a distinction which was
fundamental to the doctrine of transcendental idealism propounded in his
previous writings.
This was the radical contrast he had drawn between the realm of
empirical phenomena, comprising reality as it appears to us as cognitive
subjects endowed with a certain sensory and intellectual apparatus, and a
postulated non-empirical realm of noumena or “things in themselves.” So
far as the phenomenal sphere was concerned, Kant had argued that our
familiar awareness of a spatio-temporal and causally governed world of
perceivable entities and events presupposed a framework of universal
forms and categories which was imposed upon the data or raw material of
sensation by the human mind. Such an a priori framework determined the
basic structure of the empirical consciousness, constituting the conditions
upon which all everyday and scientific knowledge depended for its
possibility. At the same time, it must clearly be understood that any
knowledge we might legitimately claim to possess of reality was confined
to the sphere of observable nature, i.e. to what fell within the scope of
sensory experience: it did not extend to the noumenal realm, the latter
being a supersensible field that was necessarily inaccessible to theoretical
cognition or investigation. However, it did not follow that the notion of
the supersensible had no substantive part to play in our thought. On the
contrary, Kant regarded it as being crucial to the conception we were
obliged to have of ourselves when considered from a practical and, more
specifically, a moral point of view. For here it was essential that we should
think of ourselves as possessing free will and as being thereby able to act
in compliance with practical imperatives prescribed by reason as opposed
to following the natural promptings of sensuous impulse or inclination.
Such a capacity for rational self-determination appeared to be excluded on
the supposition that we belonged solely to the phenomenal domain, since
on Kant’s own principles everything occurring within that sphere was
subject without exception to the laws of natural causality. On the other
hand, the requirements of morality could be preserved if it were accepted
that there were two aspects under which people might be viewed, the first
of which involved treating them as items in “the world of sense” and the
second of which involved regarding them as belonging to the “intelligible”
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or supersensible sphere which necessarily lay outside the range of the
causal categories that were universally applicable within the empirical
realm. Thus, while from a theoretical standpoint we were indeed bound to
consider ourselves as governed by natural laws, from the standpoint of
practical motivation and choice we could at the same time consistently
conceive of ourselves as exercising freedom and rational autonomy of the
kind presupposed by the moral consciousness. Kant was careful to point
out that the latter conception, depending as it did for its possibility upon
our membership of the supersensible as well as the natural world, was not
capable of being cognitively established; for nothing whatsoever could be
known by us at the level of noumenai reality. Nonetheless, the “two-
world” doctrine invoked might be said to leave room for the idea of
human free will in a way that rendered it compatible with the acceptance
of a fully deterministic account of nature, thereby resolving an antinomy
commonly believed to arise between the claims of scientific enquiry and
the presuppositions of ethical thought.
Problematic though it has often been felt to be, the above solution to
this apparent conflict was certainly the one that Kant had adopted in his
two preceding Critiques. And it recurs in the Introduction to his third
inasmuch as he speaks there of theoretical understanding and practical
reason as having “two distinct jurisdictions,” neither of which need be
thought of as interfering with the other—“it is possible for us at least to
think without contradiction of both these jurisdictions, and their
appropriate faculties, as coexisting in the same Subject” (Introduction, p.
13). However, although in the present context he briefly refers to this
thesis as having been established in the Critique of Pure Reason, at the
same time he indicates here that it leaves in its wake a further issue whose
significance has still to be faced. For it raises the question of what
connection, if any, may be presumed to exist between the spheres of
natural necessity and practical freedom, given their supposed
independence. Kant certainly writes of there being “a great gulf fixed”
between the provinces to which the concepts of nature “as the sensible”
and of freedom “as the supersensible” respectively apply, the first of these
being “powerless” to exercise an influence upon the second. The fact
remains nonetheless that the two realms cannot be thought of as totally
insulated from each other, for it is a condition of moral agency that the
principles and objectives which reason prescribes should be understood to
be realizable in the phenomenal world, achieving expression within the
empirical course of events. As he himself goes on to say: “the concept of
freedom is meant to actualize in the sensible world the end proposed by its
laws,” and he holds it to follow that nature must be “capable of being
regarded in such a way that in the conformity to law of its form it at least
harmonizes with the possibility of the ends to be effectuated in it
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according to the laws of freedom” (ibid., p. 14). In other words, we should
be able, though without violating the principle of natural causality, to
consider the phenomenal domain under an aspect that would allow us to
view it as amenable to the behests and aims of morality; at the very
minimum, it would not present itself as being wholly allen to the
fulfillment of the latter. Such an aspect is specifically connected by Kant
with the notion of a purposiveness or “finality” in nature which is
supplied by the faculty of judgment; and it is in these terms that he
envisages the possibility of judgment’s providing a “mediating concept” or
requisite link between the two modes of thinking—theoretical and
practical—whose spheres of application he has found it essential to
distinguish.
The implications of this suggestion, which Kant relates somewhat
obscurely to his conception of phenomenal nature as itself having a
“supersensible substrate” or noumenal ground, only appear at a later
stage of the Critique where it is evaluated in the light of certain
qualifications to which it is held to be inevitably subject. Within the
context of the Introduction, however, its chief importance lies in its being
the cue for him to initiate a general account of judgment and its functions.
It is necessary to speak in the plural of its role, since Kant certainly regards
the power of judgment as operating at more than one level of our thought
and as being relevant to discriminable philosophical concerns. That,
indeed, quickly becomes apparent from the discussion which directly
follows and which actually forms the centerpiece of this section of his
book. For there it is issues pertinent to scientific procedure, rather than
questions arising from reflection on our moral experience, that
immediately occupy him. Moreover, it is with reference to such
methodological considerations that he first broaches the problem of what
kind of a priori employment may legitimately be assigned to the mental
faculty he has in mind.
Kant opens his account by making a preliminary distinction between
what he respectively calls the “determinant” and the “reflective”
dimensions of judgment. In both it is said to involve relating universals
and particulars, but the manner in which it does so is radically different in
the two cases. Thus judgment is asserted to be determinant when it
involves applying a “given” universal—that is, a concept or general law
known or presupposed in advance—to particulars recognized as falling
under it: it was in this sense that Kant referred to judgment in his first
Critique, where the relevant universals were the formative categories and
principles of the understanding and where it was simply characterized as
“the faculty of subsuming under rules.” He now wishes to compare that
capacity with another one in which the above process is, so to speak,
reversed; here it is the particular, or particulars, that is or are given, the
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task of judgment being taken instead to consist in seeking a universal
beneath which the latter can appropriately be brought. Engaging in such a
task is the business of reflective judgment, and it is with the operations of
judgment so understood that Kant is presently concerned.
What does this amount to in less abstract terms? As we have seen, it
was central to the standpoint Kant adopted in his critical philosophy that
everything falling within the sphere of empirical reality conformed to an
overall framework whose universal applicability to phenomena was
transcendentally guaranteed. And, since the forms of order embodied
therein were constitutive of all objective experience, it followed that they
must be taken to hold of whatever occurred within the areas explored by
the empirical or natural sciences. However, it was one thing to recognize
the a priori validity for any experience of such a categorical principle as
that every event must have a determining cause. It was quite another to
discover from experience what particular causal laws or regularities
actually obtain within a given domain and to try to identify their possible
connections and interrelations. Neither enquiry can be undertaken without
recourse to the findings of empirical observation and scrutiny, but Kant
lays especial stress on the second as expressing something that he
considers to be intrinsic to the very notion of scientific thinking. That is
the idea of system.
The claim that “systematic unity is what…raises ordinary knowledge to
the rank of science” had already been emphasized in the first Critique in
connection with what was there called “the logical employment of
reason.” Here Kant takes it up, though with the difference that the
exercise of judgment is implicitly substituted for that of theoretical reason.
At the level of everyday life there are innumerable generalizations which
reflect the “manifold forms of nature” and which may be said to
contribute to the stock of our ordinary or commonsense knowledge of the
world. Even so, a mere aggregate of such perceived regularities, however
comprehensive, is never by itself sufficient to qualify as a science. To
satisfy that description, and to meet theoretical requirements of the kind
deemed essential to scientific understanding, it is necessary that the
relevant empirical laws should be seen to constitute an interdependent and
hierarchically related system; as Kant puts it, from this point of view it is
essential to establish “the unity of all empirical principles under higher,
though likewise empirical, principles, and thence the possibility of the
systematic subordination of higher and lower” (Introduction, p. 19). And
that leads him to formulate what he conceives to be a fundamental
presupposition of scientific enquiry. For he goes on to maintain that to
embark upon such a project is to proceed on the assumption that the
multiplicity of naturel laws will be found to exhibit a unitary order which
is intelligible to the human mind, so that it is as if “an understanding
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(though it be not ours) had supplied them for the benefit of our cognitive
faculties.” Nature, in other words, must be approached as though its
workings were purposively adapted to our intellectual capacities and
powers of comprehension, this being a conception which he specifically
ascribes to reflective judgment. And in so ascribing it he at the same time
contends that it amounts to an a priori principle possessed of an
independent validity in its own right.
Kant is insistent that the distinctive status of the principle in question,
together with that of subsidiary “maxims of judgement” like those which
attribute economy and continuity to nature’s operations, should be fully
appreciated. In his own terminology, it is not “constitutive”: unlike the
transcendental rules imposed by the understanding, it does not represent a
necessary condition of phenomenal reality as such, being prescriptively
related to our modes of empirically investigating nature rather than being
objectively determinative of the natural realm considered in itself. Nor,
Kant holds, does it justify us in affirming the existence of an actual
designer in the form of a divine or superhuman intelligence responsible for
harmonizing the natural world with the needs and capacities of our finite
intellects. Instead it functions purely as a principle of enquiry which, while
a priori in the sense of being something brought to rather than derived
from experience, is only “regulative” or heuristic in character.
Nevertheless, although we can never justifiably claim to know that nature
objectively conforms to a purposively conceived order of the sort
postulated, we are subjectively obliged even so to pursue our
investigations as if it did. For otherwise scientific thought and research,
conceived as a quest after system within the prima facie untidy
conglomeration of facts and regularities that empirically confronts us,
could not be meaningfully undertaken: “were it not for this presupposition
we should have no order of nature in accordance with empirical laws, and,
consequently, no guidingthread…for an investigation of them”
(Introduction, p. 25). It appears, therefore, that a view of nature invoking
purposive conceptions—which, as was intimated earlier, might ultimately
be found to serve judgment as a means of mediating between the spheres
of freedom and natural causality—can at least be said to have received
positive, if limited, endorsement within the context of scientific
methodology. For here it is taken by Kant to underlie, as an indispensable
regulative idea, the general project of comprehending phenomena within a
unitary scheme of interconnected laws. It has, moreover, a further
implication to which he briefly alludes. For it follows from the account he
has given that, although as scientists we must always conduct our
enquiries on the supposition that nature is adapted to meet our
systematizing ambitions, we cannot in this case—as we can in the case of
its conformity to the categories of the understanding—have any guarantee
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that it will necessarily do so; if on a particular occasion it turns out to
accord with our theoretical concerns, that can only be for us a contingent
result. But the attainment of every objective where failure is possible is
accompanied by a feeling of pleasure. Hence whenever the scientific quest
after systematic unity is crowned with success, such an achievement is
bound to be pleasing: the discovery, Kant notes, “that two or more
empirical heterogeneous laws of nature are allied under one principle that
embraces them both is the ground of a very appreciable pleasure” (ibid., p.
27). Thus it emerges that the exercise of judgment can be viewed as being
intimately connected with the experience of a certain kind of pleasurable
feeling, one that has its source in the satisfaction afforded to our faculties
of cognition rather than in the fulfillment of any practical aims or desires
we may happen to entertain.
The above concludes what Kant has to say in the Introduction about
the part played by reflective judgment in rendering the scientific enterprise
possible. In effect, it constitutes a prelude that leads—admittedly
somewhat obliquely—to the two central sections of his Critique, the first
comprising a comprehensive analysis of judgment in relation to the
aesthetic consciousness and the second a discussion of its role that focuses
chiefly on the interpretation of organic phenomena of the sort studied in
biology. At first sight these might seem to represent very dissimilar fields
of interest. Nevertheless, they are both ones in which Kant again treats the
idea of purposiveness as occupying a pivotal position. Furthermore, the
intellectually oriented conception of pleasure he associated with the use of
reflective judgment in scientific contexts may be regarded as anticipating,
if only in some respects, a notion that lies at the heart of his aesthetic
theory.
AESTHETIC JUDGMENT AND EXPERIENCE
Kant’s concern with aesthetics—the subject to which Part I of the Critique
of Judgement is exclusively devoted—was by no means new. It is true that
his appreciation of art itself was limited in both scope and depth. That
was especially so in the case of music, to whose appeal he appears to have
been largely insensitive; yet even with regard to literature he seems to have
confined himself to a somewhat narrow diet, while his lifelong residence in
the city of Königsberg meant that he had practically no direct awareness
of what had been achieved in the spheres of painting, sculpture, or
architecture. All the same, these constraints did not prevent him from
taking a considerable interest in the nature and sources of aesthetic
experience. He had long been familiar with eighteenth-century writing on
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aesthetic matters, an essay he published in 1764 on the feeling of the
beautiful and sublime suggesting that by that time he was already broadly
acquainted with the contributions made by such British thinkers as
Hutcheson, Addison, and Burke. He referred, however, to the piece in
question as having been undertaken “more with the eye of an observer
than a philosopher,” and it was in fact only when he returned to the topic
more than two decades later that he felt able to accord it the type of
theoretical treatment it merited.
This was due to the circumstance that during the years immediately
preceding the composition of the third Critique Kant underwent a
fundamental change of mind concerning the character of aesthetic claims.
Generally speaking, he regarded earlier theorists, who included men like
Baumgarten, Lessing, and Hume, as having tended to favor one or other
of two radically opposed approaches to what these involved. Either they
viewed them as being essentially related to psychological reactions or
sentiments which were subject to a purely empirical investigation, or else
they interpreted them instead as answerable to conceptual criteria or rules
in a way that implicitly assimilated them to the status of cognitive
assertions about objective reality. While he had previously been inclined to
sympathize with the first position, Kant was now of the opinion that
neither of them was finally acceptable. Both distorted what was basically
at issue, each—though in contrasting ways—failing to do justice to
distinctive peculiarities of judgments of taste that rendered them
problematic. He therefore concluded that it was necessary to provide a
fresh analysis of their implications, one that was designed moreover to
show that the possibility of such claims ultimately depended upon the
satisfaction of certain a priori conditions. Given that he had at the same
time come to regard aesthetic appreciation and the pleasure it afforded as
representing a specific form in which reflective judgment manifested itself,
this was not an unexpected aspiration.
Beauty and the problem of taste
Many of the elements central to Kant’s revised account are set out in the
section that opens this part of the Critique and is called “Analytic of the
Beautiful.” As its title indicates, he considers the judgments with which he
is dealing to be propositions ascribing beauty to things, subdividing his
discussion of them into four “moments”—quality, quantity, relation, and
modality—which purport to elucidate their essential nature under
distinguishable aspects. Although schematically separated, however, the
different features thereby identified tend (some-what questionably) to be
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spoken of as logically interdependent, and Kant also introduces additional
points about their import that await clarification or elaboration further on
in the book. Thus close attention to the order and detail of his exposition
at this stage is liable to encounter obscurities or uncertainties that raise
difficulties of interpretation. Nonetheless, and despite such complications,
it is possible to view what he writes as contributing to a developing
pattern of argument whose general tenor and purpose become evident as
he proceeds.
Right at the beginning of the “Analytic” Kant makes it apparent that he
wishes to draw a sharp distinction between aesthetic judgments and ones
that are objectively cognitive; to that extent at least he is in agreement
with previous theorists who adopted a basically subjectivist position.
Judgments of taste are not concerned with, nor can their truth be
determined by reference to, observable properties of phenomena in the
sense in which those may be said to underlie claims to knowledge about
how matters stand in the world. Rather, they crucially have to do with the
manner in which particular representations affect us so as to produce a
“feeling of pleasure or displeasure,” the latter being something that
“denotes nothing in the object.” It follows, Kant thinks, that aesthetic
judgments are ones whose “determining ground cannot be other than
subjective,” and he goes on to stress the contrast between, on the one
hand, apprehending a building from a strictly cognitive standpoint and, on
the other, being “conscious of this representation with an accompanying
sensation of delight” (Part I, pp. 41–2). Qua subjective feeling, such a
pleasurable reaction can contribute or add nothing to our knowledge of
the building considered as an independent object of perception; it is,
however, indispensable as forming the basis of a favorable judgment of
taste.
It appears, then, that pronouncing something to be beautiful necessarily
implies finding it to occasion an experience of satisfaction. But satisfaction
of what kind? Unlike some of his predecessors, who had also assigned
pleasure a central place in their accounts, Kant was not content merely to
regard the notion as referring to an isolable mental state, identifiable apart
from the varying conditions of its occurrence. We have seen that traces of
a different approach were already discernible in the Introduction to the
Critique; but it is only here, where Kant emphasizes the need to
discriminate the type of enjoyment intrinsic to the appreciation of beauty
from the kinds of satisfaction experienced in other contexts, that it is
explicitly formulated and developed. Thus he insists that the delight
relevant to such appreciation must be carefully distinguished from
pleasures which are, as he puts it, “allied to an interest” and which
presuppose the presence of determinate appetites or wants on the part of
the subject. Pleasures of the latter sort fall into two main groups,
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respectively categorized as ones that relate to the agreeable and ones that
relate to the good. So far as the agreeable is concerned, Kant singles out
immediate pleasures of sense, speaking at the same time as if these
involved the gratification of particular desires or inclinations. By contrast,
pleasure in the good is not a matter of sensuous enjoyment, the
satisfactions in question being determined instead by rational
considerations of a characteristically practical nature—we may, for
instance, be pleased by something’s serving a certain purpose or again by
its meeting certain standards or requirements we have in mind, including
those prescribed by morality. Delight in the beautiful, however, stands on
a completely different footing from either of the above. It derives from no
specifie interest, whether sensuous or practical, that we may take in the
existence of a given object or state of affairs. On the contrary, our
attention in this case is directed solely to what strikes us as worthy of
contemplation in its own right, the pleasure afforded being dependent
neither upon sensory gratification nor upon a recognized conformity to
the demands of practical rationality or volition. Hence it can be said that,
of the triad of delights mentioned, taste in the beautiful constitutes “the
one and only disinterested and free delight; for with it, no interest,
whether of sense or reason, extorts approval” (Part I, p. 49). It is related
to “favour,” as opposed to “inclination” or “respect,” and “favour is the
only free liking.”
The view that an attitude of disinterested contemplation is essential to
aesthetic appreciation is one that has acquired widespread currency since
Kant’s time. He may not have been alone among eight-eenth-century
philosophers in subscribing to it, but he was certainly the most explicit
and influential of its original proponents. He saw it, moreover, as having a
significant bearing upon a feature of judgments of taste that was vital to a
proper interpretation of their meaning. For he thought that, if the delight
we take in a particular object is believed to owe nothing to conditions or
preoccupations peculiar to ourselves, we feel we have reason for claiming
that it should elicit a similar delight from everyone. And it was just such a
claim to general agreement that he held to be necessarily embodied in
aesthetic appraisals, a claim which he initially encapsulated in the
contention that “the beautiful is that which, apart from concepts, is
represented as the object of a universal delight” (Part I, p. 50). The
grounds and implications of this contention are examined and explored in
the second and fourth “moments” of the “Analytic.”
The fact that we are typically prone to speak as if beauty were a quality
of things in the world is pertinent to what Kant has in mind. As one might
expect, he implies that such a form of words is misleading insofar as it
suggests that aesthetic judgments can legitimately be assimilated to
objective judgments of a cognitive kind. Nevertheless, it is also revealing
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in pointing to a genuine analogy between the two; for the former, despite
being subjectively founded on feeling, resemble the latter in that they
“may be presupposed to be valid for all men.” This becomes apparent,
Kant thinks, if one compares the ways in which we refer to the merely
pleasant or agreeable, where what we say is restricted in scope to our own
private sensations, with the pronouncements we make about the beautiful,
these being understood to have universal import in that they lay claim to
the assent of others. Appealing to ordinary usage, Kant argues that when
someone says that a particular wine is agreeable he will readily admit that
he is asserting no more than that it is agreeable to him. There is therefore
no contradiction between his judgment and a divergent judgment about its
agreeableness expressed by somebody else, with the consequence that
neither can properly criticize or condemn the taste of the other as
“incorrect”: here, as in all cases of what is found personally pleasing to
our various senses, the familiar dictum “Everyone has his own taste”
holds good. When, on the other hand, we turn to ascriptions of beauty, the
situation markedly changes. A person cannot in the same fashion confine
him-or herself to saying of, for example, a building or a poem, “It is
beautiful for me,” as if that again were just a matter of the pleasure it
happened to give them. For, according to Kant,
if it merely pleases him, he must not call it beautiful. Many things
may for him possess charm or agreeableness—no one cares about
that; but when he puts a thing on a pedestal and calls it beautiful, he
demands the same delight from others. He judges not merely for
himself, but for all men, and then speaks of beauty as if it were a
property of things.
(Part I, p. 52)
Such an implicit call upon the agreement of others, which Kant sharply
distinguishes from a mere empirical conjecture as to how they are likely to
react, explains how it is that divergent judgments of beauty, as distinct
from ones concerning the agreeable, represent genuine instances of
conflict. For here we express ourselves as if we were entitled to their
assent; in his own words, we “formulate judgements demanding this
agreement in its universality,” and if it is not forthcoming we are apt to
regard those who dissent as being mistaken or wrong—we do not shrug
off its absence as simply a difference in individual response. To that extent,
then, aesthetic appraisals may justifiably be likened to cognitive judgments
about matters of fact, where a similar claim to universal acceptance is
implied and where divergences of opinion give rise to imputations of error.
There, however, the apparent resemblance ends. For the validity to
which aesthetic appraisals lay claim is subjective only; as such it in no way
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depends upon the use of concepts, whereas these play an essential role in
ascribing validity to cognitive judgments about items in the world.
Judgments of the latter type, in addition to presupposing the formal
conditions imposed by the categories, necessarily involve subsuming what
is perceptually presented under determinate empirical concepts whose
applicability to the given is governed by publicly recognized rules. The
validity of a particular cognitive claim is thus objectively decidable
according to whether what it purports to denote and describe has been
correctly characterized in a manner that conforms to the relevant rules or
criteria. But it is Kant’s emphatic contention that judgments of taste
cannot be understood or assessed in these terms: “in forming an estimate
of objects merely from concepts, all representation of beauty goes by the
board,” appeals to specific rules or principles as a means of compelling
agreement or resolving disputes in aesthetic contexts being out of place
(Part I, p. 56). If that were not so, aesthetic judgments would—as certain
theorists have earnestly hoped—be “capable of being enforced by proofs.”
Yet their hopes are vain, disregarding as they do something that is intrinsic
to the very notion of aesthetic appraisal and failing which nothing can
rightfully qualify as a judgment of the kind in question. For, as Kant has
already insisted, what is crucial in grounding such a judgment about a
given object is the pleasure we subjectively experience when we
contemplate it; we must “get a look at the object with our own eyes, just
as if our delight depended on sensation.” If the requisite delight is lacking
we cannot properly or sincerely pronounce the thing to be beautiful, nor a
fortiori can agreement that it is be wrung from us by others, however
numerous they may be and whatever supposed “rules of beauty” laid
down by distinguished critics they may invoke in their support. As he puts
it elsewhere, in such circumstances I can only “take my stand on the
ground that my judgement is to be one of taste, and not one of
understanding or reason” (ibid., p. 140). The contrast with the claims to
validity implicit in cognitive assertions could not, it would appear, be more
trenchantly affirmed.
Nevertheless, and as Kant himself was well aware, the position he had
reached raised a considerable problem from a philosophical point of view.
If aesthetic appraisals differed from expressions of personal liking in
claiming universal and—as he further maintained—necessary agreement,
and if they differed from cognitive judgments in virtue of their essentially
subjective orientation, the question inevitably arose as to whether, and if
so in what manner, they could be said to be justifiable. It was one thing to
offer an analysis that aimed to exhibit their logical and epistemological
peculiarities. It was another to contend that, given such features, we were
actually entitled to make them. In our ordinary practice we might speak as
if we were, but with what right? When I say of an object that it is of a
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certain shape or dimensions, there are determinate criteria to which
reference can be made; granted that its empirically identifiable properties
satisfy them, I may legitimately require general assent. When, on the other
hand, I call it beautiful, it is intersubjective agreement in response, not
agreement in objective description, that is centrally at issue. And here, it
seems, I have ultimately to consult and rely upon my own felt reactions to
the thing, “to the exclusion of rules and precepts” and without the
availability of empirical or conceptual proofs. But if so, what valid
grounds can I or anyone else possess for purporting to speak with a
“universal voice” that lays claim to the concurrence of all? In Kant’s own
summary formulation of the problem, “how are judgements of taste
possible?” (Part I, pp. 144–5).
An early intimation of his approach to the question he posed had
already appeared when he was discussing the disinterestedness of aesthetic
pleasure and when he there implied that the absence of personal
idiosyncrasies in determining our delight might naturally lead us to regard
it as resting on what we “may also presuppose in every other person.” As
originally introduced, however, this seems to be presented as a mere
conjecture which is uninformative as to the content of the presupposition
referred to and which in any case stands in need of independent
substantiation. And much of what Kant wrote in subsequent sections may
be interpreted as being designed to provide such substantiation. Thus he
went on to argue that a careful examination of the inner nature and
sources of our pleasure in the beautiful showed it to be due to the
satisfaction of subjective conditions of judgment which must indeed be
assumed to be universally present in every human being. Hence if we
could be sure that the pleasure we experienced was produced in
accordance with these conditions, we should in fact be entitled to call
upon the agreement of others in the manner distinctive of judgments of
taste. Although his reasoning in support of this conclusion takes an
intricate and on occasions bewilderingly circuitous course, the salient
points covered are not hard to discern.
What, then, are the “subjective conditions” to which allusion has been
made? Kant’s answer derives from his faculty psychology and turns on
something he calls “the free play of the cognitive powers.” In the account
of perceptual knowledge originally given in the Critique of Pure Reason
and briefly recalled in the present work, such cognition was portrayed as
involving the operations of both imagination and understanding. The
imagination, as “the faculty of intuitions or representations,” holds
together and synthesizes items of the sensory manifold so as to allow them
to be subsumed by the understanding under appropriate concepts; in this
connection, therefore, it can be said to be at the service of the
understanding, “in harness” to the latter in its task of categorizing and
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conceptualizing the presentations of sense. Now it is Kant’s contention
that the same two faculties are also operat-ive at the level of aesthetic
experience. Here, however, there can be no question of there being a
specifie cognitive purpose which requires the subordination of the
imagination to the ends of the understanding; in consequence, the roles
they respectively perform do not conform to this pattern. Instead they
should be regarded as engaging or meshing together in a fashion that
enlivens or “quickens” both while setting “irksome” constraints upon
neither: in the ideal case, that takes the form of a harmonious accord, a
mutually satisfying interaction whereby each faculty is proportionately
attuned to the other in an unconstrained “entertainment of the mental
powers.” The resultant “feeling of free play” is one of pleasure, and it is of
such pleasure that we are conscious when our experience is of an
authentically aesthetic kind.
Kant believed that the above account provided the basis for a
“deduction,” or justification, of the intersubjective validity to which
judgments of taste laid claim. For with those the delight involved was not
dependent upon merely contingent capacities for sensuous enjoyment
which notoriously varied from individual to individual. On the contrary, it
had been shown to presuppose the operation of intellectual faculties that
must be presumed to be identical in all human beings as a priori
conditions if communicable knowledge was to be possible; hence it was
pleasure of a type which everybody, in appropriate circumstances and
undistracted by irrelevant considerations, could rightfully be expected to
share. Kant indicated, moreover, that the position he had advanced had an
additional consequence to which he attached great importance, a
consequence that concerned the aspects under which an object must strike
us if it was to produce the requisite response. In explaining what this
consisted in, he introduced the notion of “formal finality” or
“purposiveness without a purpose” (Zweckmässigkeit ohne Zweck).
How are these curious expressions to be understood? At first sight Kant
might be taken to mean that, in ascribing beauty to products of nature, we
are subjectively disposed to think of them as somehow purposively
adapted to our faculties but without being thereby justified in asserting
this to be actually the case. And that is suggestive of a partial analogy with
what he wrote in the Introduction about the conception of nature
presupposed by reflective judgment in relation to scientific enquiry. But
while in contexts involving natural beauty he is apt to speak in this vein,
he also makes it clear that he has something further in mind. For he also
argues that for pleasure of the relevant kind to be possible our response
must be occasioned by the perceptual form an object displays, this form
being experienced as manifesting a self-subsistent coherence or order
which is apprehended neither as serving an assignable objective end or
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utilitarian purpose nor as conforming to some prior notion of what the
thing is supposed or intended to be. The point is elaborated in a celebrated
distinction drawn between what he respectively calls “pure” or “free”
beauty and “dependent” or “adherent” beauty: the first, he writes,
“presupposes no concept of what the object should be; the second does
presuppose such a concept and, with it, an answering perfection of the
object” (Part I, p. 72). Thus if we appreciate a natural product in terms of
its suitability to its biological function or a human product in terms of its
meeting requirements specific to objects of that type, we are assessing it
from the standpoint of dependent beauty and any pleasure we derive
there-from partakes of what Kant earlier referred to as being pleasure in
the good. In judging something as an instance of free beauty, on the other
hand, we are concerned solely with what “pleases by its form,” the form
in question presenting an appearance of design or purposive organization
that is satisfying on its own account and without any reference to
identifiable objective ends or preassigned specifications. The latter would
introduce considerations of a conceptual or cognitive character, whereas it
is essential to formal relationships of the sort proper to a “pure” judgment
of taste that they should not be reducible to some “universally applicable
formula” and that they should be grasped and enjoyed in a way that is
altogether free from the constraint of determinate rules.
In giving examples of objects that impress us with the requisite
pleasingness of form, Kant selects as “beauties of nature” certain birds,
flowers, and crustaceans; in general, indeed, it is to natural products that
he tends to accord precedence throughout this part of his text. But he also
illustrates what he has in view by mentioning various human artifacts.
Thus abstract “designs à la grecque” and wallpaper patterns are said to be
“free beauties” inasmuch as they have “no intrinsic meaning” or
representative function—“they represent nothing—no object under a
definite concept”; and he further asserts that art forms such as painting
and sculpture, where “the design is what is essential,” and musical works,
where “composition” has an analogous status, are likewise capable of
disposing the mind to the harmonious interplay of the faculties that is
productive of aesthetic satisfaction. Whether his emphasis on exclusively
formal features followed from, or was even wholly consistent with, his
overall account of the character and grounds of judgments of taste may be
questioned. It cannot, however, be denied that his asseverations on that
particular score have frequently been seen as anticipating certain
substantive critical doctrines which were to achieve considerable
prominence more than a hundred years after he wrote. The conception of
visual art as pre-eminently a matter of “significant form,” popularized
early in the twentieth century by British writers like Roger Fry and Clive
Bell, has often been cited in this connection. It is noteworthy, too, that the
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American critic and advocate of formalism, Clement Greenberg, later
explicitly referred to him as a precursor of modernist theory. Such
comparisons and parallels are understandable enough if viewed in the
context of some of the claims Kant put forward in the “Analytic of the
Beautiful.” Nevertheless, they accord less comfortably with what he had
to say when, in the second of the two main sections into which Part I of
the Critique of Judgement is divided, he effectively widened the scope of
his investigation of aesthetic experience.
The sublime and fine an
Both the title of this lengthy second section and the manner of its
organization have—not surprisingly—troubled commentators. Kant called
it “Analytic of the Sublime,” thereby giving the impression that he would
be centrally concerned with sublimity considered as a distinguishable
dimension of the aesthetic consciousness. But the heading chosen turns out
to be misleadingly restrictive. Not only does the implied contrast with
beauty lead him back into picking up and elaborating on matters
regarding the status and justification of judgments of taste that had
already been alluded to in the preceding section. He also goes on to
undertake an extended examination of the nature and value of artistic
achievement which reaches far beyond anything suggested by his previous,
rather cursory remarks on that topic. And while it is possible to descry
some connection between the treatment of art he is now concerned to
provide and his treatment of the sublime, the links discernible remain at
best tenuous. Following the order of Kant’s own account, we shall begin
with the latter.
Kant’s interest in sublimity as a distinctive aesthetic category dates back
to his 1764 essay on its relation to beauty which was mentioned earlier on.
As in the case of the beautiful, however, his approach to the sublime
underwent a profound transformation, the setting in which his
observations were originally framed being replaced by one that eschewed
“merely empirical” considerations of the kind adduced by Edmund Burke
in his famous study of the subject in favor of a “transcendental
exposition” that involved conceptions deriving from Kant’s mature critical
system. In giving such an exposition, he makes it clear that he does not
wish to deny the presence of significant similarities in our appreciation of
the two. Thus he claims at the outset that both are “pleasing on their own
account” and without reference to any further end. Moreover, judgments
of the sublime are like pure judgments of beauty in not presupposing the
application of any determinate concept and in the fact that, while being
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singular and noncognitive, they nonetheless lay claim to universal validity.
Yet, despite these affinities, there are important differences which Kant is
at pains to point out. In his eyes, they are sufficiently impressive to make
an independent explanation of how sublimity can figure as a recognizable
aspect of our aesthetic experience seem an imperative requirement.
The need for such an explanation becomes plain when we compare the
satisfaction we take in the beautiful with that aroused by the sublime. As
has been seen, the former is held to involve the apprehension of a formal
or self-subsistent purposiveness in objects which engages our faculties of
imagination and understanding in harmonious free play. Furthermore, so
far as natural beauty is concerned we are elevated by the thought of nature
as being in some sense ideologically ordered to elicit this pleasurable
response, “a finality in its form making the object appear, as it were,
preadapted to our power of judgement” (Part I, p. 91). In the case of the
sublime, however, nature confronts us in quite another light. For what is
striking here is the circumstance that we assign sublimity to natural effects
which present themselves to us as limitlessly vast or chaotic in a way that
may be totally devoid of form. And this is connected by Kant with
additional points of difference. Whereas what we find beautiful in nature
is experienced as being happily attuned to our mental faculties, natural
products of the kind typically referred to as sublime are said to
“contravene the ends of our power of judgement”; they overwhelm our
capacity for sensuously taking them in, thereby constituting what he calls
an “outrage on the imagination” rather than anything conducive to its
unconstrained accord with the understanding. It follows (Kant thinks) that
sublimity, unlike beauty, is incorrectly ascribed to the phenomena
themselves; for how can what is apprehended as “inherently contra-final”
be noted with an expression of approval? Instead, we should properly
attribute it to the sentiments and attitudes of mind they evoke in us, these
being essentially associated with the presence of rational ideas that exceed
the bounds of sensory presentation. As he himself puts it: “the sublime, in
the strict sense of the word, cannot be contained in any sensuous form, but
rather concerns ideas of reason” (ibid., p. 92).
Kant’s stipulations concerning the use of the term, and the
accompanying contrast drawn with beauty, consort somewhat oddly with
what he says elsewhere about the grounds and subjective orientation of
aesthetic judgments in general. Given that—as he here allows—objects can
properly be called beautiful in virtue of their aptitude for affecting our
faculties in certain ways, why should not the same considerations apply to
the phenomena we call sublime, even if these are said to affect them in a
radically dissimilar manner? In fact, it is his reference to reason and its
ideas that is crucial in the present context and that chiefly underlies the
distinction he wishes to make. For, insofar as particular natural
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phenomena cause us to entertain conceptions that outrun our powers of
imaginative representation, they arouse us to a consciousness of reason as
an independent faculty which leads us “to esteem as small in comparison
with [its] ideas…everything which for us is great in nature as an object of
sense.” And that, Kant claims, helps to explain the pleasurable exaltation
induced by the sublime, springing as it does from a presentiment of “our
superiority over nature” that awakens us to our rational vocation and
makes the mind “sensible of the sublimity of the sphere of its own being.”
Accurately construed, therefore, sublimity “does not reside in any of the
things of nature, but only in our own mind” (Part I, p. 114).
The invocation of reason as a separate “supersensible” faculty, which
according to his previous Critiques is capable of both a theoretical and a
practical exercise, underpins the account Kant goes on to give of two
different modes wherein the above presentiment is held to manifest itself
and which he refers to respectively as the “mathematically” and the
“dynamically” sublime. In the case of the first, it is the sheer magnitude
and formlessness of what appears before us that is paramount, conveying
a perceptually intractable impression of unlimited extent and absence of
boundary. But the failure of the imagination to encompass within a
comprehensive intuition what is thus intimated to it, and the consequent
dissatisfaction we feel in the face of its inadequacy, is counterbalanced by
the fact that we are able to grasp in thought the notion of the infinite as a
totality or “absolute whole,” the latter being an indeterminate idea
ascribable to reason in its theoretical capacity. Hence the very limitations
displayed by the imagination in its fruitless endeavors to measure up to
this idea at the level of sensuous representation serve to highlight by
contrast the supremacy of our rational powers, indicating that we are
endowed with “a faculty of mind transcending every standard of sense”
(Part I, p. 102). A broadly analogous conclusion is reached in Kant’s
discussion of the dynamically sublime, although here the focus is on
reason in its practical employment and what he writes assumes a
distinctively ethical character. Whereas in the preceding case it was the
vast dimensions of certain phenomena that impressed us, it is now the
apparently “irresistible might” exhibited by such natural occurrences as
violent storms and volcanic eruptions. Like Burke before him, Kant insists
that the aesthetic appreciation of nature under this threatening aspect,
which brings home “a recognition of our physical helplessness,” is only
possible when we view it from a position of safety; on the other hand, he
fundamentally diverges from his predecessor in the interpretation he offers
of the satisfaction involved. That is not (as Burke had implied) due to the
moderation of our sentiments which the absence of personal danger
produces and which thereby allows us to find pleasantly invigorating and
stimulating what would otherwise be experienced as disagreeably
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frightening. On the contrary, Kant holds its actual source to lie once again
in a sense of the superiority of our rational powers to those of sensibility.
This time, however, it is not a theoretical capacity to surpass in thought
the limits of the sensuously oriented imagination that he has in mind.
Rather, it is a supposed ability at the level of our practical life to respond
to hostile or menacing circumstances in such a manner as to withstand the
pressures of sensuous inclination. The dynamically sublime, in other
words, awakens us to the conception of ourselves as self-determining
moral agents who can rise above the solicitations of sensuous impulse and
make our conduct conform instead to the principles and ends laid down
by practical reason. Thus in experiencing it we are conscious of being
more than mere creatures of sensibility—here conceived as a susceptibility
to natural desires or fears—and are raised to a presentiment of the pre-
eminence of our rational stature. This, moreover, is something we may
properly expect of all human beings in virtue of their assumed capacity for
moral feeling. It follows, therefore, that judgments of the sublime, like
judgments of the beautiful, may rightfully command general assent,
although they do so on different grounds.
The emphasis on pride in the supremacy of reason in Kant’s theory of
the sublime, together with the prominent place he assigned to moral
considerations, may not be felt to conform very happily to our intuitive
understanding of the concept as applied in aesthetic contexts. In tackling
the problems it poses, however, he at least showed a novel insight into
their complexity, as well as demonstrating a salutary readiness to extend
the range of his enquiry beyond the somewhat narrow limits suggested by
his initial analysis of taste. And a similar sensitivity to the variety of forms
that aesthetic experience can take emerges in the passages he specifically
devoted to the importance and value of art. In his earlier treatment of
beauty he had tended to accord paradigmatic status to natural objects,
with the accompanying implication that the aesthetic quality of works of
art was estimable in comparable terms. Here, by contrast, it is the
distinguishing features of the latter that he goes out of his way to stress.
One such feature concerns intentionality. Kant does not retract his
original claim that to be beautiful natural objects must convey an
impression of formal design, even appearing to us as if they had been
“chosen as it were with an eye to our taste” (Part I, p. 217). But that is
very different from appreciating something in the knowledge that it is the
product of actual deliberation, consciously made with a view to affecting
us in a manner that will be found satisfying in its own right. Artistic works
are intentional in this full-blooded sense and realizing them to be so is
vital to their appraisal—“a product of fine art must be recognized to be
art and not nature.” That is not to suggest that they should look
artificially contrived or “laboured”; rather, they must be “clothed with the
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aspect of nature” in not seeming to owe their creation to an obtrusive
observance of constrictive or “mechanical” rules. Thus an unstudied
“pleasingness of form,” consonant with the conditions of taste, remains a
necessary component of artistic worth. But it is not—Kant now insists—
sufficient. Acknowledgment of the intentional dimension of art requires us
to take account of a further factor, one that relates to the content of a
work or to what it is meant to represent.
Reference to the relevance of representational considerations in
evaluating artistic achievement certainly constitutes a significant departure
from the restrictively formalist preoccupations evident in some of Kant’s
previous pronouncements on the subject. Yet it would be wrong to
conclude from what he writes about artistic representation that he simply
had in mind the mimetic reproduction of natural phenomena in another
medium, however elegantly or harmoniously that might be accomplished.
For his discussion of it is integrally connected with the role he ascribed to
“genius” in art, this being described as completely opposed to the “spirit
of imitation” and as involving capacities additional to merely technical
skills that can be picked up and learned through academic training.
Genius, according to Kant, is an esentially original and creative power,
exhibiting itself among other things in the portrayal and expression of
what he termed “aesthetic ideas”: taste may impart a universally pleasing
appearance to art, but it is genius, as the source of and ability to
communicate such ideas, that animates genuine examples of fine art with
“soul” or “spirit.” Thus questions concerning the nature of aesthetic ideas
and the manner in which they can be presented by artists in a publicly
accessible form assume a critical importance in his account. How should
what he says about them be interpreted?
In looking for an answer, it is worth noting some remarks Kant makes
about their relation to ones of the kind that figured in his theory of the
sublime. Ideas like those of absolute totality or transcendental freedom
were “indemonstrable concepts of reason” to which nothing could
objectively correspond at the level of possible experience and for which a
“commensurate intuition” could therefore never be given. Aesthetic
ideas, it is now suggested, may be appropriately viewed as constituting
the counterpart of such purely rational conceptions. They resemble the
latter in not belonging to the sphere of objective cognition, but they do
so for a diametrically opposite reason. For what are here under
consideration are representations or intuitions of the imagination “for
which an adequate concept can never be found.” Kant elaborates on the
point as follows:
By an aesthetic idea I mean that representation of the imagination
which induces much thought, yet without the possibility of any
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definite thought whatever, i.e. concept, being adequate to it, and
which language, consequently, can never get quite on level terms
with or render completely intelligible.
(Part I, pp. 175–6)
It appears, then, that insofar as works of art are understood to embody
aesthetic ideas, their inner content can never be finally or exhaustively
articulated in alternative terms. The multiplicity of thoughts and
associations conveyed by such works overflows the boundaries of
determinate formulation and definition, outrunning the resources of
conceptual or linguistic expression.
Kant develops and illustrates this theme in subsequent passages. He
does not dispute that, in seeking to give sensuous shape to the ideas that
inspire them, artists are obliged to draw upon material which is furnished
by perception and which is itself susceptible to objective description. He
stresses, however, that they do not do this in a merely imitative spirit, but
rather in a fashion that imbues familiar phenomena with an unfamiliar
meaning or symbolic resonance, thereby “animating the mind by opening
out for it a prospect of kindred representations stretching beyond its ken.”
Far from simply copying nature, art “surpasses” it, seizing upon the
elusive intimations and fragmentary aspects of ordinary life and
experience and “bodying them forth to sense with a completeness of
which nature affords no parallel.” Thus imagination, regarded in the
context of artistic activity as a productive rather than a reproductive
capacity, can be affirmed to be “a powerful agent for creating, as it were,
a second nature out of the material supplied to it by actual nature” (Part I,
p. 176): it does not so much mirror the everyday world as transform it. It
must be admitted that Kant’s allusions to the imaginative faculty are at
times confusing, and not least in the apparently very different status
accorded to it here from the one he typically assigned to it in his treatment
of the sublime—he is even prepared to speak of it in its artistic
employment as “emulating the display of reason in its attainment of a
maximum.” But notwithstanding such difficulties and obscurities, his
suggestive account of the imaginative potential of aesthetic ideas may be
seen in retrospect to have been at once arresting and seminal. In
emphasizing the revelatory though conceptually “inexponible” nature of
specifically artistic representation, he anticipated in outline approaches
followed by both Schiller and Hegel, particularly the latter’s detailed
portrayal of the various arts as modes of expression in which thought and
sensuousness are to be found indissolubly united or fused.
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The aesthetic and the ethical
It was indeed Hegel who, referring to Kant’s aesthetic theory as a whole,
described him as having spoken “the first rational word” on the subject.
Whatever Hegel himself may have meant by this, there can be no question
that Kant’s overall contribution proved to be of cardinal importance for
the future development of aesthetics as a separate branch of philosophy.
Rich in content and comprehensive in scope, it stands out as a historical
landmark in the field, bringing into view considerations whose deeper
significance had eluded the notice of earlier writers and whose
ramifications have continued to haunt later ones. Furthermore, by
underlining though not finally resolving problems unique to judgments of
taste, it did much to encourage the notion that the aesthetic consciousness
forms an autonomous or self-contained sphere, irreducible to other areas of
human experience and demanding independent investigation in its own right.
Yet while Kant’s influence in promoting such an outlook seems
incontrovertible, a certain qualification regarding his own position is in
order. It may be true that he never diverged from his fundamental claim
that aesthetic judgments can no more be assimilated to practical or moral
judgments than they can be to those of cognition or mere sensory liking.
However, that did not prevent him from suggesting in a variety of places
and contexts that connections exist between our capacities for aesthetic
appreciation and broader concerns relating to our lives and conduct. This
was clearly evident in his analysis of the dynamically sublime, with its
pronounced ethical overtones. But discernible variations on the same
general theme occur elsewhere. At one point, for example, he contends
that the cultivation of taste and the communication of the delights it
affords play a noteworthy role in social development, exerting a civilizing
impact upon human behavior and intercourse. And at others he draws
attention to analogies between the aesthetic and the moral points of view:
in both cases we can be said to prescind from a preoccupation with
personal gratification or advantage, regarding things instead from a
universally shareable perspective; insofar as taste is conducive to such a
mental state, it makes “the transition from the charm of sense to habitual
moral interest possible without too violent a leap” (Part I, p. 225). Finally,
Kant indicates that a concern with the beauty of nature—though not, it
transpires, with that of art—is linked in a special way to our aspirations as
moral beings. His point seems to turn on the often reiterated idea that
natural beauties strike us as if they were designed to accord with and
satisfy our mental powers in the enjoyment of aesthetic experience,
intimations of such an apparent harmony between mind and nature being
said to awaken an “interest…akin to the moral” (ibid., p. 160). What he
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writes on this score is admittedly condensed and somewhat elusive, but
he can partly be taken to mean that the interest in question derives from
the notion of nature’s being capable of displaying a comparable
accordance with our ethical ideals and ends. If so, the moral significance
he wishes to attach to the appreciation of natural beauty differs
markedly from—though without necessarily conflicting with—the moral
import he attributed to our experience of the dynamically sublime. For
the latter was essentially related to our assumed ability as self-
determining rational agents to rise above the promptings of natural
inclination at the level of inward choice and intention. Here, on the
other hand, it is the conception of nature’s ultimately harmonizing with
the fulfillment of ethical ideas and projects at the level of external reality
that is relevant. And that may recall what Kant wrote about the faculty
of judgment in general when, at the start of the third Critique, he
contemplated its playing a mediating role in relating our moral
aspirations to the world. Nor need this seeming echo of his wider
preoccupations surprise us. Although at times only faintly in evidence,
they were seldom—if ever—altogether absent from his mind.
TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT AND
EXPLANATION
In Part II of the Critique of Judgement Kant takes leave of aesthetics and
returns to topics in the philosophy of science, the notion of purposiveness
as “the characteristic concept of the reflective judgement” once again
being prominent in what he has to say. Even so, he is at pains to point out
that the issues that now occupy him must be distinguished from those he
was dealing with when considering the fundamental presuppositions of
scientific enquiry in the Introduction. Thus it was one thing to ascribe
purposiveness to nature in the sense of conceiving the natural sphere to
conform to a “logical system” of empirical laws which was adapted to our
cognitive capacities and powers of comprehension. It was another to
postulate or assume the applicability of purposive conceptions to
particular types of objects falling within the natural realm. And it is to the
specific question of whether, and if so in what manner, it may be justifiable
to interpret from a scientific standpoint certain phenomena in purposive
or ideological terms that the present part of the Critique is to a large
extent directed. As quickly emerges, the particular phenomena Kant has in
view are living or organic beings of the sort studied in biology.
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Internal purposiveness and the concept of an organism
Generally speaking, and given the preconceptions of the age in which Kant
was writing, the belief that organic phenomena presented special problems
for the development of science is not hard to understand. The adoption of
mechanical principles of explanation, founded upon the notion of “matter
in motion” and according to which natural objects and events were
universally subject to quantitatively determinable causal regularities,
appeared acceptable enough when applied to the inanimate domain; by
the close of the eighteenth century, indeed, the Newtonian framework of
material particles and forces seemed already to have been triumphantly
vindicated through the formulation of experimentally confirmed
hypotheses whose explanatory power extended over a very wide range.
When, however, it was proposed that the same approach should be
transferred to the sphere of the organic the position looked a good deal
less straightforward. For living things possessed features that apparently
distinguished them sharply from inanimate entities and substances. In
particular, they exhibited a degree of internal organization and complexity
which made it difficult to regard them as the merely contingent products
of “blind” causal forces or mechanisms and which suggested instead that
it would be more apposite to invoke notions like design and purposive
function in accounting for their structure. Thus a division tended to open
up between those who steadfastly maintained that in the final analysis all
phenomena, animate and inanimate alike, were explicable in mechanistic
terms and those who claimed that the phenomena of organic life required
for their proper interpretation a quite different set of ideas.
The broad outlines of this emerging controversy were already clearly
visible in Kant’s time. Teleological conceptions might have been effectively
extruded from the sphere of physics, but the belief that they were
nonetheless requisite in some form for the understanding of living things
found adherents in contemporary biology. Moreover, quasi-Aristotelian
ways of thinking about nature had been revived at a more general level by
the philosopher J.G.Herder whose principal work, Ideas toward a
Philosophy of the History of Mankind, was severely criticized by Kant
himself on its publication in 1784. That such views impinged crucially
upon his own position will be evident from what has already been said
about the epistemological theses he had advanced in his first Critique. For
according to these the very possibility of objective experience and
knowledge was dependent upon the application of a priori concepts and
rules in unifying the data of sense, the latter being held to correspond in
essentials to the basic principles of Newtonian science. It appeared to
follow, therefore, that nature was universally subject to regularities that
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conformed to the accepted paradigm of scientific explanation: in Kant’s
words, “appearances must… be capable of complete causal explanation in
terms of other appearances in accordance with natural laws” (Critique of
Pure Reason, B 574). Claims of this sort, suggestive of an unqualified
commitment to the tenets of the Newtonian scheme, might thus lead one
to suppose that he would have ranged himself firmly with those who
argued that organisms, no less than the rest of the natural world, were
susceptible to mechanistic modes of explanation, and that he would have
set his face against any attempt to reintroduce—even within a limited field
of enquiry—conceptions that apparently harked back to an earlier epoch
of scientific thinking. In fact, however, he followed another route; the
opinions on the subject he eventually arrived at were altogether more
complex, with reflective judgment being invoked to resolve the matters in
dispute.
At a preliminary stage of his approach to what he calls “objective
finality in nature,” Kant distinguishes between the notions of “external”
and “internal” purposiveness. With reference to the first of these, he
points out that various natural products may be regarded as being
designed either for our own benefit or else for the use and advantage of
other living creatures. For example, grass may be said to exist in order to
support herbivores like sheep or cattle, and the existence of the latter may
in turn be viewed as answering to the needs of human beings. But
although we may be led to look at things in this light if we make certain
further assumptions, we are in no sense bound to do so. Taken simply by
themselves, we can causally account for and sufficiently explain such
externally adaptive relationships without recourse to any teleological
ideas.
By contrast, understanding the internal structure and development of
organic phenomena seems positively to demand their employment. Thus
we find it not merely natural but necessary to treat a living object like a
plant or an animal as being something of which “every part is thought as
owing its presence to the agency of all the remaining parts, and also as
existing for the sake of the others and of the whole, that is as an
instrument” (Part II, p. 21). So conceived, an organism can be termed a
“natural end” (Naturzweck), an entity whose inner constitution appears
to be governed by an idea of what it is meant to be or become and whose
component elements variously contribute to this purpose in a fashion
suggestive of the operations of a constructive intelligence; indeed, the very
notion of living things as “organized beings” may be felt to carry this
implication. Moreover, in the case of internal as opposed to external
purposiveness, Kant insists that objects which exemplify it are such that
we are unable to imagine how their nature and production could be
accounted for in terms of “mechanical principles” alone. It is impossible
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for human reason to hope to understand the generation of even “a blade
of grass” from merely mechanical causes: “such insight,” he roundly
declares, “we must absolutely deny to mankind” (ibid., p. 54).
Pronouncements of the above kind strongly suggest that it is primarily
to teleological modes of thought rather than to ones presupposing the
operations of physical causality that we should look when investigating
organic phenomena—a proposal encapsulated in Kant’s dictum that an
organism is a natural product in which “nothing is in vain, without an
end, or to be ascribed to a blind mechanism of nature” (Part II, p. 25).
Hence we may gain the impression that he was prepared after all, and
despite expectations to the contrary, to side with the antimechanist camp
in biology. And on the face of it this would seem to entail his accepting a
dualism regarding our understanding of the empirical world which was
hard, if not impossible, to reconcile with his own stated epistemological
commitments. It turns out, however, that he only subscribed to it in a form
that imposed important restrictions upon both the significance and the
actual implications of the teleological principles involved.
Teleology and empirical science
In the first place, Kant was concerned to emphasize that similarities
discernible between natural organisms and purposively constructed human
artifacts must not be allowed to obscure no less striking differences. An
artificial contrivance such as a watch fulfills its function because the parts
of which it is composed interact by moving one another in ways that have
been independently determined by its maker. Living phenomena, by
contrast, are apprehended as “self-organizing” entities, endowed with a
“formative power” (bildende Kraft) which remains for us basically
mysterious in its workings and for which no close analogue exists among
the products of human art or technique. The various components of an
organism are interrelated in a distinctively intimate and reciprocal manner,
both “producing” and “sustaining” one another: for example, if an
essential part of a tree is damaged or destroyed, the deficiency is apt to be
repaired or made good “by the aid of the rest” so as to preserve the life of
the whole to which they severally belong. Thus in considering the role of
the concepts of design and purpose in biology it is necessary to recognize
the constraints that govern their meaningful use in that context.
Second, Kant indicates that in any event teleological principles of the
sort employed in the interpretation of biological processes ultimately
possess no more than a regulative status. In this view, to be sure, they are
indispensable to our thought about these, affording modes of
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understanding and suggesting fruitful lines of enquiry at a point where the
resources of explanation in terms of efficient causality seem to fail us. And
that, indeed, may also encourage us to enlarge the field of their application
to nature as a whole, adopting a perspective on reality wherein it is
assumed that “everything in the world is good for something or other;
nothing in it is in vain” (Part II, p. 28). In conformity with the reservations
he has already expressed about attributions of “external” purposiveness,
however, Kant is careful not to ascribe to such an extended employment of
teleological conceptions the indispensability he thinks these have for us
within the more limited sphere of organic phenomena; we are not obliged
to contemplate nature in general in this way. Nevertheless he holds that,
even in the case of the organic sphere, to say that we find it subjectively
necessary to bring purposive notions to its interpretation is not to say that
these can be accredited with objective validity. It is one thing to assert that
we are intellectually so constituted that we cannot render organic
phenomena intelligible to ourselves other than by treating them as if they
were—in some admittedly mysterious sense—designed or organized to
accord with a preconceived idea or intention regarding their final form. It
is another to assert this to be so as a matter of objective fact, their
possibility being dependent upon the agency of a nonhuman intelligence or
creative mind. The latter, according to Kant, is something we could never
justify or prove: strictly speaking, “we do not observe the ends in nature
as designed” but “only read this conception into the facts as a guide to
judgement in its reflection upon the products of nature” (ibid., p. 53).
Here as elsewhere, in other words, we occupy the standpoint of reflective
judgment, operating with heuristic concepts and principles that play a
vital role in directing our thought about nature but without being in a
position to affirm the actual existence of a supernatural designer or
“author of the world.”
In effect, and whatever concessions he may have made to the opponents
of mechanism in biology, Kant did not abandon the conviction that
explanation of a cognitively acceptable kind must conform to the
mechanical paradigm. It is noteworthy, for instance, that he consistently
speaks of our “estimating” (beurteilen) organic processes through
teleological conceptions, not of our explaining them thereby. Moreover, he
reiterates the point that we should always press the search for mechanical
causes as far as we can, since if we do not follow this procedure there can
be “no knowledge of nature in the true sense at all.” And while he
undoubtedly asserts, quite categorically, that we can never hope to arrive
at purely physical explanations of organic phenomena, he stresses that it
would even so be “presumptuous” dogmatically to conclude that some
“mechanism of nature,” sufficient to account for them, does not in fact
exist. That is something which we have simply no means of knowing; the
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most that can reasonably be affirmed is that such a possibility lies beyond
the limits of human comprehension.
Despite its considerable ingenuity, Kant’s attempt to do justice to the
rival claims of mechanism and teleology is not free from difficulty. It is
true that at one point he writes as if the “antinomy” to which these
approaches may be said to give rise can be surmounted by understanding
each of them to be endorsing a particular methodological “maxim” for the
investigation of nature rather than a principle purportively constitutive of
its objective character. Thus a rule enjoining us invariably to seek causal
explanations as far as we are able is not inconsistent with a rule
legitimizing a resort to purposive interpretations when “a proper
occasion” presents itself: to that extent the two standpoints can be
reconciled. One trouble with this proposal, however, is that the causal
principle was originally portrayed by Kant as being constitutive; to treat it
now as having no more than the regulative status he has ascribed to its
teleological counterpart would represent an apparent departure from that
position. Furthermore, it is one thing to assert of certain phenomena,
which at a given stage of enquiry seem to resist physical or mechanical
explanation, that they may be accounted for instead along teleological
lines. It is a different and more questionable matter to say of them that a
complete causal explanation must forever be beyond our reach; indeed,
the subsequent history of the biological sciences makes such a contention
look somewhat bizarre. Even so, Kant certainly implied that, insofar as we
found ourselves obliged to understand the functional structure of
organisms in purposive terms, it was impossible for us to regard them as
the mere products of what he himself called “blind efficient causes”; nor
was he alone among his contemporaries in feeling that the two
conceptions prima facie excluded one another in their application.
Consequently, and notwithstanding the qualifications he introduced, he
appears to have been committed to holding that we were precluded from
fully assimilating organic phenomena to the framework within which all
objective knowledge and genuinely scientific explanation are set. And it
was perhaps partly a recognition of the problems this ostensibly presents
that led him to entertain the notion of a possible understanding, “higher
than the human,” which would comprehend the mechanical and
teleological principles as cohering within a single uniting principle that
transcended them: “if this were not so,” he writes, “they could not both
enter consistently into the same survey of nature” (Part II, p. 70). He
argues, however, that such a principle can only be referred to what, as the
supersensible or noumenal ground of the phenomenal realm, lies outside
the range of empirical representation. Thus so far as we ourselves are
concerned it must be one of which, from a theoretical point of view, we
are unable to form “the slightest positive determinate conception.”
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TELEOLOGY, MORALITY, AND GOD
Kant’s contention that the supersensible constitutes a realm necessarily
inaccessible to human knowledge and understanding of a theoretical kind
is one that recurs in the Appendix which forms the long concluding section
of the Critique of Judgement. This comprises a careful and wide-ranging
discussion of the conceivable relevance of teleological interpretations of
the natural world to the claims of theology. It is true that the question of
whether the apparent evidence of purposiveness in nature could be
invoked in support of such claims had already been broached in the
Critique of Pure Reason, where it was examined along with other
attempts that had classically been made to establish the existence and
character of God from a speculative standpoint. Kant clearly felt, however,
that the comprehensive investigation he had now undertaken of the
general status and limitations of teleological judgment in relation to
natural science warranted his embarking upon a more extended analysis
than hitherto of the issues which the so-called “argument from design”
involved. Furthermore, such an analysis seemed especially called for in the
light of what he had written in his second Critique concerning the
possibility of justifying belief in God from a moral or practical point of
view as opposed to a theoretical one.
As has been seen, Kant specifically denied the legitimacy of deriving
theological conclusions from the fact that we find ourselves subjectively
obliged to interpret certain natural products in teleological terms. It may
be that the best sense we can make of such apparently purposive
phenomena as organisms is by thinking of them as the creations of “a
supreme intelligence”; he implies, indeed, that this is the case. But at the
same time he reiterates the point that such an hypothesis is devoid of
objective authority and that its import must instead be comprehended
heuristically; it can never do more than
point to this cause in the interests of the reflective judgement
engaged in surveying nature, its purpose being to guide our estimate
of the things in the world by means of the idea of such a ground, as
a regulative principle, in a manner adapted to our human
understanding.
(Part II, pp. 75–6)
The latter claim certainly accords with his critical objections to any
theoretical attempt to transcend the limits of possible experience. Yet he
thinks that, even if his strictures on that score were disregarded, other
important difficulties would remain. By no means all natural phenomena
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impress us as bearing the marks of design; nor is it true that everything
that occurs in the empirical world is prima facie easy to reconcile with the
thought that nature in general has issued from the hand of a wise and
beneficent creator. It would seem, in fact, that the most we could
reasonably hope to establish by following this path would be the
formative operations of a suprahuman “artistic understanding”
(Kunstverstand) sufficient to account for “miscel-laneous ends” of the sort
natural organisms exemplify. But that is a far cry from being entitled to
infer that the world as a whole is the product of a presiding moral divinity
with an overarching end or purpose in view. And if we confine ourselves to
the theoretical contemplation of nature alone it is unclear how such an
inference could conceivably be justified. There is nothing in the natural
order when considered solely by itself which can properly be held to
qualify as an unconditioned or final end of creation capable of endowing
it with meaning and value in our eyes.
The various weaknesses of the argument from design, referred to by
Kant himself as “physico-theology,” do not however require us to suppose
that no such ultimate end can be identified. This becomes apparent if we
turn aside from theoretical considerations and approach the matter from
the standpoint of practical reason as exhibited in our moral experience.
When looked at in that perspective it is evident that man emerges as the
only possible candidate—“without man…the whole of creation would be
a mere wilderness, a thing in vain, and have no final end” (Part II, p. 108).
In our capacity as moral agents we are aware of having a status which sets
us apart from the rest of the natural order and which uniquely assigns to
our existence intrinsic worth. For it is a presupposition of the moral
consciousness that, regarded as rational beings possessing freedom of
choice and volition, we are able to act under laws and pursue objectives
that originate, not in nature, but in ourselves. In Kant’s words:
Only in man, and only in him as the individual being to whom the
moral law applies, do we find unconditional legislation in respect of
ends. This legislation, therefore, is what alone qualifies him to be a
final end to which entire nature is ideologically subordinated.
(Ibid., p. 100)
How is this supposed to be relevant to the issue that physico-theology tries
but fails to resolve—the existence of God as “the supreme cause of nature
and its attributes”? It is Kant’s contention that, while a theoretical appeal
to our experience of nature cannot legitimize theological claims, there is a
sense in which a recognition of what is essentially involved in our vocation
as moral agents may be said to do so. Following the line of thought
articulated in his second Critique, he argues that practical reason sets
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before us as an a priori obligation the project of promoting what he calls
the summum bonum, “the highest good in the world possible through
freedom” (Part II, p. 118). Such a goal is held to constitute an ideal state
of affairs wherein human happiness would be appropriately proportioned
to moral desert, a condition that manifestly does not obtain in life as we
know it but which we are nonetheless called upon to help to realize.
Granted, however, that this is something morality obliges us to pursue as a
duty, it follows that we must believe it to be ultimately attainable; and that
consideration, when taken in conjunction with the limitations to which we
are inescapably subject as finite and imperfect members of the world,
requires us to assume the existence of a “moral author” of nature capable
of ensuring that our efforts will not turn out to be finally vain. Kant thinks
that someone who, though in general righteously disposed, does not
assume this will inevitably be “circumscribed in his endeavour,” eventually
abandoning any attempt to further the project in question on the ground
of its impracticability. If, on the other hand, such a person resolves to be
faithful to the call of their “inner moral vocation” and acts accordingly,
they thereby show themselves to be committed to “the existence of a
moral author of the world, that is, of a God” (ibid., p. 121). Such an
assumption, in other words, is essential if we are to “think in a manner
consistent with morality”; to employ the terminology of the second
Critique, it represents a “postulate” of pure practical reason. Admittedly,
and as Kant points out in an important footnote, this argument still does
not amount to an “objectively valid proof” of God; on critical principles
that remains forever impossible. But it is nonetheless “sufficient
subjectively and for moral persons” (ibid., p. 119). And given the
necessary primacy for us of the moral law, he implies that it is all that we
can properly ask for or need.
The priority that Kant assigns to what he calls “the moral proof” in the
last part of the Critique of Judgement raises the question of what
significance, if any, he is prepared to attribute to ideological conceptions
of nature from a theological point of view. He certainly concedes that the
traditional argument from design is worthy of respect; unlike other
speculative arguments, it has appeared as persuasive to the understanding
of the ordinary “man in the street” as it has to that of the “subtlest
thinker.” He implies, though, that this tends to be due to an unnoticed
confusion between an ostensible reliance upon purely empirical factors
and the underlying influence of “moral considerations to which everyone
in the depth of his heart assents.” When these two strands are carefully
distinguished, it becomes clear that it is the second that actually produces
conviction, any presumed dependence of the conclusion reached upon the
“physico-teleological evidence” being in fact illusory. And he drives the
point home by claiming that, even if as rational beings we inhabited a
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universe in which nature showed no trace of features suggestive of
physical teleology, the asseverations of practical reason regarding the
existence of God would still retain their force. Yet all the same, and
notwithstanding his insistence that “physico-theology is physical teleology
misunderstood” (Part II, p. 108), he does not go so far as to declare that
such a teleology is wholly irrelevant or otiose in the present context.
Considered as affording the premises for a theoretical demonstration it is
certainly useless to the theologian. But it does not follow that it has no
subsidiary role to play.
Kant indicates, for instance, that it may at least function “as a
preparation or propaedeutic,” disposing the mind to entertain the idea of
there being an “intelligent” source of nature and thereby rendering it
“more susceptible to the influence of the moral proof.” Furthermore, he
also goes on to suggest that the abundance of material for teleological
judgment which the actual world supplies can be said to serve us “as a
desirable confirmation of the moral argument, so far as nature can adduce
anything analogous to the ideas of reason (moral ideas in this case)” (Part
II, p. 155). In trying to interpret this rather cryptic remark, it will be
worth recalling again the notion—initially advanced in the Introduction to
the Critique—of judgment’s affording a mediating link between practical
reason as the supersensible source of moral requirements and nature as
constituting the sensible sphere wherein they are to be given effect and
realized. Now according to Kant’s moral proof we must believe that the
pre-eminent objective reason sets before us is an attainable one, this belief
involving as an indispensable condition our acceptance of the existence of
God. But it is not easy from a human standpoint to give content to that
idea without envisaging nature to be designed in a manner that makes the
attainment of such an end possible. Thus the fact that innumerable natural
phenomena seem to demand for their intelligibility the employment of
teleological concepts may be welcomed as lending some reinforcement to
the thought of nature’s being purposively adapted to the practicable
fulfillment of what the moral consciousness enjoins; for as Kant puts it:
“the conception of a supreme cause that possesses intelligence… acquires
by that means such reality as is sufficient for reflective judgement” (ibid.).
Even so, the problem of ultimately reconciling teleological and
mechanistic interpretations of the natural world remains; and while Kant
has allowed that a transcendent principle capable of subsuming or
accommodating both might conceivably obtain at the level of a higher
understanding, he at the same time reiterates the point that, so far as
human knowledge is concerned, the conception of nature as a product of
intelligent design can never be theoretically established or proved.
Reflective judgment may perform a salutary service in supplementing
assumptions to which, as a matter of moral necessity, we find ourselves
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committed by practical reason. As, however, he has consistently
maintained throughout the third Critique, in none of its forms
can judgment itself be accredited with cognitive insight into what lies beyond
the bounds of the phenomenal sphere. Such assurance as we have on the
latter score can never be other than a moral assurance, one that holds
good for us “from a purely practical point of view” (Part II, pp. 143–4).
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Original language editions
4.1 Kant, I. Kritik der Urteilskraft, Berlin, 1790.
4.2 Kants gesammelte Schriften, 29 vols, ed. Deutschen (formerly Königlich
Preussische) Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin: de Gruyter (and
predecessors), 1902–, Vol. V.
English translations
4.3 Kant’s Critique of Judgement, trans. J.C.Meredith, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1952: all references in the text are to this translation.
4.4 Kant’s First Introduction to the Critique of Judgement, trans. J.Haden, New
York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965.
Bibliographies
4.5 Cohen, T., and Guyer, P. (eds) Essays in Kant’s Aesthetics, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1982, pp. 308–23.
4.6 Guyer, P. (ed.) Cambridge Companion to Kant, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1992, pp. 467–9.
Influences
4.7 Addison, J. “On the Pleasures of the Imagination,” The Spectator (1712);
trans. into German 1745; in Addison, J. The Spectator, 5 vols, ed.
with introduction and notes by D.F.Bond, Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1965, pp. 535–82.
4.8 Burke, E. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the
Sublime and Beautiful (1757), ed. with introduction and notes by
J.T.Boulton, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958.
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4.9 Hume, D. Essays Moral, Political and Literary (1693), Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1963.
General surveys
4.10 Cassirer, E. Kant’s Life and Thought (1918), trans. J.Haden, New Haven and
London: Yale University Press, 1981.
Specific topics
4.11 Cassirer, H.W. A Commentary on Kant’s Critique of Judgement, London:
Methuen, 1938.
4.12 Caygill, H. Art of Judgement, Oxford: Blackwell, 1989.
4.13 Cohen, T., and Guyer, P. (eds) Essays in Kant’s Aesthetics, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1982.
4.14 Crawford, D. Kant’s Aesthetic Theory, Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1974.
4.15 Crowther, P. The Kantian Sublime, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989.
4.16 Guyer, P. Kant and the Claims of Taste, London and Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1979.
4.17 Kernel, S. Kant and Fine Art, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986.
4.18 McCloskey, M. Kant’s Aesthetics, London: Macmillan, 1986.
4.19 McFarland, J.D. Kant’s Concept of Teleology, Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 1970.
4.20 McLaughlin, P. Kant’s Critique of Teleology in Biological Explanation,
Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990.
4.21 Mothersill, M. Beauty Restored, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984.
4.22 Podro, M. The Manifold of Perception: Theories of Art from Kant to
Hildebrand, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972.
4.23 Savile, A. Aesthetic Reconstructions: The Seminal Writings of Lessing, Kant
and Schiller, Oxford: Blackwell, 1987.
4.24 Schaper, E. Studies in Kant’s Aesthetics, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press, 1979.
4.25 Walsh, W.H. “Kant’s Moral Theology,” Proceedings of the British Academy,
49 (1963):263–89.
4.26 Wood, A. Kant’s Rational Theology, Ithaca and London: Cornell University
Press, 1978.
4.27 Yovel, Y. Kant and the Philosophy of History, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1980.
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CHAPTER 5
Fichte and Schilling: the Jena
period
Daniel Breazeale
FROM KANT TO FICHTE
An observer of the German philosophical landscape of the 1790s would
have surveyed a complex and confusing scene, in which individuals tended
to align themselves with particular factions or “schools,” frequently
associated with specific universities or, in some cases, periodicals, and
engaged in often bitter public controversies with their opponents. Within
this context, Kantianism (or “the Critical philosophy,” as it was styled by
both its opponents and its exponents) was simply one party among others.
Self-appointed representatives of “Enlightenment,” inspired by English
and French examples and pledging their allegiance to the legacy of
Lessing, dominated more urbane intellectual circles, such as that of Moses
Mendelssohn and his associates in Berlin. A more academic variety of
rationalism was defended by the many proponents of the Leibnizian-
Wolffian philosophy, which still dominated the philosophy departments of
most German universities. At the same time, there was a widespread vogue
for what was then called “popular philosophy,” the adherents of which,
though they usually shared the liberal assumptions and conclusions of the
Aufklärer and Wolffians, based their philosophy not upon a priori
reasoning, but upon an appeal to the testimony of “healthy common
sense.” In opposition to the dominant spirit of the age, these “popular
philosophers” distrusted the systematic impulse and were suspicious of all
attempts to turn philosophy into a well-grounded “science.”
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was associated with Friedrich Jacobi and J.G.Hamann, two idiosyncratic
but influential thinkers who employed skeptical arguments in order to
reveal the fragility of human reason and hence the necessity and
superiority of “faith.” Another eccentric but influential figure was
J.G.Herder, a philosophical naturalist who challenged the prevailing
mechanistic models of the mind and of society and sought to replace them
with more organic or vitalistic ones. Herder’s ground-breaking work on
the origin of languages and the role of history in the formation of human
consciousness eventually led him to call for a “meta-critique” of
philosophy’s alleged neglect of the influence of language, culture, and
history upon thought itself. Finally, there were also a few straightforward
representatives of philosophical skepticism, such as G.E.Schulze and Ernst
Planner.
All of these contending parties were united, however, in their opposition
to the new Kantian philosophy, which was steadily gaining in prominence.
Not only were several new journals dedicated to the promulgation of
Kantianism, but a university chair was established for this purpose as well
(at Jena in 1787). It is noteworthy, however, that the single work which
played the greatest role in calling public attention to the Critical
philosophy was not a book by Kant himself, but rather a series of popular
“Letters on the Kantian Philosophy” published in 1786–7 in the widely
circulated Allgemeine Literatar-Zeitung. These “Letters” were the work of
K.L.Reinhold (1756–1823), an ex-Jesuit and enthusiastic convert to the
new Critical philosophy. The most striking feature of Reinhold’s “Letters”
is their strong emphasis upon the practical or moral consequences of
Kant’s thought. Consequently, it was not as a new theory of knowledge or
even as a critique of metaphysics that Kant’s philosophy first attracted
widespread attention, but instead, as an ingenious defense of freedom,
morality, and religion: a doctrine of “practical belief” which was
simultaneously able to acknowledge the (limited) legitimacy of the modern
scientific worldview. On the strength of his fame as author of the
“Letters,” Reinhold was named as the first occupant of the new chair in
Critical philosophy established at Jena in 1787.
To the consternation of many of Kant’s more literal-minded followers,
Reinhold proved to be a rather unorthodox adherent of the new
transcendental philosophy and immediately embarked upon an ambitious
project of reformulating and revising Kant’s philosophy. Though Reinhold
was quite prepared to endorse all of Kant’s conclusions, he found Kant’s
specific arguments and “derivations” to be somewhat lacking in inner
coherence and systematic rigor. According to Reinhold, transcendental
philosophy could become genuinely “scientific” only by being recast in the
form of a deductive system based upon a single, self-evidently certain,
“absolutely first principle,” from which, in turn, everything else (e.g. the
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famous distinction between “thought” and “intuition,” with which Kant’s
theoretical philosophy begins) could be “derived.”
Reinhold gave the name “Elementary Philosophy” (or “Philosophy of
the Elements”) to his revised version of Kantianism, and argued that the
latter alone was able to provide Kant’s writings with the systematic form
and scientific foundation which they themselves lacked. By analyzing the
bare concept of “representation,” Reinhold obtained the first principle of
his system, the “principle of consciousness,” and from this first principle
he then proposed to derive the distinction between intuition and thought,
along with all of familiar Kantian faculties and categories.
Reinhold’s Elementary Philosophy is historically significant for two
reasons: First of all, Reinhold’s explicit criticism of the “letter” of Kant’s
own presentation of his philosophy, and especially his criticism of the
duality of Kant’s starting point and the ad hoc character of some of his
arguments, promoted a general demand for a more coherent and
systematic exposition of Kant’s philosophy. Second, Reinhold’s specific
program for accomplishing this task—viz., by deriving the entire Critical
philosophy from a single first principle—stimulated others (above all,
Fichte) to seek an even more “fundamental” first principle upon which
philosophy in its entirety could be “grounded.”
Another prominent feature of Kant’s philosophy which was subjected to
early criticism (though in this case not by Reinhold) concerned the
problematic status of “things in themselves” within the Critical
philosophy. The most influential early critic of Kant on this point was
F.H.Jacobi (1743–1819), who was a well-known author of sentimental
novels, as well as of several influential philosophical (or rather,
antiphilosophical) works. In 1787 Jacobi devoted the Appendix to his
David Hume on Belief, or Idealism and Realism to an examination of
transcendental philosophy, and he focused his criticism upon Kant’s
apparently conflicting remarks concerning the status of “things in
themselves.” Jacobi concluded that the entire doctrine was incoherent,
since, as he put it, one had to assume the existence of things in themselves
in order to obtain entry in Kant’s philosophy, only to discover upon entry
into the same that such a doctrine is incompatible with the transcendental
account of “objectivity” made possible by that same philosophy. For
followers of Kant, therefore, the challenge was clear: to defend
transcendental idealism from Jacobi’s criticism without following Jacobi
himself into a wholesale rejection of philosophical speculation and
embrace of a fideistic celebration of “not-knowing.”
Similar objections to treating the thing in itself as the transcendent
ground of sensations were advanced by Salomon Maimon (c. 1752–1800),
a largely self-educated Polish-Russian Jew and the author of the
extraordinarily original Examination of Transcendental Philosophy
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(1790). For Maimon, however, the lesson to be drawn from the
untenability of Kant’s doctrine of things in themselves was not the need to
abandon reason for immediate feeling and faith, but rather, the desirability
of constructing a more “skeptical” variety of Kantianism, one shorn of all
transcendent remnants and aware of its own limitations. To this end,
Maimon attempted to rehabilitate the Leibnizian notion of an “infinite
understanding,” from the perspective of which the distinction between
sensibility and thought, content and form, would disappear.
Another influential critic of the new transcendental philosophy was
G.E.Schulze, self-styled “Humean skeptic” and author of the
anonymously published Aenesidemus, or concerning the Foundations of
the Elementary Philosophy Propounded at Jena by Prof. Reinhold,
Including a Defense of Skepticism against the Pretensions of the Critique
of Reason (1792). In attacking the Critical philosophy, Schulze not only
repeated many of Jacobi’s and Maimon’s specific criticisms but added
some new ones of his own, including an objection to the very idea of “the
primacy of practical reason.”
In addition to the various internal difficulties within Kant’s writings,
Kant’s first generation of readers also had to grapple with what might be
thought of as the external problem of the relationship between the various
Critiques, a problem which, of course, ultimately concerns nothing less
than the systematic unity of the Critical philosophy. How is the worldview
of the first Critique to be squared with that of the second? Despite Kant’s
own attempt to address this problem, first in the Transcendental Dialectic
of the Critique of Pure Reason, and then in the Introduction to the
Critique of Judgment, many readers remained uncertain about how the
deterministic worldview of Kant’s theoretical philosophy could be
reconciled with the account of freedom and self-determination presented
in his practical philosophy. There was also widespread confusion
regarding the relationship between the various “subjects” (or “I’s”)
encountered in the various Critiques. Is the pure subjective spontaneity
that accounts for the transcendental unity of apperception (i.e. “the
transcendental I”) identical with the freely acting and self-legislating
practical agent (“the practical I”)? And how are these “I’s” related, in
turn, to empirical self-consciousness and to embodied persons? Finally,
many sympathetic readers expressed serious reservations concerning the
overall “architectonic” of the Critical philosophy. How, precisely, are the
claims of theoretical philosophy related to those of practical philosophy?
Indeed, what is the epistemic status of philosophical claims themselves?
What kind of “knowledge” does philosophy convey, and how is such
knowledge established?
Such was the philosophical context within which the achievements of
Fichte and Schelling must be understood and evaluated. Everyone agreed
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that, for better or for worse, philosophy was in a period of extraordinary
crisis and ferment. Even as the magnitude of Kant’s accomplishment was
becoming increasingly apparent, it was also becoming obvious—to Kant’s
more perspicacious defenders as well as to his critics—that any successful
defense of the Critical philosophy would have to be more than a mere
restatement of the same. Instead, what would be required would be a
further advance down the road first opened by Reinhold’s Elementary
Philosophy; only by abandoning the “letter” of Kantianism, or so it
seemed, could its “spirit” be preserved.
J.G.FICHTE’S JENA
WISSENSCHAFTSLEHRE
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814), son of a Saxon ribbon weaver,
university dropout, and itinerant tutor, first encountered Kant’s writings in
1790, and the effect was immediately galvanizing. “I have been living in a
new world ever since reading the Critique of Practical Reason,” he
reported to a friend.
Propositions I thought could never be overturned have been
overturned for me. Things have been proven to me which I thought
could never be proven—e.g. the concept of absolute freedom, the
concept of duty, etc.—I feel all the happier for it…. Please forgive me
for saying so, but I cannot convince myself that prior to the Kantian
critique anyone able to think for himself thought any differently than
I did, and I do not recall ever having met anyone who had any
fundamental objections to make against my [previous, deterministic]
system. I encountered plenty of sincere persons who had different—
not thoughts (for they were not at all capable of thinking) but
different—feelings.
(III, 1:167)1
As this passage poignantly testifies, what attracted Fichte to
transcendental idealism was his conviction that it alone was able to
reconcile human freedom and natural necessity, moral sentiments and
rational judgments, “feelings” and “thoughts.” It is no exaggeration to
say that Fichte devoted the rest of his life to the task of explaining and
expounding the philosophy which, he believed, makes such a
reconciliation possible. Though he soon confessed to nagging doubts
concerning certain details of Kant’s own presentations of his philosophy,
Fichte never entertained any doubts concerning the fundamental truth of
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the latter, at least insofar as its “spirit” was concerned—a spirit which
Fichte was convinced was even better expressed in his own philosophy,
which he succinctly characterized in 1795 as “the first system of human
freedom” (III, 2:298).
Barely two years after his first encounter with Kant’s writings, Fichte
was unexpectedly propelled to fame with the publication of his first book,
Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation (1792). Through circumstances
which have never been adequately explained, the book in question, issued
by Kant’s own publisher and dealing with an important topic (viz.,
revelation, considered as the “appearance” of noumenal reality within the
phenomenal world) raised by the Critical philosophy but not yet explicitly
dealt with by Kant himself, was originally published anonymously. Not
surprisingly, it was immediately and widely hailed as the latest publication
by Kant himself. Thus, as soon as the author’s true identity became
known, Fichte’s fame as a philosophical author was assured, since it was
now too late to retract all of the extravagant praise the book had already
received.
The young author’s notoriety was only increased by his next two
publications, A Discourse on the Reclamation of the Freedom of Thought
from the Princes of Europe, who have hitherto Suppressed it and the first
installment of A Contribution toward Correcting the Public’s Judgment of
the French Revolution. Though both works were published anonymously in
1793 in Danzig (where Fichte was once again employed as a private tutor),
the author’s identity was widely known. Thus, in addition to his growing
renown as the “third sun in the philosophical heaven,” Fichte also acquired
an early reputation as a fiery Jacobin, a reputation which guaranteed him
political as well as philosophical enemies during his career at Jena.
When Reinhold unexpectedly resigned his chair at Jena in the spring of
1794 it was immediately offered to Fichte, who at this point was living in
Zurich in the home of his new father-in-law and was completely engrossed
in a vast project of constructing his own version of transcendental
idealism, one which would heed Reinhold’s call for a system based upon
“a single first principle,” but would do so in a manner which would avoid
the published criticisms of Jacobi, Maimon, and Schulze. It was during
this period that Fichte decided that his new philosophy deserved a new
name. Accordingly, since he wished to emphasize that his new, “rigorously
scientific,” philosophy would represent something more than mere “love
of wisdom” (or “philosophy”), he baptized it “Wissenschaftslehre” (that
is, “theory of science” or “doctrine of scientific knowledge”—not “science
of knowledge”).
Fichte, who more than anything else wished for his own philosophical
efforts to make a positive contribution to the improvement of human life,
could hardly afford to decline the offer from Jena, which would guarantee
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the maximum amount of exposure for his new system. Accordingly, he
began lecturing on his new philosophy in the summer of 1794, though not
before publishing a brief and “hypothetical” introduction to the same in
the form of a meta-philosophical treatise entitled Concerning the Concept
of the Wissenschaftslehre, or of so-called “Philosophy” (1794).
Even though Fichte had not yet completed the task of thinking through
even the rudiments of his new system at the time of his arrival at Jena, he
nevertheless immediately began lecturing on the “Foundations of the
Entire Wissenschaftslehre.” These lectures, which continued through the
winter semester of 1794–5, represent Fichte’s first attempt at a full-scale
public presentation of his philosophy. For the convenience of his students,
he had the text of his lectures printed and distributed (in fascicles) over the
course of the two semesters. However, he soon agreed to have these
printed fascicles bound together and issued as a book, or rather, as several
books: Foundations of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre, Parts I and II (1794)
and Part III (1795), and Outline of the Distinctive Character of the
Wissenschaftslehre with respect to the Theoretical Power (1795)—though
the title page of each of these volumes still included the words “published
as a manuscript for the use of his students.”
There is considerable historical irony in the fact that this “book,” the
first parts of which appeared in print well before the later portions had
even been drafted, became (and to this day remains) Fichte’s best-known
and most influential philosophical work. It is intriguing to wonder what
the “history of German Idealism” would have been like if the call to Jena
had not come in 1794 and if, instead, Fichte had been allowed the leisure
to develop and to publish his philosophy at a somewhat less frantic pace.
But, of course, such speculation is as idle as it is intriguing, for the fact is
that the full text of the Foundations, along with that of the Outlines, was
fatefully set before the reading public in the summer of 1795.
Fichte himself was, from the first, deeply dissatisfied with the
Foundations, which he wished his auditors and readers to treat as no more
than a provisional presentation of the basic principles of his system.
Accordingly, when he next returned to this topic, that is, in the lectures on
the “Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy (Wissenschaftslehre) nova
methodo” which he first delivered in 1796–7, he offered his students a
completely revised and very different presentation of the basic principles
and outlines of his philosophy. Apparently, he was relatively satisfied with
this new presentation (the socalled “Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo”),
for he repeated these lectures twice more during his career at Jena. Indeed,
he fully intended to revise them for publication and, in 1797–8, succeeded
in publishing two “introductions” to, as well as the first chapter of, this
new version, under the title An Attempt at a New Presentation of the
Wissenschaftslehre in the Philosophisches Journal einer Gesellschaft
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Teutscher Gelehrten, of which he was then co-editor.
However, Fichte did not confine himself to refining his presentation of
the foundations of his philosophy; he also devoted a great deal of effort to
fleshing out the systematic scheme merely alluded to in his programmatic
writings. He did this in his lectures on Naturrecht (or “natural right”) and
ethics, subsequently published as Foundations of Natural Right according
to the Principles of the Wissenschaftslehre (1796–7) and The System of
Ethical Theory according to the Principles of the Wissenschaftslehre
(1798). Though he announced that he would lecture on a third systematic
subdivision of the Wissenschaftslehre, viz., philosophy of religion, during
the summer semester of 1799, the lectures in question were never
delivered.
Fichte was embroiled in one controversy or another (often involving his
political views) from the moment of his arrival in Jena, but the final one,
the so-called “atheism controversy,” proved to be his undoing. In 1798 he
had published a brief article entitled “Concerning the Basis of our Belief in
a Divine Governance of the Universe,” in which he bluntly criticized all
attempts by philosophers to infer the existence of God from the fact of the
moral law—or from anything else. His many local enemies seized upon
this article to incite broader opposition. He was officially charged by the
Saxon authorities with atheism, which provoked a very public controversy
between Fichte’s opponents and defenders. Eventually, and largely as a
result of his own tactical miscalculations, he was dismissed from his
academic post. In the summer of 1799 he moved to Berlin.
For Fichte, 1799 was a year filled with disappointment. Not only did he
lose his job, but he also began to lose many of his most prominent
philosophical allies, including Reinhold, who had briefly become an
enthusiastic exponent of the Wissenschaftslehre. Schelling, the most
conspicuous and prolific of the young “Fichteans,” continued, despite
Fichte’s disapproval, to pursue his interest in “the philosophy of nature,”
while Jacobi, whom, for all their philosophical differences, Fichte greatly
admired, published a long Open Letter to Fichte, in which he
devastatingly characterized the Wissenschaftslehre as “nihilism.” Finally,
in August 1799, Kant himself issued a public “declaration” in which he
repudiated Fichte’s system and disavowed any relationship between his
own philosophy and the Wissenschaftslehre. “One star sets, another one
rises,” shrugged Goethe, when informed of Fichte’s departure from Jena.
When Fichte arrived in Berlin (where there was, as yet, no university)
he was forced to earn his living from his writings and from occasional,
privately subscribed lessons and lectures. His first project was a “popular”
presentation of his philosophy, one specifically designed to rebut the
charge of atheism and to reply to Jacobi’s more general criticisms of
transcendental philosophy. The resulting book, The Vocation of Man, was
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published in 1800, closely followed by a rather bold foray into political
economy (The Self-Contained Commercial State). Still attempting to
defend himself against what he viewed as widespread misperceptions of
his position, Fichte then published the pathetically titled Crystal-Clear
Report to the General Public concerning the Actual Essence of the Newest
Philosophy: an Attempt to Force the Reader to Understand (1801), in
which he emphasized the philosophical differences between the
Wissenschaftslehre and rival systems of thought.
At the same time, he continued to revise and recast his “scientific”
presentation of the first principles of his system; indeed, he himself
accurately characterized the period 1800–4 as one of “ceaseless work on
the Wissenschaftslehre.” Finally abandoning his efforts to revise for
publication his 1796–9 lectures on Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo, he
once again drafted an entirely new version of the foundations of his
philosophy, which he presented in a course of private lectures delivered in
Berlin in 1801–2. Once again, however, dissatisfaction with the results
prevented him from publishing this new version and impelled him to
embark upon yet another, even more thoroughgoing systematic overhaul
of his presentation. These efforts culminated in the year 1804, in the
course of which Fichte delivered three separate sets of lectures on the
Wissenschaftslehre. Though he expressed complete satisfaction with this
latest version and readied it for publication, he appears finally to have
concluded that he himself was simply incapable of producing a written
exposition of his own philosophy which could stand on its own and avert
the sorts of misunderstanding to which his Jena writings had been
subjected. For the rest of his life he vowed “to confine himself to oral
communication, so that misunderstanding can thereby be detected and
eliminated on the spot” (III, 5:223). In 1804 he also delivered a well-
received series of more popular lectures On the Characteristics of the
Present Age (subsequently published in 1806), in which he dealt, for the
first time, with the philosophy of history.
Fichte spent the summer semester of 1805 at the Prussian University at
Erlangen, where he prepared and lectured upon yet another presentation
of the first principles of his philosophy. Upon his return to Berlin in 1806
he delivered yet another set of “popular” lectures, Directions for a Blessed
Life, which were published later that same year. These lectures reveal the
strong influence of the Gospel of St John on Fichte’s thinking at this point
and contain what is perhaps the most accessible presentation of the new,
more religiously oriented, and “mystical” tendency of his thought during
his final years.
With the defeat of Prussia by Napoleon’s armies in 1806 and the
occupation of Berlin, Fichte took refuge in Königsberg, where he served
briefly as a professor, producing for his lectures yet another version of the
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Wissenschaftslehre. After the Peace of Tilsit, however, he returned to
Berlin, where he delivered his celebrated Addresses to the German Nation
under the noses of the occupying forces. These lectures, in which Fichte
attempted to kindle a sense of distinctively “German” patriotism and
outlined a program of national education for this purpose, were published
in 1808 and subsequently exercised a wide influence upon the
development of German nationalist sentiment.
Fichte was also instrumental during this period in establishing the new
University of Berlin. When the university was finally opened in 1810, he
served as head of the philosophical faculty and, briefly, as rector of the
university. He remained a professor at the new university until his death in
1814. During these years he lectured on a variety of subjects, including the
first principles of his Wissenschaftslehre (of which he produced at least
four more versions after 1810), political philosophy (or “doctrine of the
state”), philosophy of right, and a popular introduction to philosophy
under the title “the facts of consciousness.” None of these new lectures
were published by Fichte, though in 1810 he did publish a cryptic
overview of the latest version of his system, The Wissenschaftslehre in its
General Outline. Fichte died unexpectedly at the age of 51, of typhus,
which he contracted from his wife, who had been infected by wounded
soldiers she was nursing.
Let us now turn to a consideration of Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre,
limiting ourselves to the version which exercised the greatest influence
upon his contemporaries, that is, the “Jena Wissenschaftslehre” of 1794–
9. In doing so, it is vital to recall that the term “Wissenschaftslehre” does
not refer to any particular book or even any specific presentation of
Fichte’s system. In its broadest sense, “Wissenschaftslehre” is simply
Fichte’s proposed new name for “philosophy” itself, understood not as a
form of “practical wisdom,” but rather as a rigorous, systematic
“science.” Thus, in Concerning the Concept of Wissenschaftslehre, Fichte
identifies Wissenschaftslehre with “the science of science itself,” with
knowledge about the very conditions, foundations, and limits of
knowledge. (To be sure, this means that philosophy, qua “science of
science” or “knowledge of knowledge,” involves a certain, unavoidable
degree of circularity. But, as Fichte argues persuasively in Concerning the
Concept, such circularity—once it has been clearly grasped—is not an
objection to philosophy, but is, instead, one of its most distinctive and
unavoidable features.)
Somewhat more narrowly construed, “Wissenschaftslehre” is Fichte’s
new name for “transcendental idealism” or “Critical philosophy” —in
contrast to the previously prevailing systems, which Fichte lumped
together under the name “dogmatism” and believed was best represented
by Spinoza. The essential features of a Wissenschaftslehre in this narrower
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sense are, first of all, that it follows Kant in insisting that genuinely
philosophical questions are those of justification or warrant (quid juris)
rather than questions of “fact” (quid facti). Consequently, the actual
arguments and deductions which constitute philosophy as
Wissenschaftslehre cannot be based upon an appeal to the so-called “facts
of consciousness,” since the task of such a science is to “explain” or
account for these very “facts.” More specifically, the particular set of facts
which a Wissenschaftslehre has to account for in the first instance are
those associated with our experience of an external world of objects. Or
rather, limiting ourselves to the standpoint of consciousness, what
philosophy has to explain is the presence within human consciousness of
“representations accompanied by a feeling of necessity.” Hence the
question posed by the Wissenschaftslehre is as follows: “What is the
connection between our representations and their objects? To what extent
can we say that something independent of our representations, something
altogether independent of and external to us, corresponds to our
representations?” (I, 3:247). What has to be explained, in short, is “how
representing becomes knowing.”
Second, the “explanation” of cognition provided by the
Wissenschaftslehre must be rigorously “transcendental” in character, in
the sense that it must begin with something it regards as certain or beyond
controversy (e.g. in Kant’s case, the continuous self-identity of the
knowing subject over time) and then enquire into the necessary conditions
for the possibility thereof.
Third, a Wissenschaftslehre takes very much to heart the Kantian
insistence upon “the primacy of practical reason.” This does not mean
simply that it recognizes the integrity and autonomy of the moral or
“practical” sphere and resolutely refuses to countenance any standpoint
that treats our consciousness of our own freedom as illusory. Instead, the
Wissenschaftslehre insists that “the practical power is the innermost root
of the I” (I, 3:332); and, basing itself upon this insight, it attempts to
demonstrate that “our freedom itself [is] a theoretical determining
principle of our world” (I, 5:77). What a transcendental idealism of this
sort has to demonstrate is that only a free and practically striving I can
have any experience of a world of spatio-temporal, material objects, and
the overall deductive strategy of the Wissenschaftslehre is to demonstrate
this by showing that the latter is a condition for the former. This is the
sense in which “theoretical reason” is based upon “practical reason.” (Of
course, there is also an important sense in which the converse is true:
since, according to Fichte anyway, practical striving presupposes
theoretical awareness of a goal.)
Finally, there is a third, even narrower sense of “Wissenschaftslehre,” in
which the term is synonymous neither with philosophy in general nor with
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transcendental idealism as such, but refers instead to Fichte’s own,
distinctive version of the latter. Although Fichte himself never relinquished
his long-standing claim that “the Wissenschaftslehre is nothing other than
the Kantian philosophy properly understood” and consequently always
sought to minimize the differences between his own system and Kant’s, it
must nevertheless be conceded that there are many striking differences
between the “letter” of his philosophy and that of Kant’s.
For example, Fichte’s version of transcendental idealism follows
Reinhold in claiming to base everything upon a single, absolutely certain
“first principle.” By proceeding in this rigorously “deductive” manner,
Fichte believed, the Wissenschaftslehre would be able to produce a more
elegant and successful derivation of the a priori categories of possible
experience—including space and time. (The deductive strategy of the
Wissenschaftslehre makes it possible to dispense with the Kantian
distinction between “transcendental aesthetics” and “transcendental
logic,” and thus tends to identify “forms of intuition” and “categories of
thought.”) By deriving everything from a single starting point the
Wissenschaftslehre could also hope to avoid the problems of systematic
unity which plagued Kant’s writings. Not only would it be able to exhibit
the “common root” of intuition and thinking, but, even more significantly,
it would be able to demonstrate, in a systematic manner, the intimate link
between theoretical and practical reason, the realm of nature and that of
freedom. (This last point marks a major advance beyond Reinhold’s
Elementary Philosophy, which confined itself almost entirely to an account
of theoretical reason.)
Or, to cite another example of the manner in which Fichte’s philosophy
advanced beyond the letter of Kant’s, there is no room within the
Wissenschaftslehre for any reference, however minimal or tangential, to
“things in themselves.” Having absorbed the arguments of Kant’s critics,
Fichte firmly rejected any appeal—within the context of a philosophical
account of experience, though not, of course, within the context of
everyday life, where such appeals are not only appropriate but
unavoidable—to what he characterized as the “non-thought of things in
themselves.” In contrast to philosophical “dogmatism,” which vainly
attempts to explain representations as “produced” within the mind by
external objects, and which thus pretends to derive consciousness from
things, a genuine transcendental idealism or Wissenschaftslehre adopts the
opposite strategy; that is, it tries to show how our experience of “things”
is a consequence of the character of consciousness itself. If philosophy is to
remain transcendental and is not to become transcendent, then the
undeniable “objectivity” of the world of ordinary experience will have to
be accounted for purely in terms of consciousness and its acts. This means
that transcendental philosophy must demonstrate that “the representation
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and the object that is supposed to correspond to it are one and the same
thing—merely regarded from two different points of view” (I, 3:252). It
accomplishes this by showing that consciousness must operate in certain
ways if selfconsciousness (which, for Fichte as for Kant, is the starting
point of the entire deduction) is to be possible at all. It is the “necessity” of
these modes of acting which accounts for the “feeling of necessity” which
accompanies certain representations, and thereby accounts for the
experienced “objectivity” of the world. (The sort of idealism which merely
asserts that mind “constructs” reality but does not offer a rigorous
deduction of the necessity with which it acts in doing so is dismissed by
Fichte as “transcendent idealism.”)
Turning now to the Jena Wissensckaftslehre, let us begin with an
examination of its first principle or starting point. Obviously, it is not
sufficient that the “first principle” of all philosophy be a proposition from
which all of the other propositions of the system can be derived; in
addition, the principle in question must also be true. But how can the truth
of this highest principle be established? Its truth cannot be derived from
some higher principle or set of principles, for then the principle in question
would not be “first.” Hence the first principle, if it is to be true at all, must
be immediately true; it must express something that is self-evidently
certain. (To be sure, that this self-evident certainty is also the “first
principle” of all philosophy is by no means self-evident; instead, this can
be established only by actually erecting a system upon the certainty in
question.)
What then is the first principle of the Jena Wissenschaftslehre? Though
casual readers of the Foundations of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre
sometimes assume that Fichte begins with the logical principle “A=A,” a
closer reading of the famous § I of this text reveals that the first principle
in question is not the abstract logical principle of identity, which is
employed purely as a preliminary “clue” for the discovery of the actual
first principle of the system: viz., the material proposition which states
that “the I simply posits itself.” This principle expresses what Fichte
believes to be the supreme act of the mind, an act in which the I is
simultaneously subject and object. (Such an act is “supreme” in precisely
the same, transcendental sense in which Kant considered the
transcendental unity of apperception to be “supreme.”)
Though there is certainly a sense in which the Wissenschaftslehre may
be construed as a continuation of the Cartesian project of basing
philosophy as a whole upon the alleged self-evidence of the cogito, there is
also a crucial difference concerning the status of “self-consciousness.” For
Fichte, self-consciousness (and hence all consciousness, since the
underlying strategy of the entire enterprise is to show that the latter is but
a special instance of the former) cannot be understood as a “fact,” no
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matter how privileged; nor can it be comprehended as an accident of some
substance or a modification of some “being.” Instead, it must be
understood as an activity, albeit of a most extraordinary, self-productive
type. To employ Fichte’s own terminology, the self-positing of the I, which
alone makes possible every act of empirical self-consciousness, and indeed,
object-consciousness, is a “fact/act” or Tathandlung. It presupposes no
prior “subject” which acts; it constitutes itself, qua self-consciousness, in
the very act of becoming conscious of itself.
From this it follows that the “being” of the I is, so to speak, a
consequence of its self-positing. Indeed, this, according to Fichte, is
precisely what it means to be a “free being.” A similar thought has been
expressed in our own century in the formula that, where human beings are
concerned, “existence precedes essence.”
Thus, in order to “explain representations” Fichte invokes an original
act of consciousness which is not an act of mere “representing” at all, but
is equally and at the same time an act of production, indeed
autoproduction. Thus the starting point of the Jena Wissenschaftslehre is
equally “practical” and “theoretical,” for the act described in its first
principle (“the I simply posits itself”) is a “doing” as well as a “knowing.”
Indeed, it is precisely because Fichte’s system commences with and
proceeds from “that supreme point from which the practical and the
speculative appear as one” (III, 2:395) that it can hope to succeed in its
overall goal of reconciling freedom and necessity, morality and nature.
This choice of a starting point has equally dramatic implications for the
narrower field of theoretical philosophy proper (that is, for that portion of
philosophy which accounts for our experience of an external world of
spatio-temporal objects), for it establishes, from the very start, the
essential identity of ideality (being for consciousness) and reality (being in
itself). An I is an I only insofar as it posits itself—i.e. is aware of itself as
an I. Since the unity of being and thinking is explicitly present in our
original starting point, it follows that it will be (implicitly) present in
everything derived therefrom. Everything that “is” is only insofar as it is
“for the I”; i.e. “being” is not an original category within the
Wissenschaftslehre, but is only a subsidiary or “derived” one.
The nature of this starting point is further clarified in Fichte’s second
attempt at a presentation of the outlines and first principles of his system
(viz., in the Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo and the fragmentary
Attempt at a New Presentation). It is here, in the presentation of 1796–9,
that the initial act of self-positing with which the Wissenschaftslehre
begins is described as an “intellectual intuition.” Though Fichte’s use of
this term has produced a great deal of confusion (and though his remarks
on the topic are not always as clear or as consistent as one might wish),
the term “intellectual intuition” simply designates the previously described
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“act” (Tathandlang) of pure self-consciousness, within which the I is
supposed to be immediately present to itself, thereby constituting itself as
an I, at the same time that it distinguishes itself as an object of
consciousness from itself as the subject thereof. Such an act deserves to be
called an “intuition” (in the Kantian sense) because the object of
consciousness is in this case immediately present. But since the object in
question (the I itself) is not “given” to consciousness in this case, but is
produced thereby, the intuition is “intellectual” rather than sensory.
One should note that it is not Fichte’s claim that such an original
intellectual intuition can ever occur within empirical self-consciousness.
On the contrary, he frequently reminds his readers that “this absolute
identity of subject and object within the I can only be inferred and cannot
be immediately evinced as a ‘fact of consciousness’ ” (I, 5:21). However,
philosophical reflection upon our own, necessarily divided self-
consciousness can lead us to the inference that such an original unity must
necessarily underlie and condition every empirical act of consciousness
(within which the reflecting subject is in fact never discovered to be
identical with the object of reflection). Only if there is an original unity of
self-consciousness can we account for our abiding sense of our own
identity, despite the fact that within every moment of empirical
consciousness we find our identity divided between that of the subject and
that of the object.
Thus, whereas the formal presentation of the “foundations” of the
system begins with a description of the ungrounded Tathandlung or self-
positing of the I, actual philosophizing, i.e. recapitulating for oneself the
series of deductions which constitute the Wissenschaftslehre, begins
instead with a free act of reflective abstraction on the part of the would-be
philosopher. This act of turning one’s attentions away from all objects and
toward the operations of one’s own consciousness is not an act of
“intellectual intuition” of the sort attributed to the pure I which the
philosopher is trying to study. (If Fichte sometimes uses the term
“intellectual intuition” to designate the act of introspection or self-
observation engaged in by the philosopher, then one must carefully
distinguish this use of the term from its other, more fundamental
employment to designate the I’s original act of self-positing.)
The philosopher, meanwhile, after having abstracted from the “facts of
consciousness,” then seeks (within the artificial context of their
philosophical account) to re-establish that same realm of facts, and they
accomplish this by showing why and how the I must posit such a realm if
it is to posit itself at all. This is how transcendental philosophy answers
the quid juris.
But why should a philosopher begin with precisely this abstraction?
Why should we commence with the bare thought of what Fichte calls
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variously “the absolute I,” “I-hood,” “the intellect,” or simply “reason”
(rather than beginning, for example, with the abstraction of a “thing in
itself”)? What is it that makes this mere idea of an original self-positing
subject certain? Fichte’s reply is instructive: The initial certainty of his
proposed starting point is not theoretical at all, but is, instead, practical.
The autonomy of the I, which is, after all, what is asserted in the formula
that “the I simply posits itself,” is something one must confirm for oneself
within one’s own moral experience. To the extent that one is aware of
oneself as a free agent, to this extent one is actually aware of oneself as a
self-positing I.
To be sure, theoretical/philosophical doubts concerning such an
awareness always remain possible. This is why skepticism cannot be
avoided by purely theoretical means. Instead, what keeps us from
doubting the proposed starting point is our sense of moral obligation to
determine our own actions, that is to say, our indefeasible awareness of
our own freedom. The reason, therefore, why the transcendental idealist
comes to a stop with the proposition “the I freely posits itself” is not
because they are unable to entertain theoretical doubts on this point or
because they cannot continue the process of reflective abstraction. Instead,
as Fichte puts it:
I cannot go beyond this standpoint because I am not permitted to do
so… I ought to begin my thinking with the thought of the pure I, and
I ought to think of this pure I as acting with absolute spontaneity—
not as determined by things, but rather, as determining them.
(I, 4:220–1)
Thus the “categorical imperative” is invoked to secure the first principles
of the entire Wissenschaftslehre (not merely of ethics), which illuminates
Fichte’s striking claim that the “Wissenschaftslehre is the only kind of
philosophical thinking that accords with duty” (I, 4:219).
This also may help explain the notoriously ad horninem character of
Fichte’s polemic against those (the “dogmatists”) who are unable or
unwilling to accept the Wissenschaftslehre. What ultimately prevents them
from doing so, according to Fichte, is not any deficiency of their intellect
or any lack of philosophical acumen. Instead, the reason some people
persist in attempting to understand consciousness in terms of things
(rather than vice versa) is because they lack a lively sense of their own
freedom. The defect in question is thus one which concerns their moral
character. As Fichte put it in a sardonic footnote: “most men could more
easily be convinced to consider themselves a piece of lava on the moon
than an I” (I, 2:326 n.). The Wissenschaftslehre, however, is a philosophy
for those who can and do conceive of themselves as free agents, and it is in
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precisely this sense that Fichte could describe it as “from first to last,
nothing more than an analysis of the concept of freedom” (III, 4:182).
After one has established for oneself via abstract reflection the first
principle of the Wissenschaftslehre and has confirmed the truth of this
starting point by appealing directly to one’s own practical experience, one
is then in a position to discover—again, by reflection and self-
observation—all of the other acts which must necessarily occur as well if
the postulated original act is to occur. Of course, just as we are never
directly aware of the original act of self-positing which constitutes
subjectivity as such, so we are not usually aware of these other, “necessary
but unconscious” acts which are derived as conditions necessary for the
possibility of this first act (though, of course, the transcendental
philosopher becomes aware of them in the course of their enquiry). The
Wissenschaftslehre is therefore described by Fichte as both (a) a process of
raising to consciousness those unconscious acts by means of which the I
“constitutes” the world of its experience and (b) nothing more than a
complete (and often exceedingly complex) analysis of its own first
principle.
The results of such an analysis, however, are sometimes surprising. For
example, one of the more striking conclusions of the “analysis” of
freedom carried out in the “foundational” portion of the Jena
Wissenschaftslehre is that, although “the I simply posits itself,” freedom is
never “absolute” or “unlimited”; instead, Fichte unequivocally
demonstrates that freedom is conceivable only as limited. Only finite
freedom is actual, just as the only sort of consciousness which is actual is
finite, empirical, and embodied. Only “limited” subjects exist as subject.
The conclusion of the Foundations and the nova methodo is the same:
an I must posit itself in order to be an I at all; but it can posit itself only
insofar as it posits itself as limited (and hence divided against itself). The
limitation in question is first posited as a “feeling,” then as a “sensation,”
then as an “intuition” of a thing, and finally as a “concept.” All that we
can say, from a transcendental perspective, concerning the original
character of the “limitation” in question is to describe it in terms of the I’s
practical striving. This limitation is first described (in the 1794–5
presentation) as a “check” or Anstoß to the I’s striving, a “check” which
manifests itself within consciousness as “feeling.” Though Fichte certainly
demonstrates that such an Anstoß must in fact occur if self-consciousness
is to be actual, he never claims that such a limitation is produced by the
self-positing I, though he does, of course, observe that a limitation cannot
exist (as a limitation of the I) unless it is “posited” as such (i.e. taken up
into consciousness) by the I. On the other hand, Fichte steadfastly opposes
all attempts to “explain” the Anstoß as an “effect” produced by the Not-
I. The point is simply this: like the I itself, even the most rigorously
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“scientific” and a priori philosophy finally must admit that there are limits
to what can be explained. Philosophy can explain, for example, why the
world has a spatio-temporal character and a causal structure, but it
cannot explain why objects have the particular sensible properties they
happen to have. This is simply what the I discovers—albeit “within itself”
and not “out there”—when it reflects upon its own original limitations.
To be sure, philosophy can show that the I cannot posit its own
freedom, i.e. cannot posit itself, unless it finds itself to be limited (and
then, in turn, posits a world of objects as the ground of its own limited
state—thereby, as it were, “explaining” to itself its own limitation).
However, that the I, in fact, finds itself to be limited—and limited in a
specific manner (=“feeling”)—is something that cannot be demonstrated a
priori; instead, this is something “that everyone can prove to oneself only
through one’s own experience” (I, 2:390).
This first account of the original limitation of the I is supplemented (in
the Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo) by an account of how the
practically striving I is originally called upon to limit itself freely in
response to a “summons” (Aufforderung) received from what it takes to
be another free being similar to itself. To this degree, the 1796–9
presentation goes well beyond the 1794–5 version in demonstrating that
self-consciousness also presupposes a recognition of and by others; for one
can be conscious of oneself only as an individual, which in turn requires
consciousness of a realm of rational beings of which one is but a single
member. This important argument, which demonstrates that recognition
of and by others is a condition for self-recognition, was first elaborated by
Fichte in his Foundations of Natural Right and was subsequently
incorporated into his presentation of the very “foundations” of the
Wissenschaftslehre—though it must be admitted that the precise, relative
roles of Anstoß and Aufforderung in the constitution of self-consciousness
remain somewhat unclear.
Let us now turn from a consideration of the starting point and
deductive strategy of the Jena Wissenschaftslehre to an examination of the
overall, systematic structure of the same (as explained in the concluding
section of the Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo). The presentation of a
complete, transcendental system of philosophy should begin with a
discussion and demonstration of the “basic principles” or “foundations”
of such a system, and this is precisely what Fichte himself attempted to do,
first in the Foundations of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre and Concerning
the Distinctive Character of the Wissenschaftslehre with Respect to the
Theoretical Power, and then, in a revised form, in his lectures on the
Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo.
The “foundational” portion of the system begins by calling upon the
reader to isolate for him- or herself the concept of the freely self-positing I
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(“think the I!”). Once this initial starting point has been established, it is
followed by an elaborate, transcendental account of subjectivity as such,
an account which includes step-by-step analysis (which Fichte calls
“genetic explanation”) of the various unconscious acts of the mind which
are required for the possibility of self-positing and which are involved in
the constitution of everyday experience. This analysis includes an
extended account of the creative activity of the “productive imagination,”
understood by Fichte as that power of the I which mediates between free
self-positing (Tathandlung) and limited self-feeling (Anstoß). This first,
“foundational” portion of the Wissenschaftslehre demonstrates how the
“entire mechanism of consciousness is based upon various ways of
viewing the separation of the subjective and the objective within
consciousness, and, in turn, the union of both” (I, 5:21): hence the
explicitly “dialectical” structure of the argument, which constantly
oscillates between moments of relative identity and moments of relative
difference.
Next come what Fichte terms the various “real” philosophical sciences
which make up the further subdivisions of the entire Wissenschaftslehre.
There are three such systematic subdivisions: “theoretical philosophy,”
“practical philosophy,” and “philosophy of the postulates,” within each of
which the mind’s general principles, laws, and modes of acting (all of
which.have previously been derived within the “Foundations”) are applied
and extended within a specific and limited field.
A “specifically theoretical Wissenschaftslehre” or “Wissenschaftslehre
of cognition” (not to be confused with the “theoretical” portion of the
Foundations) concerns itself with the general features of what
consciousness “discovers” in the course of its experience. Accordingly, this
portion of transcendental philosophy presents us with a complete “theory
of the world.” It deals with what is given to consciousness, and it
explains—to the severely limited extent that this can be explained
philosophically—the necessary features of such a world. Hence,
theoretical philosophy is limited to a consideration of cognition, that is, to
an analysis of the specific type of consciousness within which the
conscious subject considers itself to be “determined” by its objects.
Theoretical philosophy shows what objects must be like for such
consciousness to be possible, and in this sense it constitutes an a priori
account of empirical reality as a whole, or of “nature.” It thus determines
the content of experience, but only to the extent that this content reflects
the form of consciousness. This sort of theoretical philosophy of nature
can indeed circumscribe experience, but it is in no way intended to
supplant or to rival the empirical, natural sciences.
Though clearly Fichte envisioned such a “distinctively theoretical
Wissenschaftslehre” (modeled, no doubt, upon Kant’s Metaphysical
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Foundations of Natural Science), he himself never completed such a
science. The closest he came was in his Concerning the Distinctive
Character of the Wissenschaftslehre with Respect to the Theoretical
Power, which barely proceeds beyond the transcendental deduction of
space, time, and causality.
In contrast with the purely “theoretical” portion of the system, the
specifically “practical” Wissenschaftslehre views the object of
consciousness as freely determined by the subject. Thus it treats objects (or
“being”) not as given to consciousness, but rather, as produced, and
produced by a freely acting and conscious subject attempting to
accomplish its own goals: hence Fichte’s assertion that the practical
Wissenschaftslehre views “being as a product of concepts.” The usual
name for such a science is “ethics” or “ethical theory” (Sittenlehre).
Ethics, or the distinctively practical portion of the overall system of the
Wissenschaftslehre, examines not what is, but what ought to be. The
“world” with which it is concerned is the world as it ought to be
constructed by rational beings. Thus, in this portion of his system (though
not elsewhere) Fichte really does interpret the world purely as an arena for
moral striving—for this is how the world is actually viewed by the
practically striving I (just as the theoretical or “knowing” I views it as
something given to consciousness).
Fichte’s System of Ethical Theory begins with a recapitulation of certain
conclusions established in the “Foundations”: e.g. (a) an awareness of
one’s own efficacy (i.e. of one’s capacity to realize one’s goal concepts) is a
condition for the very possibility of self-consciousness, and (b) the I finds
itself called upon (or “summoned”) to limit itself freely in relation to other
free beings. The specific task of The System of Ethical Theory is to
indicate the particular duties and practicial corollaries which follow from
the general obligation to limit oneself freely. Accordingly, this portion of
the system can be described as a detailed analysis of conscience as such, or
as an expanded enquiry into the form and content of the “categorical
imperative.” The result is a systematic account of duty as such, that is, of
those duties which apply to all rational beings, without taking into
account any of the individual differences between persons. Here again, the
argument by means of which Fichte purports to establish this system of
duties is strictly transcendental in character: the various “oughts” it
establishes are presented as so many conditions for the possibility of the
original “ought,” i.e. as conditions for the possibility of autonomous self-
determination.
The third and in many respects most original systematic subdivision of
the Wissenschaftslehre is called by Fichte “philosophy of the postulates.”
This portion of the system is concerned with the relationship between the
theoretical and the practical realms and examines the specific demands (or
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“postulates”) which each realm addresses to the other. Those postulates
that theory addresses to the practical realm are the subject of the portion
of the system entitled “theory of right” (Rechtslehre) or “natural right”
(Naturrecht), whereas those postulates that practical philosophy
addresses to the theoretical realm are the subject of the philosophy of
religion.
Unlike ethics, which deals with rational (i.e. free) beings as such, the
“theory of right” considers these same practical agents in their individuality,
that is, as individual members of a community of free individuals. Such a
philosophical science poses the question: How must the freedom of each
individual be externally limited in order to permit every individual to pursue
their individual goals to the fullest extent possible?
The Foundations of Natural Right begins with a general deduction of
“intersubjectivity,” that is, with a transcendental demonstration that a free
individual can recognize itself as such only insofar as it recognizes the
freedom of others, while simultaneously distinguishing itself from all of
these other freely acting individuals. The next step is to stipulate the
conditions for the possibility of such “mutual recognition” among free
beings, the chief one of which is free acknowledgment of the legitimacy of
the general rule of “right” or “justice,” namely: “limit your own freedom
in accordance with the concept of the freedom of all other persons with
whom you come into contact” (I, 3:320).
Since the mutual recognition in question, that is, the sway of the “rule
of right,” can be shown to be possible only within a free society, Fichte’s
examination of “natural right” quickly turns into a consideration, deeply
indebted to Rousseau, of the nature of a just social order, the sources of
political legitimacy, and some of the specific features of a “just state.”
Indeed, the Foundations of Natural Right could be described as a
systematic effort to re-establish the Social Contract on purely
transcendental foundations. It is the most important early presentation of
Fichte’s political philosophy.
From a purely systematic perspective, the most distinctive feature of
Fichte’s Rechtslehre is his clear awareness of the distinctively “mixed”
character of such a discipline. It is “theoretical,” because it speaks of a
“world” (viz., the juridical or political order which is designed to
constrain the activities of freely self-positing individuals in such a way that
each can pursue their own goals); yet it is also “practical,” because such a
world is never simply “given” to us, but must be produced by free action.
The just state is a human product, not something “natural”; but at the
same time it is something external, something which, unlike purely ethical
ends, cannot be achieved merely by internal self-limitation—though, to be
sure, the “external limitations” required by the concept of “right” must be
freely self-imposed (i.e. must be expressions of the “general will”).
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This is precisely what distinguishes the “science of right” from the
“theory of ethics” (and distinguishes Fichte’s treatment of the former from
that of Kant, for whom the “theory of right” constitutes a subdivision of
ethics): whereas ethics deals with the sphere of our duties, and thus with
what is demanded of us as free individuals, the theory of natural right
deals with those limitations of freedom which are required by the concept
of a community of free individuals; i.e. it deals with what is permitted.
Whereas ethics is concerned with the inner world of conscience, the theory
of right is concerned only with the external, public realm—though only
insofar as the latter can be viewed as an embodiment of freedom. Hence
the concept of right obtains its binding force, not from the ethical law, but
rather from the general laws of thinking and from enlightened self-
interest. Such a force is hypothetical rather than categorical. If one is to
posit one’s own freedom, then one must posit the freedom of others and
limit one’s own freedom accordingly. It follows that a just political order is
a demand of reason itself, since “the concept of justice or right is a
condition of self-consciousness” (I, 3:358).
The other subdivision of the theory of the postulates, that is, the
philosophy of religion, is described as that philosophical science which
concerns itself with the postulates which morality addresses to nature. As
such, the philosophy of religion considers the manner in which the sensible
realm of nature is supposed somehow to accommodate itself to the goal of
morality, and thus it deals primarily with what is sometimes called the
problem of “divine providence.” Fichte himself, as we have noted, was
prevented from fully developing this portion of his system while at Jena
by, ironically enough, the outbreak of the atheism controversy.
Nevertheless, one can gain some idea of his thoughts on this subject from
the short essay, “On the Foundation of Our Belief in a Divine Government
of the Universe,” which precipitated the controversy in question. What
one finds in this essay is, first of all, an attempt to draw a sharp distinction
between religion and philosophy (corresponding to the all-important
distinction between the “ordinary” and “transcendental” standpoints),
and second, a defense of our right to postulate something like a “moral
world order.” But whereas Fichte argues that we are justified in believing
that our conscientious actions will in fact “make a difference” in the real
world, he resolutely insists (against the Kantians) that such a postulate
does not require the postulate of a personal deity, a.k.a., “moral
lawgiver.” Thus the argument of the essay in question is primarily
negative. It does not deny the existence of God, but it does deny that such
a postulate is morally required or justified.
Finally, a word is perhaps in order concerning the general tenor or
“spirit” of Fichte’s Jena Wissenschaftslehre. Before finally settling upon a
distinctive name for his new philosophy, Fichte considered various
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possibilities, one of which was Strebungsphilosophie, or “philosophy of
striving” (II, 3:265). As a description of “the first system of human
freedom” this discarded appellation is particularly apt, for the general
conclusion of the Jena Wissenschaftslehre is as follows: Freedom is
possible and actual only within the context of natural necessity, where it is
never “absolute,” but always limited and finite. Though it must posit its
freedom “absolutely”—that is to say, “purely and simply” (schlechthin) or
“for no reason”—a genuinely free agent can actually exist only as a finite
individual striving to overcome its own limitations and to transform the
natural world in accordance with its own goal concepts. To be an “I” is
thus to be involved in an endless process of self-overcoming, a process
which necessarily takes place in reciprocal interaction with other self-
overcoming agents and in the context of a spatio-temporal, material
world. Without such limits, there can be neither freedom nor self-
consciousness.
Such is the philosophical “vision” which presides over and gives
direction to the often bewildering complexities of Fichte’s Jena writings.
The Wissenschaftslehre is a philosophy of projects, a “philosophy of the
future.” The famous “absolute I” with which the system begins is a mere
abstraction, just as the final unity of the I with itself toward which it
aspires is a sheer ideal. Between the abstraction and the ideal lies the entire
realm of actual consciousness and experience, which, as we have seen, is
necessarily a realm of finite, constrained freedom and of real, empirical
nature, which exists only “for consciousness”—even though the specific
determinacy of this natural world remains philosophically inexplicable.
What we can grasp is that the world is not now as it ought to be and that
it is up to us to change it. Hence Fichte’s parting injunction to the students
who flocked to his lectures during his first semester at Jena: “Act! Act!
That is what we are here for” (I, 3:67).
SCHELLING’S NATURPHILOSOPHIE AND
SYSTEM OF IDENTITY
Even in a period when observers were in the habit of keeping a weather
eye on the philosophical horizon for the emergence of the newest star,
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling was a phenomenon: a philosophical
Wunderkind who lived a long life, marked by what at least appeared to be
dramatic and frequent shifts of philosophical orientation. Accordingly, it is
customary to divide Schelling’s philosophical career into a number of more
or less distinct phases or periods, though scholars disagree among
themselves over the precise number of periods and the degree of
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underlying continuity in Schelling’s development. Here, in any case, we will
confine our attention to the period prior to his departure from Jena in 1803.
Born near Stuttgart in 1775, Schelling was the son of a Schwabian
pastor and duly attended the seminary at Tübingen, where he became
close friends with Hölderlin and Hegel. His first philosophical publication,
an essay on “the philosophy of mythology,” appeared in 1793, when its
author was barely 18 years old. With the publication of Fichte’s first
systematic writings, Schelling immediately became an enthusiastic
exponent of the same and devoted his next two publications, On the
Possibility of a Form for All Philosophy (1794) and On the I as the
Principle of Philosophy (1795), to expounding and defending this latest
version of transcendental idealism.
After leaving Tübingen in 1795, Schelling spent three years as a tutor to
the children of a wealthy nobleman, a post which provided him ample
opportunity for travel and independent study (including an extended
period during which he studied physics, medicine, and mathematics at the
University of Leipzig). During these years he became a regular contributor
to the Philosophical Journal, where he published his Philosophical Letters
on Dogmatism and Criticism (1795), as well as his New Deduction of
Natural Right (1796)
A growing enthusiasm for Spinoza began to become increasingly
evident in Schelling’s writings of this period, along with mounting
reservations concerning the Wissenschaftslehre. Above all, Schelling was
dissatisfied with the status assigned to “nature” by Fichte’s system. Indeed,
one could characterize Schelling’s philosophical project at this point as an
attempt to replace Fichte’s “lifeless” conception of nature with a more
adequate one modeled on Spinoza’s notion of natura naturans, but to do
so without overstepping the bounds of transcendental idealism (e.g. by
assimilating Spinoza’s “infinite substance” or God to the idealists’
“transcendental I”).
Stimulated both by his enthusiasm for Spinoza and by his own scientific
studies, Schelling gradually became preoccupied by efforts to construct a
systematic Naturphilosophie or “philosophy of nature.” To be sure, he
was not alone. Others, for example Goethe, were also vocal in their
dissatisfaction with what they regarded as the unnecessarily mechanistic
and reductive character of the Newtonian worldview. Nevertheless,
Schelling gave a distinctive twist to this project, inasmuch as he attempted
to develop a more holistic view of nature which would at the same time be
at least compatible with (if not actually a systematic subdivision of) the
new transcendental philosophy of Kant and Fichte. Of his many
publications on this topic, the more important include Ideas for a
Philosophy of Nature (1797) and On the World-Soul (1798), as well as
the Journal of Speculative Physics (1800–3).
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In 1798 Schelling received an academic appointment at Jena, where he
remained until 1803. Though he had frequent contact with Fichte during
his first year in Jena, he was even more intimately associated with a
younger and more artistically inclined circle, which included the Schlegel
brothers, Tieck, and Novalis. Indeed, his philosophy of this period
exercised a seminal influence upon the birth of “German romanticism,”
just as the latter, in turn, deeply influenced the subsequent development of
Schelling’s own thinking.
Even as he was exploring “speculative physics” and attempting to
supplement transcendental idealism with Naturphilosophie, Schelling was
also engaged in an attempt to construct a revised and improved
presentation of transcendental idealism itself. His lectures on this subject
resulted, in 1800, in the publication of what is perhaps, from both a
literary and a philosophical point of view, his most successful single
publication, The System of Transcendental Idealism.
Because of the quite privileged status assigned to an at the conclusion of
the latter work, this phase of Schelling’s thought is sometimes
characterized as “aesthetic idealism.” But Schelling’s interest in an was not
a merely passing phase, nor was it purely theoretical in character. Just as
he had previously supplemented his efforts to construct a
Naturphilosophie by studying the empirical sciences, so too, under the
tutelage of Friedrich Schlegel, he attempted to cultivate himself
aesthetically by making a systematic, empirical study of the history of an.
The fruits of this intensive effort are apparent in the richly detailed
lectures on the philosophy of art he delivered first at Jena (1801–3) and
then at Würzburg (1803–4).
Schelling’s Jena philosophy culminates in his efforts, in the years
immediately following the publication of his System of Transcendental
Idealism, to make explicit the implicit harmony between the philosophy of
nature and transcendental idealism. In order to accomplish this goal, he
incorporated both of these “sciences” within a larger, more encompassing
system, which he dubbed the “System of Identity” or “Absolute Idealism”
and expounded in a series of publications, including the Presentation of
my System of Philosophy (1801), Bruno, or On the Natural and the
Divine Principle of Things (1802), and what is unquestionably the most
accessible and “popular” presentation of this phase of his thought, On
University Studies.
This was also the period of close and regular collaboration between
Scheliing and Hegel, who arrived in Jena in 1801. For the next two years
the two were allied in a collaborative effort to explicate and to defend the
new System of Identity. In pursuit of this goal, they founded and co-wrote
the entire contents of a short-lived new Critical Journal of Philosophy.
During this same period the rift between Schelling and Fichte—a rift
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which originally arose over Fichte’s misgivings at Schelling’s efforts to
“supplement” transcendental philosophy with Naturphilosophie and then
turned into a more general disagreement concerning the nature and limits
of philosophy itself—became permanent and public.
In 1803 Schelling, accompanied by his new wife Caroline (ex-wife of
A.W.Schlegel), left Jena for a chair at the University of Würzburg, which
had only recently come under the protection of the Bavarian Crown. In
1806 Schelling moved to Munich, where he served as general secretary of
the Academy of Fine Art and delivered occasional public lectures as a
member of the Bavarian Academy of Science. Later, following the
establishment of the University of Munich, Schelling was appointed to a
professorship. As a Protestant in a Catholic state increasingly dominated
by ultramontane forces, Schelling found himself under growing pressure,
but he nevertheless remained in Munich until his move to Berlin in 1841
(except for the period from 1820 to 1827, which he spent as a professor at
the Protestant University of Erlangen).
For the next several years Schelling continued to develop and to defend
his System of Identity (see e.g. his System of Philosophy as a Whole and of
the Philosophy of Nature in Particular, 1804), while continuing to
cultivate his interests in the philosophy of art (see e.g. Concerning the
Relationship of the Plastic Arts to Nature, 1807) and Naturphilosophie
(establishing yet another new journal, the Yearbook for Medicine as
Science, 1805–8). However, the most distinctive feature of Schelling’s
thought during this period was a growing concern with religious issues
and a particular fascination with the Gnostic tradition, as embodied, for
example, in the theosophical writing of Jakob Boehme. This new interest
is reflected in all of Schelling’s post-Jena writings, and is especially
prominent in his well-known Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of
Human Freedom (1809).
Eventually, Schelling’s public forays into religious issues embroiled him
in a bitter public controversy with Jacobi. At roughly the same time he
also broke with his erstwhile ally Hegel, who, without mentioning
Schelling by name, had mercilessly lampooned the System of Identity in
the Preface to his Phenomenology of Spirit. Following the death of
Caroline in 1809, Schelling’s activity as a philosophical author virtually
ceased. He began to associate more and more with conservative social and
religious elements, defended the reactionary alliance of “throne and altar”
represented by the Karlsbad decrees, and proudly identified himself as an
opponent of “old-Jacobin views and of shallow Enlightenment.”
From 1811 to 1813 Schelling worked on an ambitious speculative
interpretation of human history, The Ages of the World. He went so far as
to have text set in type, but withdrew it from publication at the last
moment. He also began to lecture on the history of philosophy, and his
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lectures on this subject reveal an extraordinary animus against his
erstwhile philosophical allies and a special resentment toward the growing
success of Hegel’s dialectical idealism. More and more, however, his
lectures and writings focused upon the same three subjects: art,
mythology, and religion.
In 1841 Schelling relocated to Berlin, where he was appointed Privy
Councilor to the court as well as Professor of Philosophy, charged with the
task of stamping out the “dragon’s seed of Hegelianism.” To the
disappointment of the civil authorities, as well as that of his auditors
(whose ranks included Kierkegaard, Bakunin, and Engels), Schelling
barely touched upon political and social philosophy in his lectures at
Berlin. Instead, he devoted them almost entirely to the development of his
new philosophy of revelation and methodology. By this point he had
begun to characterize his new standpoint as “positive philosophy,” in
contradistinction to the purely “negative” philosophy of Kant, Fichte, and
Hegel—as well as of his own Jena period. Increasingly isolated from his
students and contemporaries, Schelling finally died in 1854 in Bad Ragaz
in Switzerland, where he had gone to recover from a cold.
It is difficult to comment briefly upon the thought of a philosopher
whose intellectual development went through as many apparent “shifts”
and phases as Schelling’s. Nevertheless, some brief description of
Schelling’s philosophical itinerary prior to 1804 is called for, beginning
with his first, self-consciously “Fichtean” phase. First of all, there is some
question concerning the extent to which Schelling was ever an orthodox
follower of Fichte, since important differences between his views and
Fichte’s are apparent even in his earlier writings. In hindsight, anyway,
most scholars would agree with Schelling’s own judgment of 1807, that
“there was certainly a time when I sought to find something higher and
deeper in [Fichte’s] philosophy than I could in fact find there” (7:23).2
Still, the differences are hardly overwhelming, and it is hard to blame the
young Schelling’s contemporaries for initially classifying him as little more
than “the town-crier of the I.”
In retrospect, of course, one can detect the seeds of future development
in Schelling’s reluctance to endorse Fichte’s view of the I as a pure activity
and in his insistence, already apparent in On the I, on talking about the
“being” of the I, and the various “spiritual properties” of the same. As has
already been mentioned, however, the most striking difference between
Schelling and Fichte at this point concerned the status of “nature”—both
within transcendental philosophy itself and as an object of a special
philosophical science.
The growing differences between Schelling and Fichte are even more
apparent in the former’s Philosophical Letters on Dogmatism and
Criticism, in which the system of Spinoza (“dogmatism”) is compared to
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that of Fichte (“criticism”), ostensibly to the advantage of the latter. Even
here, however, it is apparent that Schelling’s deeper interest is not so much
to demonstrate the incommensurability of these rival systems as it is to
find some way of combining Spinoza’s superior grasp of objective reality
with Fichte’s transcendental analysis of subjective freedom.
Another significant difference between Schelling and Fichte, even at this
early date, is hinted at in the former’s casual reference to an “intellectual
intuition of the world” (I:285). Whereas for Fichte, “intellectual intuition”
designated the abstractly conceived “self-positing” of the I, Schelling was
prepared to employ this same term in a much broader sense to designate
an allegedly “higher,” non-sensible type of “direct perception” of objective
reality, so that one could speak of an intellectual intuition of the Not-I as
well as of the I. Understood in this manner, “intellectual intuition” was
transformed into a special “faculty of truth” possessed by at least some
individual human beings. It is this sense of “intellectual intuition” which
attracted the attention of Novalis and Friedrich Schlegel and finally led
Schelling himself to assert that “art is the organ of philosophy.”
Schelling’s dissatisfaction with the purely formal or “negative” concept
of nature defended by Fichte, together with his admiration for Spinoza’s
interpretation of nature as a self-developing whole (natura naturans) soon
led Schelling to make his first truly independent contributions to
philosophy. Initially, this took the form of an effort to supplement
transcendental idealism, which attempts to derive our knowledge of
objects from an initial act of self-positing, with a “philosophy of nature”
or Naturphilosophie that attempts just the opposite: i.e. the derivation of
consciousness from objects. Naturphilosophie begins with nature as “pure
objectivity” and then shows how nature undergoes a process of
unconscious self-development, culminating in the production of the
conditions for its own self-representation, that is, in the, emergence of
mind of spirit. Naturphilosophie thus shows how subjectivity emerges
from pure objectivity. As precedents for this way of viewing nature,
Schelling could refer, not only to Spinoza and Goethe, but also to Kant.
Not only are features of Schelling’s view of nature anticipated in Kant’s
discussion (in the Critique of Judgment) of natural teleology, but Kant had
also attempted (in his Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science) to
develop a “metaphysico-dynamical” theory of matter as an equilibrium of
opposed forces. Indeed, Schelling called explicit attention to the parallels
between Kant’s theory of matter and his own, though he noted that the
“positive elements” in Kant’s theory “remained too subordinate” (5:332).
Rather than viewing nature merely as the “other” of consciousness,
Schelling’s Naturphilosophie seeks to interpret it as an analogon of the
same: to treat nature as “visible spirit” and spirit as “invisible nature”
(2:56). So viewed, nature no longer appears to be the mechanically
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ordered, lifeless realm of the Not-I; instead, it becomes a living, self-
organizing system in its own right, one not of mechanical relations
between material “things,” but of dynamic relations between forces, a
self-developing, organic whole, containing within itself its own end or
purpose: viz., the production of ever higher natural forms, culminating in
mind itself.
In contrast with the approach of the experimental sciences, the method
of Naturphilosophie is fundamentally a priori. It begins with the concept
of the unity of nature (natura naturans) and then deals with the diversity
of the same (natura naturata) by interpreting nature as a system of
opposed forces or “polarities.” The task of Naturpbilosophie or
“speculative physics” is to describe this system, from its highest, self-
organizing principle (“the world soul”) to the various specific oppositions
or “polarities” (e.g. attraction and repulsion, positive and negative forces,
light and darkness), which manifest themselves in ever more complex
levels of organization, referred to by Schelling as “powers” or “potencies”
(Potenzen). At the first level or “power,” nature appears as a system of
independent physical bodies; at the second, it is a realm of dynamic
processes; whereas at the third and highest level it appears as a completely
organic realm, indeed, as a single “organism.” This hierarchical scheme
reflects the teleological character of nature itself, inasmuch as the lower
levels of organization can be adequately “explained” only in terms of the
higher.
Whereas Schelling, in the first edition of his Ideas for a Philosophy of
Nature, still sought to provide something resembling a ‘transcendental
deduction” of the “idea of nature,” he dispensed entirely with such a
derivation in the second edition (1803). In the new System of Identity the
duality between nature and spirit proceeds directly from the point of
“absolute indifference” with which the system begins; and thus the
requisite concept of nature is immediately available for philosophical
analysis.
In fact, the very idea of a Naturphilosophie was based from the start
upon the idea of the “Absolute” (not to be confused with the “absolute I”
of transcendental philosophy), an idea which can be warranted neither on
empirical nor on transcendental grounds. Instead, as in Spinoza and in
Schelling’s own System of Identity, the idea of the Absolute must simply be
asserted as the philosophical starting point. Hence, by 1801 at the latest,
Schelling had come to the clear recognition that the philosophy of nature
is not an autonomous, self-grounded science, but “can proceed from
nothing but a system of identity” (5:116).
As has been emphasized, Schellmg never considered his interest in the
philosophy of nature to be in any way incompatible with his commitment
to transcendental idealism. Instead, he viewed the two as complementary,
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as two sides of the same coin and two branches of a single, more
comprehensive system, which he eventually names the “System of
Identity.” Before commenting upon the latter, however, let us consider a
few of the more distinctive features of Schelling’s own essay into
transcendental philosophy in his System of Transcendental Idealism.
Whereas Naturphilosophie traverses the path from sheer objectivity to
subjectivity, transcendental idealism proceeds in the diametrically opposed
direction: pure subjectivity (self-consciousness) to objectivity (the
necessary positing of the Not-I, or nature). This latter path, of course, was
already blazed by the Wissenschaftslehre, and Schelling’s description of it
resembles Fichte’s in many of its details. Adapting Fichte’s characterization
of transcendental philosophy as a “pragmatic history” of the human mind,
Schelling’s presentation of transcendental idealism takes the form of an
analysis of successive “epochs” of consciousness; hence it moves from
“sensation” to “sensible intuition,” from “intuition” to “reflection,” and
from “reflection” to “willing.” At the same time, Schelling also attempts
to indicate how each of these stages in the transcendental “history” of self-
consciousness is correlated with a specific Potenz of nature itself.
After having derived “willing,” Schelling turns to what is (at least in
comparison with Fichte’s treatments of these topics) a rather perfunctory
account of the “practical” portion of transcendental idealism, that is, to a
deduction of intersubjectivity, the categorical imperative, the system of
moral duties, and finally, the system of rights or laws. An innovation in
Schelling’s account of “natural right” and the just state is his explicit
attention to the temporal, that is to say, historical, evolution of a just
social order. Thus the System of Transcendental Idealism presents us,
almost in passing, with an interpretation of human history as a process of
endless progress toward the full realization of freedom, and thus as a
“continual and gradual self-revelation of the absolute” (3:603). Schelling’s
remarkable suggestion that history bears the same relation to practical
philosophy that nature bears to theoretical philosophy implies that Fichte
overlooked one of the “real sciences” which should constitute a separate
subdivision of any complete transcendental system, viz., philosophy of
history.
By far the most innovative and influential portion of Schelling’s System
of Transcendental Idealism, however, is its concluding section, “Deduction
of the Universal Organ of Philosophy, or, Essentials of the Philosophy of
Art according to Transcendental Idealism.” Here Schelling treats art, not
merely as capable of providing us with an “as if” glimpse of noumenal
reality (Kant), nor as capable of assisting in the transition from the
ordinary to the transcendental standpoint (Fichte), but rather as
accomplishing—albeit in a concrete rather than in an abstract form—the
very task of transcendental idealism. It is precisely within aesthetic
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experience, according to Schelling, that the identity between the subjective
and the objective, what is conscious (freedom) and what is unconscious
(nature), becomes an object to the experiencing I itself. This unity is
present in the art product, the “beauty” of which is explicable only as a
finite display of the infinite. The art product, in turn, can achieve this
synthesis only because of the distinctive character of the activity which
produces it. Artistic production, unlike all other human activities, is
simultaneously free and unfree, conscious and unconscious.
Rather than attempting to explicate further the distinctive character of
artistic production, Schelling simply invokes at this point “the obscure
concept of ‘genius’,” (3:616). Thus he was led by the force of his own
argument to the conclusion that it is here and only here—in the productive
activity of the artistic genius, in the “art product” which results from this
activity, and finally, in the secondary type of “genius” required for genuine
aesthetic appreciation—that the fundamental insight of transcendental
idealism (viz., the identity of the ideal and the real) becomes apparent
within empirical consciousness. This, therefore, is the meaning of the oft-
quoted claim that art is “the only true and eternal organ and document of
philosophy” (3:627), for it is within aesthetic experience—and there
alone—that the philosopher encounters in an objective form that intuition
which allegedly grounds their entire transcendental system. By appealing
to (objective) aesthetic intuition, the transcendental philosopher can
defend him- or herself from the charge that the “intellectual intuition”
with which they begin is nothing but a subjective illusion.
With this typically bold move, Schelling elevated the philosophy of art
or aesthetics into a central position within his overall system. In fact, it
could be argued that the “philosophy of art” outlined by Schelling during
this period (1800–4) should really be viewed as constituting a third, co-
equal branch of his overall System of Identity, one which should take its
rightful place alongside Naturphilosophie and transcendental idealism. If,
as Schelling maintains, art is “a necessary appearance which flows directly
from the Absolute” (5:345), then art, nature, and spirit are merely three
different expressions or manifestations of the underlying reality.
In the years following the publication of the System of Transcendental
Idealism the philosophy of art sketched at the conclusion of that work was
elaborated by Schelling along Platonic (or Neo-platonic) lines. Thus, in his
Bruno, as in his lectures on The Philosophy of Art, he interprets individual
works of art as participating in or reflecting the various divine “Ideas.”
No aspect of Schelling’s philosophy exercised a greater influence upon his
contemporaries than his remarks on art, which fell on fertile ground and
were further developed into what amounted to a religion of art by the
early German romantics. Schelling himself, however, was never guilty of
trying to supplant philosophy with art (even though he may have come
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perilously close to this at the conclusion of his System of Transcendental
Idealism, where he calls for a “new mythology” which will represent the
triumphant return of science to poetry and the synthesis of both). Instead,
he insisted that art and philosophy should be viewed as correlative: art as
the real and philosophy as the ideal reflection of one and the same
absolute reality. What is present to the philosopher as a “subjective
reflection” is present to the artist as an “objective reality”; but for this
very reason the artist, who is inspired by a “genius” he himself does not
clearly comprehend, remains unconscious of the true and “absolute”
nature of his or her object, whereas the philosopher can acquire genuine
“knowledge” of the identity in question. “This is why philosophy, despite
its inner identity with art, remains always and necessarily science—i.e.
ideal—and art remains always and necessarily art—i.e. real” (5:349).
If transcendental idealism traces the path from “the ideal” to “the real”
and Naturphilosophie the path from “the real” to “the ideal,” and if it is
also true that the basic presupposition underlying all true science is “the
essential unity of the unconditionally real and the unconditionally ideal,”
a unity which is identical to “the idea of the Absolute” (5:216), then surely
it behooves the systematic philosopher to make this underlying unity as
explicit as possible. This is precisely the task of Schelling’s “System of
Identity”: to give philosophical substance to his frequently repeated
assurance that transcendental idealism and Naturphilosophie are mutually
complementary. Since this new system recognizes the total
interpenetration of the real and the ideal at every level, Schelling called it
“objective” or “absolute idealism” (5:112). Since it asserts the underlying
identity of mind and nature, as well as of all other experienced differences
(including the philosophical differences between the systems of Spinoza
and Fichte), he also called it the “System of Identity.”
The most distinctive feature of this new system is that it begins with a
bald assertion of the unity of thought and being, that is, with the idea of
the “Absolute” or “reason.” As Schelling explains, “this is the idea of the
Absolute: viz., that in relation to the absolute, the idea is also being, and
thus the absolute is also the first presupposition of knowing and is itself
the first knowledge” (5:216). Consequently, it is futile to demand any sort
of philosophical deduction of or justification for the idea of Absolute
Identity. Instead, the unity expressed by this idea must simply be
presupposed.
The System of Identity commences not with the transcendental idealist’s
principle of self-identity, but with the still broader principle of identity as
such, an identity which transcends and comprises every conceivable
difference (hence Schelling’s description of his own starting point as the
“point of indifference”). To express this bare logical idea of an identity
underlying every difference, Schelling utilized the abstract formula “A=A,”
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which he consequently characterized as expressing “the supreme law of
reason.” From this undifferentiated or “indifferent” starting point, he then
proceeded to a description (albeit a remarkably abstract one) of reality as
a whole, considered as a differentiated system within which unity is
maintained by various synthetic relationships, such as substance and
attribute, cause and effect, attraction and repulsion, etc. As in his
philosophy of nature, Schelling’s System of Identity utilizes the notion of
various hierarchically related Potenzen as its basic organizing principle.
For since, as Schelling notes, there is only one absolute and identical
reality, it follows that “diversity among things is possible only to the
extent that the undivided whole is posited under various determinations
[or ‘powers’]” (5:366).
It must be confessed that, for all of Schelling’s dialectical ingenuity, the
details of his exposition of this system remain extraordinarily obscure.
Though this is especially true of his attempts at a systematic presentation
modeled on Spinoza’s Ethics (e.g. in the Presentation of my System of
Philosophy), it is also true of the “conversational” presentation contained
in the dialogue Bruno, as well as of the informal exposition contained in
the first of his lectures On University Studies. However, few critics of
Schelling’s System of Identity even bother to examine the details of his
exposition and most limit themselves to pointing out the alleged emptiness
or incoherence of the first principle of the same. Generations of students
and scholars have been content to echo Hegel’s famous characterization of
Schelling’s Absolute as “the night in which all cows are black.”
However, even if one overlooks the difficulty of grasping its abstract
starting point, the System of Identity still suffers from an even more
serious problem, viz., its inability to give an adequate explanation of the
why and the how of the initial movement from the point of indifference or
identity to a (real) system of differentiated elements. The difficulty in
question concerns the relationship between the “indifferent absolute” and
everything else (and indeed, the very intelligibility of positing anything
“else” beyond or outside of the “Absolute”). How, precisely, is one to
understand the transition, demanded by this philosophy, from unity to
difference, from the one to the many, from the eternal to the temporal,
from the infinite to the finite, from the abstract to the concrete, from form
to content, etc.? Schelling himself was clearly dissatisfied with his own
solution to these questions, though not with the questions themselves;
indeed, they may be said to have set the agenda for his entire subsequent
philosophical development.
The more one reflects upon the problem of the transition from the
Absolute to its finite manifestations, the easier it is to see why, in the
period immediately after his departure from Jena, Schelling was
increasingly attracted to various forms of Platonism and Neo-platonism
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and was particularly fascinated by the works of Bruno and Boehme; for all
of these preceding philosophies explicitly address the question of how the
finite can be said to “proceed from” the infinite. Furthermore, all of them
tend to interpret the former merely as an “appearance of” or “way of
looking at” the latter—albeit a necessary one.
Ultimately, Schelling seems to have acknowledged the intractability of
this problem, at least within the framework of his earlier philosophy.
Indeed, beginning with his Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of
Human Freedom, all of his later works may be seen as attempts to resolve
this very problem, and to do so by moving from a purely abstract or
formal philosophy of logical relations—a “negative” philosophy incapable
of addressing questions of “existence”—to a “positive” philosophy, better
able to open itself to the mystery of existence.
If Fichte’s philosophy may be called a “philosophy of striving,”
Schelling’s may be characterized as a philosophy of speculative salvation,
inspired, above all, by a deep longing to restore a presumably lost unity or
harmony. This longing is expressed in the profoundly “metaphysical”
character of all of Schelling’s writings, including his earliest ones. As early
as 1795, he characterized philosophy’s task as “solving the problem of the
existence of the world” (I:314), a formulation which certainly betrays a
radically different spirit from that expressed in Fichte’s description of
philosophy’s task as “explaining the origin of representations
accompanied by a feeling of necessity,” though not inconsistent with it.
It is quite in keeping with this difference that Schelling should have
soon discarded the strictly transcendental approach to philosophy and
should have transformed his system into a doctrine of the Absolute, for
only such a doctrine is capable of addressing the “riddle of existence.” A
genuinely Critical or transcendental philosophy, in contrast, while not
denying the presence of such a “riddle” within human life, also
acknowledges philosophy’s utter inability to solve it.
But the differences between Schelling and Fichte extend beyond their
disagreement concerning the limits of philosophy, and include—if indeed
they are not based upon—a disagreement concerning the very aim of
human life. In Fichte’s view, consciousness is necessarily divided against
itself and the world; freedom is expressed through practical striving; and
harmonious self-identity remains an unobtainable ideal. For Schelling, on
the other hand, unity is always present, however obscured by appearances;
all that prevents us from acknowledging this, and thereby obtaining a kind
of salvation, is our lack of knowledge.
Moreover, according to Schelling, philosophy itself—that is, a
misguided philosophy of “mere reflection”—is largely responsible for our
present, torn condition, our separation from nature and from our own
true selves. We suffer from a “spiritual sickness”; we long for restoration
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of a “lost unity.” But the way to recover our health and restore this unity
is not to reject philosophy, but to replace a shallow and false philosophy
with a profound and true one: “to abolish the split at a higher power by
means of speculation” (5:121).
In the end, there is no better way to characterize the “presiding spirit”
of Schelling’s thought than to contrast it with that of Fichte’s, and this
contrast is nowhere better expressed than by Schelling himself, in his
first lecture On University Studies, where he wrote, in a transparent
allusion to Fichte: “‘Action! Action!’ is the call that resounds from many
quarters, most loudly however from those who do not wish to proceed
with knowledge” (5:452) Though Schelling undoubtedly included
himself among the ranks of the latter, he never considered knowledge to
be an end in itself, but only a means: a means for overcoming our
divided selves, a means toward salvation. It is no accident that, whereas
Fichte’s most original philosophical contributions were to ethics and
social philosophy, Schelling’s were to the philosophy of art and
philosophy of religion.
THE LATER PHILOSOPHIES OF FICHTE
AND SCHELLING
Even the most casual reader must be struck by the obvious superficial
differences between the many versions of the Wissenschaftslehre Fichte
wrote after 1800 and the two presentations of the “foundations” of the
same he produced while in Jena. Experts continue to differ among
themselves, however, concerning the depth and significance of the
differences in question, with some arguing for a radical break in Fichte’s
intellectual development after the move to Berlin and others emphasizing
the continuity of his writings and the similarities between the systems of
his Jena and Berlin periods. (Fichte himself never renounced his earlier
writings nor did he emphasize the differences between the various versions
of the Wissenschaftslehre; on the contrary, he tended to describe them
simply as so many different expressions or presentations of one and the
same “spirit.”)
So too in the case of Schelling, though here the differences are, if
anything, even more striking (and of course Schelling himself called
explicit attention to the differences between his earlier, “negative”
philosophy and the “positive” philosophy of his Berlin years).
Nevertheless, there are distinguished scholars who attempt to emphasize
the continuity of Schelling’s intellectual development and scorn the
traditional division of his works into a series of separate “periods.” Still,
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no reader of the Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of Human
Freedom or the posthumously published Berlin lectures on Philosophy of
Mythology and Philosophy of Revelations can fail to note the tremen-dous
difference between these works and the writings of Schelling’s Jena period.
Moreover, even those scholars who acknowledge the fundamental
differences between Fichte’s earlier and later works, or between Schelling’s
earlier and later writings, disagree concerning the causes or reasons for
these differences. Whereas some emphasize the role of “external” factors
(such as, in the case of Fichte, the atheism controversy, the dispute with
Jacobi, and the French occupation of Prussia, or, in the case of Schelling,
the influence of figures such as Franz von Baader, Schelling’s resentment at
the successes of his contemporaries, and the general reactionary mood
which engulfed Europe in the wake of the Congress of Vienna), others
point to internal, philosophical reasons for the specific changes they
purport to find in Fichte’s and Schelling’s post-Jena writings.
It has been said of Fichte that whereas his earlier thought and writings
belong to the history of philosophy, his later work—with the exception of
such “popular” efforts as The Way toward the Blessed Life and the
Addresses to the German Nation—are of purely biographical interest, and
the same could be said of the works of Schelling’s final period. The point
of such observations, presumably, is to call attention to the greater
influence the early writings of each man had upon the subsequent history
of “German Idealism.” This, of course, is hardly surprising, given the fact
that the most important theoretical writings of both Fichte’s and
Schelling’s later years were not published until years after their deaths.
However, this fact alone should not be allowed to suggest that the later
writings of either are somehow lacking in intrinsic, philosophical merit.
On the contrary, it is precisely the later, posthumously published writings
of both Fichte and Schelling which have received the most concentrated
attention from recent and contemporary scholars.
Large claims have been made on behalf of the later versions of Fichte’s
philosophy, and especially concerning the 1804 Wissenschaftslehre (which
replaces the first principle of the Jena versions—viz., “the I simply posits
itself”—with the lapidary proposition, “there is truth”). So too, far more
attention has been paid in recent decades to Schelling’s post-1803 writings
than to his earlier works. In particular, his 1809 Philosophical Inquiries
into the Nature of Human Freedom has been the subject of studies by such
eminent thinkers as Karl Jaspers, Paul Tillich, and Martin Heidegger, all of
whom agree in interpreting this text as a harbinger of twentieth-century
existentialism. Other scholars have pointed to the lectures Schelling
delivered during his final Berlin years as representing, not merely the
logical conclusion of his own protracted philosophical development, but
the culmination of German Idealism as a whole. Consequently, no well-
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informed contemporary student of either Fichte or Schelling would be
likely to dismiss the later writings of either as lacking in interest or value.
Nevertheless, from the standpoint of a “history of German Idealism” it
remains true that the Jena writings of Fichte and Schelling are the ones
that matter most. They are the ones upon which their contemporary
reputations were largely based, just as they are the writings which most
influenced the immediately subsequent history of philosophy (unlike the
later works, which exercised a negligible influence upon the “history of
German Idealism”). To take a particular case in point, Hegel’s philosophy,
at least in the form in which we are familiar with it, is quite inconceivable
apart from Fichte’s Jena Wissenschaftslehre and Schelling’s
Naturphilosophie and System of Identity.
Hence there is some justification in the present context for ignoring the
later published and unpublished writings of Fichte and Schelling. This,
however, should not be taken as an implicit judgment upon the relative
philosophical worth of the earlier and later writings of either Fichte or
Schelling, nor is it meant as an endorsement of Hegel’s self-serving
interpretation of the philosophical merits of Fichte and Schelling, whom
he tended to treat as little more than stepping stones toward his own
version of speculative idealism. On the contrary, one must strenuously
guard against such an interpretation, even if limited to the Jena writings of
Fichte and Schelling. To interpret these solely in the light of their reception
and critique by Hegel and others is to distort and to misunderstand them,
a misunderstanding not unlike the one which would be involved if one
were to read Plato merely as forerunner of Aristotle, or Descartes simply
as a step along the path to Spinoza.
Quite apart from its historical influence, Fichte’s Jena
Wissenschaftslehre stands on its own as a unique and enduring, albeit
widely misunderstood, contribution to philosophy, and the same can be
said of Schilling’s System of Transcendental Idealism, as well as of his
various attempts to construct a “philosophy of nature” and to articulate
his “System of Identity.” Nobody today interprets Kant’s Critiques
merely as an “influence” upon the development of Hegelianism, even
though they manifestly were such. So too, it is high time that the early
writings of Fichte and Schelling be accorded the same intellectual
courtesy—that is, the courtesy of being allowed to stand or to fall on
their own merits.
NOTES
1 Fichte’s writings and letters are cited, by series, volume, and page number,
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according to the text of the (still incomplete) new critical edition: J.G.Fichte:
Gesamtausgabe der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 24 vols (to
date) ed. R.Lauth et al. (Stuggart and Bad Cannstatt: Frommann, 1964–. All
English translations are by the author (though Fichte’s italics have not always
been retained).
2 Schelling’s writings are cited, by volume and page number, according to the
first collected edition, edited by his son, F.K.A.Schelling: Friedrich Wilhelm
Joseph von Schellings sämmtliche Werke, 14 vols (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1856–61).
Translations are by the author.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ficbte
Original language editions
5.1 J.G.Fichte: Gesamtausgabe der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften,
24 vols (to date), ed. R.Lauth, H.Jacobs, and H.Gliwitzky, Stuttgart
and Bad Cannstatt: Frommann, 1964–.
5.2 Johann Gottlieb Fichtes nachgelassene Werke, 3 vols, ed. I.H.Fichte, Bonn:
Adolph-Marcus, 1834–5.
5.3 Johann Gottlieb Fichtes sämmtliche Werke, 8 vols, ed. I.H.Fichte, Berlin:
Veit, 1845–6.
English translations
5.4 Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation (1792, 1793), trans. G.Green, New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1978.
5.5 Fichte: Early Philosophical Writings, trans. and ed. D.Breazeale, Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1988.
5.6 Fichte: Science of Knowledge (Wissenschaftslehre),trans. P.Heath and
J.Lachs, New York, Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1970; 2nd edn,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
5.7 Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy (Wissenschaftslehre) nova
methodo (1796–9), trans. and ed. D.Breazeale, Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1992.
5.8 “On the Foundation of our Belief in a Divine Government of the Universe”
(1798), trans. P.Edwards, in P.L.Gardiner (ed.) Nineteenth Century
Philosophy, New York: Free Press, 1969.
5.9 The Vocation of Man (1800), trans. P.Preuss, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987.
5.10 “A Crystal Clear Report to the General Public Concerning the
Actual Essence of the Newest Philosophy: An Attempt to Force the
Reader to Understand” (1801), trans. J.Botterman and W.Rash, in
E.Behler (ed.) Philosophy of German Idealism, New York:
Continuum, 1987.
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THE AGE OF GERMAN IDEALISM
5.11 The Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, trans. W.Smith, 2 vols,
London: Chapman, 1848–9; 4th edn, 1889.
5.12 Addresses to the German Nation (1808), trans. R.F.Jones and G.H.Turnbull,
ed. G.A.Kelly, New York: Harper & Row, 1968.
5.13 “The Science of Knowledge in its General Outline” (1810), trans.
W.E.Wright, Idealistic Studies, 6 (1976): 106–17.
Bibliography
5.14 Baumgartner, H.M. and Jacobs, W.G. J.G.Fichte: Bibliographie, Stuttgart
and Bad Cannstatt: Frommann, 1968.
5.15 Breazeale, D. “Fichte in English: A Complete Bibliography,” in D.Breazeale
and T.Rockmore (eds) Fichte: Historical Context and Contemporary
Controversies, Atlantic City: Humanities Press, 1993.
5.16 Doré, S. et al. “J.G.Fichte—Bibliographie (1968–1991),” Fichte-Studien, 4
(1992).
Influences and development
5.17 Baumanns, P. Fichtes ursprüngliches System. Sein Standort zwischen Kant
und Hegel, Stuttgart and Bad Cannstatt: Frommann, 1972.
5.18 Gueroult, M. L’Evolution et la structure de la doctrine de la science chez
Fichte, 2 vols, Paris: Société de l’édition, 1930.
5.19 Wundt, M. Fichte-Forschungen, Stuttgart: Frommann, 1929.
General surveys
5.20 Adamson, R. Fichte, Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1881.
5.21 Baumanns, P. Fichte, Freiburg: Alber, 1990.
5.22 Jacobs, W.G. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Reinbeck bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1984.
5.23 Léon, X. Fichte et son temps, 3 vols, Paris: Armand Colin, 1922–7.
5.24 Philonenko, A. L’Oeuvre de Fichte, Paris: Vrin, 1984.
5.25 Rohs, P. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Munich: Beck, 1991.
5.26 Widmann, J. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Berlin: de Gruyter, 1982.
Interpretations of the Jena Wissenschaftslehre
5.27 Everett, C.C. Fichte’s Science of Knowledge: A Critical Exposition, Chicago:
Griggs, 1884.
5.28 Hohler, T.P. Imagination and Reflection: Intersubjectivity. Fichte’s Grundlage
of 1794, The Hague: Nijhoff, 1982.
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FICHTE AND SCHELLING: THE JENA PERIOD
5.29 Pareyson, L. Fichte: Il sistema della libertà, 2nd edn, Milan: Mursia, 1976.
5.30 Philonenko, A. La Liberté humaine dans la philosophie de Fichte, 2nd edn,
Paris: Vrin, 1980.
5.31 Talbot, E.B. The Fundamental Principle of Fichte’s Philosophy, New York:
Macmillan, 1906.
Studies of the post-Jena Wissenschaftslehre
5.32 Brüggen, M. Fichtes Wissenschaftslehre. Das System in den seit 1801/02
enstandenen Fassungen,Hamburg: Meiner, 1979.
5.33 Widmann, J. Der Grundstrukture des transzendentalen Wissens nach
J.G.Fichtes Wissenschaftslehre 18042, Hamburg: Meiner, 1977.
Specific topics
5.34 Engelbrecht, H.C. Johann Gottlieb Fichte: A Study of his Political Writings,
with Special Reference to his Nationalism, New York: Columbia
University Press, 1933.
5.35 Henrich, D. Fichtes ursprüngliche Einsicht, Frankfurt/Main: Klostermann,
1967; trans. D. Lachterman, “Fichte’s Original Insight,”
Contemporary German Philosophy, 1 (1982): 15–52.
5.36 Lauth, R. Die transzendentale Naturlehre Fichtes nach den Prinztpien der
Wissenschaftslehre, Hamburg: Meiner, 1984.
5.37 Neuhouser, F. Fichte’s Theory of Subjectivity, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1990.
5.38 Renaut, A. Le Système du droit: Philosophie et droit dans la pensée de
Fichte, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1986.
5.39 Rockmore, T. Fichte, Marx, and the German Philosophical Tradition,
Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1980.
5.40 Stolzenberg, J. Fichtes Begriff der intellektuellen Anschauung, Stuttgart:
KlettCotta, 1986.
5.41 Williams, R.R. Recognition: Fichte and Hegel on the Other, Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1992.
Recent collections and special issues of journals
5.42 Breazeale, D., and Rockmore, T. (eds) Fichte: Historical Context and
Contemporary Controversies, Atlantic City: Humanities Press, 1993.
5.43 Hammacher, K. (ed.) Der transcendentale Gedanke. Die gegenwärtige
Darstellung der Philosophie Fichtes: Hamburg, Meiner, 1981.
5.44 Idealistic Studies, 6, 2 (1979).
5.45 Philosophical Forum, 19, 2 and 3 (1988).
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Schelling
Original language editions
5.46 Schellings Werke, 12 vols, ed. M.Schröter, Munich: Beck/Oldenbourg,
1927–54.
5.47 Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schellings sämmtliche Werke, 14 vols, ed.
F.K.A.Schelling, Stuttgart: Cotta, 1856–61.
English translations
5.48 The Unconditional in Human Knowledge: Four Early Essays (1794–1796),
trans. F.Marti, Lewisburg, Pa: Bucknell University Press, 1980.
5.49 Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature (1797), trans. E.E.Harris and P.Heath,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
5.50 System of Transcendental Idealism (1800), trans. P.Heath, Charlottesville:
University Press of Virginia, 1978.
5.51 Bruno, or On the Natural and the Divine Principle of Things (1802), trans.
and ed. M.G.Vater, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984.
5.52 On University Studies (1803), trans. E.S.Morgan and N.Guterman, Athens:
Ohio University Press, 1966.
5.53 “Of the Relationship of the Philosophy of Nature to Philosophy in General”
(1802), trans. and ed. G.di Giovanni and H.S.Harris, in Between Kant
and Hegel: Texts in the Development of Post-Kantian Idealism,
Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985.
5.54 The Philosophy of Art (1801, 1804), trans. and ed. D.W.Stott, Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1989.
5.55 “Concerning the Relation of the Plastic Arts to Nature” (1807), trans.
M.Bullock, in H.Read The True Voice of Feeling: Studies in English
Romantic Poetry, New York: Pantheon, 1953.
5.56`Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom (1809), trans.
J.Gutmann, Chicago: Open Court, 1936.
5.57 Ages of the World (1813), trans. F.D.Bolmon, New York: AMS Press, 1942.
5.58 Schellings Treatise on the Deities of Samothrace (1815), trans. R.F.Brown,
Missoula, Mont.: Scholars’ Press, 1976.
5.59 “On the Source of Eternal Truths” (1850), trans. E.A.Beach, Owl of
Minerva, 22 (1990): 55–67.
Bibliographies
5.60 Sandkühler, H.J. Friedrich Joseph Schelling, Stuttgart: Metzler, 1970.
5.61 Schneeberger, G. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling. Eine Bibliographie,
Bern: Francke, 1954.
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Influences and development
5.62 Benz, E. Schelling: Werden und Wirken seines Denken, Zurich: Rein, 1955.
5.63 Frank, M., and Kurz, G. (eds) Materialen zu Schellings philosophischen
Anfangen, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1975.
5.64 Görland, I. Die Entwicklung der Frühphilosophie Schellings in der
Auseinandersetzung mit Fichte, Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1973.
5.65 Lauth, R. Die Entstehung von Schellings Identitätsphilosophie in der
Auseinandersetzung mit Fichtes Wissenschaftslehre, 1795–1801,
Freiburg: Alber,
General surveys
5.66 Jaspers, K. Schelling: Grösse und Verängnis, Munich: Piper, 1955.
5.67 Marquet, J.-F. Liberté et existence: étude sur la formation de la philosophie
de Schelling, Paris: Gallimard, 1973.
5.68 Tielette, X. Schelling: Une philosophie en deviner, 2 vols, Paris: Vrin, 1970.
5.69 White, A. Schelling: An Introduction to the System of Human Freedom, New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1983.
5.70 Zeltner, H. Schelling, Stuttgart: Frommann, 1954.
Schelling’s earlier philosophy (1794–1808)
5.71 Esposito, J.L. Schelling’s Idealism and Philosophy of Nature, Lewisburg, Pa:
Bucknell University Press, 1977.
5.72 Meier, F. Die Idee der Transzendentalphliosophie beim jungen Schelling,
Winterthur: Keller, 1961.
5.73 Watson, J. Schelling’s Transcendental Idealism: A Critical Exposition,
Chicago: Griggs, 1882.
Schelling’s later philosophy (1809–54)
5.74 Brown, R.F. The Later Philosophy of Schelling: The Influence of Boehme
on the Works of 1809–1815, Lewisburg, Pa: Bucknell University
Press, 1977.
5.75 Fuhrmans, H. Schellings letzte Philosophie: Die negative und positive
Philosophie im Einsatz des Spätidealismus, Berlin: Junker und
Dünnhaupt, 1940.
5.76 Heidegger, M. Schelling’s Treatise on the Essence of Han Freedom, trans
J.Stambaugh, Athens: Ohio Univesity Press, 1985.
5.77 Holz, H. Spekulation und Faktizität. Zum Freiheitsbegriff des mittleren und
späten Schelling, Bonn: Bouvier, 1970.
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5.78 Schulz, W. Die Vollendung des deutschen Idealismus in der Spätphilosophie
Schellings, 2nd edn, Pfullingen: Neske, 1975.
Specific topics
5.79 Gibelin, J. L’Esthetique de Schelling, Paris: Vrin, 1934.
5.80 Haynes, P.C. Reason and Existence: Schelling’s Philosophy of History,
Leiden: Brill, 1967.
5.81 Knittermeyer, H. Schelling und die romantische Schule, Munich: Reinhardt,
1929.
5.82 Tillich, P. The Construction of the History of Religion in Schelling’s Positive
Philosophy: Its Presuppositions and Principles, trans. V.Nuovo,
Lewisburg, Pa: Bucknell University Press, 1974.
Recent collections and special issues of journals
5.83 Archives de philosophie, 38, 3 (1975).
5.84 Baumgartner, H.M. (ed.) Schelling: Einführung in seine Philosophie,
Freiburg: Alber, 1975.
5.85 Les Etudes philosophiques, 2 (1974).
5.86 Idealistic Studies, 19, 3 (1989).
5.87 Koktanek, A.M. (ed.) Schelling-Studien, Munich: Oldenbourg, 1965.
5.88 Studia Philosophica, 14 (1954).
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CHAPTER 6
Hegel’s Phenomenology of
Spirit
Robert C.Solomon
G.W.F.Hegel (1770–1831) was the greatest systematic philosopher of the
nineteenth century. As a young man he followed and was (at least at first)
enthusiastic about the French Revolution. Then came the Reign of Terror
of 1793, and Hegel, like many early followers of the revolution, had
second thoughts. With the new century came Napoleon. Hegel and all of
Germany watched with mixed fascination, anticipation, and anxiety as
Napoleon began his political and military campaign eastward, forming
alliances with many of the tiny principalities and city-states of Germany,
threatening and swallowing others. By 1806, Napoleon was at the height
of his powers, and in the battle of Jena in October of that year, he put an
end to the 800-year-old Holy Roman Empire. The international success of
French revolutionary liberalism impressed Hegel, who was then teaching
at the University of Jena. The battle also put him out of a job. But in the
wake of Napoleon Hegel envisioned the birth of a new world, and he
announced in the Preface of the book he was completing, albeit in rather
ponderous philosophical terms, the ultimate liberation and final
unification of the human spirit. The book was called The Phenomenology
of Spirit. Its influence in philosophy would be as profound and as
enduring as Napoleon’s bold ventures in European history, in terms of
both its positive impact and the reactions it engendered. It is Kant,
perhaps, whose “Copernican revolution” is usually compared to the
upheaval in France, but it is Hegel who deserves credit for consolidating
and spreading that revolution. If Heine could compare Kant to
Robespierre, then Hegel, with comparable philosophical hyperbole,
deserves comparison to Napoleon.1
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Hegel began studying and writing philosophy soon after Kant had
redefined the philosophical world, and just as Europe was entering the
turbulent new century. As a young man, Hegel was educated in the
Tübingen seminary but seemed to have little religious ambition or
theological talent. In fact, his first philosophical essays were somewhat
blasphemous attacks on Christianity, including a piece on “The Life of
Jesus” which went out of its way to make Jesus into an ordinary moralist,
who in his Sermon on the Mount espoused Kant’s categorical imperative.2
As a student, however, Hegel entertained the idea of inventing a new
religion that stressed our unity with nature, a “synthesis of nature and
spirit” drawn from the ancient Greeks and crudely formulated with great
poetic flair by Hegel’s college friend and room-mate Friedrich Hølderlin.
Hølderlin was without doubt one of the poetic geniuses of his generation
and a powerful influence on young Hegel. Drawing from not only the
ancient Greeks but the romantic culture that surrounded them, Hølderlin
promulgated a grand metaphor of effusion, cosmic spirit making itself
known to us and to itself throughout all of nature, in human history, and,
most clearly of all, in poetry and the “spiritual sciences.” Their younger
friend Friedrich Schelling had already converted that metaphor into
philosophical currency by 1795, and when Hegel finally decided to turn to
serious philosophy in 1801, it was with the encouragement and
sponsorship of Schelling. He sought and obtained a teaching position, and,
in opposition to the clear polemical tone of his earlier, “anti-theological”
essays, he began to write philosophy in a terse, academic style.3 Hegel
joined Schelling in his bold attempt to forge a new form of philosophy,
following Kant and the radical neo-Kantian Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and
together they published a journal, the Critical Journal of Philosophy. His
first professional essay was a comparison of the philosophies of Fichte and
Schelling, making clear the superiority of the latter.4 For several years,
Hegel was known in the German philosophical world only as a disciple of
Schelling. But then he published his Phenomenology.5
Hegel’s original intentions and initial approach to the Phenomenology
were rather modest and for the most part derivative of earlier efforts by
Fichte and Schelling to “complete Kant’s system.” The idea of a “system”
of philosophy comes from Kant, who aspired to provide a unified and all-
encompassing “science” of philosophy. But according to Fichte and
Schelling and several other philosophers who greatly admired and
emulated Kant, he had not succeeded. He left us instead with a
fragmentary philosophy which, however stunning in its individual parts,
failed to show the unity of human experience. In particular, Kant left a
gaping abyss between his theory of knowledge—in the first Critique, the
Critique of Pure Reason—and his conception of morals in the Critique of
Practical Reason, and so left the human mind as if cleft in two. The third
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Critique was supposed to be a synthesis of the two, but in the opinion of
many of Kant’s closest followers, some of whom preferred the third
Critique above all, that book failed to provide the synthesis required for a
genuine system.6 Moreover, Kant’s conception of the “thing in itself,”
while central to his philosophy and the key to his division between the
phenomenal world of knowledge and the noumenal world of free will,
morality, and religion, was greeted by these post-Kantians as a mistake, a
serious flaw that threatened to undermine the whole critical enterprise.
The idea that there could be any intelligible conception of things as they
are in themselves and not as phenomena—that is, as experienced by us—
left room for the skeptic to’ dig in their wedge with the challenge: How
can we know that we really know anything at all? How can we have true
or “absolute” knowledge—that is, self-reflective knowledge that does not
permit the possibility of skepticism? How does the world of practical
reason tie in with what we know, and vice versa? In his philosophy,
therefore, Hegel would argue against the intelligibility of skepticism,
against the intelligibility of any conception of the “thing in itself” as
distinct from things as we know them, and against the bifurcation of
human experience into incommensurable theoretical and practical realms.
The fact that Hegel expresses this reasonably modest and academically
well-established set of problems and their solution in the language of
“absolute knowing” has understandably led to much misunderstanding
and considerably exaggerated claims on behalf of Hegel’s efforts. What
Hegel was after, however, was a continuation, a correction, and the
“completion” of some of Kant’s key themes, die unity of knowledge, the
unintelligibility of skepticism, the importance of the first-person,
“subjective,” Cartesian, or “phenomenological” standpoint as the origin
of all knowledge, and the a priori necessity of certain forms of
consciousness. It was not a particularly ambitious program, and Kant,
Fichte, and Schelling, among others, had clearly shown the way.7
What emerged in 1807, however, was a book very different from
anything that had been seen in philosophy before. True, the Kantian
themes and the post-Kantian ambitions were still in evidence, and the
book did conclude with a modest chapter entitled “Absolute knowing.”
But in between the introduction and opening chapters, on the one hand, in
which these themes were quickly dispatched, and the brief conclusion, on
the other, in which the post-Kantian ambitions were summarily concluded,
the book grew into something of a beautiful monster. There are chapters
on various Greek philosophies and on various eccentric movements in
ethics, as well as an open attack on Kant’s categorical imperative,
commentaries on contemporary history including the Enlightenment and
the French Revolution, bits of literary criticism, philosophy of science, and
an oddly shaped survey of the world’s religions, all put forward in a barely
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THE AGE OF GERMAN IDEALISM
intelligible abstract neo-Kantian jargon that makes even the Kantian
Critiques read like vacation novels by comparison. The Phenomenology is
not, as originally intended, merely a demonstration of “the Absolute.” It is
a magnificent conceptual odyssey which carries us through the most
elementary conceptions of human awareness to some of the most all-
encompassing and complex forms of consciousness. Its stated purpose is
still to comprehend the truth—the absolute truth—but this should not be
understood as a merely epistemological enterprise. What Hegel comes to
mean by philosophical truth is an all-encompassing vision, and this will
include not only a variety of philosophical theories but much material
from religion, ethics, and history as well.8
THE SPIRIT OF THE PHENOMENOLOGY
The fact that Hegel so obviously followed in Kant’s great footsteps too
easily misleads us into thinking that Hegel, supposedly like Kant, was just
another academic philosophy professor, worried about abstruse and
abstract problems that an ordinary person would neither comprehend nor
care about.9 The truth is, of course, that this picture is unfair to Kant, and
it is mistaken about Hegel as well. Kant was moved in philosophy not only
by David Hume, who famously awakened him from his dogmatic
Leibnizian slumbers, but by his religious piety, his firm moral convictions,
and his enthusiasm for Newtonian science. He was troubled by the
conflict between science and religion, and he was deeply interested in such
speculative questions as the meaning of life as well as the basic Socratic
question of what it meant to be a genuinely good human being. To read
Kant merely as the answer to skepticism or the grand synthesis of the
warring schools of rationalism and empiricism is to miss what is most
important and exciting about him. So, too, to see Hegel as the
continuation or “completion” of Kant is to deny what is most fascinating
about his philosophy. And to read the Phenomenology as if it were only a
wordy and difficult introduction to the mature “system” that followed is
to miss what is most important and exciting about that book. For the
“spirit” of the Phenomenology is nothing less than an all-embracing
conception of the world, an attempt at synthesis, yes, but nothing so
meager as a mere collaboration between (as Schopenhauer called them)
“irritated professors.”
In the Tübingen seminary or Stift, Hegel, Schelling, and Hølderlin had
dreamed of a new religion.10 They despised much of their theological
training, dismissing it with those familiar vulgarities with which students
have always dismissed the dogmatic studies they were forced to mouth
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and respect in the classroom.11 They had deep misgivings about German
culture as well, torn between the cosmopolitan clarity and free-thinking of
the French and British Enlightenment (represented in Germany by Kant)
and the romantic nationalism mixed with mysticism that marked the
German romantic reaction to the Enlightenment.12 The Enlightenment
seemed to many Germans to be vulgar, overly concerned with economics,
and contemptuous of religion and the “spiritual” aspects of social life.13
And yet the promises of the Enlightenment seemed so attractive, and the
dead weight of feudalism, Lutheran theology, and the medieval church, by
comparison, seemed to have philosophy as well as German life pinned
down in a decidedly most unenlightened past. Reconciling the
cosmopolitan demands of the Enlightenment and their regional pride and
piety seemed essential to the young Germans, and the events across the
French border made these conflicts very real and very urgent. In the years
between his graduation from the seminary and his first university post,
Hegel wrote his early essays on the nature of religion.14 Most of them were
hostile to Christianity and held up the spiritual life and the “folk religion”
of the ancient Greeks as an attractive alternative.15 Hegel’s early essays
were often sarcastic, sometimes clumsy attempts to revise and reconcile
Christianity with Greek folk religion, insisting on a “natural” religion
rather than one based on authority, and a “subjective” religion—a religion
of ritual and social participation—rather than the “objective” religion
taught by theology.16 Religions, Hegel surmised, are and ought to be
particular to particular people and a particular time, part of the life of a
people and not merely abstract beliefs with no practical manifestations.17
And yet, it makes sense to speak of “religion” in general, and of certain
universal features that all religions and all people share in common.18
Hegel here is an evident disciple of Kant. In his Critique of Practical
Reason and his Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, Kant had
insisted on the rational defense of religion and the bond between morality
and Christianity.19 Hegel does find much to criticize in Christian morality,
in particular its unworkability in large groups and whole societies. He
finds much to criticize in Kant too, notably Kant’s neglect of local custom
in ethics in favor of universal categorical principles, but he makes it clear
nevertheless, in straightforward Kantian terms, that “the aim and essence
of all true religion, and our religion included, is human morality.”20 To this
end, Hegel tries to revise Christianity as a folk religion concerned first of
all with the cultivation of morality, culminating in his awkward but
amusing attempt to have Jesus preach the categorical imperative.21 But as
these early unpublished efforts deepen in their thought and their
sophistication, Hegel drops much of his hostility and begins to suggest
that in all religions one can discern a kind of necessary development of the
human spirit.22 He begins to focus not just on the failings of Christianity
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but rather on its internal contradictions, “disharmonies,” or “alienations”
(Entfremdungen).23 He finds fault with the idea that God and man are
separate and distinct, in which God is infinitely superior and we are mere
“slaves.”24 He also finds fault with the distinctions between and
separation of reason and the passions, theology and faith, theory and
practice. And here we find the seeds of two of the most dramatic and
central themes of the Phenomenology, the grand conception of Spirit or
Geist as immanent God incorporating us all, and the all-important place
of local customs and affections in ethics. Like so many other thinkers and
poets in Germany of the time, Hegel found his inspiration and alternative
visions in the fascinating life of the early Greeks. But with the close of the
century and the French Revolution in tatters, with German culture in
ascendancy and his young friend Schelling already engaged in a very
contemporary philosophy that would change the way we think about
ourselves, Hegel abandoned his nostalgic posture and moved into the
moment. For what he saw happening was just what his youthful essays
had been suggesting to him. The world was filled with contradictions and
disharmony, but philosophy would make a difference. Only a few years
later, ending his lectures at Jena in 1806, the manuscript of the
Phenomenology in hand, Hegel announced to his classes:
We find ourselves in an important epoch, in a fermentation, in which
Spirit has made a great leap forward, has gone beyond its previous
concrete form and acquired a new one…. A new emergence of Spirit
is at hand; philosophy must be the first to hail its appearance and
recognize it.25
The concept of Spirit or Geist is clearly the key to Hegel’s philosophy. It is
important not to translate “Geist” as “mind,” as some early translators
have done, not because it is literally incorrect but because it is extremely
misleading. “Spirit” has a religious significance which is missing from
“mind,” and, more important, “spirit” suggests something larger about a
person while “mind” suggests something merely internal and private. We
typically speak of the spirit of a group or a nation and “team spirit” as a
way of indicating unity and fellow-feeling, and we may also note that
“spirit” thus indicates passion, whereas “mind” suggests rather only
thoughts and intelligence—not, we should quickly add, that the two are or
need be opposed. But what Hegel has in mind by Spirit is nothing less than
the ultimate unity of the whole of humanity, and of humanity and the
world. It is the concept in which he seeks to synthesize or at least embrace
the various contradictions and disharmonies of religion and morality and
reconcile humanity and nature, science and religion. Hegel rarely talks
about God, but it is quite clear as we trace our way through the labyrinth
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of the Phenomenology that it is God, God as Spirit, who is our subject and
who is our guide. Not a God within, and certainly not a transcendent God
without, but the God who ultimately we are emerges from its pages. Thus
Hegel’s work has often been touted as a “theodicy,” an account of God’s
revelation on earth, and Heinrich Heine, one of Hegel’s less pious
students, ironically commented: “I was young and proud, and it pleased
my vanity when I learned from Hegel that it was not the dear God who
lived in heaven that was my God, as my grandmother supposed, but I
myself here on earth.”26
What makes Heine’s comment so outrageous, of course, is his mocking
usurpation of the role of God himself, but what is essential to Hegel’s
concept of Spirit is precisely the loss of individuality and the gain in
comprehension that it requires. The realization of Spirit is not the
recognition that I am myself God but that we are all God, that Spirit
pervades and defines all of us. In this, Hegel’s notion is much like
Spinoza’s pantheism, the realization that we are all one, a claim repeated
by Schelling and criticized brutally by Hegel in his Preface with the
sarcastic comment “the night in which all cows are black.”27 What Hegel
is getting at is the necessity to demonstrate his thesis through reason and
by way of a lengthy demonstration of its necessity, not by way of mystical
experience or dogmatic insistence. And that is what the Phenomenology
does or tries to do, to demonstrate by actually guiding us through the
emergence of Spirit from its various individualistic guises to the
recognition of the necessity of larger, more comprehensive forms.
One can understand here the political as well as ontological imagery
which pervades Hegel’s philosophy. Hegel is not an individualist. In the
Phenomenology he comments that much less should be thought of and
expected of the individual, and in his later Philosophy of History he
famously tells us that even the greatest individuals follow unwittingly “the
cunning of reason” and find themselves pawns in the hands of a larger
fate, a dramatic idea that is embodied in flesh and blood by Tolstoy in his
later account of Napoleon’s Russian campaign in War and Peace. One can
imagine Hegel envisioning the great battles of that war, in which hundreds
of thousands of undifferentiated “individuals” in identical uniforms
moved in waves and slaughtered one another for the sake of larger and
dimly understood ideas and loyalties. So viewed, the individual does
indeed count for very little, and it is the larger movement of humankind
that comes into focus instead. And yet, Hegel is no fascist—whatever ideas
or inspiration Mussolini and his kind may have drawn from him. Hegel
insists on this larger view of human history but nevertheless insists
throughout his work that the ultimate aim and result of that history has
been human freedom and respect for the individual. But it is the individual
as an aspect of Spirit that impresses us, not the ontologically isolated and
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autonomous individual of Hegel’s liberal predecessors, notably Kant.
There is a more philosophically profound way of making this point,
which makes much more sense of the imagery of Spirit than the usual
quasi-mystical accounts. Among the many borrowings of Hegel from Kant
was the basic orientation of his philosophy, variously described as
“subjective” or “Cartesian” or “phenomenological,” although all of these
characterizations have the potential to be misleading. (For example, both
Kant and Hegel found much to criticize in Descartes, so the “Cartesian”
designation has to be much qualified.) This orientation, common to the
empiricists as well as most other modern philosophers, might simply be
described as “the first-person standpoint,” or the attempt to understand
the world beginning with one’s own experience. Thus the familiar
questions, entertained by Descartes, Locke, Hume, and Kant, such as:
How do I know that the world conforms to my experiences? Although
Hegel will reject this question, as did Kant, they share this
phenomenological approach to philosophy and the world in terms of one’s
own experiences. But, we must ask, whose experiences? Are they the
isolated and perhaps eccentric experiences of a single individual? Or are
they in some sense more general and shared? Kant identifies the subject of
all experiences as what he called “the transcendental ego,” distinct from
the merely empirical ego that we normally refer to as the self, a particular
person. The transcendental ego imposes the categories and processes our
sensory intuitions into our experience of the phenomenal world, but—and
this is the crucial point—it does not experience itself through those same
categories. In a famous but somewhat obscure chapter of the Critique of
Pure Reason, Kant argues against the “paralogisms of psychology,” in
which the self or soul is misinterpreted as a “thing,” a potential object of
consciousness. But the self, Kant argues, can never be the object of
consciousness; it is always the subject. And because it is therefore immune
from the application of the various categories of number, substance, and
identity, it cannot be specified as “yours” or “mine,” but remains the
transcendental ego, “consciousness in general.” What lies behind this
technical move, of course, is Kant’s insistence that the forms of experience
cannot be matters of personal idiosyncrasy and must be universal and
necessary. But Hegel rather easily takes the notion of a “consciousness in
general” and converts into a literally general consciousness. That general
consciousness is Spirit, the self that pervades and ultimately embraces
us all.28
The importance of Spirit, however, lies not only in its shared
immanence but in its development. The Phenomenology is, from
beginning to end, the phenomenological account of that development. To
put it in an expanded way, the Phenomenology adds a new dimension to
philosophy, and that is the dimension of history. Not that the
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Phenomenology as such is a historical account—although it contains quite
a few such accounts, some easily recognizable, some not—but the idea
that ideas and movements can be understood only through their
development is a bold conjecture, and one rarely appreciated before Hegel
(and still too rarely). In his later lectures, this insight becomes the
centerpiece of Hegel’s philosophy, as he traces the origins and development
of the various religions, the course of human history, and the evolution of
philosophy itself. Religion, he had recognized toward the end of his early
essays, was not abstract dogma but the expression of certain basic human
needs and tendencies, and these are not to be found whole in any single
religion, nor are they ever entirely absent, but it is in the interplay and
development of religions that the ultimate nature of religion emerges—
eventually, he suggests, in philosophy. Human history, he will later write,
first appears to be a “slaughter-bench,” on which whole nations as well as
millions of individuals are butchered. But to one who “looks with a
rational eye,” Hegel argues, “history in turn presents its rational aspect.”
The history of humanity, brutal as it has been, nevertheless displays an
ineluctable sense of progress and increasing freedom.29 Finally, in
philosophy, Hegel teaches us not to see the history of the subject as merely
competing answers to the same ill-formed questions but rather as a growth
of certain ideas and their importance at certain times into subsequent,
improved ideas that have benefited from the conflicts and confrontations
of the past. The name of this process or confrontation and improvement,
as everyone knows, is dialectic, and we shall have more to say about it
shortly. But the point to be made here is that the form of the
Phenomenology, its complex organization in terms of some sort of
conceptual development, is not just an oddity of Hegel’s authorship but,
perhaps, the most single important feature of the book.
And yet, the Phenomenology is not history, and it is not as such an
empirical study of the development of anything, philosophy, humanity, or
religion. To be sure, various movements in philosophy are traced in more
or less historical order in the first few chapters of the book, and there are
bits of actual history spread through the later sections. But one also notes
with some consternation that the Greeks are discussed after the moderns
and Sophocles after the Stoics, and one would be hard pressed to
formulate a historical interpretation that would account for such
chronological oddities. What the Phenomenology is doing, therefore, is
not tracing the actual order of the development of various “forms of
consciousness” in history but rather ordering them and playing them
against one another in such a way that we see how they fit and how they
conflict and how a more adequate way of thinking may emerge. Dialectic
is not just development but a mode of argument, and the order of the
Phenomenology is not just a demolition derby, a process of elimination
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and the survival of the fittest, but a teleology, a genuine progression from
less adequate ways of thinking to more adequate and more comprehensive
and, finally, to the most comprehensive way of all.
THE PHENOMENOLOGY: PREFACE AND
INTRODUCTION
The Preface to the Phenomenology is one of the best-known,
leastunderstood documents in modern philosophy. Like most prefaces, it
was written after the text as a whole was completed, and what it tries to
do is to describe the point and purpose of the entire monstrous
manuscript. Or, less sympathetically, the Preface is Hegel’s attempt to
force an interpretation on his book that the text itself does not easily
sustain. It is a rambling, convoluted, grandiose monologue punctuated by
some striking passages which do, indeed, give considerable insight into
Hegel’s whole philosophy. It is there that he argues (or insists, at any rate)
that “the truth is the whole,” that it is a process and not merely a result,
and that philosophy must be systematic, scientific, and developmental in
its form. But he also insists that such comments are inappropriate in a
preface and that, in any case, their whole meaning must be demonstrated
in the text, not simply declared beforehand. It is in the actual “working
out” of various one-sided positions and “forms of consciousness” that we
come to understand how truth emerges in philosophy and how that truth
is the history of philosophy itself. One must see ideas and philosophies and
whole stages of history as an organic, developing process. In one of his
most striking metaphors, Hegel writes, only somewhat tongue-in-cheek:
The bud disappears in the bursting-forth of the blossom, and one
might say that the former is refuted by the latter; similarly when the
fruit appears, the blossom is shown up in its turn as a false
manifestation of the plant, and the fruit now emerges as the truth of
it instead. These forms are not just distinguished from one another,
they also supplant one another as mutually incompatible. Yet at the
same time their fluid nature makes them moments of an organic
unity in which they do not only not conflict, but in which each is as
necessary as the other, and this mutual necessity alone constitutes the
life of the whole.
(PG, 2)
Hegel also announces in the Preface and in the wake of Napoleon his
vision of a “birth-time” and the beginning of a new era, and in philosophy
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he announces the emergence of what he calls “the concept” (Begriff), a
holistic comprehension of the world through reason.30 Indeed, philosophy
properly developed should exist wholly in the realm of the concept. But
that philosophy would be more in evidence in the works and lectures that
followed the publication of the Phenomenology rather than in the
Phenomenology itself.31
The Introduction to the Phenomenology, by contrast, is short and
straightforward. It is indeed an introduction. It sets up the standpoint
from which the Phenomenology will proceed. The Introduction begins
where Kant’s first Critique ends, with the rejection of skepticism and a
declaration of transcendental idealism. The history of modern
epistemology from Descartes and Locke through Kant’s grand synthesis is
very much in evidence there, as it will be in the opening chapters of the
Phenomenology. What concerns Hegel in the Introduction is a metaphor,
or rather, a pair of metaphors, whose consequence is skepticism. The irony
is, of course, that the metaphors in question originated with philosophers
who could not tolerate skepticism and sought to lay it to rest once and for
all. The metaphors concern the seemingly contingent relationship between
knowledge and truth. The first and more prominent is the metaphor of
knowledge as a tool, through which we “grasp hold” of the truth. The
second is the metaphor of knowledge as a medium through which the
“light of truth” must pass. Both Locke and Descartes attempted to
examine this tool or medium, and the ultimate result was the skepticism of
David Hume. Kant was “awakened from his dogmatic slumbers” by
Hume but only pursued the metaphor further with his “critique” of reason
and the understanding. Hegel’s argument, simply stated, is that the
metaphor itself is mistaken. Skepticism can be laid to rest, as Kant had
tried and seemingly succeeded in doing, only if the contingency of
knowledge and the metaphors of knowledge as instrument and medium
are rejected from the outset (PG, 73).
In Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, and Berkeley, the distinction between our
knowledge and “the external world” had made way for Hume’s
devastating skepticism. Kant had solved the problem, in the eyes of many
philosophers of the time, by incorporating the external world into the
realm of knowledge itself, constituted by the categories of the
understanding and the forms of intuition. But with Kant’s further
distinction between phenomena and noumena—the world-as-we-know-it
and the world-as-it-is-in-itself—it remains impossible for us to know the
world as it is in itself. Once the distinction is made between the world-for-
us and the world-independent-of-us, there can be no escape from the
conclusion that we can know only the world as it is for us. Hegel’s pursuit
of absolute knowledge begins with the rejection of this distinction.32
In the Introduction to the Phenomenology, Hegel begins his revision of
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Kant’s theory of knowledge by attacking just this distinction, which he
claims is based on unanalyzed and undefended metaphors in which
knowledge is considered a “tool with which one masters the Absolute.” If
knowledge is a tool, there must be a certain necessary distortion due to the
operations of knowledge on reality, and therefore we can never know
reality (the Absolute) itself but only as it has been manipulated and
distorted by the instrument of knowledge. We can, therefore, have only
mediated knowledge of the Absolute, and never know the Absolute itself.
This is Kant’s problem in the first Critique, and his solution to it is the
critical doctrine that we never know reality independent of the conditions
imposed on it by knowledge. The best that can be done by the philosopher
is an exploration of the nature of this tool of knowledge and the
demonstration of the necessary conditions it imposes on reality. Kant’s
Critique, therefore, abandons the search for absolute reality and simply
investigates the tool by which we come to know reality.
But why should we accept this metaphor? Kant never examines
or defends this metaphorical starting point, and Hegel turns it against
itself:
If the fear of falling into error sets up a mistrust of Science, which in
the absence of such scruples gets on with the work itself and actually
cognizes something, it is hard to see why we should not turn around
and mistrust this very mistrust.
(PG, 74)
By beginning with the investigation of the faculties of knowledge, Kant
has already determined the critical outcome of his first Critique. Once the
distinctions between things as known and things in themselves and
between reality-for-a-subject and absolute reality are introduced, one must
conclude that we cannot have any but conditioned knowledge and that the
demands of traditional metaphysics are utterly impossible. Kant,
according to Hegel, offers no justification for this starting point and, more
importantly, fails to see fatal problems inherent in this approach. First, the
metaphor simply plays on the notions ‘truth’, ‘reality,’ and ‘knowledge,’
and, given Kant’s distinctions, Hegel argues that what he ought to have
concluded was that we can have no knowledge at all, that our cognitive
faculties are such that we can never know the truth. Second, Hegel argues
that one cannot begin by investigating the faculties of knowledge before
one attempts to gain knowledge in philosophy, for the investigation itself
already utilizes these faculties and their concepts. Any such analysis is
covertly circular, and one might as well try, Hegel suggests, to learn to
swim before getting into the water.
Thus Kant, on the basis of the instrument metaphor, distinguishes
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between two different sorts of knowledge, two different kinds of truth.
There is limited or conditional knowledge giving us truth limited by the
conditions of our cognitive faculties, and there is absolute or
unconditioned knowledge of things as they are in themselves which human
consciousness cannot have. But even limited truth is indeed truth only if it
is the way things really are. If it is an unconditioned or a priori truth that
all events must be temporally ordered (for us), then this limited truth is a
truth only if all events really are ordered. If events are not really so
ordered, but rather ordered by us, then this limited truth is a falsehood,
even if it is necessary for us. (Thus Nietzsche will argue that all of our a
priori or necessary truths are such ‘falsehoods.’) Similarly, our conditioned
or limited knowledge is really knowledge only if it is in agreement with
what is really true. If we have conditional knowledge that there exist
objects ‘outside’ us due to the nature of our cognition, this knowledge is
true knowledge only if there truly are such objects. In other words, truth is
Absolute Truth; knowledge is Absolute Knowledge. The ‘real’ world is the
world as it is in itself, whether that is the world of our experience or not.
But what would it mean to even suggest that it is not?
Hegel’s reason for rejecting the dualism between knowledge and reality
is not simply its skeptical conclusions; the preliminary investigation of
knowledge, which is part and parcel of the “knowledge as tool” metaphor,
is logically ill-conceived. Kant argues that philosophy must begin by
examining those faculties which purport to give us knowledge, but with
what do we examine these faculties? The investigation of cognition must
itself be carried out by cognition; thus Kant demands that we examine
reason by using reason, but a preliminary investigation of the tool of
knowledge is already a use of that tool. Hegel agrees with Kant that
philosophy must begin with an investigation of knowledge, but unlike
Kant he recognizes that this investigation cannot be independent of the use
of the faculties of knowledge. Hegel argues that the investigation of
knowledge changes that very knowledge, and that such an investigation
can never be preliminary, but constitutes the whole of philosophical
investigation. The critique of knowledge is the development of knowledge
as well.
Once we appreciate this problem as Hegel perceived it, we are in an
excellent position to understand the necessity for the peculiar dialectical
structure of his work, particularly of the Phenomenology. Knowledge
develops with our conceptual sophistication. This is not to say merely that
as we learn more, our knowledge increases; rather, the kind of knowledge
changes. Specifically, knowledge changes in kind when we turn to focus on
our faculties of knowledge, when we question not so much our knowledge
of the world, but ourselves. For Kant, self-knowledge was either empirical
knowledge of ourselves as phenomenal objects or transcendental
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knowledge which could disclose only the necessary forms of our
consciousness, but, according to Kant, we could not have knowledge of
ourselves in any other sense (e.g. as moral agent or as immortal soul).
Neither could we have knowledge of things-in-themselves. For Hegel,
knowledge of objects and transcendental self-knowledge are but two
stages in the attainment of further kinds of knowledge, knowledge of
oneself and the world as Spirit. The Phenomenology is just the
demonstration and the development of such knowledge, starting with the
lowest forms of knowledge, showing how these are inadequate to other
forms, and culminating in Absolute Truth in which all of the problems,
paradoxes, and inadequacies of the lower forms disappear.
Philosophy, for Hegel, is the demonstration of the ‘becoming’ of
Absolute Knowledge. Such a becoming need not be the pattern of
development of any particular individual consciousness, and the
development of knowledge in the system is not the psychological
development of an individual. For that matter, it does not faithfully appear
in or as the history of philosophy either, although this history is inevitably
a close approximation of the development of Absolute Knowledge and
Spirit. The “forms of consciousness” or forms of knowledge derived in the
Phenomenology lead to Absolute Knowledge, that level of conceptual
development where traditional conceptual (philosophical) problems
disappear, but it is not at all obvious that there is but one route—the way
described in the Phenomenology—from partial or inadequate knowledge
to absolute knowing.33 At the ultimate stage of knowledge, traditional
philosophical dichotomies are eliminated and nature and Spirit find their
place together. The Fichtean antitheses of dogmatism and idealism are
synthesized. The development of Hegel’s system is the “working out” of
these various traditional forms of consciousness and ordering them in a
hierarchy of more sophisticated forms. The purpose of this ordering is to
demonstrate how each level corrects inadequacies of the previous
conceptual level and how it is possible to correct all these inadequacies
once we adopt an all-encompassing vision of the whole rather than limit
ourselves to advocacy of this or that particular position.
CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE DIALECTIC
The Phenomenology is divided into three uneven sections, each
representing one type of ‘form’ or ‘level of consciousness,’ in (more or less)
ascending order of sophistication. The first and shortest section is called
“Consciousness,” which deals with relatively naive epistemological
consciousness. It is a critique, among other things, of the narrowly
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epistemological vision of philosophy that had begun to emerge in the
eighteenth century and which still, regrettably, persists today.34 The second
is called “Self-consciousness” and traces the first crude beginnings of the
awakening of the consciousness of Spirit in its early form of simple
antagonistic recognition of other people and the development of
paradigms of dominance and submission (“master and slave”) as
prototypical forms of self-recognition and awareness. Finally, there is the
long, twisting section on “Reason,” which traces the ultimate
development of a holistic spiritual-rational consciousness from the most
simple sense of community to its penultimate realization of Spirit in art
and religion before its ultimate realization in Hegel’s philosophy.
We can summarize the progression or dialectic of the section on
“Consciousness” in three readily identifiable steps, each of them
corresponding to a family of “common-sense” claims and philosophical
positions. At the beginning is the common-sense notion which Hegel calls
“sense-certainty,” that we simply know, prior to any verbal description or
conceptual understanding, what it is that we experience. Hegel
demonstrates that such a conception of knowledge is woefully inadequate.
He then brings us from this naive realism through a number of theoretical
variations in which can be recognized major insights from Leibniz and
some of the empiricists, which he abbreviates as “Perception,” to the
philosophy of Kant’s first Critique, in which knowledge is demonstrated to
be a form of understanding. In “Understanding,” Hegel also tackles the
question of the thing-in-itself by way of an extended reductio ad
absurdum and, following his opening argument in the Introduction, shows
us the nonsense of supposing that the true world might be different from
the world of our experience.35
The first section of the Phenomenology develops the role of the
understanding in experience, but as an analysis of the entire movement in
modern philosophy including such central problems as the nature of
substance, the necessity of concepts, and the nature of connections
between experiences and the synthesis of objects. In other words, it covers,
in a dialectical way, the subject matter of Kant’s first Critique and the
major epistemological work of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. The stage of
consciousness referred to as “sense-certainty” is “knowledge of the
immediate” (PG, 90; Hegel’s italics). It is “what is presented before us,”
“what is given.” It is “the richest kind of knowledge, of infinite wealth….
It is thought to be pure apprehension without yet any conceptual
comprehension, raw experience, without the need of understanding, the
experience of a passive sensitive receptacle” (PG, 91). But because it
involves no understanding, just a pure knowledge of “This,” the particular
thing in front of me, one might say that this stage is not truly
consciousness or knowledge at all, but merely “knowledge implicit.” This
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is the pure data of the senses which so many philosophers, of this century
as well as the past, have taken to be the indubitable, secure foundation of
human knowledge. It is pure experience, uninterpreted and thus
unadulterated by us in any way. Accordingly, sense-certainty also includes
the claims of many mystics and intuitive philosophers, including, perhaps,
Schelling and Jacobi, who have claimed that the knowledge of the
Absolute is not conceptual or rational but strictly intuitive, a pure
experience, undistorted by human concepts and categories. Traditional
epistemologists have argued that errors in human knowledge, when they
arise, must arise after this level. For on this level, our knowledge is certain
and becomes fallible only when we attempt to conceptualize or to
understand our experiences.
Although this section is among the shortest of the Phenomenology, it
provides us with some vital clues for understanding the nature of Hegel’s
dialectic. Hegel’s argument against this form of ‘knowledge’ as certain
knowledge, or even as knowledge at all, is clear and to the point. Briefly,
Hegel argues that this knowledge, which he describes as a mere “this,
here, now,” is the very opposite of pure, “authentic” knowledge,
knowledge which is complete as opposed to all other knowledge which is
abstract and conditioned. It is really “the most abstract and poorest truth”
(PG, 91). It is what we “mean” only in the sense of pointing (this) and
thus not really meaning at all. It might be said to be reference, perhaps,
but not sense. In fact, it is not even reference. How does one point to a
particular without specifying what it is to which one is pointing? Thus
Hegel concludes that there can be no knowledge without concepts, and the
supposed certainty of sensecertainty seems certain only because it is not
knowledge at all. It is, at best, mere presence. The infallibility of sense-
certainty, of pure experience, lies in its failure to assert any claim to
knowledge which might be shown to be wrong. This knowledge which “is
called the unutterable, is nothing else than the untrue, the irrational, what
is merely meant” (PG, 110).
We can see that Hegel essentially agreed with Kant that there can be no
unconceptualized knowledge, that knowledge is essentially a product of
the understanding. From this agreement, however, we can also appreciate
one of the keys to Hegel’s works, that knowledge is essentially an active
process, that mere experience can never give us knowledge, that synthesis
of experience by rules or concepts is necessary. To use a common
philosophical term, knowledge necessarily consists of universals. This does
not mean that it is the same the world over, “for all rational creatures” as
Kant would say. It means that all sense and reference relies on concepts,
on the recognition of general properties which apply not to this or that
particular but to an indefinitely large number of particulars (and possibly
to no actual particulars at all). One might note that Hegel’s insistence on
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universality as the essence of knowledge is already a reply to the Schelling-
Kierkegaard criticism of Hegel as a “negative” philosopher (who ignores
individual existence) which gathers momentum after Hegel’s death.
The Phenomenology is not a running autobiography of Spirit but rather
a retrospective of the development of Spirit, an attempt to understand why
some forms of consciousness are inferior to others and force us to search
for more adequate, more all-embracing modes of comprehension. The
transitions between forms of consciousness represent a demonstration and
a development, perhaps an explanation, but there is no mechanism which
pushes one stage to the next and Hegel does not claim that each stage
necessarily leads to the next. What he does claim is that the process itself
is necessary, that consciousness is driven by its own inadequacies to pursue
other modes of understanding. Sense certainty is not itself a mode of
consciousness but, in more modern terminology, a theory about
consciousness, a conception of knowledge. Hegel shows that this
conception of knowledge is an inadequate conception, and concludes that
no such conception of knowledge can succeed. Sense-certainty is
inadequate as knowledge because it is not knowledge at all. Therefore, we
move along the dialectic to a more adequate form of consciousness, which
is that of Perception.
Perception is the first appearance of knowledge, for now we can
interpret our experiences by applying concepts. In Hegel’s short
description, the object of consciousness is now “the thing.” As a thing, the
object is characterizable and characterized by ascription of properties, in
other words, by the application of universally applicable concepts to a
particular. Our experience is therefore no longer “pure” experience but
experience of a thing defined by its properties. For example, our
perception of a tree consists of a certain unity of colors, shapes, tactile
sensations, perhaps sounds, and smells. Over and above this, we suppose
that there is the tree, that which “lies behind” all of these experiences and
ties them together. In traditional philosophical terms, there is the tree as
substance which is responsible for the unity of the tree-perceptions. The
problem, familiar from Locke, Hume, and Kant, is what if anything
warrants our conclusion that the tree-perception refers to the tree, for any
substance ‘behind’ these perceptions is by its very nature not the object of
any possible perception.
In the recent history of philosophy, this line of questioning sent Berkeley
to idealism, the view that there are no material substances, only ideas,
although idealism does not yet appear as such in the Hegelian hierarchy of
knowledge. In Hegel’s terms, substance would be an “unconditioned
universal,” that is, not experienced through the senses. As such, it cannot
be an aspect of perception. Thus Locke was forced to some rather ad hoc
stipulations to explain how we can make the inference to substance and
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Hume insisted that we could not justifiably make such inferences in
philosophy. Moreover, there was the question, unanswered and even
unasked by the traditional empiricists, how the various properties
perceived were in fact unified as the properties of an object. Since that
general view of knowledge which Hegel calls “perception” does not
recognize the extraperceptual, that is, anything but conditioned (sensory)
universals, if we are to understand the unity of objects and the idea that
we actually know objects and not mere clusters of properties we find
ourselves moving on to the next stage of consciousness.
The solution to the problem of unity is provided by the understanding.
The concept of “understanding” here is clearly taken from Kant’s use of
the term and refers to the application of concepts to experience. However,
as Kant uses the term, there is a special focus on a priori or
“unconditioned” concepts, which Kant calls the “categories.” Among
these categories is the category of substance, which is the solution to the
problem of unity. The tree-perceptions have a unity of a tree because of
our employment of the concept of substance. Similarly, problems such as
the coexistence of various objects, the reality of causal interconnections
between perceptions, as well as successions of perceptions, all appear at
this level of the dialectic, to which one might refer as the Kantian level, for
it consists primarily of the conclusions of the Transcendental Analytic of
the first Critique.36 Of central interest in this section is Hegel’s analysis of
the theory of the understanding as culminating in a dual worldview. On
the one hand, there is the world as perceived, and the laws intrinsic to that
perception. On the other hand, there is the world in itself, which is
postulated ‘behind’ this world to ‘explain’ it.
In the understanding, we postulate ‘unconditioned universals’ in our
experience to represent objects in themselves. But Hegel does not adopt
the traditional notion of ‘substance’ for those objects. He prefers a more
dynamic vision of experience, and so calls them as ‘forces’ or ‘powers,’
which are related to the “kingdom of laws” which is Kant’s vision of a
necessarily unified and ordered (phenomenal) world. But while the chapter
called “Force and understanding” is essentially Kantian, it contains a
powerful critique of Kant’s Critique and suggests that the laws of nature
are not merely imposed but inherent in the world itself. In other words,
Hegel rejects the Kantian insistence that we should not look for “the
universal laws of nature in nature” but rather “in the conditions of
possibility of experience.”37 According to Hegel, there is no valid
distinction to be made here. Indeed, Hegel suggests that scientific
explanation might better be understood as a redescription of phenomena.
Again, Kant’s noumenon-phenomenon distinction is fundamentally wrong;
if there is any sense to be made of the notion of “thing-in-itself” it must be
as part of the thing-as-phenomenon. Indeed, “the Understanding in truth
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comes to know nothing else but appearance…in fact, the understanding
experiences only itself” (PG, 165; Hegel’s italics). Noumena are not
transcendent to phenomena but immanent in them.
The closing argument of “Force and understanding” and the
“Consciousness” section as a whole consists of one of Hegel’s longest and
most peculiar counterexamples. He postulates a noumenal world which
happens to be an inverted (verkehrte) world. According to Kant, the
world-in-itself is a necessary supposition of the conditions of knowledge
but by its very nature cannot be known. Because knowledge depends on
the human faculties of knowledge, and because we cannot know that our
knowledge is not therefore some distortion of things as they exist
independent of our experience of them, we must, while supposing our
knowledge to be valid, resort to noumenon which very possibly might
have its own principles, different from the world as perceived and known
by us. Kant insists that there is nothing more to be known about the world
in itself, this unknown “x.” But Hegel provocatively goes on to suggest
what the world-as-it-is might be like by suggesting that everything in this
world is ‘unlike’ that in our own. “What is there black is here white, what
by the first law [of phenomena] is in the case of electricity the oxygen pole
becomes in its other supersensible reality the hydrogen pole” (PG, 158).
The two-worlds doctrine is carried to the realm of morality, where Hegel
argues that the two—worlds view destroys the very concept of morality it
is invoked by Kant to protect. For, according to Hegel:
an action which in the world of appearance is a crime would, in the
inner world, be capable of being really good (a bad action be well-
intentioned); punishment is punishment only in the world of
appearance; in itself, or in another world, it may be a benefit for the
criminal.
(PG, 159)
Here we have the first reference to Kant’s morality, which begins with the
crushing criticism of Kant’s summum bonum and his entire two-world
view. The problem, as stated here, is that the summum bonum and Kant’s
morality in general require man and his actions to be considered as
noumenon. A man and his actions are also part of the phenomenal world
where they are evaluated, and Hegel is here briefly pointing out the
problem in applying the phenomenonnoumenon distinction to a man
acting. Why suppose that what we consider punishment to the
phenomenal man will have any such effect on man as noumenon. Here,
even in this first section, we have a clear indication of the continuing
attack of Kant’s moral-religious philosophy that will be the core of Hegel’s
mature writings.
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The inverted-world passage is essentially an argument by ridicule, for
what becomes evident is that, if we take Kant’s notion of noumenon
seriously, any sort of nonsense becomes equally intelligible. Either the
noumenal world is just like the phenomenal world, or, not only does it not
make sense to talk about it, but it does not even make sense to suppose
that there might be one. The inadequacy of consciousness, considered in
its entirety, is the inadequacy of Kant’s philosophy, which Hegel considers
the culmination of all modern philosophies before it. The inadequacy of
the understanding as such is a signal to a new move in philosophy, a move
which is not simply new knowledge or a new progression in conciousness,
but which is an entirely new kind of knowledge and a new kind of
consciousness. Insofar as one wishes to interpret the progress of the
Phenomenology along philosophical-historical lines, one might say that
this new stage was initiated implicitly by Kant and made explicit by
Fichte. But the Phenomenology is not intended to be just a history of
philosophy.
Throughout the Phenomenology, Hegel displays similar inadequacies
in one form of consciousness after another, and so we are guided from
one form to another in an ongoing “dialectic,” eventually to reach
“absolute knowing,” which is the all-encompassing overview of all that
has preceded it. The dialectic often proceeds by way of conflict and
confrontation, when one form of consciousness contradicts another.
But it is a misunderstanding of Hegel to think of the dialectic as a
mechanical meeting of “thesis and antithesis,” resolved by a
“synthesis.” That formulation, which comes from Kant, Hegel
explicitly criticizes. The dialectic is rather a complex interplay of
conceptions, some of which are simply improvements on others, some
of which are indeed opposites demanding synthetic resolution, but
others simply represent conceptual dead ends, which indicate a need to
start over. Indeed, it is not at all clear that Hegel’s dialectic is a linear
progression from simplicity to the absolute but rather a
phenomenological tapestry in which a great many (hardly “all”) of the
forms of human experience and philosophy jostle against one another
and compete for adequacy. Within that tapestry, however, can be found
much of the history of Western epistemology and metaphysics, and a
great deal of ethics and social history and the history of religion.
Whether or not Hegel reaches the absolute, as he states so proudly in
his Preface, he gives us an eclectic but systematic philosophy which
boldly demonstrates both the complex life of ideas and the role of
those ideas in defining human history and consciousness.
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SELF AND SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS
The Phenomenology makes what might well seem to be an abrupt turn
from consciousness, an essentially epistemological study, to self-
consciousness and “the truth of self-certainty” and an obscure discussion
of “desire” and “life.” But the historical linkage here is provided by
Fichte, who had charted the move from the theory of knowledge to the
importance of a broad, pragmatic conception of self-knowledge several
years before. Consciousness becomes self-consciousness when it
understands itself as the source of the understanding. To consider the
problems of knowledge alone, without reference to the uses of knowledge
and the psychological-social world in which knowledge functions, is futile.
Thus any adequate conception of knowledge must begin with an
understanding of the living self, which is not first of all epistemic but
needy, full of demands and desires.
“Self-certainty,” like sense-certainty, begins with a commonsense,
cocksure conception of the self—in this case clearly reminiscent of
Descartes’s “I think, therefore I am.” Hegel goes on to show that the self is
not certain at all. To the contrary, in the confusion of desire and the urges
of life the self is confused and desperately seeking in identity. As in the
preceding epistemological chapters, Hegel will bring us from a naive view
to a more complex and sophisticated philosophical standpoint, but in
contrast to the preceding chapters he will now insist that there is an
essentially “practical” dimension to knowledge. But “practical” here
means, as in Kant, the self conceived as a true self, not just the self of
appearances. Accordingly, what emerges in the section on “Self-
consciousness” is a reappearance of the old dichotomy of appearance and
reality. But instead of rending the world in two, as in the “upside-down”
world, the self is shattered into the most “unhappy” of consciousness.
Following Hegel’s brief opening comments on the supposedly self-
certain “I” and its relation to desire and life, we find the bestknown and
most dramatic single chapter in the Phenomenology, the parable of the
“master and slave.” The point is to show that selfhood develops not
through introspection but rather through mutual recognition. The self is
essentially social or, more accurately, interpersonal, and not merely
psychological or epistemological. But Hegel is also concerned to speculate
on a certain kind of “natural” relationship between primitive, “stripped-
down” human beings. It is an imaginary situation envisioned by many
philosophers (notably Hobbes and Rousseau) in their hypotheses about
the “state of nature.” Their common assumption is that human beings are
first of all individuals and only later, by mutual agreement, members of
society. Hegel thinks that this assumption is nonsense, for individuality
begins to appear only within an interpersonal context.
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The confrontation of two consciousnesses is the key to the master-
slave relationship, which Marx would later take up as a model for his
social theory and Jean-Paul Sartre would borrow as a paradigm for his
analysis of “Being-for-others” in Being and Nothingness. Hegel tells us
that “self-consciousness achieves its satisfaction only in another self-
consciousness” (PG, 175), and that “Self-consciousness exists in itself
and for itself when and by the fact that it so exists for another; that is, it
exists only in being acknowledged” (PG, 178). These cryptic sentences
are the crux of “self-consciousness”; they spell out for us the first
appearance of Spirit—the recognition of the existence of a universal
consciousness in the primitive form of the recognition of consciousness
other than one’s own. But Hegel is also arguing a radical thesis about the
nature of origin of selfhood. First, there is the suggestion that the concept
of “self-consciousness” or “self-identity” can only arise in confrontation
with others. Hegel’s thesis might thus be construed as the claim that a
person has no concept of self, cannot refer to themselves and cannot say
things about themselves (for example, ascribe states of consciousness to
themselves) until he is shown how to do so by someone else. This thesis
has remarkable affinities with Ludwig Wittgenstein’s and later
P.F.Strawson’s claim that psychological predicates can only be learned
through learning to apply them to someone else.
Second, there is a more modest thesis that one can only develop self-
consciousness, that is, a particular concept of oneself, through
confrontation with other people. This weaker thesis does not insist that
one cannot have concepts of self-reference before social confrontation but
rather that the particular image one has of oneself is acquired socially, not
in isolation. It is this sort of thesis which occupies much of Sartre’s quasi-
psychological efforts in Being and Nothingness. The first claim, that
concerning the concept of self-reference, is not pursued by Hegel, for he
considers self-reference as such to be “merely formal” and “entirely
empty,” hardly worth the title of “self-consciousness” at all. (Compare his
discussion of the “knowledge” of sensecertainty.)38 The second thesis,
however, seems to fit precisely into the overall ambition of the
Phenomenology, to show how an inadequate conception of oneself is
forced into some remarkable and surprising twists and turns.
The first part of the master-slave parable is quite simple and
straightforward: two self-consciousnesses encounter each other and
struggle to “cancel” each other in order to “prove their certainty of
themselves” (their independence and freedom) against the other, who
appears as an independent and therefore limiting being.39 Each self-
consciousness originally tries to treat the other as object, but finds that the
other does not react as an object. Each demands that the other recognize
them as an independent consciousness. But recognizing another as
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independent limits one’s own independence, and each becomes determined
to prove their own freedom and independence. Hegel tells us:
they have not yet exposed themselves to each other in the form of
pure being-for-itself, or as self-consciousness. Each is indeed certain
of its own self, but not of the other, and therefore its own self-
certainty still has no truth.
(PG, 186)
Hegel suggests that it is solely by risking one’s life that such a truth is
established, and, indeed, the two self-consciousnesses fight (almost) to the
death. The other must be “cancelled” because their otherness contradicts
one’s view as self-conscious, free, and independent. However, it becomes
clear that the role of the other in this life-and-death struggle is not only
that of a threat or purely destructive. The recognition by the other of one’s
self is at the very crux of the conflict. Thus it is gaining the recognition of
the other that is the point of the battle, not the extinction of the other.
Hegel says that “trial by death does away with the truth which was
supposed to issue from it, and so, too, with the certainty of self generally”
(PG, 188). Thus Hegel argues that self-consciousness requires the presence
of another for one’s own self-consciousness. In fighting for recognition,
each tries to save their own life, but each tries also, if possible, to preserve
the life of their opponent. If one consciousness is victor, and neither loses
their life, then one becomes a consciousness “for itself,” independent, a
master, while the other becomes a consciousness ‘for another,” a slave
whose essence, Hegel comments, is “life,” suggesting that all that the slave
has salvaged, at least for the moment, is their life.
The lord or master “is the consciousness that for itself, which is
mediated with itself through another consciousness” (PG, 190). But the
master, although self-sufficient in the sense of having the slave dependent
on him, is also dependent on this dependence. Because the master
maintains the power, they are the master, but because they are now self-
sufficient only through the industry of the slave, they are also dependent
on the slave. Hegel stresses the importance of a Lockean relationship to
“the thing”—presumably land, food, or some craft—which the slave has
immediately (“he labours upon it”) but “the master only mediately, except
that he gets the enjoyment of it” (ibid.). In the course of the dialectic, the
slave, because of their direct relation to the thing, becomes self-sufficient,
while the master, because of their dependence on the slave, becomes
wholly dependent. (From this reversal Marx is to take his central theses of
class struggle and the ultimate degeneration and self-destruction of the
economic master classes.) Furthermore, the problem of the continued need
for the recognition of the other breeds a further instability into this
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relationship. The master, who depends on the slave for the recognition
that they are indeed the master, now finds that the slave is a totally
dependent creature without an independent will, incapable of giving them
the recognition of an independent other. The slave, in other words,
becomes a “yes-man,” whose recognition is irrelevant precisely because it
is coerced.
In the master-slave relationship, we first see the striving for freedom
of Spirit, the ultimate truth of self-consciousness. In the master-slave
relationship, we see only the inadequacy of the attempt to derive this
truth from human relationships which treat persons as independent and
opposed. Hegel will go on to argue that the way to freedom, the goal
of self-consciousness, lies not in such relationships but in the direction
of increased civilization. Rousseau had famously argued that society
takes a man and turns him into a citizen. For Hegel, too, individual
freedom will be found not in isolated independence but in citizenship.
But none of this, the explicit recognition of Spirit, appears in the
section on “Self-consciousness.” The master-slave relationship rather
gives way to the wholesale rejection of the master-slave situation and
the mutual dependency it entails, denying all external reality and
rejecting all action as meaningless. Here Hegel locates the impressive
philosophy of Stoicism, which flourished in the ancient world for more
than 600 years. The Stoic rejects both slavery and mastery, and Hegel
makes much of the fact that two of the leading Stoics, Epictetus and
Marcus Auelius, were a slave and the master of the Roman Empire
respectively (PG, 197–203). In an even more extreme form, self-
consciousness attempts to get beyond the frustrations of the master-
slave relationship by taking everything as meaningless, which Hegel
interprets along the lines of the ancient (not the modern) philosophy of
Skepticism (PG, 204–5). Ultimately, the contradictions or disharmonies
of all possible forms of self-consciousness become explicit in a self-
consciousness that is so alienated that it conceives of itself as nothing,
or as worse than nothing, in contrast to a holy ideal before which it
humbles itself. This unhappy consciousness is the primitive Christian
ascetic who believes himself to be both part of this world and
essentially divine, but the “creature of the flesh” and the “soul before
God” cannot coexist (PG, 206–30). The master-slave relationship,
which became an impossible relationship between two people, here
becomes internalized in a single schizoid individual. A decade after
Hegel’s death, Hegel’s Danish critic Søren Kierkegaard would return to
this disharmonious Christian for his “knight of resignation.” Where
Kierkegaard will insist that this incomprehensible schizophrenia is a
necessary condition for Christianity, however, Hegel insists that we go
beyond this internalized master-slave relationship with its self-
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flagellation and self-denial. At the very end of the discussion of the
“unhappy consciousness” and the section on “Self-consciousness,”
Hegel anticipates a new and happier conception of Christ and
Christianity, but not through self-consciousness alone. It is rather in
“the idea of Reason, of the certainty that, in its particular individuality,
it has being absolutely in itself, or is all reality” (PG, 230; Hegel’s
italics).
REASON AND SPIRIT
Rational consciousness is the goal of the Phenomenology, a final
“unification of the diverse elements in its process” and “the consciousness
of the certainty of being all truth” (PG, 231). Reason resolves by
harmonizing and elevating (autheben) the disharmonies between self and
others, between God and man, between morality and personal inclination,
between nature and knowledge. The Spirit of Absolute Knowing is both
immanent God and human society. It is also nature, which one might
think of as the material aspect of Spirit. There is no separating God from
nature or from man and it is folly to separate freedom from nature, reason
from passion, or morality from society, as Kant seemed to have done in his
philosophy. Reason in the Phenomenology marks the synthesis of a
number of conflicts that have been introduced in the dialectic of the
Phenomenology itself, the inadequacies of traditional epistemological
thought, the resolution of the master-slave relationship, and interpersonal
conflict (including the internalized conflict of the unhappy consciousness);
and, most ambitious of all, the Phenomenology is Hegel’s first attempt to
integrate and harmonize all human forms of consciousness and find the
proper conceptual place for each of them.
The long section on “Reason”—considerably more than two-thirds of
the Phenomenology—appears to have no organizing principle or
straightforward argument, such as one can discern in the first two sections
on “Consciousness” and “Self-consciousness.” The first part of the section
is a lengthy discourse on the philosophy of nature, including what we
would now call the philosophy of science, and it culminates in a
particularly peculiar discussion of the oddball sciences of physiognomy
and phrenology, the claims that personality and deep psychology can be
“read” from certain facial features or the bumps on a person’s skull. What
occupies Hegel throughout the entire discussion, however, is an attempt to
emphasize the nature of the organic, rejecting the familiar Cartesian
divisions of mind and body, “inside” and “outside,” and the reductionist
conceptions of nature. The argument about faces and skulls is not so much
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a defense of dubious sciences as it is a defense of the integration of our
conceptions of psyche and expression, much as he had argued for the
organic integrity of nature earlier in the discussion.40
Immediately following this discussion we find ourselves suddenly
steeped in certain perennial questions of ethics, “the actualization of
rational self-consciousness through its own activity” (PG, 347ff.). If there
is a principle of transition here, apart from the holistic impetus that
motivates all of reason, it is not at all easy to discern. In rapid succession,
Hegel considers hedonism, what we would call moral self-righteousness,
and a certain tragic conception of integrity or “virtue,” but the discussion
here seems to follow more or less directly from the unhappy resolution of
self-consciousness. Indeed, one of the more familiar channels of denial for
the unhappy consciousness is the soon jaded road of hedonism. The
predictable reaction, a stubborn asceticism and the rejection of “the way
of the world,” is equally familiar in both literature and life (PG, 381). In
these short chapters, as so often for the rest of the book, Hegel seems to be
incorporating any number of more or less contemporary themes and
controversies, rarely identified as such, from the psychology of Rousseau
to the world-weary asceticism of the Jansenists. Nevertheless a general
theme is perceptible through the details and meanderings, and that is the
inadequacy of any conception of ethics that remains restricted to the
isolated individual. Thus the emphasis in this discussion is on the phrase
“actualization through its [one’s own] activity,” which leads inevitably to
new versions of the frustrated, unhappy, divided consciousness. The
discussion culminates in Kant and a discussion of the categorical
imperative. This is, perhaps, the most enduring argument of the
Phenomenology, some aspects of which are routinely trotted out in
introductory ethics classes as criticism of Kant without recognizing their
source in Hegel. But before we actually get to Kant, Hegel slips in one of
the oddest chapters of the entire Phenomenology, a covert discussion of
university life under the title, “The Spiritual Animal Kingdom and Deceit,
or ‘the Matter in Hand’ itself” (PG, 397–418). To explain just the title
would take several pages, but the upshot of the chapter is as easy to
understand as it is amusing. Professors love to conceive of themselves as
independent individuals, but they really are the ultimate conformists,
utterly dependent on each other and on their mutual opinions of one
another. Whereas the unhappy independent spirits of the “Actualization”
chapter erred in their efforts to remain wholly isolated, the rather self-
satisfied creatures in the “academic zoo” simply pretend to be isolated and
independent, whereas in fact they are nothing of the kind. It is from here
we suddenly leap into the ethical thinking of the greatest professor of all
academic zoos, Immanuel Kant. For he, too, likes to feign an autonomy
that is more imagined than actual.
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Ever since Kant, autonomy has been the watchword of ethics.
Autonomy is the ability of each of us, as rational creatures, to ascertain
for ourselves what is right and, in words drawn from Rousseau, impose
the moral law on ourselves. Ethics in general and Kant’s categorical
imperative in particular concern the recognition of our moral autonomy.
Indeed, one of the three formulations of the categorical imperative appeals
explicitly to the notion of autonomy.41 But Hegel criticizes this notion of
autonomy, and he does so on two different grounds. The arguments are
quite succinct, perhaps because Hegel had already published them at
length elsewhere.42 The primary criticism, still the focus of much critical
discussion today, is the illusory nature of Kant’s moral self, which is no
particular self with no particular properties but simply a confused
abstraction from the social life of bourgeois or bürgerlich Prussian
morality (PG, 419f.). Moreover, the basic Kantian distinction between
reason and the “inclination” unwisely divides the moral self in two and
gives unwarranted precedence to formal laws rather than particular moral
contexts (PG, 425f.). But those formal laws, Hegel argues (like our best
undergraduates today), cannot be so readily applied to our concrete, often
ambiguous everyday situations. There is no satisfactory criterion for
“testing laws,” as Kant had argued; there are only the ad hoc stipulations
of the “maxim” of one’s actions such that the moral law can be made to
fit as needed (PG, 429–37). But behind these brief hit-and-run attacks on
Kant, Hegel has an alternative conception of ethics, which will soon
appear. What he really objects to is the bogus individualism and a priori
universality of Kant’s notion of morality (Moralität). In its place, he will
emphasize the social foundations of ethics, or Sittlickkeit, much as he had
in his first youthful essay on Greek folk religion over a decade before.
The notion of Sittlichkeit stands at the center of Hegel’s ethics, and
with it we are finally informed that we are now on the home ground of
Spirit. The master-slave relation may have in some sense appeared to be a
social encounter, if by that one means only the joint appearance of two or
more mutually aware creatures, but society and the social are much more
than a collection of individuals. They presuppose mutual attachments and
dependencies—just those attachments and dependencies that those
antagonistic self-consciousnesses denied. They presuppose a sense of
community, a shared identity. Ethics, in other words, is based on
community values, on shared customs (Sitte), not autonomy. And reason,
in Hegel’s philosophy, refers not to that abstract a priori ability to
calculate and deliberate so much as the very concrete conception of oneself
as part of the whole. Reason is not an individual “faculty” but a social
process. And ethics as an exercise of practical reason means not working it
out for oneself so much as understanding one’s duties and obligations to
one’s community.
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But, of course, there are different communities, with different customs,
and sometimes these communities come into conflict. Nothing could have
been more evident to Hegel, who as he wrote watched the tragedy of
Europe tearing itself apart in the name of competing ideologies, just as
Germany had torn itself apart many years before in the name of what
would appear from a distance to be a couple of theological nuances.43
Thus the upshot of Hegel’s philosophy and the grand hope of the
Phenomenology, announced with great fanfare in the Preface, is the birth
of a new, international world, in which cultural differences might be
preserved but the harmony of the whole would be assured. But this is
getting ahead of ourselves. At this point in the Phenomenology, Sittlichkeit
has just appeared, and it is immediately rent apart by tragedy. Within
communities, as well as between them, conflict is always possible. And as
so often in Hegel’s writing, particular conflicts have great philosophical
consequences. At this juncture, Hegel chooses to write about Sophocles’
tragedy Antigone, one of his favorite plays (which he would discuss at
length again in his Philosophy of Right, fifteen years later). The point of
the play is taken to be the clash of two sets of laws, human and divine.
The divine law, defended by Antigone, is the law of the primitive tribe,
blood law, the ultimate sanctity of the family. The human law, or what
would later become civil law, was represented by Creon, the king. In the
battle over the burial of Antigone’s brother, required by sacred law but
prohibited by Creon, the two laws meet in mortal conflict within the
individual person Antigone. She is simultaneously embedded in two
societies, the “divine” tribal society of her family, in which family duty
and honor were all, and civil society in which law and obedience were
essential. Her individual case is tragic and unresolvable, but the movement
of history and the dialectic provide a resolution to the conflict which was
not available for the tragic heroine. With the development of modern civil
society, individuals and families are integrated under the law of the land.
Hegel then goes on to speculate on the development of civil society and
the concept of culture, as he would again in his Philosophy of Right.44 He
discusses the Enlightenment as the embodiment of a false because anti-
spiritual effort to build a truly universal society, and he introduces the
almost current-events topic of the French Revolution and in particular the
Terror of 1793–4 and the character of Robespierre as something of a
reductio ad absurdum argument against the Enlightenment pretense of
pure reason against the more humble security of traditional spirituality
and community. And at this point Kant comes back into the dialectic, not
Kant of the categorical imperative but the Kant who defended the
religious “postulate” of “the moral worldview” and the grand teleology of
the third Critique. According to Hegel, Kant had earlier argued for the
importance of autonomy and his narrowly described notion of morality
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only at a terrible cost, a one-sided picture of man as separated from nature
and his own desires and happiness, concerned only with the imperatives of
duty. Hegel now argues (as he had in his earlier writings) that morality
and happiness cannot be separated: “enjoyment lies in the very principle
of morality.” Hegel thus restates what Kant called the summum bonum as
a necessary condition for morality: “The harmony of morality and nature,
or… the harmony of morality and happiness, is thought of as necessarily
existing” (PG, 599). This “harmony of morality and objective nature”
Hegel refers to as “the final purpose of the world” (PG, 604). Postulation,
however, is not proof, and Kant’s belief in a divine moral Legislator and
the Kingdom of Heaven, his “postulates of practical reason,” cannot be
left to mere postulation. Thus the dialectical movement fron Kant’s ethics
to religion is an attempt to broaden the field of ethics and get away from
Kant’s overly restrictive notion of duty and the ultimately self-defeating
distinction between duty and reason on the one hand and the inclinations,
including both the moral sentiments and the pursuit of happiness, on the
other. In the Phenomenology, as in his early writings, Hegel suggests that a
more sophisticated and harmonious conception of morality can be found
in Sittlichkeit, but now expanded to global and even cosmic proportions.
After one final, unusually harsh attack on Kant, Hegel resurrects the early
Christian ideal of conscience, in which, he argues (following Fichte), the
commands of duty and the incentives of the inclinations are synthesized.45
Conscience acts on implicit principle, yet it is also specific to particular
situations. It is individual yet derivative of a person’s upbringing in society.
Conscience finds its living ideal in the figure that Hegel identifies as the
“beautiful soul,” a holy figure whose “pure goodness” makes them “lose
contact with social reality.” One immediately thinks of Dostoevsky’s
Prince Myshkin (The Idiot), or more aptly, it is the conception of the
historical Jesus who best characterizes the beautiful soul and the perfect
voice of conscience. It is the person of Jesus who moves the dialectic to
that penultimate level of consciousness known as religion (PG, 632–71).
“The concept of Religion,” according to Hegel, “is the consciousness
that sees itself as Truth” (PG, 677). After a brief excursion through
primitive and ‘artistic’ religious consciousness, Hegel brings us back to
Christianity, whose Judaic origins have already promoted the conception
of God as Spirit, but an objective or transcendent Spirit, “out there.”
What Christ represents, according to Hegel, is not a concrete
manifestation of God in the form of one man. Christ is rather the symbol
of the conception that God and all men are a unity. That spirit is
“substance and subject as well” means that the Christian Spirit and we
ourselves are the same (PG, 18, 748). Here is the resolution of the
disharmony between man and God which had caused Hegel to renounce
Christianity in his early writings, but it is not to be thought that this is an
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unambiguous endorsement of traditional Christianity either. Christianity
has failed to become Absolute Truth, according to Hegel, because it has
become obsessed with figurative thinking in stories and pictures. To
become Absolute Truth, Christianity must reject such thinking and
become wholly conceptual. Needless to say, this entails a rejection of
many of the teachings and most of the ritual storytelling of the Christian
church. The Absolute Knowing of the Phenomenology can thus be
interpreted as a reconceptualization of the basic themes of Christianity.
But it is, apart from its trinitarian jargon, a notoriously weak vision of
Christianity.46 The insistence that Christianity become totally conceptual
does not mean that it must dispense with any content, but its content is
ultimately the content of the Phenomenology rather than the theological
constructs that Hegel occasionally imitates but just as often lampoons. It
has been said that the end and the purpose of the Phenomenology and the
justification and end of all human activity rest in Hegel’s revised
Christianity, but, as Kierkegaard bitterly points out, this alleged
Christianity is far more Hegelian than Christian. So, too, what Hegel
means by “reason” may be no more than nominally related to what most
philosophers designate by that term. The tricks and twists of the
Phenomenology, not to mention its often impossible language, belie the
claim that this is a work of, indeed the very embodiment of, reason.
Nevertheless, it is a masterpiece of a very different kind, and philosophy
would certainly never be the same without it.
CONCLUSION
Hegel intended his Phenomenology as the “introduction” to a system of
philosophy. It was supposed to establish the standpoint of Absolute
Knowledge from which the system itself could be formulated. That task
occupied Hegel for the rest of his career. The conclusion always seems to
be: We do experience Absolute Reality, but we conceive of it in many
different ways and these various ways can be contrasted, compared, and
fitted into a single, overall system of philosophy. Nietzsche later urged us
to “look now through this window and now through that one,” but where
Nietzsche would insist (against Hegel) on the inevitable conflict and
incommensurability of these various forms of experience, it is Hegel’s
project to show us how they grow from and complement one another as
well as conflict. A sufficiently broad, indeed “absolute”, perspective will
absorb (which is not to say resolve) all of those conflicts as well.
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NOTES
1 H.Heine, German Philosophy and Religion, in Werke, Vol. V, trans.
J.Snodgrass (Boston: Beacon, 1959), p. 137.
2 Hegel’s Early Theological Writings, trans. T.M.Knox (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1948). For an excellent treatment of Hegel’s early years and
philosophical development, see H.S.Harris, Hegel’s Development: Towards the
Sunlight 1770–1801 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972).
3 Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi is said to have commented, reading one of Hegel’s
early unsigned academic essays: “I recognize the bad style.” See R.C.Solomon,
In the Spirit of Hegel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), pp. 147ff.
4 The Difference between Fichte’s and Schelling’s Systems of Philosophy, or
“The Difference Essay,” published in the Critical Journal of Philosophy in the
summer of 1801, English trans. H.S.Harris and W.Cerf (Albany: SUNY Press, 1977).
5 All references to the Phenomenology in this essay are based on the A.V.Miller
translation of Die Phänomenologie des Geistes (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1977), henceforth referred to as PG; citation numbers refer to
paragraph numbers, not pages. My account of the Phenomenology is based on
two earlier treatments in R.C.Solomon, From Rationalism to Existentialism
(New York: Harper & Row, 1972; Savage, Md: Rowman & Littlefield, 1992),
and, at much greater length, In the Spirit of Hegel, op. cit.
6 Among the fans of the third Critique were the great German poet Goethe, his
equally talented playwright friend Friedrich Schiller, author of Letters on the
Aesthetic Education of Mankind (1795), and many of the young romantics of
the day.
7 Fichte, Wissenschaftslehre; Schelling, System of Transcendental Idealism; see
Daniel Breazeale’s excellent introduction to these works in Chapter 5, “Fichte
and Schelling: the Jena period.”
8 The notion of “truth” employed here was obviously not strictly an
epistemological notion, but one based on the original German root “Wahr”
(like “treowe” in Old English and “veritas” in Latin) which means genuine,
not simply “true to the facts.” See Hegel’s own etymology of “truth” in his
Encyclopedia, Logic, trans. W.Wallace (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1892), 24, p. 172, where he distinguishes philosophical truth (Wahrheit) from
mere “correctness” (Richtigkeit); and my analysis in “Hegel: truth and self-
satisfaction,” in R.C.Solomon, From Hegel to Existentialism (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1987), pp. 37–5 5.
9 Nietzsche once wrote that “Kant’s joke” was the defense of the common man
in language that the common man could not possibly comprehend.
10 Harris, op. cit., pp. 258–310; J.Hoffmeister, Hølderlin und Hegel in Frankfurt
(Tübingen, 1931).
11 See Harris, op. cit., p. 140; and Solomon, In the Spirit of Hegel, op. cit., pp.
115–16.
12 Notably, in the work of Johann Herder, F.H.Jacobi, and Kant’s close friend,
Hamann. See Lewis White Beck’s discussion of this period in Chapter 1,
“From Leibniz to Kant,” esp. his discussion of the Spinoza dispute, pp. 28–32.
13 Hegel defended such a position in the Phenomenology, ch. 6B, but evidently
held it much earlier. See Harris, op. cit., e.g. pp. 140, 299. Years later,
Nietzsche caught the German attitude with a quip against utilitarianism:
“Man does not live for pleasure: only the Englishman does.”
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THE AGE OF GERMAN IDEALISM
14 Knox, op. cit., and in Harris, op. cit., pp. 488ff.
15 Notably, “Hegel’s Tübingen essay” of 1793, trans. in Harris, op. cit.; and his
notoriously hostile “The Positivity of Christianity” (1795), in Knox, op. cit.
16 Harris, op. cit., pp. 504–5. Cf. Kierkegaard, Hegel’s posthumous nemesis:
“The way of objective reflection makes the subject accidental.” Concluding
Unscientific Postscript, trans. W.Lowrie (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1941), p. 173.
17 Harris, op. cit., p. 499.
18 Ibid.; also Hegel, “The Spirit of Christianity and its Fate,” in Knox, op. cit.,
pp. 182–301.
19 Hegel, Critique of Practical Reason; Religion within the Bounds of Reason
Alone.
20 Hegel, “Positivity” essay, op. cit., p. 68.
21 Hegel, “The Life of Jesus,” also written in 1795.
22 A theme he clearly borrowed from Lessing’s Education of Mankind, which he
read in 1787 and again in 1793. See W.Kaufmann, Hegel: A Re-examination
(New York: Doubleday, 1966), pp. 67f. Hegel, “The Spirit of Christianity and
its Fate,” op. cit., markedly shows this change of temper.
23 See also Hegel’s fragment on “Love,” in Knox, op. cit., pp. 302–8.
24 Hegel, “Positivity” essay, op. cit., pp. 185–7; Solomon, In the Spirit of Hegel,
op. cit., pp. 142–3. Cf. Nietzsche’s later argument in On the Genealogy of
Morals, Book I, trans. W.Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1967).
25 Quoted from Solomon, In the Spirit of Hegel, op. cit., pp. viii–ix. See also Leo
Rauch’s discussion of Hegel on “Spirit” in Chapter 8, “Hegel, Spirit, and
Politics.”
26 Quoted in Kaufmann, op. cit., p. 366.
27 PG, 16. Hegel denied making personal reference to Schelling in that comment
and in a crack about “monochromatic” and “schematizing formalism” a bit
later (PG, 51–2); but compare his only somewhat more diplomatic comments
on Schelling in his later Lectures on the History of Philosophy. “His defeat is
that the idea in general [is] not shown forth and developed through the
concept [Begriff],” p. 242. He also distinguishes himself from Spinoza’s
pantheism—a dangerous position to be associated with in those days—in his
Encyclopedia, op. cit., p. 573.
28 See my “Hegel’s Concept of Geist,” in Solomon, From Hegel to
Existentialism, op. cit., pp. 3–17.
29 See Leo Rauch, Chapter 8.
30 The “concept” is opposed to “intellectual intuition” and represents an
argumentative or “dialectical” conception of philosophy compared to the
emphasis on mystical insight that fascinated many of the romantic
philosophers. Just after the publication of the Phenomenology, Schelling wrote
to Hegel: “I confess that I do not comprehend the sense in which you oppose
the concept to intuition. Surely you do not mean anything else by it than what
you and I used to call the idea, whose nature it is to have one side which is
concept and one from which it is intuition” (from Munich, 2 November
1807).
31 For Hege’s mature notion of “the self-development of the concept,” see
Willem deVries’s acount in Chapter 7, “Hegel’s logic and philosophy of
mind.”
32 See Daniel Bonevac’s discussion of Kant’s first Critique in Chapter 2, “Kant’s
Copernican Revolution.”
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33 I have suggested elsewhere that one could begin the route traced in the
Phenomenology at any number of different starting points and, presumably,
cover much of the same territory and arrive at the same conclusion. Solomon,
In the Spirit of Hegel, op. cit., ch. 4C, pp. 235ff.
34 One of the most outspoken advocates of this attack on epistemology today is
Richard Rorty, who perhaps gives too little credit to Hegel in this regard.
Despite his systematic pretensions, Hegel would seem to be a much more
palatable ancestor than Heidegger, for example. See Rorty, Philosophy and the
Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977).
35 Cf. Nietzsche, “How the True World’ Finally Became a Fable,” in Twilight of
the Idols, trans. W.Kaufmann, The Viking Portable Nietzsche (New York:
Viking, 1954), pp. 485f
36 Again, see Daniel Bonevac’s chapter on the first Critique, Chapter 2.
37 Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill,
1950), p. 66.
38 An extended discussion of this empty self-reference can be found in Part III of
the Encyclopedia, op. cit.
39 This conception of the individual as essentially independent but limited by
others cornes to Hegel from Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who influenced Hegel in
many ways as much as he influenced Kant.
40 PG, 309ff. See A.Maclntyre, “Hegel on Faces and Skulls,” in Maclntyre (ed.),
Hegel (New York: Doubleday, 1972).
41 See Don Becker, Chapter 3, “Kant’s moral and political philosophy.”
42 In Hegel’s essay on “Natural Law” in the 1802–3 volume of the Critical
Journal and in his System of Sittlichkeit based on the lectures of that same
period, trans. H.S.Harris and T.M.Knox (Albany: SUNY Press, 1979).
43 Cf. Hølderlin: “I can think of no people as torn apart as the Germans…. Is it
not like a field of battle where hands and arms and other limbs lie scattered in
pieces while the blood of life drains into the soil?” Hyperion, trans. W.Trask
(New York: Ungar, 1965).
44 See Leo Rauch, Chapter 8, on Hegel’s social and political philosophy.
45 PG, 625. Cf. Fichte, Science of Ethics, pp. 15off., and his Vocation of Man,
pp. 136, 154, both in Science of Logic (Wissenschaft), trans. P.Heath and
J.Lachs (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1970).
46 See my “Secret of Hegel,” in Solomon, In the Spirit of Hegel, op. cit., ch. 10.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Original language editions
6.1 Hegel, G.F.W. Gesammelte Werke, ed. Rheinisch-Westfälischen Akademie
der Wissenschaften, Hamburg: Meiner, 1968–.
6.2 Hegel, G.F.W. Sämtliche Werke, 20 vols, ed. E.Moldenhauer and K.M.
Michel, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1970–1.
6.3 Hegel, G.F.W. Theologiscbe Jugendschriften, ed. H.Nohl, Tübingen: Mohr,
1907.
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THE AGE OF GERMAN IDEALISM
English translations
6.4 Hegel’s Early Theological Writings, trans. T.M.Knox, Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1948.
6.5 Hegel, G.F.W. The Difference between Fichte’s and Spelling’s Systems of
Philosophy, trans. H.S.Harris and W.Cerf, Albany: SUNY Press,
1977.
6.6 Hegel, G.F.W. The Phenomenology of spirit, trans. A.V.Miller, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1977.
Books on the Phenomenology
6.7 Fackenheim, E. The Religious Dimension in Hegel’s Thought, Indianapolis:
Indiana University Press, 1967.
6.8 Findlay, J. Hegel: A Re-examination, London: Allen & Unwin, and New
York: Oxford University Press, 1958.
6.9 Gadamer, H.-G. Hegel’s Dialectic, trans. C.Smith, New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1976.
6.10 Harris, H.S. Hegel’s Development: Towards the Sunlight, 1770–1801,
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972.
6.11 Hyppolite, J. Genesis and Structure of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit,
Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974.
6.12 Inwood, M.J. Hegel, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983.
6.13 Inwood M.J. (ed.) Hegel, Oxford Readings in Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1985.
6.14 Kaufmann, W. Hegel: A Re-examination, New York: Doubleday, 1966.
6.15 Kojéve, A. An Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, New York and London:
Basic Books, 1969.
6.16 Lauer, Q. A Reading of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, New York:
Fordham, 1976.
6.17 Maclntyre, A.C. (ed.) Hegel: A Collection of Critical Essays, New York:
Doubleday, 1972.
6.18 Marcuse, H. Reason and Revolution, New York: Oxford University Press,
1941; Boston: Beacon, 1960.
6.19 Norman, R. Hegel’s Phenomenology: A Philosophical Introduction, Sussex,
1976.
6.20 Plant, R. Hegel: An Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983.
6.21 Robinson, J. Duty and Hypocrisy in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Mind,
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977.
6.22 Rosen, S. G.W.F.Hegel: An Introduction to the Science of Wisdom, New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1974.
6.23 Schacht, R. Hegel and After, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1983.
6.24 Singer, P. Hegel, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983.
6.25 Solomon, R.C. From Hegel to Existentialism, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1987.
6.26 Solomon, R.C. From Rationalism to Existentialism, New York: Harper &
Row, 1972: Savage, Md: Rowman & Littlefield, 1992.
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6.27 Solomon, R.C. In the Spirit of Hegel, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1983.
6.28 Solomon, R.C. Introducing the German Idealists, Indianapolis: Hackett,
1981.
6.29 Taylor, C. Hegel, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.
6.30 Taylor, C. Hegel and Modern Society, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1979.
Selected articles on the Phenomenology
6.31 Bernstein, R. “Why Hegel Now?” Review of Metaphysics, 31 (1977): 29–60.
6.32 Bossait, W.H. “Hegel on the Inverted World,” Philosophical Forum (1982).
6.33 Gadamer, H.-G. “Hegel’s Dialectic of Self-Consciousness,” in Gadamer [6.
9].
6.34 Kelly, G.A. “Notes on Hegel’s Lordship and Bondage,” Review of
Metaphysics, 19 (1965); repr. in Maclntyre) [6.17].
6.35 Taylor, C. “The Opening Arguments of the Phenomenology” in Maclntyre
[6.17].
6.36 Zimmerman, R. “Hegel’s ‘Inverted World’ Revisited,” Philosophical Forum
(1982).
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CHAPTER 7
Hegel’s logic and philosophy
of mind
Willem deVries
LOGIC AND MIND IN HEGEL’S
PHILOSOPHY
Hegel is above all a systematic philosopher. Awe-inspiring in its scope, his
philosophy left no subject untouched. Logic provides the central, unifying
framework as well as the general methodology of his system.
Understanding Hegel’s logic is therefore essential to a comprehensive
understanding of any piece of the system and any subject it deals with.
Hegel never slavishly accepted received wisdom in any field and less so
in logic than anywhere else. The philosophical revolution began by Kant
demanded a thoroughgoing reconception of the purpose, method, and
content of logic, Hegel believed, and his expositions of this newly
reconstituted discipline in the Science of Logic and the Encyclopedia of the
Philosophical Sciences remain among the most intractable works of the
philosophical canon. Hegel’s logic breaks radically from the Aristotelian
and scholastic logic that had dominated previous philosophical
speculation, and it is unrelated to the mathematical logic that began to
develop soon after Hegel’s demise. The primary focus of this essay will be
on what Hegelian logic is about, rather than on the details of its
execution.
In the first section the essential problem of Hegel’s logic is introduced,
viz., that logic, according to Hegel, cannot be a purely formal discipline.
The second section summarizes the textual development of Hegel’s logic.
The third section establishes the parameters constraining the
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interpretation of Hegel’s logic. Because of the obscurity of the texts, it is
valuable to state explicitly the conditions that constrain an adequate
interpretation. Succeeding sections address these conditions by showing
what it means that Hegel’s logic is a self-movement of the concept and
how this relates to his theory of subjectivity (the fourth section), in what
sense logic is a formal science for Hegel (the fifth section), how one begins
the enterprise of logic (the sixth section), and why Hegel’s logic exhibits
such a particular structure (the seventh section).
The paramount importance of logic within Hegel’s system cannot be
denied. A relatively large proportion (over 30 per cent) of his written work
is devoted to logic: Of the four books Hegel published, one (the largest) is
solely devoted to logic, and it is that book Hegel wrote in order to make
his mark in the philosophical world after his first book, the
Phenomenology of Spirit, garnered little notice. One-third of the
Encyclopedia is devoted to logic. More importantly, Hegel’s system begins
with logic and culminates by returning to the point of departure for logic;
logic is the alpha and omega of the system. Logic provides the alphabet for
the system as well, for the conceptual analyses provided by logic serve as
the patterns for the rest of the system. Logic is also the discipline in which
Hegel’s methodology is explicitly thematized. The idea that there is a
“dialectical method” that can be illuminatingly brought to bear on any
subject matter has fascinated post-Hegelian thought. (What this method
is, however, has been notoriously difficult to specify.) Hegel’s logic remains
the primary source for any understanding of dialectics.
Logic plays such an important role in Hegel’s philosophy, in part,
because of his revolutionary interpretation of the discipline. Traditionally,
logic has been understood as the study of the formal conditions of truth or
as the study of the laws of thought. As the study of the formal conditions
of truth, logic pays no attention at all to the contents of the items it
addresses.1 But Hegel rejects this interpretation of logic, arguing, in effect,
that truth is both the subject and content of logic, and that logic cannot be
a purely formal enterprise, for the notion of truth is not and cannot be a
purely formal notion. If truth is the agreement of thought (or language)
with reality, there is no guarantee that there must be certain conditions
that thought or language on their own must satisfy in order to be able to
agree with reality.2 The conditions for the possible agreement between
thought and reality or concept and object must depend in part on reality
(see e.g. WL, I:25; SL, 44–5).3 But, then, they cannot be purely formal.
Hegel also picks up on the ancient theme that logic is the science of the
laws of thought and infers that “as thinking and the rules of thinking are
supposed to be the subject matter of logic, these directly constitute its
peculiar content; in them, logic has that second constituent, a matter,
about the nature of which it is concerned” (WL, I:24; SL, 44). Whether
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the connection to truth or the connection to thought is emphasized in
understanding the nature of logic, Hegel concludes that logic cannot be a
purely formal enterprise. Since logic concerns the fundamental conditions
of truth and thought and these cannot be specified independently of their
content, the fundamental structures of reality, logic merges with basic
metaphysics in Hegel’s system.
The hope to derive metaphysics from logic is not peculiar to Hegel by
any means—besides Hegel’s predecessors (Leibniz and Kant, in particular),
the twentieth-century logical atomists (Russell and early Wittgenstein),
who in most other ways were Hegel’s antithesis, also sought to read their
metaphysics off of their logic. The logic-metaphysics connection acquires
still further weight in Hegel’s system from his idealism. Idealism is a tricky
“ism” because so many different theories have gone by that rubric. Hegel’s
version, absolute idealism, must be distinguished from Berkeleyan
subjective idealism (the claim that material bodies do not exist and the
only things that do exist are mental substances and their modifications),
what Kant calls Cartesian “problematical” idealism (the claim that the
only things we know for certain are our own mental states, all other
knowledge being a probabilistic inference therefrom), and Kantian
transcendental idealism (the claim that our knowledge is restricted to
things as they appear to us given our forms of intuition and that things as
they are in themselves can never be known). Some versions of idealism
thus have metaphysical theses at the core, while others are grounded in
epistemological theses.
Absolute idealism is principally a metaphysical position characterizable
as the claim that mind and reality share the same categorical structure.
The categorical structure of thought (“thinking and the rules of
thinking”), which is the subject matter of logic, must also be, according to
the absolute idealist, the categorical (read here “ontological”) structure of
reality, and thus logic is metaphysics. Hegel’s epistemology, in contrast to
his metaphysics, is fundamentally realist and committed to our ability to
cognize the objective structure of reality, although it is complicated by a
sophisticated understanding of the historical conditions of knowledge.
Without looking in greater detail at the arguments Hegel gives to back up
his claims, it is hard to grasp his points fully, but one immediate warning is
warranted in this introductory glimpse of his position. Do not confuse mind
(spirit) with minds. Hegel’s German term Geist, formerly translated as
“mind” but now increasingly translated as “spirit,” can apply to individual
minds, in which case Hegel would talk of subjective spirit. This is the usage
that is most like our contemporary use. Hegel has a specific section of the
Encyclopedia, called the “Philosophy of subjective spirit,” focused on
problems in philosophy of psychology. But Geist or spirit can also apply
more broadly. Hegel generalized the Kantian notion that the self (the
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transcendental ego) is a principle uniting a disparate manifold of sense
impressions into the notion that Geist is a principle uniting the disparate
manifold of natural and historical events. Schematically:
Kant’s transcendental ego: phenomenal world::
Hegel’s absolute spirit: the world
This vast oversimplification leaves at least two important questions: What
happens to the Kantian thing-in-itself in Hegel’s version? And what is the
relation between subjective spirits and absolute spirit for Hegel? Let me
briefly address the second question here; we will return to both questions
later. Individual minds embody spirit; they are necessary to and participate
in the development of absolute spirit, but no individual mind is itself
essential to spirit’s self-realization.
The movement and development of absolute spirit constitutes a higher
level of abstraction than the psychological or historical development of
individual people or societies. It is at this very high level of abstraction that
we can describe pure thought. Logic is therefore not concerned with the
thinking of any individual—that would make it psychology—nor with the
“rules of thinking” governing any particular culture, period, or discipline.
Logic is to be understood as the system of pure reason, as the realm
of pure thought. This realm is truth as it is without veil and in its
own absolute nature. It can therefore be said that this content is the
exposition of God as he is in his eternal essence before the creation
of nature and a finite mind.
(WL, I:31; SL, 50)
DEVELOPMENTAL HISTORY OF HEGEL’S
LOGIC
This essay does not purport to trace the development of Hegel’s logic (a
study which is yet to be written), but here a few landmarks may help
orient one within the somewhat idiosyncratic world of Hegel’s thought.
Hegel’s earliest philosophical speculations center around issues in ethics
and the philosophy of religion—in particular Hegel seeks to understand
how it might be possible to reconcile the oppositions that he felt
characterized modern life: the oppositions, e.g. between reason and faith,
society and individual, universal and particular. In his earliest writings
(1795–1801), Hegel believes philosophy cannot itself escape the
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contradictions of such finite oppositions, for it remains trapped within
them. Philosophy can at best lead us to see their inadequacy; religion alone
can take us beyond them.
In Hegel’s Jena period (1800–7) philosophy gains ascendancy over
religion as the field in which the sought-for resolution of the tensions and
oppositions of the modern world can be found. Nevertheless, during most of
this period at least, Hegel thinks of logic and metaphysics as an introduction
to philosophical speculation, not yet an essential part of it. The principal
problem governing Hegel’s thinking in Jena is that of overcoming the
subject-object opposition. Hegel assumes that beneath the apparent
opposition there is an underlying unity that takes on different forms in each
of the opposed concepts. Speculative philosophy itself is the consideration of
this unity and its various forms. Logic and metaphysics are preliminaries: In
logic and metaphysics the fixed oppositions in terms of which we normally
understand the world are shown to self-destruct. This destruction of the
concepts of the understanding should then liberate us from the rigid
categories that make resolution of the conflicts of modern life impossible
(the task of logic) and, according to Hegel, also establish the Absolute, the
unity underlying all oppositions, as the principle of all philosophy (the task
of metaphysics). After the ground is cleared by logic and metaphysics,
philosophy proper—the philosophy of the object, the philosophy of the
subject, and the philosophy of the Absolute—can begin.
Unfortunately, little of the material in which Hegel works out his
conception of logic and metaphysics at this time has survived. Yet one
of the most important changes in Hegel’s development is the shift in his
understanding of the nature and place of logic and metaphysics that
occurs toward the end of the Jena period (c. 1805–6). During this
period Hegel ceases to distinguish between logic, metaphysics, and
speculative philosophy. Briefly, Hegel seems to have discovered the idea
that the formal structure of self-consciousness provides a model in
which the conceptual oppositions of logic as well as the phenomena of
nature and the social world can be treated in a unified, meaningful
manner. Logic is the science of pure, self-conscious thought, and is
therefore an essential part of the new system. In the light of this new
conception Hegel adds a new kind of introduction to the system, the
massive Phenomenology of Spirit, published in 1807, in which he
traces the different forms consciousness and self-consciousness may
take, culminating in the pure self-consciousness that is both the subject
and object of logic.
The Phenomenology of Spirit was finished, as the story goes, with the
battle of Jena booming in the distance. Subsequent to Napoleon’s defeat of
the Prussian army at Jena, the university was shut down, and Hegel had to
go looking for employment, spending the next year as editor of a
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newspaper in Bamberg before accepting a post as the rector of a
Gymnasium (a college-preparatory academy) in Nuremburg.
During his time in Nuremberg the Hegelian system, especially the
logic,4 as we now know it really took shape. The first installment of his
Science of Logic (the so-called objective logic) was published in two
volumes, the Doctrine of Being in 1812 and the Doctrine of Essence in
1813. The second installment (the subjective logic) containing the
“Doctrine of the Concept” was published in 1816, the year Hegel was
called to a chair at the University of Heidelberg. Hegel needed a text for
his students in Heidelberg, so he put together the first edition of his
Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences. This contained a brief outline
of his entire philosophical system and was intended only as an aid to those
attending his lectures, orienting them within his system.
Hegel was called to Berlin, the leading university of Prussia, in 1818.
He was to become the dominant figure in German philosophy during the
subsequent decade. He published his last book, the Philosophy of Right, in
1821; he began another on the philosophy of subjective spirit, but never
completed it. The second edition of the Encyclopedia appeared in 1827.
Only a few years later, he revised the Encyclopedia yet once more, its third
edition appearing in 1831. By 1826 the original copies of the Science of
Logic were sold out, and the printer suggested reprinting the work. Hegel,
however, decided to rework the book. The new version of the Doctrine of
Being was given to the printer in 1831, the new preface dated 7 November
1831. A week later, on 14 November 1831, Hegel died of cholera.
After Hegel’s death a group of Hegel’s students, calling themselves the
Society of Friends of the Eternalized, undertook to publish a complete
edition of Hegel’s philosophy. Their edition of the Science of Logic
combined the newly revised version of the first third with the older, still
unrevised remainder. Thus the first third of the Science of Logic as it has
come down to us was written almost a decade and a half after the rest of
the book. In the posthumous edition of the Encyclopedia the editors
decided that it was too cryptic in the form Hegel gave it and therefore
added supplementary additions (Zusätze) drawn from both Hegel’s own
and students’ lecture notes. Most of the original notes have since been lost,
so there is some question about the authenticity of some of this additional
material, but the Zusätze have been a part of the Hegelian corpus since
shortly after his death and can provide a valuable perspective on the
argument of the text.
In the new, critical edition of Hegel’s texts currently in preparation,
both versions of the Science of Logic’s first part are available, as will be
much more reliable editions of the notebook material utilized by Hegel’s
various editors in compiling Zusätze and lectures.
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ADEQUACY CONDITIONS ON
INTERPRETATIONS OF HEGEL’S LOGIC
Since the texts of Hegel’s logic are among the most difficult in the
philosophical corpus, it is not surprising that there is a wide variation in
the interpretations that have been offered and that no school of
interpretation is currently dominant. The salient aspects of Hegel’s logic
that any interpretation must account for fall into two categories, the
structural and the testimonial. Any adequate interpretation must account
for the place of logic within the Hegelian system, the general structure
exhibited by Hegel’s logic, and the particular transitions found in it.
Further, any adequate interpretation of Hegel’s logic must also account for
Hegel’s own pronouncements about its scope, content, and method. An
interpretation that gave a detailed, sensible account of the progress of the
argument in the logic would be powerful and very valuable—but if it
could not be made consistent with Hegel’s own testimony, it would always
face skepticism. It seems clear, however, that Hegel’s practice in the logic
does not always coincide with his preaching; every interpretation of
Hegel’s logic will have to construct a fine balance between the structural
and testimonial evidence.
Structural conditions on interpretations
What role does Hegel’s logic play in the system? The system consists of
three parts: Logic, Philosophy of Nature, and Philosophy of Spirit. Hegel
tells us that his system is a “circle of circles,” so this is not merely a linear
ordering. At the end of the Philosophy of Spirit we are to be in a position
to begin again with the logic in some manner. Logic, therefore, is both the
antecedent and the product of spirit. Other puzzling questions quickly
arise in trying to understand this triad: The Philosophies of Nature and
Spirit concern items within our experience that occupy space and time, but
logic seems concerned with things of quite a different stripe. Just what is
the relation between the logical realm and the realms of nature and spirit?
Next, the internal structure of Hegel’s logic must be accounted for by
any acceptable interpretation. It is instructive to look at the arrangement
of topics in the logic to get a sense of what an interpretation must cope
with. Hegel’s logic appears to have a very rigid hierarchical organization.
An interpretation that accounts for the gross structural organization may
have difficulty with the fine structural detail of the system, and two
different interpretations may be able to penetrate the fine detail better in
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different areas of the logic. Appended to this essay is an outline of the
system as found in the Science of Logic (in the hybrid edition).
Several features of the logic immediately leap to the eye. Virtually
everything is grouped in triads. The only exceptions are: (a) there are four
groups of judgments at the fourth level under III.A.2 (see Appendix, pp.
246–7), and (b) the Idea of Cognition has only two subheadings, the Ideas
of the True (which itself has only two subheadings, Analytic and Synthetic
Cognition) and the Good. This triadicity is not a mere artifact of
compulsive German orderliness; it is supposed to be a necessary
consequence of the method of logic that generates the outline. But why,
then, does it have any exceptions?
Several of the titles are repeated. Thus, Being is both heading I, heading
I.A.I., and heading I.A.I.a; Appearance is both heading II.B and heading
II.B.2. How can the same topic or concept appear at several places in the
hierarchy? Other than the triad Concept, Judgment, Syllogism under III.A,
most of the concepts have apparently very little to do with logic as
standardly understood, then or now. Most of them are, however,
connected with classical problems of metaphysics.
It is also notable that the relations among the concepts dealt with in
each of the three main divisions differ. In the Doctrine of Being the
concepts within a triad tend to be contrastive and mutually exclusive; in
the Doctrine of Essence they tend to come in coordinate pairs, both of
which can be applied to an object; in the Doctrine of the Concept the
successor concepts are supposed to retain and contain their predecessors.
Or at least Hegel tells us that there are such structural changes within the
Logic, and on the whole his assertion seems borne out.
Testimonial conditions on adequacy
Any fully adequate interpretation will have to take account of what Hegel
says about his Logic, its purpose, its method, and its achievement. We
have already seen some of Hegel’s own interpretation: that his logic is
about thinking and the rules of thinking, that it constitutes the system of
pure reason, truth in its own nature, and, more obscurely, that it is an
exposition of “God as he is in his eternal essence.”5 Hegel’s logic, while
both logic and metaphysics, is a theology as well. According to Hegel
religion and philosophy share the same content—the Absolute. In religion
this content is couched in an imagistic form that is not fully adequate to
the content itself; it is only in philosophy that this content receives a form
adequate to itself. Thus we should expect a mapping between the truths
developed within logic and the images and stories found in religion such
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that logic reveals the full message embodied obscurely in the mythology of
religion.6 Christianity may be the highest form of religion, the form in
which the content can, given the limitations of the imagistic presentation,
most fully express itself, but every religion has at heart the one true
content, the Absolute.
Undoubtedly the most difficult problems in interpreting Hegel are
generated by his pronouncements about the method of the logic. For his
method is no method at all: What we have before us in the logic is the self-
movement of the concept. That is, Hegel rejects the idea that in
philosophy there is one thing, a method, that is applied to a separate
thing, a content. The logic traces out what is contained in its content, and
it does that not by applying some externally definable, content-
independent method to produce a result, but by allowing the content to
unfold itself. There is no “dialectical method,” despite its supposed
practice by so many of Hegel’s followers. But then just how is the
elaborate structure of the logic generated?
While Hegel’s logic is not in any normal sense a formal logic, Hegel
does claim that it is a formal science in the sense that it is the science of
form. What does this mean? Hegel attacks the form/content distinction,
but he does not simply reject that distinction as either senseless or even
necessarily confused: What he objects to is the notion that form and
content are absolutely separable and autonomous elements of a whole. No
form and no content are pure. Instead, Hegel believes form and content
are necessarily correlative; some forms are best suited for some contents
but not others, and vice versa. Hegel constantly distinguishes the formal
aspects of phenomena from their particular contents—that is, in part,
what the philosophies of nature and spirit are all about—but what kinds
of forms are available and how they relate to each other simply as forms
are matters for logical analysis. In the logic as a whole, form is its content,
and this content dictates its form.
Logic must also be a presuppositionless science, according to Hegel. This is
a fundamental distinction between logic and all other scientific disciplines.
Other scientific disciplines must presuppose some particular, independent
subject matter; to this subject they bring some method or procedure. In
neither case is the justification of these presuppositions a problem within that
discipline. “Logic, on the contrary, cannot presuppose any of these forms of
reflection and laws of thinking, for these constitute part of its own content
and have first to be established within the science” (WL, I:23; SL, 43).
Let me summarize the set of adequacy conditions for an interpretation
of the logic delimited here. These conditions are not exhaustive; the logic
is an extremely rich and perplexing text. But an interpretation that can
meet these conditions will have a good chance of responding to other
challenges as well.
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1 Any interpretation must explain the sense in which the logic is
the self-movement of the concept and the implications of this for its
methodology.
2 Any interpretation must explain how the logic is the science of form.
3 Any interpretation must be able to explain the relation between the
Logic and the Philosophies of Nature and Spirit. It should also explain
the logic’s relation to the Phenomenology of Spirit, which was
proposed to be an introduction to the logic.
4 Any interpretation must explain the presuppositionlessness of the logic
and how such a presuppositionless science can get started.
5 Any interpretation will have to account for the internal structure of
the logic:
(a) Triadicity.
(b) Repetition of titles.
(c) Differences between types of concepts in the three parts of the
logic.
(d) A detailed reconstruction of the particular arguments and
transitions found in the texts.
6 Any interpretation must explain the relation between logic and God.
THE SELF-MOVEMENT OF THE CONCEPT
The concept
Understanding Hegel’s claim that logic is simply the self-movement of the
concept requires understanding the particular meanings Hegel gives the
terms of that dictum. Hegel has quite a particular notion of a concept,
which is central to his whole system. Of course, Hegel’s notion of a
concept is heir to a significant history, and much can be revealed by
tracing its roots in the philosophical tradition. While there is little space
here for such development, a few allusions may help situate the discussion.
Hegel’s logic, like that of his predecessors, is a logic of terms and
concepts, not a logic of relations between sentences and operations upon
sentences. The modern logician begins by specifying a syntax, that is, a
vocabulary and rules of sentence formation. These initial steps are
followed by specifying a proof theory and then a semantics. Thus, if the
modern logician thinks of the syntax, the vocabulary and formation rules
for the system, as the preliminary set-up, the actual beginning would most
likely be a set of axioms or fundamental truths. One way in which Hegel
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differs is that he expects logic to develop a system of relations among
concepts, not a system of relations among sentence forms. Aristotelian
logic provides very few sentence forms and no system by which to
generate arbitrarily complex new forms. What flexibility Aristotelian logic
affords, by which it can be applied to a relatively broad range of sentences
and arguments, comes from our ability to formulate arbitrarily complex
concepts to use within the sparse syntax provided. Hegel therefore focuses
his logic on the forms of concepts, not the forms of sentences. So he looks
to begin with a fundamental, simple, immediate, unstructured concept—
the simplest form a concept can take—and end with the all-inclusive,
absolutely self-constituting concept, the Idea. Just as the early
Wittgenstein sought the general form of a proposition, Hegel seeks the
general form of a concept.
The historical background for Hegel’s notion of a concept properly
begins with Plato’s notion of a separable form (eidos), a universal in which
any number of sensible things can participate. This notion was then
transmuted by Aristotle into a form immanent in the sensible object that
shared it and necessarily embodied in an appropriate kind of matter. The
most important fact about these classical Greek speculations is that both
considered their concept-precursors, the forms, to be objective features of
the world graspable by human reason. The skeptical attacks of Hellenistic
philosophy coupled with the rise of Christian metaphysics forced these
objective universals inside the mind; they were saved from complete
subjectivity only because they could be located in the mind of God, who
created the world in accordance with his divine plan. But the mind of God
itself became more and more distant as the Middle Ages wore on, and by
the time modern philosophy came on the scene only such patently
inadequate ruses as Cartesian innate ideas guaranteed by a beneficent but
ultimately unknowable God protected universals from complete
entrapment in subjectivity. In the subjective idealism of the empiricists this
development reached its sorry nadir.7
Kant began the climb out of the subjectivist coal pit when he reasserted
the objectivity of certain universal concepts on the grounds that they are
necessary constitutive conditions of thought itself. Such concepts are
objective because without them thought could have no object at all. But
Kantian concepts are limited to the material of sensuous intuition;
substance, cause, and other a priori concepts objectively characterize
phenomenal objects, but have no application beyond the bounds of sense.
Our concepts do not apply to things as they are in themselves.
Kant falls back into a subjectivist skepticism despite his valiant effort to
climb out (e.g. Enz. [Encyclopedia], §§ 40–5). Hegel is quite convinced
that any “knowledge” that is not of the object as it is in itself is not
knowledge at all. Hegelian concepts, like those of the great classical
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thinkers, must be objective, humanly graspable features of things as they
are in themselves (Enz., §§ 19–25). In order to develop and defend his idea
of a concept, however, Hegel must demonstrate how finite, sensuous
intelligences like ours can grasp such objective features of our world: He
must develop both an ontology and an epistemology. The general outlines
of both his ontology and his epistemology emerge from Hegel’s rejection
of the possibility of a purely formal logic together with the constraints he
believes govern any adequate theory of thinking. As a first step toward
climbing out of the subjectivism Hegel thinks besets modern philosophy,
let us develop the Hegelian theory of subjectivity, for only an adequate
theory of subjectivity can demonstrate that we are not trapped in our own
minds with no access to the world.
Logic as a theory of subjectivity
A full theory of subjectivity must account for all the phenomena of mind:
sensation, feeling, perceiving, thinking, desiring, willing, etc. It would be a
mistake, however, to think that the Hegelian theory of subjectivity is
essentially a theory of human subjectivity. Human subjectivity is
distinguishable from the pure thinking thematized in the logic in that it is
still beset with the contingent, variable structures of sensation, feeling,
desiring, etc. Pure thinking is abstracted from such contingencies. Here we
will reconstruct the theory of pure thinking, for this is also the content of
Hegel’s logic. There are two constraints that any adequate theory of
thinking must observe: First, the Kantian transcendental unity of
apperception, the fact that the ‘I think’ must be able to accompany all my
representations.8
Kant was always unclear about the exact status of the ‘I think’—to this
day his commentators wrangle about it—but it is at least clear that the ‘I
think’ that occurs in the principle of the transcendental unity of
apperception cannot, on Kantian principles, itself be a piece of objective
knowledge. Objective knowledge requires application of a schematized
category of thought to the sensuous content of intuition, and the
transcendental unity of apperception is an analytic principle not based in
any way on sensuous intuition. Kant, therefore, cannot justify his belief
that he thinks. Hegel could not accept the notion that our self-reflection is
in a substantially worse position than our other knowledge, and is
furthermore unwilling to draw the distinctions in kind between, on the one
hand, transcendental ‘knowledge’ of the form of experience and the role of
the unity of apperception and, on the other hand, objective knowledge of
items within our experience.
The second constraint on the theory of thinking is that the ‘I think’
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expresses an objective cognition. In this sense Hegel reasserts the
Cartesian cogito.9 These two constraints jointly require thought to be
capable of objective self-reflection.
Hegel’s theory of thinking is logic itself. In what sense logic is a theory
of thinking, however, needs further clarification, for a thoroughgoing
empiricist such as J.S.Mill might agree with this and conclude that logic
must itself be an empirical discipline, though admittedly at a very high
level of abstraction. Hegel is certainly not an empiricist, though the extent
to which his system accommodates the empirical has generally not been
well enough recognized. Nor is Hegel’s logic itself psychologized, for it is a
mistake to assume that thinking is solely an activity of human subjects.
Psychology is a particular discipline handled within the system at its
appropriate place. But thinking is the activity of the universal, the concept
itself.
If the psychological process of thinking is not what provides logic with
its content, then in what sense is thinking the content of logic? Kant
distinguishes between general logic—a formal discipline that concerns the
conditions of thought in general, regardless of its object—and
transcendental logic—the discipline concerned with the a priori conditions
of thinking about objects of our sensibility (objects located in space and
time). General logic must be purely syntactic, but transcendental logic has
an irreducible semantic component, for it must deal with the conditions of
reference to spatio-temporal objects. Kant’s table of categories, the list of
those a priori concepts he thinks structure our abilities to think and know
about the sensible world, is a product of transcendental logic, the analysis
of the a priori conditions for applying the forms of judgment to spatio-
temporal objects.
Hegel maintains, in effect, that the syntax/semantics distinction Kant
presupposes to separate general and transcendental logic cannot be
sustained.10 Syntax is always contaminated with semantic content
precisely because syntax’s role is to subserve a semantic purpose: the
embodiment of truth. The hope of analyzing out of language or thought a
pure logical syntax without any metaphysical implications about the
nature of objects is a pipe dream, or worse, a delusion. Even the bare
subject/predicate distinction constrains our metaphysics; it is no accident
that a traditional definition of ‘substance’ is the ultimate subject of
predication. Again, noun is usually supposed to be a syntactic category,
but its classical definition, “name of a person, place, or thing,” is given
semantically. In fact it is impossible to give a nontrivial but general, purely
syntactic characterization of the nouns, verbs, etc. of any natural
language.
For Kant, pure (unschematized) thought has no intrinsic relation to
anything; it is, as it were, merely the form of relatedness to an object.
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Actual relation to objects is the business of another and separate faculty of
mind, sensibility. Hegel responds that thought must have, intrinsically, a
relation to itself—that, as he sees it, is the point of Kant’s transcendental
unity of apperception. And this relation is capable of sustaining a
knowledge-claim; that is the point of the cogito. The cogito does not
express a piece of sensory knowledge, according to Hegel; neither does it
express a direct nonsensory intuition of a thinglike existent. The self or T
is itself a concept in Hegel’s special sense of that term.11 The cogito
expresses a recognition and preliminary understanding of that concept, an
understanding that presupposes a good deal of sensory knowledge, but
cannot be reduced to such sensory knowledge. Since the ‘I think’ does not
itself contain distinctively sensory knowledge, Hegel sees it as purified of
such sensory content, as having left the sensory realm behind. Thus,
although he rejects the Kantian notion of a pure reason entirely and in
principle divorced from sensibility, Hegel recovers a notion of pure reason
by postulating a form of thought and knowledge that rises above the
sensory to achieve independence of any and all particular sensory
contents.
Reason necessarily goes beyond sense, but the cogito shows that it does
not thereby lose either its object of its objectivity. It therefore cannot be
the case that all relation of thought to its object is the business of an
entirely separate, nonrational faculty of mind. Since not all relation to
objects is directly mediated by sensibility, sensibility is no longer the
universal limitation on all thought. Thus for Hegel the distinctions Kant
relied on to separate general and transcendental logic have evaporated,
and the conclusion must be that all logic has a transcendental component
and thus merges into metaphysics.
Bluntly put, since thought must be capable of self-relation, the conditions
necessary to that self-relation are conditions on all thought. Some objects
we may relate to through sensation, but the thinking that relates to them
must still belong to a structure of thought capable of pure (nonsensuous),
objective self-relation. The cogito shows the reality of this self-relation of
thought to itself, but the lesson of the cogito goes beyond a mere ability of
thought to refer to itself: It shows that thought must be capable of knowing
itself. Hegel would not claim that the cogito itself contains or expresses such
self-knowledge of thinking by thinking, but he does believe that he can
demonstrate that the self-reference of thought to thought contained in the
cogito is itself possible only if thought is also capable of complete self-
comprehension. (This is a major result of the Phenomenology of Spirit.) The
reality of the self-related structure of thought demands closure. The self-
related structure of thought is the topic for logic.
Thus Hegel’s logic is at the same time an implicit theory of subjectivity,
of what kind of structure is necessary in order for thinking to comprehend
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itself.12 The self-comprehension of thought requires a comprehension of
the object of thought and thought’s relation to that object, for, as we have
seen, thought cannot be characterized in an entirely self-contained, purely
syntactic way. In completely characterizing itself, thought must also
completely characterize its range of possible objects, and there can be no
remainder, no things-in-themselves left over outside the structure of
thought. The structures revealed by the self-comprehension of thought
include necessarily the structures of all objects of thought as well; an
object that is not a possible object of thought is nothing at all. But what
the logic does not itself directly consider are the ways in which thought
structures are embodied in the world. The rest of Hegel’s philosophy deals
with this, for thought structures are embodied in nature (thus the
philosophy of nature), in social structures (thus the philosophy of
objective spirit), in the expressive products of human activity (thus the
philosophy of absolute spirit), and, of course, in the psyches of individual
organisms. It is the task of the philosophy of subjective spirit to discuss
how it is possible for an individual animal organism to embody within
itself the structures definitive of thinking. Needless to say, the complex
organization requisite to embodying a self-comprehending structure of
thought imposes significant constraints on the nature and capacities of
such an organism. But for our purposes it is more important to see that
Hegel does not believe that the embodiment of the structures constitutive
of thought is confined solely to individual animal organisms: The world as
a whole also embodies these structures. In order to see why Hegel thinks
this is necessary and how he believes it to be possible, we need to look
more closely at his ontology.
The active concrete universal13
Hegel believes that most of his predecessors chose the wrong paradigm of
predication. These philosophers—philosophers trapped in the “attitude of
the understanding”14 according to Hegel—took accidental predications (e.g.
“The ball is red”) as paradigmatic. In such a case there is no intrinsic
connection between the universal and the individual it is predicated of; both
the universal and the individual seem quite indifferent to each other. Taking
this to be the paradigmatic predication relation, Hegel believes, leads to a
metaphysics in which the world is seen as composed of a nexus of bare
particulars (in his terminology abstract individuals) and ontologically
independent universals (he would call these abstract universals). Hegel
thinks such a metaphysics impossible; to escape being trapped in it one must
reject both the abstract individual and the abstract universal.15
In the place of accidental predication Hegel substitutes a version of
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essential predication, for in an essential predication the universal and the
individual are intrinsically tied. The essence of something is also seen by
Hegel to have some explanatory power; saying of what kind a thing is can
be a legitimate explanatory move. In Hegel’s view an essence, something’s
concept, is not a descriptive characterization, but a prescriptive ideal, and
it plays a role in a ideological explanation. Something’s concept offers an
ideal pattern which the thing strives to realize in the course of its
existence, though individual things are never perfect exemplars of their
essence. In this respect we can begin to see a rather strange melding of
Aristotle’s concept of an essence with the Kantian notion of a concept.
Kant insisted that “a concept is always, as regards its form, something
universal which serves as a rule” (Critique of Pure Reason, A 107). Hegel
seizes on three aspects of Kant’s a priori concepts—their unrestricted
universality, their prescriptive force, and their conceptual priority over
their instances—and transfers these properties to the basically Aristotelian
conception of an essence or thing-kind.
Hegel also learned from Kant that concepts are not discrete entities that
exist and can be known each independent of any others; neither thinker
employs the notion of a simple concept. We can say that Hegel took over
from Kant a coherence theory of concepts: Even bottom-level basic ideas
are to be understood through their interaction with other ideas in basic
principles, in contrastive relationships, and so forth. Hegel is committed to
a more thoroughgoing holism of concepts than Kant, for he cannot
distinguish absolutely between formal and material representations.
Perhaps most important, the crucial relationships between concepts need
not all be construed as analytic ‘inclusions’: Kant inaugurated the search
for nonanalytic but also non-psychological, rational connections between
concepts, and Hegel willingly followed. Thus, what Hegel calls a concept
is a prescriptive ideal that is part of a system of such ideals that the world
is striving to realize and in terms of which we can make sense of what
happens in the world.
However, Hegel takes the rulelike character and implicit systematicity
of concepts so seriously that he made a move Kant would never have
dreamed of making. Hegel insisted that the being of the T is the being of a
concept, for the T is the rule for the unification of all experience. The
unity of apperception is the ideal governing all synthetic activity in the
mind. Indeed, since the T provides the ultimate rule—all concepts must be
unified under the ’I,’ including the pure concepts—the ‘I,’ the self, becomes
a superconcept, a concept of concepts, the concept (WL, II: 220–1; SL,
583). Thus the cogito becomes the first and immediate expression of the
self-directed, self-organizing activity of the concept. The T or self is not a
thinglike substance, but a conceptlike self-organizing activity.
Every universal of whatever kind unifies something, but in contrast to
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abstract universals like ‘red,’ concrete universals like ‘dog’ or ‘thinker’ not
only unite various different individuals under some heading but also
account for their internal unity. The model for this internal unification is
the synthesis of the manifold into the unity of apperception. The manifold
is unified, according to the Kantian vision, because I make it mine,
constituting myself in that very process. Hegel attributes this kind of self-
constituting activity to every concrete universal, to all concepts. Any unity
of a manifold that is not thus actively involved in the very nature of the
elements, while also constituting its own self in the activity, is to that
degree a merely abstract universal. A concrete universal is therefore
different from the abstract universals that previous thinkers in the classical
tradition took to be the objects of thought.
The universal of the concept is not a mere sum of features common
to several things, confronted by a particular which enjoys an
existence on its own. It is, on the contrary, self-particularizing or
self-specifying, and with undimmed clearness finds itself at home in
this antithesis.
(Enz., § 163; my translation)
An abstract universal is a tag which can be hung on things otherwise quite
indifferent to it in order to sort them out for whatever purposes one may
have. A concrete universal, on the other hand, divides nature at the joints;
it must reach to the very hearts of things and afford an understanding of
their being. An abstract universal is static and unchanging because it is
dead, a mere sum of otherwise unrelated features. A concrete universal, a
concept, however, is alive, dynamic, and dialectical; it is essentially a part
of a self-developing system.16
In sum, the foremost characteristic of a concept is that it is active. Thus
Hegel explains the stability of the world, the fact that the world is not a
sheer, unstructured chaos, by the activity of concrete universals. The
manifold unified by these concepts is not itself entirely separate from them
in nature, provided from the outside, but must itself be of some
determinate kind and therefore itself already conceptualized. Thus there is
a complex structure of interrelated concepts, a structure that is not built
up from the outside by some external agency, but develops its own
organization from within. Its mode of action is teleological, that is, it is
self-realization. The concept is both cause and effect; it is self-developing.
Second, a concept is the truth of those objects it characterizes and
animates. It is their essence, that which explains what they are and why
they have the unity they do. Third, a concept is not separable from its
instances, but actively manifests itself in and through them. Fourth,
concepts have an essence of their own, the concept, which realizes itself in
the active self-realization of its contributory moments. Concepts are
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essentially parts of a self-realizing system. What ultimately is, according to
Hegel, is a universal self-constitutive activity that becomes self-conscious
in man’s knowledge of it—the Absolute.
The self-movement of the concept
In Hegel’s vision this universal self-constitutive activity expresses itself in
the world via the articulation of nature into different orders of entities and
properties. But the expression of the Absolute in nature is itself static; the
movement and change within nature are but a pale reflection of the
dynamic self-activity of the Absolute, for nature itself is ahistorical, it does
not develop, but simply changes endlessly. It is in the realm of spirit that
this universal self-constitutive activity expresses itself adequately, both as
historical development across the human, spiritual community and as the
individual development of a thinker’s thought in contemplation.
Subjectivism is no longer a problem, Hegel thinks, because the active
concrete universals that structure and inform the world are one and the
same as the structures that animate subjective thought (when it has freed
itself from the strictures of sense and understanding). One and the same
rule system governs both thought and the world. That structure is reason
itself, and it is grasped by individual minds through their instantiating the
structure of rules in a self-conscious way.
All this grand talk of self-constituting activities can still, however, leave
one dissatisfied, convinced that the fundamental questions still remain: In
the self-movement of the concept, just what is moving, and how? We have
seen that concepts are items in a complex, self-developing system and that
this system is itself supposed to be a concept. It is easy to get the
impression that this is a case of pulling oneself up by one’s own
bootstraps. This is a serious charge against Hegel, and one that is not
without merit, but a finer appreciation of his position shows that the
situation is at least a good deal more complex.
Concrete universals must be embodied, so Hegel would not take the
self-movement of the concept to be something that occurs only in a kind of
Platonic heaven, apart from all sensuous, material reality. The movement
of the concept must be embodied in a movement of things embodying the
concept. Nature embodies the concept in one way, but not a way best
suited to showing the concept’s own self-movement. It is spirit that
embodies the concept in a way capable of exhibiting its self-movement.
On the one hand the social structures of humanity embody the concept,
and thus the historical development of those social structures is one form
of the self-movement of the concept. But this is not the sense in which the
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logic is the self-movement of the concept. The other form in which spirit
embodies the concept is in thinking itself. In philosophy, pure thinking, we
realize the self-movement of the concept by instantiating the self-
developing system of concrete universals in a higher and still more
adequate form than either nature or social reality finds possible.
Importantly, however, Hegel realises that even this pure thinking must
be embodied, and its embodiment is language, for “we think in names”
(Enz., § 462). But if we think in words, then the movement of thought
must also be a movement of words, and an investigation of “thinking and
the rules of thinking” will result in conclusions that apply indirectly to
language as the essential expressive embodiment of thought. This line of
thought leads to the notion that Hegel’s logic is an attempt to construct an
ideal language. What is the Hegelian ideal for language? This is a difficult
question, but one desideratum stands out above all others: The ideal
language must be its own meta-language. It must contain its own truth
concept and be capable of expressing its own relation to the world (and
itself) truthfully. Indeed, since Hegel believes thought must necessarily
know itself as thought, its embodiment, ideal language, must also
necessarily be expressively complete and capable of demonstrating this
expressive completeness. Thus Hegel’s logic is an attempt to elaborate a
set of conceptual qua linguistic structures that are expressively complete
and capable of demonstrating this completeness by (a) reconstructing the
depth-conceptual and linguistic structures we in fact find around us in
ordinary language, in the sciences, and in religion and philosophy, and (b)
accounting for its completeness by generating these structures from the
very idea of (linguistically embodied) thought.
Hegel takes this project to be implicit in the very existence of language.
He regards it as a project to which language users contribute
unconsciously as they use language in navigating through the world and
consciously as they engage in logic or philosophy. Hegel’s logic presents an
explicit and self-conscious culmination of this historical development, but
not as an historical development—that occurs in the philosophy of history
and also, in part, in the Phenomenology. Hegel’s logic presents us with the
pure results of this process: an expressively complete and self-reflexive set
of linguistic/conceptual structures.
LOGIC AS THE SCIENCE OF FORM
Since everything that can be thought or expressed must utilize one of the
conceptual structures/expressive forms elaborated in the logic, it is easily
seen how the logic constitutes the science of form. Every possible form is
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systematically generated in the course of the logic, Hegel claims, and all
content, every phenomenon, will find its appropriate form somewhere in
the battery of conceptual forms so generated.
It is no objection that this means Hegel intends his logic to be
irrefutable and unfalsifiable; anything properly called logic intends to be
irrefutable. Usually this is explained in terms of the contentlessness, the
pure formality of logic. This explanation is not open to Hegel. His
explanation can only be that his logic simply spells out the necessary
conditions of thought, and therefore the necessary conditions of the
existence of the refutable. It would be self-defeating to reject it because it
is irrefutable.
But there is also no guarantee in Hegel’s logic that phenomena come
with their logic already patent. Although it seems to be a consequence of
his interpretation of the form/content distinction that every content will
have some form in which it is best expressed and comprehended, given the
imperfection of nature, form-content mismatches in which both moments
are obscured are only to be expected. In this case a great deal of acumen
may be required for proper analysis. Surface structure may conceal logical
form.
So-called “dialectical” consideration of nature or society is nothing
more than a learned ability to identify the conceptual structures
characteristic to the phenomena at stake.17 This means that one
understands the dialectic of X when one has properly diagnosed the kinds
of conceptual structures definitive of X’s. For instance, the dialectic of the
family is controlled by the fact that implicit in the very concept of a family
are certain kinds of relationships within the family, certain kinds of
relationships between the family unit and the external world, the general
function of the family in the ethical life of a community, and the relation
of the family, as a social structure, to other forms of social organization
such as the commercial marketplace. Not all of these relationships are
superficially evident within the concept of the family, however,
Dialecticians may start with a superficial understanding of the concept of
a family, but as they seek to understand the concept more deeply, they can
use the abstract structures plotted out in logic to explore the conceptual
space of the family in greater detail. What conceptual tensions are
resolved within the family structure? What tensions does it itself generate?
Under what higher heading would the family fall? The concept of the
family reveals as well the dysfunctional family, for it will then be clear
how families can fall short of the concept. The logic provides the
theoretical structures within which our comprehension of such phenomena
operates; all of these phenomena and their relationships will be instances
of the most general kinds of objects of thought as laid out in the logic.
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PRESUPPOSITIONLESS BEGINNINGS
Though we have now seen how Hegel thinks his logic compares to the
traditional conceptions of logic and metaphysics, the characterization has
been very abstract. It is still hard to see how to begin this project and then
carry on with it. Let us therefore consider these matters at a more practical
level. How does one start doing logic? Since logic is the self-movement of
the concept, it seems that there is nothing that one does at all. How does
one get concepts to move themselves?
Hegel insists that logic can have no presuppositions, even to the point of
not having a clear conception of the discipline itself until it is completed.
“What logic is cannot be stated beforehand, rather does this knowledge of
what it is first emerge as the final outcome and consummation of the whole
exposition” (WL, I:23; SL, 43). Yet, as we will see, he also knows exactly
where to begin: Being. The presuppositionlessness of logic is apparently the
guarantee of its purity, its universality, its necessity, its absoluteness, and it is
therefore extremely important. Yet Hegel also says that the system is a circle
of circles, and that seems clearly to imply that the logic is in some sense
generated by, derived from, or entailed by the rest of the system as well; why
isn’t this a form of presupposition?
Apparently, then, one can begin doing logic without any clear idea of
what it is that one is doing or how it is to be done. Nonetheless, despite all
the talk about presuppositionlessness, it is not the case that logic is begun
absent of all conditions. “The beginning is logical in that it is to be made
in the element of thought that is free and for itself, in pure knowing” (WL,
I:53; SL, 68). The point seems to be that the essential condition for logic
consists in a certain attitude or state on the part of the logician. This state
of pure knowledge is reached at the end of the 1807 Phenomenology of
Spirit by overcoming the subject-object distinction altogether. However
one arrives at it (there is no reason to believe it can be reached only via the
train of thought contained in the Phenomenology),18 pure knowing is a
state in which thinking is directed solely upon thought itself (shades of
Aristotle’s thought thinking thought!), without constraint from any
sensory conditions, prejudices of the understanding, or even
preconceptions about thinking. One has, as it were, opened oneself up to
the world, which can finally lay itself bare before one, unobscured by
merely subjective intrusions. Even this way of describing the situation
rings slightly false, for it makes the world seem something distinguished
from and therefore opposed to an observing consciousness. But in pure
knowing the distinction between knower and known, subject and world,
has utterly vanished, or more accurately, there is only a distinction in their
forms, for in pure knowing the content of world and thought is identical.19
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Now starting from this determination of pure knowledge, all
that is needed to ensure that the beginning remains immanent
in its scientific development is to consider, or rather, ridding
oneself of all other reflections and opinions whatever, simply to
take up, what is there before us.
Pure knowing as concentrated into this unity has sublated all
reference to an other and to mediation; it is without any
distinction and as thus distinctionless, ceases itself to be
knowledge; what is present is only simple immediacy.
(WL, I:54; SL, 69)
Hegel admits that in this case pure knowing as an outcome of finite
(impure) knowing is presupposed, but pure knowing in this sense is not a
thesis or claim that is presupposed. It is itself a mode of being, a being in
a position to know. It is not itself a cognitive presupposition, but only the
presupposition of pure cognition. The circle is complete when this mode of
being has itself been reapprehended in knowledge and the identity of
thought and being it is predicated upon is vindicated.
But if no presupposition is to be made and the beginning itself is
taken immediately, then its only determination is that it is to be the
beginning of logic, of thought as such. All that is present is simply
the resolve, which can also be regarded as arbitrary, that we propose
to consider thought as such.
(WL, I:54; SL, 70)
The claim here seems even more radical: The honest, even naive resolve to
think about thought as such should be sufficient to begin logic, for that
honest, if naive, resolve begins from the identity of thought and being. We
do not need to know that we are in the state of pure knowledge to begin
logic. To require that before we begin doing logic we know that we have
achieved a state of pure knowing would introduce a cognitive
presupposition again. The possibility of pure knowing—which Hegel
equates with the identity of thought and being—means that the honest
resolve to think about thought can and eventually will succeed. The
vindication of the state of pure knowing achieved by the end of our
deliberations suffices to legitimate the entire undertaking. The only things
that stand in the way of reaching that consummation are the sedimented
preconceptions we have accumulated through our experience of
acculturation.
But why should the appropriate beginning be pure being? Hegel tells us
that since it is a pure beginning, it must be something immediate, that is,
not derived from anything else, not mediated by any other. Further, it must
be simple, without any internal structure (or we would have to start with
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that). He then informs us that “this simple immediacy… in its true
expression is pure being” (WL, I:54; SL,) 69). Why is this? What makes
“being” the correct expression of the beginning point of logic? Here we
encounter a general difficulty with Hegel’s logic: The concept designations
he chooses often seem less than compelling. That the simple, immediate
universality with which logic begins should be called “being” is, in fact,
more intuitive than many of his other choices. Although we have said that
logic is tied to language in that thought must express itself in language,
there is no guarantee that the purified structures of thought will map
exactly onto the pre-existing vocabulary and manipulation rules of any
language. Ordinary language gives us a rich resource refined over
millennia of reflection, but the logician must get behind the surface
structures of the language to uncover the real logical structures embodied
in that language.
Philosophy has the right to select from the language of common life
which is made for the world of pictorial thinking, such expressions
as seem to approximate to the determinations of the Concept. There
cannot be any question of demonstrating for a word selected from
the language of common life that in common life, too, one associates
with it the same concept for which philosophy employs it; for
common life has no concepts, but only pictorial thoughts and general
ideas, and to recognize the concept in what is else a mere general
idea is philosophy itself.
(WL, II:357; SL, 708)
The history of philosophy provides a particularly rich resource, for it mirrors
(though by no means exactly) the progress of thought itself. Thus, the attempt
to think pure immediacy appeared early on in the philosophy of the Eleatics.
Parmenides’ pronouncement that “Being is and Not-Being is not” is its earliest
expression, and surely Hegel is leaning on this phrasing when he says that the
beginning point, simple immediacy, is being. The attempt to think pure being
turns out to be unstable—it is identical to a thought of pure nothing, even
though the two concepts are superficially in absolute opposition. And it is no
accident that this conflict generates a concept Hegel expresses as “becoming,”
the key word in Heraclitus’ philosophy.
TRIADS AND DIALECTIC
Hegel is perhaps most renowned for the constant triadic structure of his
logic, popularized without much textual basis as “thesis-antithesis—
synthesis.” But whatever slogan one uses to characterize the triadic
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structures encountered throughout the logic, Hegel believes this pattern
arises necessarily from “the method” of the logic. Since, as we have seen,
this method is no method at all, but rather the self-movement of the
concept, Hegel believes the triadic structure is inherent in concepts
themselves (Enz., § 79). What are these triads, and why does Hegel believe
that the conceptual realm is so structured?
Logic is the self-investigation of thought; at its end, thought must
comprehend itself. We can therefore think of each concept encountered in
the logic as a candidate theory of thought. This is a slightly misleading
way to phrase it, for it seems to presuppose that someone, a subjectivity
external to and separate from the object of its thinking, is proposing some
abstract set of propositions intended to characterize correctly that object
of thought. Thus, there would be three relata here: a subject, an object,
and a theory. But in logic there is only one presence: self-related thought.
We might better think of each concept in the logic as a mode of thought’s
self-relation. And since thought is self-constituting activity, each concept is
therefore a mode of thought’s existence. The highest mode of thought’s
existence, the mode without which it could not be the completely self-
constituting activity of thought, is the Idea, thought’s adequate self-
comprehension.
Put another way, the constant content throughout the logic is thought
itself; each of the concepts encountered up to the Idea is a less than fully
adequate form for that content. Though less than fully adequate, each
captures a dimension of thought, a real mode of thought’s existence. The
form adequate to the content of logic is, in fact, none other than the
comprehension of the whole of the series of less than adequate forms, for
collectively the concepts embody and enable thought’s self-comprehension.
Suppose, then, we begin with the honest resolve to think thought, and
that we begin with the immediate, simple universality Hegel calls “being.”
It is important to be clear about what this beginning point is. It is to be
pure being, which means that no determinate being is in question here. It
is not the kind of being one may talk of in speaking of the being of a
number or the being of space or the being of consciousness. Hegel is well
aware that this concept is an abstraction, indeed, the absolute abstraction
from all determinateness.
As the beginning point of the logic this concept is at once a prototheory
of thought and a mode of thought itself, a way in which thought is. As a
proto-theory of thought, something a consciousness considers for
adoption, there are many inadequacies to this concept: It is highly
inarticulate, unable to describe or explain any of the phenomena we
normally associate with thought, including its own existence. But as
correct as such considerations are, they are irrelevant from Hegel’s point
of view. They do not exhibit the “self-movement of the concept,” for one.
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They exhibit instead an external reflection upon a subjective reality,
according to Hegel. Second, while they may give good reason for rejecting
the proto-theory, they fail in two regards: (a) they do not show whether
the concept indeed captures something of the nature of thought, and (b)
they do not point the way to a better conception.
But consider this concept as itself a mode or determination of thought.
For being is as much a way of thinking as an object of thought. Concepts
are not simple, given entities, each capable of its existence entirely
separately from others. They are essentially and necessarily involved in
contrastive relations, in entailment relations, etc. The system of pure
thoughts forms a self-realizing structure. No single determination of
thought is entirely self-subsistent. The concept of pure being,
indeterminate immediacy, however, attempts to be just that—without
inner determination, without relation to anything else. In its attempt to
purify itself from every determinate content, it divests itself of all content
and turns out to be identical to the concept of nothing. In this case the
self-movement of these concepts turns out to be the intrinsic connection
between the contents (or in this case, lack thereof) of the concepts.
Hegel confronts the question of how these concepts could be self-
moving more explicitly in considering Jacobi’s critique of Kant’s notion of
a priori synthesis. Jacobi claimed that when he achieved a state of purified,
abstract consciousness, no synthetic activity, no “movement” among the
concepts was evident at all. Hegel replies:
But this is found immediately in them. They [the thoughts of pure
space, pure time, pure being, and so on] are, as Jacobi profusely
describes them, results of abstraction; they are expressly determined
as indeterminate and this—to go back to its simplest form—is being.
But it is this very indeterminateness which constitutes its
determinateness; for indeterminateness is opposed to
determinateness; hence as so opposed it is itself determinate or the
negative, and the pure, quite abstract negative. It is this
indeterminateness or abstract negation which thus has being present
within it, which reflection, both outer and inner, enunciates when it
equates it with nothing, declares it to be an empty product of
thought, to be nothing. Or it can be expressed thus: because being is
devoid of all determination whatsoever, it is not the (affirmative)
determinateness which it is; it is not being but nothing.
(WL, I:85; SL, 99)
The attempt to think pure, indeterminate being is, in effect, a failure, for
its indeterminateness is its determinateness. But thought does not stop
here. The failure is not absolute. Thinking of pure being has turned out to
be thinking of nothing, but this unity of being and nothing has
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transformed them both. The lesson is that in all thinking being and
nothing are thought together.
Being and nothing are the same; but in their truth, in their unity,
they have vanished as these determinations and are now something
else. Being and nothing are the same; but just because they are the
same they are no longer being and nothing, but now have a different
significance…. This unity now remains their base from which they
do not again emerge in the abstract significance of being and
nothing.
(WL, I:95; SL, 108)
Everything and everythinking is a union of being and nothing; just how
these two are to be unified and what further transformations must occur
before a fully stable conceptual scheme is available is the story of the
logic.20
But Hegel admits that the transaction between being and nothing is not
typical: there is no real transition to be found, but only an immediate
identity.
In the pure reflection of the beginning as it is made in this logic with
being as such, the transition is still concealed; because being is
posited only as immediate, therefore nothing emerges in it only
immediately. But all the subsequent determinations, like determinate
being which immediately follows, are more concrete; in determinate
being there is already posited that which contains and produces the
contradiction of those abstractions and therefore their transition.
(WL, I:86; SL, 99)
Nonetheless, this unity of being and nothing, which is their “truth,” is
labeled “becoming” by Hegel.
Becoming is the unseparatedness of being and nothing, not the unity
which abstracts from being and nothing; but as the unity of being
and nothing it is this determinate unity in which there is both being
and nothing. But in so far as being and nothing, each unseparated
from its other, is, each is not. They are therefore in this unity but
only as vanishing, sublated moments.
(WL, I:92; SL, 105)
Depending on whether one emphasizes being or nothing as the immediate
element and the other as related to it, becoming has two forms, coming-to-
be and ceasing-to-be. But is “becoming” at all an appropriate label for the
unity of being and nothing? It has the historical pedigree of being
Heraclitus’ response to Parmenidean Being, but it is so loaded down with
temporal connotations and so closely associated with the notion of change
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that it seems at best a highly misleading choice of terms. But it is also hard
to see what other term might serve better. Becoming is the third, yet it is
not itself stable.
Being and nothing are in this unity only as vanishing moments; yet
becoming as such is only through their distinguishedness. Their
vanishing, therefore, is the vanishing of becoming of the vanishing of
the vanishing itself. Becoming is an unstable unrest which settles into
a stable result.
(WL, I:93; SL, 106)
The stable result is the concept of determinate being. Being and nothing
have been transformed, or rather have revealed their true colors in their
unity, becoming, but this very unity cannot retain the character of
becoming. “It is…inherently self-contradictory, because the
determinations it unites within itself are opposed to each other; such a
unity destroys itself” (ibid.). Becoming destroys itself, not by negating
itself entirely—that would return to mere nothing—but by settling into a
stable and once again immediate oneness: determinate being.
The identification of being and nothing seems to be motivated by
considerations of the nature of identity and individuation of concepts by
their contents and other reasonable considerations in the context of the
project of the logic. But the subsequent moves to becoming and thence to
determinate being do not seem nearly as intelligibly grounded. It is hard
not to think that talk of the vanishing of vanishing and suchlike is mere
word play without significant philosophical import. Yet there is also
something intuitively right about Hegel’s conclusion that the attempts to
think pure immediacy must fail in favor of thoughts of determinately
qualified forms of being. The text of the logic challenges the interpreter to
show how Hegel’s principal moves actually trace the “self-movement of
the concept”—a movement that is supposed to be the very soul of
intelligibility—despite a superficial form as crabbed and obscure as any
text ever written.
Numerous authors have attempted overviews of the progress of Hegel’s
logic, and numerous claims have been made about the general course of
the argumentation, but there is still no thoroughgoing commentary on
Hegel’s logic to place beside the commentaries on other philosophical
masters by scholars like Cornford, W.D.Ross, Vaihinger, or Kemp Smith.
No one has been able systematically to reconstruct the flow of
argumentation in the logic in a thoroughly coherent, detailed, and
intelligible manner. In the opinion of this writer, generalizations about the
overall pattern of argumentation followed by attempts to show with
specific examples how the pattern is instantiated have for so long failed so
badly to illuminate this text that a new push to investigate the individual
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HEGEL’S LOGIC AND PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
arguments entirely on their own should take precedence. If Hegel’s
pronouncements about his method are correct and in each case only the
self-movement of the concept is involved, each argument should be
intelligible in its own right. Indeed, if Hegel’s remark that the method of
the logic just is the self-movement of the concept is taken more seriously
than most of his interpreters have allowed, there may be no higher
principles involved throughout the whole course of the logic.21 The detail
work may be all that there is to understanding Hegel’s logic.
APPENDIX
I have marked one divergence between the Science of Logic and the
Encyclopedia in the Doctrine of Being, but it should be noted that the
Encyclopedia includes far less detail than the greater Logic and that the
arrangement in the Doctrine of Essence differs fairly significantly, enough
that it could not be easily marked on this outline.22
I. The Doctrine of Being
A. Determinateness (Quality)
1. Being
a. Being
b. Nothing
c. Becoming
(1) Unity of Being and Nothing
(2) Moments of Becoming: Coming-to-be and Ceasing-
to-be
(3) Sublation of Becoming
2 Determinate Being
a. Determinate Being as Such
(1) Determinate Being in General
(2) Quality
(3) Something
b. Finitude
(1) Something and Other
(2) Determination, Constitution, and Limit
(3) Finitude
(a) The Immediacy of Finitude
(b) Limitation and the Ought
(c) Transition of the Finite into the Infinite
c. Infinity
(1) The Infinite in General
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THE AGE OF GERMAN IDEALISM
(2) Alternating Determination of the Finite and Infinite
(3) Affirmative Infinity
3. Being-for-self
a. Being-for-self as such
(1) Determinate Being and Being-for-self
(2) Being-for-one
(3) The One
b The One and the Many
(1) The One in its Own Self
(2) The One and the Void
(3) Many Ones—Repulsion
c. Repulsion and Attraction
(1) Exclusion of the One
(2) The One of Attraction
(3) The Relation of Repulsion and Attraction
B. Magnitude (Quantity)
1. Quantity
a. Pure Quantity
b. Continuous and Discrete Magnitude
c. Limitation of Quantity
2. Quantum
a. Number
b. Extensive and Intensive Quantum
(1) Their Difference
(2) Identity of Extensive and Intensive Magnitude
(3) Alteration of Quantum
c. Quantitative Infinity
(1) Its Concept
(2) The Quantitative Infinite Process
(3) The Infinity of Quantum
3. The Quantitative Relation or Ratio (Enc.: Degree)
a. The Direct Ratio
b. Inverse Ratio
c. The Ratio of Powers
C. Measure
1. Specific Quantity
a. The Specific Quantum
b. Specifying Measure
(1) The Rule
(2) Specifying Measure
(3) Relation of the Two Sides as Qualities
c. Being-for-self in Measure
2. Real Measure
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HEGEL’S LOGIC AND PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
a. The Relation of Self-subsistent Measures
(1) Combination of Two Measures
(2) Measure as a Series of Measure Relations
(3) Elective Affinity
b. Nodal Line of Measure Relations
c. The Measureless
3. The Becoming of Essence
a. Absolute Indifference
b. Indifference as an Inverse Ratio of its Factors
c. Transition into Essence
II. The Doctrine of Essence
A. Essence as Reflection within Itself
1. Illusory Being
a. The Essential and the Unessential
b. Illusory Being
c. Reflection
(1) Positing Reflection
(2) External Reflection
(3) Determining Reflection
2. The Essentialities of Determinations of Reflection
a. Identity
b. Difference
(1) Absolute Difference
(2) Diversity
(3) Opposition
c. Contradiction
3. Ground
a. Absolute Ground
(1) Form and Essence
(2) Form and Matter
(3) Form and Content
b. Determinate Ground
(1) Formal Ground
(2) Real Ground
(3) The Complete Ground
c. Condition
(1) The Relatively Unconditioned
(2) The Absolutely Unconditioned
(3) Emergence of the Fact into Existence
B. Appearance
I. Existence
a. The Thing and its Properties
(1) Thing-in-itself and Existence
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THE AGE OF GERMAN IDEALISM
(2) Property
(3) The Reciprocal Action of Things
b. The Constitution of the Thing out of Matters
c. Dissolution of the Thing
2. Appearance
a. The Law of Appearance
b. The World of Appearance and World-in-itself
c. Dissolution of Appearance
3. The Essential Relation
a. The Relation of Whole and Parts
b. The Relation of Force and its Expression
(1) The Conditionedness of Force
(2) The Solicitation of Force
(3) The Infinity of Force
c. Relation of Outer and Inner
C. Actuality
1. The Absolute
a. The Exposition of the Absolute
b. The Absolute Attribute
c. The Mode of the Absolute
2. Actuality
a. Contingency, or Formal Actuality, Possibility, and
Necessity
b. Relative Necessity, or Real Actuality, Possibility, and
Necessity
c. Absolute Necessity
3. The Absolute Relation
a. The Relation of Substantiality
b. The Relation of Causality
(1) Formal Causality
(2) The Determinate Relation of Causality
(3) Action and Reaction
c. Reciprocity
III. The Doctrine of the Concept
A. Subjectivity
1. The Concept
a. The Universal Concept
b. The Particular Concept
c. The Individual
2. The Judgment
a. The Judgment of Existence (Inherence)
(1) The Positive Judgment
(2) The Negative Judgment
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HEGEL’S LOGIC AND PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
(3) The Infinite Judgment
b. The Judgment of Reflection
(1) The Singular Judgment
(2) The Particular Judgment
(3) The Universal Judgment
c. The Judgment of Necessity
(1) The Categorical Judgment
(2) The Hypothetical Judgment
(3) The Disjunctive Judgment
d. The Judgment of the Concept
(1) The Assertoric Judgment
(2) The Problematic Judgment
(3) The Apodeictic Judgment
3. The Syllogism
a. The Syllogism of Existence
(1) First Figure of the Syllogism
(2) The Second Figure: P-I-U
(3) The Third Figure: I-U-P
(4) The Fourth Figure: U-U-U, or the Mathematical
Syllogism
b. The Syllogism of Reflection
(1) The Syllogism of Allness
(2) The Syllogism of Induction
(3) The Syllogism of Analogy
c. The Syllogism of Necessity
(1) The Categorical Syllogism
(2) The Hypothetical Syllogism
(3) The Disjunctive Syllogism
B. Objectivity
1. Mechanism
a. The Mechanical Object
b. The Mechanical Process
(1) The Formal Mechanical Process
(2) The Real Mechanical Process
(3) The Product of the Mechanical Process
c. Absolute Mechanism
(1) The Center
(2) Law
(3) Transition of Mechanism
2. Chemism
a. The Chemical Object
b. The Chemical Process
c. Transition of Chemism
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THE AGE OF GERMAN IDEALISM
3. Teleology
a. The Subjective End
b. The Means
c. The Realized End
C. The Idea
1. Life
a. The Living Individual
b. The Life Process
c. The Genus
2. The Idea of Cognition
a. The Idea of the True
(1) Analytic Cognition
(2) Synthetic Cognition
(a) Definition
(b) Division
(c) The Theorem
b. The Idea of the Good
3. The Absolute Idea
NOTES
1 Ideally, the formal properties of items do not depend in any way on their
semantic or representational properties, and therefore cannot depend in any
way on the nature of the reality they represent. But this is really too simple,
since the logician must distinguish logical from nonlogical particles. The
whole reason for making the distinction and doing logic in the first place rests
on the different kinds of content embodied in the symbols.
2 Traditionally, logic is thought to spell out the conditions for thought’s
‘agreeing’ with itself, assuming that unless it agrees with itself, it cannot agree
with reality. But there are substantive (and nonformal) assumptions here about
the nature of such internal agreement and about the nature of reality.
3 WL: Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik, 2 vols, ed. G.Lasson (Leipzig: Meiner, 1923);
SL: Hegel’s Science of logic, trans. A.V.Miller (London: Allen & Unwin, 1969).
4 I distinguish between the generic discipline of logic and Hegel’s particular
treatment of it by calling his treatment the logic. This usage does not
distinguish between his treatments in the Science of Logic and the
Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences.
5 Note that Hegel explicitly does not say that the logic is an exposition of the
ideas or the mind of God, for he would insist that this kind of imagistic and
metaphoric way of describing the logic is very inadequate. Rather, it is an
exposition of God himself.
6 A good example of this occurs in the Zusätz to § 24 of the Encyclopedia,
where the Mosaic legend of the fall of man is read as an “ancient picture of
the origin and consequences” of the self-disruption of spirit that makes all
knowledge possible to begin with.
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HEGEL’S LOGIC AND PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
7 Actually, Hegel himself would have been more likely to have said that this
development bottomed out with Kant, whom in this regard he classifies as an
empiricist, simply because the hard-core nominalist empiricists still held onto
the simple faith that thought (in their case their ideas and impressions) and
reality match. Only in Kant are we inescapably confined to a realm of thought
without direct connection to reality.
8 “It is one of the profoundest and truest insights to be found in the Critique of
Pure Reason that the unity which constitutes the nature of the Concept is
recognized as the original synthetic unity of apperception, as unity of the I
think, or of self-consciousness…. Thus we are justified by a cardinal principle
of the Kantian philosophy in referring to the nature of the I in order to learn
what the Concept is” (WL, II:221–2; SL, 584–5).
9 Hegel does not believe that the cogito expresses a direct intuition of a
substantial soul. Indeed, just what is at stake in the cogito turns out to be very
complex and intertwined with a great deal of other knowledge about ourselves
and the world around us. Thus, Hegel’s interpretation of the cogito is highly
anti-Cartesian. I have discussed this in greater detail in W.A.deVries, Hegel’s
Theory of Mental Activity (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), ch. 6.
10 Hegel, of course, never couches his objection to Kant in these terms.
11 See WL, II:220–3; SL, 583–5.
12 This aspect of Hegel’s logic has been emphasized in K.Düsing, Das Problem
der Subjektivität in Hegels Logik, Hegel-Studien Beiheft 15 (Bonn: Bouvier,
1976).
13 The following section is derived, in substance, from deVries, op. cit., pp. 171–4.
14 The attitude of the understanding seeks to find and hold on to a set of rigid
categories and distinctions that can be brought independently to bear on any
material. The pre-Kantian thinkers, both rationalist and empiricist, with their
consistent drive to decompose everything into simple atoms, are strong
examples of this (pre-)philosophical attitude.
15 See R.Aquila, “Predication and Hegel’s Metaphysics,” in M.J.Inwood (ed.),
Hegel, Oxford Readings in Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1985).
16 Cf. the discussion of the active universal and “objective thought” in Enz., §§
19–25.
17 Hegel seems to assume that with sufficient consideration one conceptual
structure will present itself as being the structure characteristic of the
phenomenon in question. But why could there not be alternative structures,
perhaps each revealing something important about the phenomenon, but none
with a claim to being the privileged structure inherent in the phenomenon?
Hegel’s own attempts to find the “right” structure for the philosophy of
religion, for instance, show that he struggled with different alternatives.
18 Nevertheless, there are some contemporary commentators, e.g. Kenley Dove
and William Maker, who seem to hold that retracing the Phenomenology is
indeed the only way to achieve this state.
19 Although Husserl never thought much of Hegel, Hegel’s conception of the
attitude of pure knowing bears striking similarities to Husserl’s notion of the
phenomenological attitude. This may help explain why so many of Husserl’s
followers, unlike their master, found Hegel fascinating.
20 For any excellent review of the interpretations and criticisms of the opening
moves in Hegel’s logic, see D.Henrich, “Anfang und Methode der Logik,” in
his Hegel im Kontext (Frankfurt Main: Suhrkamp, 1967). Unfortunately, this
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THE AGE OF GERMAN IDEALISM
essay—the entire book, for that matter—is not available in English
translation.
21 The major argument against this particularist reading of Hegel’s logic is that it
leaves the systematic triadicity of the system totally unexplained. Surely there
is no particular reason to think that each and every concept must have an
intrinsic, implicit triadic structure. I am willing to hazard the revisionist guess
that the triadicity is an artifact of Hegel’s commitment to a logic of terms in
which the principal model of logical relation is a three-termed syllogism. But
this is not the place to defend such a radical interpretation.
22 Hegel succeeded in revising only the Doctrine of Being before his untimely
death. This revision brings it into accord with the logic as contained in the
third edition of the Encyclopedia. But the Doctrine of Essence remains
unrevised in the Science of Logic, and it differs in some significant ways from
the version contained in the Encyclopedia. We must assume that had Hegel
lived to revise the Doctrine of Essence in the larger Logic, it would have been
brought into agreement with the version in the Encyclopedia. I am not aware
of a thoroughgoing study of the differences between the two logics.
Significantly, the Doctrine of the Concept as contained in the Science of Logic
and published in 1816, several years after the appearance of the first two
parts, accords substantially with the version in the Encyclopedia; apparently it
would not have needed as extensive revision.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Original language editions
7.1 Hegel, G.W.F. Sämtlicbe Werke, 20 vols, ed. H.Glockner, Jubiläumsausgabe,
Stuttgart: Frommann, 1927–30.
7.2 Hegel, G.W.F. Werke, 20 vols, ed. E.Moldenhauer and K.M.Michel,
Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1970–1.
7.3 Hegel, G.W.F. Gesammelte Werke, ed. Rheinisch-Westfälischen Akademie der
Wissenschaften, Hamburg: Meiner, 1968–.
7.4 Hegel, G.W.F. Wissenschaft der Logik, 2 vols, ed. G.Lasson, Leipzig: Meiner,
1923.
English translations
7.5 Hegel, G.W.F. The Encyclopedia Logic, trans. T.F.Geraets, W.A.Suchting,
and H.S.Harris, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1991.
7.6 Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind, trans. W.Wallace and A.V.Miller, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1971.
7.7 Hegel’s Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, 3 vols, trans. M.J.Petry, Boston:
Reidel, 1978.
7.8 Hegel’s Science of Logic, trans. A.V.Miller, London: Allen & Unwin,
1969.
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HEGEL’S LOGIC AND PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
7.9 The Logic of Hegel, 2nd edn, trans. W.Wallace, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1892.
7.10 Hegel, G.W.F. The Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V. Miller, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1977.
Bibliographies and concordances
7.11 Steinhauer, K. (ed.) Hegel: An International Bibliography, Munich: Verlag
Dokumentation, 1978.
7.12 Hegel-Studien, Bonn: Bouvier, published annually.
Influences
7.13 Beiser, F.C. The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte,
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987.
7.14 Fleischmann, E. “Hegels Umgestaltung der kantischen Logik,” Hegel-
Studien, 3 (1965): 181–208.
7.15 Gray, J.G. Hegel and Greek Thought, New York: Harper & Row, 1969.
7.16 Hartmann, N. “Aristoteles und Hegel,” in Kleinere Schriften II, Berlin: de
Gruyter, 1957.
7.17 Heintel, E. “Aristotelismus und Transzendentalismus in ‘Begriff bei Hegel,”
in W.Biemel (ed.) Die Welt des Mensche—die Welt der Philosophie,
The Hague: Nijhoff, 1976.
7.18 Hølderlin, F. “Urtheil und Seyn,” in M.Frank and G.Kurz (eds) Materialien
zu Schellings Philosophischen Anfängen, Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp,
1975.
7.19 Kroner, R. Von Kant bis Hegel, 2 vols, Tübingen: Mohr, 1961.
7.20 Parkinson, G.H.R. “Hegel, Pantheism, and Spinoza,” Journal of the History
of Ideas, 38 (3) (1977): 449–59.
7.21 Priest, S. Hegel’s Critique of Kant, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987.
7.22 Royce, J. Lectures on Modern Idealism, New Haven: Yale University Press,
1919.
7.23 Solomon, R.C. Introducing the German Idealists, Indianapolis: Hackett,
1981.
Hegel’s development
7.24 Harris, H.S. Hegel’s Development: Towards the Sunlight, 1770–1801,
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972.
7.25 ——Hegel’s Development: Night Thoughts (Jena (1801–1806), Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1983.
7.26 Horstmann, R.-P. “Probleme der Wandlung in Hegel’s Jenaer
Systemkonzeption,” Philosophische Rundschau 19 (1972): 87–117.
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7.27 Lukács, G. The Young Hegel, trans. R.Livingstone, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press, and London: Merlin Press, 1975.
The philosophy of Hegel: general surveys
7.28 Findlay, J.N. Hegel: A Re-examination, London: Allen & Unwin, and New
York : Oxford University Press, 1958.
7.29 Inwood, M.J. Hegel, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983.
7.30 Mure, G.R.G. An Introduction to Hegel, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939.
7.31 Mure, G.R.G. The Philosophy of Hegel, London: Oxford University Press,
1965.
7.32 Pöggeler, Otto (ed.) Hegel, Freiburg and Munich: Verlag Karl Alber,1977.
7.33 Stace, W.T. The Philosophy of Hegel: A Systematic Exposition, London:
Macmillan, 1924.
7.34 Taylor, C. Hegel, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.
Hegel’s logic and metaphysics
7.35 Aquila, R. “Predication and Hegel’s Metaphysics,” Kant-Studien, 64 (1973):
231–45; rep. in M.J.Inwood (ed.) Hegel, Oxford Readings in
Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.
7.36 Burbidge, J. On Hegel’s Logic: Fragments of a Commentary, Atlantic
Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press,1981.
7.37 Düsing, K, Das Problem der Subjektivität in Hegels Logik, Hegel-Studien
Beiheft 15, Bonn: Bouvier, 1976.
7.38 Elder, C. Appropriating Hegel, Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1980.
7.39 Fulda, H.F. Das Problem einer Einleitung in Hegels Wissenschaft der Logik,
Frankfurt/Main: Klostermann, 1965.
7.40 Fulda, H.F., Horstmann, R.-P., and Theunissen, M. Kritische Darstellung der
Metaphysik. Eine Diskuission der Hegels Logik, Frankfurt/Main:
Suhrkamp, 1980.
7.41 Henrich, D. Hegel im Kontext, Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1967.
7.42 Henrich, D. “Formen der Negation in Hegels Logik,” in W.R.Beyer (ed.)
Hegel-Jahrbuch 1974, Cologne: Pahl-Rügenstein, 1975.
7.43 Horstmann, R.-P. Seminar: Dialektik in der Philosophie Hegels, Frankfurt/
Main: Suhrkamp, 1978.
7.44 McTaggart, J.M.E. A Commentary on Hegel’s Logic, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1910.
7.45 Marcuse, H. Hegels Ontologie und die Grundlegung einer Theorie der
Geschichtlichkeit, Frankfurt/Main: Klostermann, 1932.
7.46 Mure, G.R.G. A Study of Hegel’s Logic, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939.
7.47 Pinkard, T. Hegel’s Dialectic, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988.
7.48 Pippen, R.B. Hegel’s Idealism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1989.
7.49 Rosen, M. Hegel’s Dialectic and its Criticism, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1982.
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7.50 Soll, I. An Introduction to Hegel’s Metaphysics, Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1969.
7.51 Theunissen, M. Sein und Schein. Die kritische Funktion der Hegelschen
Logik, Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1978.
7.52 Trendelenburg, A. Logische Untersuchungen, Berlin: Bethge, 1840.
7.53 Wolff, M. Der Begriff des Widerspruchs: Eine Studie zur Dialektik Kants
und Hegels, Königstein: Hain, 1981.
Hegel’s philosophy of mind
7.54 Bodammer, T. Hegel’s Deutung der Sprache, Hamburg: F.Meiner, 1969.
7.55 deVries, W.A. Hegel’s Theory of Mental Activity, Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1988.
7.56 Solomon, R.C. “Hegel’s Concept of Geist,” in A.C.Maclntyre (ed.) Hegel: A
Collection of Critical Essays, New York; Doubleday, 1972.
7.57 Stepelevich, L.S., and Lamb, D. Hegel’s Philosophy of Action, Atlantic
Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1983.
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CHAPTER 8
Hegel, spirit, and politics
Leo Rauch
Hegel’s impact on political thought has been immense—giving shape to
the major political movements of the modern world. Yet the person of
average education is hardly familiar with the name, which is usually
identified with a small number of simplistic statements, to the effect that
Hegel argued for the supremacy of state power over all else; or that Hegel
says individuals must subject themselves completely to the will of the
state, and so on. Moreover, Hegel was seen (until recently) as the prophet
of German totalitarianism—and the alleged evidence for this is in his
characterization of the state as “the divine idea as it exists on earth,” “the
march of God in the world,” etc.
In our century, such views have ominous echoes, especially when we
have seen states override the rights of individuals; when state power has
more often crushed personal freedom than it has preserved it; when
individuals have all too often been forced to cooperate in their own
enslavement by the state; and when the areas of state power have been
expanding irreversibly. In the light of all this it surely seems that any
endorsement of state supremacy is suspect and ought to be rejected out of
hand.
Moreover, we may well wonder if there is anything in Hegel’s political
philosophy that merits our attention. The affirmative answer comes from
the fact that so much of what he wrote has been reflected in other political
streams, even if these involve distortions of Hegel’s thinking. World
communism, for example, adopted the dialectical logic of Hegel’s
worldview, although that dialectic was linked (in communism) to a
materialism Hegel had rejected utterly.
There is no question about Hegel’s power to fascinate readers with his
views of state and history. To understand his views, we must understand
his reaction to the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. In an age that placed
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great emphasis on the concept of a static and unchanging human nature,
Hegel chose to emphasize the dynamism of the political theater. He sees
the political reality as being historical through and through. But that
dynamism also characterizes culture in all its aspects. And if we now
regard the law, medicine, science, and the arts as fundamentally
dynamic—so that it is by now basic for us to study these in their
histories—this perspective is due in no small part to Hegel. But in regard
to the dynamism of politics we must ask: If politics presents a scene of
change, what is it changing from? what is it changing to?
DYNAMISM AND HISTORY
The dynamic emphasis was not always the norm. Thinkers associated with
the Enlightenment believed that there is a fixed human nature, making all
historical change unreal. As Voltaire is often thought to have said, “Plus
ça change, plus c’est la même chose.”1 And Hume, in his Enquiry (VIII:i),
tells us that if we wish to know the ancient Greeks and Romans we need
merely study the French and English, since humanity stays much the same,
and history “informs us of nothing new or strange.”
Hegel’s approach makes a sharp contrast to all this. Instead of arguing
for the unchanging character of human nature, Hegel emphasizes the
evolutionary perspective in history: the state, and all else that is human, is
seen to be in process and to derive its significance from the process. The
Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset said: “Man has no nature, only
a history.” The very concept of an unchanging human nature seems to
have been mocked by history’s spectacle of mindless chaos and blind
change. Hegel rejects the characterization of history as mindless and blind:
History does have an aim, and that aim is rational. If so, what is all this
change aimed at? If the fundamental characterization of humanity
involves its volatility in the dimension of time, in what direction does time
take us: to development or decline? And how inevitable is the historical
process anyway?
Hegel’s way of addressing this complex issue is to make it even more
complex. If we agree to see human life as historical in its very essence, the
historical dimension must be seen in a global perspective—even in a
cosmic perspective whereby human history is regarded as a continuation
of the development of the cosmos as a whole. In the terminology of our
own time, we may see the cosmos beginning as simple matter composed of
undifferentiated particles, but ending as mind and culture subsumed under
the heading of what Hegel calls Spirit: i.e. all that has been created by
humans using their minds, language, culture, and society. Geist has also
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been seen as a “general consciousness, a single mind common to all men.”2
It is this metaphor that makes it possible for Hegel to look at history as
though it were the report of the world’s own coming to self-consciousness,
like a mind growing up and achieving maturity and freedom.
What about matter and spirit? How did we get from the one pole to the
other? In the temporal “distance” between these two poles (matter and
spirit), we see an emerging process: it all has tended in the direction of the
highly complex and self-conscious beings we are—beings capable of
understanding themselves in rational terms and giving shape to their lives
accordingly; beings capable of grasping their own history, and of seeing
reason at work in it.
Hegel must have been struck by the sheer wonder of it all. But if so, he
did more than wonder at it: he organized his wonderment into a
comprehensive system of metaphysical speculation. In his Encyclopaedia
of the Philosophical Sciences (1817), Hegel undertook to demonstrate a
very remarkable doctrine (among other remarkable ones): namely that the
mere concept of Being must eventuate in an existing world, an Ontological
Argument for the world’s existence. Being—a purely abstract and formal
concept in metaphysics—must somehow lead to an eventual
materialization of itself as reality, so that the self-enclosed concept must
produce a version of itself outside itself, as nature! From there, Hegel went
on to show how the world of inorganic nature must produce an organic
version of itself, as life. And from there he showed how life as such must
lead to consciousness and then to self-consciousness. Moreover, he showed
how these separate stages must follow from one another, not merely as a
haphazard biological/ evolutionary progression but as a matter of logical
necessity.
The final goal of the process—that is, our rational self-consciousness
made real in the world—must be seen as somehow embedded in its very
beginning. The omega is entailed in the alpha—so that our modern
cultural life, in all its wealth of complexity and detail, is implicitly there in
the simple first moments of the life of the universe. (Needless to say, Hegel
does not use such a term as “the Big Bang.”) If we are now so highly
evolved as to be capable of understanding ourselves rationally, this self-
consciousness of ours must be the final goal of the entire process, the
purpose that gives the cosmos its ultimate meaning. Accordingly, it is
Spirit—fully evolved and fully self-conscious—that is the goal of history.
And the entire process of cosmic evolution culminates in freedom (for in
being fully self-conscious we are in a position to act freely, according to
our own will, and to shape our lives to meet the standards of our own
rationality).
Hegel undertakes to show how such freedom has emerged in time.
History is the account of the emergence of freedom (in the fullest sense of
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that term). Not all cultures have attained such self-directing freedom, and
they are therefore in the early or intermediary stages in the evolutionary
process of history. Obviously, an authoritarian culture, in which only one
person is “free,” does not provide the setting wherein the individual
participants can regard themselves as fully self-motivating, since they are
not in a position to shape their lives according to their own rational
precepts. Thus Hegel sees history as the gradual fulfillment of our rational
potential, in freedom.
All this must change our view of the violent history of Hegel’s time—
and ours. History is not a chaotic succession of meaningless and
disconnected events. There is a meaning that unites it all, Hegel says, a
meaning we can see if we approach history with a rational attitude. In his
view, then, the unifying meaning is implicit in the omega of history: the
fully explicit and self-conscious rationality manifested in a public life of
full freedom.
Yet we might ask: Assuming that this genuine goal of full rationality
could be realized, would it justify the necessary sacrifices? In our century
(perhaps the most horrific of them all), the question of a sacrificial
calculus is inescapable. Every point on the horizon has its pile of corpses
heaped up in the name of so-called “historical” aims: there are the vast
multitudes who died in the prolonged trench warfare of the First World
War; the millions who were victims of Stalin’s collectivization; the millions
who perished in Hitler’s “final solution,” not to mention the further
millions, on all sides, who died in the Second World War as its victims or
combatants; then think of Hiroshima; of Mao’s “cultural revolution”; of
Cambodia and Vietnam; and on and on. Can all this misery be said to
have contributed to the developing freedom and rationality of history?
And even if such a contribution could be proven, in the long range, could
the remote goal justify all the immediate suffering?
Hegel has no illusions about history’s violence and its short-range
irrationality. He does not see history as filled with sweetness and light.
Indeed, he speaks of history as a “slaughter-bench.” He lived through the
Napoleonic Wars; and although he admired Napoleon when he saw him
on horseback, riding through the conquered city of Jena in 1806, Hegel
knew that he must come to terms with the destructive side in what
Napoleon had done, and keep both eyes open to history’s murderous
aspect. How, then, could anyone argue for the intrinsic rationality of
history, in view of its so obvious irrationality?
For Hegel, the irrational element in history is necessary for the
fulfillment of the ultimate aims of cosmic reason. He argues for this view
on two levels: He begins by saying that “world-historical individuals”
such as Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon (i.e. the “movers” of history) are
merely the unwitting instruments of a higher Spirit working through them,
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a Spirit which is mysteriously exploiting their very irrationality for the
sake of Spirit’s rational goals, and achieving (through these individuals)
ends they never intended, but which were the implicit goals of history all
along. This is the “Cunning of Reason” in history.
Then he extends this concept to human action in general. Human
actions stem from human passions, needs, and interests; and however
irrational these may be, they too are the means whereby the World Spirit
fulfills its rational goals. Thus the aims of Spirit are made real through the
actions of the human will, revolving around its irrational passions, etc.
And thus the rational Idea (i.e. cosmic reason) and the irrational passions
of the individual are interwoven as the “warp and woof” of history,
Hegel says.
THE DIALECTIC
We have seen that human beings can act irrationally, yet serve the rational
goals of cosmic Spirit in so doing. Despite all appearances, therefore, there
is an implicit rationality at work in history and in states. Does this entail a
contradiction? Could this be a positive feature of states and their history?
Here we must say a few words about the topic of Hegel’s dialectic. The
term “dialectic” means (in Greek) discourse, debate, logical reasoning.
Hegel adopted it as a technical term, to mean “logic” in a special sense.
Aristotle’s logic avoids contradiction—so that if a conclusion contradicts
its premises, you know that the argument is invalid. Hegel incorporates
the element of contradiction into his discourse, and makes it play a
constructive role there.
Here is how it works: An idea or proposition (thesis) will readily
suggest its opposite (antithesis), and the one will enter into the very
definition of the other. (Think of the idea of slavery, and how the idea of
freedom enters into its very meaning. Think of Rousseau’s ringing
sentence: “Man is born free, and yet everywhere he is in chains.”) For
Aristotle, a thesis and its antithesis cannot both be true; you must give up
one or the other. Hegel says that two opposed statements can be true if
each is only a partial truth. Indeed, each leads to its opposite because it is
true in only a partial manner. When we see the partial nature of such
truths, we are led to think of a higher truth which is more comprehensive
and includes them both, as partial, so that the partial nature of these lower
truths is overcome. (Thus we could respond to Rousseau by saying: “Yes,
man is by nature free, but he himself freely creates the chains of his
enslavement.”) This higher truth, bringing thesis and antithesis together, is
a synthesis. The synthesis, in turn, will generate a further opposite. (“If
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man is free to create his chains, then he is free to break them. Why, then,
does he remain unfree?”)
Let us take note of the productivity of thought as it arises out of the
clash of its implicit opposites. (It, too, is creating its chains, then breaking
them.) The Danish physicist Niels Bohr said: “There are two sorts of
truth, small truth and great truth; the opposite of a small truth is a
falsehood; the opposite of a great truth is a further truth.” This remark is
straight out of Hegel, except that Hegel was not content to let such a
contradiction remain a contradiction; rather, he would take it to a higher
synthesis. He might say: “The great truths and their opposites are in
opposition only by virture of their compatibility.”
From this, Hegel goes on to the remarkable view that this dialectical
logic works in two separate but parallel areas, i.e. in thought and in
history. Thus our thinking process is dialectical in character, creating its
own counter-questions and their solutions, leading to further questions,
etc. But Hegel goes on to say that history, too, is dialectical in the way it
unfolds—for it is marked by conflicts and solutions, then further conflicts,
and so on. Thus the process of history has the same implicit logic to it, the
dialectic.
Thus the main feature of the dialectic is that it is said to work in two
spheres—the formal and the factual, i.e. logic and history. This means that
if some events are linked logically, that is also the way they are linked in
reality—with the same rigorous necessity characterizing both.
But here we may want to ask: Is there not an antithesis between logic
and history, as there is between pure theory and concrete reality? (This
antithesis, as well, cries out to be resolved in a higher synthesis.) Thus in
the field of pure theory we are confronted by an embarrassing series of
dichotomies (e.g. freedom vs determinism, facts vs values, individual rights
vs collective expectations, etc.)—and the only way these antitheses can
begin to be resolved is by showing that their component “truths” are not
final, that they are mere abstractions or merely piecemeal truths, and that
they can be brought to unifying syntheses if we see them from a “higher”
(unifying) perspective. From that perspective, both thesis and antithesis
are “negated” at the same time that they are “lifted up” (as we shall see in
the forthcoming example of the classless society).
At all events we must grasp the parallelism of logic and history—an
isomorphism that becomes feasible when we realize that the way our
minds think things through (when we think in a thorough manner) is
actually the way things do and must happen—again, because the same
necessity is to be found in both spheres. It is this feature that enables us to
declare, about any series of connected events, that whatever has happened
had to happen.
We can thereby presume to demonstrate the inevitability of (say) the
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Communist Revolution of 1917 by showing that it occurred with a logical
necessity, both in its initial causes and its ultimate aims: Thus the opposed
interests of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat (as thesis vs antithesis)
erupted into open conflict wherein class differences were eventually to be
eliminated through the creation of a supposedly classless society
(synthesis). So, if Marx and Engels are correct, and all history is the record
of class conflict, then the synthesis that is the classless society negates
social classes entirely at the same time that it elevates them into a higher
synthesis—wherein the individual would see him- or herself as belonging
to a higher entity, altogether outside class.
It is an ironic fact about the dialectic process that a synthesis need not be
final either, but that it too may create a further opposition in another
antithesis, to be followed by yet another synthesis, and on and on. If, however,
any historical synthesis is final, then it becomes the “end” of history—in the
combined sense of its completion and its ultimate purpose (and, indeed, that is
how the “classless society” was seen by Marxist theoreticians).
We may conclude, therefore, that what drives history is its internal (i.e.
formal) conflicts brought about by the one-sided “partiality” and
inconclusiveness of its theses and antitheses, and that all this will come to
an end in an all-embracing synthesis wherein the imperfections inherent in
the one-sidednesses are altogether overcome.
We must leave to the judgment of history the question as to whether
this dialectical vision is for the most part correct. However that may be,
the fact that so many historical events do involve conflict of some sort
tends to make the dialectical explanation a useful model, though probably
a reductive and simplistic one. Moreover, since the dialectical model is
most often applied after the events, not predictively, its power to explain is
limited because it is so arbitrary. Hegel never uses the dialectical model in
this formal and puerile manner, but only for the purpose of arguing in
support of the link between logic and history—a link that is somewhat
reflected in the powerful statement in the Preface of Hegel’s Philosophy of
Right: “What is rational is actual; what is actual is rational” (p. 10).
HISTORY AND THE COSMIC SPIRIT
With the foregoing statement—important enough for Hegel to utter it in
his Preface—the parallelism of thought and reality comes into full view.
That link is possible because both belong to the realm of Spirit. The
concept of “Spirit” (Geist) is so central to Hegel’s entire doctrine that if
that concept falls, then his entire system falls with it. What can be said for
it, or against it?
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To begin with, the concept of a World Spirit (Weltgeist) is the paradigm
case of a “metaphysical” concept if ever there was one. And if we adopt
the anti-metaphysical stance so typical of our age, we would have to say
that any sentence with the word “Spirit” in it (as Hegel uses the term)
cannot be verified, and so it must be rejected as a sentence devoid of
meaning. Thus if I say, “Spirit acts through the world-historical
individuals,” I cannot describe just how the connection works, or how
Spirit makes them act as they do. Further, I cannot specify what
observable conditions would make that sentence true or make it false. In
the absence of such verifying or falsifying conditions, the sentence must be
judged to be literally without meaning! (This is the general criticism
leveled by Logical Positivists against all metaphysical utterances.)
Moreover, if we were to adopt the Marxian standpoint, we would have
to say that Hegel’s doctrine of Spirit (as a doctrine) is nothing but theology
in disguise. Like the God of the Bible, Hegel’s “Spirit” acts in history,
chooses certain nations to bring its (Spirit’s) message to the world, acts
through certain individuals to manifest its will—and all the while keeps its
(i.e. His) ultimate intentions hidden. (“God works in mysterious ways…”
The sentence has the same meaning if its subject is “Spirit.”) And if Hegel
is really talking theology in this metaphysical doctrine of his (as Marxist
criticism alleges), and religion is the opium of the people (an opium
employed for the purpose of keeping the lower classes in their place), then
Hegel’s doctrine is on very shaky ground indeed.
Yet there is no denying some important points in favor of Hegel’s
doctrine of Spirit:
(a) In view of history’s dynamic nature, it does seem to be moving
toward a goal. Hegel speaks of the process of history as though it were an
individual mind growing up and becoming aware of itself, a process of
maturation in the world’s “mind.” We therefore need the concept of a
“mind” or “Spirit” to give meaning to the process.
Consider the probable mentality of (say) Neanderthals or other
paleolithic primitives who might have come only as far as domesticating
fire and the dog, and who might have had only the most rudimentary ideas
about their surrounding world. They must have had only the vaguest
reasonings regarding their own social organization. Their ability to
function in the world, to explain it successfully and make use of its
opportunities for providing food, clothing, shelter, health, social order, and
security—all these would have been severely limited.
Now contrast the picture (admittedly fanciful) of that crude mentality
to that of a Freud, Einstein, Bertrand Russell, and it is obvious that we
have come a long way in our mental evolution. Our capacity for handling
abstract concepts has grown exponentially. Our ability to think our way
through a complex series of issues in a sustained way, then to
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communicate and record the process—all this has far exceeded anything of
which the primitive was capable.
In what does the difference consist? If we say it is a difference in
“culture”—what does that term amount to in its comparative/ explanatory
power? Frued, Einstein, and Russell were the “products” of their culture—
and they would hardly have survived in the Neanderthal world. The
Neanderthals, in turn, no doubt had their characteristic ways of relating to
the world, of using it and explaining it, etc. But this relativistic approach of
ours (placing all “cultures” on an equal footing) gives us little; in and of
itself, it does not tell us what the differences amount to.
The difference between “us” and “them” is not simply in what we
might call civilization. To account for the contrast, we must observe that
the intervening process has been thrusting its way toward the goal of a
more articulate level of self-consciousness—i.e. a more complex mentality
or spirituality active in the world. The historical process makes sense only
in the light of that increasing complexity in the mentalization or
spiritualization of humanity. Thus we become human to the degree that
we can think of ourselves as human. With this, the concept of a developing
Spirit is indispensable if we are to understand the process as a whole.
Otherwise the process itself (along with the contrast between ourselves
and the primitives) remains an unexplored mystery.
(b) Moreover, without that concept there would be an unexplained
mystery in connection with cultural boundaries which some civilizations
have marked out for themselves: Why do the Elizabethans have such
sublime theater, but so little painting? Why do the Florentines produce
such magnificent painting, but such negligible theater in comparison to the
Elizabethans? How is is that the ancient Hebrews develop such an exalted
conception of deity, at a level of thought calling for the most profound
wisdom and insight—yet have nothing to say in regard to art as such, or
democracy, or science? How could the ancient Greeks, that miraculous
people, have had so much to contribute in art, science, and mathematics—
and even have invented tragic drama, democracy, and philosophy—yet not
have gone so far as the most elementary form of monotheism?
Here, the concept of Spirit has considerable explanatory power. Hegel
says that the characteristic differences between cultures can be explained
by what he calls the “Spirit of a people” (Volksgeist). As he sees it, each
people has a distinct contribution to make to the great stream of cultural
history. A people will step up upon the stage of world history just once,
will say its “lines,” and then step down. The Hebraic contribution of
ethical monotheism is entirely distinctive in the Hebrews; no other people
could have made that contribution to world culture, and that world
culture is the richer for it. The Greek contribution of theater, democracy,
science, and philosophy is (in its totality) similarly distinctive. Again, no
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other people could have made that combined contribution, and without it
the world would be a bleak place indeed—with no civilization at all but
only some form of stunted cultural existence.
These contributions—the “lines” spoken by each of these peoples on
the world stage—are not arbitrary or accidental, but are rather the
necessary steps in the maturation of the world’s “mind.” At certain
definite moments in time, this or that contribution had to be made—and
the world’s “mind” chose one people or another to make it. This is
precisely what demarcates one people or another. It is the Hebraic
Volksgeist and the Greek Volksgeist that explain what these peoples are,
thereby dispelling the mystery about their different capacities and
characteristic achievements. At this level we are no longer dealing with a
mysterious cosmic Spirit or world mind, but with Spirit in a more limited
scope, the mind of a people or nation—and perhaps the concept’s
explanatory force is all the greater for being limited.
(c) There is a further argument to support the concept of Spirit, perhaps
the most convincing of all: An inventory of the world’s “contents” must
include not only all material objects and material particles; it must also
include all thoughts, all actions, relations, concepts, meanings, etc. All
these latter things must be differentiated from material objects, since their
descriptions cannot be equated with material descriptions. They must
therefore be consigned to a nonmaterial category, and this is Spirit. (We
could just as well call it “Mind,” or the “mental,” and Hegel would accept
these terms as equivalent, since Geist includes them all.) Spirit embraces
the totality of human significations. And if we are to see that totality in
dynamic terms, as evolving in history and historical time, then we must
have a dynamic conception of Spirit itself, to comprehend all that is
cultural and distinctly human.
We ought to respond to the Marxian objection made earlier—to the
effect that Hegel’s metaphysical doctrine or history is theology in disguise,
that his philosophy is merely a version of religion. Thus Hegel’s statements
about history should (in the view of Marx) be translatable into theological
statements, and these translations should then reflect the true meaning of
what Hegel has to say. Hegel, however, maintains the converse: rather
than philosophy being religion in another form, religion is actually
philosophy in another form. That is to say, religious assertions are trying
to say what philosophy says, but they say it crudely, by means of imagery
(human figures representing abstract concepts, and so on). Thus religious
statements are inadequate expressions of deeper philosophic truth; and it
is the philosophic truth (not the religious) which is ultimate—since
philosophy is fully articulate and self-critical, while religion must express
its insights in nothing better than imperfect verbalizations which must
wait to get their truth by way of philosophy.
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Marx respected Hegel for his dialectical logic—the logic of conflict and
its overcoming. He accepted Hegel’s view that history works dialectically
(the Marxian class struggle being the best example of dialectical conflict in
history). But Marx felt that Hegel was wrong about Spirit being the
moving force in history; he believed he had cleared up one of Hegel’s
errors, replacing Hegel’s “idealistic” doctrine with a “materialistic” view
of history. (This occasioned Marx’s famous remark about his finding
Hegel standing on his head, and setting him back on his feet.) It was
Plekhanov who in 1891 coined the phrase “dialectical materialism” to
characterize Marx’s view of history. Yet Marx’s “materialistic conception
of history” involves a false materialism: the “material forces” which he
believes move history are the economic factors embedded in human
society; they are the products of human effort, not the effects of physical
matter. Hegel calls them Objective Spirit—and they are the work of Spirit,
after all, not of matter. Despite Marx’s never-ending attack on Hegel, the
Marxian conception of history is Hegelian through and through.
Thus, if there is any doubt about Hegel’s view that “ideas” move
history, such doubt is readily dispelled by Marx’s own case, since the
“material forces” he adduces are themselves the work of the “mental,” i.e.
people’s ideas about history—and few “ideas” have moved history more
decisively than have Marx’s doctrines.
REASON IN THE WORLD
We saw Hegel say, “What is rational is actual; what is actual is rational.”
Here, again, we see the implicit parallelism of thought and history, united
by a parallel dialectic. Elsewhere he says that when we approach the world
with our own rationality, the world responds by showing us its rationality
in return. (This is from his Introduction to the Philosophy of History, p.
14.) The rational aspect he shows us is the world’s dialectical structure—
which we can comprehend because it parallels the dialectical structure of
our thinking.
Here, then, we may see a further side to the puzzling theme of Spirit in
history: Instead of seeing “Spirit” as a mysterious metaphysical agency
(and most critics of Hegel see him thinking in just this way), we might
take “Spirit” to refer merely to the element of active reason in the world,
the rational in the actual.
Once we have this in full view, Hegel’s “metaphysical” utterances are
tamed and demystified. In every way he can, he is trying to account for the
existence of reason in the world. After we have acknowledged the obvious
truism that the world and the mind are mutually reflective, mutually
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consistent, we can either marvel at the fact or shrug our shoulders at it.
Hegel sees the consistency between world and mind, between the actual
and the rational, as the most deeply problematic of truths. Einstein said:
“The one incomprehensible fact about the world is that it is
comprehensible.” For Hegel, that fact is not incomprehensible, and his
aim is to show this to be so.
He approaches the problem at a number of levels: Not only does he
make it a metaphysical issue requiring some very complex lines of
argument (as in the grand structure of his Encyclopaedia); he also
examines the actual workings of reason in such different areas as art,
religion, culture in general, history—and political life. Here, then (as I
suggest), we see a less-than-metaphysical approach being taken by him.
And as soon as we realize that this is so—namely, that not all his
explanations are intended as metaphysical assertions but rather as
statements closer to the world’s everyday ontology—then many of his
“metaphysical” utterances (so called) become less daunting.
In the Introduction to the Philosophy of History (p. 75), there is the
oft-quoted statement: “World history in general is…the unfolding of Spirit
in time, as nature is the unfolding of the Idea in space.” This statement is
far less metaphysical-sounding when we realize that Hegel is merely
contrasting the realm of mind and culture with that of physical nature.
Each has its source in a rational process, Hegel is saying.
HEGEL’S PHILOSOPHY OF RIGHT
Much of the tradition of political thought rests on two tenets that are
sometimes made explicit, but are more often left tacit. These are:
The human being is by nature a social animal.
The human being is by nature a rational animal.
Political theory, throughout its variegated course, has tried to prove the
mutual compatibility of these two statements—although there have been
thinkers, such as Nietzsche, who have sought to demonstrate how
incompatible these are, so that our social inclination is by no means a rational
one. If they are compatible, then we may expect human society to exhibit the
same rationality that typifies all other human contrivances and constructions;
if they are not compatible, then there is no basis for expecting society (or
anything else that is human) to display anything like a rational aspect. The
problem goes back to a wider controversy in ancient Greek philosophy, as to
whether the laws are the product of nature or of convention: Are social values
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entirely random, arbitrary—and irrational? For Nietzsche, there is nothing in
social life or custom that can be given a fully rational and intellectually
satisfying justification. (In one of his examples, he speaks of a culture in which
the act of scraping ice off one’s boots with a knife is punishable by death—
and he seems to be saying that there is no socially sanctioned act anywhere
that does any better in its justification.)
On the other hand, we have had a host of thinkers who regard the state
as a rational device specifically created (by rational and naturally social
creatures) to serve one or more of our basic social purposes: to promote
peace and social order; to protect life and property; to determine and
secure natural rights; to insure that a people will have a unifying voice; to
make possible the transmission of inherited values from one generation to
the next; to make it possible for the wisest to rule, etc. Whatever these
various theories argue for, they share an emphasis on the purposiveness
and rationality of societal life. Is it at all rational and sensible for
individuals to enter into social ties with others? Presumably, we enter into
contractual arrangements with one another for one rational end or
another. Having done so, is it rational and sensible for us to try to give
further order to our societal interrelations through the application of
reason? Or is all this speculation about the social interactions of ourselves
as primordial humans merely an idle exercise?
Of course, like Nietzsche, we may express no confidence at all in the
reasonableness of human institutions and arrangements. Where Nietzsche
is at the nadir of trust in regard to such institutions, Hegel is at the
zenith—as reflected in the motto we have been citing about the rational
and the actual. Society, as Aristotle says, begins with the process of
satisfying the needs of life, although its ultimate aim is the pursuit of the
good life. Again, how rational are these as goals, and how rational is the
aim of achieving them?
We might go so far as to conceive of certain rights, to which all humans
may lay claim; we may even speak of such rights as parts of self-evident
truths, i.e. as standing to reason. But it is no secret that the theoretical
foundations of these rights have been roundly attacked over the centuries.
(Can an attack on what is “self-evident” avoid self-contradiction?)
Accordingly, we may state one of the challenges confronting Hegel as
follows: to decline the use of “natural rights” as a basis for a theory of
statehood; yet to maintain the emphasis on the rationality of the state.
There are further challenges: Throughout his Preface, Hegel argues
against the uncritical acceptance of social convention and entrenched
values. What is to be decisive is not convention but truth. We may or may
not wish to go along with him in his search for a basis in objectivity for
such truth. As for its other criteria we must reiterate his motto, since it
tells us that only what is fully rational is actualized in the world, and only
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the fully actual is transparently rational. All this reminds us that we must
avoid convention as a basis for argument, along with the intellectual
fashion of the moment, and especially the individual conscience. All these
are now seen as impediments in the search for truth, its objectivity and
rationality.
All this may well be a sensible goal in, say, logic or mathematics. In
political theory, moored as it is in the concrete life of society and its
values, we can hardly avoid our individual feelings and points of view.
Can we be altogether free of perspectives that have become historically
ingrained? Hegel insists that we must somehow put these things behind us
if we are to have any hope of attaining truth and rationality.
Hegel goes so far as to suggest that Plato drew his Republic from the
values implicit in Greek ethical life. What is the status of that “actuality”?
In Hegel’s motto, the German word that is translated as “actual” is
wirklich. With this, he does not mean that just any actuality is rational—
and certainly not the false and ephemeral “actuality” we encounter in
political life. Rather, wirklich refers to the union of existence and
essence—as when we speak of a “real” athlete, one who fulfills the essence
of what it means to be an athlete. Accordingly, wirklich means “real” (or
actual), “true,” “genuine,” etc.
And therefore Hegel’s “science of the state” (i.e. of the rational/ actual
state) is not a study of this or that example of statehood, but of the state
that perfectly fulfills the functioning ideal. Up to this point we can hardly
have been enlightened as to what all this means. Yet when we do grasp
this, the challenge that faces us is “to apprehend in the show of the
temporal and transient the substance which is immanent and the eternal
which is present” (p. 10).
The state’s rationality and its actualization as such emerge together.
Thus, a further challenge confronting Hegel is “to apprehend and portray
the state as something inherently rational” (p. 11). This sounds as though
he is trying to set up an ideal of the state as it ought to be (à la Plato). But
no, it is the state as it is which is to be united with its essence, as the
actuality. As he tells us: “To comprehend what is, this is the task of
philosophy, because what is, is reason.”
To apprehend the eternal in what is transitory. But most emphatically,
this does not involve setting up a standard of perfection with the purpose
of getting us to live up to it. Instead, there is a hint of resignation when
Hegel admits that the aim of philosophy is not to change the world, but
only to apprehend our own time by way of thought (again, the synthesis
of the rational and the actual). As for changing the world, wisdom makes
its appearance only at the end of an era, when things can no longer be
changed but only understood. As he famously says: “The owl of Minerva
takes to flight only in the oncoming dusk.”
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HEGEL’S INTRODUCTION3
We have been speaking of history as an evolutionary process. That
process, however, is not entirely value-neutral. Instead, Hegel sees it as
involving (a) the concept of right, and (b) its actualization through time, in
a transition from merely “abstract” right to “concrete” right, fully
realized. Consider, for example, such concepts as these: “selfhood,”
“humanity,” “property,” “obligation,” and so on. In some societies these
could be mere concepts, with an application that is nothing more than a
matter of form or ritual; in other societies, these concepts might be more
fully articulated, with a content that can be given words as well as a
concrete expression in societal life.
On a broader scale, we may contrast an arid ideology (powerful though
it may be) against a set of political tenets whose meaning is made fully
verbal and rational. This transition, then, is what occurs (or should occur)
in any society in the course of time. It is a transition to a stage of cultural
life wherein mind is consciously applied, a transition to something more
fully rational and actual in regard to the element of right.
We must not identify this with the values held by any particular society
(whose existence is in any case contingent and variable). Nor ought we to
link “reason” to any social values expressed as positive law in this or that
place. Rather, we must think of a universal, or norm, applied to particular
cases in law, but reflecting the essential Geist of a people (par. 3). Above
all else, it is the essence of right that we are seeking: its basis is Spirit
which is given expression as the will of a people. Since the will is free, as
Hegel explains, freedom is both the substance of right and its goal. Indeed,
“the system of right is the realm of freedom made actual, the world of
mind brought forth out of itself like a second nature” (par. 4). Yet
although the process is free, it is in search of determination. This is
provided by its dialectical counterpart.
The free will, taken to an extreme in politics, ignores all restraints. As a
result it rises to pure destructiveness, to eliminate all individuals who
might pose some sort of a threat to it, and thus turning to destroy the
social order itself. Hegel is obviously thinking of the French Revolution in
this regard; but these words of his are ominous for our own time as well—
with all the abundant examples of murderous autocracies operating
destructively in the name of “freedom,” equality, or whatever (as abstract
ideas).
This is one of the most penetrating insights Hegel offers: namely, that
the abstract idea is not merely one-sided and empty of content; but that it
is necessarily destructive, in that its partiality and one-sidedness—
mistaken as the whole truth—must become destructive of society as a
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whole, as a result of the violence inhering in the dialectic itself. There are
numerous ways whereby this may occur: The will, being free, is
indeterminate; it is the ego that seeks to give itself some determinate
content. In so doing, it turns back into itself; it becomes the reflection of
itself, by reflecting on its own reflection—and this is its universality, its
infinity, its self-determination, and also its absoluteness (par. 7). Above all,
its self-relatedness is its freedom. And in that freedom from external
factors, it may well become politically autistic and violent; or it may
become rational.
We might wonder whether Hegel is thinking here in terms of the will of
the individual or the will of a people. Most likely, he is deliberately
conflating the two levels of discourse, so that the individual will can be
taken as a metaphor for the social will. Once he has engaged that
metaphor, he can come to analogous conclusions about a social “mind”—
attaining its freedom, self-determination, and maturity on the basis of how
an individual undergoes the same process. From here it is an easy step to
conclude that just as the individual ego is autonomous, so the social
“mind” can claim a similar degree of autonomy, even an absolute
authority over its own “selfhood.” Hegel often decried the use of analogy
in philosophical argument; he preferred direct (non-analogical) discourse,
whereby we say exactly what we mean, and nothing else.
Yet the fact is that he himself employs analogies—and he does so in
support of his most crucial points (the twofold “mind” being one such
analogy, among others), and this must cast much of what he says into
doubt, since this “double-speak” is deliberately ambiguous on this score.
Thus, while leaving the question open as to whether he is speaking of the
will of an individual person or the will of a people, he can say: “It is not
until it has itself as its object that the will is for itself what it is in itself”
(par. 10). Only in its self-awareness does the will, or ego, attain its essence.
But just whose will is this—that of the individual person or that of society?
This question is not addressed, since Hegel prefers to leave the ambiguity
in place. Shortly thereafter (par. 13), he speaks of the individual will
coming to its resolutions; but as individual it is a will only in form, and is
therefore abstract.
It is in the individual will that we see the dialectic of choice and
resolution combining to form contradictions in the ego, an ego therefore
divided against itself. This is surely a destabilizing factor when it occurs in
the social “mind,” which sees these differences of will as arbitrary,
subjective, and threatening; they are therefore uprooted as much as
possible. With this remark, Hegel seems to damn all dissent in society, as
well as all diversity (par. 19). We get the same result by extending his
metaphor: a psyche divided is unhealthy in the individual, and is made
healthy by its integration; in the social “psyche” integration is wholesome,
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a people speaking with one voice, in a unity of social purpose. Such
integration ought therefore to be fostered as the primary social goal.
What is most important is to get the will away from its abstractness, so
that it becomes self-relating and self-determining, thereby achieving its
freedom, universality, and infinitude (as we have seen). This, then, is its
truth (pars 21–3). By turning back into itself, the will is able (in its
resulting indeterminacy) to turn outward and project itself into the world,
which it shapes according to that will.
This defines the progression in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right-proceeding
from the abstractness of its concepts to their external embodiment, thence
back into the will and its freedom, it is then turned outward once more,
but now energized by its freedom. Having turned outward, the will is
made objective in a shared system of morals, to be followed by what he
calls “Ethical Life” (par. 33). This will undergo a dialectic of its own. The
book is therefore divided into three main sections: “Abstract Right,”
“Morality,” and “Ethical Life.”
ABSTRACT RIGHT
John Locke, in his Second Treatise of Government, explains how rights
evolve, and he uses the right of property as the paradigm of all other
rights: Thus, a man in the “state of nature,” wherein no one owns
anything, mixes his bodily labor with nature (say, by picking fruit off a
tree). The resulting product of this mixture is rightfully his. A similar
argument holds for all other rights: they, too, are extensions of one’s
bodily self, expressions of one’s will. In this way, the rights to “life, liberty,
and estate” are established. Governments are specifically set up for the
purpose of safeguarding those rights.
Here we can think of a variety of philosophic approaches describing the
basic formation of the state as a primordial instrument for securing
property and personal safety. Obviously, we do not leave it at that—as
though, with security achieved, the state has completed its task. Rather,
the state persists beyond that task; there are further purposes for it.
Moreover, the right which is secured by the primordial state is merely
an “abstract” right—namely, a formal, less-than-real right. This is because
there can be no “right” to property prior to the establishing of a
government and a system of ownership, and therefore no rights which a
government is subsequently meant to protect. What Hegel must do,
therefore, is to show that the “abstract” right is an inadequate and
incomplete picture of rights and their justifications.
The essence of what it is to be a person involves the notion of self-
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relatedness. Selfhood is a relation in which a self relates itself to itself. This
powerful paradox is derived from Schelling. (It is a paradox because a
relation relates one term to another that is pre-existing; and yet, in
Schelling’s terms, the self does not pre-exist for a self to relate to, but only
begins to exist as a result of the relation itself.) Hegel reiterates this point
by saying: “I am simply and solely self-relation” (par. 35). Only by virtue
of my relation to my self, which logically should already exist, do I then
begin to exist as a self. Hegel needs this paradox, this antithesis, as a basis
for his subsequent dialectic. On the other hand, Locke’s exposition is
straightforward, involving a progression from a state of nature, to labor,
to property, to ownership, to a civil state which protects property, etc.
Hegel goes much deeper, to the ego which originates labor and which
owns; yet that ego is paradoxical, since it is not the originator but the
result of its acts of will.
Locke’s picture is that of the rational primitive who discovers that there
are things to be gotten through labor, and that these things must be
protected by some human invention; the state is that invention. There is
nothing problematic about the insight of this primitive individual. Hegel’s
dialectic, however, is not driven by anything so straightforward. Rather,
Hegel’s dialectic is driven by paradoxicality: it is the ego itself, in its self-
relatedness, that is the engine of the dialectic. My self-relatedness is what
gives me my sense of self, my sense of being complete in myself. It is a loop
by means of which I have turned inward; that turn has a dimension of
universality, for in turning back into myself I see what all human beings
are. I am, therefore, an individual and at the same time a universal. I am,
so to say, one of a kind—and one and a kind, a unit-class, solo yet
complete.
Yet that very sense of self is incomplete, since my self begins to emerge
only from my relation to the self which is also the product of my self-
relation. Thus I would have an abstract right if I were a Lockean manager
of my external world. But then my selfhood would still be far from
established. My act of establishing it, now, is what propels my thoughts
and rights in their paradoxicality. Let us examine the dialectics of this.
Social contract theorists—such as Hobbes and Locke—have portrayed
a “state of nature” with human occupants. Each of these is a fully
formed ego, with a will which has all of the attributes of the humans we
know. Such a primordial ego has a will which is free and universal
(universal in the sense of representing all humanity). Hobbes and Locke
regard their protagonist as psychologically complete, endowed with the
various personal characteristics shared by the rest of us (although
Hobbes and Locke differ diametrically in regard to what those
“common” characteristics are). Hegel, on the other hand, regards that
picture of the primal human as incomplete: Rousseau introduced the
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notion of that human as but half-human; Hobbes’s and Locke’s man is
someone we would readily recognize; Hegel sees this creature as
incomplete since he will only begin to define himself through his
encounter(s) with others.
Prior to such encounter(s), therefore, the self is not yet in the process of
self-formation, let alone the fully formed and recognizable product of that
process. That self is abstract, so far. As Hegel says: “The universality of
this consciously free will is abstract universality, the self-conscious but
otherwise contentless and simple relation of itself to itself” (par. 35). Thus
this is not a fully formed individual, but a case of bare self-relatedness, a
purely formal narcissism—an abstraction.
From this perspective, it follows that such “rights” as are based on such
an abstraction must be merely abstract rights as well. It may be that “in
my finitude I know myself as something infinite, universal, and free,” but
these are still a “contentless” infinitude, universality, and freedom—i.e.
not concretely real, but entirely abstract.
On the other hand, it is the very abstractness of these features that
enables me to connect myself to others: for in acknowledging my
personhood as the basis of my rights (however abstract that personhood
and those rights), I grasp my link to others on the same basis. Thus,
Hobbes and Locke see my need for personal security as my reason for
entering into social relations; Hegel sees those relations emerging from a
recognition of others as beings similar to myself. For this purpose he
enunciates something like a Kantian imperative: “Be a person and respect
others as persons” (par. 36). That is the basis of universality, to be sure.
Yet that personhood is incomplete as long as it does not include my
recognition of whatever it is that makes me a particular individual and
unique. Over against the background of the universal, therefore, I become
particularized. Over against the objectivity of the others who are there, I
emerge as subjective (although this contradicts my own universality). Out
of this struggle between the universal and the individual, and between the
objective and the subjective, my own personality evolves (par. 39).
There are rights which I attach to myself on a subjective (i.e. infantile)
basis: The world is my world, as Wittgenstein says. When I emerge out of
my infantile solipsism, my rights take on an objective character,
recognized by me as inherent in my very personhood. When I enter into a
contract with another person, I implicitly recognize him or her qua person,
and I am thus recognized in turn. The transfer of property from one to
another serves as the medium of personhood.
Let us note how far we have come: i.e. from the rather primitive picture
offered by Hobbes and Locke, of self-interested individuals desirous
of securing what they have wrested from nature, to a far more
ephemeral image of human beings engaged in the far more subtle activity
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of self-recognition, and from that recognition giving form to selfhood and
ego, both in personal and societal terms.
The ego must turn its attention outward, by externalizing the self in
some property. But the paradoxical feature of such a thing is that it is both
an extension of the self, yet is separable from the self, both different from
the self, yet the same. Moreover, a piece of property may be material and
inert, and yet the very vehicle of selfhood. “A person has as this
substantive end the right of putting his will into any and every
thing…thereby making it his,” Hegel says (par. 44). We may go even
further and say that not only does a piece of property become his, it
becomes him. Man puts himself, his will, into a thing -but, in turn, the
thing may come to encompass his very self. Property is thus the
embodiment of personality, involving not only my possession of property
but also the recognition of it, as mine, by others (par. 51). This entails
their recognition of my will in it. This is so fundamental a feature of
ownership that we may say that the fact that a thing is recognized as mine
makes the thing take on a character that is external to it.
There are dialectical elements in all this as well, and these elements, in
their very contradictoriness, actually propel the dialectic into creating a
social fabric. Thus the fact that a thing is mine (dependent on me) and also
it (an object that is independent of me) can be said to raise difficulties
which only a society can be called upon to resolve. This piece of earth is
mine, although it exists as something on its own; but the opposite is also
true, that its being mine becomes an external feature of the object. (Thus
slavery, the ownership of a “living chattel,” had to be sanctified by
society; but when the time came for the abolition of slavery as an
institution, only society could be expected to undertake that task.) Similar
contradictions obtain with regard to my body as both mine and it; and the
social fabric both sustains and dissolves this contradiction. Such
contradictions account for the manysided ambiguity in the use of terms
such as “my body,” “my person,” “my self.” In general, the ambiguities
arise in the dialectics of those terms as reflecting the selfhood of the user.
(Do I warm my “self” at the fire?)
With property, then, a fabric of recognitions emerges. That is to say, we
may see society evolving around the mutual recognition of the property
right. We might even say that Hegel regards property as the first step away
from “abstract right” and into the creation of a social fabric, with
“rights” moving in the direction of concreteness.
In discussing the alienation of property, i.e. giving it into the hands of
another person, I can also alienate my time, my creativity or ability, etc.
But Hegel points out—as Marx does in the section on alienated labor in
his Paris Manuscripts of 1844—that with this I am also alienating “the
substance of my being…my personality” (par. 67). My product may cease
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to be strictly mine if someone copies what I have made, and uses it to
express their own personality. We may also wonder whether, having put
my will or ego into a thing, I must devalue myself when my product drops
in value.
Since property involves a tacit agreement between the owner and all
others (i.e. to respect the right of the owner), we may regard that relation
as implicitly contractual. Now, whether I hold on to my property (and
others respect it as such) or I do alienate it by transferring it to someone
else, there is a conjunction of wills (for example, in regard to the sale
price). Thus we have a conjunction of wills, but also a separation of wills,
since each of us is out to serve our own interest by means of the
transaction. Once again, we see property and the property relation leading
both to a social configuration and to selfhood.
Although we have made mention of Hobbes and Locke, we are by no
means proposing to consider Hegel as another social-contract theorist.
Hegel does not speak of a social contract as anything like the formative
nexus of society, the way they do. For him, society is based on a fabric of
mutual recognition—and this is psychological and self-relating, rather
than overtly contractual. A contract is therefore a reflection of such
recognition, not the genesis of it. When Hegel does discuss the meaning of
a contract, he is speaking quite literally of the way contractual relations
actually function in a social setting; he is decidedly not speaking in a
metaphorical sense of a social “contract” arranged prior to the formation
of society and therefore the instrument of its formation. His primary aim
is to examine the working of the wills of contracting parties. Thus, in the
case of a contract for a sale or exchange, he says, value passes in both
directions: the seller alienates their property, while the buyer appropriates
it and (say) exchanges value for it. Value, therefore, remains as a constant
throughout—always provided that there is a concurrence of wills:
the seller asking a certain sum, the buyer agreeing to pay that sum
(pars 76, 77).
The agreement of the two parties, the legality of their contract, the very
notion of right—all these things are negated when the contract is broken
or is fraudulent. Thus there is the appearance of legality and formal
Tightness—and obviously there could be no appearance of right without
the implied background-of Tightness, legality, etc. This Tightness is
reasserted if the fraud is challenged as fraud, etc. (pars 82, 83).
What we see here is a further stage in Hegel’s dialectic of society: a
contract requires the concurrence of wills; one of those wills is now
challenged, and the challenger asserts a claim on the basis of implicit
right—which now becomes explicit—and thus may lead to a clash of
rights. This clash is adjudicated on the basis of right, i.e. in the question as
to who has the right to the property at issue. When the right is challenged,
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even when it is negated altogether, the right is in some way asserted,
implicitly or explicitly.
This being so, the criminal must be regarded as acting inside the fabric
of right, even when he or she violates the right of another (indeed,
especially so). Here, Hegel brings out a strange result of this dialectic:
namely, that the penalty which is meted out to the criminal is implicitly his
will, an embodiment of his freedom, his right, even a right established
with the criminal himself, Hegel says, so that the criminal’s punishment is
his act: “his action is the action of a rational being…[thus] the criminal
has laid down a law which he explicitly recognized in his action and under
which he should be brought as under his right” (par. 100). In crime, there
is a conflict between a universal law (or universal will) which is implicit
and a single will (that of the offender) which is explicitly independent.
With punishment, the injury done is negated, the law is asserted, and the
offender’s freedom is secured (that is, in their having determined the law
which asks for their punishment).
MORALITY
We have offered some observations about consciousness becoming self-
conscious, turning back into itself. This self-consciousness is the key to a
society’s freedom and autonomy; and it is therefore the key to its morality
as well. We might wish to say, superficially, that morality is the product of
a society setting up rules for the behavior of its members. This need not
necessarily be a self-conscious process. Indeed, we might compare societies
for the degree of self-consciousness involved in their choice of values:
some societies have managed to develop a set of mores without involving
much thought in the process; others more so. But at its best—when a
society is entirely conscious of what it is doing, so that it becomes self-
reflecting, and examines its values in the light of other values, deeper ones,
in an effort at making such values consistent and coherent—then such a
society is closest to being fully in control of itself and of its destiny as it
exercises its freedom in choosing the values by which it will live.
Let us recall Hegel saying that the self-consciousness of a culture is the
goal of history, and this is its freedom. Thus the maturity associated with
such freedom is the product of the will which has turned back into itself.
In the individual person, such self-reflection is what makes that person the
subject of their own will; the same holds true for a culture when it
becomes the subject of its will (par. 105). It is a striking metaphor—
whereby social change is presented as a maturation of the individual—yet
it is but a metaphor, and thus it has its characteristic weaknesses. Hegel
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persists in using it—as when, in his Philosophy of History, he speaks of a
society as though it were an individual growing up, becoming responsible,
and so on.
The metaphor is used to its strongest effect in regard to morality. Now,
we are not considering the growth of morality from primitive society to
complex ones; nor is Hegel giving us a picture of primitive humans in
action (as Hobbes and Locke do). Yet Hegel does concern himself with the
intrinsic nature of moral values as such; and therefore he must concern
himself with the question of how moral values as such; and therefore he
must concern himself with the question of how moral values come into
being (as though there were human beings engaged in creating values, à la
Hobbes and Locke).
The point may be clarified methodologically: The analysis of moral
values exposes their component elements; with these elements in view we
may see how they fit together—as though someone had actually put them
together, actually synthesized them. This returns us to the metaphor of the
maturing individual, standing for the social mind in its development. It is a
metaphor that prevails throughout Hegel’s writing, even if he does not
make that metaphor explicit at all points. Thus we can regard Hegel’s
account of morality as genetic, i.e. concerned with the origin of values in
society (and in this respect he does resemble Hobbes and Locke, though
only in an abstract and formal sense).
A further extension of the metaphor is reflected in Hegel’s way of
regarding morality as the creation of will: he addresses this concept as
though it were the will of an individual person, although it is something
like an abstract social will that is meant. This adds a further dimension
to the dialectic of all this: namely, in that the will is something
subjective, within the mentality of the individual, and yet its product is
objective, in that it is given expression in the outer world of social
values. Hegel can speak of the “self-determination of the will” in its
subjective character (par. 107), yet he can pit against it the objectivity of
the social will (par. 109).
It is the characteristic strategy of Hegel’s, after setting up a
dichotomy, to show the two sides to be identical. In the case of the
subjectivity/objectivity dichotomy, this is precisely what he does when he
speaks of the objectification of subjectivity. Each of us absorbs social
values in our individual process of enculturation, and each of us makes
those values private ones, as though each of us had created them for
ourselves. It is in this light that we may say that there is therefore a
private and a public will at work; it is my will at work, yet it is identical
to the will of others (par. 112).
Further dichotomies are reflected in the fact that the subjectivity/
objectivity stand-off is externalized (and thus is resolved) in activity, as
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well as in the fact that the values of the individual are those of the
universal, i.e. the intention behind the action (par. 119). In transactions
between individuals, it is the shared meaning of the universal that makes
mutual understanding possible. The aim of all action is to produce good,
or benefit—again, understood in universal terms. There can be benefit
without right, or right without benefit—but neither of these is good (par.
130). Only in their combination is good realized. The subjective will sees
its object(s) as good, and this is its prerogative, i.e. to judge its object(s) as
being right or wrong, good or ill, legal or illegal, etc. (par. 132). But in all
this the process of judging is still rather abstract, as Hegel suggests.
All this has the Kantian caste of universalizability—down to the
element of duty (and it would be more Kantian still, if not for the genetic
dimension of Hegel’s account). Thus the objective side is eventually united
with subjective knowing, so that the subjective is given expression in
ethical life, where the abstractness of mere contentless morality is
overcome (par. 137). At this stage, morality subsists in good intentions
alone, and the good heart is taken to justify all (p. 99). Yet the objective
good is lacking here. As for the identity of the two terms of the dichotomy,
it is the identity of objective good with the subjective will that makes for
concreteness. Hegel says that the identity of the two is the “truth” of each,
and as such it constitutes the Ethical Life.
ETHICAL LIFE
From what we have seen of the Morality discussion, the component values
were not yet complete. True, there was the element of universality, i.e. the
humanity to which we all belong and which we share as humans. But this
was still abstract as a value-element and had not yet been given
concreteness in a social form. The thrust of Hegel’s discussion, hereafter,
will be to show that our moral values are a function of our societal
arrangement, and of the way(s) our societal life is actually run.
Hegel will turn his attention to the most rudimentary form of societal
life—the family—to show what values are implicit in it and, further, what
values can be expected to emerge from it. Then he will go on to discuss
civil society, to show some of the workings of the law and its management
of justice. And finally, there will be an extended discussion of the state—as
the highest (i.e. the most moral) operation of our shared life.
With Ethical Life, we enter into the institutional aspect of societal life.
This may suggest the unconscious organic side; yet in Hegel’s view it is
that part of societal life reflecting self-conscious knowing and willing—
i.e. freedom. There are values made concrete as an “objective ethical
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order”—with such objectivity transcending both the subjectivity of the
individual and the mutability of social mores (par. 144). Indeed, the
objectivity of these values exceeds (for the individual) the “authority” of
nature.
From the very outset, the individual is in a secondary position vis-à-vis
these life-regulating values, “as accidents to a substance” (par. 145). And
yet, this ethical “substance” is not something external or alien to us, since
it is the very element of our spirituality, amounting to a “second nature.”
As he says: “It is mind living and present as a world, and the substance of
mind thus exists now for the first time as mind” (par. 151). This is
objectified in institutions such as the family and the nation. It is here that
rights and duties become reciprocal, so that having the one entails having
the other.
The family is held together by bonds of love, despite the fact that (as a
proto-state) its characteristic function is the exercise of power. In this
light, the individual exists not as a totally independent entity but as a
member (par. 158). This is why we may see the family as a state in
embryonic form.
History is a process of the growth of freedom, the story of freedom (as
we have seen). Hegel can therefore see each stage as mirroring the whole:
just as marriage begins with the physical aspect and proceeds to the
affirmation of love, so the cosmic process as a whole involves the
transition from nature to Spirit. For Hegel, then, we may say that any and
every segment of the historical process is the emblem for the entirety: at
first, in the opposition between nature and Spirit; then in the transition
from the individuality of the two persons to their unity as one (and in the
process overcoming the transiency of love).
Monogamy is the essence of marriage, Hegel says, since it entails the
total absorption of the individuals in the ethical bond. Thus the family
itself becomes an “individual”—one whose personality is constituted by
property (par. 169). This is also the basis for setting up further families in
the newer generations. Just as the offspring become independent
individuals, so do the new families, making their own transition from
particularity to universality (par. 181). This transition culminates in civil
society, wherein the ethical life of the family is absorbed in a broader
context.
We may wish to find that broader context in the state, and to regard the
state in terms of some of its services, such as water supply, the post, etc.
For Hegel, all these necessary functions come under the heading of civil
society. This is a subordinate classification, which allows Hegel to reserve
the state for higher purposes: to serve as the vehicle of history, the medium
of Spirit, etc.
In the most basic terms, civil society is a communal arrangement for the
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mutual satisfaction of our fundamental needs. An interesting question,
therefore, asks what social values are implicitly attached to that
arrangement: Does it lead us to give conscious acknowledgment to our
interdependence, so that we actually come to regard society in that way? If
so, then the mere understanding is at work: i.e. we grasp the meaning of
civil society in its particularity, whereby individuals are concerned with
their private interests alone. On the other hand, to grasp the essence of the
state, we must appeal to reason, which is in touch with universality. In
regard to the personal needs satisfied by civil society, mere understanding
will suffice, with its focus on subjectivity and particularity. Civil society
can therefore be regarded as a system of needs; the state, as we shall see,
goes far beyond this.
To illuminate the system of needs (and their satisfaction) Hegel speaks
of class organization in civil society: \\there is the agricultural class, the
business class, and the universal class (i.e. the civil servants concerned with
the needs of society at large). Through some measure of self-identification
with the interests of the community, a morality is built up wherein one’s
wider responsibility is expressed, but where the closest one comes to a
universality of interests is in the right to property.
The abstract right becomes objectified when we become conscious of its
objectification. It becomes binding in our recognition of it as law.
Obviously this cannot be enough: there are the ties established by positive
law in regard to property in civil society; but there also are the ethical ties
of the heart, of love and trust (par. 213). Since these ties touch us at the
most private level, morals cannot be a matter of legislation. Laws do
comprise a system—and, ideally, we ought to be able to expect such a
system to fulfill the requirements of any system, namely, that the totality
ought to exhibit consistency, coherence, and completeness. All this would
come to a test when the universal principles are applied to particular
individuals and cases. Here, too, law becomes objectified in our
recognition of its objectification—primarily in regard to property and the
infringement of the rights connected to it (par. 218).
When a crime is committed, it is the universal that is being injured, and
when the law exacts its vengeance it goes beyond vengeance in the
personal sense which is subjective and contingent. In punishment, an
offense is annulled, the law is reconciled with itself. Accordingly, we may
see in this an elevation of values to an objective and universal sense—a
further reflection of the historical evolution of Spirit (par. 220).
The fact that the parties to a legal case have certain express rights, and
that every legal case is established on the basis of argument and proof,
also reflects the evolution of spirituality by way of the introduction of
reason into public life. In this way, that public life is increasingly
moralized—notwithstanding the fact that the legal process can turn into
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lethal formalities. Above all, the fact that a judge applies a universal
standard to a single case reflects the process of the rational moralization of
society as a whole (par. 225). (Thus we may say that the development of
positive law is what enables us, by its example, to think in universal terms
and thus to apply the thinking appropriate to, say, the categorical
imperative.)
From all this, we might hastily conclude that all social progress is a
moralizing process. We have pointed to some clear examples in this
regard. Thus, in pointing to some rudimentary forms of social existence,
Hegel speaks of the family as the “first ethical root of the state” (par.
255). The continuity is fundamentally ethical.
Civil society can be seen as largely efficacious in providing for society’s
basic needs. But Hegel also points to some inevitable weaknesses
associated with civil society; and he is not far from Marx in this
criticism—except for the difference that Hegel does not trace these
weaknesses to capitalist production but to civil society itself. Thus there is
poverty, massive unemployment, illiteracy, a disparate distribution of
wealth, economic imperialism and the search for foreign markets,
colonialism, etc. (pars 244–8)—ills which he includes under the rubric of
“this inner dialectic of civil society” (par. 246).
Where Marx, however, would condemn the source (capitalism) for its
results, Hegel merely sees them as by-products of the larger framework
which is civil society. But where Marx sees that source as dissolvable in
revolution—so that an industrial society would be made more moral by
the removal of capitalism’s antisocial and destructive effects on human
beings—Hegel goes back to civil society and its broader perspective of the
role of power. The primary purpose of public authority, he says, is “to
actualize and maintain the universal contained within the particularity of
civil society” (par. 249). A further difference, therefore, is that Marx sees
true morality emerging in the negating of capitalism’s effects, while Hegel
sees morality emerging from the social and legal functioning of civil
society itself—in its lawlike effect of universalizing human judgment
within a framework of law.
THE STATE
All of Hegel’s prior discussion has been leading up to his treatment of the
state; and indeed, this is the culmination of his Philosophy of Right. But
here a caution must be noted: the state is the continuation of civil society,
yet it is different from it. (This tactic is consistent with his dialectic, where
two adjacent areas form a continuum or identity by virtue of their
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difference from one another, and differ by virtue of their being identical.)
Thus civil society is a collection of atomic individuals, each motivated by a
private interest that excludes the interests of others; the state, on the other
hand, is a collective entity wherein individuals fulfill their separate
interests by merging them into the interests of the whole (much like the
ideal of the Greek polis).
The libertarian tradition of Anglo-American thinking sees the
individual as the most fundamental political entity; with this in mind, the
state is seen as a device for serving the interests of individuals—and
therefore the main stress is placed on the limits to be imposed on state
power. Hegel, on the other hand, comes from a holistic tradition wherein
state power is irreducible to the interests of individuals. The state is a
higher entity—even something approaching the mystical—into which the
goals of individual persons are to be dissolved. Let us recall Rousseau,
who gives emphasis to a volonté générale, a consensus wherein all voices
share; the libertarian tradition, on the other hand, must allow for a
dissensus among its individual citizens.
As for the continuity between civil society and the state, this is to be
seen in the different moral purposes to be served by each: i.e. the purposes
of the individual as against those of the collective. Both are systems of
value, existing tacitly in custom, and explicitly in the ideal of a rational
self-consciousness. As Hegel says:
The state is the actuality of the ethical Idea. It is ethical mind qua the
substantial will manifested and revealed to itself, knowing and
thinking itself, accomplishing what it knows and in so far as it
knows it. The state exists immediately in custom, mediately in
individual self-consciousness, knowledge, and activity, while self-
consciousness—in virtue of its sentiment towards the state—finds in
the state, as its essence and the end and product of its activity, its
substantive freedom.
(par. 257)
Presumably, since all this is reflective of a process toward rationality, such
rational self-consciousness is not in the state’s present, but only in its
idealized future. And only when its implicit aim is fully realized—i.e. as
“the actuality of the substantial will which it possesses in the particular
self-consciousness once that consciousness has been raised to
consciousness of its universality”—only then does the state exercise a
supreme right over the individual. In other words, the fully realized aim is
the right of the state qua Plato’s Republic (nothing less), i.e. the state as
“mind objectified” (par. 258). It is also freedom objectified in self-
legislating consciousness, and thus closer to Kant’s ethic.
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At this point, the question that must present itself is this: How can a
Platonic universal or a Kantian imperative, although fully rationalized,
necessarily entail any socio-political modes common to a perfect state as
such? In an Addition to par. 258, Hegel declares:
The state in and by itself is the ethical whole, the actualization of
freedom; and it is an absolute end of reason that freedom should be
actual. The state is mind on earth…consciously realizing itself
there…. Only when it is present in consciousness, when it knows
itself as a really existent object, is it the state…. The march of God in
the world, that is what the state is. The basis of the state is the power
of reason actualizing itself as will…. In considering the Idea of the
state, we must not have our eyes on particular states…. Instead we
must consider the Idea, this actual God, by itself…. The state is no
ideal work of art, it stands on earth and so in the sphere of caprice,
chance and error, and bad behaviour may disfigure it in many
respects. But the ugliest of men, or a criminal…is still always a living
man. The affirmative, life, subsists despite his defects.
(Addition, p. 279)
With this, we ought to stress the point that Hegel’s Platonic/Kantian
dimension is no piece of idle metaphysical theorizing; rather, it calls for a
fully concrete realization of the essence of political life.
Up to now, what Hegel has said in regard to the state and its supremacy
over all other interests has not seemed to contradict the widespread
prejudice concerning his supposed sympathy for the totalitarian state. The
point is, however, that Hegel does not leave it at that; instead, he clearly
argues in favor of (a) the rule of law, (b) the fulfillment of the individual’s
goals through the political freedom that is guaranteed to the individual by
means of a constitution, and (c) the absorption of particular interests into
the universal.
Accordingly, it is in this light—i.e. in the light of an existing
constitutional system—that Hegel says: “The state is the actuality of
concrete freedom” (par. 260). Indeed, it is only by means of particular
interests and actions that the universal is achieved. In civil society, the
society stands opposed to the individual (who is usually seen in an
adversarial position vis-à-vis society); with the state, we see the
completion of the individual, and the fulfillment of their most private
concerns in and through the social. Nothing less than this can be regarded
as a proper state in Hegel’s sense.
We may ask, therefore: How is the individual to find a personal
fulfillment in a state? Only in the union of the individual with the
universal can this be achieved—a union of public and private interests,
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such that the public interest is that which is closest to the individual’s
heart. The polis alone provided the framework that made such an identity
possible, and thinkers such as Rousseau and Hegel have been searching
ever since for ways to make it real.
Accordingly, the two polar elements—namely, the public interest and
the private interest—comprise an antithesis that demands resolution in a
higher synthesis. It is the state that provides such a synthesis—i.e. by
offering the individual their personal fufillment in the state, as well as that
very concern as embodied in the words of Hegel’s Preface: “What is
rational is actual; what is actual is rational.” We can now see this for the
tautology that it is: When the term wirklich is translated as “real,” we
have some suggestion of the Platonic realism to which Hegel is sometimes
prone, though not fully committed; but when we translate wirklich as
“actual,” we have the Aristotelian entelechy to which Hegel is fully
committed in his notion of development.
Thus Plato seeks the perfect form of the state in its pure and
unchanging permanence; Aristotle’s emphasis, on the contrary, is on the
dynamism of the historical state in its becoming. The state is not a finished
entity but a process: its telos is its arche, its end is in its beginning. If we
can see duty and right as a dualism of reciprocal entailment (so that where
there is one there is the other), we will have grasped Hegel’s concept in a
nutshell. He stresses this point as being of vital importance, as the source
of the state’s “inner strength” (par. 261, p. 162).
In civil society the antithesis (of public vs private) is of a limited nature.
But when these are resolved (i.e. absorbed) in a higher synthesis, they
become “the firm foundation not only of the state but also of the citizen’s
trust in it” (par. 265). This involves, further, the unification of the opposed
realms of freedom and necessity. Thus my personal interest is both
preserved and negated (aufgehoben) in the state, and this organic unity is,
as Hegel says, “the constitution of the state” (par. 269). It should be
pointed out that the term “constitution,” here, does not refer to a
document, or a set of laws (written or unwritten), but is to be taken as the
organizing principle(s) of a state, that by which it is constituted. This
organizing principle, then, is the nascent reason inhering in the state. It is
in this special light, therefore, that Hegel can say: “The state is the divine
will, in the sense that it is mind present on earth, unfolding itself to be the
actual shape and organization of a world” (par. 270, p. 166).
The task of civilization, over the centuries, has been the transfer of the
inner into the outer, “the building of reason into the real world” (par. 270,
p. 167). In the modern world, this manifestation of reason in the political
has involved “the development of the state to constitutional monarchy”
(par. 273, p. 176). Since all this is happening to reason, the diremption of
that process has occurred to the universal, the particular, and the
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individual—not as abstract and empty categories, but as the actual
legislature, the executive, and the monarch, respectively.
Hegel points to the development of the state to constitutional monarchy
as “the achievement of the modern world,” and the “inner deepening of
the world mind.” There is a greater complexity here, whether in the mind
of the individual or even in that of the cosmos. This has the consequence
of producing diremption, polarization, conflict, and dialectic. Indeed, it is
the developing complexity of mental and political life that actually fuels
the engines of change and progress. Without such conflict, nothing much
would be happening, and certainly no historical advance.
Hegel suggests that the constitution of the state (i.e. its actual
organization) is not to be regarded as “made” by humans, but as sui
generis or (as he likes to put it) “divine” (par. 273, p. 178). His reasoning
is peculiarly Feuerbachian (although Feuerbach published his work two
decades after Hegel published his Philosophy of Right): Anything regarded
as having been made by humans can as easily be regarded as capable of
being unmade by humans; only by being seen as “divine” does it retain its
measure of authority over humans and beyond change.
This must surely introduce a measure of schizophrenia into the body
politic (or the mental equivalent of that metaphor): i.e. the difference
between the process of opening our political life to increased rationality
and the closing of that rationality for the sake of myth. Political maturity
(whether in the individual or in the state) involves a coming-to-self-
consciousness; and in the light of this, the deliberate self-delusion that
prompts us to see the state as “divine” is a piece of counter-rationality that
cannot be expected to thrive. Why is this?
One thinks here of Marx’s Feuerbachian Paris Manuscripts: With
regard to the institution of monarchy (or, equally, the capitalist system),
can one actually “tell” oneself that this is not an institution made by
humans—and believe it? Rather, to take that step in the direction of
demythologization, and to regard any institution as man-made, is to start
on the road to dismantling it, denying its superhuman authority.
Yet the Crown embodies the element of subjectivity, although this is
condensed into the individual human being. To say, “The state decides,” is
as much as to say “The Crown decides”—but for the fact that in Hegel the
crown has the limited authority of a constitutional monarch. Implicitly,
the Crown combines its three component elements: the legislative power
embracing the universality of the constitution and its laws; the
adjudication which subsumes single cases under the universal through the
power of the executive; and the power of ultimate decision by way of the
self-determination in which the subjectivity of just such determinations are
made (pars 273, 275). Nevertheless, the element of self-delusion (as when
we say, with the ritualism of the law court, “The state versus…” or “The
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Crown versus…”) is all too easily dispelled, once seen—and once this is
grasped we can hardly resist the inclination to demythologize all our social
myths, everywhere and on all sides.
This leads us into the most troubling—and controversial—part of
Hegel’s entire political edifice, that of the monarch. There is hardly a
philosopher who is more of a rationalist; but while this entails the
dissipation of myths, we ought not to overlook Hegel’s profound respect
for myths and their social purpose. In this respect Hegel is the tool of his
own myth-making, and this is reflected in his theorizing on kingship. One
might wonder why a monarch should be needed at all in Hegel’s state,
given Hegel’s emphasis on constitutionalism and the rule of law. Further,
one might ask why a monarch is needed, as Hegel says, to embody the
element of subjectivity in the state, or why that subjectivity should need to
be embodied at all.
Perhaps this is a result of Hegel’s pervasive metaphor in all this: If
history can be seen as a process wherein the state (as “mind”) comes to
self-awareness, to maturity and freedom, then that so-called “mind”
would certainly require a subjective dimension for its completion.
But must we stay with that metaphor? (Since the main point of history
is that it is to be compared to a mind “growing up,” we may call it Hegel’s
“educational metaphor” of the state.) As a metaphor, it has its uses: the
state, immersed in time, is necessarily dynamic in its process—just as
human individuals are in their endless movement toward a telos. That
telos holds out the hope of progress in history—i.e. human individuals
learning from experience. (As Dewey says, experience doesn’t merely exist,
it teaches.) The state, in its various efforts to reconcile its inner
contradictions, is what produces this human thrust into the future. The
state thereby fulfills the potentialities embodied in the perennial human
condition. (Here is the educational metaphor once again.) In so doing, the
state can be said to learn through time, to improve on its own
enlargement, etc.—in effect, to provide the equivalent of a secular
salvation.
Yet the ubiquitous metaphor is hardly convincing when Hegel, as we
saw, speaks of something as dubious as a World-Spirit (Weltgeist)
coming to self-awareness. He is stuck with the metaphor; we are not.
Here is where the monarch comes in: as a concept, the monarch serves
to flesh out the metaphor, yet it does little more than leave it in its
abstract form; in concrete, however, it provides the subjective aspect
that a Geist (“mind” or “Spirit”) would need in order for us to
understand it.
The monarch, then, enables us to address the metaphor, to question it
and to demand that it explain itself and account for itself. Clearly, the
figure of the monarch can (in principle) be addressed in this way, while the
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state cannot (so that we cannot literally speak of the state’s “purposes,”
etc.) because it is entirely impersonal.
Yet the state, as something mental (i.e. spiritual, non material), is the
bearer of a “soul,” an identity (Addition to par. 275, p. 287). As such it
may be seen as “sovereign” over all its component elements, and
containing all differences in itself. As the “soul” can be said to unify its
disparate elements, so the sovereign performs a similar function by
containing all differences itself. Indeed, without a monarch, Hegel says, a
people is but a “formless mass” (par. 279, p. 183). As a totality, the state
is an organic whole of which the monarch is the “personality.”
But here a further contradiction enters, stemming from Hegel’s view of
the state as the embodiment of reason—i.e. reason objectified: “The state
is mind fully mature and it exhibits its moments in the daylight of
consciousness” (p. 283). If so, then objectified reason must reflect the
realm of the immutable and be unchanging; yet states do change. If it is
“the way of God with the world” that there should be states, can the state
be regarded as being the effect of temporal forces? To be sure, the person
of the monarch is the effect of natural forces, as this individual; but the
state itself is a nonnatural entity, designed to serve a higher-then-natural
purpose. As such, the “immediate individuality” of the monarch must be
irrelevant to the state’s inherent rationality. And if individuality is the
synthesis of the universal and the particular, cannot the state itself be such
an individual in its sovereignty, i.e. without a king?
*
Hegel is one segment of the long tradition of visionary philosophers who
(beginning with Plato) have sought to introduce reason into the concept of
the political world. What we must realize, with Hegel, is that that vision is
to be taken as a totality, in which its prismatic elements combine to form a
unity wherein those elements are merely seen as individual but are actually
unified. As he says:
In the state, self-consciousness finds in an organic development the
actuality of its substantive knowing and willing; in religion, it finds
the feeling and the representation of this its own truth as an ideal
essentiality; while in philosophic science, it finds the free
comprehension and knowledge of this truth as one and the same in
its mutually complementary manifestations, i.e. in the state, in
nature, and in the ideal world.
(par. 360)
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NOTES
1 The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations ascribes the remark to a certain
Alphonse Karr (1808–90) in Les Guêpes (Jan. 1849).
2 R.C.Solomon, “Hegel’s Concept of Geist,” Review of Metaphysics, 23 (1970):
647; see also R.C.Solomon, In the Spirit of Hegel (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1983), p. 197.
3 Numbers refer to paragraphs in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Original language editions
8.1 Hegel, G.W.F. Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, ed. E.Moldenhauer
and K.M.Michel, Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1970.
8.2 ——Phänomenologie des Geistes, ed. J.Hoffmeister, Hamburg: Meiner, 1952.
8.3 ——Schriften zur Politik und Rechtsphilosophie, ed. G.Lasson, Leipzig:
Meiner, 1923.
8.4 ——Gesammelte Werke, ed. Rheinisch-Westfälischen Akademie der
Wissenschaften, Hamburg: Meiner, 1968–.
8.5 ——Sämtliche Werke, 20 vols, ed. H.Glockner, Juhiläumsausgahe, Stuttgart:
Frommann, 1927–40.
8.6 ——Sämtliche Werke, ed. J.Hoffmeister, Hamburg: Meiner, 1952–60.
English translations
8.7 Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, trans. T.M.Knox, Oxford and London: Oxford
University Press, 1952, pbk 1967.
8.8 Hegel, G.W.F. The Philosophy of History, trans. J.Sibree, New York: Wiley, 1956.
8.9 ——Introduction to the Philosophy of History, trans. L.Rauch, Indianapolis:
Hackett, 1988.
8.10 ——The Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V.Miller, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1977.
8.11 ——Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, Part III: Hegel’s
Philosophy of Mind, trans. W.Wallace and A.V.Miller, Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1971.
8.12 ——Political Writings, trans. T.M.Knox, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962; see
“The German constitution.”
Bibliographies
8.13 Steinhauer, K. (ed.) Hegel: An International Bibliography, Munich: Verlag
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Dokumentation, 1978; contains 13,400 entries, from Hegel’s first
work to publications on him in 1973.
Extensive bibliographies are also to be found in:
8.14 Inwood, M.J. Hegel, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983.
8.15 Taylor, C. Hegel, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.
Influences
8.16 Harris, H.S. Hegel’s Development, Vol. I: Towards the Sunlight, 1770–1801,
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972; Vol. II: Night Thoughts, 1801–1806,
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983.
8.17 Hook, S. From Hegel to Marx, New York: Humanities Press, 1950.
8.18 G.Lukács, The Young Hegel, trans. R.Livingstone, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press, and London: Merlin Press, 1975.
General surveys
8.19 Findlay, J.N. Hegel: A Re-Examination, London: Allen & Unwin, and New
York: Oxford University Press, 1958.
8.20 Haym, R. Hegel und Seine Zeit, Hildesheim: Ohm, 1962.
8.21 Kaufmann, W. (ed.) Hegel’s Political Philosophy, New York: Atherton, 1970.
8.22 Löwith, K. From Hegel to Nietzsche, trans. D.E.Green, New York: Holt,
Rinehart & Winston, 1964; London: Constable, 1965; Garden City:
Doubleday Anchor, 1967.
8.23 Marcuse, H. Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory,
Boston: Beacon, 1960.
8.24 The Monist, 48, 1 (Jan. 1964): Hegel Today issue.
8.25 Mure, G.R.G. An Introduction to Hegel, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939.
8.26 Reyburn, H.A. The Ethical Theory of Hegel: A Study of the Philosophy of
Right, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967.
8.27 Stace, W.T. The Philosophy of Hegel, New York: Dover, 1955.
Specific topics
8.28 Avineri, S. Hegel’s Theory of the Modern State, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1974.
8.29 Foster, M.B. The Political Philosophies of Plato and Hegel, Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1935.
8.30 Hyppolite, J. Studies on Marx and Hegel, London: Heinemann, 1969.
8.31 Inwood, M.J. (ed.) Hegel, Oxford Readings in Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1985.
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8.32 Kelly, G.A. Idealism, Politics and History, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1969.
8.33 ——“Notes on Hegel’s ‘Lordship and Bondage’, ” Review of Metaphysics,
XIX, (1966).
8.34 Kojéve, A. An Introduction to the Readings of Hegel, New York & London:
Basic Books, 1969; a Marxist reading.
8.35 MacIntyre, A.C. (ed.) Hegel: A Collection of Critical Essays, New York:
Doubleday, 1972.
8.36 O’Brien, G.D. Hegel on Reason and History, Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1975.
8.37 Pelczynski, Z.A. (ed.) Hegel’s Political Philosophy: Problems and
Perspectives, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971; see esp.
K.Ilting, “The Structure of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right,” and
Z.A.Pelczynski, “The Hegelian Conception of the State.”
8.38 —— The State and Civil Society: Studies in Hegel’s Political Philosophy,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
8.39 Plamenatz, J. Man and Society‘ Vol. 2,London: Longman, 1963.
8.40 Rauch, L. The Political Animal: Studies in Political Philosophy from
Machiavelli to Marx, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press,
1981.
8.41 Ritter, J. Hegel and the French Revolution, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
1982.
8.42 Sabine, G.H. and Thorson, T.L. A History of Political Theory, Hinsdale,
111.: Dryden Press, 1973.
8.43 Solomon, R.C. In the Spirit of Hegel, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1983.
8.44 Strauss, L. and Cropsey, J. (eds) History of Political Philosophy, Chicago and
London: University of Chicago Press, 1963.
8.45 Taylor, C. Hegel and Modern Society, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1979.
8.46 Wilkins, B.T. Hegel’s Philosophy of History, Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1974.
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CHAPTER 9
The Young Hegelians,
Feuerbach, and Marx
Robert Nola
Largely through lectures delivered at the University of Berlin, Hegel built
up a circle of followers, mainly contemporaries or pupils, who were intent
on working out aspects of the philosophical system that their master had
suggested but left undeveloped. After Hegel’s death in 1831 this circle,
later dubbed “the Old Hegelians,” became the core of a group of
philosophers whose task was to put the finishing touches to the Hegelian
philosophical edifice. Though there were during Hegel’s lifetime external
critics of his philosophy, especially his theology, the work of his close
associates was directed toward establishing the unity of his system rather
than exposing its inner tensions. True to its dialectical character, Hegel’s
philosophy did contain contradictory tendencies which if taken too far
would transform the apparent unity of his system into a clash of opposites.
When “the Young Hegelians” emerged in the mid-1830s, they exploited in
various ways these contradictory tendencies, thereby dissolving the unity
of Hegel’s system and bringing about what Marx called “the putrescence
of the absolute spirit.”
Though his followers were not united on every aspect of Hegel’s
philosophy, after his death the differences between them became more
marked, first in theology then in political theory. Latent divisions became
open disputes when the 27-year-old David Friedrich Strauss published his
The Life of Jesus Critically Examined in 1835–6, thereby breaking with
Hegel over matters to do with religion and philosophy. Strauss (1808–74),
who had attended some of Hegel’s lectures just before his death, differed
markedly from his master over the role which was to be assigned to the
Gospels and to the life of Jesus within speculative theology.
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While Hegel did not pay much attention to the actual details of the life
of Christ and the historicity of the Gospels, he did think that the basic
tenets of Christianity, found in the doctrine of the Trinity and expressed in
historical events such as the Incarnation, the Ascension, the Creation, and
the Fall, could be given an independent philosophical foundation. There
would be no need to appeal, for example, to miracles or to historical
evidence to establish Christian doctrine. For Hegel the very content of
Christianity is identical with the content of Hegelian philosophy, though
the form of each is different. The difference in form is the difference
between Vorstellung (representation) and Begriff (concept). In the case of
the philosophical Begriff, Hegelian philosophy gives us the absolute
content of Christianity in the form of pure thought, or as a “deduction”
from pure thought. In the case of the Vorstellung, popular Christianity
with its dogmas deals in pictorial or representational imagery or in
figurative thought. These images are not logically particular, as are our
sensuous experiences of our mental imagery, but are alleged to be of
universal significance; aspects of pure thought contained in such imagery
are to be made explicit within Hegelian philosophical theology.
During his time as a vicar in 1830–1 Strauss became acutely aware of
this difference of form; the popular religious Vorstellung of his
parishioners seemed far removed from the religious Begriff of the Hegelian
philosopher-theologian. While not abandoning the latter, Strauss delved
more into the former, particularly the historical genesis of the ideas of
Christianity among its earliest devotees. This in turn led to a close study of
the life of Jesus and the manner in which this was presented in biblical
texts. When The Life of Jesus was finally published most of it was devoted
to a densely argued critical examination of the historicity of the Gospels—
with only a little devoted to philosophy and speculative theology.
The startling result of Strauss’s research was that even though there was
an historical Christ there was little that we could regard as true of him.
Instead most of the biblical stories about him were to be understood as
myths, constructed not by individuals but by the earliest Christian
communities in response to the teaching of Christ and the Messianic
tradition which they had inherited from the Old Testament. For Strauss an
“evangelical mythus [is] a narrative relating directly or indirectly to Jesus,
which may be considered not as the expression of a fact, but as the
product of an idea of his earliest followers.”1
Earlier theologians had accounted for much of the Old Testament in
terms of myth. Strauss, who drew on their work, was one of the first to
extend the mythical account to much that had previously passed as literal
truth in the four Gospels and the rest of the New Testament. Though his
mythical account of the Gospels still remains contentious, Strauss’s critical
work on their historicity stands at the beginning of the modern tradition
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of scholarly and scientific study of the New Testament. For Strauss the
Hegelian theologian, the important consequence of his research was that
there was no longer any identity between Hegelian philosophy and the
Christian religion. Hegel’s philosophical theology still remained correct,
but if the stories of the Gospels were no longer historical truths but myths,
then there is nothing in the actual history of Christianity for Hegelian
theology to capture and the theology stands quite independently. As
Strauss says in the Preface to the First German Edition:
The author is aware that the essence of the Christian faith is
perfectly independent of his criticism. The supernatural birth of
Christ, his miracles, his resurrection and ascension, remain eternal
truths, whatever doubts may be cast on their reality as historical
facts.2
At the end of his book Strauss also made another highly contentious claim:
since God and man have the same essence, viz., spirit, then they are not
genuinely distinct, and thus humanity is divine. Strauss even allowed
himself to talk of the God-man as an expression of this unity.3 The
argument for the identity is a bad one; the Young Hegelians were not, on
the whole, sensitive to the logical faults in their arguments. However, the
rejection of a transcendent God and the identification of God with man
underline the extreme humanism that characterized not only Strauss’s
thought but the thought of all the Young Hegelians.
The conclusion of Strauss’s investigations would have been, at the time
of their publication, sensational enough for ordinary believers. The
notoriety of his book was such that Strauss was prevented from ever
obtaining a permanent university position in Germany. The reaction of his
fellow Hegelians was also sensational; many rejected his interpretation of
the Bible and came to doubt his Hegelian orthodoxy. In reply to their
criticism in his “Controversial Writings”4 Strauss divided the Hegelians
into the Right, Center, and Left—his model being the various political
factions in the French National Assembly. The Right Hegelians, also called
“Old Hegelians,” tended to conserve as much of the doctrines of their
master as possible, particularly the old doctrine of the unity of Hegelian
philosophy with the historical truth of Christianity. The Right included
such people as the old defender of Hegel against earlier criticisms, Karl
Friedrich Göschel (1784–1861); the successor to Hegel’s chair of
philosophy in Berlin, Georg Andreas Gabier (1786–1853); and, very
briefly, the young Bruno Bauer (1809–82). The Center included people
such as Karl Rosenkranz (1805–79) who accepted most of what Strauss
claimed about Christ and the Gospels but who insisted, contrary to
Strauss, that Christ, not humanity as a whole, was divine. (It was
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Rosenkranz who published in 1840 a comic drama about the dissolution
of Hegel’s School after his death.)5 Strauss’s supporters were on the Left—
the Left Hegelians. This division of reactions to Strauss’s work persisted
even when other Left Hegelians subsequently developed their own
critiques of Christianity in ways different from Strauss’s mythological
explanations.
Karl Ludwig Michelet (1801–93), a Center Hegelian who was in other
respects sufficiently orthodox to be one of a panel whose task was to edit
the works of Hegel, suggested that there was enough in common between
the Center and the Left to make the distinction unnecessary. But this initial
attempt to overcome one of the divisions among the Hegelians failed to
touch the major division. The differences deepened when the terms “Old
(i.e. Right) Hegelians” and “Young (i.e. Left) Hegelians” became a
common mode of designation for the two factions in the late 1830s6—
though such a bipartite division simplifies in many respects the complex
relationships that existed among German philosophers in the two decades
after Hegel’s death. As Karl Löwith says of the Old Hegelians who
eschewed any radical philosophical innovation:
They preserved Hegel’s philosophy literally, continuing it in
individual historical studies, but they did not reproduce it in a
uniform manner beyond the period of Hegel’s personal influence. For
the historical movement in the nineteenth century they are without
significance.7
The Young Hegelians were more radical; they dared explore innovatively
Hegel’s philosophy for their own time, rejecting aspects of it as they
saw fit.
The important Young Hegelians, some of whom had attended Hegel’s
lectures at the University in Berlin, include: Arnold Ruge (1802–80);
Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–72); Max Stirner (1806–56); David Strauss
(1808–74); Bruno Bauer (1809–82) and his younger brother Edgar Bauer
(1820–86); Moses Hess (1812–75); August von Cieszkowski (1814–94);
Karl Marx (1818–83); and Friedrich Engels (1820–95). As their dates
indicate, they were all born within the first two decades of the nineteenth
century, and most, if Engels and Marx are excluded, were born in the first
decade. Despite appearances the Old/Young distinction is not based on age
since many contemporaries of the Young Hegelians were sufficiently
philosophically orthodox to be grouped with the Old Hegelians (e.g.
Rosenkranz and Michelet). Nor should it be assumed that the Left/Right
distinction carries its standard political connotations. Rosenkranz, who
was active in politics, adopted a liberal rather than a reactionary stance
despite his identification with the Old Hegelians. In contrast, even though
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Strauss’s views on religion were radical, he was conservative politically,
especially in the period leading up to the revolutions of 1848 when he
became involved (on the whole unsuccessfully) in practical politics.8 In
fact in the 1840s, even though Strauss’s Life of Jesus was still an important
work for unorthodox Hegelians, he ceased to be a leading Young Hegelian
as the focus of the criticism of Hegel shifted from his speculative theology
to his social and political theory.
Given the close alliance in the Germany of the time between religion and
state, any criticism of religion inevitably brought in its train conflict with the
state. For this reason alone none of the Young Hegelians were able to obtain
permanent teaching positions in German universities and their work was
often subject to the scrutiny of the censor. For many of the Young Hegelians
their critique of religion in the late 1830s laid the ground for a critique of
the state in the 1840s—though few took the bold approach of Marx and
Engels in finally jettisoning much of the Hegelian theory of the state and in
supporting revolutionary movements. The political and social changes in
Germany in the 1830s and 1840s did shape some of the differences between
the Old and the Young Hegelians. Löwith makes a suggestive point when he
says that the divisions between Old and Young Hegelians can be traced
back to Hegel’s dictum that “the real is the rational and the rational is the
real.”9 The conservative Old Hegelians put emphasis on the first part of this
dictum, thereby supporting the status quo, viz., that the real existing state is
also rational. In contrast the more radical
Young Hegelians put emphasis on the second half of the dictum, viz.,
currently existing conditions were irrational and would have to be
transformed so that in the future the real would be the rational (a view
quickly adopted by Marx and Engels). In respect of this dictum Hegel
himself was more of an Old than a Young Hegelian. The Young Hegelian
movement began after the European revolutions of 1830, reached its
zenith in the early 1840s, and was over by the 1848 revolutions.
Frederick-William IV, who ascended the Prussian throne in 1840, had the
support of many of the Young Hegelians who looked forward to the
reform of the bureaucratic Prussian state and to greater participation of a
broader range of people in public life. Initially the Young Hegelians
benefited from the relaxation of censorship and the creation of a freer
press which allowed their ideas to gain wider circulation. But this was
short-lived for by the end of 1842 the radical press had been suppressed
and the monarch began to move Prussia in the direction of a conservative
Christian state. For the Young Hegelians who had criticized received
conceptions of religion and whose political thought was, in several cases,
strongly influenced by the ideals of the French Revolution, this was a
move in the opposite direction from the constitutional democracy which
many favored.
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It is thus not surprising that some of the Young Hegelians turned to a
critique of Hegel’s political and social theory. Among the first of these
critics was Arnold Ruge whose “Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and the
Politics of Our Times” appeared in August 1842 in the Deutscher
Jahrbücher which he edited. Ruge argued that there was a deep-seated
contradiction between the theory of the state which Hegel developed and
the actual state in which he existed. As he put the matter: “The abstract
inwardness of Protestantism did not free even Hegel from the illusion that
one could be theoretically free without being politically free.”10 According
to Ruge this raised for Hegel an ethical question which had previously
haunted Kant, viz., even though one should not state falsely what one
believes, should one create controversy by publicly disclosing all of what
one truly believes? In Ruge’s view it might have been diplomatic for Hegel
not to have publicly aired all that he thought. He commented: “If Hegel
had been presented with an opportunity to stand up for his theory, his
times would have had to have turned against him, as happened with
Kant.”11 Even though during his lifetime Hegel’s philosophical theories,
including his theory of the state, had the support of the Prussian
government, Ruge pointedly observed that Hegel passed over the
contradiction between his theory and the actual Prussian state without
acknowledgment.
Ruge also complained that
Hegel undertook to present the hereditary monarch, the majority, the
bicameral system, etc., as logical necessities, whereas it had to be a
matter of establishing all of these as products of history and of
explaining and criticizing them as historical existences.12
In Ruge’s view there is a place both for the philosophical discussion of the
purposes and aims of the state and for the historical (and social)
investigation of any form of government. However, one should not
conflate historical and logical categories. Ruge goes to the heart of his
difficulty with Hegel’s Philosophy of Right when he says: “[Hegel]
wrenches the state out of history and considers all of its historical forms
only under logical categories (thus, right from the start the categories of
universality, specificity, and singularity are employed again and again).”13
Ruge’s complaint was to be repeated later by Marx.
In February 1844 Ruge published in the Deutsch-Französische
Jahrbücher Marx’s own critique of German philosophy and the German
state in an article entitled “A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s
‘Philosophy of Right’: introduction.” This was only part of a much longer
paragraph-by-paragraph critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right which
Marx had written in the previous year and which he had intended to revise
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for publication; the surviving sections of this critique first saw the light of
day only in 1927.14 Though the published “Introduction” does not contain
any detailed criticism of Hegel of the sort found in the unpublished drafts,
Marx does use some Hegelian notions when, for the first time, he
proclaims that the proletariat is the class whose revolution will bring
about the emancipation of humanity.
For Marx the proletariat is a part of what Hegel had called “civil
society”; at the time Marx was writing it was just beginning to emerge in
Germany with the rise of industrial development. For Hegel civil society
is the sphere of private interest in which each person pursues their own
ends often in conflict with others; in contrast the state is that sphere in
which the clash of private interests is transcended and there is unity and
universality of interest. Whatever defects there may be in actual states,
Hegel says in the Preface to his Philosophy of Right: “This book, then,
containing as it does the science of the state, is to be nothing other than
the endeavour to apprehend and portray the state as something
inherently rational.”15 In criticizing Hegel, Marx sets out to show: there
is no separation of the sort Hegel envisages between civil society and the
state; the falsity of Hegel’s supposition that in the state there is
rationality and unity; and universality of interest masks the fact that in
actual states the interests of one particular group dominate within civil
society.
Though Hegel recognizes that there are various groups within society,
such as civil servants, an agricultural class, an industrial/commercial class,
etc., the notion of the proletariat developed in Marx’s critique of Hegel is
distinctively Marx’s own—but without the theoretical depth that his later
economic analyses would give the notion. However, the genesis of Marx’s
notion of the proletariat does have its roots in Hegel’s notion of a
universal class, i.e. a class whose interests are supposedly those of society
as a whole. Marx rejects Hegel’s idea that the universal class might be the
class of civil servants or the bureaucracy. He also claims that Hegel’s
attempt to reconcile the differences between civil society and the state is
misplaced; instead the historical role of the proletariat is to abolish the
very ground which makes these differences possible. In answer to the self-
posed question “Where is the positive possibility of a German
emancipation?” Marx replies that it lies
In the formation of a class with radical chains, a class of civil society
which is not a class of civil society…a sphere which has a universal
character by its universal suffering…a sphere, finally, which cannot
emancipate itself without emancipating itself from all other spheres
of society and thereby emancipating all other spheres of society,
which, in a word, is the complete loss of man and hence can win
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itself only through the complete rewinning of man. This dissolution
of society as a particular estate is the proletariat.
(MECW, 3:186)16
The future evolution of the proletariat is also described in the
“Introduction” in terms of Hegel’s dialectic—the one prominent feature of
Hegelian thought that Marx never abandoned. Marx speaks of the
proletariat “demanding the negation of private property.” For the
proletariat private property is “the secret of its own existence”; by calling
for its abolition the proletariat undermines the very condition that makes
its own existence possible. Thus the quite thoroughgoing nature of the
social transformation that Marx envisages, viz., “the dissolution of the
hitherto existing world order” (MECW, 3:187). Marx’s notion of the
proletariat thus has its origin both in a critique of speculative Hegelian
political theory and in Marx’s observation of the social changes taking
place within Germany at the time. Much later when writing Capital, Marx
found a more secure basis for his views about the proletariat in his
economic theory; they are the means whereby surplus value is created.
But, as chapter 32 of Capital 1 shows, Marx still maintained that the
future evolution of the proletariat was best described using the notions of
the Hegelian dialectic.
It was through Arnold Ruge’s activities as an editor and publisher that
many of the ideas of the Young Hegelians found a public outlet. In 1837
he started the highly influential Hallische Jahrbücher für deutsche
Wissenschaft und Kunst. Owing to the pressure of censorship Ruge shifted
to Dresden in 1841 and continued the journal under the new name
Deutsche Jahrbücher für Wissenschaft und Kunst, However, early in 1843
even this journal was suppressed, along with Marx’s daily newspaper
Rheinische Zeitung. In 1844 a similar fate befell the Allgemeine Literatur-
Zeitung, started by Bruno and Edgar Bauer in Berlin in the previous year,
thus ending the sequence of journals that had been the main public vehicle
for Young Hegelian thought. These journals helped give the Young
Hegelian movement a semblance of identity. Their end was only partly due
to censorship; by 1845 the movement itself had lost whatever unity it
might have possessed and much of its impetus.
The Berlin wing of the Young Hegelians, also known as Die Freien, had
its origin in the Doktorenklub, a group formed at the University of Berlin
in 1837 for the discussion of radical Hegelian ideas (it was in this group
that Marx became acquainted with Hegelian philosophy). The leading
member of Die Freien was Bruno Bauer. As a student he had attended
Hegel’s lectures and had been deemed sufficiently orthodox to be asked to
defend the Right Hegelian position against Strauss’s Life of Jesus. Soon
after reviewing the book Bauer was converted to its general themes and
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took an even more radical position than Strauss on Christianity; he
became an atheist, arguing in several works that not only was there no
historical truth to be found in the Gospels but Christianity was a barrier to
progress and it was an irrational doctrine that ought to be opposed.
Bauer’s subsequent dismissal from his university position became a
cause célèbre for the Young Hegelians during the early 1840s. With little
to lose Bauer wrote an ironic attack on Hegelian philosophy in an 1841
pamphlet, The Trumpet of the Last Judgment over Hegel the Atheist and
Antichrist: An Ultimatum, in which Hegel is exposed as a closet atheist
and revolutionary. Even the apostasy of Young Hegelians, Bauer claimed,
is not original to them, for Hegel too, when unmasked, is revealed to be
one of them: “It cannot be believed that they [the Young Hegelians] have
not recognized the destructive rage of this [Hegel’s] system, for they have
taken their principle only from their Master”!17 Thus the true heirs of
Hegelian thought were not the Old Hegelians and their ilk (found in
university and government circles) but the Young Hegelians, since Hegel
himself, when properly interpreted, also espoused their subversive and
radical doctrines.
Though Bauer continued his attacks on religion he slowly dissociated
himself from Die Freien, whom he dubbed “beer literati”; after the 1848
revolution, which he thought seriously mistaken, he became politically
conservative. By the early 1840s Marx, who had been close to Bauer when
a student at the University of Berlin, had begun to reject many of Bauer’s
characteristic views, especially his development of a modified version of
Hegel’s theory of self-consciousness. The progress of man, Bauer alleged,
occurred as the result of the development of successive levels of self-
consciousness, criticism being the means whereby the development of self-
consciousness took place. The term “criticism” was one of the buzzwords
of the Young Hegelian movement, meaning many things to each of them;
Bauer and his followers even referred to their own theoretical activity as
“Critical Criticism.”
Bauer became the object of sustained critical attacks by Marx in both
his 1844 article “On the Jewish Question” and his first collaborative work
with Engels, The Holy Family, or Critique of Critical Criticism: Against
Bruno Bauer and Company (first published in February 1845). The “Holy
Family” were Bauer and his contributors to the Allgemeine Literatur-
Zeitung, many of whom wrote in opposition to the Communist movement
as it was currently developing. They doubted whether any proletarian
movement could ever be the means whereby the appropriate development
of self-consciousness, whether personal or social, could be achieved. For
example, in September 1844 Bauer wrote in his journal that the crowd (i.e.
the masses or the proletariat) were in conflict with Spirit, i.e. with critical
self-consciousness. Among others he attacks French communism because if
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it were to achieve its aims “it would abolish freedom in the smallest
things” and give rise to a “despotic condition of subdued atoms.” His
conclusion is that there is “an inevitable war of the multitude against spirit
and self-consciousness, and the significance of this war is found in nothing
less than the fact that in it the cause of criticism is set against the genus
[human species].”18 With much hindsight it might be thought that Bauer
has anticipated the despotic communism of some recent Communist
societies—forms of communism which Marx had already criticized in his
unpublished Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.19 However,
Bauer’s article is obscure both in its argument and in its appeal to “spirit
and self-consciousness” as opposed to “the crowd.”
Marx became increasingly opposed to the use of self-consciousness as a
fundamental category of analysis; along with this went his rejection of
Bauer’s Critical Criticism as the means whereby self-consciousness is to be
developed. From Marx’s perspective it is evident that Bauer’s Critical
Criticism applied to self-consciousness would represent a dead end in
subjective idealism and even a regressive step away from the objective
idealism of Hegel. Also in drafts of the unpublished Economic and
Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 Marx had written of the need to criticize
Bauer’s views; Feuerbach, Marx claimed, had shown what was wrong
with the mystical transcendental aspect of Hegel’s dialectic which Bauer
continued to use.20 More significantly, while in Paris in 1844 Marx had
attended meetings of a worker’s society called the League of the Just and
had closely aligned himself with the French Communist movement;
consequently he was at odds with all the contributors to the Allgemeine
Literatur-Zeitung concerning the role of “the crowd” that Bauer and
others had denigrated.
The friendship that had developed between Marx and Engels from
August 1844 gave them the opportunity to collaborate in producing The
Holy Family. Beside the broadsides against the Berlin faction of the Young
Hegelians and others, the book contains not only the further development
of Marx’s theory of the proletariat outlined in his earlier critical work on
Hegel, but also the first outlines of what was to become Marx’s theory of
historical materialism. Unfortunately much of the dated polemics of The
Holy Family obscures this aspect of the development of Marx’s thought.
Despite the considerable differences between Marx and Bauer, Marx
absorbed much of Bauer’s writings; as McLellan shows,21 Marx uses one
of Bauer’s metaphors when he famously says that religion is the opium of
the people.
One of the final works to be identified with the Young Hegelian
movement was Dir Einzige und sein Eigentum (1845), written by another
member of Die Freien, Max Stirner (his real name being the more prosaic
Johann Schmidt). Stirner’s fame rests on this one book, known in English
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as The Ego and its Own: The Case of the Individual against Authority.
The book, which initially attracted much attention, is in several places
merely a collection of notes without an overall structure, as befits it
anarchistic theme. However, Marx and Engels thought it sufficiently
important to write their own book-length critique of Stirner, whom they
dubbed “Saint Max”; this long, sometimes turgid, often insightful
polemic remained unpublished during their life-time.22 Though Marx
adopted none of Stirner’s views, McLellan argues that Stirner’s criticisms
of Feuerbach did play some role in Marx’s final rejection of Feuerbach,
the one Young Hegelian whose influence Marx acknowledged.23
Commentators have often linked Stirner with Nietzsche in respect of
both style and content, though there is no evidence that Nietzsche ever
read him. During this century Stirner has had a strong influence upon
many of those of the non-Communist left and anarchists. Two writers
who have attested to his influence upon their work are Herbert Read and
Albert Camus.24 On the darker side, Stirner has not been without an
influence on Fascist thought.
Stirner’s work stands opposed to the abstractions of thought and the
tendency to systematization found in Hegel and the Young Hegelians. It is
also a plea for the totally unconstrained freedom of the individual person.
The short introductory section of his book, whose title “All Things Are
Nothing To Me” is a quotation from Goethe, ends with the claim:
The divine is God’s concern; the human, man’s. My concern is
neither the divine nor the human, not the true, good, just, free, etc.,
but solely what is mine, and it is not a general one, but is unique, as
I am unique. Nothing is more to me than myself!25
Since Stirner’s theme is the exaltation of the individual above any
abstraction such as God, the state, the party, man or mankind, etc., he
presents the main body of his book in two parts, the first called “Man,”
the second “I”—the unique individual or ego.
From the stance of the unique individual not only is all consideration of
pure thought or Spirit to be expunged from philosophy but also all talk of
man. Even Feuerbach, who believed that all talk of God is really talk of
man and man’s essence, is still too abstract for Stirner and becomes the
object of much criticism and even undergraduate ridicule. For example, in
a section of his book entitled “The Spook” Stirner says: “To know and
acknowledge essences alone and nothing but essences, that is religion; its
realm is a realm of essences, spooks, and ghosts.”26 Elsewhere he adds:
“Man is the last evil spirit or spook…the father of lies.”27 Continuing his
criticism, Stirner inverts the entire thrust of Hegelian philosophy when
he says:
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Feuerbach…is always harping upon being. In this he too, with all
his antagonism to Hegel and the absolute philosophy, is stuck fast in
abstraction; for “being” is abstraction, as is even “the I”. Only I am
not abstraction alone: I am all in all, consequently even abstraction
or nothing; I am all and nothing; I am not a mere thought, but at the
same time I am full of thoughts, a thought-world. Hegel condemns
the own, mine—“opinion”. “Absolute thinking” is that which
forgets that it is my thinking, that I think, and that it exists only
through me.28
Stirner replaces fantastic Hegelian abstractions with almost common-sense
banalities about what is the proper subject of thought, viz., the person. As
Stirner implores us to realize when reading Hegelian philosophy: “Man,
your head is haunted; you have wheels in your head!”29 This kind of
criticism of Hegel, which Stirner could have found in the earlier work of
Feuerbach (and, under Feuerbach’s influence, is to be found in Marx’s
unpublished critique of Hegel), would have a sympathetic response from
more nominalistically inclined twen-tieth-century analytic philosophers.
Even Stirner’s Berlin associates of Die Freien are not spared when he
criticizes various forms of society in a section called “The Free.” He
attacks the political liberalism of the bourgeoisie, the social liberalism of
the Communists, and the humane liberalism of Bruno Bauer, all of whom
had their representatives in the Berlin circles in which Stirner moved. In
particular Stirner picks out some features of social (or Communist—
Stirner did not distinguish) liberalism that have become all too evident in
twentieth-century Communist states. He is deeply suspicious of “the
Sunday side” of communism in which each man views the other as brother
while masking an illiberal “workday side” in which men are merely
laborers. He alleges that for communism it is of our essence to labor
(strictly not Marx’s view). Further he argues that under communism (as
well as other forms of state) our labor takes place under the domination of
the all-encompassing state with its regulation of life. From this Stirner
draws the conclusion that under communism there will appear a new form
of tyranny to dominate the individual: “Society, from which we have
everything, is a new master, a new spook, a new ‘supreme being’, which
‘takes us into its service and allegiance’!”30 As he adds later: “Communism
rightly revolts against the pressure that I experience from individual
proprietors; but still more horrible is the might that it puts in the hand of
the collectivity.”31
In the second section, “I,” Stirner explores his doctrine of the unique
individual. What is left of the individual once he or she is liberated from
the snares of philosophy, religion, culture, family, morality, the various
forms of liberalism, the state, any political party, property—even love,
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equality, and human rights? Concerning the last of these Stirner says:
“Right—is a wheel in the head, put there by a spook; power—that am I
myself, I am the powerful one and the owner of power.”32 Here the
obscure and somewhat sinister side of Stirner’s thought appears with its
Nietzschean appeal to the power each individual possesses, its exercise,
and the egoistic individual so created. He ends his book with a peroration
to the power of the self-creating individual:
I am owner of my might, and I am so when I know myself as unique.
In the unique one the owner himself returns into his creative nothing,
of which he is born. Every higher essence above me, be it God, be it
man, weakens the feeling of my uniqueness, and pales only before
the sun of this consciousness. If I concern myself for myself, the
unique one, then my concern rests on its transitory, mortal creator,
who consumes himself, and I may say: All things are nothing to me.33
In speaking of the property that the unique individual owns (viz., his or
her own self-creative power), it is as if Stirner never got beyond the
opening passages of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, summed up in, for
example, § 47. There Hegel talks about the right of property which each
has in their own person, i.e. in their body, and the will they exercise
through their body. The ego and what it owns are both the beginning and
end of Stirner’s anarchistic political theory.
Even in his discussion of love Stirner adopts a completely egoistic
position. Though he claims to love every other person he does so
egoistically: “I love them because love makes me happy.”34 For an extreme
individual egoist such as Stirner all forms of the state are to be resisted—
the state, too, is a spook. However, he does feel the need to speak of an
association or union of egoists; but it is hard to see what such a union is
like for an extreme egoist. We are told: “it is not another State (such as a
‘people’s State’) that men aim at, but their union, uniting, this ever-fluid
uniting of everything standing.”35 Elsewhere he paints a bleak picture of
what this ever-fluid union of egoists might be like:
For me no one person is to be respected…but [each is] an object in
which I take an interest or else do not…. And if I can use him, I
doubtless come to an understanding and make myself at one with
him, in order, by the agreement, to strengthen my power, and by
combined force to accomplish more than individual force could
effect. In this combination I see nothing whatever but a
multiplication of my force, and I retain it only so long as it is my
multiplied force. But thus it is a—union.36
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Stirner may have raised some important critical points concerning Hegel
and his fellow Young Hegelians and to have alerted us to the dangers in
appeals to unanalysed abstractions such as “man” and “the state.”
However, he often bases his own positive theory of the freedom of the
individual on a false inference from the need to be free of this and that
particular thing (e.g. a political party, or the family, etc.) to the need to be
free from everything. By combining the idea of absolute freedom from
everything with the idea of the power that the individual can egoistically
exert in making itself, Stirner is led to rather unsavory views about the
kind of relationships people can have. Belatedly, Stirner recognizes the
need for some association of egoists; but his theory of the union does not
get beyond the Hobbesian state of nature. In the end he espouses views
characteristic of twentieth-century right-wing and Fascistic movements:
My intercourse with the world, what does it aim at? I want to have
the enjoyment of it, therefore it must be my property, and therefore I
want to win it. I do not want the liberty of men, nor their equality; I
want only my power over them, I want to make them my property,
material for enjoyment.37
No wonder a recent editor of an abridged version of Stirner’s book
thought it appropriate to include it in a general series with the title “Roots
of the Right.” Even Mussolini wrote: “Leave the way free for the
elemental power of the individual; for there is no other human reality than
the individual! Why shouldn’t Stirner become significant again?”38
Marx and Stirner have, at a certain level, common themes; Stirner’s
graphic account of alienated labor is paralleled by Marx’s own account of
alienation given at the same time in his unpublished Economic and
Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. However, at a deeper theoretical level of
the relationship between the individual and society Marx and Stirner are
poles apart. For Stirner the states of mind of, and the powers exerted by,
the egoistic individual are sui generis and are not to be further explained.
In contrast, for Marx, as he developed his materialist view of history, the
states of mind to which Stirner appeals are falsely treated as ultimate and
are themselves things which stand in need of explanation. As Marx first
said in The German Ideology: “It is not consciousness that determines life,
but life that determines consciousness,”39 where “life” is to be understood
as people “developing their material production and their material
intercourse” (MECW, 5:37). In particular Marx complains:
Stirner regards the various stages of life only as “self-discoveries” of
the individual, and these “self-discoveries” are moreover always
reduced to a definite relation of consciousness. Thus the variety of
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consciousness is here the life of the individual. The physical and
social changes which take place in individuals and produce an
altered consciousness are, of course, of no conern to Stirner. In
Stirner’s work, therefore, child, youth and man always find the
world ready-made, just as they merely “find” “themselves”…. But
even the relation of consciousness is not correctly understood either,
but only in its speculative distortion.
(ibid.: 128)
Stirner’s egoistic individual cannot merely be a person cultivating their
unconditioned power unrelated to any circumstances whatever: “[Stirner]
quite consistently abstracts from historical epochs, nationalities, classes,
etc., [and] he inflates the consciousness predominant in the class nearest to
him in his immediate environment into the normal consciousness of ‘a
man’s life’ ” (ibid.: 129). Thus the unique I does not well up out of itself
from nothing, as Stirner claims, but, according to Marx, is the product of
circumstances to which the I remains blind.40
The only Young Hegelian to have exerted an influence on Marx was
Ludwig Feuerbach. The nature and extent of Marx’s relationship to the
work of Hegel and the Young Hegelians have only been able to be fully
assessed since the 1930s when the MEGA edition (1927–32) made
available all of Marx’s and Engels’s early writings (i.e. before 1848).
Before the 1930s the full range of Marx’s thought on Hegel and the Young
Hegelians and the extent of Feuerbach’s influence were not known.
Marx says in his 1859 Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of
Political Economy that in 1845 he and Engels had
decided to set forth together our conception as opposed to the
ideological one of German Philosophy, in fact to settle accounts with
our former philosophical conscience. The intention was carried out
in the form of a critique of post-Hegelian philosophy. The
manuscript, two large octavo volumes, had long ago reached the
publishers in Westphalia when we were informed that owing to
changed circumstances it could not be printed. We abandoned the
manuscript to the gnawing criticism of the mice all the more
willingly since we had achieved our main purpose—self-clarification.
(MECW, 29:264)
This manuscript, first published in full in 1932, is now known as The
German Ideology.41 The manuscript left to the mice was in Engels’s hands
again in 1886 when he leafed through it in the course of writing a review
of a book on Ludwig Feuerbach. The review reappeared in 1888 as a
separate pamphlet entitled Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical
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German Philosophy. In the Preface, Engels tells us that he had undertaken
the earlier review willingly, since “a full acknowledgement of the influence
which Feuerbach, more than any other post-Hegelian philosopher, had
upon us during our Sturm und Drang period, appeared to me to be an
undischarged debt of honour” (MECW, 26:520). In the first section of this
work Engels treats us to his own brief version of the history of the
development of German philosophy from Hegel until the 1848
revolutions. The crucial turning point for Hegelian philosophy was,
according to Engels, the publication of Feuerbach’s The Essence of
Christianity in 1841:
The spell was broken; the “system” [i.e. Hegel’s] was exploded and
cast aside, and the contradiction [between the Idea and nature],
shown to exist only in our imagination, was dissolved. One must
have experienced the liberating effect of this book for oneself to get
an idea of it. Enthusiasm was universal: we were all Feuerbacheans
for a moment. How enthusiastically Marx greeted the new
conception and how much—in spite of all critical reservations—he
was influenced by it, one may read in The Holy Family.
(MECW, 26:364)
Engels’s claim in the last sentence is at variance with the facts, as McLellan
points out.42 In The Holy Family Feuerbach’s The Essence of Christianity
is not mentioned, as a glance at the index will show. However the index
lists two other works by Feuerbach published in 1843 that are arguably an
equal or more important influence on Marx, viz., Provisional Theses for
the Reformation of Philosophy and Principles of the Philosophy of the
Future. Engels’s 1888 pamphlet is important in another respect. In the
Preface he also tells us that “in an old notebook of Marx’s I have found
the eleven theses on Feuerbach, printed here as an appendix. These are
notes hurriedly scribbled down for later elaboration, absolutely not
intended for publication” (MECW, 26:520). These, now known as the
Theses on Feuerbach, along with The German Ideology, contain Marx’s
own critical evaluation of Feuerbach.
Marx had been aware of the work of Feuerbach from the time he wrote
his dissertation (1840–1). At the beginning of 1842 he said in an article,
comparing Feuerbach with Strauss, that “there is no other road for you to
truth and freedom except that leading through the stream of fire [the
Feuer-bach]. Feuerbach is the purgatory of the present times.”43 The
significance of Feuerbach’s work as a tool for the criticism of Hegel
became apparent to Marx with the publication of Feuerbach’s two 1843
works in which a program is set out for the future development of
philosophy once Hegel’s speculative philosophy had been abandoned.
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However, Marx was aware of one important limitation of these works. He
wrote to Ruge on 13 March 1843 concerning the Provisional Theses:
“Feuerbach’s aphorisms seem to me incorrect in only one respect, that he
refers too much to nature and too little to politics. That, however, is the only
alliance by which present-day philosophy can become truth” (MECW,
1:400). In the unpublished Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
Marx has only praise for the “theoretical revolution” that Feuerbach had
wrought. The other Young Hegelians, especially Strauss and Bauer, are
singled out for failing to appreciate that these two works have “in principle
overthrown the old dialectic and philosophy.” For Marx, “Feuerbach is the
only one who has a serious, critical attitude to the Hegelian dialectic and
who has made genuine discoveries in this field. He is in fact the true
conqueror of the old philosophy.”44 It is only in subsequent, unpublished
work that one can find Marx’s criticisms of Feuerbach.
Feuerbach, who had met Hegel and attended some of his lectures,
devoted much of his philosophical career to the study of religion. He
gained notice with the publication of Thoughts concerning Death and
Immortality (1830) in which he argued that there was no personal
immortality and no transcendent God but, instead, only the immortality
and transcendence of the human spirit. The reception of his book ended
any hopes that he may have held for a permanent university position. With
the publication of Toward a Critique of Hegelian Philosophy (1839)45
Feuerbach became firmly identified with the Young Hegelians. This work
is an attack on several major themes in Hegel’s logic and metaphysics,
particularly his idealism.
Among the many points concerning Hegelian philosophy that
Feuerbach takes up in the Critique are the following, (a) In contrast to the
idea that Hegelian philosophy is absolute because it is presuppositionless,
he argues that, like all other philosophy, it too has its hidden
presuppositions, (b) In contrast to Hegel’s abstract notion of thought he
claims that all thought involves interpersonal dialogue and that language
itself is “the realization of the species.” (c) Philosophy is bound up with
communication and language and is not to be, as in Hegel, imprisoned and
compressed into a system, (d) Even though Hegelian philosophy employs a
critical method it fails to notice what Feuerbach calls the “genetico-critical
philosophy” in which the causal origins of thought and ideas are traced,
(e) Common Hegelian errors are to be rectified by turning the Hegelian
subject into a predicate and, conversely, the predicate into a subject. This
is the first statement of Feuerbach’s famous inversion principle that so
attracted Marx, (f) The Absolute is “a vague and meaningless predicate”
and Hegelian philosophy is “rational mysticism.” (g) Hegel’s opposition of
Being and Nothing is to be rejected (though Feuerbach’s own arguments
concerning Nothing sometimes fall into logical error).
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The work which propelled Feuerbach into fame as the leading Young
Hegelian was the publication in 1841 of The Essence of Christianity. The
enthusiasm with which this work was greeted ranged from Engels’s
remark that “we were all Feuerbacheans for a moment” to Richard
Wagner’s claim that he “always regarded Feuerbach as the ideal exponent
of the radical release of the individual from the thraldom of accepted
notions.”46 While the body of the book illustrates how the genetico-critical
method is applied to the analysis of religious belief, the Preface to the
second edition tells us more about the manner in which Feuerbach’s
method differs from the approach of Hegel. Importantly Feuerbach views
himself as “a natural philosopher in the domain of the mind” in applying
his genetico-critical method not only to religious belief but to other sons of
belief as well.
The genetico-critical method is not to be understood in the Humean
manner in which epistemological justifications of our beliefs (i.e. thoughts)
are to be sought by logically basing them in our impressions of experience.
The method that Feuerbach employs has its roots more in the continental
tradition of the interpretation of Locke. It is genetic in that it traces the
causal origin of our beliefs back to their source in experience (but not in
the sense of providing an epistemic justification by means of experience).
It is critical in that it uncovers what is the real cause, as opposed to the
commonly believed but false cause, of some of our beliefs. If a belief
cannot be epistemically justified, the Humean response is to reject it as
epistemically illegitimate; in contrast, such illegitimate beliefs are of prime
concern for the genetico-critical method.
It is in this sense that Feuerbach sees himself as “a natural philosopher
of the mind” investigating even the residue of our epistemically
illegitimate beliefs. Feuerbach speaks in this context of the geneticocritical
method being mainly concerned with “secondary” causes, citing as an
example the theological view that comets are the work of God and
contrasting this with the astronomer’s or the natural philosophical view of
their cause.47 This example suggests that what we commonly take to be
the cause of a phenomenon might be quite wrong and that there is some
other “secondary” cause of the phenomenon which scientific investigation
would reveal. It is Feuerbach’s view that when it comes to the
phenomenon of belief, particularly religious belief, we can be quite
mistaken about what is the proper (i.e. secondary) cause of particular
beliefs.
For Feuerbach religion provides a particularly fertile field for beliefs
which have a causal origin in something quite distinct from their putative
object. On Feuerbach’s analysis, beliefs about God do not have their
causal origin in God but in something quite different, viz., our human
nature. As Feuerbach might say, human nature, not God, is the correct
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“secondary” cause of our religious beliefs. Elsewhere Feuerbach talks of
religious beliefs being reduced to beliefs about human essence and that
God himself has been reduced to the essence of the human species. With
hindsight the genetico-critical method can be viewed, in part, as an early
exercise in the sociology of knowledge, or, much better, the sociology of
belief, in which the origins of beliefs are traced to causes other than their
putative objects.
Feuerbach’s genetico-critical account of the source of our concept of
God is at least as old as Xenophanes, who is reported to have said that if
horses, cows, or lions could draw then they would draw their gods like
horses, cows, or lions; i.e. we make our god(s) in our own image. For
Feuerbach’s reductive program every predicate of God is in fact a
predicate of the human essence. It is we who then project God as an
independently existing object onto the world; at the same time we believe
that God created us—thus inverting the true but hidden causal relation.
In presenting his case for this inverted picture Feuerbach begins the first
section of chapter 1 of The Essence of Christianity by describing the
essential nature of man, i.e. those features which distinguish us essentially
from other animals. We are told that the essence of man is such that each
being “has consciousness in the strict sense”; such consciousness is
“present only in a being to whom his species, his essential nature, is an
object of thought.” Feuerbach even claims that science, which has to do
with species or kinds rather than individuals, is only possible for beings
who can be conscious of their own species, i.e. their essential nature.
Feuerbach continues his account of our essence by saying that such
consciousness is also consciousness of the infinite. By means of a rather
muddled argument he tells us that this means that “the conscious subject
has for his object the infinity of his own nature.” At best this cannot be
the nature of the individual but of the species as a whole, though it does
not strictly follow that even the species as a whole will necessarily have an
infinite nature. In the course of this discussion Feuerbach introduces the
notion of religion; this is, somewhat question-beggingly and without any
accompanying argument, identified with our essence, i.e. “with the
consciousness which man has of his nature.”
When he comes to say what further properties our essential nature has
it transpires that our essence is very Cartesian; the essential properties of
the human species are reason, will, and affection. Thus our natures are
such that we have the power to think, to act forcefully, and to love—and
our power to do so as a species is allegedly infinite. Given that this is our
essence, how does Feuerbach get from our essential nature to our concept
of God? To ask this is to put the wrong question. Rather one must ask:
given some feature alleged to be of God, how is this feature to be causally
reduced, using the geneticocritical method, to features of our essence?
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To assist in this Feuerbach appeals to his inversion principle, adapted to
suit the special case of God: “the object [God] of any subject [man] is
nothing else than the subject’s own nature taken objectively.”48 That is, all
the features we attribute to God, e.g. that God is loving, are nothing but
features of our own nature—in this case the power we have of affection or
love. We then project onto the world an independently existing object
which has the power to love. From this Feuerbach concludes that our
knowledge of God is nothing but knowledge of ourselves. However, he is
careful to point out that the identity of God with man’s essence is not
something evident to us, for “ignorance of it [the identity] is fundamental
to the peculiar nature of religion.”49 This is in effect Feuerbach’s genetico-
critical method applied to our beliefs about God. As Feuerbach himself
later puts the matter, somewhat obscurely:
Man—this is the mystery of religion—projects his being into
objectivity, and then again makes himself an object to this projected
image of himself thus converted into a subject; he thinks of himself is
[sic] an object to himself, but as the object of an object, of another
being than himself.50
At the end of Part I of his book Feuerbach does speak of his program in
terms of reduction: “We have reduced the supermundane, supernatural,
and superhuman nature of God to the elements of human nature as its
fundamental elements.”51
Feuerbach’s attempt to be “a natural philosopher in the domain of the
mind,” especially for our beliefs about God, is not without its problems—
not least of which is the use of the inversion principle to get his reductive
account of God launched. Related to this is the alleged identity of God
with the human essence. To establish this, what Feuerbach needs to show
first is that our concept of God does not hold of any external being.
Descartes recognized more clearly than Feuerbach the need to show, by
argument, that our idea of God is an idea of some external existent entity
(though it is generally recognized that Descartes’s use of a version of the
ontological argument does not prove this). Since Feuerbach is not fully
aware of this Cartesian point he makes heavy weather in § 2 of chapter 1
of The Essence of Christianity of the question of whether God exists or
not. Sometimes Feuerbach says that a God with features other than those
of our human essence is not a God we would recognize, and so would not
be a God for us. On other occasions he seems to suggest that where God
lacks our human features then it follows that God does not exist, i.e.
atheism is established.
Nor is Feuerbach particularly clear about whether, in reducing God to
our human essence, he has shown that God is identical to our human
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essence (somewhat in the style of Strauss) or that God does not exist and
that he is a fantastic projection of ours upon the world. Often Feuerbach
intends the latter, but sometimes his extreme atheism is tempered with the
“divine humanism” of the former—this being the manner in which a
number of contemporary theologians attempt to interpret Feuerbach. This
is important because even if Feuerbach can show that our beliefs about
God can be reduced to those about our human essence, it does not follow
that there is no God. Whether or not God exists is left untouched by his
genetico-critical method applied to religious concepts. Of course, for an
already committed atheist the genetico-critical method might tell us
something about why so much false religious belief still traffics its way
through people’s minds. This point brings out the important difference
between the Humean epistemic justification of a belief and the genetico-
critical method for tracing the causal origin of a belief. The justification
for God’s existence is quite independent of how people are caused to have
the beliefs they do about God.
Setting aside these difficulties in his account of God, Feuerbach
provides a bold and innovative attempt to employ the genetico-critical
method to the case of our religious concepts. As will be seen, Marx did not
accept Feuerbach’s reductive account of religious belief; instead he put
more emphasis on the functional role of our religious beliefs. But he did
adapt the general reductive program, illustrated by Feuerbach’s analysis of
religion, to the concepts Hegel employs in expounding his theory about
the state.
Feuerbach’s two works published after The Essence of Christianity in
1843 exerted an important influence on Marx; these were Provisional
Theses for the Reformation of Philosophy and Principles of the
Philosophy of the Future, the latter being a more thoroughgoing treatment
of themes of the former. Both works are set out in paragraphs, sometimes
quite lengthy, and contain criticisms of Hegelian speculative philosophy
while outlining a program for an alternative philosophy. The first
paragraph of the Provisional Theses says:
The secret of theology is anthropology but the secret of speculative
philosophy is theology, the speculative theology. Speculative theology
distinguishes itself from ordinary theology by the fact that it
transfers the divine essence into this world. That is, speculative
theology envisions, determines, and realizes in this world the divine
essence transported by ordinary theology out of fear and ignorance
into another world.52
This summarizes the project of The Essence of Christianity—but with the
additional comment that the projection of God into another world is due
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to our ignorance and fear. According to this thesis theology becomes part
of anthropology, understood as the study of man and man’s essence; the
reduction of ordinary theology to anthropology is the province of what
Feuerbach calls “speculative theology.” Such a reductive’program also
contains an important message for Hegelian speculative philosophy; it,
too, can be reduced to anthropology:
The method of the reformatory critique of speculative philosophy in
general does not differ from the critique already applied in the
philosophy of religion. We only need always make the predicate into
the subject and thus, as the subject, into the object and principle.
Hence we need only invert speculative philosophy and then have the
unmasked pure, bare, truth.53
The inversion principle (as we have already called it), in which predicate
and subject are interchanged, is not the most perspicuous of principles. Yet
it is this principle, which some call Feuerbach’s “transformative method,”
that most attracted Marx. It is unclear how the principle is to be applied in
particular cases because what comprises the subject and predicate and the
manner in which they are to be inverted are not always clear. Consider the
following example of inversion given by Feuerbach in The Essence of
Christianity:
For, according to the principles which we have already developed,
that which in religion is the predicate we must make the subject, and
that which in religion is a subject we must make a predicate, thus
inverting the oracles of religion; and by this means we arrive at the
truth. God suffers—suffering is the predicate—but for men, for
others, not for himself. What does that mean in plain speech?
Nothing else than this: to suffer for others is divine; he who suffers
for others, who lays down his life for them, acts divinely, is a God
to men.54
It is obvious, contrary to what Feuerbach says, that “God suffers (for
others)” does not mean the same as “whoever suffers for others is
divine.” However, in a slightly strained sense the subject “God” of the
first sentence has become the predicate “divine” of the second sentence.
Also the predicate “suffers” of the first sentence might be construed as
the subject of the second sentence; but we must understand the subject of
the second sentence not as Feuerbach expresses it, viz., as people (who
suffer for others), but as suffering (which is other-directed). Whichever
way we take the inversion we lose all reference to God as a subject of
discourse. Instead what we talk of is either people who suffer for others,
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i.e. sufferers (whose suffering is other-directed), or something slightly
more abstract than individual people, viz., suffering, which is other-
directed.
Feuerbach’s reduction of the first sentence to the second via the
inversion principle could be resisted on the grounds of lack of meaning
equivalence. However, for those not ontologically committed to God, the
reduction given might be acceptable, despite the lack of meaning
equivalence. Feuerbach’s procedure in this example is akin to those
twentieth-century nominalists who eschew certain classes of abstract
entity and who logically transform their discourse so that apparent
references to undesirable abstracta are removed. While it would be out of
place to see Feuerbach’s inversion principle as an anticipation of some of
the reductive or nominalistic moves of Russell or Quine, his procedure in
the above example would not meet with their disapproval. We could
without too much strain call Feuerbach’s inversion a “nominalistic
reduction” in that it relieves us of higher levels of abstract entity in favor
of lower-level, more nominalistically acceptable items.
With this example of the inversion principle in mind, now consider the
following two theses:
The essence of theology is the transcendent essence of the human
being, placed outside human beings. The essence of Hegel’s Logic is
transcendent thinking, the thinking of the human being supposed
outside human beings.55
“To abstract” means to suppose the essence of nature outside
nature, the essence of the human being outside the human
being, the essence of thinking outside the act of thinking. In
that its entire system rests upon these acts of abstraction,
Hegelian philosophy has estranged the human being from its
very self.56
We have seen already how the inversion principle might work in the case
of religious claims about God. It is also supposed to work in the case of
thought and thinking; the apparent postulation of thought as a subject of
predications becomes, by the inversion principle, a predicate, thinking, of
other subjects, viz., people (who think) or thinkers. The reverse of the
inversion principle is the process of abstraction, viz., the postulation of
thought as a subject in its own right with an existence independent of
people who think.
Feuerbach applies his inversion in detail only to religious beliefs but
sketches ways in which it might be applied to Hegel’s Logic. Toward the
end of the Provisional Theses he suggests that the inversion principle can
also be applied in political philosophy:
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All speculation about right, willing, freedom, personality without
the human being, i.e. outside of or even beyond the human being, is
speculation without unity, without necessity, without substance,
without foundation, and without reality. The human being is the
existence of freedom, the existence of personality, the existence of
right.57
Feuerbach’s programmatic claim that the inversion principle can be used
to analyze Hegelian political philosophy attracted Marx when he read the
Provisional Theses. Though Marx had been studying Hegel’s Philosophy
of Right before this, the Provisional Theses gave him a new critical tool
with which to approach it. He also took to heart, as will be seen, the
message of another thesis: “The beginning of philosophy is not God and
the beginning of the absolute is not the absolute, not being as a predicate
of the idea. The beginning of philosophy is the finite, the determined, the
actual.”58
It is impossible to deal adequately here with Marx’s detailed paragraph-
by-paragraph critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right found in his
Feuerbach-inspired Critique of Hegel’s “Philosophy of Right”.59 Instead a
few examples must suffice. Marx’s surviving manuscript begins with § 262
of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right:
The actual Idea is mind, which, sundering itself into the two ideal
spheres of its concept, family and civil society, enters upon its final
phase, but it does so only in order to rise above its ideality and
become explicit as infinite actual mind. It is therefore to these ideal
spheres that the actual Idea assigns the material of this its finite
actuality, viz., human beings as a mass, in such a way that the
function assigned to any given individual is visibly mediated by
circumstances, his caprice and his personal choice of his station
in life.60
Often Marx begins the criticism of a section from Hegel by translating it
into ordinary prose, removing its stylistic peculiarities; this section is no
exception. Marx notes that the actual Idea (mind as infinite and actual) is
taken to be something, a subject, that has its own powers to evolve toward
a determinate end; moreover it sunders itself into “two ideal spheres,”
viz., family and civil society. The Idea, which is distinct from family and
civil society, makes these into dependent existences; they are finite
determinations of the Idea which arise from the Idea’s own processes. This
Marx condemns as “logical, pantheistic mysticism.”
Both following Feuerbach’s directive to begin with the “finite and
determined” rather than the Absolute, and using the inversion principle,
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Marx begins instead with the mass of human beings. It is they who make
up families and civil society and these in turn are modes of existence of the
state: “family and civil society make themselves into a state. They are the
active force.”61 Speculative Hegelian philosophy treats this wrongly as an
achievement of the Idea-subject, its aim being to “become explicit as
infinite actual mind.” According to Marx: “The entire mystery of the
Philosophy of Right and of Hegelian philosophy in general is contained in
these paragraphs.”62 Marx demystifies § 262 when he rewrites it as: “The
family and civil society are elements of the state. The material of the state
is divided amongst them through circumstances, caprice, and personal
choice of vocation. The citizens of the state are members of families and of
civil society.”63
It is hard to see in Marx’s demystified rendering of Hegel’s § 262 the
precise application of the inversion principle. The Idea as a selfacting
subject does not reappear as a predicate. It has disappeared and in its
place are new subjects, viz., the masses of people, the family, civil
society; they make up the state and, as Marx says, “are the active force.”
Rather it seems more accurate to view Marx’s alleged use of the
inversion principle in this case as a reductive nominalizing move in
which mystifying abstracta, such as the actual Idea with its powers, are
replaced by more concrete talk of the mass of people, the family, civil
society, and their powers. The last item, civil society, may itself be
somewhat abstract but it is not as obnoxiously so as the actual Idea.
How does Marx’s desire to rid social theory of abstracta affect his own
social ontology? As is well known, the ontology of Marx’s later
historical materialism, first set out in The German Ideology, came to
include not abstracta of the sort just mentioned but relational items such
as relations of production, and, in some cases, forces of production. The
postulation of such relational items in no way counts against Marx’s
reductive nominalism when used as a critical tool to demystify Hegel’s
theory which is populated by obscure abstract entities (or as Stirner
would say, by spooks).
Sometimes Marx does not employ the inversion principle in his
criticisms of Hegel. Thus he complains, in commenting on § 278, that
where Hegel says “The sovereignty of the state is the monarch” the
common man would say “The monarch has the sovereign power, or
sovereignty.” This is a straightforward nominalizing move in which the
definite description of the first sentence is eliminated in the less mystifying
second sentence said by the common man, thereby making it quite clear
where the power lies. However, elsewhere in his lengthy comments on §
278 Marx quite explicitly formulates the inversion principle several times
in the course of developing his criticism of Hegel on sovereignty. Thus he
cavils at Hegel’s reification of sovereignty when he says:
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Accordingly, sovereignty, the essence of the state, is here first
conceived to be an independent being; it is objectified. Then, of
course, this object must again become subject. However the subject
then appears to be a self-incarnation of sovereignty, which is nothing
but the objectified spirit of the state’s subjects.64
And so on for other Hegelian reifications, for example, concerning
patriotism or the constitution, that Marx ferrets out of The Philosophy of
Right.
Marx has criticisms to make of Hegel’s political philosophy that do not
depend on Feuerbach’s inversion principle; but its application does relieve
one from much that is mind-numbing in Hegel’s theory. As a number of
commentators have pointed out,65 the nominalizing moves leave untouched
the empirical content of Hegel’s claims. This is obviously the case in the
above transformation of what Hegel says about sovereignty into what the
common man would say. Even though Marx elsewhere makes empirical
objections to Hegel’s theory (e.g. about the function of primogeniture), the
inversion principle, in leaving untouched empirical matters, exposes only the
pseudo-profundity of Hegel’s mystifying presentation of these empirical
matters. As Feuerbach put it in another thesis:
To have articulated what is such as it is, in other words, to have
truthfully articulated what truly is, appears superficial. To have
articulated what is such as it is not, in other words, to have falsely
and distortedly articulated what truly is, appears profound.66
Often Marx and Engels assume in criticizing Hegelian speculative
philosophy that they are entitled to drop the epithet “Hegelian
speculative” and conclude that all philosophy-is similarly flawed.
However, all they have shown is that one kind of philosophy, Hegel’s, is
defective. Marx’s reductive nominalizing moves are of a piece with much
of the logical critique of language developed in twentieth-century analytic
philosophy.
Aspects of Feuerbachian, and even Hegelian, influence can be found in
another work that Marx left incomplete and so unpublished in his lifetime,
now known as the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. This
is Marx’s most humanistic work, particularly in its exploration of the
notion of alienation. But within a year Marx explicitly rejected much of
Feuerbach’s philosophy, including his account of human essence, his
critical analysis of religion, and his version of materialism. In The German
Ideology (1845–6) Marx became impatient with all attempts to define the
essential properties of human beings in terms of consciousness and its
forms. Without referring directly to Feuerbach he says:
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Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by
religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to
distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce
their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their
physical organization.
(MECW, 5:31)
But this is not adequate because it leaves out the possibility of humans
living in hunter-gatherer societies in which there is no production of means
of subsistence. Nor does it take into account the possibility of either
biological attempts to specify the human essence, or biochemical attempts
in terms of our DNA structure.
Marx did not entirely abandon all talk of necessary features of
humanity even in Capital:
So far therefore as labour is a creator of use-value, is useful labour, it
is a necessary condition, independent of all forms of society, for the
existence of the human race; it is an eternal nature-imposed
necessity, without which there can be no material exchanges between
man and Nature, and therefore no life.67
In the first sentence Marx speaks only of labor as a necessary condition
for our existence, and not as our essence. However, in the second sentence
he seems to make a much stronger claim when he talks of labor as “an
eternal nature-imposed necessity” upon human beings. But all this means
is that, given the way the actual world is, we humans must always labor if
we wish to exist. Perhaps there are possible worlds in which nature itself is
so bountiful that it produces all that would be needed for human existence
without any labor on our part. If so, and if we take an essential property
of a species to be one without which the species cannot exist, then labor is
not an essential property of the human species; rather it is a necessary
condition of our existence given that in the actual world we must work in
order to live. Thus in the absence of a different theory of essence in Marx
(and in Feuerbach) the above quotation does not entail that labor is an
essential feature of human beings.
Marx makes no mention in the above quotation of consciousness. But
elsewhere in Capital he does appeal to consciousness as that which
differentiates us from the animals. In discussing “the labour process
independently of the particular form it assumes under given social
conditions” he says, when comparing human labor with spiders as makers
of webs or bees as makers of cells: “But what distinguishes the worst
architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure
in imagination before he erects it in reality.”68 However, not every laborer
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raises the product of their labor in their imagination before they make it.
This point aside, Marx claims that what distinguishes humans from
animals is imagination—a form of consciousness. Even though the kind of
consciousness that Marx appeals to is different from the consciousness
Feuerbach alleges is our human essence, their claims have this much in
common: there exists an essential feature which differentiates humans
from the animals.
The above becomes significant when we consider the sixth and seventh
of the Theses on Feuerbach (1845):
(6) Feuerbach resolves the essence of religion into the essence of man. But
the essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each single individual.
In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations. Feuerbach, who
did not enter upon a criticism of this real essence, is hence obliged:
1 To abstract from the historical process and to define the religious
sentiment by itself, and to presuppose an abstract—isolated—human
individual.
2 Essence, therefore, can be regarded only as “species”, as an inner,
mute, general character which unites the many individuals in a
natural way.
(7) Feuerbach, consequently, does not see that the “religious sentiment”
is itself a social product, and that the abstract individual which he
analyses belongs to a particular form of society
(MECW, 5:4–5)
Thesis (6) begins with a pithy summary of Feuerbach’s view of religion,
but then challenges it by denying that there is any Feuerbachean essence
and, more strongly, that there is a human essence at all. For Marx there is
nothing intrinsic to each person, or to humanity as a whole, which is their
individual or species essence. Rather, if Marx is going to admit talk of
essences at all, then the “essence” of each person will arise from
something external to each. According to Thesis (6) each member of the
human species exists in some specifie ensemble of social relations, different
ensembles of social relations existing at any one time and over time.
Individual humans, among other things, are the relata, the items that stand
in the relations in the ensemble. Moreover the items related do not retain
their important characteristics from one ensemble of relations to another
since the ensemble plays an important role in “shaping” the characteristics
of the items in the relata. Both the relata and the ensemble of relations
must be taken together and cannot be easily separated out into relata and
relations. That is, the relations are, in some sense, intrinsic to the relata
and not extrinsic. (This raises a problem about the extent to which the
relata and the ensemble of relations affect one another, which Marx
attempts to address in Thesis (3); it will not be discussed here.)69
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The views Marx expresses in Thesis (6) are of a piece with the remark
already cited from The German Ideology: “It is not consciousness that
determines life, but life that determines consciousness.” It follows that the
forms of consciousness that people have are “determined” by the ensemble
of social relations of which they are the relata, and the forms of
consciousness change with change in the ensemble. Thus on Marx’s view
there can be no common forms of consciousness to which Feuerbach can
appeal as the essence of humankind across all the ensembles of relations in
which humans can exist—especially emotional features such as suffering
for others which Feuerbach mentions. This is not the place to assess this
central claim of Marx’s materialist view of history; but it does highlight
the reasons why Marx rejects essentialist views of human nature.
The two theses are also important for the light they cast on Marx’s view
of religion. For Feuerbach the reductive base of religion is the human
essence. In contrast there is no such universal reductive base for Marx; so
he must reject Feuerbach’s genetico-critical analysis of religion. Since the
ensemble of relations, i.e. society, is alleged by Marx to determine
consciousness, the very features of human beings that Feuerbach alleges to
be our human essence, i.e. our forms of consciousness, are not sui generis
and stand in need of explanation. In effect Marx shifts the reductive base
from human essence to the ensemble of relations, i.e. society as a whole.
Marx expresses just this in his “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s
‘Philosophy of Right’: introduction”: “This state, this society, produce
religion, an inverted world-consciousness” (MECW, 3:175). This is, in
part, Feuerbach inspired; however, it is in the society that “produces”
religion, not our human essence. A little further on Marx talks of religion
as “the opium of the people” and of the abolition of religion as “the
demand to give up illusions about the existing state of affairs” which in
turn is “the demand to give up a state of affairs which needs illusions.”
It is now commonplace to look for functional explanations of the role
of religious belief in the overall fabric of society. For example, the function
of religion might be to provide an illusion, e.g. religious consolation or the
postulation of a better afterlife, for a state of affairs that needs an illusion,
in this case the suffering that people experience as a result of poverty or
war. Or religion might have, as Marx suggests in The German Ideology,
the function of maintaining a form of the division of labor in a given
society:
When the crude form of the division of labour which is to be found
among the Indians and the Egyptians calls forth the caste-system in
their state and religion, the historian believes that the caste-system is
the power which has produced this crude form.
(MECW, 5:55)
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It is a long-standing issue of interpretation to reconcile Marx’s claim here
that, on the one hand, the state of society “produces” or “calls forth”
religion, and, on the other, the claim he makes elsewhere that religion (e.g.
the religious caste system) can help maintain the state and its relations of
production (in this case the division of labor represented in the caste
system). Cohen has argued that the tension between “producing” and
“maintaining” can be resolved by adopting a functional account of the
explanation that social factors can give of religious belief 70 If this is the
case then Marx’s functional explanation of religious belief is quite distinct
from Feuerbach’s account of religion; however, both still hold that religion
is a form of illusion.
Marx also rejects Feuerbach’s version of materialism. Feuerbach
provides an explicit, though muddled, statement of his empiricist
materialism in his Principles of the Philosophy of the Future, § 32: “The
real in its reality or taken as real is the real as an object of the senses; it is
sensuous. Truth, reality, and sensation are identical. Only a sensuous being
is a true real being.”71 Crudely put, this asserts that something is real if
and only if it can be sensed (by us humans). When it comes to the theory
of perception Marx understands Feuerbach to hold the simple tabula rasa
view in which the mind is a passive receptacle for sense impressions
produced by objects and by our feelings. Marx criticizes this, along with
other “old” versions of materialism in contrast to his “new” version of
materialism, in the first of the Theses on Feuerbach:
The chief defect of all previous materialism (that of Feuerbach
included) is that things, reality, sensuousness are conceived only in
the form of the object, or of contemplation, but not as sensuous
human activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence, in contradistinction
to materialism, the active side was set forth abstractly by idealism—
which, of course, does not know real, sensuous activity as such.
Feuerbach wants sensuous objects, really distinct from conceptual
objects, but he does not conceive human activity itself as objective
activity. In The Essence of Christianity, he therefore regards the
theoretical attitude as the only genuine human attitude, while
practice is conceived and defined only in its dirty-Jewish form of
appearance. Hence he does not grasp the significance of
“revolutionary”, of “practical-critical”, activity.
(MECW, 5:3)
Much critical ink has been spilt on this thesis.72 For our purposes we need
note only the following. In the second sentence Marx appeals to “idealist”
theories of knowledge, such as those advocated by German Idealist
philosophy from the time of Kant, in which the knower makes an active
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contribution to perceptual knowledge; the knower actively synthesizes
what the senses passively present to him or her in order that the knower
can have knowledge of empirically given objects such as chairs or the
moon. In this sense Feuerbach is out of step with the idealist tradition
concerning ordinary perceptual knowledge in omitting reference to this
activist side of idealist epistemology.
But Marx also adds that both Feuerbach and the idealist tradition
miss an important aspect of the way in which human activity
“constructs” the objects of which we are sensuously aware; this is a
central feature of his materialist view of history. In a section of The
German Ideology (for which editors of this work usually provide a
heading such as “Feuerbach’s Contemplative and Inconsistent
Materialism”), Marx criticizes Feuerbach for having too
“contemplative” or too passive a view of our relationship with the
objects that exist in the world. The plain fact, claims Marx, is that even
the ordinary chairs and tables commonly appealed to as objects of
perception by the epistemologist are human creations. Most of the world
in which we live is a human-created world; it is our industry over
thousands of years that has produced most of the objects which
surround us. Even the common cherry tree is a product of human
husbandry, a result of “human activity” or “practical-critical activity” as
Marx puts it in Thesis (I). Science is also an important part of this
practical-critical activity transforming even more thoroughly and rapidly
the world in which we live. This does not mean that there is no external
world: “Of course, in all this the priority of external nature is
unassailed” (MECW, 5:40); but, adds Marx, perhaps only a few
Australian coral islands are untouched by human activity. It is the man-
nature interaction, emphasized throughout all of Marx’s subsequent
writings, that has produced our everyday world. It is this that the old
materialists and Feuerbach omit totally and that the idealists treat in a
one-sided manner by ignoring objective human activity in producing the
world in which we live. In summary Marx says: “As far as Feuerbach is
a materialist he does not deal with history, and as far as he considers
history he is not a materialist” (ibid.: 41).
As important as Marx’s point is, it fails to address the traditional
philosophical problem about the perception of ordinary objects, even if
they are human-made chairs. The traditional epistemological problem was
of little interest to Marx. Instead he was interested in our practical
interaction with the world, how it “revolutionizes” the world and how
this is reflected in our discourse about the world. (This is a reorientation
of the traditional epistemological problem taken up in some respects by
the later Wittgenstein.) The last two sentences of Thesis (1) emphasize
this, but in a curious way. The reference to Feuerbach’s The Essence of
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Christianity takes us to Chapter 14 of that work in which a contrast is
made between “the Greeks [who] looked at nature with the theoretic
sense” and the Israelites who “opened to Nature only the gastric sense.”
In support of this Feuerbach quotes the Bible passage in which it is said
that after Moses and the seventy elders ascended the mountain “they saw
God; and when they had seen God they ate and drank.” Since the sight of
God excites in the Jews the appetite for food, Feuerbach claims that the
Jewish religion involves “the most practical principle in the world—
namely egoism.”73 Later Feuerbach goes on to praise the theoretical
attitude of the Greeks as joyful, happy, and aesthetic, while the practical
attitude, exemplified by the Jews, is unaesthetic and “is not pure
[schmutzig—dirty], it is tainted with egoism.”74 Thus Marx was not
making an anti-Semitic remark75 in talking about practice in “its dirty-
Jewish form”; rather he was having a dig at Feuerbach for failing to grasp
that much of our relationship with the world is not theoretical but bound
up in our practical activity, which may be “dirty” and in which egoism
may play a part.
Feuerbach’s contemplative epistemology omits any role for human
practical activity. In contrast Marx’s materialistic view of history puts
strong emphasis on the practical activity of humans as they labor to
produce their means of existence, activity which Marx calls
“revolutionary” in Thesis (I). In the final thesis of his Principles of the
Philosophy of the Future, Feuerbach’s proposals for reform remain entirely
within the realm of philosophy:
So far, the attempts at philosophical reform have differed more or
less from the old philosophy only in form, but not in substance. The
indispensable condition of a really new philosophy, that is, an
independent philosophy corresponding to the needs of mankind and
of the future, is, however, that it will differentiate itself in its essence
from the old philosophy.76
It is surely this passage that Marx has in mind when in the eleventh of his
Theses on Fenerhach he rejects reform merely at the level of speculative
philosophy and emphasizes not only human practical activity in
transforming the world but also the revolutionary character of that
activity: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various
ways; the point, however, is to change it.”77
For Marx the Young Hegelians provided a range of theories, many still
current, about the individual and society which rivaled his own developing
theory of historical materialism. His criticisms of the Young Hegelians,
though often buried in now irrelevant polemical points, provide a useful
survey of the responses a socialist might make to these rival theories. By
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1846 the views of Marx and Engels on history and politics had matured to
the point where they could fully distance themselves from not only
Hegelian political theory but also the theories of all of the Young
Hegelians. Marx declared not only that “the decomposition of the
Hegelian system, which began with Strauss, has turned into a universal
ferment” but also that the Young Hegelian movement was a “philosophic
charlatanry,” was “parochial” and “tragicomic” in its pretensions, and
represented “the putrescence of the absolute spirit.”78 In his view the
Young Hegelians had not comprehensively criticized Hegel’s system; they
had merely played off one part against another. Moreover they had not
fully given up religious conceptions of people and their circumstances.
Thus their thought was confined to merely ideological accounts of people
and their circumstances:
Since the Young Hegelians consider conceptions, thoughts, ideas, in
fact all the products of consciousness, to which they attribute an
independent existence, as the real chains of men (just as the Old
Hegelians declare them the true bonds of human society), it is
evident that the Young Hegelians have to fight only against these
illusions of consciousness. Since, according to their fantasy, the
relations of men, all their doings, their fetters and their limitations
are products of their consciousness, the Young Hegelians logically
put to men the moral postulate of exchanging their present
consciousness for human [Feuerbach], critical [Bauer], or egoistic
[Stirner] consciousness and thus of removing their limitations.
(MECW, 5:30)
After this Marx continues in a manner not unrelated to his eleventh thesis
on Feuerbach: “This demand to change consciousness amounts to a
demand to interpret the existing world in a different way, i.e. to recognize
it by means of a different interpretation.” We are now familiar with such
radical changes in the way we understand the world through Kuhn’s talk
of “paradigm shifts” or through recent French philosophy in which much
is made of “epistemological breaks.” Marx had undergone a change in his
understanding of the connections between human beings and society more
radical than any of his contemporary Young Hegelians. The above harsh
judgments concerning his contemporaries sprang from the self-
clarification he had achieved in setting out for the first time the materialist
conception of history as opposed to the ideological conception of history
in which he believed Hegel and the Young Hegelians were hopelessly
enmeshed.
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NOTES
1 D.Strauss, The Life of Jesus Critically Examined, trans. G.Eliot (London:
Swann Sonnenschein, 1906), p. 86.
2 Ibid., p. xxx; or L.S.Stepelevich (ed.), The Young Hegelians: An Anthology
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 22.
3 See Strauss, op. cit., § 150, “The speculative Christology”; or Stepelevich, op.
cit., pp. 44–6.
4 See D.Strauss, Streitschriften zttr Vertheidigung meiner Shrift über das
Leben Jesu und zur Charakteristik der gegenwärtigen Theologie (Tübingen,
1837).
5 J.E.Toews, Hegelianism: The Path toward Dialectical Humanism, 1805–1841
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 203–4.
6 For further discussion of the division of Hegelians into Left, Center, Right,
Young, and Old, see: Stepelevich, op. cit., “Introduction”; K.Löwith, From
Hegel to Nietzsche: The Revolution in Nineteenth-Century Thought,
trans.D.E.Green (London: Constable, 1965), pp. 53–71; Toews, op. cit., chs 6
and 7.
7 Löwith, op. cit., p. 54.
8 For an account of Strauss’s political activities, see W.J.Brazill, The Young
Hegelians (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), pp. 121–3.
9 Löwith, op. cit., pp. 70–1. A version of Hegel’s dictum occurs in the Preface to
Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, trans. T.M.Knox (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1952), p. 10 and n. 27.
10 A.Ruge, “Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Right’ and the politics of our times” (1842),
in Stepelevich, op. cit., p. 223.
11 Ibid., p. 225.
12 Ibid., p. 228.
13 Ibid., p. 230.
14 This material, which was untitled by Marx, is commonly, but not always,
known in English as “Critique of Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Right’.” It was
published by D.Rjazanov in Vol. 1 of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels:
HistorischKritisch Gesamtausgahe (Frankfurt/Main and Berlin, 1927–32);
henceforth referred to as MEGA. See also Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels:
Collected Works (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1975–), henceforth referred
to as MECW, Vol. 3, “Contribution to the critique of Hegel’s philosophy of
law,” pp. 3–129. The two Hegel critiques, the one Marx published and the
drafts he left unfinished, are collected together, with a useful commentary, in
Marx, Critique of Hegel’s “Philosophy of Right”, ed. J.O’Malley
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1970.
15 Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, op. cit., p. 11.
16 MECW: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Collected Works, op. cit.; citations
are by volume and page number.
17 A few extracts from this work are available in English in Stepelevich, op. cit.,
pp. 177–86; the quotation is from p. 183.
18 B.Bauer, “The genus and the crowd,” in ibid., pp. 204–5. The German title of
the work is “Die Gattung und die Masse”; the term “Gattung” was
extensively used by Feuerbach and is often translated into English as
“(human) species” rather than “genus.”
19 See Marx’s distinction between crude communism and other forms of
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THE AGE OF GERMAN IDEALISM
communism in MECW, 3, pp. 294–7; see also S.Avineri, The Social and
Political Thought of Karl Marx (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1968), pp. 220–39.
20 See MECW, 3, pp. 231–4, Preface, and the concluding section p. 327.
21 D.McLellan, The Young Hegelians and Karl Marx (London: Macmillan,
1969), p. 78.
22 See “Part III: Saint Max” of Marx and Engels, The German Ideology, MECW,
5, pp. 117–450. In contrast Marx devotes only pp. 27–93 to a critique of
Feuerbach, the Young Hegelian generally held to have had some influence
upon him.
23 McLellan, op. cit., pp. 129–36.
24 For an account of Stirner’s influence, see the Introduction by J.Carroll to his
abridged edition of Max Stirner: The Ego and Its Own (London: Cape, 1971);
this appeared in a series entitled Roots of the Right under the general
editorship of G.Steiner.
25 M.Stirner, The Ego and his Own (1844), ed. J.Carroll, trans. S.T.Byington
(London: Cape, 1971), p. 5.
26 Ibid., p. 40.
27 Ibid., p. 184.
28 Ibid., p. 339.
29 Ibid., p. 43.
30 Ibid., p. 123.
31 Ibid., p. 257.
32 Ibid., p. 210.
33 Ibid., p. 366.
34 Ibid., p. 291.
35 Ibid., p. 224.
36 Ibid., pp. 311–12.
37 Ibid., p. 318.
38 Quoted in Carroll, Introduction, op. cit., p. 14.
39 See MECW, 5, p. 37. The import of this central idea of Marx is obscure. I
suggest one way in which it might be criticized toward the end of section II of
R. Nola, “The strong programme for the sociology of knowledge, reflexivity
and relativism,” Inquiry, 33 (1990): 273–96.
40 For a useful account of Marx on Stirner, see S.Hook, From Hegel to Marx:
Studies in the Intellectual Development of Karl Marx (Ann Arbor: Ann Arbor
Paperbacks, 1962), ch. 5, part II. For an account more sympathetic to Stirner
and critical of Marx, see E.Fleischmann, “The role of the individual in
prerevolutionary society: Stirner, Marx and Hegel,” in Z.A.Pelczynski (ed.),
Hegel’s Political Philosophy: Problems and Perspectives (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1971).
41 For a history of the manuscript and its publication, see MECW, 5, n. 7, pp.
586–8.
42 McLellan, op. cit., p. 93.
43 Marx, Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, ed. L.D.Easton
and K.H.Guddat (New York: Doubleday, 1967), p. 95.
44 For Marx’s praise, see Preface to Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts
of 1844, MECW, 3, pp. 232–3, and the final section, headed “Critique of
the Hegelian dialectic and philosophy as a whole,” pp. 327–9. See also
the letter which Marx wrote to Feuerbach on 11 August 1844, ibid., pp.
354–7.
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45 M.W.Wartofsky, Feuerbach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977),
ch. VII, is an excellent account of this work; a translation can be found in
Stepelevich, op. cit.
46 The remark of Wagner is cited in Brazill, op. cit., p. 137.
47 For a few brief comments by Feuerbach on his genetico-critical philosophy, see
his Towards a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy, in Stepelevich, op. cit., pp. 121
and 127; see also the Introduction by E.Wartenberg to Feuerbach, Principles
of the Philosophy of the Future, trans. M.Vogel (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1986),
pp. xxiii-xxvii.
48 Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, trans. G.Eliot (New York: Harper
Torchbook, 1957), p. 12.
49 Ibid., p. 13.
50 Ibid., pp. 29–30.
51 Ibid., p. 184.
52 Stepelevich, op. cit., p. 156.
53 Ibid., p. 157.
54 Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, op. cit., p. 60.
55 Stepelevich, op. cit., p. 158.
56 Ibid., p. 159.
57 Ibid., p. 170.
58 Ibid., p. 160.
59 See O’Malley’s editorial comments in Marx, Critique of Hegel’s “Philosophy
of Right”, op. cit.; R.N.Berki, “Perspectives in the Marxian critique of
Hegel’s political philosophy,” in Pelczynski, op. cit.; Avineri, op. cit.;
L.Dupré, The Philosophical Foundations of Marxism (New York: Harcourt,
Brace & World, 1966), ch. 4; and D.McLellan, Marx before Marxism
(London: Macmillan, 1970), ch. 5: all of whom attempt to evaluate Marx’s
own criticisms of Hegel.
60 Marx, Critique of Hegel’s “Philosophy of Right”, op. cit., p. 7.
61 Ibid., p. 8.
62 Ibid., p. 9.
63 Ibid., p. 8.
64 Ibid., p. 24.
65 For example, O’Malley in ibid., p. xxxiii.
66 Stepelevich, op. cit., p. 162.
67 Marx, Capital: Volume 1 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1973), p. 50.
68 Ibid., p. 174.
69 For a useful analysis of Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach, see W.A.Suchting,
“Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach: a new translation and notes towards a
commentary,” in J. Mepham and D.Ruben (eds), Issues in Marxist Philosophy,
Vol. 2: Materialism (Brighton: Harvester, 1979); and W.A.Suchting, Marx and
Philosophy: Three Studies (New York: New York State University Press,
1986), ch. 1; see also Hook, op. cit., ch. 8.
70 See G.A.Cohen, Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1978), chs VI, IX, and X, for his account of functional
explanation in Marx’s historical materialism.
71 Feuerbach, Principles of the Philosophy of the Future, op. cit., p. 51.
72 For a useful commentary, see Suchting, “Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach…,” op.
cit., and Marx and Philosophy: Three Studies, op. cit., chs 1 and 2.
73 Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, op. cit., p. 114,
74 Ibid., p. 196.
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75 Some commentators—such as Hook, op. cit., p. 278 n. 2—miss Marx’s
reference to Feuerbach writings in the penultimate sentence of Thesis (1). See
Suchting, “Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach…,” op. cit., p. 11 and nn. 18 and 19,
for a useful commentary on this sentence; the remarks in the text above have
been adapted from Suchting.
76 Feuerbach, Principles of the Philosophy of the Future, op. cit.
77 Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach,” in Karl Marx: Selected Writings in Sociology
and Social Philosophy, ed. T.B.Bottomore and M.Rubel (London: C.A.Watts,
1956), p. 69.
78 These scathing comments come from the first few pages of The German
Ideology, MECW, 5, pp. 27–8.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Original language editions
9.1 Feuerbach, L. Ludwig Feuerbach: Sämtliche Werke, ed. W.Bolin and F.Jodl
(additional volumes ed. H.-M. Sass), Stuttgart: Frommann, 1903–11.
9.2 Feuerbach, L. Gesammelte Werke, ed. W.Schuffenhauer, Berlin: Akademie-
Verlag, 1967–.
9.3 Löwith, K. (ed.) Die Hegelische Linke, Stuttgart and Bad Cannstatt:
Frommann, 1962.
9.4 Lübbe, H. (ed.) Die Hegelische Rechte, Stuttgart and Bad Cannstatt:
Frommann, 1962.
9.5 Marx, K., and Engels, F. Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels: Historisch-Kritisch
Gesamtausgabe, ed. D.Ryazonov and V.Adoratsky, Berlin: Dietz,
1927–32.
9.6 Marx, K., and Engels, F. Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels: Werke, Berlin: Dietz
Verlag, 1956–.
9.7 Stirner, M. Dir Einzige und sein Eigentum (1845), ed. H.Helms, Leipzig:
1892.
9.8 Strauss, D. Das Leben Jesu, Kritisch Bearbeitet, Tübingen, 1835–6.
9.9 Strauss, D. Streitschriften zur Vertheidigung meiner Schrift über das Leben
Jesu und zur Charakteristik der gegenwärtigen Theologie, 2nd edn,
Tübingen, 1837, 1841.
English translations
Complete
9.10 Marx, K., and Engels, F. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Collected Works,
London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1975–.
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THE YOUNG HEGELIANS, FEUERBACH, AND MARX
Separate works
9.11 Carroll, J. (ed.) Max Stirne: The Ego and its Own, London: Cape, 1971;
published in the series Roots of the Right, general ed. G.Steiner.
9.12 Feuerbach, L. (1957) The Essence of Christianity, trans. G.Eliot in 1854
from the 2nd German edn of 1843, with an introductory essay by
K.Earth, New York: Harper Torchbook.
9.13 Feuerbach, L. The Fiery Brook: Selected Writings of Ludwig Feuerbach, ed.
Zawar Hanfi, New York: Doubleday, 1972.
9.14 Feuerbach, L. “Towards a Critique of Hegelian Philosophy” (1839), in
Stepelevich [9.22].
9.15 Feuerbach, L. “Provisional Theses for the Reformation of Philosophy”
(1843), in Stepelevich [9.22].
9.16 Feuerbach, L. Principles of the Philosophy of the Future (1843), trans.
M.Vogel with introduction by T.E.Wartenburg, Indianapolis: Hackett,
1986.
9.17 Hegel, G.W.F. Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, trans. T.M. Knox, Oxford and
London: Oxford University Press, 1952, pbk 1967.
9.18 Marx, K. Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, ed.
L.D.Easton and K.H.Guddat, Garden City: Doubleday Anchor, 1967.
9.19 Marx, K. Critique of Hegel’s “Philosophy of Right”, ed. J. O’Malley,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970.
9.20 Marx, K. Capital, Vol. 1, Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1973.
9.21 Marx, K. Karl Marx: Early Texts, ed. D.McLellan, Oxford: Blackwell, 1971.
9.22 Ruge, A. “Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Right’ and the Politics of Our Times”
(1842), in Stepelevich [9.22].
9.23 Stepelevich, L.S. (ed.) The Young Hegelians: An Anthology, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1983.
9.24 Stirner, M. The Ego and its Own (1844), trans. S.T. Byington in 1907, New
York: Libertarian Book Club, 1963; ed. J.Carroll as The Ego and his
Own, London: Cape, 1971.
9.25 Strauss, D. The Life of Jesus Critically Examined, trans. from the 4th
German edn of 1840 by G.Eliot in 1860, London: Swann
Sonnenschein, 1906.
Bibliographies
9.26 Brazill, W.J. “Bibliographical Essay,” in Brazill [9.32].
9.27 McLellan, D. “Select Bibliography,” in McLellan [9.37].
9.28 Mah., H. “Bibliography,” in Mah [9.38].
9.29 Stepelevich, L. (1983) “Young Hegelianism: A Bibliography of General
Studies, 1930 to the Present,” in Stepelevich [9.22]; this also contains
bibliographical material in the editor’s introduction preceding each
selection.
9.30 Toews, J.E. “Bibliography” (up to 1840), in Toews [9.40].
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THE AGE OF GERMAN IDEALISM
General surveys
9.31 Berki, R.N. “Perspectives in the Marxian critique of Hegel’s political
philosophy,” in Pelczynski [9.39].
9.32 Brazill, W.J. The Young Hegelians, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970.
9.33 Crites, S.D. “Hegelianism,” in P.Edwards (ed.) The Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, Vol. 3, New York: Macmillan and Free Press, 1967.
9.34 Fleischmann, E. “The role of the individual in pre-revolutionary society:
Stirner, Marx and Hegel,” in Pelczynski [9.39].
9.35 Hook, S. From Hegel to Marx: Studies in the Intellectual Development of
Karl Marx, Ann Arbor: Ann Arbor Paperbacks, 1962.
9.36 Löwith, K. From Hegel to Nietzsche: The Revolution in Nineteenth-Century
Thought, trans. D.E.Green, New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston,
1964; London: Constable, 1965; Garden City: Doubleday, Anchor,
1967.
9.37 McLellan, D. The Young Hegelians and Karl Marx, London: Macmillan,
1969.
9.38 Mah, H. The End of Philosophy, the Origin of Ideology: Karl Marx and the
Crisis of the Young Hegelians, Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1987.
9.39 Pelczynski, Z.A. (ed.) Hegel’s Political Philosophy: Problems and
Perspectives, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971.
9.40 Toews, J.E. Hegelianism: The Path toward Dialectical Humanism, 1805–
1841, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980.
9.41 Wartofsky, M.W., and Sass, H.-M. (eds) The Philosophical Forum, 8, 2–4
(1976–7); a special triple issue devoted to works on or by the Young
Hegelians.
Books on Feuerbach
9.42 Kamenka, E. The Philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach, London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1970.
9.43 Wartofsky, M.W. Feuerbach, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1977.
Books and articles on Marx, Engels, and the Young
Hegelians
9.44 Althusser, L. For Marx, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969.
9.45 Avineri, S. The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1968.
9.46 Barth, H. Truth and Ideology, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976.
9.47 Cohen, G.A. Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence, Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1978.
9.48 Colletti, L. Marxism and Hegel, London: New Left Books, 1973.
328

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THE YOUNG HEGELIANS, FEUERBACH, AND MARX
9.49 Dupré, L. The Philosophical Foundations of Marxism, New York: Harcourt,
Brace & World, 1966.
9.50 McLellan, D. Marx before Marxism, London: Macmillan, 1970.
9.51 Mepham, J. and Ruben, D.H. Marx and Philosophy: Three Studies, New
York: New York University Press, 1986.
9.52 Suchting, W.A. “Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach: A new Translation and Notes
Towards a Commentary,” in J.Mepham and D.H.Ruben (eds) Issues
in Marxist Philosophy, Vol. 2: Materialism, Brighton: Harvester, 1979.
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CHAPTER 10
Arthur Schopenhauer
Kathleen M.Higgins
Despite a recent surge of philosophical interest, Arthur Schopenhauer
remains one of the most underappreciated philosophers of modern times.
He has arguably had a greater influence on subsequent philosophy and
intellectual history than any other figure. The richness of Schopenhauer’s
thought is suggested even by a perusal of the intellectual world’s reactions.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Sigmund Freud, Thomas Mann,
Thomas Hardy, Richard Wagner, and Woody Allen all claim him as their
intellectual and/or spiritual ancestor. Such influential concepts as
Wittgenstein’s “family resemblance,”1 Nietzsche’s “will to power”2 and
“eternal recurrence,”3 and Freud’s “libido”4 all develop from ideas
originally suggested by Schopenhauer.
Yet Schopenhauer’s philosophy has often been dismissed as being of
mere historical interest. One explanation is that Schopenhauer is an
emphatically systematic thinker. In claiming that his philosophy is an
“organic” whole, composed of elements that stand or fall together,
Schopenhauer invites the reader who rejects a part of it to reject the theory
in toto.5 In light of his insistence on complete resignation, extreme
asceticism, and sexual abstinence as the only alternative to a life of futile
struggling, many readers understandably balk at embracing his theory
wholesale.
Another explanation for Schopenhauer’s unpopularity is the reaction of
many readers to his personality. Bertrand Russell, who criticizes
Schopenhauer’s philosophy for “inconsistency and a certain shallowness,”
seems most indignant about Schopenhauer’s character. After complaining
about the internal tensions in Schopenhauer’s doctrine of resignation,
Russell continues:
Nor is the doctrine sincere, if we may judge by Schopenhauer’s life.
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ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
He habitually dined well, at a good restaurant; he had many trivial
love-affairs, which were sensual but not passionate; he was
exceedingly quarrelsome and unusually avaricious. On one occasion
he was annoyed by an elderly seamstress who was talking to a friend
outside the door of his apartment. He threw her downstairs, causing
her permanent injury. She obtained a court order compelling him to
pay her a certain sum (15 thalers) every quarter as long as she lived.
When at last she died, after twenty years, he noted in his account-
book: “Obit anus, abit onus.” [“The old woman dies; the burden
departs.”] It is hard to find in his life evidence of any virtue except
kindness to animals, which he carried to the point of objecting to
vivisection in the interests of science. In all other respects he was
completely selfish.6
Russell’s sense of virtue is probably quite different from Schopenhauer’s.
But even if Russell is not entirely fair in his attack, Schopenhauer’s
biography suggests grounds for ad hominem attack. Russell’s anecdote
alone suggests an impulsive, willful personality, a matter worth comment
in one convinced, as is Schopenhauer, that Will is the fundamental
metaphysical principle of the world.7 Schopenhauer’s system and, in
particular, his denunciation of sex as the focal expression of the will and
guarantor of human unhappiness prompt Nietzsche to remind his readers:
In all questions concerning the Schopenhauerian philosophy, one
should, by the bye, never lose sight of the consideration that it is the
conception of a youth of twenty-six, so that it participates not only
in what is peculiar to Schopenhauer’s life, but what is peculiar to
that special period of his life.8
Whether or not one considers such ad hominems to be legitimate in
philosophical argumentation, Schopenhauer’s writings present a
psychological puzzle.9 Although misanthropic and barbed in his tone,
Schopenhauer advocates an ethic of compassion. Despite his elitism, he
insists that all individuals are manifestations of the identical Will.
Consistently analyzing the world’s phenomena as manifestations of
futility, Schopenhauer nonetheless describes them with voluptuous
enthusiasm. He displays great wit and insight into human behavior—and
yet he shows no sign of self-irony. Perhaps it was this last feature of
Schopenhauer’s work that moved the youthful Nietzsche to describe him
as motivated by the need “for love above everything else.”10
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SCHOPENHAUER’S LIFE AND WORKS
Schopenhauer’s biography at least sheds light on his intellectual breadth.
Schopenhauer was born in Danzig on 22 February 1788 to a cosmopolitan
couple, consisting of Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer, a prominent merchant,
and Johanna Henriette Trosiener, a successful novelist. Heinrich’s
penchant for travel and unconventional views on schooling led to
Schopenhauer’s receiving a rather nomadic education. He lived in
Hamburg from ages 5 to 9, spent the following two years in France, and
subsequently spent two more years traveling the world with his parents
and sister, briefly attending a British boarding school in Wimbledon. As a
result of this globe-trotting lifestyle, Schopenhauer developed fluency in
several languages and his own predilection for travel.
Schopenhauer’s father died, apparently through suicide, when
Schopenhauer was 17. Schopenhauer briefly attempted to fulfill a promise
to his father that he would become a merchant; but concluding after two
years that this career choice didn’t suit him, he abandoned that career for
classical studies. He began these at Gotha, but transferred to Weimar,
where his mother lived. Schopenhauer and his mother were constant
antagonists who could not bear to live in the same house. Indeed,
Schopenhauer’s misogynist comments, directed in particular at the modern
“ladies” of Europe, may stem from this relationship to his mother.11
Despite his dislike for her, however, Schopenhauer frequently visited her
and her salon during this period, which included some of the most
celebrated literary figures of the time (Goethe, Schlegel, and the brothers
Grimm among them).
When he received his considerable inheritance at the age of 21,
Schopenhauer began medical studies at the University of Göttingen. His
growing interest in philosophy prompted him to transfer to the University
of Berlin, where Fichte was professor. Schopenhauer found the lectures of
both Fichte and his colleague Schleiermacher wanting, however, a
conclusion reiterated in footnotes to virtually all of his subsequent works.
The proximity of battle during the Napoleonic Wars prompted
Schopenhauer’s next move, to a small town called Rudolstadt, near
Weimar. There he wrote his dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the
Principle of Sufficient Reason (1813), which was awarded the doctorate
by the University of Jena. Schopenhauer’s private printing of the thesis did
not win him a large readership. Nevertheless, Goethe read and praised it.
In response to their subsequence conversations, Schopenhauer wrote a
short book entitled On Vision and Colors (1815).
After returning to Weimar and briefly living with his mother,
Schopenhauer completely severed his relation with her, never to see her
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again. He moved to Dresden, where he wrote the central statement of his
philosophical theory, The World as Will and Representation (1818). The
book was by no means a bestseller, but Schopenhauer’s publication record
was strong enough to gain him a lectureship in philosophy at the
University of Berlin. Hegel, object of Schopenhauer’s considerable scorn,
had inherited Fichte’s chair. By scheduling his courses at times when Hegel
was also lecturing, Schopenhauer forced his students to choose between
himself and Hegel. The predictable result was that the students chose
Hegel, with the consequence that Schopenhauer’s lectures were canceled.
The independently wealthy Schopenhauer never again sought an academic
position; indeed, he consistently disparaged academic philosophy in his
writings.
The cholera epidemic that killed Hegel in 1831 inspired the somewhat
hypochondriacal Schopenhauer to make his final move, this time to
Frankfurt. He devoted his remaining years to writing and traveling. His
works of this period include “On the Will in Nature” (1836) and “On the
Foundation of Morality,” which were conjoined in The Two Fundamental
Problems of Ethics (1841); the second edition of The World as Will and
Representation, together with a second volume of supplementary essays
(1844); a revised and enlarged edition of On the Fourfold Root of the
Principle of Sufficient Reason (1847); and a collection of essays entitled
Parerga and Paralipomena (“Supplementary Works and Omitted
Material”) (1851). Schopenhauer lived to see his works become popular in
his waning years. He died on 21 September 1860.
SCHOPENHAUER’S GRAND SYNTHESIS
Schopenhauer’s principal statement of his philosophical system is The
World as Will and Representation, Volume I. Although he added
subsequent essays in the years following its publication, these only
elaborated on positions he initially stated in that volume. Schopenhauer
never disavowed any detail of his initial formulations. As he announced in
his Preface to the book’s second edition: “I have altered nothing.”12
Schopenhauer’s Preface to the first edition of The World as Will and
Representation reveals a demanding author. Schopenhauer insists that the
book is the development of a single thought, and that the first chapters
depend as much on the last as the other way around. Hence, he insists that
the reader must read the entire book twice. In addition, since he is
presupposing the work he had done in his dissertation, Schopenhauer also
requires that his readers be familiar with On the Fourfold Root of the
Principle of Sufficient Reason (and ideally with On Vision and Colors as
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THE AGE OF GERMAN IDEALISM
well). Finally, he requests that the reader have thorough familiarity with
the writings of Kant, and preferably with Plato’s dialogues and the
Upanishads as well.
These last requirements give a hint as to what will follow.
Schopenhauer’s system aims to synthesize the philosophies of Kant, Plato,
and India (in particular Buddhistic philosophy). The common
denominator of the three is a distinction between the world of everyday
appearances and a truer reality, ascertainable by the human mind. In order
to accomplish his grand synthesis, Schopenhauer has to modify
considerably the works from which he draws inspiration. Nonetheless, it is
noteworthy that for all his curmudgeonly complaints about most other
human beings, Schopenhauer expresses awe for his heroes.13 (In fact, he
decorated his rather sparse living quarters in Frankfurt with a bust of Kant
and a statue of the Buddha.)14
The essential moves involved in Schopenhauer’s synthesis are as
follows. Schopenhauer accepts Kant’s distinction between the phenomenal
world and the noumenal world. The former is called, in Schopenhauer’s
idealistic scheme, the world as representation, for it is composed of objects
constituted by the forms imposed by the conscious mind. The noumenal
world, or thing-in-itself, is the reality underlying the world as
representation. Schopenhauer disagrees with Kant that the thing-in-itself is
inaccessible to us. Instead, he points out that each of us, in our own case,
recognizes an immediate reality behind the phenomenal behavior of our
own body. This inner reality is “will.” Schopenhauer extends this inner
reality to all phenomena, concluding that “Will” is the thing-in-itself.15
Although the entire phenomenal world is a manifestation of “Will,”
Schopenhauer maintains that the Will manifests itself to various degrees in
different types of things. He invokes the Platonic Ideas (or Forms) to
account for the different forms of the Will’s manifestation. Following
Plato, he argues that everyday human awareness usually focuses on
particular things, not on their eternal, universal prototypes. However, in
aesthetic experience, the individual sees the object as the Platonic Idea,
and in the process raises him- or herself to the condition of “the universal
subject of knowledge.” In aesthetic experience, the willful character of our
inner life is silenced. Aesthetic experience, therefore, affords the human
being brief moments of inner peace.
Schopenhauer places high value on inner peace, and this valuation
prompts him to incorporate insights from Indian philosophy into his
system. Although the Will is the fundamental metaphysical principle
behind all phenomena, its internal struggling character ensures that its
phenomenal manifestations will themselves be characterized by struggle
and suffering. Schopenhauer follows Buddhism in concluding that the only
way to stop suffering is to stop desiring. Hence, he contends that
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resignation and the asceticism that arises from it are the only alternative to
a life of continuing suffering. Resignation is the outlook attained by the
human being who fully grasps that the same Will is the inner reality within
all phenomena. When one has fully incorporated this insight, one is no
longer capable of competing or struggling with other phenomena. One
achieves in this case the ideal that lies at the core of all religions—the ideal
of compassion toward all other beings, in the full recognition that all are,
in reality, one.
THE WORLD AS REPRESENTATION AND
THE PRINCIPLE OF SUFFICIENT REASON
Let us now consider Schopenhauer’s system in more detail. Schopenhauer
begins The World as Will and Representation with a clear statement of his
idealism.” ‘The world is my representation’: this is a truth valid with
reference to every living and knowing being, although man alone can
bring it into reflective, abstract consciousness.”16 The existence of the
world as it appears to us—the world as representation—is entirely
contingent on consciousness.
True to his word, Schopenhauer begins his analysis of the world as
representation by presupposing the account that he had given in On the
Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. Indeed, he asserts the
world of representation is entirely governed by the principle of sufficient
reason, a principle which he simply assumes. This principle, although
variously formulated, essentially contends that there is a sufficient reason
for every phenomenon. In one formulation Schopenhauer states that the
principle holds that “every possible object… stands in a necessary relation
to other objects, on the one hand as determined, on the other as
determining.”17 The principle of sufficient reason establishes that all
objects that are represented for the conscious mind stand in a nexus of
connection with one another. Thus, every represented object can be
entirely explained in terms of its relation to other objects.
In his dissertation Schopenhauer describes the different forms that the
principle of sufficient reason takes in relating the four possible types of
objects to their grounds. The four types of objects he analyzes are those of
being, becoming, knowing, and acting, a list which he takes to be
exhaustive of possible objects. By considering these sequentially, we can
observe much about the structure of the Schopenhauerian world as
representation.
As representation, the world is subject to the Kantian forms of
intuition, time and space. These are forms essential to the constitution of
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all objects by consciousness, and they individuate the world into
particular, individual objects. For this reason, Schopenhauer sometimes
refers to time and space as the principium individuationis (the principle of
individuation). He also designates them “the ground of being” because of
their fundamental role in securing the possibility of the world that we
perceive. When Schopenhauer considers the principle of sufficient reason
as it pertains to “being,” he has time and space in mind.
The principle of sufficient reason pertains to our intuitions of time and
space by establishing that positions within time and space exist in a nexus,
mutually determining each other. In other words, the location of objects in
time and space can be determined only in relation to other locations.
Schopenhauer takes the existence of mathematics to reflect the lawlike
interrelation of positions in the time-space continuum. Arithmetic focuses
on relationships within time (for Schopenhauer sees it as originating in
counting, which deals directly with succession in time). Geometry focuses
on relationships within space. Geometric proofs depend on the principle of
sufficient reason, for they draw on the fact that certain relationships imply
others.
The representations of consciousness include both intuitive and abstract
representations. Among the objects that are directly intuited are both
objects of perception and the conditions of their possibility. These latter
include time and space, and also causality. The law of causality is the form
that the principle of sufficient reason takes in connection with perceptual
objects, whose character Schopenhauer analyzes in terms of “becoming.”
Causes, for Schopenhauer, have to do with changes of states over time.
In order for change to occur within time, something must undergo the
change. Schopenhauer considers the persisting object of change to be
matter. He even defines matter as “the perceivability of time and space.”18
Matter and causality are conflatable, for “matter is absolutely nothing but
causality…its being is its acting.”19 The “acting” that concerns
Schopenhauer in this connection is the action of perceptual objects on our
bodies. By means of these effects, we come to know causes. Causes
provide the ground for given states of perceptual objects. Thus they are
the form of connection that the principle of sufficient reason provides
between representations of this type.
One might ask, at this juncture, how we come to know causes.
Schopenhauer, like Kant, contends that perception is intellectual, for it
essentially involves the understanding as well as sensation.20 But
Schopenhauer’s conception of understanding differs from Kant’s. Kant
considers the understanding to be the faculty that applies principles of
judgment to representations. Schopenhauer considers the understanding to
be a faculty that leaps from a represented effect to its cause. At times
Schopenhauer argues that apprehension of causality is the sole operation
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of the understanding.21 Schopenhauer attributes understanding to animals,
as well as to human beings, maintaining that the “most sagacious
animals” (e.g. dogs, monkeys, elephants, and foxes) give us an accurate
picture of what the understanding can achieve without the assistance of
reason.22 Because causality is among the forms that constitute the world as
representation, the world as representation exists only insofar as the
understanding of at least one animal or human being is in operation.
Reason is the faculty, uniquely possessed by human beings, that enables
them to form abstract representations, or concepts, the third possible
object of consciousness that Schopenhauer considers. Concepts are
“representations of representations.” Thus, they are derived from
perception. Many particulars (known through perception) can, at least in
principle, be thought under a given concept, for concepts are essentially
abstract and universal. Any concept can therefore be said to have a range.
The faculty of judgment determines the relations among the ranges of
various concepts.
“Knowing” is a matter of determining the truth of given judgments.
The principle of sufficient reason ensures that every true judgment can be
referred to a ground, and that truth can be established by this means. The
particular form of the ground for a judgment depends on the type of
judgment being made. Logical truths are grounded in other judgments;
material truths are grounded empirically; transcendental truths are
grounded in the conditions of the possibility of experience; and
metalogical truths are grounded in the formal conditions of thought (the
laws of identity, excluded middle, and contradiction, and the principle of
sufficient reason).
Despite the fact that Schopenhauer credits judgment with the ability to
interrelate concepts in a way that yields knowledge, he has little
enthusiasm for the abstract articulation of such relationships in logic. “It
is merely knowing in the abstract what everyone knows in the concrete.”23
Logic has no practical use, although Schopenhauer is willing to declare it
“perfectly safe.”24 The only useful role of logic, according to
Schopenhauer, is to assist philosophers in gaining insight into the nature of
reason—and this should be their concern in their logical investigations.
The fourth type of object that Schopenhauer considers to be governed
by the principle of sufficient reason, the object of “action,” is the self as a
willing being. In this case, the ground of action is a motive. Motives
determine only the external results of willing—actions within the world as
representation. The inner reality involved in willing will be discussed in
connection with the world as Will.
In every case, the principle of sufficient reason pertains only to objects
in the world as representation. It does not govern the thing-in-itself.
Schopenhauer utilizes this distinction to dismiss a number of traditional
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philosophical positions. Among these are all views regarding what
Schopenhauer calls “the foolish controversy about the reality of the external
world.”25 Because causality operates only within the phenomenal world, i.e.
the world as representation, Schopenhauer argues, causality obtains only
between objects, not between subject and object. The real object is always a
representation of consciousness. Therefore, it is nonsense to seek (as do all
who concern themselves with the problem of the external world’s existence)
a “real” object outside the phenomenal realm.26
Schopenhauer dismisses materialism on similar grounds. The materialist
attempts to explain consciousness by reference to a prior material ground.
But “matter” is, as we have seen, one of the forms fundamental to the
thinking subject’s capacity for representation. Without the thinking subject
and the forms that it uses to constitute its representations, “matter”
evaporates.” ‘No object without subject,’ is the principle that renders all
materialism for ever impossible.”27
THE AMBIVALENCE OF REASON
Reason affords the human being unique possibilities, unavailable to
animals. Through reason, human beings can transcend their own
understanding. Unlike animals, who are motivated only by what they
perceive directly, humans can be motivated by abstract ideas. They are
also able to choose among motives because reason can represent several
simultaneously. This transcendence enables the human being to have a
sense of time, and to plan for the future. The use of words as tokens for
concepts, an essential characteristic of rational beings, facilitates the
formulation and preservation of knowledge, which in turn can be put to
use in actualizing human plans.
Schopenhauer is less enthusiastic about reason, however, than most of
his fellow philosophers. Reason introduces error, care, and doubt into
human experience. By virtue of reason, human beings can lose touch with
their perceptions and behave much more foolishly than animals can act.
Along with consciousness of time, reason produces consciousness of death,
and the dread that goes with it.
Schopenhauer considers reason’s proper role in human experience to be
relatively modest. Rational knowledge fixes “in concepts of reason what is
known generally in another way.”28 Thus, reason does not, strictly
speaking, yield knowledge; instead, it reproduces perceptual knowledge in
an alternative form.
The value of reason’s alternative mode of formulation is primarily that
it enhances the communicability and preservation of knowledge. The
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price, however, is a sacrifice of some of the fineness of perceptual
knowledge, such as that which an expert billiard player or musician can
employ in practice. The concepts of reason are also insufficient to produce
art, which depends on the artist’s perceptual acumen. Even in behavior, the
concepts of reason are deceptively clear, lacking the finegrained character
of perceptual knowledge.
Schopenhauer concludes that reason, while essential and useful in
human life, must never gain the upper hand over perception. In this, he
opposes not only the philosophical commonplace that reason is the pride
of humanity. He also opposes the common ethical view that reason should
be entrusted with control of one’s behavior.
Reason is so far from being a trustworthy guide in behavior that
Schopenhauer considers it to be an essential presupposition of folly. He
analyzes the ludicrous, the ground of all humor, as arising from the
incongruity of reason’s concepts in relation to real objects. Behavioral
foolishness, like other forms of humor, occurs when one interprets an
object in terms of a single concept, but suddenly perceives that the object
has one or more characteristics that are incompatible with that concept.
Thus, to appropriate a joke from Kant’s Critique of Judgment, the man
who complained about the mourners at his loved one’s funeral, on the
grounds that they kept looking happier the more he paid them to look sad,
makes a conceptual error. He interprets the mourners’ expressions as being
the services for which he pays them, and he ignores the fact that their
expressions might literally “express” their pleasure at being paid.29
Building on this analysis, Schopenhauer labels “foolish” those principled
moralists who see reason as the appropriate ethical guide:
Pedantry…arises from a man’s having little confidence in his own
understanding, and therefore not liking to leave things to its
discretion, to recognize directly what is right in the particular case.
Accordingly, he puts his understanding entirely under the
guardianship of his reason, and makes use therefore on all occasion;
in other words, he wants always to start from general concepts,
rules, and maxims, and to stick strictly to these in life, in art, and
even in ethical good conduct…. The incongruity between the concept
and reality soon shows itself, as the former never descends to the
particular case, and its universality and rigid definiteness can never
accurately apply to reality’s fine shades of difference and its
innumerable modifications. Therefore the pedant with his general
maxims almost always comes off badly in life, and shows himself
foolish, absurd, and incompetent.
Even Kant, whom Schopenhauer largely admires, is convicted by this analysis:
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We cannot entirely exonerate Kant from the reproach of causing
moral pedantry, in so far as he makes it a condition of the moral
worth of an action that it be done from purely rational abstract
maxims without any inclination or momentary emotion.30
Schopenhauer’s insistence on the primacy of perception over reason
extends to his analysis of science. Science aims at complete knowledge in
the abstract of some particular species of objects. It is concerned with the
form of knowledge, for it aims at facilitating and completing (i.e.
systematically connecting and hierarchizing) what is known about its
objects. Perception, however, being the ultimate source of knowledge, is
also the basis of science. All scientific evidence derives ultimately from
intuitive perception.
As a systematic employment of reason, science is subject to the
limitations inherent to abstract thought. Frequently, science makes use of
proofs, which involve the deduction of new consequences from previously
accepted propositions. Proofs do not establish the certainty of their
conclusions, for the truth of a conclusion depends on the truth of the
premises. The conclusion of an abstract chain of reasoning, moreover, is
never really new knowledge; it is only an exposition of what the premises
already imply. “Proofs are generally less for those who want to learn than
for those who want to dispute.”
Schopenhauer is so thoroughly convinced that reason is subordinate to
perception that he believes that every truth ascertained through proof or
syllogism is, in principle, recognizable through direct perception as well.31
He recommends a strategy of teaching geometric truths through direct
observation of geometrical figures. This he prefers to Euclid’s method of
proof from axioms, “a very brilliant piece of perversity.” Schopenhauer
likens Euclid’s approach to “a conjuring trick” that brings truth in
“almost always…by the back door, since it follows per accidens from
some minor circumstance.”32 Through direct perception we can see both
that something is so and why it is so, according to Schopenhauer, while
with Euclid’s method, we see only the former.
Science, insofar as it aims to explain things, is concerned ultimately
with the principle of sufficient reason. Explanation establishes the
relations of phenomena with one another, a relation always determined by
the principle of sufficient reason. In every case, however, the systematic
pursuit of explanation stops, confronted either with the necessary truths
fundamental to our basic forms of knowledge or with “an accepted
qualitas occulta (‘occult quality’), which is entirely obscure.”33 Primary
concepts of science, such as weight, cohesion, and chemical properties, as
well as the inner nature of a human being, are all qualitates occultae. Such
occult qualities establish the limits of every science. Schopenhauer sees
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these as indications of the thing-in-itself, which appears in them. The
thing-in-itself is the inner reality that science cannot explain. It is thus the
absolute limit that science cannot penetrate.
THE WILL AS THING-IN-ITSELF, THE
INNER LIFE OF OBJECTS
Schopenhauer’s account of the world as representation presupposes a
third-person point of view. But what is the real significance of the world as
representation? Schopenhauer observes, regarding the world’s phenomena,
that “these pictures or images do not march past us strange and
meaningless…but speak to us directly, are understood, and acquire an
interest that engrosses our whole nature.”34 Yet if we restrict our attention
to what Schopenhauer considers in his account of the world as
representation, our interest in these phenomena is mysterious. Our own
position seems a bit like that of
a man who, without knowing how, is brought into a company quite
unknown to him, each member of which in turn presents to him
another as his friend and cousin, and thus makes them sufficiently
acquainted. The man himself, however, while assuring each person
introduced of his pleasure at meeting him, always has on his lips the
question: “But how the deuce do I stand to the whole company?”35
The key to resolving this question regarding our relationship to
phenomena is the status of our own bodies. Each of us is not merely the
consciousness for whom the world as representation exists. We are not
only consciousness, but embodied. The body to which each consciousness
is attached has an odd relationship to the world as representation. On the
one hand, the body is itself a representation, which behaves much like
other representations. On the other hand, the body seems to be moved by
an inner mechanism. This inner mechanism, according to Schopenhauer, is
aptly designated “will.”
Schopenhauer takes sexual desire to be a paradigmatic manifestation of
this inner will.36 The will is demanding, persistent, discontented, and
perpetually goal-oriented. Insofar as one has desires, one has will,
according to Schopenhauer. The will connects us to the world as
representation; it gives us “interests.” We take an interest in our world
because it provides objects, instruments, and obstructions in connection
with our various desires and projects.
The individual’s direct knowledge of his or her body has two aspects.
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The individual experiences inner acts of will; yet these acts of will are
simultaneously acts of the body. Schopenhauer concludes that the body is
“nothing but the objectified will, i.e. will that has become representation.”
From the point of view of the world as representation, it is “the immediate
object,” but from the point of view afforded by one’s inner awareness, it is
“the objectivity of the will.”37
Schopenhauer indicates several corollaries to his principle that the will
and the body are one. First, willing and acting are one and the same.
“Only the carrying out stamps the resolve; till then, it is always a mere
intention that can be altered; it exists only in reason, in the abstract.”38
Second, pleasure and pain are not representations, but impressions of the
will through the body. Such impressions are pleasure when they accord
with the will, pain when they contradict the will. Third, every emotion,
which Schopenhauer defines as a “vehement and excessive movement of
the will,” directly “agitates the body and its inner workings,” thereby
disturbing its vital functions.39 Fourth, one cannot separate one’s
knowledge of the will from one’s knowledge of the body and its individual
acts in time. Thus, one cannot observe one’s will as a whole, in its timeless
reality.40
Schopenhauer considers the individual’s direct knowledge of the will
within the body to be knowledge of what the body is in itself. In this
respect, our bodies afford access to the thing-in-itself, the realm that Kant
denies to knowledge. Schopenhauer’s approach here raises a conceptual
problem. He accepts Kant’s claim that the thing-in-itself does not admit of
plurality. Yet in appealing to each individual’s insight into the inner
mechanism of his or her own body, Schopenhauer seems to have indicated
an “inner reality” that still admits of plurality. He goes on to argue that
the inner life that each individual recognizes in the body is a single life
common to all. But how do we get from the plurality of inner “wills” to
the unified thing-in-itself? Schopenhauer’s statements regarding the
relationship of particulars to the Will are not particularly illuminating:
“only the will is thing-in-itself…. It is the innermost essence, the kernel, of
every particular thing and also of the whole.”41
Schopenhauer’s argument for extending the concept of “will” to refer to
the inner reality of all phenomena is similarly problematic. He defends this
move by arguing that one has only two options. Either one can account
for one’s unique access to the inner life of one’s own body by claiming that
it is the only object that is both will and representation. This course would
amount to solipsism, or theoretical egoism, the conviction that one’s own
being is the only real being. Or the individual can assume that all objects
have a similar inner reality, and that while one’s relationship to one’s body
is unique, the body itself is not. Serious theoretical egoism being a form of
insanity, Schopenhauer dismisses the former alternative as a view that
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requires “not so much a refutation as a cure.”42 He concludes that one is
warranted in granting to every other phenomenal object a reality
comparable to that of one’s own body.
Thus, Schopenhauer exends the term “will,” which seems apt for the
inner life of our own bodies, to refer to the inner nature of all objects.
Schopenhauer’s primary defense of this extension is that we have no better
alternative. He believes that we naturally tend to anthropomorphize our
world because anthropomorphic metaphors convey the most to us. “Will,”
accordingly, conveys more to us than any other term we could use.
“Force” might be thought a viable alternative. But we have no insight
into the basic forces of nature at all, Schopenhauer insists. They are
qualitates occultae, completely unfathomable to us. By contrast, the word
“will” refers to the most distinct form in which the reality underlying all
phenomena appears to us. Thus, “will” is the most meaningful term we
could use to name the inner reality of all things.
Schopenhauer considers the inner reality of other phenomena to be
thoroughly comparable with our own. “Spinoza (Epist. 62) says that if a
stone projected through the air had consciousness, it would imagine it was
flying of its own will. I add merely that the stone would be right.”43
Schopenhauer points out, however, that in calling the inner nature of all
objects, including inanimate ones, “Will,” he does not mean to attribute
sentience and conscious motives to all of them. Will operates differently in
different types of objects. Only in humans and animals does it employ
motives determined by knowledge. The stimuli that prompt most organic
processes and the causes that occasion inorganic ones are mechanisms that
do not involve knowledge. Nevertheless, despite the differences among
these forms of causation, the Will is operative through all of them.
NO FREE WILL
Because he believes that motives determine the will in human beings,
Schopenhauer denies that human beings have free will. An individual’s
actions are completely determined by motives in conjunction with his or
her character. Schopenhauer follows Kant in distinguishing the empirical
character, the character of the individual as it appears in phenomenon,
from the intelligible character, the character as it is in itself, outside of
time and space. Schopenhauer considers the latter to be a timeless,
unalterable act of the Will, which is manifest in empirical behavior over
time. The empirical character accurately objectifies the intelligible
character: “the man…will always will in the particular what he wills on
the whole.”44 But it does this gradually; and the precise forms through
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which it manifests the intelligible character are in part determined by the
entirely contingent features of circumstances.
Given that the empirical character, motives, and one’s actions are all
among the objects of representation, causality obtains among them.
Hence, in principle, a causal account can be given to explain any of an
individual’s actions. However, in practice such accounts are limited. In the
first place, human beings possess more striking individuality than do any
other kind of beings. The range of human characters is considerable.
Hence, one needs considerable knowledge of a particular person’s
character, in addition to knowledge of the motive, in order to predict what
that person will do in a given case.
Moreover, the knowledge that one can have is knowledge of the
empirical character, which is not the character of the individual in itself,
but only the appearance of the latter over time. In the case of those whom
we have known well for a long time, we may be fairly competent
predictors of behavior. But we come to know the empirical character only
through its actions, after the fact; thus, our knowledge is limited. This is as
true of one’s own character as of any other individual’s. Knowledge even
of one’s own character is a considerable achievement. Schopenhauer labels
such gradually accumulated knowledge of what one wills and what one
can do “acquired character.” Such knowledge enables one to direct one’s
actions consistently and effectively toward satisfaction of one’s will, for it
allows one to recognize in advance what courses of action are worth
attempting, given one’s own limitations.
Our ignorance, even of our own characters, leads many to believe that
human beings have free will. Because we lack sufficient information to
predict our own and others’ behavior accurately, we cannot see that it
follows absolutely from the interaction of character and motive.
Moreover, because we engage in deliberation, the abstract contemplation
of multiple motives, each of which recommends a different course of
action, we tend to feel as though the ensuing action is in suspension until
we choose. “But,” claims Schopenhauer,
this is just the same as if we were to say in the case of a vertical pole,
thrown off its balance and hesitating which way to fall, that “it can
topple over to the right or to the left”…this “can” has only a
subjective significance, and really means “in view of the data known
to us.” For objectively, the direction of the fall is necessarily
determined as soon as the hesitation takes place. Accordingly, the
decision of one’s own will is undetermined only for its spectator,
one’s own intellect, and therefore only relatively and subjectively….
In itself and objectively, on the other hand, the decision is at once
determined and necessary in the case of every choice presented to it.45
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The true situation is reflected by our own attitudes regarding freedom.
Schopenhauer observes that
everyone considers himself to be a priori quite free, even in his
individual actions, and imagines he can at any moment enter upon a
different way of life, which is equivalent to saying that he can
become a different person. But a posteriori through experience, he
finds to his astonishment that he is not free, but liable to necessity;
that notwithstanding all his resolutions and reflections he does not
change his conduct, and that from the beginning to the end of his life
he must bear the same character that he himself condemns, and, as it
were, must play to the end the part he has taken upon himself.46
The explanation lies in the fact that as individuals our actions are
completely determined by our characters and a motive. However, because
our own inner reality is the Will, which is not constrained by causality, we
feel the Will’s freedom within ourselves and mistakenly associate it with
our own individuality. What the Will freely does, however, is to assign to
each of us a character, which we have no power to alter. We are also
incapable of explaining why an individual has the particular character he
or she does, for the Will is not subject to causality, and thus is not
constrained by anything in its selection of this character.
Thus, no explanation can be provided as to why an individual is
motivated by the particular motive he or she is. Our account of human
behavior is necessarily limited. In this respect, human behavior is akin to
the behavior of everything else in the phenomenal world. All rests on
qualitates occultae which cannot be further illuminated.
PLATONIC IDEAS
We have already observed that Schopenhauer’s account of the unity of the
thing-in-itself does not square easily with the plural points of departure we
are told to use to infer it. Schopenhauer touches on the problem of
bridging the noumenal and phenomenal realms in his appeal to the
Platonic theory of the Forms, or “Platonic Ideas.”
Schopenhauer attempts to clarify the Will’s relationship to its plural
manifestations by arguing that it does not make sense to say that “more”
will is in the human being than in the stone. “More” and “less” depend on
the spatial form in which the representation appears and have to do only
with the will’s objectification, not with the Will itself. The inner life of
each thing is “present whole and undivided” within it.47 However, it is
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appropriate to say that the Will is objectified to a higher degree in the
human being than in the stone. The Platonic Ideas are the immediate
objectivity of the Will at particular grades, or degrees.
The Platonic Ideas are for Schopenhauer, as for Plato, the unchanging
eternal patterns, or Forms, in which the innumerable, transient particulars
of the phenomenal world participate. Every particular Idea, in
Schopenhauer’s usage, is a definite “grade of the will’s
objectification…related to individual things as their eternal forms, or as
their prototypes.”48 These are, according to Schopenhauer, intuitively
graspable by perception, not mediated by the abstractions of reason.
The “location” of the Platonic Ideas in relation to the noumenal and
phenomenal worlds (i.e. the world as Will and the world as
representation) is a bit confusing. The Platonic Ideas are outside time and
space, and hence not in the world as representation. On the other hand,
they are multiple, while the Will is not. Perhaps the best way to
understand the Ideas’ “bridging” of the world as Will and the world as
representation is to envision the Ideas as windows through which the Will
has access to the world as representation. Of course, the world as
representation is entirely a manifestation of the Will, according to
Schopenhauer. Thus, the window image is misleading, in that it makes the
world as Will and the world as representation seem more distinct than
they are in Schopenhauer’s scheme.
Although the Platonic Ideas and the thing-in-itself are not identical,
Schopenhauer considers them “very closely related,” being two “paths
leading to one goal.”49 He concludes that the most paradoxical concepts in
the thought of Plato and Kant—the Forms and the thing-in-itself—are thus
reflections of essentially the same insight:
the inner meaning of both doctrines is wholly the same; that both
declare the visible world to be a phenomenon which in itself is void
and empty, and which has meaning and borrowed reality only
through the thing that expresses itself in it (the thing-in-itself in the
one case, the Idea in the other).50
The unity of the Platonic Idea in all its phenomena is, according to
Schopenhauer, what is meant by “a law of nature.” Laws of nature relate
the Idea to the forms of representation. Because both the Idea and the
conditions of its representability are constant, a law of nature holds for all
the phenomena it governs, without exception. What acts in any such case
is an inexplicable natural force. The “cause” involved determines only
when and where a particular natural force has the occasion to exhibit
itself in a particular piece of matter.
The Platonic Ideas, according to Schopenhauer, comprise a hierarchy of
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discrete levels. The “lowest” grades of the Will’s objedification are the
universal forces of nature. Among these are gravity and impenetrability,
which govern all matter. Schopenhauer also includes “rigidity, fluidity,
elasticity, electricity, magnetism, chemical properties, and qualities of
every kind,” forces that govern some pieces of matter but not others.51
Individuality is a function of the hierarchy of the Platonic Ideas, such
that the higher grades of the Will’s objectification exhibit more
individuality than the lower ones. Accordingly, higher animals have more
individuality than lower ones. In the lower animals, one sees no trace of
individuality, but only the general character and physiognomy of the
species. Plants have little individual character, according to Schopenhauer,
while inorganic objects have virtually none.
Human beings have more individuality than anything else in nature.
Individuality is so extreme in human beings that every person can “to a
certain extent” be described in terms of a particular idea. Schopenhauer
identifies this “Idea” of the individual as the individual’s intelligible
character, the result of a unique act of the Will outside time. Nonetheless,
Schopenhauer insists that human beings manifest a common form of
humanity. Perhaps the best way of integrating these two claims is to see
the “special” Ideas of each individual human to be facets of the more
encompassing Idea of humanity. Indeed, Schopenhauer indicates that
individuality in general amounts to partial expression of “the whole of
the Idea.”52
Because the same Will manifests itself in all Ideas, all phenomena
manifesting the Ideas have an inner relationship with one another. One
consequence is that the forms of the various plants and animals all bear a
kind of analogy with one another. A family likeness prevails even between
the Ideas of inorganic phenomena. Schopenhauer points to the analogies
that can be observed between electricity and magnetism, and between
chemical attraction and gravitation.
The levels of the Will’s manifestation are also mutually dependent upon
one another. The Ideas form a pyramid, with the Idea of humanity as its
culmination. The manifestations of the higher Ideas, accordingly,
presuppose the manifestations of the lower in external nature. Hence, the
human being depends on animals; animals depend on other animals and
plants; the plants need soil, water, sun, etc.; and all of nature depends on
the inert mass of the planet. Every phenomenon adapts itself to its
environment, while its environment similarly adapts itself to each
phenomenon. This interdependence of all phenomena in nature reflects the
fact that “the will must live in itself, since nothing exists besides it, and it
is a hungry will.”53
Despite such analogies, however, Schopenhauer insists that the Ideas
should not be conflated with one another. Indeed, phenomena of different
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Ideas can be seen as essentially at war with one another. Throughout the
organic world, one organism eats or somehow assimilates another: “every
animal can maintain its own existence only by the incessant elimination of
another’s.”54 The struggle among the various kinds of phenomenon
assimilated in the organic body exemplifies a more basic struggle, that
inherent to the nature of the Will. The Will, as Schopenhauer conceives it,
is fundamentally at “variance with itself.”55 Even matter exists by virtue of
a struggle among forces of attraction and repulsion, manifested as
gravitation and impenetrability. Although the unity and oneness of the
Will are manifest in the mutual adaptation of all natural phenomena, the
harmony goes only so far as is necessary for “the continuance of the
world,”56 which requires only the continuance of species, not that of
particular individuals.
The essential struggle among all phenomena corresponds to the fact
that the Will operating within them is blind. Even in beings that have
knowledge, knowledge is originally and fundamentally an expedient of the
will. Only rarely, in aesthetic experience and ethical insight, does human
knowledge do anything but assist the fulfillment of the will’s demands.
Thus, humans, too, with rare exceptions, struggle endlessly with other
phenomena.
Although the Will struggles continually, we are not in a position to say
why the Will wills. Even to ask the question is to confuse the Will with the
phenomenon, for it amounts to asking what causes the Will’s willing.
Nothing can cause the Will’s willing, for the Will is not determined by
causality, which is only a form of the Will’s objectification in the world as
representation. As thing-in-itself, the Will is groundless. Schopenhauer
concludes that the Will is aimless, and that aimless, endless striving is also
characteristic of its manifestations.
AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE
Aesthetic experience provides, for most individuals, the sole respite from
“the penal servitude of willing.”57 According to Schopenhauer, aesthetic
experience involves direct knowledge of the Platonic Ideas. Because these
Ideas are not subject to the principle of sufficient reason, they are not
objects of knowledge in the phenomenal world. The individual is manifest
as an individual only within the phenomenal world, however.
Schopenhauer concludes that the Ideas can only become objects of
knowledge “by abolishing individuality in the knowing subject.”58 This is
what aesthetic experience accomplishes.
Schopenhauer describes aesthetic experience by means of a contrast
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with everyday experience. In everyday experience, the individual
experiences his or her body as existing in a world of other objects that
stand in various relations to it, and by means of it, to the individual’s will.
The other objects of the phenomenal world are conceived by the
individual as either potential means or potential obstacles to the
fulfillment of the will’s desires. These objects are known, in fact, only in
terms of their relations to other manifestations of the will—for accounts in
terms of the principle of sufficient reason are essentially relational
accounts.
Aesthetic experience alters the individual’s perception of objects and the
individual’s awareness of self. The individual ceases to be “merely
individual” and becomes “a pure will-less subject of knowledge.”59 In
aesthetic experience, the subject is no longer concerned with relations
between his or her body and other objects, but instead restfully
contemplates the object alone, outside of all relations. This contemplation
is not mediated by abstract concepts; instead, one devotes one’s mind
entirely to perception of what is present. The distinction of subject and
object drops away in this state of absorption; one does not differentiate
the perceiver from the perception. In aesthetic experience, we are
appropriately said to “lose ourselves.”60
The “knowledge” involved in aesthetic experience does not involve
knowledge of an object’s relations. What is known, instead, is the Idea
of the object. The object is rendered universal in this experience, for it
becomes, for the perceiver, the eternal form of the will’s objectivity at
its grade. The subject, at the same time, also becomes universal as the
“pure will-less, painless, timeless subject of knowledge.”61 Both subject
and object have passed beyond the forms of the principle of sufficient
reason. The timeless Idea that is the object’s prototype becomes present
to the observer as a timeless intellect, no longer engaged in projects of
the will.
In arguing that aesthetic experience undermines desire, Schopenhauer
accepts Kant’s claim that aesthetic experience is essentially disinterested.
Nietzsche indicates the controversial nature of this claim in his caricature
of Schopenhauer’s aesthetics:
Schopenhauer speaks of beauty with a melancholy fervor…. Beauty
is for him a momentary redemption from the “will”—a lure to
eternal redemption. Particularly, he praises beauty as the redeemer
from “the focal point of the will,” from sexuality—in beauty he sees
the negation of the drive toward procreation. Queer saint!
Somebody seems to be contradicting you; I fear it is nature.62
Nietzsche rejects Kant and Schopenhauer’s characterization of beauty as
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inspiring contemplation that is “disinterested,” arguing that nothing is of
greater interest to human beings.
Although Schopenhauer follows Kant in his analysis of aesthetic
disinterestedness, he breaks from Kant in his analysis of the difference
between the beautiful and the sublime. According to Kant, appreciation of
the beautiful and appreciation of the sublime involve different mental
operations and even different faculties. Schopenhauer, by contrast, insists
that the beautiful and the sublime differ rather slightly. Both aim, in his
view, at contemplation of the Idea within phenomena.
The difference between the beautiful and the sublime lies only in the
contemplated object’s usual relationship to the will. In the case of the
beautiful, the object contemplated seems almost designed for willless
contemplation; its form is so well suited to the human senses that it invites
tranquil observation. In the case of the sublime, however, the
contemplated object has, by its very nature, a hostile relationship to the
observer’s will, and the observer is consequently aware of some inner
aversion to it. One can achieve aesthetic contemplation of the sublime,
therefore, only by means of forcibly subduing the will’s aversion. In the
case of the beautiful, on the other hand, the object itself soothes the will,
and no effort is required to silence it.
Schopenhauer concludes that the beautiful and the sublime are two
ends of the same continuum. Besides paradigm cases of each, certain cases
fall in between. These Schopenhauer considers relatively sublime. For
example, even the aesthetic appreciation of radiant sunlight on a snowy
landscape is somewhat sublime; one must forcibly resist dwelling upon the
inhospitable temperature of the snow in order to enjoy the visual
spectacle.
Like experience of the beautiful and of the sublime, in Schopenhauer’s
analysis, aesthetic experiences of nature and art are essentially kindred.
Art is “the work of genius.”63 Genius is a pre-eminent talent for engaging
in aesthetic contemplation. The genius is able to “grasp the Idea of each
thing, not its relation to other things.”64 Because this process involves
forgetting one’s own personal concerns, Schopenhauer describes genius as
“the most complete objectivity, i.e. the objective tendency of the mind.”65
The genius’s talent is possessed in some measure by all human beings.
According to Schopenhauer, this is why the average individual is able to
enjoy art. In art the genius communicates his or her own recognition of
Ideas. Aesthetic pleasure is always a matter of grasping the Idea, whether
the phenomenon contemplated is a natural object or an artwork. For most
individuals, however, “the Idea comes…more easily from the work of art.”
This is because “the artist, who knew only the Idea and not reality, clearly
repeated in his work only the Idea, separated it out from reality, and
omitted all disturbing contingencies.”66
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Through this analysis of the artwork, Schopenhauer suggests criteria
for evaluating art. Good art is produced when the artist works from direct
perception of the Idea, not from conceptual recipes. The success of an
artwork also depends on the artist’s technical skill at communicating this
direct perception to the audience.
Like many aestheticians of his own and the previous century,
Schopenhauer hierarchically classifies the types of an. His criterion for
classification is the significance of the Platonic Ideas that are focal within
a given medium. Thus, the arts that invite contemplation of the lower
Ideas are ranked lower than those that invite contemplation of the higher
Ideas.
Architecture is assigned the lowest place in Schopenhauer’s hierarchy,
because it brings “to clearer perceptiveness some of those Ideas that are
the lowest grades of the will’s objectivity.” Among these, he includes
“gravity, cohesion, rigidity, hardness,” and also “light, which is in many
respects their opposite.”67 Architecture reveals the way in which these
basic forces oppose one another. Thus, rigidity opposes gravity in certain
constructions. Schopenhauer classifies “artistic arrangements of water” on
the same level as architecture, for fountains bring into prominence the
Ideas of fluidity and gravity, again Ideas at the lowest grades of the Will’s
objectivity.
Landscape gardening and landscape painting comprise the level above
architecture and fountain art in Schopenhauer’s scheme, for these reveal
the Ideas of the vegetative world. The next level includes animal painting
and animal sculpture, which reveal the Ideas of animal life. Historical
painting and sculpture reveal the Idea of the human being, and hence these
occupy a still higher level. But a fuller revelation of the Idea of the human
being occurs in poetry, where the principal object is the human being “in
so far as he expresses himself not through the mere form and expression of
his features and countenance, but through a chain of actions and of the
accompanying thought and emotions.”68
Schopenhauer believes that the most profound insight into humanity
involves awareness that the same Will wars against itself in the conflicts
among human beings. Presumably, this is why he classifies tragedy as “the
summit of poetic art.” Tragedy aims at “the description of the terrible side of
life,” and it reveals the profound insight “that what the hero atones for is not
his own particular sins, but original sin, in other words, the guilt of existence
itself.”69 Optimally, tragedy can bring home to its audience the true character
of our interactions with one another. In the best type of tragedy,
characters as they usually are in a moral regard in circumstances that
frequently occur, are so situated with regard to one another that their
position forces them, knowingly and with their eyes open, to do one
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another the greatest injury, without any one of them being entirely in
the wrong.70
Thus far, no mention has been made of music. Schopenhauer sees music as
being entirely unlike the other arts. All other arts aim to facilitate
perception of the Ideas, on his account; but music copies the Will directly.
As a consequence, “the effect of music is so very much more powerful and
penetrating than is that of the other arts.”71 Not at all concerned to
represent specific phenomena, as do the visual arts, music transcends
particularity even in emotional expression:
Therefore music does not express this or that particular and definite
pleasure, this or that affliction, pain, sorrow, horror, gaiety,
merriment, or peace of mind, but joy, pain, sorrow, horror, gaiety,
merriment, peace of mind themselves, to a certain extent in the
abstract, their essential nature, without any accessories, and so also
without the motives for them.72
Because the world as representation itself, taken as a whole, is an
objectification of the Will, music and the world have a parallel
relationship to the Will. Thus, Schopenhauer concludes that a complete
philosophy of music would “also be at once a sufficient repetition and
explanation of the world in concepts, or one wholly corresponding
thereto, and hence, the true philosophy.”73
Schopenhauer elaborates on this suggestion by indicating points of
analogy between features of music and characteristics of the world. These
depend, to a certain extent, on the structure of the music with which
Schopenhauer was contingently familiar. Thus, he compares the relatively
hierarchical relationships among voices common in Western music of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to the hierarchical relationships
among Ideas. The low voices, like the lowest Ideas, provide the ground on
which all the others depend. Schopenhauer compares the melody to “the
intellectual life and endeavor of man,” for unlike the inner voices in his
analogy (which he compares to animal and vegetable life), “melody alone
has significant and intentional connexion from beginning to end.”74
Despite Schopenhauer’s analysis of music as a copy of the Will, he
believes that music, like the other arts, affords escape from everyday
awareness, which is constantly driven by will. This is because music
expresses the nature of willing in universal form, without concern for
particular phenomena. In this respect, the insight that music affords
resembles that which Schopenhauer sees essential to ethics, the insight that
the phenomenal world, with its apparently separate objects and
individuals, is an illusion that veils the transcendent nature of the world.
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LIFE IS SUFFERING
Because all individuals, and indeed all living phenomena, are
objectifications of the Will, their essential tendency is to will. Striving
continually, living beings gain one objective only to strive anew for
another. Dissatisfaction of one sort or another characterizes life from
beginning to end. The life of all humans and animals “swings like a
pendulum to and fro between pain and boredom, and these two are in fact
its ultimate constituents.”75
Analyzing all striving as essentially “need, lack, and hence pain,”
Schopenhauer concludes that life is essentially suffering:
The life of the great majority is only a constant struggle for this same
existence, with the certainty of ultimately losing it. What enables
them to endure this wearisome battle is not so much the love of life
as the fear of death.76
Schopenhauer contends that fear of death is irrational. Only the human
being as phenomenon is transient; as thing-in-itself the human being is
eternal. Nevertheless, this is rarely consoling to the individual, who most
often takes individual existence (understood through the forms of the
world as representation) extremely seriously. Thus, the life of the
individual human being is for the most part perverse and pointless:
The life of every individual, viewed as a whole and in general, and
when only its most significant features are emphasized, is really a
tragedy; but gone through in detail it has the character of a comedy.
For the doings and worries of the day, the restless mockeries of the
moment, the desires and fears of the week, the mishaps of every
hour, are all brought about by chance that is always bent on some
mischievous trick; they are nothing but scenes from a comedy. The
never-fulfilled wishes, the frustrated mistakes of the whole life, with
increasing suffering and death at the end, always give us a tragedy.
Thus, as if fate wished to add mockery to the misery of our
existence, our life must contain all the woes of tragedy, and yet we
cannot even assert the dignity of tragic characters, but, in the broad
detail of life, are inevitably the foolish characters of a comedy.77
Sexuality, which most pointedly displays the Will in human beings,
exemplifies this connection between desire and suffering. The Will deludes
the individual into imagining that gaining the beloved will result in
happiness. In fact, however, the Will is only concerned with the
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preservation of the species, not with the happiness of the individual. Thus,
while human sexual desire is extremely individualized, it is motivated only
by the Will’s concern that the species propagate a new generation of
healthy children with relatively standard traits.78 Schopenhauer concludes
that the embarrassment surrounding sexuality stems from guilt at
renewing the world’s suffering by contributing to a new generation.
If…we…contemplate the bustle and turmoil of life, we see everyone
concerned with its cares and troubles, exerting all his strength to
satisfy infinite needs and to ward off suffering in many forms, yet
without daring to hope for anything else in place of it except just the
preservation of this tormented existence for a short span of time. In
between, however, we see in the midst of the tumult the glances of
two lovers meet longingly; yet why so secretly, nervously, and
furtively? Because these lovers are the traitors who secretly strive to
perpetuate the whole trouble and toil that would otherwise rapidly
come to an end. Such an end they try to frustrate, as others like them
have frustrated it previously.79
SALVATION AND MORAL GOODNESS
The affirmation of the Will-to-live, which is fundamental to all living
beings, necessarily results in a life of suffering. The only salvation from
suffering, according to Schopenhauer, is the denial of the Will-to-live. This
is possible only for human beings, for human beings alone are capable of
inner knowledge into the reality behind phenomenon. In rare individuals
this knowledge becomes so completely absorbed that particular
phenomena come to seem merely illusory. In such a case, these phenomena
no longer provide motives for the will. When this happens, the will is
quieted, “and thus the will freely abolishes itself.”80 The suffering Will
itself, in such an individual, attains peace. The saintly individual,
therefore, fulfills the ultimate aim of the Will (the cessation of struggle),
but precisely by denying the will within.
Although Schopenhauer’s formulations of such ascetic salvation sound
negative, the insight motivating the holy life is essentially the same
insight that motivates all virtuous behavior. The basic knowledge
fundamental to both is the knowledge that the Will driving all
phenomena is essentially one.
When one perceives this truth, one is no longer motivated to do wrong,
which Schopenhauer describes as being the denial of the will in another
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individual. Egoism, the source of all wrongdoing, arises from the delusion
that one’s individual, phenomenal existence is tremendously important.
Perception of the truth—that the same will is manifest in all beings—
dispells this delusion.
Such perception, however, admits of degrees. Even the bad person, who
is so little in control of the will within that he or she chooses to violate the
will in other individuals, has a pained awareness that such action is
wrong. This is because every individual dimly grasps that such action
violates one’s own true being. The person who recognizes the Will’s
oneness to a somewhat greater degree is just. Such a person refrains from
affirming his or her own will at the expense of any other individual’s right
to a similar affirmation.
Moral goodness, in Schopenhauer’s analysis, stems directly from
knowledge and its quieting effect on the will. Schopenhauer denies that
universal moral principles have any value, for virtue is achieved
individually by means of insight. One might wonder how beings without
free will can achieve moral transformation by means of insight.
Schopenhauer’s answer is that while motive and character together
determine action, change of knowledge produces a change of motive,
which in turn affects the action that results. All repentance arises from a
change of knowledge, not from a change of will. When one recognizes that
one has used an inappropriate means for obtaining one’s object, for
instance, this knowledge results in a change of behavior. In the case of
radical transformation toward virtue, Schopenhauer would argue that one
has recognized that no action directed against another’s will could possibly
enhance one’s life. Hence, any such action is no longer seen as a viable
means to achieve one’s ends, so one comes to avoid such actions.
The good person goes further than the just person and is moved to
compassion for all sentient beings by the recognition that they are all
phenomena of the same will. A truly noble person “makes less distinction
than is usually made between himself and others,” and thus displays
concern for others of the same degree as that concern directed toward the
self.81 Such individuals have penetrated the principium individuationis,
which creates the illusion of individual separateness.
The ultimate penetration of the principium individuationis is achieved
by the saint. A saint has seen through the delusions of the phenomenal
world and responded with so much compassion that he or she no longer
wants to have any part in inflicting suffering. This self-abolition of the
will is the course taken by mystics of all traditions, according to
Schopenhauer. No longer motivated by phenomena, these holy
individuals abandon the usual expressions of will in human life. Thus,
they abstain from sex, adopt voluntary poverty, fast, and in general
mortify the body, which is objectified affirmation of the Will. Their
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entire existence is characterized by renunciation of the will, and their
lives are models of resignation.
True salvation stems from this complete denial of the will.82 At its
extreme point, the result is the extinction of character, for no motive still
stimulates willful action on the part of the saint. The saint’s will
evaporates. But in addition, with the evaporation of the will, the entire
world as representation, with its inherent distinctions among objects and
individuals, vanishes. What remains is “empty nothingness” which the
Buddhists have labeled nirvana.83
This nothingness is not, however, absolute. Indeed, the saints and
mystics of the ages have described their state as full and blissful.
Schopenhauer observes that we conceive of their condition as nothing only
because our world of suffering and struggle complete absorbs us:
we have to banish the dark impression of that nothingness, which as
the final goal hovers behind all virtue and holiness, and which we
fear as children fear darkness…. On the contrary, we freely
acknowledge that what remains after the complete abolition of the
will is, for all who are still full of the will, assuredly nothing. But also
conversely, to those in whom the will has turned and denied itself,
this very real world of ours with all its suns and galaxies is—
nothing.84
SCHOPENHAUER’S INTELLECTUAL
LEGACY
Schopenhauer did not really expect his theory of resignation and denial of
the will to inspire enthusiasts. Indeed, he prided himself on his
renunciation of popularity with his contemporaries.85 Nevertheless,
Schopenhauer would presumably be gratified by the extent to which his
ideas have assumed prominence.
Most strikingly, Schopenhauer’s conviction that knowledge is
subordinate to will—as well as his suggestive remarks on the
unconscious—have taken root in contemporary psychological theory. In
these respects, as well as in his focus on the body as a philosophical
starting point, he reverses Cartesianism and influences much twentieth-
century thought. Schopenhauer is also pioneering in developing a
systematic philosophy that is completely disconcerned with theology. His
pessimistic theories offer a critical response to German romanticism within
its own century. Schopenhauer is also closer to the following century in
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valuing and engaging in comparative studies of the philosophical
traditions of the East and the West. Finally, although the ethical claims
that he would endorse are relatively traditional, Schopenhauer’s denial of
the efficacy of moral maxims and universal principles precurses later
radical critiques of morality in general.
Ironically, given his doctrine of renunciation of the will, Schopenhauer’s
writings reveal an insatiable zest for life. Impatient with virtually all of his
contemporaries, Schopenhauer seems nevertheless to delight in description
and to take pains to move others through his prose. Perhaps his clarity of
insight into phenomena is Schopenhauer’s greatest philosophical legacy.
Schopenhauer lends us his own perceptions of the world. Fittingly, in one
who elevates perception over reason, Schopenhauer’s perceptions continue
to provoke and inspire many who reject every detail of his philosophical
system. Although his system is “ingeniously elaborated,”86 his perceptions
are brilliant.
NOTES
1 See Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, 2 vols, trans.
E.F.J.Payne, Vol. I (New York: Dover, 1969), hereafter referred to as WWR, I,
pp. 96–7, 154.
2 See ibid., pp. 326f.
3 Ibid., pp. 280, 283–4, 324.
4 See ibid., p. 330.
5 Ibid., p. xii.
6 B.Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (New York: Simon & Schuster,
1945), P. 758.
7 The German word “Wille,” like all German nouns, is consistently capitalized.
Payne, in his translations of Schopenhauer, consistently translates this term as
“will,” with the “w” in lower-case type. I shall adopt the convention of using
“Will” to refer to Schopenhauer’s metaphysical principle and “will” to refer to
the individual will in my own discussion. In citations from Payne’s
translations, however, I shall follow his usage.
8 F.Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals, in The Complete Works of Friedrich
Nietzsche, ed. O.Levy, Vol. 13, trans. H.B.Samuel (Edinburgh: T.N.Foulis,
1910), p. 132.
9 For a sympathetic discussion of the tensions within Schopenhauer’s
personality, see T.Mann, Introduction to The Works of Schopenhauer, ed.
W.Durant (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1928), pp. xvii-xxi.
10 F.Nietzsche, Schopenhauer as Educator, trans. W.Arrowsmith, in Unmodern
Observations, ed. W.Arrowsmith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990),
p. 176.
11 See Schopenhauer, “On Women,” in Parerga and Paralipomena: Short
Philosophical Essays, 2 vols, trans. E.F.J.Payne, Vol. II (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1974), hereafter referred to as PP, pp. 614–26. There, after insisting that
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women have no talent for the arts, Schopenhauer compares contemporary
“ladies” to “the sacred apes at Benares who, conscious of their sanctity and
invulnerability, think that they are at liberty to do anything and everything”
(p. 622). He also contends that unlike men, who feel rivalry only for other
members of their profession, women feel hostility for all other women. The
explanation he offers for this alleged phenomenon is that “with women”
professional jealousy “embraces the whole sex since they all have only one
line of business” (p. 619). Copleston observes that Schopenhauer’s
experience of women other than his mother was also “of a character hardly
calculated to generate a real respect for and appreciation of the other sex.”
See F.Copleston SJ, Arthur Schopenhauer: Philosopher of Pessimism,
Bellarmine Series, XI, ed. E.F.Sutcliffe SJ (London: Burns, Oates &
Washbourne, 1947), pp. 39–40.
12 WWR, I, p. xxii.
13 This is reflected by his choosing to open his Appendix to WWR, I, entided
“Criticism of the Kantian Philosophy,” with Voltaire’s comment: “It is the
privilege of true genius, and especially of the genius who opens up a new path,
to make great mistakes with impunity” (p. 413). This sentiment contrasts
markedly with Schopenhauer’s assessments of virtually every other
philosopher in the Western tradition, with the exception of Plato. Consider,
for example, his remarks on Aristotle in “Fragments for the History of
Philosophy”: “The fundamental characteristic of Aristotle might be said to be
the greatest shrewdness and sagacity combined with circumspection, power of
observation, versatility, and want of depth. His view of the world is shallow,
although ingeniously elaborated.” PP, I, p. 47.
14 P.Gardiner, Schopenhauer (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963), p. 21.
15 Julian Young has recently taken issue with the standard reading of
Schopenhauer, which interprets the Will as the thing-in-itself. According to
Young, the Will is another aspect of the thing-in-itself’s appearance, but not
the thing-in-itself. See J.Young, Willing and Unwilling: A Study in the
Philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer (Dordrecht: Nijhoff, 1987), pp. ix,
32ff.
16 WWR, I, p. 3.
17 Ibid., p. 6.
18 Ibid., p. 8.
19 Ibid., p. 8.
20 Kant also claims that perception involves imagination as well as
understanding. Schopenhauer focuses exclusively on understanding when he
considers the role of the intellect in perception.
21 See WWR, I, p. n. For an analysis of the many additional operations that
Schopenhauer implicitly assigns to the understanding, as well as a comparison
of Schopenhauer’s analysis of perception with Kant’s, see D.W.Hamlyn,
Schopenhauer, Arguments of the Philosophers Series, ed. T.Honderich
(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980), pp. 18–22.
22 WWR, I, p. 23.
23 Ibid., p. 45.
24 Ibid., p. 46.
25 Ibid., p. 13.
26 Schopenhauer does, as we shall see, believe that a thing-in-itself exists over
and above representation. But the thing-in-itself, independent of the principle
of sufficient reason, does not admit of duality. Hence, we cannot construe the
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thing-in-itself to be the realm of “real” objects that are only represented in the
phenomenal world.
27 WWR, I, pp. 29–30.
28 Ibid., p. 51.
29 See I. Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. J.C.Meredith (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1952), pp. 199–201.
30 WWR, I, p. 60.
31 See ibid., p. 65.
32 Ibid., p. 70.
33 Ibid., p. 80.
34 Ibid., p. 95.
35 Ibid., p. 98.
36 Ibid., p. 330.
37 Ibid., p. 100.
38 Ibid., p. 100.
39 Ibid., p. 101.
40 Schopenhauer also considers the validity of physiognomy to be a corollary
to the principle that the body and the will are one. See WWR, I, p. 225,
and Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, trans.
E.F.J.Payne, Vol. II (New York: Dover, 1958), hereafter referred to as
WWR, II, pp. 421, 598–9. See also Schopenhauer, “On Physiognomy,” PP,
II, pp. 634–41.
41 WWR, I, p. no.
42 Ibid., p. 104.
43 Ibid., p. 126.
44 Ibid., p. 292.
45 Ibid., pp. 290–1.
46 Ibid., pp. 113–14.
47 Ibid., p. 129.
48 Ibid., p. 130.
49 Ibid., p. 170.
50 Ibid., p. 172.
51 Ibid., p. 130.
52 Ibid., p. 132.
53 Ibid., p. 154.
54 Ibid., p. 147.
55 Ibid., p. 147.
56 Ibid., p. 161.
57 Ibid., p. 196.
58 Ibid., p. 169.
59 Ibid., p. 178.
60 Ibid., p. 178.
61 Ibid., p. 179.
62 F. Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, in The Portable Nietzsche, trans. and ed.
W.Kaufmann (New York: Viking, 1968), pp. 527–8.
63 WWR, I, p. 184.
64 Ibid., p. 188.
65 Ibid., p. 185.
66 Ibid., p. 195.
67 Ibid., p. 214.
68 Ibid., p. 244.
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69 Ibid., pp. 252, 254.
70 Ibid., p. 254.
71 Ibid., p. 257.
72 Ibid., p. 261.
73 Ibid., p. 264.
74 Ibid., p. 259.
75 Ibid., p. 312.
76 Ibid., pp. 312–13.
77 Ibid., p. 322.
78 Schopenhauer elaborates a theory of sexual attraction based on the principle
that opposites attract. Opposites attract, according to Schopenhauer, because
the Will aims to produce children that correspond more or less to the Idea of
humanity. Thus, it tries to prevent individuals who are too similar from
mating, lest they reproduce offspring who are too extreme in certain
characteristics. See “The Metaphysics of Sexual Love,” WWR, II, pp. 531–60.
79 WWR, II, p. 560.
80 WWR, I, p. 285.
81 Ibid., p. 372.
82 Schopenhauer sharply distinguishes denial of the will from suicide. Suicide, in
his view, is an extreme expression of affirmation of the will and no salvation
at all. See WWR, I, pp. 366, 398–9. See also Schopenhauer, “On Suicide,” PP,
II, pp. 306–11.
83 Schopenhauer’s assessments that life is suffering, and that only an end to
desire would put an end to suffering, are directly taken from Buddhist
thought. For some of Schopenhauer’s remarks on Buddhism, see WWR, I, p.
356, and II, pp. 169, 463, 508, 607f.
84 WWR, I, pp. 411–12.
85 See ibid., p. xxi.
86 See PP, I, p. 47. See also n. 13 above.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Original language editions
10.1 Schopenhauers samtliche Werke, 5 vols, ed. W.F.von Lohneysen, Stuttgart
and Frankfurt: Cotta/Insel, 1960–5.
English translations
10.2 On the Basis of Morality, trans. E.F.J.Payne, New York: Bobbs-Merrill,
1965.
10.3 On the Freedom of the Will, trans. K.Kolenda, New York: Bobbs-Merrili,
1960.
10.4 The Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, together with On Seeing
and Colors, ch. I, trans. E.F.J.Payne, La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1974.
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ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
10.5 Parerga and Paralipomena: Short Philosophical Essays, 2 vols, trans. E.F.J.
Payne, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974.
10.6 The World as Will and Representation, 2 vols, trans. E.F.J.Payne, New York:
Dover, Vol. I 1969, Vol. II 1958.
10.7 The Works of Schopenhauer, ed. W.Durant, New York: Frederick Ungar, 1928.
Bibliographies
10.8 Hubscher, A. Schopenhauer-Bibliographic, Stuttgart: Fromman-Holzboog,
1981.
10.9 Schopenhauer-Jahrbuch, Frankfurt/Main: Waldemar Kramer, 1912–.
Influences
10.10 Kant, I. Critique of Judgment, trans. J.C.Meredith, Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1952.
10.11 Kant, I. Critique of Judgment, trans. W.S.Pluhar, Indianapolis: Hackett,
1987.
10.12 Kant, I. Critique of Practical Reason, trans. L.W.Beck, New York: Bobbs-
Merrill, 1956.
10.13 Kant, I. Critique of Pure Reason, trans. N.Kemp-Smith, London:
Macmillan, 1964.
10.14 Kant, I. Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. L.W.Beck, New
York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1959.
10.15 Kants gesammelte Schriften, 29 vols, ed. Deutschen (formerly Königlich
Preussische) Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin: de Gruyter (and
predecessors), 1902–.
General surveys
10.16 Copleston SJ, F. Arthur Schopenhauer: Philosopher of Pessimism,
Bellarmine Series, XI, ed. E.F.Sutcliffe SJ, London: Burns, Oates &
Washbourne, 1947.
10.17 Fox, M. (ed.) Schopenhauer: His Philosophical Achievement, Totowa, NJ:
Barnes & Noble, 1980.
10.18 Gardiner, P. Schopenhauer, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963.
10.19 Hamlyn, D.W. Schopenhauer, Arguments of the Philosophers Series, ed. T.
Honderich, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980.
10.20 Hubscher, A. The Philosophy of Schopenhauer in its Intellectual Context:
Thinker against the Tide, trans. J.T.Baer and D.E.Cartwright,
Lewiston, NY: E. Mellen, 1989.
10.21 McGill, V.J. Schopenhauer: Pessimist and Pagan, New York: Haskell,
1971.
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THE AGE OF GERMAN IDEALISM
10.22 Safranski, R. Schopenhauer and the Wild Years of Philosophy, Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990.
10.23 Salaquarda, J. Schopenhauer, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft,
1985.
10.24 Simmel, G. Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, trans. H.Lorskandl, Amherst:
University of Massachusetts Press, 1986.
10.25 Von der Luft, E. Schopenhauer: New Essays in Honor of his Two-
Hundredth Birthday, Studies in German Thought and History, 10,
Lewiston, NY: E.Meller, 1988.
10.26 Schopenhauer, Dordrecht: Nijhoff, 1987.
Specific topics
10.27 Armstrong, L.W. Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and the Philosophy of the
Absolute, Albuquerque: American Classical College Press, 1987.
10.28 Atwell, J.E. Schopenhauer: The Human Character, Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 1990.
10.29 Bridgwater, P. Arthur Schopenhauer’s English Schooling, London,
Routledge, 1988.
10.30 Bykhovskii, B.E. Schopenhauer and the Ground of Existence, Amsterdam,
B.R.Gruner, 1984.
10.31 Dauer, D.W. Schopenhauer as Transmitter of Buddhist Ideas, New York:
Peter Lang, 1969.
10.32 Janaway, C. Self and World in Schopenhauer’s Philosophy, New York:
Oxford University Press, 1989.
10.33 Kishan, B.V. Schopenhauer’s Conception of Salvation, Waltair: Andhra
University Press, 1978.
10.34 Laban, F. Schopenhauer—Literature, New York: Lenox Hill, 1970.
10.35 Miller, B.R. The Philosophy of Schopenhauer in Dramatic Representational
Expressions, Albuquerque: American Classical College Press, 1981.
10.36 Nietzsche, F. Schopenhauer as Educator, trans. W. Arrowsmith, in
Unmodern Observations, ed. W.Arrowsmith, New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1990.
10.37 Simpson, D. (ed.) German Aesthetic and Literary Criticism: Kant, Fichte,
Schelling, Schopenhauer, and Hegel, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1984.
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CHAPTER 11
Kierkegaard’s speculative
despair
Judith Butler
Every movement of infinity is carried out through passion,
and no reflection can produce a movement. This is the
continual leap in existence that explains the movement,
whereas mediation is a chimera, which in Hegel is supposed
to explain everything and which is also the only thing he
never has tried to explain.
(Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, p. 42)
Kierkegaard’s critique of Hegel concerns primarily the failure of a
philosophy of reflection to take account of that which exceeds reflection
itself: passion, existence, faith. The irony in Kierkegaard’s challenge to
Hegelianism is, however, minimally twofold. On the one hand,
Kierkegaard will ask, where is it that Hegel, the existing individual, stands
in relation to the systematic totality that Hegel elucidates? If Hegel the
individual is outside the complete system, then there is an “outside” to
that system, which is to say that the system is not as exhaustively
descriptive and explanatory as it claims to be. Paradoxically, the very
existence of Hegel, the existing philosopher, effectively—one might say
rhetorically—undermines what appears to be the most important claim in
that philosophy, the claim to provide a comprehensive account of
knowledge and reality. On the other hand, Kierkegaard’s counter to Hegel
consists in the valorization of passion and existence over reflection and,
finally, language. It is in relation to this criticism that a different sort of
irony emerges, one which Kierkegaard appears not to know, but which
attends his various claims to be writing on behalf of that which is beyond
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speculation, reflection, and language. If Kierkegaard is right that Hegel
omits the existing individual from his system, that does not mean that
Kierkegaard maintains an unsystematic or nonspeculative view of the
existing individual. Although Kierkegaard sometimes uses the speculative
terminology of Hegelianism, he appears to parody that discourse in order
to reveal its constitutive contradictions. And yet, in Kierkegaard’s
descriptions of despair in Sickness unto Death (1849), his use of Hegelian
language works not only to displace the authority of Hegel, but also to
make use of Hegelianism for an anlaysis that both extends and exceeds the
properly Hegelian purview. In this sense, Kierkegaard opposes himself to
Hegel, but this is a vital opposition, a determining opposition, one might
almost say ‘an Hegelian opposition,’ even if it is one that Hegel himself
could not have fully anticipated. If Hegel’s individual is implicated in the
very existence that he seeks to overcome through rationality, Kierkegaard
constructs his notion of the individual at the very limits of the speculative
discourse that he seeks to oppose. This appears to be one ironic way, then,
that Kierkegaard’s own philosophical exercise is implicated in the tradition
of German Idealism.
DESPAIR AND THE FAILURE TO ACHIEVE
IDENTITY
In the following, I will try to make clear why despair is a category or, in
Kierkegaard’s terms, a sickness and a passion, whose analysis is crucial to
both the extension and critique of Hegel in Kierkegaard’s work. Insofar as
despair characterizes the failure of a self fully to know or to become itself,
a failure to become self-identical, an interrupted relation, then despair is
precisely that which thwarts the possibility of a fully mediated subject in
Hegel’s sense. That subject is documented in Hegel’s Phenomenology of
Spirit as an emerging set of syntheses, the subject as one who mediates
and, hence, overcomes that which initially appears as different from itself.
The success of this mediating activity confirms the capacity of the subject
to achieve self-identity, that is, to know itself, to become at home in
otherness, to discover that in a less than obvious and simple way it is that
which it incessantly encounters as outside of itself.
Hegel narrates in The Phenomenology of Spirit the various ways in
which this mediating relation can fail, but insofar as Hegel claims that
subject is substance, he defends the ideal possibility of articulating the
successful mediation of each and every subject with its countervailing
world. The various failures to mediate that relation effectively are only
and always instructive; they furnish knowledge that leads to more effective
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proposals for how to mediate that apparent difference. Each time the
subject in The Phenomenology of Spirit claims to discover the condition
by which the mediating relation works, it fails to take into account some
crucial dimension of itself or of the world which it seeks to bind together
in a synthetic unity. That which it fails to comprehend returns to haunt
and undermine the mediating relation it has just articulated. But that
which remained outside the relation is always recuperated by the subject’s
synthesizing project: there is no final or constitutive failure to mediate.
Every failure delineates a new and more synthetic task for the emerging
subject of reflection. In a sense, Kierkegaard enters Hegel’s system at the
end of the Phenomenology: if Hegel thought that the subject of the
Phenomenology had taken account of everything along the way which
turned out to be outside the terms to be mediated, understanding what
needed to be synthesized as well as how that synthesis could take place,
then the last laugh is on Hegel’s subject. In its mania for synthesis, the
subject has forgotten to include that which can never be systematized, that
which thwarts and resists reflection, namely, its very existence and its
constitutive and mutually exclusive passions: faith and despair.
In Kierkegaard’s view, despair is precisely that passion that can never be
‘synthesized’ by the Hegelian subject.1 In fact, despair is defined by
Kierkegaard as “a misrelation” (SUD, 14),2 one which confirms the failure
of any final mediation and, therefore, signals the decisive limit to the
comprehensive claims of the philosophy of reflection. Despair not only
disrupts that subject’s efforts to become at home with itself in the world,
but it confirms the fundamental impossibility of ever achieving the self’s
sense of belonging to its world. The Hegelian project is not only thwarted
by despair, but it is articulated in despair (“the category of totality inheres
in and belongs to the despairing person”: SUD, 60). As we shall see, one
form of despair is marked by the effort to become the ground or origin of
one’s own existence and the synthetic relation to alterity. A kind of
arrogance or hubris, this conceit of the Hegelian project suffers a
humiliation at Kierkegaard’s hands. To posture as a radically self-
generated being, to be the author of one’s will and knowledge, is to deny
that one is constituted in and by that which is infinitely larger than the
human individual. Kierkegaard will call this larger-than-human source of
all things human “God” or “the infinite.” To deny that one is constituted
in that which is larger than oneself is, for Kierkegaard, to be in a kind of
despair. Toward the end of this essay, we will consider just how crucial this
form of despair is for Kierkegaard’s own authorship. Indeed, it may turn
out that the despair that Kierkegaard diagnoses in Sickness unto Death,
and which, in part, he attributes to Hegel, conditions essentially the very
writing whose object it is to denounce and overcome despair.
So despair is a “misrelation,” a failure to mediate, but what are the
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terms to be mediated? And if Hegel fails to understand (his own) despair
in the system he articulates, is it also true that Kierkegaard fails to
understand the speculative conceptualization that inheres in the very
notion of despair by which he counters speculation?
The opening page of Sickness unto Death appears to be a properly
Hegelian exegesis populated with familiar terminology: ‘self,’ ‘spirit,’
‘mediation,’ ‘relation.’ And yet, as the first paragraph proceeds it becomes
clear that Kierkegaard is parodying Hegel’s language; significantly,
however, this is a parody that does not entail a thorough rejection of
Hegel. On the contrary, through parodying Hegel, Kierkegaard both
recirculates or preserves some aspects of Hegel’s system and jettisons some
others. Parody functions like the Hegelian operation of Aufhehungy set
into motion this time, ironically, by Kierkegaard to preserve, cancel, and
also transcend the Hegelian corpus itself. The crucial dimension of
synthesis is, of course, absent from this Kierkegaardian redeployment of
Hegel. Parody functions for Kierkegaard as an Aufhebung that leads not
to synthesis between his position and Hegel’s, but to a decisive break.
Kierkegaard does not lay out his arguments against Hegel in propositional
form. He re-enacts those arguments through the rhetorical construction of
his text. If the issues he has with Hegel could be rationally decided, then
Hegel would have won from the start. Kierkegaard’s texts counter Hegel
most effectively at the level of style, for part of what he wants to
communicate is the limits of language to comprehend that which
constitutes the individual. Let us, then, consider the way in which this
argument is performed through the parodie reiteration of Hegel at the
outset of Sickness unto Death.
Kierkegaard begins Part One of this text with a set of assertions and
counter-assertions, splitting his own philosophical voice into dialogic
interlocutors, miming the dialectical style which dates back to Socrates:
“A human being is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is
the self?” (SUD, 13). Then comes a ponderous sentence which one might
expect to encounter at the hilarious limits of rationality in a Woody Allen
film: “The self is a relation that relates itself to itself or is the relation’s
relating itself to itself in the relation; the self is not the relation but is the
relation’s relating itself to itself.” The first part of the sentence is a
disjunction, but it is unclear whether the disjunctive “or” operates to
separate alternative definitions or whether it implies that the definitions
that it separates are essentially equivalent to one another. Prior to the
semicolon, there appear to be two definitions: one, the self is a reflexive
relation (the self is that which takes itself as its own object), and two, the
self is the activity of its own reflexivity (it is that process of taking itself as
its object, incessantly self-referential). If this is an Hegelian exposition,
then one expects that this self will achieve harmony with itself, but here it
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seems that the more the possibility of a synthesis is elaborated, the less
likely that synthesis appears.
In the above quotation, then, we might ask: can the self both be the
relation and the activity of relating? Can the differently tensed definitions
be reconciled? Is the first a static conception, and the second, a dynamic
and temporalized one which is incompatible with the second? Or will we
learn, Hegelian style, that the static notion is aufgehoben in the second,
that the temporalized version of the reflexive self presupposes, transforms,
and transcends the static one? After the semicolon, the sentence appears to
contradict the definition of the self as static relation and to affirm the
temporalized version of the self, thereby undermining the possibility of an
emerging synthesis between the two versions: “the self is not the relation
but is the relation’s relating itself to the self.” The original ambiguity over
whether the “or” functions to set up a mutually exclusive set of
alternatives or a set of appositional and equivalent definitions appears
temporarily to be resolved into the first alternative.
The development of the sentence echoes the narrative logic of Hegel’s
Phenomenology, but in that text it is more often the case that mutually
exclusive alternatives are first laid out only then to be synthesized as part
of a larger unity. Already in Kierkegaard’s style of exposition, we see how
the expectation of an Hegelian logic is both produced and undermined.
Indeed, as the paragraph proceeds, that failure to conform to Hegelian
logic turns into a full-blown illogic, a kind of high philosophical comedy.
The rest of the paragraph reads as follows:
A human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the
temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity, in short, a
synthesis. A synthesis is a relation between two. Considered in this
way, a human being is still not a self.
Here the development of what appears to be an argument takes several
illogical turns and seems by the propelling force of rationality to be
spiraling into irrationality. By the end of the first sentence, we have
concluded (a) that the self is temporalized, (b) that it is the activity of
relating, and (c) that it is not a static relation. The possibility of a synthesis
is therefore negated. This next sentence, however, poses as a logical
consequence, but only to make a mockery of logical transition. Here we
have the sudden and unwarranted shift from a discussion of the “self” to
that of the “human being,” and the announcement that the human being is
a synthesis. Moreover, the terms of which that synthesis is composed are
in no way implied by the static/temporal opposition that preoccupied the
preceding sentence. Instead, we find wild generalizations asserted at once
in the mode of a conclusion and a premise. As a conclusion that follows
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THE AGE OF GERMAN IDEALISM
from the earlier sentence, this second sentence makes no sense. As a
premise, it is equally absurd: the synthesis is asserted and described, and
then the appearance of a conclusion emerges, “in short, a synthesis,”
which can be read only as a flagrant and laughable redundancy.3 A
didactic sentence follows, which is itself nothing other than a repetition of
the obvious: “a synthesis is a relation between two.” And then a most
curious sentence concludes the paragraph in which Kierkegaard appears to
take distance from the Hegelian voice that he has both assumed and
mocked. “Considered in this way,” the sentence begins, suggesting that
there might be another way, Kierkegaard’s way, “a human being is still not
a self.” Here Kierkegaard offers a distinction to suggest that what is called
“the human being” is not the same as the self. But interestingly, we are
also recalled to the problem of the temporality and tense of the self. What
is described as the human being is “still not a self,” not yet a self, a self
that has not yet been articulated, or, rather, cannot be articulated within
the language of synthesis.
Kierkegaard proceeds to take issue with this self which seems never to
coincide with itself. He remarks that any synthesis requires a third term.
The second and third paragraphs proceed in a note of tentative
seriousness, making use of an Hegelian schematic precisely in order to
show the way beyond it. The second paragraph begins: “In the relation
between two, the relation is the third as a negative unity, and the two
relate to the relation and in the relation to the relation.” The examples of
the terms to be related are the “psychical and the physical” in this textual
instance. Kierkegaard argues that if the self is a synthesis of psychical and
physical dimensions, and if it is also the activity of relating its psychical
aspect to its physical aspect, then that very act of relating will have to be
composed of one of those aspects. Here he assumes that the activity of
“relating,” a term that seems to have been kept purposefully abstract in
the previous discussion, calls now to be specified as a psychical activity.
This more specifie determination of that relating activity will become even
more significant as Kierkegaard’s text proceeds to distinguish between
reflection, the Hegelian way of understanding that constitutive relation,
and faith, Kierkegaard’s preferred way. As this semi-Hegelian exposition
proceeds, Kierkegaard will show what is concretely at stake for the
existing individual in this abstract logic.
Kierkegaard begins here to confound the distinction between the self as
a static relation and the self as a temporal or active one. The two
dimensions of the self to be related must already in some sense be the very
relation, which is to say that psychical and the physical, as parts of the
relation, are defmitionally related, that is, presupposed as related, and are
constantly in the activity of becoming relating. These two dimensions of
that relation cannot be captured by a logic of noncontradiction. The
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reflexivity of this relation is what marks the relation as a self. For it is the
distinguishing feature of a self to endeavor to become itself, constantly
and paradoxically to be in the process of becoming what it already is. For
one can always refuse to ‘relate’ to oneself, to endeavor to become a self,
but even then that very refusal will still be a way of relating to the self. To
deny that one has a self, to refuse to become one: these are not only modes
of reflexivity, but specifie forms of despair.
This paradoxical view of the self, as that which incessantly becomes
that which it already is, coincides partially with Hegel’s view of the
subject. Hegel argues that the subject of the Phenomenology will develop
and become increasingly synthetic, including all that it discovers outside
itself in and as the world. And this subject, which successively appears to
be identified as life, consciousness, self-consciousness, Spirit, Reason, and
Absolute Knowledge, discovers finally that implicitly it has always been
what it has become. The becoming of the Hegelian subject is the process
of articulating or rendering explicit the implicit relations which constitute
that subject. In this sense, the Hegelian subject is successively discovering
what it has always already been, but has not known that it has been. The
development of constitution of the Hegelian subject is the process of
coming to know what it is that that subject already is.
For Kierkegaard, however, this view of the subject is only partially true.
For Hegel, the subject is every aspect of this relation: the subject is itself,
the activity of relating, and that to which it relates (since the world, or
Substance, turns out to be synthetically unified with the subject). It is
precisely this circle of immanence, however, that Kierkegaard tries to
break; he performs this break, however, by working Hegel’s own logic to
its own breaking point. A new paragraph following the above exposition
graphically enacts the break with the Hegelian argument. Kierkegaard
states an either/or question that cannot be asked within the Hegelian
framework: “Such a relation that relates itself to itself, a self, must either
have established itself or have been established by another.” Here
Kierkegaard raises the question of the genesis of this relation. It is not
enough to know what the relation constitutes, nor to know that in some
way it constitutes itself. The question remains: What has constituted this
relation as a self-constituting relation? What put this circular relation into
motion? Kierkegaard infers that there must be a relation that is temporally
prior to the self-constituting self, that this prior relation must be reflexive
and constituting as well, and that the self must be one constituted product
of that prior relation. This prior relation appears to be God, although
Kierkegaard almost never supplies a definition of God.
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PASSIONATE SELVES AND THE
AFFIRMATION OF FAITH
In Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846), Kierkegaard makes clear
that he is not interested in proving rationally that God exists, but only in
the question of how to achieve faith as it arises for the existing individual:
how do I become a Christian, what relation can I have to faith?4
If that which constitutes the self remains part of that self, then the self
whose task it is to take itself as its own object will of necessity take that
prior ground of its own existence as its object as well.5 It is in this sense
that for Kierkegaard the self which takes itself as its own object will of
necessity take “another” as its object as well. In Hegel, this same
formulation applies, but the “other” who constitutes the self will be the
social other, the community of other subjects who collectively supply the
common social and historical world from which the particular subject is
derived. That move, however, is for Kierkegaard symptomatic of a refusal
to see that which transcends the social and human world, namely, the
transcendent or the infinite from which the social world in its concreteness
is derived.
The task of the self, for Kierkegaard, is indissolubly twofold: self-
constituting yet derived, the self is “a relation that relates itself to itself
and in relating itself to itself relates itself to another” (SUD, 13–14).
Insofar as “another” is infinite, and this prior infinity constitutes the
self, the self partakes of infinity as well. But the self is also determined,
embodied, and hence finite, which means that every particular self is
both infinite and finite, and that it lives this paradox without resolution.
Faith will be described by Kierkegaard as infinite inwardness, the
unceasing and passionate affirmation of the infinite, and in this sense
faith will be an occasion for infinity to emerge within the self: “that
which unites all human life is passion, and faith is a passion” (FT, 67).6
In yet another sense, that self, however capable of infinite faith, will
never be equivalent to the infinity that is prior to the individual, which
Kierkegaard calls “God,” but which is sometimes figured in terms of
infinite possibility.7 However infinite in its passion and faith, the self is
still existing and, hence, finite. Strictly speaking, the infinity prior to the
self, the infinity from which the self emerges, does not exist. For
unactualized and infinite possibility to exist, it would have to become
actualized, which is to become finite and, hence, no longer to be
definable as infinite possibility. This infinite possibility, this ground or
God, cannot be known or affirmed as a finite object, but can only be
affirmed by a passionate faith that emerges at the very limits of what is
knowable.
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This is an affirmation that cannot take place through rationality,
language, or speculation; it emerges as a passion and a possibility only on
the condition that reflection has failed. In Kierkegaard’s Philosophical
Fragments (1844), he refers to this crisis in speculative thought as “the
passion of Reason” and “the passion in all thinking” (PF, 46).8 Here
passion carries the meaning of suffering and longing, and Kierkegaard
appears to imply that passion is generated precisely at the moment in
which thought fails to grasp its object. Because part of what is meant by
comprehending an object is comprehending its origin, and because that
origin or ground is the infinity of God, every act of knowing is haunted by
the problem of faith and, hence, also by passion. Kierkegaard
commentator Niels Thulstrup describes this passion as “something which
reason cannot comprehend and which leads reason to founder in its
passion, the passion which wills the collision, which strives to discover
that which cannot be thought and cannot be comprehended in the
categories of human thought.”9 In the face of the infinite, thought can
only supply a finite concept or a word, but both of these are finitizing
instruments which can only misconstrue and, indeed, negate that which
they seek to affirm. This is, of course, also the problem with Hegel’s
reliance on the concept to grasp infinity.10
One might be tempted here to think that Kierkegaard proposes that the
self overcome its finitude in order to affirm through passionate inwardness
the infinity from which that self emerges. But that is, for Kierkegaard, an
impossibility. And here is where he appears to take Hegel seriously, even
as he finally disputes him: the self is inevitably both finitude and infinitude
which the self lives, not as a synthesis, and not as the transcendence of the
one over the other, but as a perpetual paradox. Inasmuch as the self is self-
constituting, that is, has as its task the becoming of itself, it is finite: it is
this self, and not some other. Inasmuch as the self is derived, a possibility
actualized from an infinite source of possibility, and retains that infinity
within itself as the passionate inwardness of faith, then that self is infinite.
But to reconcile existence and faith, that is, to be an existing individual
who, in its finitude, can sustain itself in infinite faith, that is the paradox
of existence, one which can only be lived but never overcome. As
Kierkegaard puts it with characteristic irony: “to be in existence is always
a somewhat embarrassing situation” (CUP, 404).
Let us return then to the sentence from Sickness unto Death which
suggests that the Hegelian subject, reconceived as a self (with the capacity
for inwardness), and understood as derived from an infinite source, is both
self-constituting and derived, “a relation that relates itself to itself and in
relating itself to itself relates itself to another.” This sentence, which
appears logical and to some extent implicitly theological, leads to the
introduction of despair as a psychological category:
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This is why there can be two forms of despair in the strict sense. If a
human self had established itself, then there could be only one form:
not to will to be oneself, to will to do away with oneself, but there
could not be the form: in despair to will to be oneself.
(SUD, 14)
Despair is the result of the effort to overcome or solve the paradox of
human existence. If one seeks to be grounded in the infinite and to deny
that one exists and is, therefore, finite, one falls into the despair of the
infinite, willing not to be the particular self that one is. But if one denies
the infinite and seeks to take full responsibility for one’s own existence,
viewing all of one’s self as one’s own radical creation, that is the despair of
the finite.11 It is this second form of despair, the despair of willing to be
oneself, that is, to be the ground or sole source of one’s own existence,
that is more fundamental than the first. This second form constitutes a
refusal to be grounded in that which is more infinite than the human self
and so constitutes a defiance of God. The primary way in which human
selves fall into despair is through the repudiation of their infinite origins.
This despair is marked by a certain hubris or arrogance and, at its limit,
becomes demonic, understood as a willful defiance of the divine. We will
consider that demonic extreme of despair toward the end of our remarks
when we consider Kierkegaard’s ambivalent relationship to his own
authorship.
What this means, of course, is that if one knows one is in despair and
seeks by one’s own means to extricate oneself from despair, one will only
become more fully steeped in that despair. That self is still trying to refuse
its groundedness in that which is greater than itself. Paradoxically, the self
that refuses the infinite must enact that refusal infinitely, thereby
recapitulating and reaffirming the infinite in a negative way in the very
gesture of disbelief. If Hegel thought that the subject might be a synthesis
of finite and infinite, he failed to consider that that subject, reconceived as
a self with inwardness, can never mediate the absolutely qualitative
difference between what is finite in that self and what is infinite. This
failure of mediation is what underscores the paradoxical character of
existence; the passionate and nonrational affirmation of that paradox, an
affirmation that must be infinitely repeated, is faith; the effort pre-
emptively to resolve this paradox is the feat of despair. In this sense,
despair marks the limit of dialectical mediation or, rather, every effort at
mediation will be read by Kierkegaard as symptomatic of despair. Every
synthesis presumes and institutes a repudiation of that which cannot be
comprehended by thought; infinity is precisely that which eludes
conceptualization. That refused infinity returns, however, as the infinite
movement of despair in the existing individual who seeks to resolve the
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paradox of existence through thought. Through the invocation of despair,
Kierkegaard marks out the limits of the Hegelian ideal of synthesis:
“Despair is the misrelation in the relation of a synthesis that relates itself
to itself” (SUD, 15).
The Hegelian ideal of becoming at one with oneself is achieved
through one’s social relations and through one’s relation to everything
that is outside the self. For Hegel, the subject discovers that other human
beings and objects are part of its own identity, that in relating to others
and to objects, the human subject enacts (or actualizes) some of its own
most fundamental capacities. Hence, the subject achieves a certain
oneness with itself through relating to that which is different from itself.
This oneness, however, is not a possibility for the Kierkegaardian self. As
much as that self might want to affirm itself as the ground or origin of
its own relations with others, it is bound to fail. This self can take
responsibility for its own capacities by denying that it is itself produced
by that which is greater than itself. That is one kind of despair, the
despair of willing to be oneself. On the other hand, if that self tries to
relinquish all responsibility for itself by claiming that some greater and
infinite reality, God, has produced everything about that self, then that
self is in a different kind of despair, the despair of willing not to be
oneself. There is no escape from this paradox. Hence, to be a self means
either to be in one of these two forms of despair or to have faith. But in
both despair and faith, this paradox is never resolved. In despair, one
lives one side of the paradox and then another (one takes radical
responsibility for oneself or not at all), but in faith, one affirms the
paradox, taking responsibility for oneself at the same time affirming that
one is not the origin of one’s existence.
One might ask, is one always either in despair or faith? The answer
for Kierkegaard is yes. For the most part, human beings live in despair,
and they do not even know that they are in despair. In fact, this not
knowing that one is in despair is a symptom of despair. The person who
does not know that there is a task, a struggle to affirm oneself in this
paradoxical way, makes some set of presumptions about the solidity of
its own existence which remain unquestioned and, hence, outside the
difficulty of faith. And there appears to be no way to faith except
through despair. But faith for Kierkegaard does not provide a solution
for the paradox of the self. Indeed, nothing provides such a solution. The
self is an alternation, a constant pitching to and fro, a lived paradox, and
faith does not halt or resolve that alternation into a harmonious or
synthetic whole; on the contrary, faith is precisely the affirmation that
there can be no resolution. And insofar as ‘synthesis’ represents the
rational resolution of the paradox, and the paradox cannot be resolved,
then it follows that faith emerges precisely at the moment at which
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‘synthesis’ shows itself to be a false solution. This is, as it were,
Kierkegaard’s last laugh on Hegel. Whereas Hegel argues that the failure
of any given synthesis points the way to a greater and more inclusive
synthesis, Kierkegaard tries to show that synthesis itself, no matter how
inclusive, cannot resolve the paradox of the self. Concretely, this
difference between Hegel and Kierkegaard implies that the self will
ultimately have a very different experience of and in the world. For
Hegel, the subject will eventually find a unified and harmonious relation
with what appears at first to be outside itself, so that it can, ideally, find
itself at home in the world, ‘of ’ the world that it is ‘in.’ But for
Kierkegaard, that which is ‘outside’ the finite self, namely, the infinite, is
also ‘within’ the self as freedom and the dual possibility of despair and
faith (all of which are ‘infinite’ passions, passions that can have no end);
further, the infinite that persists as the ground of the finite self or within
the self as its own passion will never fully belong to the finite self or the
finite world in which it nevertheless exists in some less than apparent
way. Hence, for Kierkegaard, the infinity that is the source of the self
and which persists in the self as its passion will never fully be ‘of’ the
world in which it dwells. The self, for Kierkegaard, will be perpetually
estranged not only from itself, but from its origins and from the world in
which it finds itself.
One might imagine an Hegelian rejoinder to Kierkegaard’s affirmation
of the paradoxical self. Hegel might argue that if there is something in the
self which is infinite, that infinity must nevertheless appear in some way in
order to be known. In Hegelian language, one might say that for the
infinite to become actual and, hence, knowable, it must become
determinate or appear in some form. And Hegel imagined that certain
kinds of concepts could be both finite (particular, determinate, specific)
and infinite (nonspecific, indeterminate, unbounded). Hegel wanted to
arrive at a concept, understood as a kind of speculative thought, in which
the finite and the infinite would not only coexist, but be essentially
dependent on one another. Imagine a thought which would be your
thought, specifically yours, and therefore determined and specific, but
which would at the same time be a thought of that which is infinite and,
hence, not bound to you at all, indeed, not bounded or limited by
anything. Hegel imagined that the thought of the infinite depends on the
determinate thinker, the place and existence of that thinker, at the same
time that that infinite thought exceeds that determinate place and thinker.
In this sense, the infinite thought depends on the finite thinker in order to
be thought, in order to have its occasion and its form; and the finite
thinker is no thinker, that is, is not really thinking, thinking thought
through to its infinite possibility, unless that finite thinker is able to think
the infinite. Hence, for Hegel, a mutual dependency exists between that
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which is finite and that which is infinite in the human subject, where both
the finite and the infinite form the project of thinking.
Kierkegaard’s rejoinder is firm. If one tries to think the infinite, one has
already made the infinite finite. There can be no thinking of the infinite,
for the infinite is precisely that not only which cannot be thought, but
which insistently forces a crisis in thought itself; the infinite is the limit of
thinking, and not a possible content of any thought. To the Hegelian claim
that the infinite must first appear before it can be known, Kierkegaard
would have to respond that the infinite can neither appear nor be known.
Hence, it is to some extent against Hegel that Kierkegaard formulates his
notion of the infinite and, therefore, also of faith: the infinite eludes the
dialectic, the infinite cannot be grasped or ‘Understood’ by any rational
effort of thought or synthesis. The infinite can be affirmed nonrationally
and, hence, passionately, at the limits of thought, that is, at the limits of
Hegelianism.
FEAR, TREMBLING, AND OTHER INWARD
PASSIONS
This opposition to Hegel puts Kierkegaard in a bind, for Kierkegaard is a
writer, he puts his opposition to Hegel into words, and he produces
concrete and determinate texts, finite things, which house his claims about
that which is infinite. How do we understand Kierkegaard, the finite man
or ‘existing individual,’ in relation to this notion of the infinite that can
never fully be expressed by any finite or determinate statement or text. As
finite expressions, Kierkegaard’s own texts, the Sickness unto Death itself
or Fear and Trembling (1843), can only fail to express the very notion of
infinity that they seek to communicate. Whereas an Hegelian might argue
that Kierkegaard’s writing of the infinite is itself essential to the infinite
that it expresses, Kierkegaard’s response will be that if there is an infinite
that can never be resolved with the finite, then Kierkegaard’s own texts
will always fail to communicate the infinite. Indeed, Kierkegaard’s
response will be: ‘My texts must fail to express the infinite, and it will be
by virtue of that failure that the infinite will be affirmed. Moreover, that
affirming of the infinite will not take the form of a thought; it will take
place at the limits of thought itself; it will force a crisis in thought, the
advent of passion.’
So, for Kierkegaard to set about to write a book against Hegel, against
synthesis, and in favor of passion and faith, he must write a book that fails
to communicate directly the very passion and faith he seeks to defend. An
author cannot embody or express the infinite, for that ‘expression’ would
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inadvertently render finite that which must remain infinite. Indeed, the
words “passion” and “faith” cannot express or communicate passion and
faith; they can only fail to communicate, and in failing, point the way to
an affirmation that is fundamentally beyond language. Aware of this
paradoxical task of trying to write about that which cannot be delivered in
language, Kierkegaard insists upon the necessity of indirect
communication, a kind of communication that knows its own limitations,
and by enacting those limits, indirectly points the way to that which
cannot be communicated.
Evidence of Kierkegaard’s views on indirect communication can be
found in the fact that he often wrote and published under a pseudonym.
Sickness unto Death was published with “Anti-Climacus” as its author.
Fear and Trembling was written by “Johannes de Silentio,” and
Philosophical Fragments by “Johannes Climacus,” also the author of
Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Other pseudonyms include
“Constantin Constantius” (Repetition, 1843) and “Victor Eremita”
(Either/ Or, 1843). The use of a pseudonym raises the question of who is
the author behind the author? Why is Kierkegaard hiding? What is it that
is concealed in this writing, and what is it that is revealed? Does the
author mean to say what he says, or does the pseudonymous author allow
the ‘real’ author to write what he would not write under his own name.
What does it mean to write under the name of another? I do not want to
suggest that pseudonymous authorship always works in the same way or
for the same reasons in Kierkegaard’s work. But it does seem directly
related to the problem of writing the infinite that we mentioned above.
The false name suggests that whatever is written under that name does not
exhaust the full range of what the author, Kierkegaard, might be.
Something is not being uttered or expressed or made known. Minimally, it
is Kierkegaard the man who to some degree hides behind the fictional
author under whose name he writes. On an existential level, however,
there is something in every self which cannot be expressed by any act of
writing. There is that in every self which is silent, and Kierkegaard is clear
that in the end faith, and passion more generally, is not a matter of writing
or speaking, but of remaining silent.
If Kierkegaard’s texts, then, are to be works of faith, they must not
only be a labor of language, but a labor of silence as well. This is
suggested by the pseudonym “Johannes de Silentio,” the ‘author’ of Fear
and Trembling. And in that text, we encounter the figure of Abraham
whose silence cannot be understood by the author. Indeed, Abraham
stands for faith; he is called “a knight of faith,” and yet he does not
speak and leaves us no clues by which we might be able to find reason in
his faith. The author tries repeatedly to understand Abraham’s faith, but
fails.
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What is the story of Abraham, and what is the nature of Abraham’s
faith? Abraham receives a sign from God that he is to take his son to
the top of a mountain, Mount Moriah, and there to slay his son as an
act of faith. According to the Bible, Abraham does not tell Isaac, his
son, what he is about to do, and neither does he tell Sarah, his wife.
Through the pseudonym of Johannes de Silentio, Kierkegaard opens
Fear and Trembling by telling the story of Abraham several times. Each
effort to narrate what happened with Abraham is also an effort to
fathom how it is that Abraham could prepare himself to act in such a
way. If Abraham were willing to slay his son, he risks becoming a
murderer according to conventional ethical norms; he destroys his own
son, his own family, breaking the most cherished of human bonds.
Johannes de Silentio tries to fathom how it could be that Abraham,
who loved his son, was nevertheless willing to defy, resist, or suspend
that love as well as one of the most fundamental laws of ethics in order
to perform his faith. What kind of faith has God exacted from
Abraham such that he must prepare himself to sacrifice that worldly
connection that is most important to him. Is this a cruel God, one to be
disobeyed? And why does Abraham persist in his course, silently
bringing Isaac to the top of Mount Moriah, and draw his hand only
then to have his hand stayed by God?
The example is, of course, a shocking one, but Kierkegaard rehearses
that scene of Abraham climbing Mount Moriah, drawing the sword, and
he tries to understand how any human being could turn against that which
is most important to him in the world. Abraham supplies no explanation,
and Kierkegaard leads us to the point of understanding that there can be
no explanation in words. In the name of what? For what higher good? For
Johannes de Silentio, the answer never comes, but the questions repeat
themselves insistently, exhausting language and opening out into the silent
void of faith.
Kierkegaard imagines how it would be for Abraham to feel the full
force of his love for Isaac and at the same time follow the dictate of a faith
that requires the sacrifice of Isaac. This is surely a paradox, and in the
story of Abraham we receive from Kierkegaard something like an allegory
of the paradoxical self. There is no way to reconcile the profoundly finite
and worldly love of a father for his son with a notion of faith which is
infinite, ‘in’ the world but not ‘of ’ it. This is precisely the kind of paradox
that cannot be thought, cannot be resolved into some harmonious
solution, but which wrecks thought, forces an exposure of thought itself.
In Kierkegaard’s indirect words: “I cannot think myself into Abraham”
(FT, 33); “For my part, I presumably can describe the movements of faith,
but I cannot make them” (FT, 37); “faith begins precisely where thought
stops” (FT, 53).
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But Kierkegaard is not only horrified by the sacrifice that faith has
exacted from Abraham. He is also appalled by the fact that Abraham
appears to get Isaac back, that God not only asks for a sacrifice, but
returns what has been lost, and all this without reason. Furthermore, it
appears that Abraham does not turn against the God who has, it seemed,
played so cruelly with the most precious object of Abraham’s human love:
to be able to lose one’s understanding and along with it everything
finite, for which it is the stockbroker, and then to win the very same
finitude again by virtue of the absurd—this appalls me, but that does
not make me say it [faith] is something inferior, since, on the
contrary, it is the one and only marvel.
On the one hand, Kierkegaard is appalled by the arbitrariness and
whimsical character of the way in which God is figured here as giving and
taking away. On the other hand, Abraham’s faith is a marvel, since it does
not waver in the face of the alternating beneficence and cruelty of this
ultimate authority. Abraham is not shrewd with respect to God. Abraham
does not figure that if he only acts as if he is willing to sacrifice Isaac, God
will stay his hand: “he had faith by virtue of the absurd, for all human
calculation ceased long ago” (FT, 36). If faith designates the limit of
thought, if faith emerges precisely when thought fails to comprehend what
is before it, then Abraham climbs the mountain and draws the sword
without knowing that God will return Isaac to him. What is awesome in
Abraham is that he sustains his faith without knowing that he will receive
Isaac back. Faith is not a bargain; it is that affirmation that emerges when
all bargaining has failed. This is what Kierkegaard means when he claims
that Abraham has faith by virtue of the absurd. And if faith is a leap, it is
a leap beyond thought, beyond calculation, a leap made from and with
passion that can be neither comprehended by thought nor communicated
through language.
In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard claims that he cannot yet make this
leap, but that he can only trace its steps and applaud that movement as a
marvelous thing. He knows enough to recognize that Abraham must have
been in anxiety at the moment in which he drew that sword. And whereas
there are those who would defy God and return to the ethical world,
refuse to draw the sword, and allay their anxiety in that way, Abraham is
not one of them. And whereas there are those who would turn against
their love for Isaac and deny the importance of that bond, Abraham is not
one of them. He turns against neither the finite (Isaac) nor the infinite
(God), but prepares for the paradoxical affirmation of both. In preparing
to sacrifice Isaac, however, Abraham performs “the teleological
suspension of the ethical” (FT, 54). This is not the denial of ethics, but the
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suspension or post-ponement of the ethical domain in the name of that
which is higher, namely, the infinite or the divine. The human and finite
world is grounded in that which is larger than itself, namely, the infinite,
and there are occasions in which the affirmation of that infinity takes
priority over the affirmation of that finite and ethical domain which is the
product of that infinity. But this suspension of the ethical entails anxiety,
and faith does not resolve anxiety, but exists with it. Any finite individual
can have faith only by contracting anxiety, for all faith involves some loss
or weakening of worldly connections, including the worldly connection to
one’s own finite, bodily self. There is in faith a dying away of the finite
self, this body, this name, these worldly connections to family, friends,
lovers, this belonging to a time and a landscape, a home, a city. Faith
underscores that all those finite things in which we are invested are
perishable, and that there is no necessary reason or assurance that they
will remain as we know them or survive at all.
If the story of Abraham is an allegory of faith, and if Abraham himself
is a figure for faith, then we can read the story for its more general
philosophical implications. Aristotle once claimed that philosophy begins
with a sense of wonder, the wonder that there are things rather than no
things. Aristotle’s ‘wonder’ is not so different from Kierkegaard’s sense of
the marvelous in his encounter with Abraham’s faith. For Aristotle,
wonder emerges over the fact that there are things, not over how things
came about—although that interested him, too—but that things came
about at all. Kierkegaard writes of “the emotion which is the passionate
sense for coming into existence: wonder” (PF, 99). In Kierkegaard’s terms,
it is, on the one hand, a marvel that these specific finite beings, humans,
the elements, objects of all kinds, came into the world rather than some
other set of beings. On the other hand, it is terrifying that all that exists
appears to come into the world for no necessary reason at all. For if there
is no necessary reason that things came into the world, there is no
necessary reason that sustains those very things in the world, and there is
no necessary reason that keeps those things from passing out of the finite
world. If these finite beings came into the world from a set of infinite
possibilities, then why is it that, of all the myriad and countless beings that
came into the world, these came into being? There appears to be no
necessity that these beings came into existence, and that others did not, if
we consider that the source or origin of all things is infinite possibility,
another name for God. But the wonder or marvel is provoked by another
realization as well. If that which exists in the finite realm is the
actualization of a set of possibilities, and this set of possibilities is only a
subset of the infinite possibilities that are not actualized in the existing
world, then how do we account for which possibilities made the passage
from infinite possibility into that which exists in the finite world? No
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reason can be supplied: there is no necessity for what exists to exist. In
fact, not only is there no necessity for the infinite, God, to create the finite,
the human world, but it is perfectly absurd that he did at all.
The finite is grounded in the infinite: we know this from Kierkegaard’s
analysis of despair. But the finite never fully expresses the infinite which is
its origin. Precisely to the extent that an existing individual, for instance, is
finite, that is, limited, mortal, located in space and time, and bodily, that
individual is clearly not infinite and, hence, does not fully express the
infinity out of which he or she (absurdly) arises. This passage from the
infinite to the finite cannot be thought; it is wondrous and a marvel, but
also quite terrifying, for there is no necessary reason for anything to exist
or, for that matter, to persist in its existence, that is, to stay alive.
Whatever God is for Kierkegaard, ‘he’ (Kierkegaard tends not to personify
God) is not that which supplies a reason or a necessity for that which
exists. On the contrary, the postulation of the Kierkegaardian God
underscores that existence itself is absurd.
The story of Abraham suggests that whatever exists in this world does so
by virtue of a kind of grace, an arbitrary and irrational act. Existence can be
understood as a kind of unexpected gift, one which comes just as easily as it
is taken away. To have faith means to affirm this contingency, this absurd
coming-into-being of existence, regardless of the suffering that recognition
of absurdity causes. To transform the terror produced by the recognition of
existence in its absurdity is no easy task. Indeed, the aesthete and the ethicist
cannot find relief from this terror; they are in despair to the extent that they
are run by this terror and involved in sensuous or ethical endeavors which
seek to quell the anxiety produced by the fact of human contingency. The
Knight of Resignation in Fear and Trembling can be understood as a figure
at the limit of the ethical domain, tracing the movements of faith, but not
able to make the necessary leap. As a consequence, he is horrified by the
prospect of Abraham’s ‘sacrifice’ of his own son; indeed, the Knight of
Infinite Resignation can understand Abraham’s intended act as a murder—
and not a sacrifice or offering to God.
We might then understand the movement from the ethical domain to
that of faith as the transformation of terror into a sense of grace. The
difficulty with making this movement, however, is that the prospect of
losing one’s worldly attachments, indeed, one’s own finite existence for no
necessary reason, is not easy to face with anything other than terror.
Kierkegaard understood that the task of faith would be especially difficult
to accomplish by those who lived according to the romantic impulse to
invest existing individuals with such enormous value that they cannot
imagine themselves continuing to exist in a world without them. This was
the anguished predicament of the young man in Repetition, and there is
good evidence to support the view that Kierkegaard himself felt just this
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way about Regine Olsen with whom he broke off an engagement to be
married. This broken engagement can be understood as Kierkegaard’s own
‘sacrifice’ which, from an ethical point of view, appeared to be the
emotional equivalent of murder.
In the midst of Kierkegaard’s discussion of Abraham’s faith in Fear and
Trembling, he remarks with due irony that if Hegel’s philosophy were
right, then Abraham would, indeed, be a murderer. For Kierkegaard,
Hegel represents the ethical domain, for in Hegel’s Phenomenology of
Spirit and Philosophy of Right, he argues that the individual realizes his or
her true and proper purpose in a community bound by ethical laws.
Indeed, Hegel argues that if an individual holds him- or herself to be
above the ethical law, that individual is sinful. Kierkegaard objects to
Hegel’s characterization of the assertion of individuality as sin. According
to Kierkegaard, Hegel fails to understand that the individual is higher than
the universal ethical norm, that there are times when ethical laws must be
‘suspended’ or ‘surrendered’ so that a higher value can be affirmed,
namely, the value of faith—which, of course, for Kierkegaard, is always an
individual affair. The relation to God cannot be mediated (this belief
aligns Kierkegaard with Luther). Hegel would believe that God is present
in the ethical law, and that individuals, by submitting to the ethical law,
come into a mediated relationship to God. This happy reconciliation of
the ethical (called ‘the universal’) and the religious (called ‘the absolute’) is
one that Kierkegaard firmly rejects. The middle term, the ethical or
‘universal,’ which Hegel understands to mediate between the individual,
on the one hand, and the divine, on the other, is, for Kierkegaard, precisely
that which must be subordinated and suspended for the absolute and
immediate relation of faith to take place between the individual and God:
“this position cannot be mediated, for all mediation takes place only by
virtue of the universal; it is and as such remains for all eternity a paradox,
impervious to thought” (FT, 56).
In Kierkegaard’s view, Hegel’s ethical community requires the sacrifice
of the individual to an anonymous law. As law-abiding citizens, we are
interchangeable with one another; each of us expresses our true and
proper self through the same acts by which we conform to a law which
applies to all human beings regardless of our differences. In this sense,
none of us are individuals before the law or, rather, each of us is treated by
the law as an anonymous subject. Insofar as Abraham takes distance from
the ethical law which prohibits murder, he becomes an individual, and the
more he refuses to honor the authority of that law over his own existence,
the more individuated he becomes. This act of putting into question the
ethical law as a final authority over one’s life engages Abraham in anxiety,
for in questioning the law, Abraham encounters his own being apart from
the ethical community in which he stands.
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Opposing himself to Hegel’s notion of individuality as sin, Kierkegaard
values this anxiety as human freedom, the demand to make a decision
whether or not to comply with the law or whether to follow a higher
authority. Although Hegel appears to worry about such a moment in
which the individual stands apart from the ethical community, suspending
the power of its laws to govern his or her life, Hegel also appreciates fear
and trembling as necessary moments in the development of the human
subject.12 Significantly, Kierkegaard does not acknowledge that moment in
Hegel in which fear and trembling are considered to be necessary
experiences in the acquisition of human freedom. We can find that
moment at the end of Hegel’s well-known chapter in the Phenomenology
entitled “Lordship and Bondage.” There the bondsman who has been the
property of the lord has cut himself loose from his own enslavement. What
we might expect is the jubilant celebration of freedom, but what we
encounter in the emerging bondsman instead is a shattering fear. Consider
the following description of the emancipated bondsman from Hegel’s
Phenomenology of Spirit as an example of the fear and trembling
produced by the experience of human freedom temporarily untethered by
authority. The bondsman labors on objects, and for the first time
recognizes his own labor in that which he makes. In the recognition of
himself in the object of his making, he is struck with fear:
the formative activity…has the negative significance of fear. For, in
fashioning the thing, the bondsman’s own negativity [his freedom]
becomes an object for him…this objective negative moment is none
other than the allen being before which it has trembled.
(PS, 118)13
Whereas the bondsman has been afraid of the lord, he is now frightened of
his own freedom now that that freedom has become that which ‘lords’
over his own existence. A few lines later, Hegel continues with a passage
that further links the expression of freedom through work with the
experience of fear:
Without the formative activity, fear remains inward and mute, and
consciousness does not become explicitly for itself. If consciousness
fashions the thing without that initial absolute fear, it is only an
empty self-centred attitude…. If it has not experienced absolute fear
but only some lesser dread, the negative being has remained for it
something external [its freedom still appears to belong to another
and is not yet its own], its substance has not been infected by it
through and through.
(PS, 119)
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Hegel goes on to remark that if the bondsman has not been shaken by fear
in the very fiber of its being, it will remain “a freedom enmeshed in
servitude.”
We can begin to see here that Kierkegaard’s characterization of Hegel is
not always fair. Hegel is clearly not in favor of the enslavement of the
individual to the ethical law, for the fear and trembling associated with the
moment of emancipation will inform the individual as he or she enters
ethical life in the following chapter in the Phenomenology. Indeed, one
might well ask the question of whether Kierkegaard’s very language of
“fear and trembling” is not derived from Hegel’s description of the
emerging bondsman in The Phenomenology of Spirit. How far is the
bondsman’s trembling at the sight of his own freedom from Abraham’s
anxiety in the face of his own potential act? How do these ‘tremblings’
differ?
Whereas Hegel’s bondsman trembles before that which he has created,
the external confirmation of his own power to create, Abraham trembles
(inwardly) before that which he is compelled by God to sacrifice and
destroy. Whereas the bondsman is frightened of his own capacity to
create, a capacity which in its apparent limitlessness makes the bondsman
into a figure with enormous responsibility and power, Abraham is
compelled to act according to a divine demand that he cannot understand.
In this sense, Abraham’s freedom is not guided by reason, but by that
which is irrational, beyond reason, and which requires an obedience to
that irrationality over any human law. The bondsman, on the other hand,
appears to legislate a law for itself, expressed in its own ‘formative
activity’ or labor. The bondsman appears to be temporarily without an
authority, a ‘lord,’ who is other to himself. But Abraham, he is enthralled
to a Lord who is so radically different from himself that he cannot
understand him at all. That the bondsman is compelled to be free without
the guidance of a supervening authority is an unbearable situation which
leads to the development, in the following chapter on the “Unhappy
consciousness,” of a conscience, the self-imposition of an ethical law, what
Hegel himself understands as a form of self-enslavement. Hence, Hegel’s
bondsman retreats from the fearful prospect of his own freedom through
enslaving himself to ethical projects and practicing various rituals of self-
denial. Abraham, on the other hand, must bind himself to an authority
whose demands are incomprehensible, an act which leaves him
frighteningly detached from the ethical community and from his own
rational capacities. Kierkegaard tells us that it is through this persistence
in fear and trembling that Abraham comes to the full and gracious
experience of faith.
The task of faith is to continue to affirm infinite possibility in the face
of events which appear to make existence itself a radically impossible
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venture. What astonished Kierkegaard about the Abraham story is that
Abraham faced the prospect of losing what was most precious to him in
the world, and he still did not lose faith and curse God: he maintained his
faith not only in the face of that loss, but in the face of having to make
the sacrifice himself.14 Abraham loves Isaac, but that human bond
cannot be the most important passion of his life, for what merely exists
can come and go, and that transience can never be the object of faith. If
in the throes of romantic love or in the complicated emotional ties of
family life, we say that our existence is meaningless without some
existing individual, that is a symptom that we are in despair. For
Kierkegaard, if any existing individual becomes the fundamental reason
to live, that individual must be sacrificed so that faith can return to its
proper object: the infinite.
In Repetition, published simultaneously with Fear and Trembling,
Kierkegaard relates the story of how a young man, a thinly veiled
substitute for Kierkegaard himself, breaks off an engagement with a girl
he loves. The sacrifice appears absurd, for he has not fallen out of love
with her. And yet, if the girl has become the ultimate reason for living, the
source of all affirmation, then the young man has transferred and invested
the boundlessness of his passion onto an existing individual: this is, for
Kierkegaard, a kind of despair and a failure of faith. Precisely because she
has become an object he is not willing to lose, he must demonstrate his
willingness to lose her altogether. His sacrifice is not unlike Abraham’s,
except that Abraham, being a “Knight of Faith,” receives Isaac back
again, whereas the young man, a veritable “Knight of Resignation,”
appears to orchestrate and suffer an irreversible loss. He knows how to
sacrifice finite things, and to avoid the despair that characterizes the life of
the aesthete as well as the ethicist, but he does not know how to affirm
that infinity which appears to make existence utterly absurd.
What does it mean that whereas Abraham receives Isaac back, the
young man in Repetition fails to have his love returned? To have faith
means no longer to invest absolute meaning in what is finite, whether it is
an individual person, a set of objects or possessions, a homeland, a job, a
family. All of these sites of investment are finite and perishable, and when
we transfer religious passion onto those things, according to Kierkegaard,
we turn away from God and invest the things of this world with a
displaced religious meaning and, hence, fall into despair. If one makes the
leap of faith, then one invests absolute passion and meaning in the infinite;
this entails a suspension not only of the ethical, but of the finite realm
altogether, for any finite object of passion will now be understood as
emerging as a gift from the infinite and passing back eventually into the
infinite. For Kierkegaard, it is only once we affirm the transience and
contingency (nonnecessity) of that which we love in this world that we are
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free to love it at all. If Abraham gets Isaac back, it is because he has
suspended his attachments to that which is finite, affirmed the infinite, and
so understood that nothing that exists in this world can sustain an
absolute passion. It is in this sense that Isaac was always a gift from God;
one’s own existence is a gift, and that of every other existing thing.
Of course, to recognize that there is no necessary reason that some
beings exist and other possible beings do not produces not only a sense of
wonder, but a sense of terror as well. The thought of an existing life as a
contingency, as an arbitrary event which just as well could not have
happened, or which could without reason pass away, this is a thought
that, strictly speaking, cannot be maintained; it is a thought which
founders on itself, for how can a thought think the contingency of the
thinker who thinks it? But it is this thought that leads to the anxiety over
existence that leads to the question of faith. To witness the existing world
this way, as a terrifying and wondrous gift, is to know that one is not the
author of that world, that the father, strictly speaking, is not the ‘origin’ of
the son, and that not only do all things originate—absurdly, wondrously—
in the infinite, but all existing things return there as well.
For Kierkegaard, this problem of the contingency of existence has
implications for human love, a passion that verges on faith, but which
becomes despair when it becomes too much like faith, an absolute or
infinite passion. To love that which exists without at the same time
knowing the fragile and contingent nature of existence is to be in despair;
if one tries to love a human object as if it were absolute, one projects a
religious passion onto a human object. The result, for Kierkegaard, is to
become wracked with displaced passion and a constant sense of loss.
Kierkegaard describes this problem at some length in the first volume of
Either/Or. Considered to be part of Kierkegaard’s early writings, Either/
Or is composed of two volumes. The first offers writings that enact and
explore the aesthetic point of view; the second volume offers sermons and
treatises in the ethical point of view. Neither of these perspectives is the
same as faith, but Kierkegaard, in unmistakenly Hegelian fashion, suggests
that these two spheres, these two ways of approaching the world, have to
be experienced in order to understand the limits of each and the
superiority of faith. There is no writing in the perspective of faith in either
of these volumes, but it is unclear that such a writing could exist; faith is
nevertheless there in the writings as the path not chosen, the way to affirm
the paradox that emerges between the aesthetic and ethical perspectives.
The vain effort to make of a human being an object of absolute and
infinite passion is the fateful predicament of the aesthete in Either/Or. The
alternative in that text is to become a purely ethical being, one who makes
no attachments to anything finite, but acts in accordance with a universal
law, a law that applies to everyone, and which makes of its obedient
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subject an anonymous and impersonal subject. The aesthete, on the other
hand, values what is most immediate and finite as if it were absolute; the
ethical person (also termed the “Knight of Infinite Resignation”) treats the
human law as if it were absolute, and invests his or her full passion into
the application of that law. The one in faith, however, lives fully in the
finite world, but affirms its contingency at the same time. This is the
marvel that Kierkegaard claims he cannot perform, to love that which
exists and to affirm that it might be lost, that it cannot serve as the
ultimate object of passion, that for which one lives. Human love requires
the knowledge of grace, that what is given for us to love is not ours, and
that its loss refers us to that which is the origin of all things finite,
including ourselves. This means that for the one who has faith, love is
always an anxious and ironic affair, and there is no way to see directly
how that infinite faith in that which is infinite lives alongside the finite
love of that which exists. In Kierkegaard’s terms, “absolutely to express
the sublime in the pedestrian—only that the knight [of faith] can do it, and
this is the one and only marvel” (FT, 41).
One implication of Kierkegaard’s paradoxical view of faith is that it is
not a form of asceticism. Kierkegaard does not advise a turning away from
the finite world. On the contrary, he imagines that the Knight of Faith will
be one who dwells among the ordinary world of things, a “tax collector”
he suggests in Fear and Trembling. One would not be able to see from the
outside that this individual has faith, for faith, by virtue of its radical
inwardness, is inexpressible. The entirety of the finite realm would be
‘returned’ to such an individual for the paradoxical reason that, through
faith, he or she no longer fears the loss of what exists; in faith, the
individual affirms the absurdity and arbitrariness by which the existing
world comes into being and passes out again. That affirmation is not a
kind of wisdom or knowledge, but an irrational passion that emerges at
the limits of all thinking.
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THE PARADOXICAL LANGUAGE OF FAITH
Although it is clear that Kierkegaard writes in favor of faith, there are at
least two remaining questions that trouble any reader of his works. The
first question concerns the ‘what’ of faith: in what does Kierkegaard have
faith? What is this God which appears to be the infinite or, more
specifically, infinite possibility? The second question is intimately related
to the first: how could we have received an answer to the question ‘in
what does Kierkegaard have faith?’ if we expect the answer to arrive in
language? After all, we have already learned that faith cannot be
expressed in language, that it is the infinite passion of the inwardness of
the self. But what is the status of Kierkegaard’s own texts, if we
understand the purpose of these texts to be an incitement to faith? How
do these texts work? How do they achieve their purpose, if from the start
we know that they can never express faith or, if they claim to have
expressed faith, they have failed in that very task?
Kierkegaard’s God is in-finite which means that this God can never be
identified with one of his products. This God is said to be the origin of the
existing world, but this is not a God who, in a personified form, at some
point in history—or prior to history—said ‘Let there be light’ and light
suddenly there was. And it is not that Kierkegaard disputes the truth of
the Bible, but he insists that the truth of the Bible is not to be found in the
language of the text. In this sense, Kierkegaard is against a literal reading
of the Bible, one which takes every word printed there to be the
transmitted word of God. On the contrary, the ‘truth’ of the Bible is not,
properly speaking, in the text, but is to be found in the reader, in the
various acts by which the various injunctions to faith are appropriated and
taken up by those who read the text. The truth of the Bible is to be found
in the faith of those who read the Bible. The text is a condition by which
a certain kind of instruction in faith takes place, but faith can never be
achieved by learning what the Bible says, only by finally turning away
from that text and turning inward to discover the infinite passion that
emerges from the demand to affirm contingency. In Philosophical
Fragments, the Bible and biblical scholarship are treated with irony: these
texts can deliver no historical truth of interest to the person interested in
faith, for no historical documentation regarding the existence or teachings
of Jesus Christ can ever convince a person into faith. Faith does not arrive
as the result of a persuasive argument; faith (along with its alternative,
despair) is precisely what has the chance to emerge when all
argumentation and historical proof fail.15
But there is a further difficulty with an historical approach to faith.
Some Christian scholars argue that it can be proven that Jesus Christ lived,
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that he came into the world, and that he was the son of God. The proof
‘that’ he existed is, however, not enough for Kierkegaard. That assertion
simply prompts him to ask a series of philosophical questions which the
historical enquiry cannot answer: what does it mean for anything to ‘come
into existence’? If something can be said to ‘come into existence,’ then at
some early point in time, it did not exist at all. How, then, can something
which is nonbeing become transformed into being? This is, of course, the
question that preoccupied us above when we considered how
philosophical wonder focuses on the apparent absurdity that some things
exist rather than not, that certain possibilities become actual or finite,
whereas other possibilities remain merely possible. Possibility and
actuality are mutually exclusive states, that is, a thing is either possible or
actual, but it would make no sense to say that it is both at once.
Therefore, to say that a given thing has come into existence implies that it
has moved from a state of possibility to one of actuality. This transition
cannot be ‘thought,’ says Kierkegaard, but is a contradiction, one that
accompanies all ‘coming into being.’
In Philosophical Fragments, Kierkegaard considers the highly
significant paradox that in the person of the Savior (whose historical
status remains uncertain or, at least, irrelevant), it appears that what is
Eternal has come into time, and that what is infinite has appeared in
finite form. Whereas Hegel would claim that the finite appearance in
this consequential instance expresses and actualizes the infinite, that
this person in time, aging and mortal, expressed that which can never
die; Kierkegaard takes issue with such a notion, arguing that this
occurrence is utterly paradoxical, that the human and divine aspects of
the figure of Christ can never be reconciled; insofar as he is infinite, he
cannot appear in finite form, without losing his status as infinite; and
insofar as he is finite, he cannot become infinite, for finitude implies
mortality.
What is striking about Kierkegaard’s writing in Philosophical
Fragments is that the so-called miracle of God coming into existence
recurs at every moment that some finite thing ‘comes into being.’ Christ is
no exception to this paradoxical movement, but neither is he singular.
After all, every human self emerges from a set of infinite possibilities and
so moves from the infinite (which is nonbeing, that which is not yet finite
and does not yet have a specified kind of being) to the finite (or being).
Indeed, anything that comes into existence is miraculous for the very
reasons we set out above in our discussion of wonder. In making this
move, Kierkegaard appears to be taking an almost arrogant distance from
the church authorities, the Scriptures, and the religious authorities whose
task it is to settle historical details about Christ’s sojourn on earth. Indeed,
Kierkegaard goes so far as to subject the key concepts of Christianity to a
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new set of definitions, ones that are devised by him. Kierkegaard is not
interested in testing his interprerations against the Bible or against earlier
interpretations; he devises and sets forth his own. Throughout the
introductory chapter of Philosophical Fragments, Kierkegaard appears to
take over the power to name that properly belonged to God in the book of
Genesis. In Genesis, God spoke and said, ‘Let there be…light, man,
woman, beasts, etc.,’ and the very power of his voice was sufficient to
bring these entities into being. Kierkegaard appears to appropriate this
power of naming for himself, but the entities he brings into existence
through his writings are Christian concepts. As a result, he names these
concepts and, in the naming, revises their meaning according to his own
inter-pretive scheme: “What now shall we call such a Teacher, who
restores the lost condition and gives the learner the Truth? Let us call him
Saviour…let us call him Redeemer” (PF, 21). Further definitions are
offeredfor“conversion,”“repentance,”“NewBirth,”andmore
(PF, 22–3).
What are we to make of this Kierkegaardian willingness to fabricate
new meanings for the orthodox terms of Christianity? Is it not a kind of
arrogance or pride to offer new interpretations for such words? By what
right does Kierkegaard proceed with such obvious enthusiasm to create
new meanings for old words? Is this creative way with words related to
Kierkegaard’s enigmatic career as an author?
What is the authority of the author? For Kierkegaard, faith cannot be
communicated, so that any effort to write a book that communicates faith
will, by definition, have to fail. In this way, then, Kierkegaard must write
a book which constantly fails to communicate faith, a book which
insistently renounces its own authority to state what faith is, a text which
turns back upon itself and effectively wills its own failure. If the reader of
his book knows that the book cannot offer knowledge of faith, then that
reader will be seduced by the promise of that knowledge only to be
disappointed in an instructive way. Kierkegaard’s language must, then,
perform the paradoxical task of enacting the limits of language itself. The
author who wishes to point the way to faith must resist every effort to
communicate faith directly; in other words, that author must will the
failure of his own book, and in that very failure, know its success.
In Sickness unto Death, Kierkegaard considers the peculiar kind of
despair that afflicts “poets” and makers of fiction. We can read in this
diagnosis a thinly veiled autobiographical confession. Consider that
Kierkegaard is a kind of poet,16 one who produces a fictional narrator for
most of his early texts through the construction of various pseudonyms.
He then produces “examples” of faith and despair, fabricating “types” of
individuals, embellishing on biblical and classical characters: Abraham,
Don Juan, etc. And now consider Kierkegaard’s diagnosis of the person
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who suffers from defiant despair, the will to be oneself, that is, the will to
be the sole ground and power of one’s own existence and, therefore, to
take the place of God:
this is the self that a person in despair wills to be, severing the self
from any relation to a power that has established it, or severing it
from the idea that there is such a power…the self in despair wants to
be master of itself or to create itself.
(SUD, 68)
Kierkegaard then explains that this kind of despairing individual
regularly fantasizes that he or she is all kinds of things that they are not:
“the self in despair…constantly relates to itself only by way of imaginary
constructions” (SUD, 68). This fiction-producing self can make itself
into “an imaginatively constructed God,” but this self is for that reason
“always building castles in the sky…only shadowboxing” (SUD, 69). At
an extreme, this defiant form of despair becomes demonic despair, and
here the will to fabricate and fictionalize asserts itself in clear defiance,
even hatred, of God. Is there, for Kierkegaard, a stark opposition
between the life of faith and that of fiction-making? And can
Kierkegaard himself give up his imaginary constructions in order to live
the life of faith, one which we know, from the consideration of
Abraham, is a life of silence?
Demonic despair, which Kierkegaard calls the most intensive form of
despair, is rooted in “a hatred of existence”: “not even in defiance or
defiantly does it will to be itself, but for spite” (SUD, 69). And what
evidence does such a person have against existence? The one in demonic
despair is himself the evidence that justifies his hatred of existence. This
appears to imply that the one in demonic despair, that incessant maker
of fictions, hates himself for producing an imaginary construction of
himself, but nevertheless persists in this self-fabrication. This is a self
which, through fiction-making, postures as the creator of its own
existence, thus denying the place of God as the true author of human
existence. But this demonic self must also despise itself for trying to take
over the power of God. This self in demonic despair alternates between
self-fabrication and self-hatred. Inasmuch as this demonic one is an
author, and is Kierkegaard himself, he produces a fiction only then to
tear down the construction he has just made. The one in demonic despair
can acknowledge the divine authorship that enables his own fiction, his
pseudonymous work, only by admitting that what he has produced is a
necessary fraud.
At the end of Part One of Sickness unto Death, Kierkegaard appears to
begin this disavowal of his own production, clearing the way for an
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appreciation of God as the only ‘first-rate author’ in town, acknowledging
that Kierkegaard’s own work must always be under-stood as derived from
the power that constitutes him, a power that precedes and enables his own
imaginary production:
Figuratively speaking, it is as if an error slipped into an author’s
writing and the error became conscious of itself as an error—perhaps
it actually was not a mistake but in a much higher sense an essential
part of the whole production—and now this error wants to mutiny
against the author, out of hatred toward him, forbidding him to
correct it and in maniacal defiance saying to him: No, I refuse to be
erased; I will stand as a witness against you, a witness that you are a
second-rate author.
(SUD, 74)
Written thus in 1848 and published in 1849, we can see here the fruition
of Kierkegaard’s intention to resist the seduction of authorship. Two years
earlier, he wrote in his journal: “My idea is to give up being an author
(which I can only be altogether or not at all) and prepare myself to be a
pastor.”17 It appears that Kierkegaard gave up his career as a literary and
philosophical author after Sickness unto Death, and persevered in writing
purely religious tracts. Had he achieved faith? Did he overcome despair?
Was his writing as compelling after the leap or did it turn out to require
the very despair he sought to overcome?
NOTES
1 It would be interesting to compare this claim with Freud’s efforts to address
the question of ‘anxiety’ through analysis.
2 SUD: Sickness unto Death, ed. and trans. H.V.Hong and E.H.Hong
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983).
3 “Hegel and Hegelianism constitute an essay in the comical.” Concluding
Unscientific Postscript, trans. D.Swenson and W.Lowrie (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1974), henceforth referred to as CUP, p. 34.
4 “In order to avoid confusion, it is at once necessary to recall that our
treatment of the problem does not raise the question of the truth of
Christianity. It merely deals with the problem of the individual’s relationship
to Christianity. It has nothing whatever to do with the systematic zeal of the
personally indifferent individual to arrange the truths of Christianity in
paragraphs; it deals with the concern of the infinitely interested individual for
his own relationship to such a doctrine.” Ibid., p. 18.
5 Descartes, Fifth Meditation. God is perfect and can only make that which is
equally perfect or less perfect than him-/her-/itself, for nothing can be more
perfect than God. If there is something which has some degree of perfection in
it, that thing must be produced by that which is at least as perfect or more
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perfect than the thing itself. There is nothing in the world that is more perfect
than human beings even though human beings are imperfect in some ways
(they sin, they are ignorant). This implies that human beings must be created
by that which is equally or more perfect than themselves. And it is perfect
being that is called God.
6 FT: Fear and Trembling/Repetition, ed. and trans. H.V.Hong and E.H.Hong
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983).
7 See Kierkegaard’s discussion of Abraham, ibid.
8 PF: Philosophical Fragments, ed. N.Thulstrop, trans. D.Swenson and H.V.
Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962).
9 “Commentator’s introduction,” PF, p. 1xxv.
10 See Kierkegaard’s discussion of the limits of speculative thought in CUP, ch. 2,
“The speculative point of view.”
11 This is a view which is falsely attributed to existential philosophy generally,
but which we can see ought not to be ascribed to Kierkegaard.
12 It is interesting to note that Kierkegaard takes the phrase “fear and trembling”
from the New Testament, Philippians 2:12–14, but applies it to an Old
Testament figure, Abraham. Hegel’s placement of “fear and trembling” in
relation to work is perhaps slightly closer to the meaning of the New
Testament use: “Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in
my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own
salvation with fear and trembling: For it is God which worketh in you both to
will and to do of his good pleasure.” The Dartmouth Bible, ed.
R.B.Chamberlin and H. Feldman (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961).
13 PS: Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V.Miller (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1977).
14 Imagine if Hegel’s bondsman were to have created a son with a woman, and
that he was then compelled to sacrifice that son, how would Hegel’s analysis
have to change in order to take account of Abraham’s anguish?
15 Note Kierkegaard’s ironic tone in his writing against the historical efforts to
supply a proof of God’s existence: “And how does the God’s existence emerge
from the proof? Does it follow straightway, without any breach of
continuity?…As long as I keep my hold on the proof, i.e. continue to
demonstrate, the existence does not come out, if for no other reason than that
I am engaged in proving it; but when I let the proof go, the existence is there.
But this act of letting go is surely also something; it is indeed a contribution of
mine. Must not this also be taken into account, this little moment, brief as it
may be—it need not be long, for it is a leap. However brief this moment, if
only an instantaneous now, this ‘now’ must be included in the reckoning.” PF,
p. 53.
Kierkegaard here plays on the double meaning of the act of letting go
being “a contribution of mine.” On the one hand, this is his philosophical
contribution to the critique of rationalism, and “the leap” is a concept he
introduced into philosophical and religious discourse. On the other hand, he is
suggesting that no person, including himself, can arrive at faith without
making a contribution of him- or herself. And this contribution, being one of
passion, has to come from the inwardness of the self, and be directed toward a
faith which no ‘proof can automatically produce.
16 See L.Mackey, Kierkegaard: A Kind of Poet (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1971).
17 Quoted in the Introduction to CUP, p. xiii.
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KIERKEGAARD’S SPECULATIVE DESPAIR
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Original language editions
11.1 Kierkegaard, S. Samlede Vaerker, 20 vols, ed. P.Rohde, Copenhagen: Gyld-
endalske Boghandel, 1962–3.
English translations
Works cited
(Dates of original publication in Danish are given with the first reference to the
work in the text.)
11.2 Kierkegaard, S. Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. D.Swenson and
W.Lowrie, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974.
11.3 Kierkegaard, S. Either/Or, 2 vols, trans. D.Swenson and L.M.Swenson,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971.
11.4 Kierkegaard, S. Fear and Trembling/Repetition, ed. and trans. H.V.Hong
and E.H.Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983.
11.5 Kierkegaard, S. Philosophical Fragments ed. N.Thulstrup, trans.
D.Swenson and H.V.Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962.
11.6 Kierkegaard, S. Sickness unto Death, ed. and trans. H.V.Hong and
E.H.Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983.
Works not cited
11.7 Kierkegaard, S. Attack upon “Christendom”, trans. W.Lowrie, Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1940.
11.8 Kierkegaard, S. The Concept of Dread, trans. W.Lowrie, Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1957.
11.9 Kierkegaard, S. The Concept of Irony, trans. L.M.Capel, New York:
Harper & Row, 1965.
11.10 Kierkegaard, S. Edifying Discourses: A Selection, trans. D.F.Swenson and
L.M.Swenson, New York: Harper & Row, 1958.
11.11 Kierkegaard, S. For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourselves!, trans.
W.Lowrie, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974.
11.12 Kierkegaard, S. The Point of View for my Work as an Author, trans.
W.Lowrie, New York: Harper & Row, 1962.
11.13 Kierkegaard, S. Purity of Heart, trans. D.V.Steere, New York: Harper &
Row, 1956.
11.14 Kierkegaard, S. Stages on Life’s Way, trans. W.Lowrie, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1940.
11.15 Kierkegaard, S. Training in Christianity, trans. W.Lowrie, Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1944.
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THE AGE OF GERMAN IDEALISM
11.16 Kierkegaard, S. The Works of Love, trans. H.V.Hong and E.H.Hong, New
York: Harper & Row, 1964.
11.17 Soren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, 4 vols, ed. and trans. H.V.Hong
and E.H.Hong, assisted by G.Melantschuk, Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1967–75.
Bibliographies
11.18 Himmelstrup, J. Soren Kierkegaard International Bibliografi, Copenhagen:
Nyt Nordisk Forlag Arnold Busck, 1962.
11.19 Jorgensen, A. Soren Kierkegaard-litteratur, 1961–1970, Aarhus:
Akademisk Boghandel, 1971; also Soren Kierkegaard-litteratur,
1971–1980, Aarhus: privately printed, 1983.
11.20 Lapointe, F. Soren Kierkegaard and his Critics: An International
Bibliography of Criticism, Westport: Greenwood Press, 1980.
11.21 McKinnon, A. The Kierkegaard Indices, 4 vols, Leiden: E.J.Brill,
1970.
11.22 Thompson, J. (ed.) Kierkegaard: A Collection of Critical Essays, New
York: Doubleday Anchor, 1972.
Influences
11.23 Crites, S. In the Twilight of Christendom: Hegel vs Kierkegaard on Faith
and History, AAR Studies in Religion, 2, Chambersburg, Pa.:
American Academy of Religion, 1972.
11.24 Dupré, L. A Dubious Heritage: Studies in the Philosophy of Religion after
Kant, New York: Paulist Press, 1977.
11.25 Heiss, R. Hegel, Kierkegaard, Marx: Three Great Philosophers whose Ideas
Changed the Course of Civilization, trans. E.B.Garside, New York:
Delta, 1975.
11.26 Kroner, R. “Kierkegaard or Hegel?” Revue International de Philosophie 6,
I (1952): 79–96.
11.27 Löwith, K. From Hegel to Nietzsche: The Revolution in Nineteenth-
Century Thought, trans. D.Green, New York: Holt, Rinehart &
Winston, 1964; London: Constable, 1965; Garden City: Doubleday
Anchor, 1967.
11.28 Taylor, M.C. Journeys to Selfhood: Hegel and Kierkegaard, Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1980.
11.29 Theunissen, M. The Other, Boston: MIT Press, 1987.
11.30 Thulstnip, N. Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel, trans. G.L.Strengen,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980.
11.31 Wahl, J. Etudes kierkegardiennes, 4th edn, Paris: J.Vrin, 1974.
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General surveys
11.32 Adorno, T. Kierkegaard: Constructions of the Aesthetic, trans. R.Hullot-
Kentor, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989.
11.33 Agacinski, S. Aparté: Conceptions and Deaths of Soren Kierkegaard, trans.
K.Newmark, Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1988.
11.34 Collins, J. The Mind of Kierkegaard, Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1953.
11.35 Holmer, P.L. The Grammar of Faith, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978.
11.36 Lebowitz, N. Kierkegaard: A Life of Allegory, Baton Rouge: Louisiana
State University Press, 1985.
11.37 Mackey, L. Kierkegaard: A Kind of Poet, Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1971.
11.38 Malanfschok, G. Kierkegaard’s Thought, Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1971.
11.39 Perkins, R.L. (ed.) Kierkegaard’s “Fear and Trembling”: Critical
Appraisals, Birmingham, Ala.: University of Alabama Press, 1981.
11.40 Smith, J.K. (ed.) Kierkegaard’s Truth: The Disclosure of Self, Psychiatry
and the Humanities Series, 5, New Haven: Yale University Press,
1981.
11.41 Thompson, J. (ed.) Kierkegaard: A Collection of Critical Essays, Garden
City: Doubleday Anchor, 1972.
11.42 Thompson, J. The Lonely Labyrinth: Kierkegaard’s Pseudonymous Works,
Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967.
11.43 Wyschogrod, M. Kierkegaard and Heidegger, The Hague: Nijhoff, 1976.
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Glossary
a priori—In the early eighteenth century, knowledge was called a priori if it was
acquired by reason, not observation, or by deduction, not induction.
Opposite: a posteriori. Kant introduced a new meaning, described under “a
priori knowledge.”
a priori knowledge—what can be known independently of any (particular)
experience.
Absolute—the complete, all-encompassing whole of reality. In Hegel’s philosophy,
the term refers to knowable reality.
absolute idealism—the metaphysical position that mind and reality share the same
categorical structure, and thus that understanding the nature and
fundamental structures of thought is the same enterprise as understanding
the nature and fundamental structures of the world. To be distinguished
from epistemological idealisms of any kind.
absolute knowledge—unbiased, undistorted knowledge, without inconsistencies.
In Hegel’s philosophy, this term does not refer to knowing every detail, but
to having an adequate understanding of knowlege and the Absolute, and to
recognizing that knowledge and the Absolute are not epistemologically
separate.
abstract—in Hegel’s philosophy, that which is empty and devoid of content.
Abstract knowledge focuses on certain aspects of a thing at the expense of
other aspects and the thing’s context.
acquired character—in Schopenhauer’s philosophy, the gradually accumulated
knowlege of what one wills and of one’s abilities. Such knowledge has
transformative impact on behavior, for it provides new motives to the
individual’s will.
analytic judgment—a judgment or assertion the predicate of which is implicit in
the concept of the subject. Example: a bachelor is an unmarried man.
ars charactenstica—a form of symbolic logic invented by Leibniz, in which numbers
replace concepts of things, and combinatorial arithmetic is applied to the
numbers. Leibniz believed that in this way a universal language could be
established.
atheism controversy (Atheismusstreit)—a famous public dispute over the relationship
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GLOSSARY
between philosophy and religion, provoked by Fichte’s assertion that what is
truly divine is the moral world order itself and that there is no need to posit a
“moral law-giver” or personal God as the creator of this moral order.
Aufbeben, Aufhebung—a German word variously translated as “to supersede,”
“to sublate,” “to sublimate,” or, more colloquially, “to pick something up.”
In Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, the term is used to refer to history
moving forward while preserving what has come before. The term also
implies improvement, so that the original is “lifted” into something better.
autonomy (positive freedom)—the ability to determine for oneself the principles in
accord with which one determines one’s will.
principle of autonomy—the categorical imperative.
check (Anstoß)—in Fichte’s philosophy, the name for the inexplicable thwarting of
the outwardly directed, practical activity of the I, in consequence of which
one becomes conscious of a “feeling.”
cogito—“I think,” supposed by Descartes to be a sort of direct intuition of self, by
Kant to express the unity of apperception.
compassion—according to Schopenhauer, the orientation that proceeds from the
recognition that all beings are manifestations of the same will. A person
who fully recognizes this no longer feels any inclination to assert his or her
will against those of others and is, accordingly, a saint.
concept—an objective, though often implicit, humanly graspable ideal unity of a
“many-ness.” A prescriptive ideal that is part of a system of such ideals that
the world is striving to realize and in terms of which what happens in the
world can be made sense of.
concrete—in Hegel’s philosophy, the whole, the thing-in-itself. Knowledge of an
entity is concrete to the extent that it comprehends the entity in its entirety.
concrete universal—See “concept.”
Critical philosophy, the—another name for transcendental idealism or
Kantianism.
dialectic—development through apparently contradictory sequential stages. In
Hegel’s philosophy, this is the way in which the human Spirit has evolved
through history. It is the means by which human beings attain an adequate
conception of the world, drawing and carrying forward the conclusions of
various conceptions of the world characteristic of the stages sequentially
achieved through history.
dogmatism—Fichte’s name for philosophical realism, understood as an attempt to
derive consciousness from things in themselves.
duty—how one ought to act.
perfect duty—a duty with which one’s every act ought to accord.
imperfect duty—a duty with which one ought to adopt a principle of acting
in accord, but for which the individual has latitude in deciding exactly when
the principle ought be acted upon.
ethical duty—all of one’s duties comprehended as ways that one ought to
act exactly because they are duties, i.e. because they follow from the
categorical imperative. The only incentive for acting in accord with one’s
duties, so comprehended, is. the internal incentive that follows merely from
the recognition that they are duties.
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GLOSSARY
juridical duty—those duties that one can be coerced to fulfill through
external incentives.
elementary philosophy—the name given by K.L.Reinhold to his own systematic
revision of Kantianism.
empirical character—the individual’s character as it appears phenomenally.
end of nature—nature’s purpose. ultimate end of nature—the most comprehensive
purpose that can be realized within nature and in accord with its laws. Kant
thinks that this is human culture, by which he means the development of
aptitude of human beings to accomplish their chosen ends. final end of
nature—that purpose for which the entire system of nature functions as an
enabling condition, but which cannot be realized within nature. Kant thinks
that this is the development of humanity toward moral perfection.
entelechy—an Aristotelian conception concerned with completion. Entelechy is a
thing’s actuality when it is fully complete, no longer possessing any
potentiality. Entelechy is also the directing agent of a thing’s natural activity
toward the fulfillment of its natural end.
extended—spatial, as in “bodies are extended.”
extension—space.
extra mentem—existing outside (independent) of the mind.
faculty—an ability of the mind; for example, “Human beings have an imaginative
ability, or faculty.”
form of consciousness (Gestalt des Bewusstseins)—a self-sufficient conceptual
framework. In Hegel’s philosophy, a stage of the human Spirit’s
development.
freedom positive—See “autonomy.” negative—independence from determination
through the laws of nature. internal—freedom with respect to the
determination of one’s will. external—freedom with respect to one’s ability
to effectuate one’s will, especially thought of as independence from
constraints that come from the will of other rational beings. innate right to
external freedom—the right that all rational beings have, by virtue of their
nature as rational being, to so much external freedom as is compatible with
the same for others.
genius—in Schopenhauer’s philosophy, an exceptional talent for heightened
perception (specifically aesthetic experience) and for communicating this
state to others.
Grundbegriff—a simple concept which admits no further analysis. For example:
substance, cause.
historical materialism—From 1845 Marx developed the view that the driving
force of history was the growth of the productive forces at the disposal of
humans and the productive relations into which humans entered. This
“economic base,” he maintains, “shapes” other aspects of society such as
the state and our forms of consciousness. Such a theory of history Marx
called “materialist” in opposition to other theories, called “idealist” or
“ideological,” in which the economic base either was ignored or played
hardly any role.
Identity Philosophy (or “System of Identity”)—Schelling’s name for a system which
embraces both transcendental idealism and speculative Naturphilosophie and
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GLOSSARY
is based upon the idea of “the Absolute,” understood as sheer identity, that is,
as the undifferentiated unity of the ideal and the real (also called “objective
idealism” or “absolute idealism”).
imperative—the formula that expresses a command that constrains the will of a
rational being whose will is influenced by both pure reason and material
incentives. hypothetical imperative—presents an action as the necessary
means to some particular end. categorical imperative—presents an action as
of itself necessary, without regard to any other end. Kant thinks that the
categorical imperative is best formulated as “Act only according to that
maxim by which you can at the same time will that it become a universal
law.”
indifference, point of—the first principle or starting point of Schelling’s Identity
Philosophy; another name for “the Absolute.”
intellectual intuition—(a) in Kant, the name for a nonexistent faculty of
knowledge, through which one would have direct experience of an object;
(b) for Fichte, another name for the original self-positing (or Tathandlung)
of the I, an act within which the I as an object is directly present to itself as
a subject; (c) for Schelling, a higher faculty of direct, nonsensible knowledge
of reality, hence a special “faculty of truth” employed by artists and
philosophers.
intelligible character—the individual’s character as it is, outside time and space. In
Schopenhauer’s philosophy, the intelligible character is akin to a Platonic
Idea for the individual.
justice—the aggregate of those conditions in which everyone’s will is completely
compatible in accordance with universal law. The condition of justice is
identical to the universal realization of the innate right to external freedom.
leap of faith—the nondialectical act of will by which an individual leaves his or
her previous stage of experience and achieves the highest stage possible for
human beings, the stage of religious faith.
maxim—the general principle according to which an individual acts (e.g. “When
I’m hungry, I’ll eat”).
meta-language—a language used to discuss a language. A meta-language is often a
theoretical language. The language being discussed through a meta-
language is called, by contrast, “the object language.”
moment—a partial but essential aspect, a stage.
monad—in Leibniz’s philosophy, a simple spiritual substance whose activities are
representation and appetition.
monadology—Leibniz’s theory that the world consists of monads.
natural right (Naturrecht) or theory of right (Rechstslehre)—that portion of
Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre which examines the ways in which individual
freedom must be limited in consequence of (and, at the same time, as a
condition of) the recognition of the freedom of the others. The “theory of
right” is equivalent to social and political philosophy and is, according to
Fichte, entirely independent of ethics.
Naturphilosophie (“philosophy of nature”)—Schelling’s name for that branch of
philosophy which interprets nature as a single, hierarchically organized, and
self-developing whole, and thus, not as the opposite, but rather as the
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GLOSSARY
complement or “analogon” of the realm of spirit and consciousness;
whereas transcendental idealism proceeds from subjectivity to objectivity,
Schelling’s philosophy of nature begins with objectivity and proceeds
toward subjectivity.
negative philosophy—the name by which Schelling, during his final period,
designated the transcendental philosophy of Kant and Fichte, as well as his
own earlier philosophy.
nominalism—the position that words do not refer to the essences of things (for
essences do not exist); instead, they are simply names that we assign to
things. On this view, abstractions are all fictions (albeit useful ones). Only
particular things exist.
odium theologicum—a special kind of hatred sometimes said to be characteristic
of theologians who do not agree.
ontology—the division of metaphysics which deals with the most necessary and
universal concepts of being, like Aristotle’s enquiry into “being as being.”
Also called “first philosophy” and “general metaphysics.”
pantheism—the doctrine that the world (i.e. the physical universe) is God or a
mode of God’s being. A Christian heresy which, in the eighteenth century,
was usually ascribed to Spinoza.
particular—an entity that is definite and locatable with space and time. This term
may refer to an individual person, as well as a thing.
Platonic Ideas—Plato’s Forms. In Schopenhauer’s philosophy, Platonic Ideas are
grades of the will’s objectivity. The universal prototypes of phenomenal objects
accounting for natural kinds. As the universal forms that are instantiated in
particulars, Platonic Ideas are the objects beheld in aesthetic experience.
positive philosophy—Schelling’s name for the philosophy of revelation and
mythology which he developed during his final period, a philosophy which,
he believed, was genuinely capable of dealing with the mystery of existence.
powers, or potencies (Potenzen)—Schelling’s term for the various levels of
systematic organization exhibited within nature, as well as for the various
levels of expression of the indifferent absolute.
practical philosophy—that division of transcendental idealism which is concerned
with freedom and the will, and hence with “what ought to be” rather than
with “what is.”
practical philosophy, primacy of—For Fichte, this Kantian maxim implies that
theoretical cognition must be grounded in willing and that freedom is thus a
determining principle of all experience.
practical reason—reason employed with respect to action, i.e. with respect to
bringing about conditions in the world.
pre-established harmony—In Leibniz’s philosophy, the apparent causal
connections between changes in different monads is denied, and it is
asserted that these changes are pre-established (by God) so as to make a
harmonious whole.
principium individuationis—principle of individuation. In Schopenhauer’s
philosophy, the principium individuationis is equivalent to time and space,
the essential forms through which individuation becomes apparent in the
phenomenal world.
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pure will-less subject of knowledge—the condition of the individual during
aesthetic experience, according to Schopenhauer. The individual becomes, as
it were, the universal subject, contemplating the universal forms (or Platonic
Ideas) evident in the object observed.
rationalism—a philosophical orientation which considered A priori reason
capable of ascertaining significant truths about the world, and which
considered natural science to be primarily a rational, deductive system only
secondarily concerned with sense experience. In this sense, Kant is a
rationalist. However, the term is principally associated with Descartes,
Spinoza, and Leibniz, who are known as “the Rationalists.” Rationalism is
frequently contrasted with empiricism, which takes sense perception to be
the fundamental basis for knowledge.
reductio ad absurdum—a mode of argument in which one shows that a thesis held
by one’s opponent, however reasonable it may seem to be, implies an
absurdity and is therefore itself absurd.
repentance—According to Schopenhauer, repentance amounts to change of
knowledge (and consequently motive), with the result that behavior is
transformed.
resignation—in Schopenhauer’s philosophy, the renunciation of the will that is
characteristic of the saint. This renunciation results from full recognition
that the entire phenomenal world, and every object in it, is a manifestation
of a single will. In Kierkegaard’s philosophy, the condition of being
reconciled to tragedy in one’s situation, without yet being capable of faith.
The person in this condition is Kierkegaard’s “Knight of Infinite
Resignation,” in contrast to the “Knight of Faith.”
right in oneself—the right to have others not exercise any control over one’s body,
i.e. to not be assaulted in any manner.
rightful possession—possession that is consistent with justice.
semantics—the interpretation of a symbolic system.
Sittenlebre (“theory of ethics”)—The specifically “practical” portion of Fichte’s
Wissenschaftslehre, the “theory of ethics” provides an account of both the
form and the content of the highest principle of morality (the categorical
imperative) and derives specific duties from one’s general obligation to posit
one’s own freedom.
social contract theory—the theory that people are subject to political obligations
because they have contracted with others to subject themselves to such
obligations (presumably because of some benefit that they thereby expect to
receive).
solipsism—the theory that “I alone exist.” This theory has probably never been
held by a sane philosopher, but it is conceptually interesting as a reductio ad
absurdum of some forms of idealism.
speculative—In the eighteenth century, “speculative” often meant “theoretical.”
Thus “speculative philosophy” did not mean speculative in the sense of
fanciful dreaming, but theoretical as opposed to practical (moral)
philosophy.
Spirit (Geist)—the subject in a universal sense. In Hegel’s philosophy, the Spirit
includes every individual and every object of human experience. It amounts
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GLOSSARY
to the human world, conceived as self-conscious and a comprehensible
unity.
stages—in Kierkegaard’s philosophy, a particular orientation or lifestyle that
characterizes an individual’s pursuits. Kierkegaard describes three distinct
stages: the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious stage. These stages do not
automatically or dialectically give way to one another. Instead, an individual
must “leap” from one to another by means of an inner response to his or
her situation. Such a move is usually precipitated by the individual’s
recognition that he or she is in despair.
sufficient reason, principle of—the principle that there is a sufficient reason (or
cause) of everything that exists or happens. According to Schopenhauer, this
principle applies only to phenomenal objects. Each such object stands in a
necessary, mutually determining relationship to all other phenomenal
objects.
summons (Auffordentng)—in Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre, the term designating
one’s inner awareness of the freedom of others, as a consequence of which
one is called upon to limit one’s own freedom.
syntax—a purely formal specification of the legal strings of a symbolic system.
synthetic judgment—a judgment or assertion which is not analytic.
system—an interconnected set of propositions, demonstrably related. In the
eighteenth century, the term referred to a deductive system, a set of first
principles and theorems deducible from them.
Tatbandlung (“fact/act” or more literally, “deed/act”)—a term coined by Fichte
to designate the original, self-positing act of the I, an act which is postulated
by the philosopher as underlying the experienced separation between the
subject and object of consciousness.
teleological suspension of the ethical—in Kierkegaard’s philosophy, a condition in
which die ethical law, which is universally applicable to human individuals,
is suspended in a particular individual’s case because that person’s religious
vocation places more specific demands upon him or her.
theoretical philosophy—that branch of transcendental idealism which accounts
for human cognition, that is, for our experience of “representations
accompanied by a feeling of necessity.”
transcendent, transcendental—These words were used loosely in the eighteenth
century before Kant to refer to metaphysical concepts common to all the
branches of special metaphysics. For example, “Cause is a transcendent
concept.” Kant gave specific technical meanings to these words. (See
“transcendental argument.”)
transcendental argument—according to Kant, an argument in support of one claim,
because the truth of this claim can be shown to be a necessary condition of
the truth of another claim that is (necessarily) recognized as true.
transcendental unity of apperception—Kant’s principle that, necessarily, any
conscious state must be so unified with the other states of that
consciousness as to make it possibly self-conscious.
transformative method (also called “the inversion principle”)—Feuerbach
proposed that God was merely a projection of idealized human qualities
onto the world in the form of an allegedly independently existing being who
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is then believed to have the power to create us. As a consequence of this,
Feuerbach proposed to trace all our talk of God back to some human
quality or qualities. We may say that God is a “reification” of idealized
human qualities. Marx adopted Feuerbach’s method in political theory to
criticize Hegel’s reification of features of the state and society above the
human relations of production. He transforms the Hegelian reifications into
more concrete talk of humans and their productive relations.
universal—what is nonparticular, not specifically located in time and space, and
logically accessible to every individual. In Hegel’s philosophy, Spirit is
universal; it includes all possible particulars, including every individual
human being.
veil of Maya—the Vedantic “veil of illusion,” a term that Schopenhauer
appropriates as descriptive of the phenomenal world.
will—(according to Schopenhauer) the thing-in-itself, the reality that underlies
phenomenal appearances.
Wissenschaftslehre (literally “theory of science” or “doctrine of scientific
knowledge”)—Fichte’s name for his entire system of philosophy; not to be
confused with any particular book or presentation of this system, and,
especially, not to be confused with the presentation of the mere
“foundations” of this system (as presented, for example, in The
Foundations of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre).
world as representation—(for Schopenhauer) the world as it appears as a
consequence of the forms imposed by our minds; the phenomenal world.
world as will—(for Schopenhauer) the world as it is in itself; the noumenal world.
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Index
a priori 10–11, 20–2, 42, 49–50,
68–9, 96–7, 104
Abraham 376–84
Absolute Knowledge 194; see also the
Absolute
Absolute, the 196; in Hegel 183–4,
233–4; in Schelling 170–2
aesthete, the 385–6
aesthetic experience see aesthetics
aesthetics 14–15; and ethics 125–6;
form in 117–19, 122–3; Kant’s
110–26, 349–50; Schelling’s 162,
168–9; Schopenhauer’s 334,
348–53
Anselm, St 60
Antigone (Sophocles) 208
anxiety 378–9
Aquinas, St Thomas 59
Aristotle 11, 266, 379; essence in 231;
and logic 226, 258; and the state
283
art, and intentionality 122–3; see also
aesthetics; form
asceticism 330, 334–5, 354–6, 386
Aufhehung 366, 367
Augustine, St 43–4
Aurelius, Marcus 204
Bauer, Bruno 297–9, 301; see also
Young Hegelians
Baumgarten, Alexander 13–14
beauty, see aesthetics
being 61–2, 236–43, 256
Being and Nothingness (Sartre) 202
body, the 341–3
Boehme, Jakob 163
Bohr, Niels 259
Buddhism 334–5
Burke, Edmund 119, 121
Capital (Marx) 297, 316–17
categorical imperative, the 69, 71–82,
83, 206, 209
categories, the 45–9, 198, 228
causality, law of 336
causation 17–18
character 343–5
Christianity 205, 209–10, 290–2, 370
coercion 86–90, 93–4, 97–8
Communism 299, 301
compassion 355
concept, the 50–1; in Hegel 191, 213,
225–7, 231–4; in Kant 61, 231; in
Schelling 213; in Schopenhauer 337
Concluding Unscientific Postscript
(Kierkegaard) 370, 376
consciousness: in Fichte 150–5; in
Hegel 194–7; in Kant 53; in Marx
316–17; see also self
Copernicus 41
Critique of Judgement, The (Kant) 2,
103–36, 339
Critique of Practical Reason, The
(Kant) 2
Critique of Pure Reason, The (Kant) 2
23, 28, 40–63, 84–5
Crusius, Christian August 15–19, 21
demonic, the 372, 390
Descartes, René 44–5
despair 364, 365–9, 371–4, 384–5,
389–90
404

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determinism see freedom
dialectic: in Hegel 189, 196–7, 200,
217, 235, 238–43, 258–60; and
history 259–60
dialectical materialism 264, 299; see
also historical materialism
Die Freien 297–8, 300, 301; see also
Young Hegelians
duty 74–9, 84–9
dynamism 255–8
Economic and Philosophic
Manuscripts of 1844 (Marx) 299,
303, 315
effusion 182
Ego and its Own, The (Stirner)
299–300
Either/Or (Kierkegaard) 385–6
Encyclopedia of the Philosophical
Sciences (Hegel) 216, 221, 256
Engels, Friedrich 260, 294, 298–300,
304–5, 315, 322
Enlightenment 6–7, 185, 208–9
Epictetus 204
epistemology 43–4, 46–63, 307–8
essence 231; see also being
Essence of Christianity, The
(Feuerbach) 305, 307–8, 321
ethnics: and aesthetics 125–6; and
faith 376–82; in Fichte 157–9; in
Hegel 199–200, 206–9, 275–82,
381–4; in Kant 68–82, 199–200; in
Kierkegaard 377–86; in
Schopenhauer 355; transcendental
argument and 79; in Wolff 13
Euclid 19, 340
existentialism 174
experience 10–11
faith 368, 370–4, 375–86, 387–90;
and ethics 377–86
Fear and Trembling (Kierkegaard)
363, 375, 376–81
Feuerbach 300–1, 304–14; and
epistemology 307–8; and Marx
315–16; Marx’s critique of 317–22;
and materialism 319–20; and
religion 307–13, 317–19
Fichte 142–65, 172–5, 182, 201, 332;
consciousness in 150–5; ethics in
157–9; freedom in 154–5, 158–9,
160; and intuition 152, 165;
political philosophy of 158–9;
religion in 159–60; and Schelling
164–5, 167, 172, 173–5
First Philosophy, or Ontology (Wolff)
11
form 117–19, 122–3
Forms, the 345–8, 351
Foundations of the Metaphysics of
Morals (Kant) 68–82
free will 343–5
freedom 18–19; in Fichte 154–5, 158–
9, 160; in Hegel 187–8, 204–5,
256–8; in Kant 70–1, 79–82,
86–94, 106–7, 109; in Stirner 303
Geist see Spirit
genius 15; in Kant 123; in Schelling
168; in Schopenhauer 350–1
German Ideology, The (Marx) 303,
305, 314, 316, 318–19, 320
German romanticism 162
God: in Kant 132–6; in Kierkegaard
369, 380, 387–90
Greenberg, Clement 119
Hamann, Johann Georg 2, 28, 138–9
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
163–4, 174, 181–287, 290–1, 294,
333; absolute 183–4; absolute
knowledge in 194; on academia
206–7; onart 124–5; on
Christianity 205, 209–10, 290–2;
criticisms of 300–1, 306–7; ethics
in 199–200, 206–9, 275–82,
381–4; freedom in 187–8, 204–5,
256–8; history in 187–9, 255–65;
and Hume 198; intuition in 213;
and Kant 188, 191–200, 207, 209;
and Kierkegaard 363–75, 388; and
language 228–9, 234; law 279–80;
and Locke 197–8; logic in 216–48;
and Marx 264, 280–1; Marx’s
critique of 318; political philosophy
of 274–5; reason in 205–10, 265;
religion in 185–7; and right/s
268–75; and Schelling 162–3; and
the self/self-consciousness 187–8,
201–5, 271–4, 298; and the state
254, 265–76, 281–7, 295–7
405

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Hegelians, Left, Center, and Right
292–3
Heine, Heinrich 187
Herder, Johann Gottfried 2, 127, 139
historical materialism 314
history: and dialetic 259–60;
dynamism in 255–8; Hegel’s view
of 187–9, 255–65
Hobbes, Thomas 271–4
Hølderlin, Friedrich 182
humanism 62–3
Hume, David 17, 31, 53, 198, 255
idealism 218, 320; see also Kant
imagination 116–17, 121, 123–5
Indian philosophy 334–5
indirect communication see limits of
language, in Kierkegaard
individual/ity see self
intuition 335–6; in Fichte 152, 165; in
Hegel 213; in Schelling 165, 213
inversion principle 309, 311–15
irrationality 378–80
Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich 29–32,
138–40, 145, 240
judgment 46–9, 104–36, 337
justice 87–94
Kant, Immanuel 1–2, 5–6, 12, 17–18,
21, 28, 32, 40–136, 182–5, 218–
19; aesthetics of 110–26, 349–50;
and arguments for God’s existence
59–62; and the categories 45–9;
and coercion 86–90, 93–4, 97–8;
and consciousness 53; and duty
74–9, 84–9; epistemology of
46–63; ethics of 68–82, 132–6,
199–200; and freedom 70–1,
79–82, 86–94, 106–7, 109; and
God 132–6; and Hegel 188,
191–200, 207, 209; and Hume 53;
and imagination 116–17, 121,
123–5; and judgment 46–9, 104–
36; and justice 87–94; and
Lambert 22–4; and logic 226–9;
and the objective deduction 54–7;
political philosophy of 83–99; and
rationalism 42–4; and reason
40–63; reception of 138–42; and
Reinhold 139–40; and right/s
87–94; and Schelling 165–6; and
Schopenhauer 336–7, 340–3; and
the subjective deduction 50–4; and
the transcendental method 41,
50–62
Kierkegaard, Søren 31, 210, 363–91;
and Hegel 205, 363–75, 388
knowledge 10–11, 20–2, 337
labor 316
Lambert, Johann Heinrich 19–24
language 228–9, 234; limits of, in
Kierkegaard 366, 370–1, 375–8,
387–91
law 279–80
laws of nature 346–7
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 5–7, 10,
12–13
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 29–32
Life of Jesus Critically Examined, The
(Strauss) 290–2, 294, 297–8
Locke, John 92, 197–8, 270–4, 307
Logic (Hegel) 312–13
logic: Aristotle 226, 258; and form
234–5; and Hegel 216–48; and
Kant 226–9; and language 228–9,
234; and Plato 226; and
Schopenhauer 337; and subjectivity
227–31
lordship and bondage see master/slave
love 385–6
Løwith, Karl 293, 294
Maimon, Salomon 140–1
Marx, Karl 204, 260, 284, 295–300,
303–6, 310, 311; and
consciousness 316–17; his critique
of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
318; and Engels 294; and
Feuerbach 315–22; and Hegel 264,
280–1; and idealism 320; and labor
316; and materialism 319–20, 321,
see also dialetical materialism,
historical materialism; and the
proletariat 297, 299; and the
Young Hegelians 321–2
master/slave 201–5, 382–4
mathematics 8–10, 19–20
matter 336
Mendelssohn, Moses 10, 13–15, 28–32
metaphysics 58–9
406

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Metaphysics of Morals, The (Kant)
83–97
Michelet, Karl Ludwig 293
morality see ethics
motive 337
music 352–3
Naturphilosophie (philosophy of
nature) 161, 165–71
Nietzsche 193, 210–11, 265, 266,
300, 331, 349–50
Nirvana 356
nominalism 312
noumenal/phenomenal distinction 45,
105–7, 191, 198–200; in
Schopenhauer 334, 346
objective deduction, the 54–7
On the Fourfold Root of the Principle
of Sufficient Reason
(Schopenhauer) 332, 333, 335–8
On Vision and Color (Schopenhauer)
332, 333
ontological argument, for the existence
of God 60–2
ontology 11–13, 16
Ortega y Gasset, José 255
paradox 372–4, 377, 388
passion 371, 374, 375–6, 378, 385,
386
perception 197–8; in Schopenhauer
340
Phenomenology of Spirit, The (Hegel)
181–211, 220, 236, 364–5, 367,
369, 381–4
Philo of Alexandria 43
Philosophical Fragments (Kierkegaard)
371, 376, 387–9
philosophy of religion 159–60
Philosophy of Right (Hegel) 270, 281,
295, 296, 313–15, 381
pietism 6–7
Plato 40–4, 226, 283, 334
Platonism 345–8, 351
poet, the 389–91
Political philosophy, the: of Fichte
158–9; of Hegel 254, 265–76,
281–7, 295–7; of Kant 83–99
practical philosophy see Kant, ethics of
predication 230–1
principium individuatioms 355
principle of sufficient reason 17–19,
335–8, 340
Principles of the Philosophy of the
Future (Feuerbach) 305, 310, 319,
321
proletariat, the 297–9
property 273–4, 297
Provisional Theses for the
Reformation of Philosophy
(Feuerbach) 305, 308, 310–11, 313
pseudonymity, in Kierkegaard 376; see
also language, limits of
pure knowing 236–8
purposiveness see teleology
rationalism 10–11, 42–4
reason 10–11; in Hegel 205–10, 265;
in Kant 40–63; in Schopenhauer
337, 338–41
rebellion 97–9
reflection 368
regulative principles 109–10
Reid, Thomas 31
Reinhold, K.L. 139–40, 143, 149
religion 185–7, 307–13, 317–19
Repetition (Kierkegaard) 384–5
resignation 330, 334–5, 354–6
right/s, Hegel 268–75; in Kant 87–94;
in Locke 270–4
Rosenkranz, Karl 292–3
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 158, 204, 281
Ruge, Arnold 295, 297, 306
Russell, Bertrand 330–1
Saint, the 355–6
Sartre, Jean-Paul 202
Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph
145, 160–75, 182, 271; and the
absolute 170–2; aesthetics of 162,
168–9; and Fichte 164–5, 167,
172, 173–5; and Hegel 162–3;
intuition in 165; and Kant 165–6
Schlegel, Friedrich 162, 165
Schopenhauer, Arthur 330–56; on
humor 339; and Kant 336–7, 340,
342, 343; on music 352–3; on
tragedy 351–2
Schulze, G.E. 141
Science of Logic (Hegel) 216, 221–3
science 340–1
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Second Treatise on Government, The
(Locke) 270
self, the: in Hegel 187–8, 201–5,
271–4, 364–5, 369, 370–3; in
Kierkegaard 366–91; in
Schopenhauer 347, 349; in Stirner
301–3
sense-certainty 195–6
sex 341, 353–4
Sickness unto Death, The
(Kierkegaard) 364, 365–9, 371–2,
389–91
skepticism 45
social contract theory 94–7, 274–5
Spinoza, Benedictus de 32, 161, 165,
343
Spinozism 29–32
Spirit 186–9, 205, 218–20, 255–6,
260–5; see also Phenomenology of
Spirit
state, the 260, 283; see also political
philosophy
state, theories of the see political
philosophy
Stirner, Max 300–4
stoicism 204
Strauss, David Friedrich 290–4, 297–8
subject, the see self
subjective deduction, the 50–4
subjectivity 227–31
sublime, the 119–24
substance 12, 197–8
suffering 334–5, 353–4
synthetic a priori, the 27, 42
System of Transcendental Idealism
(Schelling) 162, 167–71
taste see aesthetics
teleology 126–36, 190
Tetens, Johann Nicolaus 24–8
Theses on Feuerbach (Marx) 305,
317–22
Thomasius, Christianus 7
Thulstrup, Niels 371
time and space 335–6
tragedy 351–2
transcendental argument 79
transcendental deduction see objective
deduction; subjective deduction
transcendental dialectic 57–62
transcendental ego see transcendental
unity of apperception
transcendental method 41, 50–62,
68–9
transcendental unity of apperception
53–5, 188, 227, 232
triads 238–43
understanding, the 336–7
Universal Speculative Philosophy
(Tetens) 25
universals 232
Voltaire 255
will 331, 334, 341–3, 347–56;
renunciation of the 355–6
Wissenschaftslehre (Fichte) 142–60,
172–5
Wolff, Christian 5–16, 19–20, 25
world as representation 334, 336–7,
341
World as Will and Representation,
The (Schopenhauer) 333, 335
Xenophanes 308
Young Hegelians, the 292–306;
Marx’s critique of 321–2
408