IDEALISM WITHOUT LIMITS
Philosophical Studies in Contemporary Culture Volume 18 Senior Editor H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr., Department of Philosophy, Rice University, and Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas Editor Mark J. Cherry, Department of Philosophy, St. Edward’s University, Austin, Texas Assistant Editor Lisa Rasmussen, Department of Philosophy, University of North Carolina, Charlotte, North Carolina Editorial Board Stanley Hauerwas, Divinity School, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina Maureen Kelley, Department of Pediatric Bioethics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington Terry Pinkard, Department of Philosophy, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. C. Griffin Trotter, Center for Health Care Ethics & Emergency Medicine, Saint Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri Kevin Wm. Wildes, S.J., President, Loyola University, New Orleans, Louisiana
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IDEALISM WITHOUT LIMITS Hegel and the Problem of Objectivity
by
Klaus Brinkmann Boston University, Boston, MA, USA
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Klaus Brinkmann Boston University Dept. Philosophy Commonwealth Ave. 745 02215 Boston, Massachusetts USA
[email protected]
ISSN 0928-9518 ISBN 978-90-481-3621-6 e-ISBN 978-90-481-3622-3 DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-3622-3 Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York Library of Congress Control Number: 2010935666 © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011 No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
To say the truth, I am wont for my own part, to regard this work as a child of time rather than of wit. (Francis Bacon)
Preface
The manuscript of this book underwent a rather long metamorphosis before it finally saw the light of day. It was always to be a book about Hegel and the problem of objective knowledge, but it started originally with the problem of objectivity as it develops in the thought of the Pre-Socratic philosophers, in particular Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Zeno of Elea, and then found a preliminary resolution in Plato and Aristotle. The rationale for letting the narrative begin with the ancients was that Hegel saw himself as standing not primarily in a Kantian but in an Aristotelian tradition. As much as Hegel intended to complete Kant’s Copernican revolution, and as much as he acknowledges his debt to Kant (especially in a footnote in the Introduction to the Science of Logic and, later in that work, in the general introduction to the Logic of the Concept), he also sees the critical philosophy as only one moment, albeit the crucial one, in the unfolding of the history of thinking that starts with the ancients. This larger trajectory of Hegel’s argument can be seen particularly clearly in the Three Positions of Thought towards Objectivity in the Introduction to the Encyclopedia. I subsequently convinced myself that my original narrative required perhaps too long a breath to keep the reader’s attention, hence the beginning with Descartes in the present version. I also found that the Cartesian legacy is still very much alive in our contemporary world and that it is in many ways responsible for our cultural and philosophical difficulties. This is the reason why I replaced the original examination of the ancients with a discussion of some contemporary attempts at preserving a viable conception of objectivity. For a further characterization of the argument of this book I may refer the reader to the Introduction. I would like to express my gratitude to the many people who accompanied the growth and permutations of this book over the years. I am indebted to my colleagues at Boston University who supported my efforts so graciously and generously, as well as to the undergraduate and graduate students who participated in my Hegel courses. It is a gratifying thought that some of the latter now teach Hegel in the classroom themselves. I would like to thank my now retired colleague Henry Allison in particular for the discussions we had about the proper way to read Kant. The more intense they were, the more enlightened I came away from them, learning to differentiate ever more sharply between the Hegelian and the Kantian Kant. I owe an
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immense debt of gratitude to my friend Thomas Bole III with whom I studied Hegel at the University of Tübingen under the guidance of our teacher Klaus Hartmann. Our long discussions of the true nature of Hegel’s argument have helped shape my view of Hegel’s project. I also thank the readers at Springer for valuable feedback on the manuscript. A special word of thanks is owed to H. Tristram Engelhardt whose unflagging encouragement helped me keep the faith. I would also like to thank the staff at Springer, especially Ms. Marion Wagenaar, for their assistance in the production and publication of this book. Finally, without my wife’s willingness cheerfully to endure countless evenings with me hidden away in my study this book could not have been written. Some debts cannot be repaid. Boston, Massachusetts
Klaus Brinkmann
Introduction
This book is primarily about Hegel. But the analysis I offer of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit and of his project in the Logic (the Science of Logic as well as the Encyclopedia Logic) is embedded in a larger context. First, there is the muchdiscussed relationship between Kant and Hegel. And second, there is the broader issue of how to secure universal standards of objectivity and normative principles of cognition and action. As I see it, Hegel came to the conclusion that Kant had pursued the Copernican revolution in philosophy only halfheartedly and had left it unfinished. On the other hand, Hegel saw no alternative to the completion of the Kantian project as he understood it. In this respect, he held on to the Kantian motive that it must be possible for concepts to determine objects a priori, if a normative basis for objective knowledge was to be preserved. Hegel based his conclusion on an immanent critique of Kant’s argument in the Transcendental Deduction. The element of empirical realism that Kant needed to retain in order to avoid empirical idealism eventually undermines the position of transcendental idealism and leads to a theoretical impasse. This meant that Kant’s transcendental project could only be sustained and brought to completion, if transcendental idealism was able to proceed without the element of empirical realism, i.e. without a heterogeneous material for cognition given independently of the subject of cognition. For Hegel, the task of developing such a homogeneous conception of idealism, an idealism without limits, as I call it, went under the motto of “overcoming the opposition of consciousness”, i.e., overcoming the epistemic hiatus between cognitive subject and object, mind and world. Although Kant’s transcendental unity of apperception in principle achieved just that, the subsequent introduction of an empirical manifold of sensation invalidates the original unity by showing it to be “burdened” with an “other” or limited by it. The Phenomenology of Spirit was designed to accomplish the unfinished task of leading from subjective thinking (whose measure is correctness or the adaequatio repraesentationis et rei) to objective thought (whose measure is truth or the adaequatio conceptus et rei) and to establish the platform for a homogeneous idealism that moves exclusively within the immanence of thought. If successful, this undertaking would be proof that transcendental idealism in the form of a “pure” idealism remains a viable position to take.
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Second, there is the issue of Hegel’s potential contribution to contemporary philosophical debates and, more broadly, to contemporary culture. I believe that one aspect of our current situation is what I call the crisis of subjectivity. This crisis is the result of a profound insecurity of the individual as a cognitive subject and as a subject of agency, an insecurity that has its roots in our Cartesian legacy. Descartes’ privileging of the individual as the ultimate arbiter of truth represents a major reason for this crisis. Even if Descartes did not inaugurate this turn towards individual subjectivity, he brought out its significance and gave it momentum and direction. Kant in fact ratified this turn while also trying to preserve the possibility of objective knowledge. In this, he had no lasting success, nor did Hegel, for that matter. Today, there is a widespread consensus that objectivity is some kind of social construct or the outcome of an interpretive activity by a particular community of agents. Every community, however, is particularized. It has its own standards of objectivity and its own norms. The problem should be obvious: Without a universal consensus about common standards of objectivity and normative commitments as agents we run the risk of a dysteleological development. On the one hand, the lack of an overarching, universal framework that permits everyone to adjudicate truth claims across different communities encourages the development of parallel universes that may become incapable of communicating with one another. On the other hand, the pressures of globalization contradict communitarian fragmentation and may thus lead to destructive antagonisms among communities. In this situation, it seems, we need to renew the effort to establish a common commitment to objectivity and normative principles across particular communities. Obviously, philosophical reflection can only do so much in this situation. Still, I believe it to be an important task to look again at the roots of the current crisis in order to understand its nature and to examine some prominent contemporary proposals of how to deal with our Cartesian legacy. In the process, I have arrived at the conclusion that past efforts to overcome cognitive and moral fragmentation based on a transcendental approach broadly conceived could serve as a valuable point of orientation. In other words, there may still be lessons to learn from Kant and Hegel that bear on our current situation. As a result, the book’s argument is structured in the following way. I will first look at the nature and origin of the crisis of subjectivity (Sections 1.1 and 1.2) and briefly discuss some traditional responses to the challenges it poses (Section 1.3) in order then to turn to an examination of contemporary positions that have generally moved beyond Descartes’ mental immanentism to an immanence of experience in which the epistemic hiatus of mind and world is no longer an issue (Section 1.4). But because these positions have difficulty securing a non-relativistic conception of objectivity, I suggest that we look at a position that was designed to accomplish precisely that in the area of theoretical knowledge, viz. Kant’s First Critique (Section 2.1). Kant’s argument there defines our ontological commitments by means of the so-called restriction thesis that results from his complementarity thesis. However, internal problems with the Transcendental Deduction that Hegel first exposed in Faith and Knowledge call into question the viability of Kant’s particular version of transcendental idealism (Section 2.2 and Section 2.3). I claim that Hegel’s critique of Kant is an immanent critique, not a critique advanced from a standpoint alien to the Kantian project, independently of the fact that Kant
Introduction
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would never have approved of the direction in which Hegel took the Copernican revolution. If Hegel’s critique is convincing, however, the question becomes what it would take to complete the transcendental project successfully. I propose that Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit holds the answer to this question (Sections 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, 3.6, and 3.7). The Phenomenology, however, is only a propaedeutic in that it tries to prove the general point that thinking is capable of “objective thoughts” but does not itself offer a universal framework for assessing our ontological commitments. The reconstruction of such a comprehensive framework by way of a systematic critique of the concepts that determine our ontological commitments is left to the Logic. In the concluding chapter, I consider first the complicated relationship between the Phenomenology and Hegel’s system (Section 4.1). Next I turn to a characterization of Hegel’s intentions in the Logic based primarily on the 1831 Preface and the Introduction to the Science of Logic and the Introduction to the Encyclopedia. Much of modern and contemporary theoretical philosophy is predicated on the mind-world relationship and consequently on the referential relationship between concepts and propositions and the objects they are supposed to be about. From within such a theoretical framework, it is difficult to appreciate Hegel’s very different immanentist or non-referential approach. I therefore try to highlight Hegel’s concern with the intelligibility of concepts rather than their reference. The difference is one between the “correctness” of my representations as compared to what is the case “in the world” on the one hand and the adequacy or “truth” of a given categorial “take” on being or reality on the other. Hegel’s concern with the intelligibility and explanatory “truth value” of the categorial concepts that determine our ontological commitments explains, among other things, why intuition plays no role in the explanation of objective knowledge and why Hegel’s critical reconstruction of the ontological frameworks that determine our ontological commitments is able to move entirely within the immanence of thought (Section 4.2). (Section 4.3) argues for a reading of Hegel in terms of a categorial theory and in that context addresses the debate about the metaphysical vs. the non-metaphysical Hegel. I suggest that there is a metaphysical Hegel in addition to the non-metaphysical Hegel. However, the metaphysical Hegel, I submit, is not to be found so much in the “esoteric” Hegel of the Science of Logic and the text of the Encyclopedia as published by Hegel himself as in the “exoteric” Hegel of the lecture hall who is reflected in the Lectures and the Additions to the Encyclopedia. In my opinion, the core of Hegel’s thought and intentions is best expressed in the 1831 Preface to the Science of Logic and in its Introduction as well as the Introduction to the Encyclopedia. That Hegel is primarily about the critical examination of the categories or concepts that explain and determine our ontological commitments. The book’s final section (Section 4.4) proposes to view Hegel’s Logic not only as a form of ontological monism but also as an integrative pluralism. As I point out in conclusion, however, the integrative capacity of Hegel’s dialectic has its limits when viewed against the background of contemporary pluralistic societies. Page references to Hegel in the original German are as follows: The Phenomenology of Spirit is quoted in the Moldenhauer/Michel edition, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1969–1972, by volume and page number after the reference to the
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sections of the Miller translation, e.g. PS § 135/3, 109. References to the German text of Hegel’s Science of Logic are to the edition by Georg Lasson in two volumes, Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1967, following the page reference to the Miller translation, e.g. SL 39/WdL I 19 or SL 584–585/WdL II 221–229. References to Kant’s works are to the Academy edition by volume and page number. However, as is customary, I refer to the A and B editions of the Critique of Pure Reason without adding the volume number. For abbreviations to all other works by Hegel and to works from the history of philosophy I refer the reader to the list of Primary Sources in the bibliography. References to Hegel’s Encyclopedia and Philosophy of Right are by section number only, omitting page numbers (e.g. E § 6, PR § 100). I am grateful to Continuum International Publishing Group, London, for allowing me to reprint a slightly altered version of “The Dialectic of the Inverted World and the Meaning of Aufhebung,” which appeared in The Dimensions of Hegel’s Dialectic, edited by Nectarios G. Limnatis (2010), as Section 3.3 “Perception and Understanding: The Immanence of Thinking and the Meaning of Aufhebung.” I am also grateful to Yapi Kredi Publishing, Istanbul, for permission to reprint with slight changes the article “Does Hegel’s System Need the Phenomenology of Spirit?” that is due to be published in Cogito, a Turkish quarterly journal of philosophy and the social sciences, and which appears here as Section 4.1 entitled “Interlude: Does Hegel’s System Need the Phenomenology of Spirit?”
Contents
1 The Problem of Objectivity as a Problem of Modernity . 1.1 The Objectivity Problem and the Crisis of Subjectivity 1.2 Descartes and the Roots of the Crisis of Subjectivity . . 1.3 Some Traditional Arguments in Defense of Objectivity 1.4 Some Contemporary Defenses of Objectivity . . . . . 1.5 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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2 Kant and the Problem of Objectivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 Kant’s Transcendental Idealism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Hegel’s Critique of Kant: The Transcendental Deduction 2.3 Beyond the Matter-Form Distinction: Hegel as a Philosopher of Radical Immanence . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 The Argument of the Phenomenology . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Methodological Presuppositions . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Sense-Certainty: The Particular and the Universal . . 3.3 Perception and Understanding: The Immanence of Thinking and the Meaning of Aufhebung . . . . . . . 3.4 The Native Land of Truth: From Desire to Reason . . 3.5 Methodological Interlude: Overcoming the Opposition of Consciousness . . . . . . . . . . . 3.6 The Internalization of Spirit: From Ethical Substance to the Spiritual Individual . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.7 Spirit That Knows Itself as Spirit: From Religion to Absolute Knowing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Objective Knowledge and the Logic . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 Interlude: Does the System Need a Ladder? . . . . 4.2 Hegel’s Paradigm Shift: From Referentiality to Intelligibility of Thought . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 The Metaphysical and the Non-Metaphysical Hegel 4.4 Hegel’s Integrative Pluralism and Its Limits . . . .
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Chapter 1
The Problem of Objectivity as a Problem of Modernity
1.1 The Objectivity Problem and the Crisis of Subjectivity In Chapter 1 of Problems of Rationality entitled “The Problem of Objectivity,” Donald Davidson establishes an argument to the effect that thought – in the sense of a thinking activity that makes truth claims about its objects – is dependent on the concept of objectivity (Davidson, 2004, pp. 3–18; originally published in 1995). Davidson’s reasoning is pretty straightforward and it would in my view be difficult to dispute it. I have no intention of doing so; instead, I endorse its basic conclusions. Davidson’s argument runs roughly as follows: To think means, among other things, to use concepts in various ways, for instance in making judgments, attributing properties to objects, characterizing situations or events, etc. None of this would be possible, however, without also possessing the concept of truth, since making statements or entertaining propositions of this kind means to make a truth claim. To think, then, would be impossible without being aware of the difference between truth and falsity, since such thoughts or propositions must necessarily be either true or false (independently of the question whether their truth or falsity can ever be established). Making a truth claim presupposes an understanding of the distinction between truth and falsity, since to claim something to be true also means to be aware of the possibility of getting it wrong. Now to grasp the distinction between true and false statements one must understand the conditions that make a statement true (or false, as the case may be).1 This requirement is stronger than one might think for, as Davidson argues, “it is not possible to grasp or entertain a proposition without knowing what it would be for it to be true” (2004, p. 9).2 In other words, merely to understand the meaning of a proposition already presupposes that one have an idea of the context or scenario in which it would be true, i.e. it requires that along with the concept of truth one also possess the concept of a fact of the matter that would make the proposition true. Thus
1 As Davidson also points out, to understand this thought implies that one also understand countless
other thoughts. He calls this the “holistic” nature of thought (Davidson, 2004, p. 11). as Thomas Nagel puts it, it must be true “in a nonrelative sense”: see Nagel, 1997, p. 5. I will come back to Nagel’s defense of “objective thought” (4) and the “objectivity of reason” (7) below.
2 Or,
1 K. Brinkmann, Idealism Without Limits, Philosophical Studies in Contemporary C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011 Culture 18, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-3622-3_1,
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“to have a concept, to entertain propositions, to be able to form judgments, to have command of the concept of truth” (2004, p. 9) and to understand the truth conditions of a proposition are all equivalent in the sense that they imply and presuppose each other. Furthermore, the concept of truth is indissolubly linked to that of objectivity, since the truth conditions of a proposition must hold independently of whether I or anybody else would like my proposition to be true or false. Or, to put it another way, the truth claim made by making a statement must be able to be judged on its own merits and independently of my or anybody else’s preferences. But that just means that a truth claim must be true or false objectively or “independent[ly] of one’s beliefs or interests” (Davidson, 2004, p. 10). Thus there exists a direct connection between thinking (in the sense of making truth claims) and a commitment to objectivity. Someone who claims to be expressing a thought (in the form of a statement or proposition) commits him- or herself to the true-false distinction and therefore also to the idea of an objectively obtaining fact of the matter. That the fact of the matter obtains objectively means that it obtains independently of anybody’s personal views or preferences. Thus, for something to be true means for it to be objectively true, such that truth is synonymous with objectivity.3 Again, this does not mean that the truth of a statement or the conditions that would make it objectively true can in fact be established for a given statement or in a given instance or under the given circumstances.4 Nonetheless, thinking, in making truth claims, is committed to acknowledging the validity of the nexus between thinking, truth and objectivity. Let me now develop what I consider to be some of the consequences of Davidson’s argument, independently of whether Davidson would have agreed with them or not.5 As I see it, objectivity now turns out to designate whatever must objectively be the case for the true/false distinction to work. More specifically, objectivity designates the ensemble of states of affairs or matters of fact that makes all true statements materially true and all false statements materially false.6 There must be
3 Note
that this rules out that something could be true “for me only” in the sense that the scope of the truth of a proposition would be limited to myself only and could not be true for anybody else. This case is not to be confused with the other in which it could be said that a proposition is true “for me” only in the sense of being specifically about me. Thus, if I am the only child of my parents it is true only of me that I have those parents. 4 For instance, we may forever be unable to determine the truth or falsity of the claim that our current universe is the only one that exists or ever existed, simply because some of the conditions that would allow us to decide the matter one way or the other may forever be unavailable to us. Many of our claims about the past or the exact sequence or causal connection among events in history similarly elude our ability to ascertain their truth. 5 Davidson goes on to draw out further implications such as the holistic nature of understanding concepts and propositions and the primordial nature of the linguistic community: “. . . the acquisition of knowledge is not based on a progression from the subjective to the objective; it emerges holistically, and is interpersonal from the start” (Davidson, 2004, p. 18). 6 I say “materially” in order to indicate that truth and falsity here are not a matter of mere logical coherence.
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The Objectivity Problem and the Crisis of Subjectivity
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a fact of the matter, so to speak, the appeal to which lets us decide whether a truth claim is true or false. Taken in this sense, objectivity is equivalent to what philosophers and non-philosophers alike somewhat loosely also call “reality.” Hence, some conception of reality must be acknowledged to be valid for getting the practice of making truth claims off the ground. This conception of reality cannot be relative to any particular speaker or community of speakers, instead, it must be a conception of an objective world that is the same for everybody. Following Thomas Nagel’s argument in The Last Word, our conception of an objective reality that is the same for all logically precedes the idea of subjective perspectives within this objective framework. For it is possible to show that the notion of a truth that is true only for me or for a limited community of individuals but not for others is incoherent (see Nagel, 1997, pp. 15–16).7 Indeed, without the presupposition of an objective truth or an objective world the distinction between different subjective points of view would not be possible.8 Furthermore, such a conception of reality cannot be simply the sum total or aggregate of all the empirical sentences that we believe to be true. Instead, it will have to be a meta-level conception of what reality truly is and/or ought to be like. To be sure, such a conception would not be invulnerable; it would remain subject to further corrections or alterations in the light of new empirical findings. But the important point is that it would not and could not be a mere summation of empirical knowledge. The relationship between the sum total of our empirical knowledge and the meta-level conception underlying it would be that of a priori framework and empirical theory, analogous to that of theory and empirical findings. At this point, it is important to address an objection to the argument so far developed. It might be said that while the nexus between truth, objectivity, and reality can indeed be established in this way, this does not by itself say anything as yet about our ability to establish what such an objective reality is, let alone must be, like. Or, the conception of an objective reality might be a mere postulate, conceptually necessary, it is true, but basically empty or, if not empty then at least entirely hypothetical. In reply to this objection I would like to point out that as a matter of fact our conception of objective reality is never empty or entirely hypothetical. We always already entertain some notion of what we believe objective reality to be. In other words, our conception of objective reality is always characterized by certain background assumptions that need not be explicitly stated but that are operative as a matter of course and that are not fundamentally questioned. Such background assumptions are essentially of two kinds, viz. methodological and ontological, and they are different
7 Clearly,
a belief can be held only by me or exclusively by some community. But this fact, if it is a fact, is then universally true. 8 Peter Strawson famously made this point in connection with his interpretation of Kant’s distinction between a subjective and an objective unity of consciousness in his 1966 study of Kant’s First Critique, The Bounds of Sense. While individually we chart our own subjective route through the world, this world is a shared objective world, and without a conception of such a shared objective world the localization of distinct individual routes through it would not even be possible (see Strawson, 1989, p. 104).
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for different areas of theoretical and practical activity. Thus one might point out that there is a common sense view of the world according to which we make certain assumptions about what is objectively the case as we move through this world as ordinary everyday agents going about our lives. These assumptions may include the belief in relatively stable objects that are located in space and time, forming part of events and subject to change in a predictable manner but also exposed to contingent and unforeseeable alterations. They may also include a certain confidence in the general stability of our form of life and the general trustworthiness of others. A certain measure of skepticism would be exercised in relying on these assumptions such that we would never blindly trust either our actual perception or our memory or the assurances of others except in cases in which experience had given us no reason for diffidence. If, by contrast, we look at the world with the eyes of a scientist, we would probably make somewhat different background assumptions about what counts as objective reality, perhaps qualifying many of the ontological assumptions of common sense as relating to mere surface phenomena and submitting ourselves to much more stringent methodological requirements, before we claim that a certain theory about the nature of physical reality had been well established. In general, we are well aware of the fact that jurists, doctors, scientists, artists, religious communities and a host of other groups look at our world in ways different from that of the relatively uniformed layman or outsider. Or perhaps we should say that they look at parts of our common, shared world in different ways. Whether these differences are always due to differences in ontological and methodological background assumptions would be a matter for further investigation, as would be the question, which points of view we would recognize as representing the major conceptual frameworks whose methodological and ontological background assumptions are different enough to constitute a framework in its own right. One might argue that the way in which a religious person, an artist, and an engineer understands the world is significantly different in methodological and in ontological terms for their points of view to constitute separate frameworks. At the same time, there will likely be enough overlap between these views such that elements of the respective frameworks would be identical across different points of view. Alternatively, one might assume that there is a general commonsense framework in which we all participate, and that more specialized views of the world are so to speak additional layers parasitic upon a shared conceptual framework. It is also possible to argue that the overall outlook on the world of a certain era or civilization is guided by a specific interpretation of what “true reality” is like or what truly matters, be it a scientistic understanding of the world or the idea that a certain political or economic system is historically privileged. We need not enter into a discussion of such questions here.9 Suffice it to say that there is a plausible case to be made that different conceptual frameworks exist and
9 Different
typologies of objective worlds have been suggested, such as Karl Popper’s “three worlds” or the Husserlian conception of a life-world. Whether these can serve a useful role in this context would have to be examined as well.
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The Objectivity Problem and the Crisis of Subjectivity
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that some of their differences are a direct consequence of the different methodological and ontological background assumptions that enter into their formation. In other words, we do not start with a tabula rasa nor with pristine, immediately given data that are untouched by any “addition” or alteration effected by the subject of cognition. In this sense, subjectivity enters into the formation of objectivity from the start. Objectivity is a product of the activities of the subject of cognition.10 Rather than undermining the possibility of objective knowledge, subjectivity, on the contrary, is its foundation. If there is any hope of demonstrating the possibility of objective knowledge, it must involve the active input of cognitive subjects, since there is no objectivity other than as an object of knowledge. Objectivity and objective knowledge are interchangeable concepts. Arguably, this last point raises the real problem. The real problem is not that the subject of cognition always already makes certain methodological and ontological background assumptions but rather that, if this is so, objectivity seems forever to recede out of reach. If subjectivity is in some critical sense the ground of objectivity, then any conception of objectivity seems to be hopelessly tainted by a subjective bias that undermines the possibility of genuine objectivity from the start. This conclusion appears to be inescapable even, once we have understood that whatever we mean by objectivity, it must in any case be a conception of reality generated by a thinking subject. Objectivity is not a picture of reality passively received because, first of all, there is no such passive reception of reality in which subjectivity or thinking has not already actively participated, and second and perhaps more importantly, because objectivity is itself the result of a process of reasoning and reflection. Once this is understood, we can see that this insight has the potential to cause an aporia. An objectivity that is the product of reasoning and reflection seems to be vulnerable to the skeptic’s objection of being viciously circular, since to try to prove any conception of objectivity to be true or genuine would require to check it against another conception of objectivity that is equally the product of reasoning and reflection, and hence a product of the cognitive subject. It almost seems as if the very idea of objectivity carries the worm of self-destruction within itself from the start. The price of objectivity is the acknowledgment of its dependence on the subject’s cognitive acts, from which develops the crisis of subjectivity, i.e. the inability of the subject to certify as objective what it knows to be the result of a subjective process. To use a metaphor, this seems like the expulsion of the subject of knowledge from the garden of objective truth. Systematically speaking, the insight that subjectivity is the source of objectivity is the root of skepticism in philosophy. It has led philosophers past and present to believe that claims to objective knowledge have to be put in limbo. Such claims, they argue, must be qualified as merely subjective. Their truth, if it could be established, would be problematic or fallible. And since something that is believed to be
10 Obviously,
this is precisely the circumstance that Kant acknowledged, but which he thought could also become the basis of an argument in favor of objective knowledge. Hegel took the same approach: see E §§ 22–25.
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probably or problematically true is not known to be true, the concept of truth cannot really be employed under these circumstances. As we shall see, even some of those who try to uphold the concept of objectivity argue that objectivity can nonetheless never be conclusively established such that all claims to objective knowledge must remain problematic. But again, if claims to objective knowledge cannot conclusively be shown to be true, the concept of objective knowledge undermines itself. Probable truth is not yet truth. To be sure, it could be argued that a truth claim that is put forward on the basis of legitimate methodological and ontological background assumptions qualifies as a potential truth. But this only pushes the problem back one level. The issue would then be to account for the legitimacy of those background assumptions and this cannot be done simply by accumulating more evidence based on those very assumptions. This path is circular in the vicious sense and thus leads to the loss of the concept of truth and hence to that of objectivity as well. Such a position is in fact theoretically unsustainable, because it denies the possibility of ever reaching a standard that would allow us to determine how close we got to the truth. To determine the latter, we would need to be able to evaluate a given conceptual framework in terms of its potential for truth, something we can do only if we possess a definitive standard of truth or are able to develop one. What this means is that the legitimate employment of the concepts of truth and objectivity can only be upheld, if we find a way to generate objective knowledge with its claim to universal validity by taking subjectivity as our point of departure, while also finding a way critically to evaluate the potential for truth of any given framework of knowledge and its background assumptions. This is not going to be possible, if we assume that we do not already have access to an objective point of view. We can construct a path from subjectivity to objectivity only if we know where this path starts and where it leads. In other words, we need to work on the assumption that we either already possess the coordinates of our subjective point of departure, or that we will at least be able to discover them once we get out of the woods, so to speak. Therefore, the construction of our path will in any case have to be a re-construction. When Davidson says that “the acquisition of knowledge is not based on a progression from the subjective to the objective; it emerges holistically, and is interpersonal from the start” (Davidson, 2004, p. 18), he must mean just that. The acquisition of knowledge is not based on a progression from the subjective to the objective, if the objective is understood as falling entirely outside the sphere of the subjective and to be beyond its reach. The acquisition of knowledge of the objective that starts from the subjective is, however, possible if the subjective is already part of the objective or of a shared interpersonal framework. The subjective and the objective are on a continuum such that the subject gradually comes to understand its viewpoint as a perspectival modification of the whole while at the same time being able successively to form a conception of the whole itself. It will become clearer in the following section that this is not simply a return to Aristotle’s progression from what is familiar and more knowable to us to what is more knowable by nature.11 The reason for this is that due to Descartes’ privileging
11 See
Phys, I 1, 184a 16–21.
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Descartes and the Roots of the Crisis of Subjectivity
7
of the first person perspective together with the hiatus he creates between ideas and their referents the hiatus between subjective certainty and objective truth has become all the more pronounced. It is the assumption that objectivity must fall entirely within the subjective that has been the basis for the crisis of subjectivity, which, it seems to me, is still very much ongoing and is part of the signature of modernity. We should try instead to see subjectivity as falling within the objective, as an articulation of the objective from a particular vantage point.12 The cooperation within an objective order allows us to come together; the idols of the cave segregate us. In order to remind us of the historical origin and the systematic reasons for the development of the crisis of subjectivity, I suggest that we briefly inspect its roots in Descartes. I will then turn to a discussion of some traditional and contemporary attempts to defend the possibility of objective knowledge. From this discussion I will conclude that even some of the most advanced contemporary positions fail to do justice to the requirements of objectivity and that only those positions that embrace a so-called transcendental strategy have a chance to respond successfully to this challenge. I will therefore investigate Kant’s problematic combination of transcendental idealism and empirical realism and try to show why only a purely homogeneous, idealistic position à la Hegel offers a coherent strategy to respond to the challenges posed by the problem of objectivity.
1.2 Descartes and the Roots of the Crisis of Subjectivity It is not particularly original to point out that the realization that subjectivity grounds and underwrites all claims to objectivity constitutes the fundamental paradigm shift from ancient to modern philosophy. Still, the consequences of this development in philosophy are so significant that it is worth dwelling on this point for a moment. The crisis of subjectivity starts as soon as subjectivity has been discovered as the true theme of philosophy. That this is so, becomes clear in an exemplary fashion with Descartes’ response, in the Objections and Replies to the Meditations, to the mistaken characterization of the “Cogito, ergo sum” as a syllogism that only lacks the major premise. Descartes’ comment is highly instructive, for he argues that the argument could not be a syllogism because the major premise could not be formulated unless one had already grasped in one’s own mind that thinking and existing are immediately connected.13 Without intuitively understanding this connection, i.e. without experiencing it in one’s own mind, one could not know that the conceptual implication between thinking and existing obtains as a matter of fact. I take Descartes to mean by this that the conceptual implication expressed in the major 12 Famously,
according to Leibniz each monad mirrors the same universe, albeit from a different angle and with more or less clarity: “It is not in the objects of their knowledge, but in the modes of this knowledge that the monads are limited. All of them have a confused knowledge of the infinite, that is, of the whole; but they are limited and distinguished by the degrees of distinct perception” (Leibniz, Monadology § 60). 13 Cf. CSM II 100/AT VII 140–141; see also CSM II 217/AT VII 205–206.
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premise according to which everything that thinks must also exist as a thinking being rests on a synthetic relationship between the concepts of thinking and existing. The fact that this relationship does in fact obtain, however, cannot be known without experiencing the connection intuitively in one’s own mind.14 The mind qua thinking being must therefore behold it in itself in order to know it to be true. From its first person perspective, the subject here certifies the truth of a conceptual relationship that is in and of itself universally valid, but whose truth must first be verified by the individual. In this sense, subjectivity underwrites objective truth by confirming that this truth does in fact obtain. Furthermore, for a truth to obtain seems to require that it be instantiated, i.e. true in a given case, and hence true of something that exists. It is thus shown to be true not only hypothetically and conceptually, but also actually and existentially. So there are two reasons why “Cogtio, ergo sum” is not a syllogism: (a) the conceptual implication between thinking and existing must be actively grasped by the mind before we can know that it holds; and (b) we must be satisfied in our own case that it is true, before we can generalize this insight and construct a major premise purporting to be true of all thinking beings. Descartes’ subordination of the third person to a first person perspective based on his argument that subjectivity underwrites all claims to objective truth plunged philosophy into a prolonged crisis. Arguably, this crisis is still ongoing. It consists in the modern predicament of having lost confidence in the possibility of objective knowledge because knowledge requires the active interpretive input of the subject. Hegel reportedly called this predicament the sickness of our time.15 Or perhaps one should say that today the sense of crisis has passed, but the predicament persists and has come to be accepted as the normal, unalterable condition in which human cognition finds itself. My earlier claim that our conception of objective reality is in fact never empty is obviously far from being a response to the skeptical question that can always be raised, namely, whether any conception of objectivity is in fact true and can be demonstrated to be so. In other words, our initial argument according to which we always already possess a conception of objective truth begs the question as long as we are unable to answer the skeptical question how we can know that our subjective conception of objectivity is in fact a conception of objectivity. Before I turn to this vexed issue, I propose to expand a little on the reasons for the Cartesian paradigm shift. First, there is the rupture, purposefully and methodically engineered by Descartes in the First Meditation, between the inner sphere of consciousness with its ideas and
14 This would be a connection of conjoined terms called “res copulata” at Regulae 13,3/AT X 432, which are perceived by intuition or “immediate inference” (immediate concludere, Regulae 3, 8/AT X 370). 15 “The sickness of our time, which has arrived at the point of despair, is the assumption that our cognition is only subjective and that this is the last word about it. But the truth is what is objective, and this truth ought to be the rule governing everyone’s convictions . . .” (E § 22, Addition). I say “reportedly,” because the text of the Additions (Zusätze) was compiled by Hegel’s students after his death. And although the compilation was based on students’ notes and Hegel’s own manuscripts, it cannot therefore be said to have been directly authorized by Hegel.
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Descartes and the Roots of the Crisis of Subjectivity
9
its mental life on the one hand and the objects that purport to be the referents of those ideas on the other, a rupture between mind and mind-independent world, but also a rupture between individual certainty and impersonal truth. We may call this rupture the ontological hiatus between mind and world. All objects, those of mathematics included, are excluded from the mental realm of consciousness, and with the referentiality of any and all ideas in doubt there is no way of telling whether the ideas are true of anything. Note that we can see Descartes’ conception of objective truth emerge at this point: a thought is true, if it is true of an object or objective realm that as such does not form part of the mental realm itself. Let us call this the referential conception of truth. It says that a thought or proposition is true, if it is true of a state of affairs or some objective correlate that exists independently of the mind’s ideas and mental activities.16 Due to the ontological hiatus, the referential conception of truth is in jeopardy.17 Descartes will try to remedy the situation by developing his ingenious proof of the existence of God in the Third Meditation, which indirectly re-establishes the existence of the objective correlate of the mind and its ideas. How little is gained by this rehabilitation of metaphysical realism can be seen in the Sixth Meditation. According to Descartes’ argument there we can only manage to secure an objective correlate in general. Without further assumptions about the causal role of God (e.g., with respect to motion) and a theory of perception, not much more can be said about the world than that its ontological makeup is that of an extended substance. Descartes’ “bracketing” of all objective correlates of the ideas in the mind (and thus of the entire mind-independent world of things and states of affairs), i.e., his hypothesis that none of them might exist, has a double effect. On the one hand, it exposes what is normally overlooked due to the intentionality of consciousness, viz. consciousness’ internal workings. For while we are normally immersed in the objective correlates of our ideas and thoughts, bracketing these correlates makes us aware of the mental sphere as the source and foundation of our belief in
16 It
is worth pointing out that Descartes has another conception of truth as well according to which ideas can be materially true but formally false (cf. CSM II 30/AT VII 43–44). This means that his distinction between a mental sphere that includes the mental life of consciousness as well as its ideas is not parallel to the Husserlian distinction between a noematic and a noetic sphere. Descartes’ ideas as they exist in the mind constitute mental contents – they are, in Husserl’s language, real content, “reeller Bestandteil” of consciousness – but they are nonetheless also noematic objects, since they possess objective reality and are materially true. If they possess noematic correlates, i.e. if they are true of something, they are formally true. However, they may not be true of anything existing independently of the mental sphere, i.e. they may not refer to anything as their objective correlate, in which case they are materially true but formally false. Conversely, they may be materially false and then by definition cannot be formally true, i.e. they cannot be truly predicated of something. Formal truth is propositional truth and concerns the relationship between propositions and mind-independent states of affairs. Material truth concerns the existence or non-existence of mental contents as distinct from the mere sign (word, name) for it. 17 The thought “I think, therefore I am” is exempted from this problem, since the referent, the ego, is included in the mental sphere itself and its existence is thus beyond doubt.
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a mind-independent reality.18 On the other hand, Descartes’ methodological procedure, i.e., his employment of the method of doubt, simultaneously creates the ontological gap between the subjective ideas and the mental activities thus exposed on the one hand and their uncertain objective correlates on the other. It thus happens that as subjectivity is discovered in its role of certifying all truth claims it is also and at the very same time being cut off from the objective correlates that provide the material conditions that can make those truth claims true. That these two moves happen simultaneously therein consists the Cartesian revolution. For it is only because of the coincidence of these two moves that the crisis of subjectivity can unfold.19 While the ontological hiatus is overcome (at least programmatically, if not in fact) through Descartes’ proof of the existence of God, there is yet another hiatus that is not derivative of the method of doubt and the privileging of subjectivity. This hiatus instead concerns Descartes’ view of the relationship between sensations and their causes. We can call this the epistemological hiatus. Based on the certainty that a mind-independent objective world does in fact exist, Descartes can be both a metaphysical and an epistemological realist, but because of his theory of perception he cannot be a direct, but only an indirect or inferential epistemological realist. The sensory relationship between mind and world is problematic, because it is indirect and not based on likeness. Famously, according to the Optics the condition of the cognitive subject is like that of a blind man with a stick in a forest.20 The information about the blind man’s environment is communicated to his mind through a chain of intermediary instruments, and the stimuli that his senses pick up contain an encoded message that the mind needs to decipher with the help of the imagination and on the basis of both empirical research in optics and fundamental principles of physics that have been established independently of sensory information. Consequently, our sensory information is more like a symbolism than a likeness of things and does not give us direct access to how things are. Perceptions represent things but do not resemble them.21 On the basis of encoded information we need to figure out what things are really like in the world of extension. The picture we thus draw of the world is based on inference and is very different from what things seem to be like according to our immediate perception of them.22 It is this epistemological hiatus 18 This
obliviousness regarding the inner workings of the mind was also noted by Locke, who saw that it took a special intentio obliqua to become aware of it: “The understanding, like the eye, whilst it makes us see and perceive all other things, takes no notice of itself; and it requires art and pains to set it at a distance and make it its own object” (Essay, Introduction § 1). 19 That such a gap is not the result of simply adopting the perspective of consciousness can be seen in Husserl who has no need to account for the existence of a mind-independent world beyond consciousness. 20 Cf. CSM I 153/AT VI 83–85; see also CSM I 165–166/AT VI 112–114. Our perceptual condition is much like that of a flight by instruments of an airplane at night. 21 Cf. CSM II 56–57/AT VII 82–83. Locke issues a similar warning prompted by the distinction between ideas of primary and secondary qualities: see Essay II 8, 15. 22 Descartes makes this point repeatedly in the Optics, the Principles and the Sixth Meditation where he warns us not to rely on immediate sensory information (a feeling of pain may have a
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Descartes and the Roots of the Crisis of Subjectivity
11
between our direct sensory experience and the nature of things in space and time that prompts Descartes to caution us that for the most part we can claim only “moral certainty” or probability for our beliefs about the world. He does, however, think that he has found a way to go beyond moral to “absolute” certainty in his metaphysics.23 His argument marks an important bifurcation in the justificatory strategy of philosophers that may be discussed at this point. The bifurcation amounts to a differentiation between the attempt to account for empirical truth on the one hand and “metaphysical” truth on the other. Whereas empirical truth claims remain fallible, metaphysical truth claims are supposed to be true independently of what is empirically the case. They can only be supported but not contradicted by empirical evidence, since they are not subject to empirical verification. Instead, the metaphysical framework delimits the range of possibility for what can count as empirically true by determining the principles in accordance with which empirical objects must behave (at least at a very general level24 ). The distinction foreshadows that between a posteriori and a priori truth claims that is gradually being worked out in different contexts and with variations from Descartes through Kant.25 To understand better what is meant by metaphysical truth claims and their absolute certainty, let us turn to the final paragraphs of the Principles of Philosophy. Descartes there advocates the possibility of establishing a body of a priori truths about the world, a normative metaphysics. From a set of “innate ideas” and “just a few principles” he deduces what he believes to be the fundamental structure of the physical world.26 But he realizes that he can offer no guarantee that the principles themselves are absolutely true. Although it lets everything “fit into a coherent pattern,” the theory may be only “morally certain,” i.e. have “sufficient certainty for application to ordinary life,” but may be “uncertain in relation to the absolute power of God” (CSM I 289–290/AT VIIIA 327). The reason for this is that coherentism ensures intelligibility, but not absolute certainty, i.e. unconditional truth or objectivity. Descartes illustrates his point with the following analogy: Suppose . . . that someone wants to read a letter written in Latin but encoded so that the letters of the alphabet do not have their proper value, and he guesses that the letter B should be read whenever A appears, and C when B appears, i.e. that each letter should be replaced by the one immediately following it. If, by using this key, he can make up Latin words from the letters, he will be in no doubt that the true meaning of the letter is contained in these
source very different from the felt location in our body, the thirst of a person suffering from dropsy should be resisted, the heat we feel is not in the fire, etc.). 23 See CSM I 290–291/AT VIIIA 327–329. 24 Thus Descartes derives the empirical principles by which the coordinates of bodies are determined from general assumptions about the nature of motion and matter (a body is in motion or at rest not absolutely but only relatively to other bodies). 25 For instance, Leibniz speaks of truths of fact vs. truths of reason, Hume of matters of fact vs. relations of ideas. Kant applies the distinction specifically to judgments and together with the analytic/synthetic distinction produces a third type of judgments, viz. synthetic a priori ones. 26 Cf. CSM I 290/AT VIIIA 328.
12
1 The Problem of Objectivity as a Problem of Modernity words. It is true that his knowledge is based merely on a conjecture, and it is conceivable that the writer did not replace the original letters with their immediate successors in the alphabet, but with others, thus encoding quite a different message; but the possibility is so unlikely<especially if the message contains many words>that it does not seem credible (CSM I 290/AT VIIIA 327–328).
Unlikely, but not impossible; coherence makes truth very probable, because “it would hardly have been possible for so many items to fit into a coherent pattern, if the original principles had been false” (ibid.). And yet, high probability is not equivalent to absolute certainty. So in the end Descartes asks himself what it would take to turn moral into absolute certainty. His answer (added in the French translation):
(CSM I 290/AT VIIIA 328).
Such certainty requires a “metaphysical foundation,” namely, that God is supremely good and in no way a deceiver, and hence that the faculty which he gave us for distinguishing truth from falsehood cannot lead us into error, so long as we are using it properly and are thereby perceiving something distinctly. Mathematical demonstrations have this kind of certainty, as does the knowledge that material things exist; and the same goes for all evident reasoning about material things (ibid.).
In other words, coherence of the theory as a whole together with the exclusion of all other alternatives (“that it is wholly impossible that something should be otherwise than we judge it to be”) would make a theory absolutely certain while working only from inside the theory, so to speak, but accepting in an initial act of faith God’s supreme goodness. Under these conditions, Descartes believes that the results of his metaphysics stand a fair chance of being admitted into the “class of absolute certainties, if people consider how they have been deduced in an unbroken chain from the first and simplest principles of human knowledge” (ibid.). His hopes for more than moral certainty remain predicated, however, on the metaphysical assumption of a supremely good being and the ability to exclude all other alternatives. Not only that. More importantly, Descartes’ hopes for absolute certainty remain predicated on the ability of the epistemic subject to ascertain the truth of those metaphysical claims by relying entirely on its own resources. These resources are made up of the elements of faith in the goodness of God, the natural light of reason (which yields principles such as that the formal reality of a cause must be at least as great as the objective reality of the effect), a set of innate ideas, i.e. a basic ontology, and a number of assumptions about the physical universe such as the nature of matter and the laws of motion (that are ultimately based on assumptions about God’s decisions in creating the world). There is, of course, no accounting for why the act of faith in the goodness of God is warranted or why the innate ideas are what they are. The method for deriving metaphysical truth claims about the structure of the physical universe is limited to “evident reasoning,” i.e. immediate and mediate inference that obeys the formal strictures of the principle of non-contradiction and issues in a “coherent” theory. No criteria are offered for what constitutes coherence, and there is no way of telling whether or not all alternative scenarios have effectively been
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Descartes and the Roots of the Crisis of Subjectivity
13
excluded. The epistemic subject is thus left entirely to its own devices. The natural light of reason, it is true, implies an appeal to a sphere of objective truth, but there is no specific explanation of what kinds of truth claims can or cannot be supported by the natural light. Not only empirical, metaphysical truth claims, too, are ultimately underwritten by the experience of certainty. There is thus no difference in their method of verification. But certainty and truth are not synonymous and can fall apart.27 The interpretation as well as the application of the measures Descartes invokes in order to certify metaphysical truth claims are entirely dependent on what appears to be evident to the epistemic subject. The interpretation and application of these measures is, in this sense, entirely “subjective.” But one may wonder whether there could possibly be any other way of ascertaining the truth of a claim, proposition, or statement than that of a “subjective” experience based on some kind of evidence.28 Does not all believing and knowing trivially involve the active contribution of the epistemic subject? A terminological distinction Hegel uses in the Phenomenology of Spirit may be helpful here. He distinguishes between what is true “for” consciousness and what is true “in itself”.29 For something to be known to be true what is true in itself must evidently also be “for” consciousness, but what is true for it is not for that reason also necessarily true in itself or true per se. Indeed, Hegel’s argument is to say that what is true for consciousness is only putatively true in itself as well, and that consciousness must learn through a laborious process of self-correction that what is true for it is merely a partial or one-sided apperception of what is true in itself – until in the end, the two perspectives are supposed to coincide. Obviously, one of the difficulties consists in successfully making the argument that there comes a point at which what is true for consciousness is no longer different from what is true in itself. Likewise, we need a convincing argument that what is true in itself is in fact knowable from a first person perspective.30 It is important now to put the two basic thoughts developed in this and the previous section together and derive the necessary criteria for how to proceed. First, if the argument of the previous section is correct that the objective is prior to the subjective, then we must examine the possibility of establishing this priority. Second, if Descartes’ point that all knowledge must be certifiable from within a first person perspective is likewise correct, we must find a way of demonstrating how objective knowledge becomes accessible from a first person perspective. That is to say, there ought to be a path that leads from the subjective to the objective and along which 27 As
a precondition for reconstructing the structures of objectivity, Hegel will therefore try to transform certainty into truth in the Phenomenology of Spirit. We will discuss his argument at some length below (see Section 2). 28 Husserl’s phenomenology is perhaps unique in that it is built around the idea of truth as experience (Erlebnis) and the noetic and noematic components that make experiencing truth possible. 29 See PS § 82, pp. 52–3/PdG 76–77. 30 I will take up this question again in the context of the discussion of Hegel’s attempt to provide a connection between subjective and objective thinking (see Section 4.3 below).
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the first person comes see itself as capable of objective knowledge. To what extent current defenders of objectivity are able to mount a successful argument in support of these two requirements is the issue we will investigate next. I will start with an examination of some traditional responses to the objectivity challenge first (Section 1.3) and will then consider some contemporary proposals.
1.3 Some Traditional Arguments in Defense of Objectivity There is a widespread consensus today that objectivity is some kind of construct or the outcome of some act or acts of interpretation. Thus it has been claimed that constructionism is the epistemological position of choice in modern philosophy31 or that there is no reality at all for human beings that is not the result of an interpretation.32 Representative statements to this effect are, for instance, that the concept of an uninterpreted reality as something that exists beyond all schemata and all science completely lacks plausibility,33 that there is no presence [in human experience] of anything that would be absolutely free of interpretation,34 that everything that exists for us is mediated by a system of signs and interpretations,35 or that talk of a “reality in itself” is possible only insofar as it is conditioned by an interpretive scheme and that the objects we assume to be the referents of our talk about the world are only presumed to be real (Lenk, 1995, pp. 85, 248). I would argue that most of these beliefs are probably true, some perhaps trivially so. However, this does not mean that something like objectivity is therefore impossible. Part of the argument of this book is to show how despite the subjective mediatedness of all knowledge objective knowledge is nonetheless possible. The roots of the antirealist attitude just described go back at least to Descartes and his understanding of perception as an encrypted form of contact with the world that results in the epistemological hiatus referred to earlier, i.e., the problematic referential relationship between ideas and their objective correlates.36 Ever since then, philosophy has tried to deal with the crisis of subjectivity as described in the previous sections. Arguably, the history of Western philosophy up to at least Kant and German idealism has been determined by a desire to account for the possibility of objective knowledge despite Descartes’ privileging of the first person perspective. These metaphysical and transcendental philosophies sought knowledge
31 Cf.
Welsch, 2003, p. 280. Wiesing, 2004, p. 137f. 33 Cf. Davidson, 1984, p. 282. 34 Cf. Röd, 1991, p. 37. 35 Cf. Abel, 2004, p. 242. 36 To remind the reader, the relationship is not problematic in the sense of doubting the existence of those objects, but in knowing how accurate our representation of them really is. 32 Cf.
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Some Traditional Arguments in Defense of Objectivity
15
transcending our individual and even our human perspective.37 The metaphysical systems of the past, in particular those of Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz, grew out of this endeavor. It is, however, not difficult to find fault with these foundationalist positions, since they were based on a combination of ad hoc assumptions about reality as a whole (such as that everything must have a sufficient or determinate cause) and indispensable logical principles such as the principle of non-contradiction. Leibniz’ fundamental assumption that there must be monads since without them the unity of phenomena cannot be explained is a case in point.38 It represents an instance of the application of the principle of sufficient reason to a more specific ad hoc assumption about the nature of reality, viz. that it is made up of compounds that require simples, if they are to form wholes. Monads are metaphysical, not physical “atoms,” because physical matter is in fact infinitely divisible.39 This follows from the analytical relationship between extendedness and divisibility. Here the ad hoc character of the argument can be seen quite clearly: divisibility or discreteness of extended things is privileged over their continuity. The continuity or oneness of things is declared to require a metaphysical principle, since unity in the physical is assumed to be a derivative phenomenon. This is not the place for a critical review of the ad hoc character of the basic assumptions in traditional metaphysical systems. It is easy to understand, however, that as the metaphysical realism and rationalist objectivism of these philosophies had been undermined by the Cartesian privileging of the first person perspective, the pressures in the direction of an immanentist position become irresistible.40 Immanentism as I understand it in the context of pre-Kantian philosophy means that we adopt the position of mental immanence, such that anything we say about objects or the world transcending this immanence is a more or less well founded conjecture. Mental immanentism is only one of the forms of immanentism that I will be discussing.41 The other two forms will be immanentism of consciousness or experience (Abel, Lenk, Rescher) and immanentism of experience and thought (Kant, Hegel). We will see that the problem of modernity and the crisis of subjectivity
37 Cf. Kutschera, 1993, pp. 285–286. Husserl, too, was still motivated by this ideal as witnessed by
his motto “To the things themselves!” Leibniz, Monadology §§ 1, 2. 39 Matter is not only potentially divisible ad infinitum but actually infinitely divided according to Leibniz: cf. Monadology § 65. 40 It could be argued that the mental immanentism of the British empiricists is the real successor to Descartes, whereas the so-called rationalists on the Continent tried to salvage a way of doing philosophy that had already been seriously undermined by Descartes himself. 41 I choose the expression “immanentism” deliberately so as to avoid confusion with the discussion between internalism and externalism among antirealist and immanentist positions. Internalism and externalism concern the dependence or independence of mental states from physical (i.e. external) states, for instance in the case of perceptual judgments. For an in-depth review of this discussion see Birke, 2001. He offers a concise definition of internalism and externalism on pages 15–6; see also the diagram at p. 21. 38 See
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referred to above are essentially expressions and consequences of the fundamental immanentist shift inaugurated by Descartes. Mental immanentism needs to account for the possibility of reference to a mindindependent reality and the possibility of making truth claims about that reality that can be verified at least in principle. But how does one do this from a position of mental immanence? Such a position is immediately threatened by skepticism about the existence of a mind-independent world and as a consequence likewise by solipsism, which in turn runs the risk of developing into relativism. To be sure, an immanentist also has the option of some form of internal realism, a position that allows for the construction of an objective world and an entire ontology “on the inside,” so to speak. Indeed, most moderate immanentists will want to defend some kind of immanent objectivity. Nonetheless, such theories remain vulnerable to serious complications to be discussed soon. Before I address some contemporary responses to the objectivity problem, I propose to take a brief look at how the problem has traditionally been dealt with in the history of modern philosophy. The usual traditional antidote to solipsism, i.e. the encapsulation of the epistemic subject in the cocoon of its own mind, is to hold on to something “given”, given, that is, independently of the epistemic subject and received by it either passively or with some cooperation of the cognitive faculties of the mind. Despite its being part of the mental space, the given is understood as coming from the outside, so to speak. It is experienced as something that made its way into the more or less “empty cabinet”, as Locke called it, by way of the senses or, as in the case of the Cartesian innate ideas, by divine intervention. Evidence that this material is subject-independent is often said to consist in its involuntary presence, the fact that we cannot help having visual, auditory or other impressions when we open our eyes or ears, etc., that we cannot will to have them or not to have them. We find the positing of such given material in Descartes, the empiricists, but also in Spinoza and Leibniz, although the latter are immanentists of a different kind that allows them to be metaphysical realists as well. In many cases, contemporary philosophers likewise posit a given, even though they often reduce it to a mere sensory stimulus that has no determinable characteristics independently of the subject’s interpretation of it.42 The problems with the traditional concept of a given material or sensory stimulus are numerous. Sensory input might be hallucinatory or very much like dream experiences and thus caused by the epistemic subject rather than some mind-independent reality. Descartes used these possibilities to undermine any trustworthiness of the senses, thus eliminating any immediate external “given.” He concluded in the Third Meditation that there was only one idea in the entire mental space, viz. the idea of
42 For
Quine, a visual stimulus, as distinct from the meaning that comes to be associated with it, is nothing but a “pattern of chromatic irradiation of the eye” (Quine, 1960, p. 31). Apparently, such a stimulus is a physical phenomenon occurring in the sense organ, one that we do not even perceive as such, since what we perceive is already a sound, say, but not a sound wave, or a color patch, not rays of light.
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Some Traditional Arguments in Defense of Objectivity
17
God, that could not possibly have been produced by his own mind, since its objective reality was greater than his own formal reality as a finite thinking being. There had thus to be a mind-independent cause of this idea adequate to account for its objective reality. Only after establishing the existence of this divine cause was he then able to re-admit the given, albeit merely in the form of an as yet uninterpreted sensory input. As a result, the true nature of the cause of those sensory data could be determined only by way of inference based on ad hoc assumptions about the nature of matter and motion and empirical theories about the mechanics of the subject’s perceptual apparatus. By contrast, Locke believed that there clearly is a given in the form of simple or particular ideas that contain their own independent conceptual information that is not the result of the subject’s interpretive acts but the undistorted and unmanipulated basis for all subsequent operations of the mind.43 However, as Berkeley quickly pointed out, the causal link that is still supposed to exist between the idea as effect and some mind-independent object X as its cause becomes problematic, since there is no way of ever comparing an object with an idea – ideas can only be like or unlike other ideas. Mental immanentism tends to undermine the referentiality of concepts and thus the entire notion of truth as agreement of idea and object. It thus encourages Berkeley’s radical immanentism usually referred to as empirical idealism and Hume’s agnosticism with respect to the external causes of impressions.44 The situation is again different in Kant who makes use of an as yet undetermined empirical manifold that is first structured by the forms of intuition and then further conceptually determined by various syntheses, but that does not in and of itself contain any conceptual information. Kant’s procedure will be discussed in greater detail in the next chapter. The examples so far suggest that not much is gained by introducing a given that comes with or without conceptual or non-conceptual sensory information. From the perspective of mental immanence there is no telling whether the stimulus is genuinely “given”, i.e. deriving from a subject-independent source, or whether it is perhaps the result of the subject’s self-affection. Nor can one really tell, whether it contains any subject-independent information or not, not to mention the problem of explaining what subject-independent information might mean here. Similarly, it is not possible to ascertain that a causal connection between the stimulus and the sensory datum is responsible for the sensory input, since any evidence to that effect
43 Cf. Locke, Essay II 2, 2; II 7, 10. The crux with Locke’s simple or “particular” ideas is whether they are supposed to contain conceptual information or are purely non-conceptual sensory data. The comment at II 2, 1 that the perception of simple ideas “contains in it nothing but one uniform appearance or conception in the mind” suggests perhaps the former rather than the latter. 44 Obviously, it does not follow that Berkleyan empirical idealism is the answer to this situation. Locke seems to have been more cautious when he declared truth to be the result of the comparison of our ideas among themselves, while still holding on to an essentially realist foundation of his epistemology, which accepts mind-independent causes of ideas. Still, the nature of those causes must largely remain a matter of conjecture for Locke.
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can only be based on more putative causation by stimulus. The causal theory operative as a background assumption is a mere hypothesis.45 Hence there is no telling whether the inference to the unobserved and unobservable cause of the stimulus can legitimately be made. Most importantly, if the stimulus is assumed to contain no conceptual information at all, it becomes difficult or even impossible to avoid the conclusion that all conceptual information must, therefore, be contributed by the epistemic subject. What, then, prevents the subject from interpreting the stimulus in accordance with expectations, psychological needs, or personal biases, i.e. non-objectively? After all, Hume set a powerful precedent in explaining our belief in the objective, quasi-scientific validity of the fundamental concept of causation by invoking a psychological mechanism that inclines us to find more regularity in our observations than observation can really warrant. Also, mental immanentism is not equipped to deal with Bacon’s thesis (which in some ways sounds astonishingly Kantian) that the human mind might be like a distorted mirror that in trying to apprehend the nature of things always mixes its own nature with that of the objects.46 It is safe to conclude, then, that the chief problem with these attempts to secure a basis for objective knowledge is the adoption of the position of mental immanence by Descartes. In his Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Richard Rorty characterized this Cartesian shift towards mental immanence as the invention of mentalism and made it responsible for the rise of epistemology as the core philosophical discipline.47 This is an excellent point. And yet, mentalism is only the weakest of the immanentist positions, as we will see, so the story told by Rorty is more complex than he seemed to think. The decision to position oneself inside mental space inevitably generates an epistemological hiatus between that space and a mind-independent reality that has the paradoxical characteristic of serving both as the basis for underwriting truth claims and as an inaccessible sphere outside of that mental space. To avoid the paradox, philosophers (especially the empiricists, but also Descartes) posit a mind-independent given whose genuineness and informational content they cannot, however, reliably establish (resulting in some cases, as in Berkeley’s, in the abandonment of any extraneous given at all). From what has been said, it is plausible to infer that the position of mental immanence will need to be overcome one way or another, if we want to regain a secure footing for making claims to objective knowledge. We should keep in mind, however, that we cannot simply return to a position of direct realism, either metaphysical
45 Apparently,
Locke was unaware of this. Having adopted the position of mental immanence, he nonetheless believes that he can assume the existence of mind-independent causes as a matter of course. 46 See Bacon, Novum Organon I 41: “. . . the human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolors the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it.” Despite this seminal insight, Bacon remains methodologically naïve. For how, if the distortion is constitutional and systematic, could we ever hope to correct our findings simply by more or even more careful observation? 47 See Rorty, 1980, 17ff, 131ff.
1.3
Some Traditional Arguments in Defense of Objectivity
19
or epistemological. Because the active contribution of the epistemic subject in the constitution of objectivity is indispensable, objectivity makes sense only in the form of a conceptualization of “reality”, such that reality is precisely what is conceptualized or conceptualizable. What is thus conceptualized is therefore necessarily of the nature of a theoretical view or framework that is part of the space of knowledge. That space must, at a minimum, include what mentalism excludes from the mental space, viz. the extraneous, mind- or subject independent sphere. It will thus make the objective correlate of the mind an integral element of the immanence, not of the mind but of consciousness or experience. To distinguish between mind and consciousness may at first seem counterintuitive. However, consciousness, at least in its more recent employment in Husserlian phenomenology, but also as it is used in Kant and German idealism, is characterized by two poles, so to speak, a subject pole and an object pole, where the object pole is not “in the mind” and yet in consciousness, viz. as its so-called intentional object.48 Consciousness thus exhibits a dual structure made up of an object-consciousness and a mental space. The mental space contains both the mental activities of the epistemic subject (such as sensing, perceiving, feeling, willing) as well the way in which the intentional objects of those activities are presented and present to the subject, i.e. the way the objects appear to or are given to the subject. Insofar as the mental activities are consciously experienced by the subject, they are likewise direct or immediate intentional objects (such as a feeling of pain). Other aspects of the mental are not direct or immediate intentional objects but can become so in reflection (such as a belief that is suddenly called into question and becomes the subject of doubt). Yet other aspects of the mental become intentional objects normally only through philosophical reflection, such as the mental activities themselves (sensing, perceiving, remembering, judging, willing, etc.) as well as the mediating role the appearance of things plays with respect to our beliefs concerning their “true nature” or the way they “really” are. The mental space, then, can likewise be made an intentional object and thus become part of the object pole in the sense that I can specifically direct my attention and awareness to whatever goes on in my mind. However, to the extent that I do so, I must assume that there is some mental activity I am not simultaneously able to focus on as an intentional object, since it is the activity that makes it possible for me to be presented with the intentional object of my current awareness. This need not lead to an infinite regress, as long as the presenting activity is interpreted as simply the consciousness of the way in which the object is present to me such that the presenting activity itself shows up as a modification of the givenness of the object (for instance, a scene is present as remembered rather than as actually lived through). But then the possibility of reflecting on the mental presupposes a self or self-consciousness that is able to objectify the mental space and reflect on its own activities as well as the way in which the object-world (including the subject’s
48 According
to the Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie this structural interpretation of consciousness was first introduced by Wolff: see HWPh I 891.
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own mental space) is given to it.49 The mental is thus the subject’s inner life that is experienced and can be reflected upon by, and hence made an object for, the subject. The self or I or ego is the source of awareness or the consciousness both of the subject-independent object world as well as the subject’s own mental life. Consciousness, by contrast, is not only a mental “forum internum.” It includes the object world as it is experienced by the subject and as it is thought to be in itself independently of the subject. The subject is also capable of objectifying thoughts, feelings, inner experiences etc. by becoming aware of or reflecting on them. The mental space is part of the structure of consciousness as that which belongs to the subject, in particular the experiences of which one is aware in one’s own mind, but also the “representations” that mediate between the mind and the objects. In this sense, Reinhold famously distinguished three elements within consciousness, viz. the self, the objects of consciousness that are experienced, and the mediating representations by means of which they are experienced. According to his “principle of consciousness” (Satz des Bewußtseins), “in consciousness, the subject distinguishes the representation from the subject and the object, and relates the representation to both” (Reinhold, 1790, 167). This conception already expresses the intentionality structure of consciousness as does Hegel’s characterization that in consciousness one thing exists for an other (i.e., an object exists for consciousness = the aspect of knowing). At the same time, however, what exists for consciousness is understood to exist not only for consciousness but also outside of this relationship or in itself (= the aspect of truth) (PS 84/77). In other words, consciousness distinguishes constitutionally, so to speak, between how the object appears and what it is like in and of itself, and both conceptions are available to it, even though what the object is like in itself is based on how it appears to the subject. After these clarifications we can better see what Descartes was doing when he questioned the reliability of the relationship between the mind’s intentional acts and their objective correlates. He in fact showed thereby that intentionality is a structural, i.e., an essential feature of consciousness – that consciousness is always consciousness of some object or other that is not “in the mind”. His radical doubt concerning the existence of any such object pole turns out to be an artificial maneuver designed to isolate the inner mental space in which the immediate identification of thinking activity and self is unproblematic since, as he believed, no hiatus exists between thinking activity and the subject or cause of thinking. In other words, the intentionality structure of consciousness does not apply to this inner sanctum of the mind.50 However, the hiatus between the mind’s objective correlates and its thinking
49 These
considerations prompted Sartre to conclude that the subjective is just as public as the objective and that consciousness as the source of all object awareness can never be objectified: see Sartre, 1988, p. 76–77. 50 In this, Sartre claimed, Descartes was mistaken (cf. Sartre, 1943, p. 20). For the identification of the activity of thinking and the self as its author requires an objectification that transforms the active self into an intentional object that is a thought, not the activity thinking the thought. Hence the self at the bottom of the activity of thinking always escapes objectification. It remains forever an elusive pre-reflective cogito.
1.4
Some Contemporary Defenses of Objectivity
21
activity remained a presupposition of the entire subsequent argument. The intentionality structure had to be artificially re-validated as a hypothesis rather than a feature that comes with the nature of consciousness. To be sure, Descartes believed that his proof of the existence of God and the subsequent rehabilitation of the intentionality of consciousness reinstated the object pole of consciousness as a necessary structural element. But then all depends on the viability of that proof. If it is not tenable, intentionality remains a hypothetical feature and objectivity thus becomes a construct based on a precarious assumption. With the object pole an original part of the structure of consciousness, the given is no longer a problem. Whatever is given is now always given as this or that and its way of givenness is distinguished from what it is understood to be in and of itself. What the given is in and of itself, i.e., independently of its givenness, can be determined only on the basis of its being given as this or that. But that does not prevent us from establishing its “objective” nature, just as the scientist establishes the physical structure of our galaxy by interpreting the data gathered about it. The room for radical skepticism becomes very narrow indeed. The immanence we have now reached is what Hegel called “the inner and outer world of consciousness” (E § 6). It is the space of human experience comprising sensory impressions, perception, perceptual and other everyday beliefs, the vast body of empirical knowledge, the experience of art and religion, etc. It is the world of experience in the immanence of consciousness. This is in effect the position that contemporary constructionists and interpretationists generally adopt. How, on this basis, are they trying to reclaim objectivity for knowledge? We will explore this question in the following section.
1.4 Some Contemporary Defenses of Objectivity The historical positions discussed in the previous section were characterized by an immanentism in the form of mental immanence. They either try to preserve a realist element by positing a given from which some subject-independent information is to be extracted (for instance, Lockean ideas of primary qualities) or they develop into strictly immanentist positions, as with Berkeley’s idealism or Hume’s agnosticism about the nature of mind-independent reality. There is thus a pull towards some form of antirealism built into an immanentist position. In this section, we will be looking at positions for which the immanence of experience describes the limits of the world.51 These immanentist positions are essentially forms of antirealism that do not want to be confused with idealism, although some of them see themselves as continuing a Kantian agenda broadly conceived, that is to say, an agenda
51 In
a variation of Wittgenstein’s famous dictum, Günter Abel states: “The limits of my/our interpretation represent the limits of my/our world and of my/our sense [Sinn],” where “interpretation” means the individual and communal being-in-the-world of a community of language users (Abel, 1995, p. 267).
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with transcendental aspirations, but without Kant’s two-aspect ontology.52 Because mental immanentism has a tendency to reject any form of direct realism, either epistemological or metaphysical, reference to a mind-independent reality becomes conjectural at a fundamental level. By contrast, today’s forms of antirealism such as constructionism and interpretationism generally try to avoid fundamental uncertainty about the existence of a mind-independent reality.53 Nor do they assume that some interpretation-free information about “reality” can even be had. The concept of interpretation-free information would in any case seem to be illogical. Their reference to “reality” is not conjectural but semiotic. This means that the world is directly present in experience as being understood or interpreted in a certain way.54 The world is always seen under a certain interpretation, and there is no reality that exists independently of being experienced in a certain way. This may seem tautological, since the world of experience is always experienced in a certain way. However, the point is that the notion of a transcendent reality beyond all interpretation is thereby excluded, since it is strictly speaking an empty thought. The idea of a reality beyond the reality of experience, i.e., the idea of a thing-in-itself world plays no role. The world of experience is not anchored in some supra-experiential realm outside experience. It is strictly self-contained. Any transcendence is a transcendence within this immanence. The more immediate sources of inspiration for these forms of antirealism are relatively recent.55 We may broadly distinguish a North American and a European, primarily German, branch. The former has its roots in American pragmatism and in a critique of empiricist epistemology that resulted in Wilfrid Sellars’ famous indictment of the “myth of the given.”56 The latter grew out of a combination of Nietzschean interpretationism and Gadamerian hermeneutics, coupled with an interest in the pragmatist and constructionist developments in the United States.57 Major proponents of American constructionism or semantic interpretationism, as we
52 Cf. Abel, 1996, 1995, p. 281. Lenk, 1995, p. 48 expresses sympathy for Kant’s “activist” key idea
that knowledge is “made” (zurechtgemacht) and structured (strukturiert) by humans. He prefers to call his version of interpretationism “methodological,” but is not averse to incorporating elements of a “quasi Kantian transcendental interpretationism” (Lenk, 1993b, p. 608). 53 See Putnam’s famous anti-skeptical argument “Brains in a Vat,” in Putnam, 1981, pp. 1–21. 54 As one of the protagonists of interpretationism puts it, interpretationism is “externalized”; i.e., interpretation does not just happen “in the head”: cf. Abel, 1995, p. 281. 55 It should be mentioned that there is also a highly advanced debate between realists and antirealists in the philosophy of science that we cannot touch on here. 56 See Sellars’ 1956 University of London Special Lectures on Philosophy titled “The Myth of the Given: Three Lectures on Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind,” later published as Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind (Sellars, 1997). 57 For an account of the transformation of Gadamer’s hermeneutics into contemporary interpretationism and a critique of the latter see Krämer, 2007. Krämer calls interpretationism an antirealist hermeneutics: Krämer 2007, 14, n. 6. – On Nietzsche’s theory of interpretation see Abel, 1984, p. 133f, J. N. Hofmann, 1994, pp. 61–90, and Röd et al. 2002, 87ff.
1.4
Some Contemporary Defenses of Objectivity
23
might call it,58 in various forms besides Sellars are Richard Rorty, Nelson Goodman, Donald Davidson and Hilary Putnam. Leading figures of German interpretationism are Günter Abel and Hans Lenk. However, a word of caution is in order since the variety of positions between, say, metaphysical realism on the one hand and radical constructionism and interpretationism on the other is enormous. Most philosophers who lean towards some form of constructionism or interpretationism because they find that arguments in favor of antirealism and against metaphysical realism have merit, also want to hold on to some element of realism and some notion of objective knowledge. We will be interested precisely in authors who despite their basic interpretationist or constructionist orientation nonetheless try to defend a position that allows for the possibility of some form of objective knowledge. We may call them moderate constructionists or interpretationists. Their difficulty to account for objectivity successfully will prompt us to recall earlier attempts at securing a foundation for objectivity in Kant and Hegel. My primary focus here will be on Günter Abel’s philosophy of interpretation (Interpretationsphilosophie) worked out in a number of books and articles since the late 1980s.59 Abel calls his position philosophy of interpretation in order to indicate that for him interpretationism has the status of a prima philosophia that grounds all other philosophical analyses, even if as a philosophical theory interpretationism is objectively speaking on a par with other philosophical theories about the nature of our being-in-the-world. That is to say, although interpretationism claims to be the contemporary philosophical theory of choice, it acknowledges that it is still one interpretation among others. Moreover, interpretation itself is either more basic than understanding and using language or the latter represents only one form of interpretation.60 Interpretationism is a foundational form of philosophy, because “interpretivity”, i.e. the activity of interpreting experience, is a primordial trait of human existence (Abel, 1995, p. 271; Abel, 2004, p. 151). One might compare it to what Kant calls the spontaneity of the understanding. Interpreting experience starts at a deep level, prior to learning any particular language and prior to what we normally call interpretation, which is a conscious effort at understanding a text or other phenomenon in a new, authentic, original, or simply a different way from the way it has so far been understood. Normal interpretation allows for the distinction between
58 “Semantischer
Interpretationismus” is the expression used by Barth, 2003, p. 201ff. Labels are tricky here since there is also another meaning of interpretationism as a method with which to infer the intentionality or meaning behind actions, a position developed by Davidson as well (see Child, 2003) in response to Quine’s notion of radical translation. 59 See in particular Abel’s 1993 detailed account in Interpretationswelten. The list of Abel’s publications on the philosophy of interpretation is long. For our purposes it will suffice to focus here on a couple of concise article-length statements and his recent presentation of the theory in his 2004 book Zeichen der Wirklichkeit. Abel’s response to criticisms by Graeser, 1996 and Löhrer, 1996 in Abel, 1996 offers useful clarifications of Abel’s position. 60 Cf. Abel, 1995, p. 267 and pp. 268–269.
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an interpretandum that can be described independently of its interpretation, either because it has not yet been “interpreted” or because it has received an interpretation that is to be replaced or superseded by a new interpretation that is somehow more adequate, more original, more intelligible etc. Primordial interpretation, as I suggest we call it, does not allow of this distinction, because there is no difference between the phenomenon interpreted and the phenomenon apart from its interpretation. The phenomenon must be interpreted in order to be a phenomenon in the first place – an expression of the quasi-transcendental status of the theory. Hence the statements quoted earlier61 that for these positions there is strictly speaking no interpretationfree reality. Reality coincides with interpreted reality: “All there is, is interpretation, and interpretation is all there is.”62 Or, to coin a phrase, “To be is to be interpreted or to interpret”. However, interpretationism in the form presented by Abel (and also Lenk) does allow for re-interpretation of primordially interpreted phenomena. After all, if primordial interpretation presents us with basic or primitive data, we need to be able to perform further interpretive operations on them to reach some level of complexity. In other words, we re-interpret what was already the result of (primordial) interpretation. Furthermore, we sometimes arrive at a better or more accurate understanding of phenomena previously thought to be already understood (there can be paradigm shifts, for instance, as in the natural sciences). Consequently, we must distinguish between different levels of interpretation. According to Abel, we need to differentiate between at least three levels of interpretive practice (Abel, 1995, p. 268), viz. (1) a primordial level called interpretation1 that comprises the most basic “actively constructional components” of our interpretation of the world such as basic categorial distinctions (for instance, between thing and property), logical principles such as the PNC, as well as principles of individuation that are presupposed by all other interpretations of experiential phenomena; this level is also called “categorializing interpretation” (Abel, 1996, p. 272); (2) an intermediate level called interpretation2 that comprises the conventions and language games of a particular language, but also the social and cultural patterns embedded in a particular form of life, the habitual and customary ways of interacting with others and with the world; and
61 See
p. 22 above. called “the principle of interpretation” (Satz der Interpretation): “Alles, was ist, ist Interpretation, und Interpretation ist alles, was ist” (Abel, 1989, p. 11). For a clarification of its meaning by Abel in response to his critics see Abel, 1996, pp. 277–282. For the criticisms see Graeser, 1996 and Löhrer, 1996. See also Abel, 2004, p. 242. Lenk finds this too radical a position to take (cf. Lenk, 1993b, p. 53f). He characterizes his own position as an interpretationism with an element of residual realism that is something like a modernized methodological Kantianism, except that it is only a “hypothetical transcendental idealism” (Lenk, 1995, p. 247; cf. p. 250). The option of a residual realism is necessary from a pragmatic perspective (cf. Lenk, 1995, p. 255).
62 Also
1.4
Some Contemporary Defenses of Objectivity
25
(3) a level of particularized and individual acts of interpretation called interpretation3 that refers to our ordinary efforts of making sense of something, such as trying to understand the motive behind a particular action, understanding the implications of a policy decision, figuring out the use of some device based on a manual, or interpreting a literary or philosophical text (i.e., what is normally called interpretation). It also includes theory building and philosophical reflection and is called “appropriating interpretation” (Abel, 1996, p. 272). This taxonomy can be enriched by distinguishing sub-levels within the three levels mentioned or by devising alternative models of the different layers and types of interpretive acts, although the methodological basis for such differentiation remains somewhat unclear.63 But it is quite unambiguous that the primordial level of intepretation1 functions as a condition of the possibility of the higher and more specialized levels of interpretation. However, while intepretation1 represents a basic a priori with respect to other levels, it is only a necessary, not a sufficient condition of experience. Because experience is concrete it cannot be reduced to the level of intepretation1 or even interpretation2 . In our experience, there is no world constituted exclusively of interpretive constructs generated at the primordial level. Thus, higher and more particularized layers of interpretation as well as theories about the world of experience always presuppose the primordial level and the latter can be isolated from the rest only in theory, not in practice. The ensemble of these various types and levels of interpretation constitutes a holistic practice of interpreting (Interpretationspraxis) that is co-primordial with being-in-the-world as a human being.64 The logical priority of primordial interpretation is emphasized as well by distinguishing between interpreting something as . . . and the interpretation of something.65 Something must already be seen or understood as something, before it can be made the object of another interpretation or a re-interpretation. For instance, a literary text must already be understood as a poem, say, before it can be the subject of a specific interpretation. Generally speaking: Talking and understanding are possible and can be successful only within the horizon of a prior practice of interpretation as well as within an understanding of the world that derives from this practice (Abel, 1995, p. 266).
Thus, within the holistic practice of interpreting there exists a logical dependence of higher on lower levels of interpretation. Now, if higher levels of interpretation logically presuppose and are conditioned by the primordial level of intepretation1 , the question concerning the genesis or 63 Reasonable
as these distinctions may be, they appear in general to have the character of ad hoc classifications. See also the differentiation of levels of interpretation in Lenk, 1988 and Lenk, 1993b, p. 56. 64 Cf. Abel, 1995, p. 269. 65 Cf. ibid.
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constitution of the primordial level naturally poses itself. We will not be surprised to learn that this question can have no real answer. The constitution of the primordial level of interpretation must remain largely inscrutable, because the world of experience is always already an interpreted world. The processes of intepretation1 interpretively construct the object-world as such in its basic ontology, and our reflection on these constructs cannot yield anything more abstract.66 The interpretive processes at the primordial level cannot be objectified in their totality, they cannot be consciously produced and made completely transparent.67 This seems to be a result that is both welcome and unwelcome at the same time. On the one hand, it is consistent with a strictly immanentist approach that must repudiate any attempt to transcend the sphere of an already interpreted experience. To somehow go behind or outside of this immanence would mean to engage in an examination of processes that are by definition not part of the experienced phenomena themselves. Furthermore, it is impossible to tease apart the formation and the material of formation at the primordial level, for this would be equivalent to identifying an as yet uninterpreted X that cannot exist in a theory for which to be is to be interpreted. The Kantian problem of an as yet uninterpreted empirical manifold is thus avoided. Therefore, while the status of the claim regarding the primordial nature of intepretation1 is transcendental in spirit, there is no transcendental deduction à la Kant of the interpretive processes and the rules they obey. Or, in short, there is a transcendental claim, but no transcendental theory to back it up.68 On the contrary, the philosophy of interpretation must claim that (a) interpretation contains an element of indeterminacy, (b) understanding signs is subject to an intrinsic alterity residing in the objects to be interpreted,69 (c) reference is inscrutable, and (d) there cannot be a definitive correlation between sign and meaning or sign and object.70 For these reasons, alternative ontologies are always possible.71 Because interpretationism must reject any essentialist conception of meaning it must also reject any essentialist ontology, i.e. an ontology that could claim to determine the objective meaning of the fundamental concepts involved in the interpretive construction of the world of inner and outer experience. Interestingly, what appeared at first to be a close-knit identity of sign and object is now mutating into a relation of two relata that allow for variability. Due to its intrinsic alterity, the object pole is potentially open to re-interpretation even at the primordial level, bringing with it a variability
66 Sign and object are indissolubly linked together, i.e. they are one. We do not think “by means of”
[vermittels] signs as if using them as tools but “in virtue of” [kraft] signs (cf. Abel, 2004, p. 160). Abel, 1995, p. 282. 68 For the general transcendental claim see Abel, 1996, pp. 277, 281. Abel, 1993, p. 455 prefers not to favor a so-called transcendental interpretationism à la Kant, because it would mean to inherit the problems connected with this type of analysis. 69 Appealing to Kant (CPR B 3) and Wittgenstein (Tractatus 5.634) Abel explains alterity as the possibility that “everything that is thus and so could equally be otherwise” (Abel, 1996, p. 283). 70 Cf. Abel, 1995, pp. 272–274. 71 Cf. Abel, 1995, p. 274. 67 Cf.
1.4
Some Contemporary Defenses of Objectivity
27
on the side of signitive expression. The ghost of the thing-in-itself does not seem to have been completely disposed of after all. Taken together, all of this amounts to the conclusion that a Kantian transcendental approach or a Husserlian investigation of the noetic and noematic acts by means of which the world of intentionality is constituted are no longer viable alternatives. Nor does a Heideggerian explication of the fundamental structures of Dasein or a phenomenological ontology à la Sartre seem to be admissible anymore. Now it seems easy to say that these would be alternative interpretations of how experience in general is possible. However, if interpretation theory claims to be the preferred theory of the possibility of experience, it simply cannot allow other theories to rank as alternatives. Nor can it simply declare them to be less fundamental than primordial interpretation. Instead, it must refute these alternatives and show why it is the foundational theory. In other words, alternative theories cannot be judged to be mere interpretations, while interpretationism is the only true theory of interpretation1 , unless it has been demonstrated that interpretationism is true. This by definition cannot be achieved due to the principle of alterity or indeterminacy just mentioned. Consequently, theories that do attempt an explanation of the constitutive principles or the possibility of intepretation1 must be acknowledged to be rival theories of the possibility of primordial intepretation1 . They can be dismissed only on grounds of inadequacy or inconsistency. That rival theories (such as transcendental theories, broadly conceived) are still competitors of interpretationism is therefore a distinct possibility, one, in fact, that we will explore below. This raises the question how the philosophy of interpretation can defend its foundational status, if it starts from the relatively weak position that the a priori nature of intepretation1 is simply to be taken as a “given”, whose origins are inscrutable and whose justification is a moot issue. Should we not be entitled to ask why just these basic ontological determinations and no others inform our outlook on the world? Can we really be satisfied with a hermeneutic approach to questions of our fundamental epistemological access to the world of experience and the basic ontology involved in it? Is there no explanatory desideratum that needs to be addressed? Indeed, it seems that a hermeneutic approach that simply declares intepretation1 to be the only defensible alternative must lead to a purely descriptive account of how our experience is constituted instead of explaining why it is so constituted and not otherwise. As Abel himself points out, all claims regarding the truth of our interpretations3 remain parasitic upon the processes of intepretation1 without, however, our being able to tie the former unambiguously to the latter (which function as their “conditions of fulfillment”).72 In other words, not only are higher order interpretive constructs variable and corrigible, their explanatory scope is also limited to interpretive constructs and theories at the level above primordial interpretation. As will be apparent from this last observation, this shift towards hermeneutic descriptivism may not even represent the most troubling aspect of the philosophy of interpretation. For, if I understand it correctly, the inscrutability does not only
72 Cf.
Abel, 1995, p. 283.
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extend to the reasons why primordial interpretation is the way it is, it includes primordial interpretation itself. That is to say, on the assumption that the processes of primordial intepretation1 (unlike those of interpretation2 and interpretation3 ) are themselves largely preconscious we cannot be sure that we can identify and describe them correctly or as they truly are. In fact, we know about these processes only by way of the higher order interpretations2 and interpretations3 .73 In other words, from the way we interpret consciously we may infer the underlying conditions of the possibility of our higher order interpretations, but since the relationship between primordial and higher order interpretations is itself subject to the fundamental openness and variability of all higher order interpretations the results are always uncertain. Claims concerning the underlying primordial interpretive constructs thus have the nature of rationalizations of our actual interpretive practice. This means that primordial interpretation cannot fulfill any critical or normative function with respect to our conscious interpretive practices. As with a priori conditions generally, the practice of primordial interpretation is incorrigible. This is certainly as it should be. But to make it practically inscrutable as well means to deprive it of its explanatory and normative value vis-à-vis higher order interpretation practices. Ultimately, the processes of primordial interpretation must thus be stipulated and posited on an insecure inferential basis. What is thus stipulated can be supported at best by arguments of greater or less plausibility. Abel sees it as an advantage of interpretation philosophy that it avoids both essentialism and relativism.74 Essentialism is ruled out in part by the openness and variability of our interpretive practice and in part by the inscrutability of intepretation1 . Hence, there is no possibility of returning to the “things themselves” and their essential natures. Interpretations remain subject to change, even at the level of primordial interpretation. Relativism, he argues, is ruled out by the requirement that our interpretive practice as a whole must satisfy the principle of “valid coherence.”75 It is, however, difficult to see who would be in a position to survey and appraise the web of vast and multifarious interpretive practices in order to see whether they comply with the requirement of valid coherence. Not to mention the fact that, as we will see shortly, interpretation philosophy allows for a multiplicity of interpretive universes, so to speak, that are not required to obey the principle of coherence among each other. The nature of primordial interpretation also has consequences for the role the concept of objectivity can play within the framework of the philosophy of interpretation. Abel assigns this concept a systematic place within his theory, even though he points out that strict standards of objectivity and truth have yet to be worked
73 As Abel explains (Abel, 1996, p. 274) the processes of primordial interpretation (as well as those
of interpretation2 ) are disclosed through a reflective and recursive questioning that starts at the level of interpretation3 . 74 Cf. ibid. 75 Ibid.
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out.76 In the philosophy of interpretation, objectivity is a function of the forms of thought.77 By forms of thought Abel means structures of thinking identical or analogous to those identified by Kant in his table of judgments and table of categories.78 This, however, does not make the forms of thought foundational in a strong sense. In other words, these forms are dependent on the forms of life in which we conduct our interpretive practices. As there is a pluralism of forms of life, so there is also a pluralism of categorial frameworks and consequently the possibility of alternative ontologies.79 The forms of thought thus lose the universalist status they had in Kant. They are valid relative to a specific form of life and a specific world-view. When Abel speaks of forms of life, the implicit reference to Wittgenstein is intentional.80 But forms of life are concrete historical phenomena that change over time and that can be empirically researched.81 Nevertheless, they are said to be the conditions of the possibility of semantic logic and, by implication, of value judgments and, it seems, of our ontology as well. (I take it that what conditions semantic logic in them is primordial interpretation, not higher order interpretation.) While this need not imply relativism – a charge Abel has been at pains to reject82 – it does lead to a factual pluralism of interpretive worlds (both historically and synchronically, one would assume).83 Whether and to what extent communication among such worlds is possible remains an open question, especially if interpretive worlds themselves should be individuated through differences in primordial interpretation. It could well be that interpretationism leads to a radically monadic conception (more radical than the one described by Leibniz) in which no two interpretive worlds are able to communicate with each other because their interpretive practices individuate separate universes of discourse. This might easily be the case, if there is no cross-world identity of interpretative practices at least at the primordial level. And there is reason to suspect that interpretationism would reject the idea of a common universal interpretive framework on which all interpretive worlds are dependent, since this would no doubt be regarded as a step backwards to an essentialism that is supposed to have been discredited.
76 Cf.
Abel, 2004, p. 169. Lenk maintains that objectivity is a legitimate concept, but that it is dependent on our interpretive framework (cf. Lenk, 1995, p. 246f). 78 Cf. Abel, 2004, pp. 150, 168. 79 Cf. Abel, 1995, p. 274. As he puts it elsewhere, “What ontology one has is a matter of the system of language, thought and, generally, of the system of signs and the system of interpretation that is being used as well as the ontological commitments that are bound up with them” (Abel, 2004, p. 242). 80 Cf. Abel, 2004, pp. 152–153. 81 Cf. Abel, 2004, p. 169. 82 See, for instance, Abel, 1993, pp. 495–507; 1995, p. 283; 2004, pp. 155–156. 83 Cf. Abel, 1993, p. 505. Each determinate, individuated, and specific world [of experience] can be regarded as an interpretive world (“kann man . . . als eine Interpretationswelt ansehen,” Abel, 1995, p. 266). 77 Similarly,
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So the conclusion seems to be that according to interpretationism objectivity is possible within a given interpretive framework (including all the interpretive practices constitutive of a form of life or a world of experience).84 But since there does not seem to be a cross-world identity at the level of primordial interpretation, there cannot be a universal framework underlying all forms of life or all other frameworks.85 This ensures successful communication within frameworks but seems to undermine successful communication between frameworks. Cross-world identity of intepretation1 should be excluded simply because the differences in forms of life that express themselves most conspicuously at the levels of interpretation2 and interpretation3 must have their roots in differences at the level of intepretation1 . That objectivity becomes relative to a given system of language and interpretive practices does not by itself lead to relativism, as Abel has rightly pointed out.86 However, the point is not so much the relativity of standards of objectivity as their factual nature. By this I mean that interpretationism does not seem to possess the methodological basis to show that the interpretive practices within (let alone between) given frameworks are either right or wrong or even better or less good than alternative practices. Abel does make the claim that interpretationism is able to distinguish between better and less good interpretive constructs within a given framework.87 But he ignores that this can work only, if we can answer the question: “Better with respect to what?”. And the answer cannot be “Better with respect to the one we already have”, since, as I will argue below, improvement (or its opposite) can only be measured against a universal standard that is valid for all interpretations within a given life form of interpretive practices. Without such a universal standard there would be no basis for adjudicating the relative merits of one interpretive practice over another. It is, however, difficult to see how interpretationism would go about establishing such universal standards, i.e. standards that would allow us to evaluate either individual practices within a given form of life or this form of life as a whole. First, entire forms of life are not supposed to be evaluated, since there is no standpoint outside or “above” a form of life from which such an evaluation could be undertaken. This would be repeating the mistake of believing in the availability of a god’s eye point of view.88 Generally speaking, reflection on and critique of a form of life can take place only from within that form of life or interpretive practice and is always an expression of level 3 interpretation. This means, second, that any theory 84 „Within
a given system of language and interpretation, the use of predicates is no longer free in an unrestricted way (Abel, 1993, p. 453). 85 See Abel’s endorsement of a plurality of worlds as opposed to a plurality of interpretations of one world (Abel, 1993, p. 505). 86 See footnote 34 above. There is also a diachronic aspect to objectivity such that it varies with time. Abel speaks of an objectivity pro tempore (“Objektivität-auf-Zeit,” Abel, 1993, p. 183). 87 Abel, 1993, pp. 495–496 (endorsing Putnam’s “what we have are better and worse versions, and that is objectivity,” ibid.). 88 Abel insists frequently that such a position is untenable since it denies our fundamental human finitude (see, e.g., Abel, 2004, pp. 25, 57, 324; 1993, p. 497ff).
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about objects and events within a framework of interpretation, whether scientific or philosophical, is likewise an instance of interpretation3 . Thus, all ontologies are interpretive constructs.89 Even the universal claim that all forms of human beingin-the-world are interpretive belongs to level 3 interpretation.90 But instances of interpretation3 are all on a par with respect to their claim to truth (or, for that matter, their claim to plausibility). They can be argued over, they can be said to be better or less good than some other theory, but in accordance with the principle of interpretationism (viz. that everything is interpretation) the question what “better than” means has only a relative, not an absolute answer, because there cannot be a universal standard of adjudication outside or above a given interpretive practice. It thus depends on individual or collective preferences which interpretation is deemed to be better or less good. An interpretation of this kind counts as better for me, better for you, better for us, better for them – but not better tout court. Abel argues, correctly, I think, that interpretationism is not vulnerable to the maxim “anything goes”, because any interpretive system qua system puts constraints on what fits with a given interpretive practice. Violating certain requirements of coherence and compliance with an established practice will result in failed communication. If communication is to be successful (as it generally seems to be), it must adhere to certain rules (rules of formal as well as semantic logic, I assume, grammaticality and the like). As a result, interpretations are not arbitrary. Now, it is indeed reasonable to agree that interpretive practices are generally structured by rules that ensure consistency and thus ultimately mutual understanding in communication. But one can easily see that the criterion of success is a purely formal criterion that cannot prejudge what is materially true or false. Criminal gangs communicate as successfully as members of a religious community. Totalitarian regimes are very successful in communicating their oppressive ideology to potential dissidents. Deceptive behavior would not be successful so often, if the deceived parties did not understand precisely what the deceiver wants them to understand. In other words, the fact that one can make a case for the non-arbitrariness of interpretive practices does not yet allow one to evaluate such practices as better or worse than others. For that we would need material standards with which to assess the rules and consistency constraints under which a given interpretive practice operates. Such standards are by definition universal, i.e. they cut across individual and group practices in order to determine whether what is better from A’s point of view is also better overall, all things considered, or generally. This consideration brings out the circumstance that individual practices are indeed governed not only by formal but also by material standards. What is better for me is better with respect to some purpose, interest, preference, or end. It is just that unless we possess a universal standard, position A need not accept the argument of position B and vice
89 Cf.
Abel, 1993, p. 193. Abel’s comments on the status of the “principle of interpretation” in Abel, 1996, pp. 277– 282, in particular p. 279: “It goes without saying that the principle is formulated at the level of interpretation3 .”
90 See
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versa. It seems that interpretationism has no place for the impartial spectator or the neutral judge. To put it differently, it is unclear how the critical self-evaluation of a given interpretive practice might be possible. Such a self-evaluation would mean to be able in some sense to step outside that practice and to question its truth or validity.91 Clearly, this is not a trivial matter. It ought to be possible critically to evaluate forms of life as a whole as well as the individual interpretive practices that constitute them. If the lifestyle in Western societies is a form of life, we should be able to come to a conclusion as to which practices are compatible with such ultimate norms as human dignity, social justice and/or political freedom and self-determination. It should be possible to make the case that a wasteful economy is objectively worse than sustainable development or that so-called casino capitalism is objectively a perversion of the true function of an economy within society. These are normative issues whose adjudication requires a point of view beyond and above the perspectival standpoint that we normally occupy as “functioning” members of a form of life or as “functioning” participants in interpretive practices. Not only that, but we should also be in a position to ask whether only empirical truth claims are legitimate or whether our current standards of scientific rationality are adequate to deal with the nature of self-referential and self-determining systems, and so on. Such reflective practices are by their nature self-critical and self-evaluative. They presuppose the possibility of universal objective standards of evaluation and thus fundamental conceptual frameworks that cut across interpretive practices or systems. Those frameworks fix our normative commitments in the areas of theory and practice alike. The question remains for now how such a position of objectivity and normativity is supposed to be established without giving up the insight of interpretationism that all truth claims can be adjudicated only from within the immanence of experience. As I indicated earlier, my argument will be that such a position can only be supported by a transcendental strategy broadly conceived. Before I turn to an examination of such a strategy, I suggest that we briefly look at another defense of objectivity and normative standards that embraces a more pragmatist outlook. In 1997, Nicholas Rescher published a book entitled Objectivity: The Obligations of Impersonal Reason, in which he presented a defense of the universality and normative nature of the standards of rational argumentation that underwrite our concept of (cognitive or epistemic) objectivity.92 Rationality is an expression of impartial reason, Rescher claims, and as such it is “inherently ‘objective’.”93 Different cultures have “different objectives,” “different problem-solving techniques” and perhaps “a different thought-style and intellectual ethos, but not a different rationality” (Rescher, 1997, p. 29). The standards of rationality and thus the standards of
91 Abel
claims that forms of life are neither true nor false. I am not so sure. It depends to some extent what exactly a form of life is meant to include or exclude. Is a civilization that causes global warming a form of life? 92 Rescher, 1997, p. 9: “Objectivity . . . pivots on rationality.” 93 Cf. Rescher, 1997, p. 3.
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objectivity are valid across cultures and, I might add, across life-worlds and interpretive practices. Nor are these standards relative to gender or social class, just as they are not dependent on the consensus of a group or community. On the contrary, consensus depends on rationality such that rationality determines what constitutes a meaningful consensus.94 In short, there exists a close conceptual nexus between the objectivity of claims to knowledge and the universal and normative standards of rationality that underwrite them. Claims are objective because they are based on principles of argumentation, justification, and evidentiation that are governed by the “demands of reason”. What those demands are can be circumscribed in a general way by referring to our best practices of cogent reasoning and argumentation or to principles of reasonableness that would be recognized by “sensible people at large . . . as being appropriate in the circumstances” (Rescher, 1997, p. 45). Rescher makes the interesting point that these practices and standards are always embedded in the “thought-framework” that “we actually accept” (Rescher, 1997, p. 59). We have no other way of assessing competing truth claims than “to do so from the perspective of our own cognitive posture – our own cognitive position and point of view” (Rescher, 1997, p. 60). To embrace this “perspectival stance” (Rescher, 1997, p. 58) does not prevent us from affirming the universality and normative character of our standards of objectivity or their superiority over other standards. The rationale behind this assertion is that the adequacy of the standards we embrace will have to be assessed “with reference to [other] standards of some sort.” However, “in this world we are never totally bereft of such a basis.”95 In other words, Rescher’s cognitive particularism, as we might call it, is designed to eschew the charge of advocating an absolutist God’s-eye point of view. Our evaluative frameworks are concretely situated without thereby becoming merely subjective or parochial. His defense of cognitive objectivity accommodates our perspectival stance without ceding ground to some strong form of relativism. In his insistence on the universality of reason as well as human finitude his position seems close to Kant’s. It allows him to question the validity of statements like the following that argue for the impossibility of an impartial universal rationality and in favor of relativism: [All] those cognitive concepts that philosophers have taken to be the most fundamental – whether it be the concept of rationality, truth, reality, right, the good, or norms – all such concepts must be understood as relative to a specific conceptual scheme, theoretical framework, paradigm, form of life, society, or culture, [since] there is no one single framework or single metalanguage by which we can rationally adjudicate or universally evaluate the competing claims of alternative paradigms.96
This sounds very much like the position defended by Abel even though Abel, as we saw, rejects the charge of relativism. Rescher’s claim that we do possess
94 Cf.
Rescher, 1997, p. 39, pp. 45–48. Rescher, 1997, p. 59f. 96 Quoted in Rescher, 1997, 59 from Bernstein, 1983, p. 8. Bernstein offers this as a description of relativism, but does not embrace relativism himself. 95 Cf.
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such a single framework in the evaluative standards we actually accept seems to me successfully to undercut this cognitive monadicism even while allowing for the situatedness of our cognitive stance. Cognitive (or epistemic) objectivity is a crucial element in all interpersonal communicative settings, because it ensures that we communicate in and about a common shared world.97 This would obviously be acceptable from an interpretationist point of view as well, except that any common shared world would then have to be limited to a specific form of life or shared interpretive practice. For Rescher, the shared world potentially stretches across all particular interpretive schemes.98 Human cognition and interpersonal communication inevitably and spontaneously aim at establishing “an objective order of reality” (Rescher, 1997, p. 82). However, in what perhaps constitutes the pivotal juncture of his overall argument, Rescher makes the point that there is a “significant and substantial difference between a true or correct statement or contention on the one hand, and a true or correct conception on the other” (Rescher, 1997, p. 89). The reason is that for a statement or truth claim to be correct, we “merely need to get one particular fact about it right.” But to have a true conception of something, we must “get all of the important facts about it right.”99 But to get all of the important or essential facts about something (let alone the world as a whole) right, is impossible given the limitations of human knowledge. Our knowledge remains forever corrigible and incomplete. In other words, there is a gap between the validly derived and substantiated claims to objective truth and the conceptions of the nature of reality based on them on the one hand, and the real or objective order of things on the other. Employing a version of the argument from finitude, Rescher insists on the “cognitive opacity of real things,” (Rescher, 1997, p. 101) such that reality always outruns our capacity to exhaust all its aspects or its essential nature. Consequently, our conception of the objective order of things systematically falls short of that objective order itself, a feature of our knowledge that calls for “epistemic modesty” (Rescher, 1997, p. 90)100 Much like Sartre in the Introduction to Being and Nothingness, Rescher interprets the inexhaustibility of the determinations of the real as a sign of the mind-independent existence of reality. The latter is not inferred from observation or experience but instead serves as a necessary presupposition of empirical inquiry, like a postulate of reason:
97 Cf.
Rescher, 1997, p. 86. ibid. 99 Ibid. Rescher illustrates this distinction with reference to the fact that, for instance, Anaximander made a number of individual statements about the sun that were correct (such as that the sun’s light is brighter than the moon’s, or that its circumference is much larger than that of the earth, etc.), but that his conception of the sun (“as the flaming spoke of a great wheel of fire encircling the earth”) was “totally wrong” (ibid.). One could say that Anaximander was in error about the true nature of the sun, but that that did not prevent him from getting some of its phenomenal features right. 100 Cf. Rescher, 1997, p. 118: “In this world of imperfect inquirers reality is not always and inevitably on the side of the strongest arguments. Heeding the call of reason, constructive though it is, affords no categorical guarantees of success, only the reassurance of having made the best rational bet . . ..” 98 Cf.
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. . . the usually accepted view . . . holds that the success of epistemic objectivity grounds the acceptance of ontological objectivity by way of an inductive inference to the best explanation. . . . By contrast, the present position takes the line that the success of the inquiry processes that we base on the supposition of epistemic objectivity retro-validates this initial postulation (presumption) of ontological objectivity by way of a pragmatic justification. On this basis, ontological objectivity has the status of a postulate validated by its functional efficacy (Rescher, 1997, p. 110).
As a postulate, however, ontological objectivity prevents us from conflating our conception of the real order of things with the real order of things. It thus keeps the space of inquiry open. The fact that we seem to make progress in our scientific investigations without ever reaching the point of saturation attests to the inexhaustibility of the real (and hence its independent existence) as well as the fundamental limitations of human knowledge. As will be apparent from this sketch of his argument, Rescher’s defense of ontological objectivity represents an endorsement of realism within the overall immanence of experience. As with Descartes, however, this kind of realism is limited to the stipulation of a mind-independent reality in general. (To be sure, unlike Descartes Rescher does not need a proof of the existence of God to support the stipulation.) And because of its status as a functional postulate, the endorsement of a mind-independent reality is not an argument in favor of direct realism. We subscribe to it on the grounds that it makes inquiry possible.101 Its justification is not based on evidence but instead on pragmatist grounds: Given that the existence of such a domain [of mind-independent reality] is not a product of empirical inquiry but a precondition for it, its acceptance has to be validated in the manner appropriate for postulates and prejudgments of any sort, namely in terms of its prospective utility (Rescher, 1997, p. 111).102
In sum, universal and normative standards of rationality ensure cognitive or epistemic objectivity, i.e. the objectivity of claims to truth based on which we develop conceptions of the objective order of things that remain fallible and corrigible and that are predicated on the distinction between how things really are and how we think or believe they really are (= ontological objectivity). Our conceptions, while subjective, are so only in the sense of being human and therefore subject to the limitations of human cognition. They are not subjective in the idiosyncratic sense. Because they are supposed to be based on standards of rational justification they are objective and normative despite being corrigible. Under ideal circumstances, epistemic objectivity would ensure the (definitive) truth of our claims to knowledge and thus at the same time generate a comprehensive understanding of how things really are. That is to say, under ideal circumstances, the difference between epistemic and ontological truth would fall away. Rescher believes that to postulate this
101 Hence
Rescher also refers to it as “a transcendental argument of sorts” (Rescher, 1997, p. 109; cf. p. 115). 102 Cf. Rescher, 1997, p. 114.
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idealization is not only possible, but “inescapable,” since the possibility of making true statements, i.e. statements that agree with what is the case, depends on it: . . . the concept of truth is inseparably bound to the ideal of adaequatio ad rem. . . . This postulation . . . is an indispensable requisite for our standard conceptual scheme with respect to inquiry, cognition, and discourse. In the end, our commitment to ontological objectivity rests on the idealistic foundation of a mind-projected postulation whose validation is . . . functional and pragmatic (Rescher, 1997, p. 115).
The idealization Rescher speaks of means that “in ideal cognitive circumstances ideally rational people will (ex hypothesi) arrive at the truth” (ibid.). Under these circumstances, cognitive or epistemic objectivity would coincide with ontological objectivity. But note that for Rescher this is a postulate, hence his position is not one of metaphysical realism or absolute objectivism. One might instead call it a “fallibilistic objectivism”103 supported by a pragmatist outlook. Rescher’s defense of cognitive and ontological objectivity is interesting and instructive, because it defends the universality of rationality while rejecting metaphysical realism and adopting the position of the immanence of experience. It is therefore in no danger of being accused of advocating a God’s-eye point of view despite its insistence on universal and normative standards. The problem of making empirical truth claims possible within the context of the immanence of experience, where there is no way of simply comparing bare, uninterpreted facts with statements about them, is solved in an interesting way. The indispensable distinction – and thus also the possible agreement – between facts and truth claims is maintained by employing both a coherence and a correspondence model of truth. While cognitive objectivity operates under the coherence model, ontological objectivity introduces a gap between our conception of the objective order of things and that objective order itself. But unlike positions in the tradition of metaphysical realism Rescher does not view the objective order as an actual order existing independently of the sphere of the immanence of experience, but rather as a regulative idea projecting the ideal of the sum total of all true facts. Despite its interesting features, Rescher’s position has its weaknesses. First among them is the fact that the postulated ontological objectivity must remain entirely indeterminate, since all ontologically determinate structures are by definition part of our conceptions of the objective order (and hence fallible and corrigible). The concept of ontological objectivity cannot therefore have any real corrective function, and correspondence itself remains an unfulfilled postulate. There is thus no point at which we could say that “we got it right”. This leads to the other serious challenge this position faces, namely the impossibility of validating pragmatically either our standards of rationality or our conceptions of the objective order of things. As I argued earlier, a framework or conceptual scheme cannot be validated by adding more evidence in its support, since the evidence itself must be selected on the basis of that very scheme. In other words, ontological conceptions or conceptual frameworks remain hypothetical throughout and truth becomes elusive. 103 I
borrow this expression from Bernstein, 1983, p. 12f.
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Abel, in defending interpretationism against the realist objection that not everything can be interpretation, points out that “the objectivity of empirical experience cannot be based (begründet) on empirical experience,” and that having recourse to empirical experience “does not furnish an argument in favor of non-interpretive realism” (Abel, 1996, p. 283). In this Abel is undoubtedly right, even if I do not see how he himself escapes the consequences of this argument. As we saw, interpretationism grounds objectivity in forms of thought that are embedded in forms of life, which in turn are incapable of validation in a strongly objective or normative sense. Accordingly, rather than searching for a method with which to try to justify the objectivity of empirical experience, Abel ends up referring to the “alterity” of experience in which “everything that is this and so could also be otherwise” (ibid.). Quoting Wittgenstein, he agrees that “no part of our experience is also a priori” (ibid.).104 And yet it is quite obvious what kind of method would be required to validate the objectivity of empirical experience, namely, a transcendental method of some sort such as the one developed by Kant that is based on the idea that there are a priori, i.e. not empirically derived or derivable, structures of subjectivity that determine the scope and basic elements of our experience universally and necessarily. So unless we undertake, once again, a critical review of Kant’s procedure, the question of whether or not objectivity can be grounded in something other than empirical experience has not received a satisfactory answer.
1.5 Conclusions The Cartesian turn towards subjectivity was neither merely the result of autobiographical circumstances nor merely the outcome of the attempt to solve a particular problem. As Descartes puts it at the beginning of the First Meditation, he felt the need, “some years ago,” . . . once in the course of my life to demolish everything completely and start again right from the foundations if I wanted to establish anything at all in the sciences that was stable and likely to last (CSM II 12/AT VII 17).
The challenge of “starting right from the foundations” could have been met in a number of ways. That Descartes chose certainty or indubitability as his standard of truth reveals the “personal” nature of his project. Truth claims need to be certified and endorsed by the individual in order to be recognized as truths. A truth or truth claim that has not been certified and endorsed in an act of critical reflection is just a thought, a proposition, a statement to which I am not (yet) committed. However, to commit to a truth claim means to hold it to be true, there being no such thing as to believe something to be true and not recognize its truth as having normative force for me. But an endorsement also means that to believe that something is true is 104 The quote is from Wittgenstein, Tractatus 5.634. For reasons I am not aware of, Abel claims that it is also Kantian in spirit (im Sinne Kants).
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equivalent to assuming responsibility for its truth. And to assume responsibility for it is to put the stamp of “certified truth” on it. This is much like signing a document and thereby entering into an obligation. My obligation is to fulfill the responsibilities specified in the document. I vouchsafe for their fulfillment. Analogously, in endorsing a truth claim as true, I vouchsafe for the truth of a proposition and this is different from merely understanding it. The difference consists in the element of taking responsibility for the truth of the proposition, something I could not do without having first reassured myself that it is valid. But Descartes’ turn to subjectivity was also necessary for systematic reasons. It acknowledged the fact that the Aristotelian continuity between perception and natural belief formation on the one hand and knowledge of the first causes on the other had become problematic.105 For one thing, inference to the underlying causes of phenomena relied on the bona fide assumption of an isomorphism between epistemic forms in the soul and ontic forms as they exist in things.106 This assumption could no longer be upheld once the relationship between perception and its objects turned out to be anything but straightforward.107 As Descartes and others put it, ideas in the mind do not resemble, they represent objects. In other words, ideas in some way symbolize objects instead of mirroring them, and the information contained in them must therefore be assumed to be encoded, without our being sure that we possess the correct key for the decoding process. Furthermore, the Aristotelian (partial) identification of human and divine nous108 could no longer be maintained after human reason had been subordinated to divine revelation. As a consequence, belief in the possibility of metaphysical realism had to be relinquished and thinking found itself thrown back to the individual’s cognitive perspective that was now understood to be fallible and finite. The important point resulting from this turn is the insight that the cognitive subject participates in the generation of truth and assumes responsibility for it. We can see why this becomes problematic given the new paradigm of the fallibility and finitude of human cognition. For there is obviously another side to truth – subjectivity cannot make true what is not true in and of itself. What is true must be so independently of my or anybody else’s endorsement or say-so. Consequently, a position restricting truth-making to the individual or even to a collective of individuals cannot do justice to the concept of truth. In particular, a position of mental immanence is unsuitable for validating truth claims that are supposed to hold universally. So how do we reconcile these two seemingly contradictory requirements? On the one hand, subjectivity participates in making truth claims true (or false, as the case may be) and assumes responsibility for the truth through the act of endorsement, but on 105 Cf. Aristotle, An. post. I 2, 71b 33–72a 5 on the inductive path from “what is more knowable to
us” to “what is more knowable by nature”. this isomorphism see Aristotle, De an. III 8. 107 As noted earlier, Francis Bacon even suspected a systematic distortion of our view of the world caused by the mind. Also note that the modern distinction between primary and secondary qualities in perception goes back at least to Galileo. 108 For this identification see Aristotle, Metaph. XII 7, 1072b 13–15. 106 For
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the other hand its participation is not sufficient to generate the objective validity that is the hallmark of truth. Earlier, we looked at Descartes’ strategy to account for objective validity from within the position of mental immanence. We have now examined some contemporary attempts at resolving this issue. They work within the broader sphere of the immanence of experience such that the issue of the existence of a mind-independent reality is no longer relevant for them. But here, too, we have run into difficulties securing non-relative objectivity and normativity across different forms of life and interpretive practices. So, on the one hand, we cannot give up the position of the immanence of experience, but on the other this immanence seems to cut us off from the possibility of securing non-relative objectivity for our interpretive framework(s). The solution to this dilemma – and hence to the crisis of subjectivity – seems obvious. Transcendental philosophy as originally developed by Kant is the attempt to ratify the Cartesian turn towards subjectivity while at the same time preserving the possibility of universal and necessary, i.e., objective truth at the level of our conceptual framework. Subjectivity becomes the source of objectivity within the immanence of experience, because it provides a universal and normative interpretive framework from within itself.109 But it does so in such a way that this fundamental framework of objectivity does not need certification by any one particular subject or community of subjects. Instead, objectivity derives from the subject’s universal aspect as a thinking and sensing self. The subject possesses two different roles, as it were. It is a universal transcendental subject and at the same time a particular empirical subject. The latter, while remaining prone to error (and guilt), cannot but move within and understand the world through the a priori forms of sensibility that are valid for all human beings and the a priori forms of the understanding that are valid for all rational beings. The result is that objectivity is possible, at least in principle, despite the limitations of fallibility and finitude. As we shall see, there remains a serious concern with Kant’s immanentism. I am not referring to the thing-in-itself that is often regarded as the worst problem of Kant’s position. The thing-in-itself, under the name of “noumenon”, rather serves to demarcate the sphere of immanence within which all experience unfolds.110 As Kant himself put it, “in experience no question is ever asked in regard to it” (Kant, CPR A 30/B45).111 The problem is not the thing-in-itself per se. The problem is that due to the restriction thesis Kant accepts an a priori framework that covers merely part of our experience, viz. the framework of a causally ordered spatio-temporal
109 Cf. Kant, CPR A 237/B 296: The “rules of [the] understanding are not only true a priori, but are indeed the source of all truth (that is, of the agreement of our knowledge with objects) . . .” 110 Cf. Kant, CPR A 255/B310f: “The concept of a noumenon is thus a merely limiting concept, the function of which is to curb the pretensions of sensibility; and it is therefore only of negative employment.” 111 The problematic aspect of the thing-in-itself becomes manifest in my opinion in Kant’s practical philosophy where it serves as the intelligible character that is the “cause” of the actions of the empirical character, even though it “does not itself stand under any conditions of sensibility” and is to be regarded “as thing in itself” (Kant, CPR A539/B 567).
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world. What concerns me here, quite independently of the thing-in-itself, is that Kant’s immanence of consciousness is (a) too limited and (b) not radical enough. As regards the latter point, the possibility of knowledge requires not only the a priori structures of subjectivity (viz., the pure forms of intuition and the pure concepts of the understanding), but also a material (viz., the empirical manifold). This material is not originally part of the transcendental unity of self-consciousness. Moreover, it lacks all determination. The problem that arises and that, as I believe, represents a fatal flaw in the argument of the Transcendental Deduction, is that this material that is necessary for knowledge can be neither determinate nor indeterminate. If so, the Transcendental Deduction ultimately fails to bring matter and form of knowledge together. As I will argue, Hegel’s strategy in the Phenomenology of Spirit, itself an expression of the position of radical immanence of experience, tries to remedy exactly this weakness in Kant’s argument while continuing to pursue Kant’s project of accounting for the possibility of objective knowledge. It also extends the scope of experience beyond Kant’s restricted spatio-temporal world and thus addresses both of the above concerns.
Chapter 2
Kant and the Problem of Objectivity
2.1 Kant’s Transcendental Idealism Kant conceived of the task of securing the objectivity of knowledge as the challenge to establish the possibility of a priori knowledge. Not indeed of a priori knowledge tout court, but of a priori knowledge of objects, i.e. so-called synthetic a priori knowledge.1 If there is to be room for philosophical knowledge of the real beyond empirical science, then such knowledge must be possible independently of experience. In Kant’s formulation of the problem in the Preface to the second edition of the Critique: 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. This would agree better with what is desired, namely, that it should be possible to have knowledge of objects a priori, determining something in regard to them prior to their being given (B XVI).2
This “Copernican” project – the project of putting metaphysics on a new foundation – revolutionized philosophy by introducing a new kind of philosophy, one that Kant calls “transcendental” (B 73; cf. A 56-7/B 80-1). It is a position that posits the identity of the a priori structures of cognition on the one hand and the a priori features of the objects of cognition on the other. If objects of knowledge must necessarily reflect cognitive structures of the epistemic subject, then an investigation into those cognitive structures will likewise yield the basic a priori features of the object-world. Herein lies the single most important systematic advance beyond the representational turn modern philosophy took with Descartes. As I argued above, 1 For the explication of the concept of synthetic a priori judgments see the Critique’s Introduction.
also B XVII: “. . . either I must assume that the concepts, by means of which I obtain this determination [of objects through representations], conform to the object, or else I assume that the objects, or what is the same thing, that the experience in which alone, as given objects, they can be known, conform to the concepts.” Only the latter alternative can yield knowledge of objects that is a priori. See also Kant’s famous February 21, 1772 letter to Marcus Herz (AA X 129–135, especially 129–131). 2 See
41 K. Brinkmann, Idealism Without Limits, Philosophical Studies in Contemporary C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011 Culture 18, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-3622-3_2,
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the representational turn towards subjectivity had made it impossible to maintain the viability of Aristotelian bona fide isomorphism, which assumed the identity between the cognitive content of forms in the soul and those same forms as they exist in things.3 For Kant, the result was the recognition that neither experience nor logic by themselves could make out anything about the necessary structure of reality.4 Barring the possibility of an intuitive grasp of essences, what was needed instead was a transcendental argument contending that unless certain a priori epistemic conditions are satisfied, there could be no well-ordered world of objects and events for us at all. One may wonder whether it would be correct to say that Kant attempted to demonstrate the a priori agreement of thought and a reality that exists independently of it. Does not his doctrine of the thing-in-itself famously deny the possibility of any such agreement? To this one would have to respond that while Kant’s restriction of knowledge to appearances evidently undercuts the possibility of knowledge of objects beyond any possible experience (as defined by Kant), the foundations of empirical knowledge Kant puts in place in the Analytic of the Critique do indeed respond to the seemingly paradoxical task of securing the identity of thought and reality while simultaneously insisting on their complete heterogeneity. Kant’s general idea is that in all knowledge of objects, be it a priori or a posteriori, there must be present an element of something irreducibly given and given independently of any intellectual or thinking activity. He calls this given element the (empirical) manifold of intuition. It is unintelligible in and of itself, and that is Kant’s point. Without the synthesis of the imagination and the unifying activity of the understanding and its (schematized) categories this manifold could never become intelligible at all, i.e. never mean anything. Although already structured by the forms of intuition independently of any conceptualization, it entirely lacks unity and specific organization. One might say that contrary to a conceptualized representation the manifold of intuition is infinitely diverse in the manner in which space and time are infinitely divisible. Because they do not contain ultimate units out of which a given volume or duration might be composed, they are incapable of being unified on their own.5 In this sense, they are unintelligible givens, pre-representational intuitions, not objects. However, if it were possible to argue that this manifold is in need of being structured in necessary ways by the forms of thought, then a case can be made for maintaining that, as Kant famously put it, the conditions of the possibility of experience in general are likewise conditions of the possibility of the objects of experience (A 158/B 197).
This speculative claim about the fundamental identity of the a priori conditions of knowledge and its possible objects does not mention the empirical intuitional 3 See 1.5 above. For a critical assessment of Aristotle’s bona fide isomorphism see Brinkmann, 2003a. 4 Nor, one might add, does the Principle of Sufficient Reason by itself impose any restrictions on our ontology, not even when it is interpreted as the Principle of the Best: cf. Leibniz, Monadology §§ 53–54. 5 Obviously, Kant must resist Leibniz’ argument in favor of monads as the “simple substances” that give unity to infinitely divisible compounds (see p. 15, footnote 38 above).
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manifold, the material for all knowledge which is merely synthesized, unified, and ordered by, but cannot in any way be derived from, the a priori forms of intuition and thought. (Nor does it mention the pure sensible manifold that Kant needs to introduce in order to explain the a priori validity of mathematics.) Nonetheless, it is only by positing the existence of a pre-representational sensible material existing independently of understanding and sensibility that Kant is able to bring off the otherwise impossible feat of determining objects of cognition prior to their being given in and through experience. To see this we only need to consider what would happen, if the forms of intuition and the categories were all that the mind contributed to knowledge. In that case, the a priori forms of cognition would have to be applied directly to representations. Now it may actually be the case that Kant was occasionally tempted to view the matter in this way.6 But it must also have occurred to him that his transcendental approach implies that there can hardly be objects (Gegenstände) existing prior to, i.e. independently of, the objectivity structures put in place by the various acts of synthesis and schematization. Indeed, for there to be an empirical sensible manifold it seems that there would need to be empirical objects first. The very distinction between empirical object and a sensation or empirical representation of it can arise only on the basis of, not prior to, a transcendentally constituted world or nature. Consequently, a direct application of the a priori forms of cognition to an empirical sensible manifold would fatally undermine the transcendental project itself. Before we proceed any further, it is necessary to draw a consequence from what has just been said. This will be crucial for our subsequent assessment of the success of Kant’s Transcendental Deduction (I will limit myself to a discussion of its B edition version7 ). As we have just seen, there are actually four factors that determine the basic structure of the Transcendental Deduction, viz. (1) the two forms of sensibility, (2) the pure manifold of space and time,8 (3) the pure concepts of the understanding or the categories, and (4) the empirical manifold of intuition. This is important, because it reflects the fact that there are two dualisms at work in Kant’s
6 See the peculiar distinction in Prolegomena § 29 between judgments of perception and judgments
of experience according to which perceptions of empirical objects (“The sun is shining, and the stone is getting warm”) may precede categorially based judgments such as “Through its light the sun is the cause of the heat in the stone.” See the discussion of this curiosity in Prauss, 1971, Longuenesse, 1998 and Henry Allison’s critical comment that “the denial of any role for the categories in judgments of perception is . . . problematic”: Allison, 1983, p. 151. I would add that just as the “subjective unity of consciousness,” judgments of perception would clearly have to be parasitic upon all three syntheses of the B deduction, not to mention the transcendental unity of apperception (for the three syntheses see below). For a more recent discussion of this issue see also Allison, 2004, pp. 197–201. 7 It will not be possible to discuss the vast literature on the Transcendental Deduction here. For a good overview of the nature of the problems Kant faces in the Transcendental Deduction and a selection of the more important secondary literature on this part of the Critique see Guyer, 1992 and footnote 2 in Guyer’s article. A lucid and at the same time critical expositions of the argument of the B deduction is to be found in Allison, 2004, 159–201. See also Part One of Förster, 1989; 2000 and in particular Carl, 1998. 8 Also called “formal intuition” at B 160–161, footnote a (see below p. 51).
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argument, not just one. There is the well-known and much discussed dualism of intuition and concept, and then there is the dualism of the form of appearances and their matter.9 I will call these two dual-source models of cognition the intuitionconcept model and the matter-form model. The matter of appearances is the only element that does not possess a priori status and is not already an element contributed by the epistemic subject. Discussions of the Transcendental Deduction tend to overlook this fact, with the result that Kant scholars are often puzzled by the question what the second step of Kant’s Deduction (§§ 20–26) is supposed to achieve.10 The reason for this puzzlement is that the Deduction is often supposed to advance an argument for the necessary interplay of only one pair of dualistically opposed “sources” of knowledge, viz. that of sensibility and understanding, or intuition and concept.11 Sensibility and understanding furnish the pure, a priori forms of intuition as well as a pure intuitional manifold and the categories. That is to say, unlike the categories, the forms of intuition possess, in addition, a pure, a priori content of their own, viz. the pure manifold of space and time. Together, these elements constitute the well-known dualism of intuition and concept. It is generally (and in my view, correctly) believed that the first stage of the Deduction is meant to show the necessary interdependence of these two factors. Another way of putting this would be to say that the first stage of the Deduction tries to establish the objective validity of the categories for all possible objects of knowledge. And indeed, if there were nothing else for the Deduction to prove, the rationale for its second step would remain a mystery. There is, however, a second dualism, that of matter and form, announced at the beginning of the Transcendental Aesthetic.12 It is likewise operative in the Deduction and comes into play during its second step. The second step, therefore, deals with the question of why and how the matter, i.e. the empirical manifold, must be subsumed under the forms of intuition as well as the categories.13 Only with this second step is the Deduction complete, because only then can it be said that any possible empirical object of perception must likewise conform to the categories and the forms of intuition. Without such an argument, the objective reality of the categories would not have been established, and we would be left only with the a priori forms of intuition and concept and the pure manifold of intuition (which latter merely gives us empty space and time). Kant presents the core components of transcendental idealism in the Transcendental Aesthetic and the Transcendental Analytic of the Critique. He locates both the pure and the sensible manifold in a faculty called sensibility, which exhibits characteristics contrary to those of the understanding. While the 9 Cf.
A 20/B 34.
10 For more on this see below. The distinction between the two steps or stages in the Transcendental
Deduction was originally proposed by Dieter Henrich in 1969: see Henrich, 1969. See also Henrich, 1989 and footnote 4, p. 252. Carl, 1998 offers a critical review of Henrich’s interpretation, together with an analysis of the Transcendental Deduction. 11 Allison is an exception: see footnote 41 below. 12 See footnote 142 above. 13 Cf. Carl, 1998, pp. 210–211.
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understanding acts spontaneously, sensibility can only react. It must be affected by something existing independently of itself as well as of the understanding.14 Sensibility is receptive, not spontaneously active, its content must be intuited and cannot be replaced by a concept. Its formal structure is spatial and/or temporal, not conceptual.15 In short, both the pre-representational empirical manifold whose source is undetermined and the pure spatio-temporal manifold supplied a priori by sensibility are irreducibly different from thought. While the empirical sensible manifold – whose presence is indicated by sensation – is a heterogeneous element received from nowhere in particular, the pure manifold of intuition – which serves as the a priori intuitional content of the pure forms of intuition – must be supplied by sensibility a priori and independently of experience. We can see here already one of the problems that will plague Kant’s transcendental project. Ignoring the mildly paradoxical requirement that the pure manifold must be passively received and yet cannot be derived from any object, there is the more severe paradox that the pre-representational empirical manifold of intuition can originate neither from the subject nor from an object, and yet it, too, must be “given”. If we simply posit its existence, as Kant did once he had eliminated the “transcendental object”16 and thus the ambiguity that the thing-in-itself might be its potential source, we will have to posit it as something given empirically and yet a priori.17 The existence of the pure sensible manifold is necessary, if only because without it thought – or, rather, the imagination – would lack a content on which to perform a synthesis, and the transcendental unity of apperception would thus be quite empty and idling. The independent givenness of the pre-representational empirical manifold is equally necessary, if Kant is to secure not only the objective validity but also the objective reality of knowledge and avoid empirical idealism, i.e. the reduction of objects of experience to mere mental representations.18
14 So
when the thing-in-itself drops out as a source of the “affection” with the empirical manifold and the pure manifold is contributed by the subject itself, problems with self-affection are bound to arise. 15 By conceptual structure I here understand not only the unity of representations but also their relationship of sub- and superordination (cf. Kant’s distinction between intuitional and conceptual content in the 4th argument concerning space in the Transcendental Aesthetic, B 39–40). 16 Not entirely, though: see B 585 where the transcendental object is said to “give” us the intuition of space. 17 It is understandable, then, why Fichte would draw the logical conclusion and incorporate the prerepresentational manifold as such directly into the unity of consciousness. In Science of Knowledge (the Grundlage) we read: “The intuited, as such, is produced [sc. by the self]” (205) and “. . . all reality . . . is brought forth solely by the imagination” (202); see also Science of Knowledge 201–202. 18 At B 150 Kant claims that the figurative synthesis that operates on the pure sensible manifold or “formal intuition” (B 160, footnote a) produces “objective reality.” If this were so in an unqualified sense, it is difficult to see why a third synthesis (the synthesis of apprehension, B 160) is needed to ensure the objective reality of the categories and to “make nature possible.” My suggestion is to restrict the objective reality mentioned at B 150 to the objects of mathematics (cf. B 147).
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Interestingly, at the beginning of the Transcendental Analytic Kant argues as follows: Transcendental logic . . . has lying before it a manifold of a priori sensibility, presented by transcendental aesthetic, as material for the concepts of pure understanding. In the absence of this material those concepts would be without any content, therefore entirely empty. Space and time contain a manifold of pure a priori intuition . . . But if this manifold is to be known, the spontaneity of our thought requires that it be gone through in a certain way, taken up, and connected. This act I name synthesis (A 76-7/B 102).
Two things we should note here. First, the empirical manifold of intuition is not mentioned in this passage at all. Second, the pure manifold of intuition, as distinct from the empirical manifold, makes its explicit appearance only here, at the beginning of the Analytic of Concepts. It is not discussed as such in the Transcendental Aesthetic.19 The Transcendental Aesthetic sometimes reads as if its only a priori elements were the pure forms of intuition while the content of intuition, as distinct from its form, is there being identified with the empirical manifold or the “matter” of appearances.20 As I have just argued, however, Kant must posit a pure synthesis as a condition of all subsequent empirical synthesis of representations, if there is to be an a priori determination of objects by concepts, and this pure synthesis requires the existence of a “manifold of a priori sensibility” independently of the empirical manifold and the act of synthesizing.21 19 The
pure manifold is first introduced at A 76–77/B 102. It is, however, present as a matter of fact in the proofs of the Transcendental Aesthetic. See also A 77/ B 103: “By synthesis, in its most general sense, I understand the act of putting different representations together, and of grasping what is manifold in them in one [act of] knowledge. Such a synthesis is pure, if the manifold is not empirical but is given a priori, as is the manifold in space and time. . . . Synthesis of a manifold (be it given empirically or a priori) is what first gives rise to knowledge.” 20 Cf. A 20/ B 34. Indeed, in the Transcendental Aesthetic the pure forms of intuition themselves seem to double as pure manifold: “The pure form of sensible intuitions in general, in which all the manifold of intuition is intuited in certain relations, must be found in the mind a priori. This pure form of sensibility may also itself be called pure intuition” (A 20/B 34–35). Later on, Kant suggests that when “you give yourself an object a priori in intuition” (A 48/ B 65) all that exists in addition to the forms of intuition is a sensible manifold. Because, as he explains in a paragraph added to the B edition, the a priori features of an object can all be explained through the relations its parts have to one another. These relations are part of the intuition, which is “antecedent to any and every act of thinking,” and an intuition that “contains nothing but relations” is “the form of intuition” (B 67). The pure manifold here seems to be absorbed into the forms of intuition themselves under the title of “relations”. Also note that what the epistemic subject famously affects itself with is not the pure manifold, but the forms of intuition (cf. B 67–68). 21 I take it that this “manifold of a priori sensibility” is the same as the “manifold of a priori sensible intuition” at B 150, which is there said to be the object of the figurative synthesis. This manifold is to be distinguished from the manifold in “objects of intuition in general” which is the “material” for the intellectual synthesis associated with the “unity of apperception” (ibid.). This is in keeping with Kant’s distinction between thinking and knowing – there is a unity of thinking that is more fundamental than the unity of knowledge, but which does not by itself produce knowledge. It is this unity of thinking, i.e. the transcendental unity of apperception, which grounds the “possibility of the understanding, even as regards its logical employment” (B 131). It is the “supreme principle of all employment of the understanding” of § 17 (my emphasis).
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Kant thus affirms both the identity of the epistemic conditions of knowledge and its objects as well as their fundamental independence and heterogeneity on the other, and this is precisely what is required if there is to be a solution to the problem of metaphysics as described in the second edition Preface. It is only through the idea of an a priori determination of the pure manifold of intuition that objects of experience could be determined prior to, i.e. independently of experience, at all. By making the inscription of a priori features of cognition on a manifold given independently of thought and prior to the sensible manifold a necessary condition for there to be any objects of experience Kant can speak of an a priori determination of objects without at the same time turning those objects into mere posits of our cognitive faculties. Objects are, after all, empirically real and only transcendentally ideal. We shall see later, however, that there is no empirical reality of objects without there being an empirical manifold as well. In this respect, Kant’s transcendental argument so far lacks its most crucial element. In order to acknowledge the fact that intuition and thought impose their own structures on the manifold, Kant calls the resulting reality “appearance” (in the transcendental sense22 ) and therefore needs to posit another aspect of reality whose existence is never in doubt, but whose knowability is by definition out of bounds.23 Still, the independent thing-in-itself must obviously be kept distinct from the equally independent pure manifold of intuition, since there could not be a determination of the thing-in-itself by the a priori features of cognition. Viewed in this light, the thing-in-itself is a consequence, rather than a condition, of transcendental idealism. With the idea of an independently given manifold of a priori sensibility in place, Kant proceeds to put together the basic framework of the Analytic of the Critique. Its fundamental tenets can be derived from an analysis of what is implied by the notion of a pure sensible manifold. To begin with, the a priori givenness of this manifold has a dual meaning. It is given a priori in the sense of “prior to or independently of experience”, and it is given a priori in the sense of “independently of thought” and its spontaneous synthesizing and unifying activities. The first sense of “given a priori” is crucial for the logical possibility of an a priori determination of objects while the second marks the pure manifold’s heterogeneous origin from that of the synthetic functions of the understanding. The fact that the origin of the manifold differs from that of the categorial functions also implies that the manifold per se is bare of any and all conceptual – and hence intelligible – features. Its origin in 22 See
A 45–46 on the “transcendental distinction” between appearance in the sense of empirical object and appearance in the sense of appearance (or aspect) of an empirical object. 23 If one ignores his moral philosophy, then Kant’s only real reason for introducing the thing-initself, if I see it correctly, is the logico-semantic one that one cannot talk about appearances, if they are not supposed to be supported by anything other than themselves – for then appearances would simply be illusory or systematically deceptive (like Cartesian adventitious ideas without a God) or simply non-existent: “. . . it does indeed follow that all speculative knowledge of reason is limited to mere objects of experience. But our further contention must also be duly borne in mind, namely, that though we cannot know these objects as things in themselves, we must yet be in a position to think them as things in themselves; otherwise we would be landed in the absurd conclusion that there can be appearances without anything that appears” (B XXVI-XXVII.)
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sensibility confers on it a heterogeneous, i.e. non-conceptual nature. Independence of experience and non-conceptual nature are thus the hallmarks of the pure manifold. The first is supposed to ensure that knowledge a priori is indeed knowledge of something “objective” rather than merely knowledge of the structures of the mind alone.24 The second means that the presence of the manifold by itself does not yet amount to knowledge. Instead, the original act of the synthesis of the imagination and the unifying function of the categories must supervene in order to produce specific a priori structures that necessarily inform any empirical manifold that may be part of the unity of consciousness: What must first be given – with a view to the a priori knowledge of all objects – is the manifold of pure intuition; the second factor is the synthesis of this manifold by means of the imagination. But even this does not yet yield knowledge. The concepts which give unity to this pure synthesis, and which consist solely in the representation of this necessary synthetic unity, furnish the third requisite for the [sc. a priori] knowledge of an object (A 78/B104).
The fact that the syntheses of the understanding must be performed on a heterogeneous content commits Kant to one of the above mentioned dual-source models of cognition, the dualism of (pure) intuition and concept. It also naturally leads to three further theses that are central to the Kantian project, viz. the so-called complementarity thesis, the intuitability thesis (also known as Kant’s principle of significance25 ), and the restriction thesis concerning the restriction of (empirical and mathematical) knowledge to intuitables. The fact that knowledge of objects must involve an intuitional component blocks the rationalist procedure of deriving the structure of the real from logical principles alone such as the principle of sufficient reason or the axiom that all true statements, including contingent truths, are ultimately analytic. Entities that cannot be exhibited in intuition and thus are not spatio-temporal particulars, such as for example monads, cannot be genuine objects of knowledge. They are products of speculation and more or less gratuitous constructs. Hence, all knowledge of objects must “relate ultimately to intuitions” (A 19/B 33). Consequently, Intuition and concepts constitute . . . the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither concepts without an intuition in some way corresponding to them, nor intuition without concepts, can yield knowledge (A 50/B 74).
Or again: Without sensibility no object would be given to us, without understanding no object would be thought. Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind . . . These two powers or capacities cannot exchange their functions. The understanding can intuit nothing, the senses can think nothing. Only through their union can knowledge arise (A 51/B 75).
24 I
say “supposed to ensure,” because in truth it is in the end the pre-representational empirical manifold that alone can assure the objective reality, as distinct from the objective validity, of empirical knowledge. More on this below. 25 See Strawson, 1989, p. 16.
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Because Kant’s complementarity thesis includes his intuitability thesis, he redefines knowledge of objects in such a way as to distinguish it from mere thinking: To know an object I must be able to prove its possibility, either from its actuality as attested by experience, or a priori by means of reason. But I can think whatever I please, provided only that I do not contradict myself, that is, provided my concept is a possible thought . . . But something more is required before I can ascribe to such a concept objective validity, that is, real possibility; the former possibility is merely logical (B XXVI, footnote b).
Since knowledge of objects is thus tied to intuitability, the scope of such knowledge must be restricted to intuitables or, to use Kant’s term, appearances: [The fact] that . . . we have no concepts of understanding, and consequently no elements for the knowledge of things, save in so far as intuition can be given corresponding to these concepts; and that we can therefore have no knowledge of any object as thing in itself, but only in so far as it is an object of sensible intuition, that is, an appearance – all this is proved in the analytical part of the Critique. Thus it does indeed follow that all possible speculative knowledge of reason is limited to mere objects of experience (B XXV-XXVI).
It is the task of the Transcendental Deduction, the Schematism and the Analytic of Principles to demonstrate the possibility as well as the necessity of the cooperation between sensibility and understanding. Once this task has been accomplished, Kant is in a position to claim that the subjective a priori conditions of cognition necessarily predetermine the basic structure of the world of empirical objects or that, in the formulation quoted earlier, “the conditions of the possibility of experience in general are likewise conditions of the possibility of the objects of experience.” How, then, does Kant’s transcendental idealism resolve the objectivity problem? It seems that in a fundamental respect Kant’s Copernican turn offers the ultimate response to that problem. Assuming for the moment that the argument in the Analytic of the Critique is successful, Kant has managed to secure both the independence and the basic intelligibility of the world of experience and has done so without relying on observation or induction which could never yield the universality and necessity that the claim to objective validity of knowledge requires. To be sure, Kant pays a price for this solution, viz. the restriction of knowledge to objects that can be sensibly intuited and the redefinition of theoretical or “transcendental” philosophy as a meta-philosophy that is essentially limited to the examination of the conditions under which knowledge a priori of our space-time world is possible. Theoretical philosophy seems henceforth confined to investigating the possibility and scope of empirical knowledge and thus becomes primarily a transcendental philosophy of science rather than a metaphysics. But within these self-imposed limits the solution seems perfect. It significantly goes beyond any bona fide position concerning the agreement between thought and reality. Looking back on the objectivity requirements mentioned earlier we can say that Kant has been able to ground the ontological structure of the world of experience in epistemic conditions that are universally valid and that derive from a combination of factual givens as well as stipulations about the nature of human cognition. He restricts objectivity to the immanence of experience and is able to derive the structure of objective reality from the subjective conditions under which alone knowledge of this reality is
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possible. While human knowledge is discursive and conceptual, the objects of such knowledge must be available in intuition. Intuitional objects can become intelligible only under the condition that the sensible manifold through which they are given be unified, i.e. conceptualized. If we can show what these a priori epistemic conditions and principles are without which intelligibility of intuitional objects would be impossible, we will have demonstrated that and how a priori determination of reality is possible. With this “transcendental deduction” the ancient problem of the objectivity of knowledge seems to have been put to rest. While Kant’s revolutionary proposal clearly marks an unparalleled achievement, some of his fundamental assumptions are unfortunately not unassailable. I will not here reiterate the frequently voiced criticism of Kant’s thing-in-itself doctrine. The unknowability thesis connected with that doctrine seems to me to be a plausible result of Kant’s approach. If knowledge of objects must be both knowledge as well as of objects, and if objects cannot be determined a priori by concepts unless something of what makes them objects already belongs to the epistemic subject, then, naturally, the idealistic approach suggests itself, and it recommends that we start with the immanence of the subject and its a priori cognitive structures in order to learn from them what objects of experience would have to be like. As already indicated, in my view the problems of the thing-in-itself doctrine lie elsewhere, viz. in the difficulties it creates for Kant’s practical philosophy, which clearly cannot take the pure practical will to be a noumenon in the negative sense only but must grant it actual existence, not to mention the problematic status of an a-temporal noumenal will whose spontaneity is nonetheless supposed to be effective in the world of sense. Be that as it may, my next concern here will be the tenability of the doctrine of the pure sensible manifold and in particular the thesis concerning its independent source and status.26 It is here that I see the first of two serious challenges to Kant’s solution to the objectivity problem. Closer reflection reveals that the independent status of the a priori manifold of sensibility cannot indeed be maintained. If true, this fact must have significant consequences and, together with a re-evaluation of the concept of the empirical manifold, will lead to a reintegration and re-homogenization of the intuitional and conceptual content of consciousness, as can be seen in Fichte and Hegel.27 As we have seen, in order to establish the objective validity of knowledge claims about the
26 The independence thesis is clearly expressed at B 145: “. . . in the above proof [presented in § 20] there is one feature, from which I could not abstract, the feature, namely, that the manifold to be intuited must be given prior to the synthesis of understanding, and independently of it.” Kant also admits that he has no justification for it here: “How this takes place, remains here undetermined” (ibid.). 27 The chapter on Sense-Certainty in the Phenomenology of Spirit contains Hegel’s argument in favor of the homogeneity of sensation and concept: see Section 3.2 below. Pippin, 1989, pp. 27–32 recognized the centrality of this issue for Fichte and Hegel who both thought that the second part of the Transcendental Deduction begins to “undercut his [i.e. Kant’s] own separation between intuition and concept” (p. 28). Kant scholars since have acknowledged the need to mount a strong defense of the heterogeneity of intuition and concept, if the Kantian project is to escape Hegel’s criticism: see Guyer, 2000. My sense is that although there are certainly good reasons in favor of the heterogeneity of intuition and thought, this will not much help Kant’s transcendental project.
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world Kant initially stipulates the givenness of a pure manifold, a pure synthesis of the imagination which weaves this manifold together in intuition, and another synthesis or combination (“conjunctio”) (B 129) which unifies the manifold conceptually and which is entirely the work of the understanding and its pure concepts or categories. This analysis of the foundations of knowledge contains a fundamental insight, viz. that intelligibility arises solely out of the unification of representations. If there is to be meaning, understanding, and knowledge, there must be unity of representation, and the production of this unity is the prerogative of the understanding or thought. Intelligibility equals unity of representations, and unity of representations presupposes a unifying synthesis or combination of the manifold. As Kant pointed out, the mere presence of a manifold or material for knowledge does not by itself constitute anything intelligible.28 Hence his insistence that synthesis must be complemented by an act of unification which “bring[s] this synthesis to concepts” and which is “a function which belongs to the understanding” (A 78/B 103). Synthesis by itself is “the mere result of the power of imagination” which is “a blind but indispensable function of the soul” (ibid.). In other words, the function of the imagination referred to at this juncture in the Critique merely generates a continuum of intuition, but it does not unify.29 Through the synthesis of the imagination alone the manifold is not yet brought under concepts but is merely “given”. Only through the unifying combination of the manifold, or through synthesizing the manifold in accordance with a rule does the a prior intuitional content acquire objective significance. It soon becomes apparent, however, that the requirements for the objective validity of knowledge, which Kant develops in the sections preceding the Transcendental Deduction in the B edition, are incomplete. As Kant admits in the famous footnote in § 26, the manifold of intuition could not even be “given” in any meaningful sense, if in addition to having been synthesized by the imagination it had not also already been unified: Space represented as object . . . contains combination of the manifold . . . so that [sc. while] the form of intuition gives only a manifold, the formal intuition gives unity of representation. In the Aesthetic I have treated this unity as belonging to sensibility, simply in order to emphasize that it precedes any concept, although as a matter of fact, it presupposes a synthesis which does not belong to the senses but through which all concepts of space and time first become possible. For since by its means (in that the understanding determines the sensibility) space and time are first given as intuitions, the unity of this a priori intuition belongs to space and time, and not to the concept of the understanding (B 160-1, footnote a).
28 A
90–91/B 123: “Appearances might very well be so constituted that the understanding should not find them to be in accordance with the conditions of its unity. Everything might be in such confusion that . . . in the series of appearances nothing presented itself which might yield a rule of synthesis . . .” 29 Note that this synthesis is introduced prior to both the A and B edition versions of the Transcendental Deduction, a passage Kant apparently thought he needed not revise when he prepared the B edition. Allison, 2004, p. 188 calls the synthesis of the imagination “proto-conceptual,” but also “interpretive” (p. 189). The latter in my view goes too far.
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It is important to realize what the correction amounts to that Kant here makes to the earlier account of the Transcendental Aesthetic and sections 10–14 of the Transcendental Deduction. It is clear that without the pure manifold the synthesis which in § 24 Kant calls “intellectual” and which in turn rests on the original synthetic unity of self-consciousness (or transcendental unity of apperception) could have no “transcendental content”, i.e. no a priori reference to objects. But what Kant now points out is that mere synthesis of the manifold without some unification of it would not be enough to constitute givenness of the pure manifold of space and time. Givenness of this manifold requires not only the weaving together of the intuitional spatio-temporal continuum, it also requires unity or combination into one whole.30 If you will, givenness requires more than mere givenness. Kant does not elaborate here on why the manifold must be unified into a “formal intuition”. He does, however, give us a hint. Unity of the manifold, he says, is necessary for space and time to be “given as intuitions”. What Kant has in mind becomes clear, if one remembers the argument in the Transcendental Aesthetic in favor of the intuitional, i.e. nonconceptual and non-discursive character of space and time considered as objects of intuition. Kant there argued that an object of intuition differs from a concept in that it is given as a whole, or as a single object.31 This is precisely what distinguishes an intellectual from an intuitional object or representation. A concept or universal is essentially incomplete or abstract, i.e. a representation applicable to objects rather than the object itself. Only the object of intuition is self-given or given in toto, and only as given in intuition is something an object as distinct from the representation of one. Kant therefore considers concepts to be mediate representations that are never in direct relationship to objects.32 In view of the dualistic intuition-concept model of cognition to which Kant subscribes we may say that intuition establishes the possibility of referentiality to objects as distinct from mere conceptual representations of them, whereas combination of the manifold in accordance with the categories establishes referentiality to objects in general as distinct from the mere intuitional givenness of appearances. The reason why a pre-categorial, non-intellectual unification of the manifold is necessary beyond its pre-categorial, non-unifying synthesis, therefore, is that without such unification in intuition no intuitable object would be “given”. That is, it would not be “present” in intuition, because an intuitional object, even if this object 30 For
a similar view see Altman, 2008, p. 140. 24/B 39: “Space is not a discursive or, as we say, general concept of relations of things in general, but a pure intuition. For, in the first place, we can represent to ourselves only one space; and if we speak of diverse spaces, we mean thereby only parts of one and the same unique space. Secondly, these parts cannot precede the one all-embracing space, as being, as it were, constituents out of which it can be composed; on the contrary they can be thought only as in it. Space is essentially one; the manifold in it, and therefore the general concept of spaces, depends solely on [the introduction of] limitations.” 32 See A 19/B 33: “In whatever manner and by whatever means a mode of knowledge may relate to objects, intuition is that through which it is in immediate relation to them, and to which all thought as a means is directed.” See also A 68/B 93: “Since no representation, save when it is an intuition, is in immediate relation to an object, no concept is ever related to an object immediately . . .” 31 A
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is merely empty space and empty time, must be individuated and hence must be a single, unified continuum, even before any matter it may contain is further synthesized and ordered in accordance with the categories. Kant acknowledges the force of this argument in the passage quoted above. It commits him, however, to stipulating the existence not only of a “pure synthesis” of imagination33 – an intuitional synthesis minus the combination part – but also a synthetic unification of the manifold through the imagination, an activity called “figurative synthesis” and “transcendental synthesis of imagination” in § 24. Furthermore, since all synthetic activity, combination included, is an expression of spontaneity, and since spontaneous activity is the prerogative of the understanding, not the sensibility, the unity brought to the pure manifold through the synthesis of imagination must be the result of “an action of the understanding on the sensibility”,34 although qua synthesis of intuitions it is productive of the intuitional content only, not of its intelligibility.35 This situation clearly constitutes a dilemma for Kant. He obviously needs a faculty distinct from the understanding to introduce unity into the pure sensible manifold independently of the intellectual synthesis of the understanding. On the other hand, all unification is the work of the understanding. Consequently, either we consider the imagination to be a hybrid of an intellectual and a non-intellectual faculty or, preferably, we take the pre-categorial (or “figurative”) synthesis of the imagination and the intellectual synthesis of the understanding to be two manifestations of one and the same fundamental faculty. The former possibility seems incoherent, the latter, however, undermines the dual-source model of knowledge based on the duality of intuition and concept.36 This, in my view, is one of the reasons why Kant will supplement this dualsource model – which, it should be noted, is concerned exclusively with the a priori elements of cognition, including the pure manifold of intuition – with the one of (pure) form and (empirical) matter in § 26 of the Transcendental Deduction. Indeed,
33 A 79/B 104. The entire passage at A 78–79/B104 suggests that this pure synthesis occurs in two
forms, as a synthesis of the imagination as well as a synthesis of the understanding. 152. 35 That is to say, “the unity of this a priori intuition belongs to space and time, and not to the concept of the understanding (cf. § 24)” (B 161, footnote a). Note that here in § 26 Kant himself establishes the connection between the pre-categorial unity of space and time and the figurative synthesis of § 24 by referring the reader back to that section. 36 My reading of the transcendental imagination is not as charitable as Allison’s (or, for that matter, Hegel’s, as we shall see) who finds “much of this [wavering on Kant’s part] . . . perfectly understandable in light of Kant’s concern to avoid the criticisms that were raised against the First Edition version of the Deduction because of its apparently psychological and psychologistic thrust”: see Allison, 1983, 163. The point, it seems to me, is that for reasons of consistency Kant is committed to assigning any synthesis or combination to the understanding while he also needs to maintain the heterogeneity of formal intuition as something given or “givable” independently of the understanding. For a similar view see Reid, 2003. He concludes that once we get to the Schematism “the distinction between intuition and concept begins to appear somewhat problematic” (253). I would only add that the erosion of the dualism between the two is quite obvious already in the Transcendental Deduction. 34 B
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if we think through the consequences of the extension that Kant’s initial picture receives in §§ 24 and 26, it will become clear that the first dual-source model and with it the independent givenness of the pure manifold is not really tenable. For Kant has now explicitly conceded that for pure intuitions such as (empty) space and time to be given as objects they need to be unified at a pre-conceptual level by a faculty which is called imagination but which is clearly a function of thought. To put it differently, imagination and understanding, sensibility and thought, synthesis and combination are inseparable already at the level of intuition. I believe that this result is inevitable, if one follows Kant’s fundamental assumptions and his own argument. And it is a result hinted at by Kant himself.37 To summarize, the pure manifold, while deriving from a source independent of the understanding or any activity of thought,38 (a) does not exist independently of the epistemic subject and (b) is not given as an object of intuition independently of the synthetic function of the understanding. For any manifold to be “given” in a meaningful sense, it must already be unified or combined at a pre-categorial level as well as, according to § 24, independently of the intellectual synthesis of the understanding – and unification or combination are acts of thought, not of sensibility. If, then, there is no pure manifold that could even be given as an object of intuition independently of the function of thought, there is so far no truly heterogeneous element of cognition that might be given independently of thought either. Consequently, the basis for the objective reality of claims about the a prior structure of reality has not yet been established. If the pure manifold were the only material that cognition has to go on in its a priori determinations, all determination would be a self-determination of the epistemic subject, and the required element of empirical realism would be absent. And if a priori referentiality of thought to a subject-independent reality could not be established, the result would be that the project of demonstrating the possibility of a priori knowledge of objects would have failed. This is precisely why a pre-representational empirical manifold becomes necessary. In addition to the pure manifold, the empirical manifold represents the truly independent and heterogeneous element of empirical realism, the truly nonsubjective component in the knowledge of objects. To determine anything as an object of cognition (as opposed to an object of intuition) there needs to be not only a heterogeneous element in cognition, but also an element that is derived from a subject-independent source. Otherwise, the epistemic subject would be tautologically self-determining.39 Without such an element, the position is in danger of
37 A 15/B 29: “. . . there are two stems of human knowledge, namely, sensibility and understanding, which perhaps spring from a common, but to us unknown, root.” 38 Kant is very clear that the manifold should be given independently of the unity of apperception: “. . . the manifold to be intuited must be given prior to the synthesis of understanding, and independently of it. How this takes place, remains here undetermined [!]” (B 145). Or: The power of the understanding consists “in the act whereby it brings the synthesis of a manifold, given to it from elsewhere in intuition, to the unity of apperception” (ibid., my italics). 39 Hence the line of thought pursued by Heinrich Rickert (Rickert, 1924), who advanced the so-called heterothetic argument, cannot really succeed. Similar to Fichte’s theory of the Anstoß
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reducing to pure transcendental idealism without empirical realism. In sum, for Kant at least heterogeneity is not enough. To secure true independence of the manifold from the understanding, we need externality or subject-independence as well.40 And indeed, while Kant apparently entertained the possibility of an original unity of understanding and sensibility, he did not actually rely exclusively on the pure sensible manifold alone to make possible the reference to objects of experience. Instead, in § 26 of the Transcendental Deduction he introduces an empirical manifold, “the manifold in an empirical intuition, whereby perception, that is, empirical consciousness of the intuition (as appearance) is possible” (B 160).41 This manifold is unified by the “synthesis of apprehension” (which resurfaces here from the A edition). In other words, if the pure manifold of sensibility cannot by itself serve as a subject-independent source of the heterogeneous material, perhaps the empirical manifold can. This manifold, I suggest, is made up of those “undetermined objects of an empirical intuition” called appearances that Kant refers to at the very start of the Critique proper.42 Together with the pure sensible manifold or formal intuition this as yet undetermined empirical manifold forms the content of inner sense. It is (check), he integrated the heterogeneous element into the unity of self-consciousness. But, as we now see, heterogeneity is not enough to avoid an idealism without empirical realism, externality must also be a mark of the heterogeneous material. The heterothetic argument was taken up again by Flach, 1959 and Wagner, 1959. For a critical assessment of the heterothetic argument see Hartmann, 1999, pp. 66–69. 40 The externality requirement is what seems to have been overlooked by those who are puzzled by the question as to why the second step of the Transcendental Deduction is necessary or what exactly it is supposed to achieve over and above the first step that ends with § 20: see the discussion in Carl, 1998, pp. 208–211. Only the externality of the matter of experience can ensure the objective reality of the categories, since without this matter we are dealing merely with the pure forms of intuition and understanding and the formal intuition (i.e., empty space and time), all of which derive from the epistemic subject alone. Fichte’s alternative of positing an internal Anstoß has to struggle with the problem of losing the element of empirical realism altogether. 41 This third synthesis should not be conflated with the figurative synthesis. Hence § 26 does not find its completion with the unification of space and time referred to in the B 160–161 footnote, as Guyer, 1992, p. 153 seems to suggest, but only with this third empirical synthesis. Similarly, Longueness, 1998, 211 overlooks the critical role of the synthesis of apprehension when she claims that the Transcendental Deduction is completed with the reintroduction of the figurative synthesis in § 26. She is thus misled into concluding that “the real weight of the argument in section 26 lies in the reexamination of the two questions: what is space, and what is time?” (214). In support of the view defended here see the discussion in Reid, 2003, pp. 250–252. I also agree with Allison, 2004, who correctly, it seems to me, states: “Although the connection of the categories with the forms of sensibility through the transcendental synthesis of the imagination is undoubtedly the pivotal step of the argument, it does not of itself suffice to secure the goal of the Deduction. This requires demonstrating that the categories stand in a necessary connection with empirical intuition. Kant attempts to achieve this goal in § 26 by linking the categories to the synthesis of apprehension . . .” (p. 193) Where I differ from Allison is in regarding the necessity of the synthesis of apprehension as a breach in the transcendental argument (see below). For another detailed discussion of the structure of the Transcendental Deduction and the role of the figurative synthesis in particular see also Senderowicz, 2004. 42 “That intuition which is in relation to the object through sensation, is entitled empirical. The undetermined object of an empirical intuition is entitled appearance” (A 20/B 34).
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through the synthesis of this manifold in accordance with the categories that Kant hopes definitively to secure the objective reality of the categories.43 As we shall see in what follows, it is the introduction of this manifold that will cause the most serious problem for Kant’s transcendental project. In Hegel’s view it constitutes the fatal flaw in the argument of the Transcendental Deduction.
2.2 Hegel’s Critique of Kant: The Transcendental Deduction Let me suggest that for a moment we ignore Kant’s attempt in § 26 of the Transcendental Deduction to build referentiality to a subject-independent epistemic component into the unity of consciousness by appealing to an empirical manifold of sensation. Since this move will exacerbate Kant’s dilemma, as will become clear later, any corrective measure should, if possible, be taken prior to and independently of the introduction of this manifold. Given the fact that up to this point the independence of a dimension of referentiality for as yet to be determined objects within the immanence of the transcendental unity of apperception has not yet been established, what should or could be done? Should we recommend that the idea of a manifold be given up entirely? This will not work, if we want to preserve the transcendental approach of determining objects independently of experience. The manifold is the element that represents the dimension of externality or subject-independence within the unity of self-consciousness. As such it is precisely what Kant calls the “transcendental content” without which thought would lack the object-dimension that is supposed to be organized and unified by the categories. Hence the concept of the manifold cannot be dismissed without losing the dimension of objectivity itself. It is after all the idea that objects must conform a priori to concepts that separates the Copernican project in philosophy from all others. No manifold, no transcendental argument.44 However, if it is true that the manifold cannot retain its independence of thought and at the same time be part of the transcendental unity of apperception, it follows that while it must be an original part of this immanence, it will be neither absolutely independent nor absolutely heterogeneous. Looking ahead, we can say that the manifold will need to be unified by thought a limine and as a consequence it will already contain the a priori conceptual structures. In other words, the manifold will represent the contents of experience, in so far as the latter is already permeated by the categorial determinations. It will be objective reality as it exists within the unity of self-consciousness or the immanence of experience. This is the situation as we will find it in the Sense-Certainty chapter of Hegel’s Phenomenology. 43 B
144–145 (§ 21): “In what follows (cf. § 26) it will be shown, from the mode in which the empirical intuition is given in sensibility, that its unity is no other than that which the category (according to § 20) prescribes to a given intuition in general. Only thus, by demonstration of the a priori validity of the categories in respect of all objects of our senses, will the purpose of the deduction be fully attained.” 44 Accordingly, Fichte made the manifold a fundamental principle under the title of a not-I posited by the original ego: see Fichte, Science of Knowledge, § 2, pp. 102–105.
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As we shall see shortly, it could thus be said that at least in Hegel’s case the development of post-Kantian German idealism takes its point of departure from a critical assessment of the consequences of Kant’s introduction of a figurative synthesis in § 24 and the acknowledgement of the need for a formal intuition in the B 160-1 footnote. The introduction of the empirical manifold in § 26, on the other hand, represents the fault line at which in Hegel’s view the Kantian strategy falls apart. As we shall see, in Hegel’s eyes § 26 with its empirical manifold marks the abandonment of the transcendental project, while the preceding part of the Transcendental Deduction can be so modified and reconstituted that transcendental idealism may be transformed into speculative idealism, which, Hegel believes, is the only consistent form of transcendental idealism. These are issues to be taken up later. It is now time to ask, whether the critique of Kant offered in the previous section is in fact shared by Hegel. Hegel’s occupation with Kant’s philosophy goes back to his student days at the Tübinger Stift. We know from Hegel’s Berne correspondence with Schelling and other sources that Hegel and his friends revered Kant as a bringer of hope who ushered in the dawn of a new era in philosophy by destroying the traditional orthodoxy and dogmatism. Although Hegel lost his initial enthusiasm for Kant’s thought, he remains appreciative of Kant’s contribution until the very end as is apparent from a footnote in the latest revision of the Science of Logic: I would mention that in this work I frequently refer to the Kantian philosophy . . . because whatever may be said, both in this work and elsewhere, about the precise character of this philosophy and about particular parts of its exposition, it constitutes the base and the starting-point of recent German philosophy and this its merit remains unaffected by whatever faults may be found in it (SL 61, n. 1/WdL I 44, footnote).
Hegel published three major critical expositions of Kant’s philosophy, the first of which is contained in the Differenzschrift of 1801. There followed the essay Glauben und Wissen (Faith and Knowledge) in 1802, a critique of Kant, Jacobi, and Fichte. A condensed presentation of Kant’s philosophy from Hegel’s mature period is to be found in the Introduction to the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences.45 In addition, there are two extended passages in the Science of Logic that merit special attention, because they allow us to reconstruct the path leading from Kant’s transcendental idealism to Hegel’s own position. Briefer references to Kant or the “critical philosophy” abound in Hegel’s writings, but we may ignore them for our purposes. Hegel’s critique of Kant is remarkably consistent over the years. His most detailed discussion of the Transcendental Deduction, however, comes in the 1802 Faith and Knowledge essay. The main point is that in the original synthetic unity of self-consciousness Kant had discovered the true principle of all philosophical 45 I
am referring to the 1830 edition of the Encyclopedia. A rudimentary presentation of Kant’s philosophy is already contained in the Heidelberg version of 1817. In the 1830 Berlin version the overview over the Kantian system occupies §§ 40–60. I am setting aside here the Kant critique to be found in Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy which were never published during Hegel’s life time.
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knowledge, but that he compromised this discovery by interpreting the specific form of synthesizing which underlies the intellectual and the figurative syntheses as a mere combination of a manifold with empty concepts where both the manifold and the concepts are supposed to exist independently of or prior to the original synthesis. Instead, Kant should have realized that, in the words of Faith and Knowledge, the forms of intuition and the forms of thought, i.e. the categories, “have no isolated existence” and that together they form an “original identity of opposites” such that their unity, qua original, must be prior to their distinction while in Kant’s presentation their unity is produced out of their pre-existing separation.46 In other words, Kant’s transcendental unity of apperception is not itself the principle from which the specific forms of unity of intuition and concept are then being derived. The unity of the latter does not emerge as a self-differentiation of the original unity and is therefore “not originally synthetic” (FK 73/GW IV 330). Qua original, the synthesis would have to precede the differentiation of the elements synthesized by it: This original synthetic unity must be conceived, not as produced out of opposites, but as a truly necessary, absolute, original identity of opposites (FK 70/GW IV 327).
The idea of an original synthesis therefore does not carry over to the categorial or the figurative syntheses. In fact, this means that from Hegel’s point of view Kant’s transcendental deduction is a misunderstanding – it attempts to synthesize what from a transcendental point of view must have existed in synthetic unity from the start. In Faith and Knowledge, Hegel views the transcendental synthesis of the imagination as the key to Kant’s speculative insight. In the Logic and the Encyclopedia versions of Hegel’s critique, the imagination loses its central role in favor of the reinterpretation of the transcendental unity of apperception as a precursor of Hegel’s own Notion. The productive imagination in Faith and Knowledge is responsible for the figurative as distinct from the intellectual synthesis,47 but at one point it is also identified with the transcendental unity of apperception in that it is both subject and object in undivided identity and thus “nothing but reason itself,” because reason is just this, “the identity of unequals.”48 It is interesting to note that already in this context Hegel suggests that the subject-predicate form of the judgment represents a differentiation of the original synthetic unity into a universal (predicate) and a particular (subject) whose original unity can be reconstructed discursively only in the 46 Cf.
FK 69–70/GW IV 327. FK 69/GW IV 327. 48 Cf. FK 73/GW IV 329. Again, the productive imagination “must . . . be recognized as what is primary and original, as that out of which subjective Ego and objective world first sunder themselves into the necessarily bipartite appearance and product . . . This power of imagination is the original two-sided identity. The identity becomes subject in general on one side, and object on the other; but originally it is both (ibid.). The intellectual synthesis, on the other hand, is the categorial synthesis which produces determinate representations distinct from the original identity of intuition and understanding: see FK 70/GW IV 327). Figurative and intellectual synthesis thus both presuppose the transcendental synthesis of imagination that for Hegel is equivalent to the transcendental apperception. 47 Cf.
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form of a syllogism.49 Hegel thus views productive imagination, predicative judgment and syllogistic reasoning as three aspects of reason itself. Replacing productive imagination with reason, we may recognize in this appropriation of Kant an anticipation of what in the Logic Hegel calls the “subjective Notion” or “subjectivity”, which is subdivided into the Notion “as such”, the Judgment, and the Syllogism.50 Faith and Knowledge thus essentially regards Kant’s original synthetic unity of self-consciousness as a fundamental, un-derivable, if not un-analyzable, identity of “heterogeneous elements” and hence as an articulation of the idea of reason itself. Hegel even concurs with the analysis of the pure sensible manifold we developed in the previous section: One can glimpse this Idea [of reason as the identity of heterogeneous elements in Kant] . . ., but not where it should be, in the transcendental exposition of these forms [of intuition and thought], but later on, in the deduction of the categories, where the original synthetic unity of apperception finally comes to the fore. Here, the original synthetic unity of apperception is recognized also as the principle of figurative synthesis, i.e., of the forms of intuition; space and time are themselves conceived as synthetic unities, and spontaneity, the absolute synthetic activity of the productive imagination, is conceived as the principle of the very sensibility which was previously characterized only as receptivity (FK 69-70/GW IV 327, my italics).
This can be taken as a direct reference to § 24 of the Transcendental Deduction, B edition, perhaps even extending to and including the famous B 160-1 footnote in § 26. Hegel’s observation means that if space and time are now considered synthetic unities the productive imagination must be the origin not only of their unity, but of space and time themselves as objects or synthetic wholes. Indeed, the transcendental synthesis of imagination, Hegel argues, is now recognized as the most fundamental principle. It therefore overrules the initial independence of sensibility and effectively negates its merely receptive nature. Thus, productive imagination is not to be regarded as an intermediate factor only that is interpolated between “an existing absolute subject and an absolutely existing world”.51 The transcendental standpoint, Hegel seems to be saying, requires that intuition and concept be united ab ovo, as it were, instead of being brought together after the fact by a transcendental act. The difference between Hegel’s analysis here and my earlier critique is that Hegel is quite appreciative of the function of the transcendental imagination. Instead
49 Cf.
FK 72/GW IV 328–329. SL 600/WdL II 239, while commenting on the distinction between understanding and judgment in the Kantian sense, Hegel explicitly confirms this by observing that “the understanding is to be distinguished from reason only in the sense that the former is merely the faculty of the notion in general.” See also FK 79–80/GW IV 334–335): We must place Kant’s merit “in his having put the Idea of authentic a priority in the form of transcendental imagination; and also in having put the beginning of the Idea of Reason in the intellect itself. For he regarded thinking, or the form, not as something subjective, but as something in itself; not as something formless, not as empty apperception, but as intellect, as true form, namely as triplicity.” For Hegel’s integration of logic and metaphysics during the Jena period see Düsing’s excellent 1976 study, pp.150–189. 51 FK 73/GW IV 329. 50 At
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of viewing it as a dubious hybrid, he re-interprets it speculatively and welcomes it as a precursor of Hegelian reason. The section on “The Notion in General”52 in the Science of Logic retains the same fundamental analysis of Kant’s transcendental position, but it also adds a new angle to Hegel’s critique. In this passage of the Science of Logic, Hegel interprets the “I” as the original synthetic unity of its internal diversity such that this inner manifold must be regarded as a “positedness” (ibid.) of the “I” itself. We easily detect in this Hegel’s re-interpretation of Kant’s transcendental unity of apperception as the source and single origin of the internal manifold. As I argued above, Hegel, unlike Kant, will be ready to admit that the empirical manifold introduced into the unity of the “I” already contains all a priori structures within itself – the I extracts them from, but does not impose them upon the manifold of experience. So Hegel not only transfers his interpretation of the Notion onto the “pure I”, but further identifies this Hegelian “I” with Kant’s original synthetic unity of self-consciousness. With the idea of an original synthetic unity of self-consciousness, he claims, Kant went beyond the ordinary conception of the “I” as an entity that possesses faculties as a thing possesses properties. While this latter view may in fact have influenced Kant’s theory of faculties in part, the idea of an original synthetic unity opens up an entirely new dimension. Says Hegel: 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 Notion is recognized as the original synthetic unity of apperception, as unity of the I think, or of self-consciousness (SL 584/WdL II 221).
Hegel apparently takes the very idea of an original synthetic unity of selfconsciousness to be the crucial point. It indicates the combination of two heterogeneous elements out of which there arises something qualitatively different from either element contained in it – if, and this is admittedly a controversial “if ”, with Hegel we understand the point of § 24 of the Transcendental Deduction and the B 160-1 footnote to be that without the activity of the understanding there could not even be a figurative synthesis. In this sense, the figurative synthesis is embedded in the intellectual synthesis and would be impossible without it. It is with some reason, then, that Hegel should regard Kant’s transcendental unity of apperception as the precursor to his concept of the Notion as far as the absolute priority of the Notion is concerned. The important point for Hegel here is the fact that the original synthetic unity of self-consciousness prefigures the original synthetic unity that is the Concept. Consequently, objectivity must be thought of as being dependent on the synthesizing activity of the understanding and is itself possible only on the basis of an original synthetic unity.53 In this way, the transcendental unity of apperception
52 The reader should note that I prefer the translation “Concept” for Hegel’s Begriff. But since I am using Miller’s translation of the Science of Logic, I will stick with “Notion” when quoting Miller’s translation. 53 SL 584/WdL II 221: “An object, says Kant, is that in the notion of which the manifold of a given intuition is unified. But all unifying of representations demands a unity of consciousness in the synthesis of them. Consequently, it is this unity of consciousness which alone constitutes
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becomes the foundation of the objective validity of a priori claims to knowledge. In a remarkable statement, Hegel even appeals to Kant’s authority for a confirmation of the correctness of his own thought concerning the role of the Concept in knowledge. “Thus,” he says, “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 Notion is” (SL 585/WdL 222). A statement such as this, coming as it does at a crucial juncture in Hegel’s argument in the Logic, can leave us in no doubt about the fundamental impact of Kant’s thought on Hegel and the fact that Kant’s First Critique served both as a genuine starting point and as a benchmark for Hegel’s own attempt at solving the objectivity problem. Hegel takes himself to be preserving and developing what he believes to be the core of the genuine Kantian insight while rejecting what he takes to be heterogeneous elements incompatible with it. In addition to its absolute priority Hegel also credits the original synthetic unity of self-consciousness with the character of concrete universality. Seeing himself as drawing out what he believes to be the logical conclusion of Kant’s thought he offers the following: Through the categories . . . the manifold of given representations is so determined as to be brought into the unity of consciousness. According to this exposition [of Kant’s], the unity of the notion is that whereby something is not a mere mode of feeling, an intuition, or even a mere representation, but is an object, and this objective unity is the unity of the ego with itself. In point of fact, the comprehension of an object consists in nothing else than that the ego makes it its own, pervades it and brings it into its own form, that is, into the universality that is immediately a determinateness, or a determinateness that is immediately universality (SL 584-5/WdL II 222).
At this point Hegel clearly begins to go beyond the letter of Kant’s text.54 On the other hand, it is less obvious that Hegel is thereby necessarily doing violence to Kant’s spirit. His reasoning may be reconstructed in the following way. If the synthetic unity of self-consciousness is truly original, i.e. if it truly is the most fundamental epistemic condition, Kant’s analytic approach which first isolates two separate sources of knowledge in order afterwards to unify them again is either misleading or an artificial ladder that must be discarded once we have reached the “highest point” on which everything else, even the functioning of the understanding and thought itself, depends. If the synthetic unity is truly original, the question whether thought and intuition are really two separate sources of knowledge must become unanswerable. If anything, this indicates that to try to isolate the two sources as elements independent of one another is to start on the wrong foot. To the contrary, it is only through an analysis of the original unity that the two elements can be separated, because qua originally unified, they must be considered heterogeneous within a prior homogeneous unity. The homogeneity of the unity itself is necessary,
the connection of the representations with the object and therewith their objective validity and on which rests even the possibility of the understanding.” 54 Hegel apparently favors the two-stage (as distinct from the dual-source) model of cognition Kant employed in the Prolegomena by distinguishing judgments of perception from judgments of experience.
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if there is to be genuine unity rather than merely an aggregate of diverse elements. From this it would follow that the synthetic unity constitutes an absolute starting point that cannot be derived or deduced from anything preceding it. Quite naturally, then, the content of this synthetic unity cannot be derived from anything else than the synthetic unity itself. To say that the content is “posited” by the spontaneity of the synthesizing “I” is merely to acknowledge this fact. Furthermore, one who has accepted the argument thus far would also have to admit that since the unity is transcendental, all forms of cognition, including “mere” sensation, perception, and even “pure” thinking itself, contain an element of original synthesis, beginning with sensation and intuition and continuing on through representation, empirical judgments, and the thinking of “pure” concepts. Hegel’s critique of Kant’s Copernican revolution could be summarized in a nutshell by saying that Hegel credits Kant with the discovery of this new paradigm of thought as originally synthetic, but that he equally continues to adhere to a dual-source model of knowledge nonetheless. As Hegel sees it, Kant’s transcendental idealism thus becomes a philosophy of divided loyalties.55 Why, then, did Hegel think it legitimate to claim concrete universality for the transcendental unity of apperception? I suggest the following reading of Hegel’s argument. On account of its implicit heterogeneous content the transcendental unity of apperception is determinate, not empty; as a unity of itself and its content it is homogeneous with itself, i.e. it possesses universality; and as a homogeneous unity that includes a heterogeneous element (viz. negation) it is a determinate universality. To support his interpretation of Kant Hegel focuses in particular on Kant’s complementarity thesis: . . . it is an essential proposition of the Kantian transcendental philosophy that without intuitions notions [Begriffe] are empty and are valid solely as relations of the manifold given by intuition (SL 585/WdL II 223).
Concepts can generate objectively valid cognition only insofar as they combine intuitions in an intelligible unity. There is a critique implied here as well. Concepts without such a content are not really concepts, i.e. there are, strictly speaking, no pure concepts of the understanding lying ready a priori in the mind. The latter, we are led to conclude, are abstractions, concepts that have no work to do. Concepts, categories included, always come with a determinate content. In a similar vein, Hegel acknowledges Kant’s innovation of proposing the idea of a synthetic a priori judgment. Here, too, the fundamental insight consists in that two heterogeneous elements are combined a priori in such a way that the resulting unity, while containing heterogeneity, is nonetheless a unity, i.e. homogenous.56 As a caveat, however, 55 SL
594/WdL II 233: “In the a priori synthesis of the Notion [des Begriffs], Kant possessed a higher principle [than that of an “empty, blank form”] in which a duality in a unity could be cognized, a cognition, therefore, of what is required for truth; but the material of sense, the manifold of intuition, was too strong for him and he was unable to get away from it to a consideration of the Notion and the categories in and for themselves and to a speculative method of philosophizing.” 56 SL 589/WdL II 227: “. . . differentiation must be regarded as an equally essential moment of the Notion [as unity]. Kant has introduced this consideration by the extremely important thought that there are synthetic judgments a priori. This original synthesis of apperception is one of the most
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we should remember that for Hegel the empirical manifold, insofar as it is saturated with a priori elements, is supposed to be originally inherent in the transcendental unity of apperception itself. Accordingly, what may on the face of it look like a Hegelian endorsement of the complementarity thesis is in reality an affirmation of Hegel’s own re-interpretation of this Kantian principle. The interpretation of the transcendental unity of apperception as absolutely original and as concrete universality also marks the turning point in Hegel’s exposition of Kant in The Notion in General. Having paid his debt to Kant, Hegel now mounts his critique. It is easy to read Hegel’s objections to what he calls Kant’s formalism and psychological idealism57 as polemical, but such a reading would likely overlook the original aspect of Hegel’s critique. For Hegel detects, or at least claims to have detected, a fault line in Kant’s position caused by an inner tension and even a contradiction between two paradigmatic but opposed conceptions of knowledge. Commenting on the relation between the Concept (i.e. the synthesis in accordance with the concepts of the understanding) and other forms of cognition such as intuition and representation Hegel remarks: The conception of this relation both in ordinary psychology and in the Kantian transcendental philosophy is that the empirical material, the manifold of intuition and representation, first exists on its own account, and then the understanding approaches it, brings unity into it and by abstraction raises it to the form of universality. The understanding is in this way an intrinsically empty form which, on the one hand, obtains a reality through the said given content and, on the other hand, abstracts from that content, that is to say, lets it drop as something useless, but useless only for the Notion. In both these actions the Notion is not the independent factor, not the essential and true element of the prior given material; on the contrary, it is the material that is regarded as the absolute reality, which cannot be extracted from the Notion (SL 587/WdL II 224-5).
Thus according to Hegel, there results the contradictory situation in which the Notion (i.e. the original unity of thought and manifold) “. . . without the manifold of intuition is again declared to be empty and devoid of content despite the fact that it is a synthesis a priori” (SL 589/WdL II 227). In the final analysis, therefore, the Concept remains “permanently conditioned by a manifold of intuition” (ibid.). The original transcendental unity reveals itself to be only an “external unity and a mere combination of entities that are intrinsically separate” (ibid.). This is the familiar Hegelian critique of the formal nature of the understanding and the categories in Kant. It is important to note, however, that this means more
profound principles for speculative development; it contains the beginning of a true apprehension of the nature of the Notion and is completely opposed to that empty identity or abstract universality which is not within itself a synthesis.” Düsing, 1976, p. 113 has pointed out that Hegel conflates two different meanings of “synthetic” in Kant, since the synthesis referred to in the transcendental apperception is valid for all judgements, whether analytic or synthetic, and only the synthesis in a synthetic judgement is one of intuition and concept. This is astute and technically correct, but neglects the point of the B 160–161 footnote and § 24 of the Transcendental Deduction that indicate an embedding of the figurative in the intellectual synthesis. Since Hegel’s argument is explicitly based on § 24, I cannot agree with Düsing’s conclusion that Hegel’s critique of Kant is “not immanent” (p. 119). 57 Cf. SL 589/WdL II 227. For the characterization of Kant’s position as one of “formal identity” and “formal idealism” see also FK 73–81/GW IV 330–335.
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than merely a rejection of an aspect of Kant’s thought with which Hegel happens to disagree. Instead, Hegel means to point out a real tension in Kant’s argument in the Transcendental Deduction between the idea of an original synthesis on one hand and the formal character of the understanding and its categories on the other. Hegel clearly sees an internal contradiction at work here. It is because of the immanent character of the contradiction that Hegel can then make the argument that Kant’s thought in and of itself is in need of a transformation that will resolve the contradiction and thus complete the Copernican revolution. If the conflict were not inherent in Kant’s position itself, Hegel’s critique of Kant could perhaps be dismissed as foreign and hence irrelevant to Kant’s thought. As we shall see, however, such judgment would be premature. But what exactly is at issue in this alleged contradiction, and where in Kant’s argument does the conflict make its appearance? We are already familiar with the fact that Hegel rejects the first of Kant’s dual-source models, viz. that of intuition and concept, and its corollary, i.e., the complete independence of sensibility and understanding. So far, Hegel’s point was that the very notion of a transcendental unity of apperception or an original synthetic unity is incompatible with this dualsource model. The latter is a combination model rather than a synthesis model. For Hegel, the combination model presupposes the separate existence and independence of category and manifold prior to their synthesis, whereas the synthesis model suggests their intrinsic unity and original identity. As we saw, even in Kant’s text there are indications that he himself found the strict independence of an original unity of self-consciousness and an independently existing manifold of intuition untenable. In other words, the idea of an original unity of understanding and manifold actually overrides and even negates the first dual-source model. As was apparent from Faith and Knowledge, Hegel is prepared to read most of the Transcendental Deduction as an attempt to work out the idea of an original synthesis. His is not primarily a critique of that part of the Deduction that deals with the transcendental syntheses (roughly, the original synthetic unity, the intellectual, and the figurative synthesis).58 There must then be some other aspect in Kant’s argument that from Hegel’s point of view re-invalidates the transcendental part of the argument of the Transcendental Deduction and therefore also seriously compromises Kant’s Copernican turn. But which aspect would this be? Let us briefly review again the formulations Hegel uses to signal what he takes to be the fundamental contradiction in Kant’s position. He claims that on one hand it is “an essential proposition of the Kantian transcendental philosophy that without intuitions notions are empty” (SL 585/WdL II 223) – in other words, the manifold of intuition is crucial for the non-emptiness of the categories. On the other, he accuses Kant of unifying understanding and sensibility only in an “external” manner. Having made a point of saying that concepts and intuitions must be originally unified, he argues, Kant then takes the sensible material to be “the absolute reality” (SL 587/WdL II 224-5), lets the “given content” drop from the Notion (i.e.
58 Both the intellectual and
the figurative synthesis are “transcendental, not merely as taking place a priori, but also as conditioning the possibility of other a priori knowledge” (B 151).
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the objective unity of apperception), and declares the Notion to be again empty and devoid of content (SL 589/WdL II 227). This procedure ultimately results in the Notion being “permanently conditioned by a manifold of intuition” (ibid.), although the original synthesis was supposed to be the highest principle. As a consequence, the Transcendental Deduction, which was meant to prove the unity of understanding and sensibility, of concept and intuition, of category and manifold, ends in a mere external combination of two elements that remain “intrinsically separate” (ibid.). Now nowhere, it seems, does Kant declare the original unity of selfconsciousness or the transcendental unity of apperception to be “empty and devoid of content”, nor does he pronounce the sensory material to be the “absolute reality”. Quite to the contrary, he seems to affirm the opposite by insisting that empirical things are indeed only appearances (in the transcendental sense), not things-inthemselves. We may wonder, therefore, what factual basis there can be for Hegel’s critique. One thing is clear – Hegel believes that a breach of an initial promise occurs somewhere in the Transcendental Deduction: The further development [sc. of the Transcendental Deduction] . . . does not fulfill the promise of the beginning. The very expression synthesis easily recalls the conception of an external unity and a mere combination of entities that are intrinsically separate (SL 589/WdL II 227).
I suggest that what Hegel has in mind when referring to this breach of a promise is the fact that according to Kant the original synthetic unity of self-consciousness and the intellectual and figurative syntheses together are as yet insufficient by themselves to determine objects of experience. In addition, there is required an input from sensation and a synthesis of apprehension, i.e. an “empirical synthesis”,59 without which categories can have no application to objects of experience. In other words, the transcendental part of the Transcendental Deduction (i.e. the part dealing with the three transcendental syntheses) is incomplete, a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for the a priori determination of “real” objects. The intellectual synthesis unifies the pure manifold of intuition in general, the figurative synthesis unifies the manifold of formal intuition, and therefore determines inner sense only with respect to its form, not its content. But as Kant had already argued in § 22 of the Transcendental Deduction, the thought of an object in general, by means of a pure concept of the understanding, can become knowledge for us only in so far as the concept is related to objects of the senses . . . Through the determination of pure intuition we can acquire a priori knowledge of objects [my italics], as in mathematics, but only in regard to their form, as appearances; whether there can be things [my italics] which must be intuited in this form, is still left undecided . . . Now things in space and time are given only in so far as they are perceptions (that is, representations accompanied by sensation) – therefore only through empirical representation . . . Even, therefore, with the aid of [pure] intuition, the categories do not afford us any knowledge of things; they do so only through their possible application to empirical intuition (B 146-7).
146: “All possible perception is . . . dependent upon synthesis of apprehension, and this empirical synthesis in turn upon transcendental synthesis . . .”
59 B
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In other words, only if it can be shown that categories “apply” to perceptions (or their sensory element) can we say that the understanding is capable of an a priori determination of things rather than objects in general. Consequently, even the objective reference that categories acquire through the determination of the form of inner sense on account of the figurative synthesis does not yet yield a priori knowledge of things, i.e. of objects of experience. As Kant explains in § 26, in addition there is needed a synthesis of apprehension by which he understands that combination of the manifold in an empirical intuition, whereby perception, that is, empirical consciousness of the intuition . . . is possible (B 160).
According to this argument, the Transcendental Deduction is systematically incomplete without the integration of the “manifold in an empirical intuition”.60 For Hegel, this means that the preceding transcendental syntheses are retroactively declared to be only formal and in this sense “empty and devoid of content”. Although they must be syntheses of some manifold, this manifold represents only the form and not yet the matter of appearances, not yet the realitas phenomenon.61 Hegel’s point, then, is that the transcendental syntheses are “empty” insofar as they lack a material that would give them “real” content. The transcendental content provided by the pure manifold of intuition and the “formal” content of the forms of intuition do not specify real objects. A passage from the Discipline of Pure Reason illustrates the point: . . . the matter of appearances, by which things are given us in space and time, can only be represented in perception, and therefore a posteriori. The only concept which represents a priori this empirical content of appearances is the concept of a thing in general, and the a priori synthetic knowledge of this thing in general can give us nothing more than the mere rule of the synthesis of that which perception may give us a posteriori. It can never yield an a priori intuition of the real object, since this must necessarily be empirical (A 720/ B 748).
If the content of the transcendental syntheses is only formal, then the truly heterogeneous element in the Transcendental Deduction is the manifold in an empirical intuition. This manifold, however, is not part of any original synthetic or transcendental unity. In this sense, it drops out of what Hegel calls the Concept. The 60 As
noted earlier, the manifold of inner sense seems to me to be what Kant elsewhere refers to as “the undetermined object of an empirical intuition”: “That intuition which is in relation to the object through sensation, is entitled empirical. The undetermined object of an empirical intuition is entitled appearance” (A 19–20/ B 34). See also the reference to “the raw material of the sensible impressions” that has to be “worked up” into “that knowledge of objects which is entitled experience” at A 1/B 1. The fatal problem for the Transcendental Deduction will be that the manifold of inner sense cannot be derived from experience, since this would be a violation of the transcendental standpoint. It would thus have to be a proto-empirical manifold which due to the synthesis of apprehension in accordance with the categories bifurcates into the subjective and objective representation of objects of experience. Obviously, some such proto-empirical material is needed, if the determination of objects is to be a priori. Husserl’s hyle represents a comparable theoretical posit (see Husserl, Ideen I, §§ 85, 97). 61 For realitas phenomenon cf. A 166: “In all appearances sensation, and the real which corresponds to it in the object (realitas phenomenon), has an intensive magnitude, that is, a degree.”
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heterogeneous element within the immanence of thought or apperception is not in fact a genuine “other”. We now have an objective unity of apperception standing over against an as yet undetermined, pre-conceptual, sensory manifold to which the categories must be applied in order to yield knowledge of things. This manifold is required to complete the Transcendental Deduction, which would remain a torso without it. It is therefore correct to say (as Kant does) that the manifold in empirical intuition functions as the key element without which the purpose of the Deduction could not be achieved. Moreover, the application model now re-introduced is again based on the idea of a combination of two elements existing independently of one another. Empirical manifold and unity of apperception cannot be originally unified, their synthesis is a “mere combination of entities that are intrinsically separate”, to use Hegel’s expression. The sensory element of cognition is not itself part of the objective unity of apperception, the latter only provides a rule in accordance with which the former is synthesized. From Hegel’s point of view, the situation reached at the end of the Transcendental Deduction looks as follows. At the end of the Transcendental Deduction, the matterform model re-emerges as the authoritative model of cognition. With the idea of a transcendental unity of apperception and a transcendental synthesis of concept and intuition Kant had already appealed to a “higher principle in which a duality in a unity could be cognized” (SL 594/WdL II 233). Compared to the idea of an original synthesis, the matter-form model is derivative, for if the synthesis is truly original, the dual source model has effectively been overcome. Now, however, it turns out that the matter-form distinction provides the fundamental framework within which the transcendental syntheses are located. We therefore face the curious situation that the model of cognition that is subordinate to the idea of an original synthesis nonetheless dominates the architectonic of the argument of the Transcendental Deduction. To put it somewhat provocatively, a synthesis a posteriori functions as the capstone of an argument built around the idea of a synthesis a priori. Hegel’s criticism thus consists in the objection that the conclusion of the Deduction re-invalidates its transcendental beginning. Or, despite the Copernican turn Kant fails to break free entirely of the empiricist model of cognition and its matter-form dichotomy. The matter-form model is committed to an understanding of knowledge as a relating of concepts to a content given independently of them. In the matter-form model, the spheres of thought and of the real are supposed to have an “intrinsically separate” existence. However, the transcendental paradigm with its incorporation of the domain of referentiality into the immanence of thought was meant to explain the possibility of such a matter-form relationship in the first place. Consequently, the matter-form approach cannot itself be used to ground referentiality, if a petitio is to be avoided. The Copernican turn requires that the notion of an independent “given” be dismissed.62 62 The
so-called “myth of the given” has recently become the primary focus of a rethinking of Kant’s dualism of intuition and concept towards a unified position that takes some of its inspiration from Hegel’s argument in the Phenomenology: see McDowell, 1994, 1998 and Brandom, 1994, 2000. But note that we are dealing with two dualisms, the intuition-concept and the matter-form
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It seems to me that Hegel’s diagnosis of a conflict within the Transcendental Deduction between two models of cognition is essentially correct. Based on his reading of § 24 of the Transcendental Deduction, Hegel is apparently willing to grant that Kant has managed to overcome the initial concept-intuition dualism and to replace it with a genuine synthetic unity of intuition and concept. (Here he is more charitable to Kant than I was prepared to be in my earlier analysis of § 24 and the B 160-1 footnote.) However, the fact that Kant then admits that the transcendental syntheses achieve only part of the task of the deduction means that the unity of apperception produced through these syntheses is as yet empty, i.e. without the required a priori referentiality to (sensible) objects of experience.63 No reference to objects “in the weighty sense”, i.e. things, has yet been established. The first step of the deduction thus produces a merely formal unity of apperception that (apart from the formal intuition) still lacks content. This admission re-introduces what Hegel elsewhere calls the “opposition of consciousness” into the Transcendental Deduction and thus invalidates the transcendental strategy. In this sense, the empiricist matter-form model trumps the transcendental synthesis model of cognition. The question is whether Hegel’s formalism critique is convincing and whether it pinpoints the real problem with the introduction of an empirical manifold. I will explain why I hesitate to answer the first part of the question in the affirmative and why I am skeptical that Hegel’s critique succeeds in identifying the real problem with the empirical manifold. First, then, Hegel is certainly right that the empirical manifold is “intrinsically separate” from the a priori forms of cognition. Unlike the pure manifold or formal intuition it is not only a heterogeneous element but also extraneous to the transcendental unity of apperception, notwithstanding the fact that Kant thinks he can show how this material can be integrated into the synthetic unity of (pure) intuition and concepts. The givenness of this manifold “from elsewhere” means, however, that Kant has indeed relapsed into an empiricist model of cognition in which a given material is supposed to be appropriated by forms of cognition existing in the mind a priori. The crucial point here is that this second step in the Transcendental Deduction is supposed to function as the completion of a transcendental argument that aims at bringing empirical content under the rules of the transcendental syntheses. But how could an empiricist model of cognition ever complete a transcendental argument, since it itself presupposes the completion of the transcendental argument? Only on the basis of a successful transcendental argument can the possibility of the empiricist model of cognition be explained. It is because thought and intuition determine objects a priori that empirical knowledge is in principle possible. Seen in this way, Kant’s actual procedure constitutes a petitio. dualism. Overcoming the former is not yet overcoming the latter as well. To properly address these anti-dualist approaches – now often referred to as Sellarsian – from a Hegelian perspective would require a separate discussion. The Kantian dualism of concept and intuition has strong defenders as well: see again Guyer, 2000. 63 In Kant’s words: No “possible employment in experience [my italics] of the pure concepts of the understanding” has yet been deduced (see title of § 26).
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However, if we look at the fine print of § 26, so to speak, we see that Kant is careful to avoid the empiricist model of feeding sensory content directly into the unity of apperception. The argument is not about the empirical manifold per se but about its synthesis called synthesis of apprehension. And of this synthesis Kant claims that it “must always conform” (B 160) to the transcendental “synthesis of apperception” (B 161, footnote b). He also makes an effort to establish an intimate connection between the empirical synthesis of apprehension and the transcendental synthesis of apperception in so far as both are said to derive from “one and the same spontaneity” (B 161, footnote b). Consequently, the empirical manifold is appropriated and integrated into the unity of consciousness by a function that obeys the rules of the transcendental syntheses. There is no object or thing for consciousness to perceive independently of the synthesis of apprehension. Hence Kant tells us that this synthesis makes the empirical consciousness of an intuition (called perception) possible in the first place.64 In other words, the synthesis of apprehension cannot take place without being also subject to the transcendental syntheses, and in this sense there is no petitio. Specifically, the model is not empiricist in any straightforward sense, since the empirical manifold appropriated in this way is not a ready-made, already empirically determined content (as, for instance in the case of Lockean simple ideas). The problem that remains for Kant (and which we will ignore here) is to explain the origin of this manifold, since it cannot very well be generated by the epistemic subject itself. This brings me to what I believe is the real issue with Kant’s empirical manifold, which is that the matter for cognition, i.e. the empirical manifold of inner sense, cannot be either determined or undetermined. It cannot possess any specifiable or descriptive features because those can arise only after or on the basis of the synthesis of apprehension. Only by virtue of this synthesis do we have a consciousness of perceiving something determinate. But to argue that the manifold must therefore be undetermined leads to equally unacceptable results. To assume that this manifold is already empirically determined or can be derived directly from experience and fed into the pre-existing framework of the empirical and transcendental syntheses would be a violation of the transcendental standpoint. To accept the existence of an already empirically determined sensible manifold would simply beg the transcendental question. Determinate empirical objects (“things”) are after all supposed to arise on the basis of, not to precede transcendental determination. Consequently, in order to be imported into the transcendental framework of the Transcendental Deduction, the manifold must be without an intrinsic determination of its own. However, in that case the empirical and the transcendental syntheses must be understood to be operating on an empirically undetermined manifold (viz. the “undetermined object of an empirical intuition” of A 20/B 34, or the “the raw material of sensible impressions” of B 1), a mere sensory hyle.65 In that case, the a priori
64 Cf.
B 160. find support for this claim in Hofmann, 2002, p. 39: “Kant denkt sich . . . (empirisches) Bewußtsein, wie es bei Wahrnehmungen vorliegt, als das ‘Auffassen’ oder ‘Aufgreifen’ und
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determination of appearances is under no constraint from a heterogeneous material at all. The distinction between a Kantian “given” and a Fichtean Anstoß seems to become elusive. So whether one does or does not believe that with the synthesis of apprehension the Transcendental Deduction is in violation of the Copernican principle of the a priori determination of objects, the situation seems equally problematic. As a result, the objective unity of self-consciousness remains empty and the basic structures of the various categorial syntheses have no sensible matter of cognition to which they could be “applied”. In light of our initial problem of preserving the possibility of normative standards of objective knowledge from within the immanence of experience the result we have reached suggests that we need to abandon the Kantian version of the transcendental argument. This conclusion entails, at least on one reading of it, the consequence that I briefly indicated at the beginning of this section. If the empirical manifold must become part of the objective unity of consciousness since without it this unity would remain empty, but cannot also remain undetermined, then the point of departure of our argument must change radically. Instead of having the forms of sensibility and understanding determine objects a priori we start with the premise that these objects, i.e. the contents of experience, already contains all a priori determinations. This will no doubt look like a massive petitio at first, but we are going to see that the argument actually consists in a critical evaluation of the presumptive a priori character of the structures that give meaning and coherence to our experience such that our premise is not an unquestionable presupposition but indeed only a presumption. In other words, the new starting point assumes that our experience is already saturated with a priori structures and normative standards, but that these structures and standards will be subject to a critical review of their validity.66 During the course of this critique, it will become clear that there are different levels of objectivity that successively fall short of the standard they themselves claim to embody. They will therefore be replaced by another standard that is presumptively more adequate, until a level of objectivity is reached that no longer falls short of its own standard. In this way, we perform a critical review of all levels of objectivity from within the immanence of experience itself, a strategy of critiquing the standards of objectivity undertaken by the subject that discerns those standards as being inherent in its experience. The reader will have guessed correctly that the procedure just sketched is the one developed by Hegel in the Phenomenology of Spirit, to which we now turn. The analysis of the role of the empirical manifold in Kant’s Transcendental Deduction has thus lead us quite naturally to Hegel’s attempt to overcome the shortcomings of Kant’s strategy as he sees them.
Verknüpfen oder Synthetisieren von prä-repräsentationalem Empfindungs-Mannigfaltigem [a combination or synthesizing of a pre-representational manifold of sensory data]” (my italics). Whether perceptual consciousness involves a categorial synthesis or not, remains, however, unclear: “Ob diese Art von Bewußtsein – das Wahrnehmungsbewußtsein – nach Kant begrifflich oder nichtbegrifflich verfaßt ist, ist schwer zu entscheiden.” 66 This will be the real critique of the categories and their ability to grasp the truth that Hegel missed in Kant.
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2.3 Beyond the Matter-Form Distinction: Hegel as a Philosopher of Radical Immanence Hegel’s Introduction to the Science of Logic is one of the key texts not only for understanding his critique of Kant but also of the Hegelian project as a whole. The reader of the Introduction cannot fail to notice the ambitiousness of the project Hegel presents there. It is no less ambitious than the project formulated by Kant in the Prefaces to the Critique of Pure Reason. Not only does Hegel introduce a new type of logic, he also proposes to replace an entire paradigm of cognition and the concept of truth that it implies with something new. The old paradigm is described as follows: Hitherto, the concept of logic has rested on the separation . . . of the content of cognition and its form, or of truth and certainty. First, it is assumed that the material of knowledge is present on its own account as a ready-made world apart from thought, that thinking on its own is empty and comes as an external form to the said material, fills itself with it and only thus acquires a content and so becomes real knowing (SL 44/WdL I 24).67
The separation of content and form of cognition is also described as a separation of matter and form, object and consciousness, object and subject, and object and thought. All these oppositions are meant to refer to the same phenomenon, i.e. the so-called “opposition of consciousness” (SL 49/WdL I 30), because Hegel believes that these oppositions have their root in the basic structure of “our ordinary, phenomenal consciousness” (SL 45/WdL I 25). However, without the rise to dominance of so-called “reflective understanding” (ibid.) at the beginning of modern philosophy – i.e., with Descartes – this cognitive structure of ordinary consciousness would not have become the reigning paradigm in philosophy. For Hegel, the issue of the opposition of consciousness is so central to philosophy that the meaning of the history of modern philosophy can be derived from it. Modern philosophy is essentially the process of the emergence and the subsequent overcoming of this opposition and the paradigm of representational knowledge and truth that is bound up with it. The separation of mind and world constitutes a “prejudice” of ordinary consciousness. If such prejudices are carried out into the sphere of reason as if the same relation [of subject and object] obtained there, as if this relation were something true in its own self, then they are errors the refutation of which throughout every part of the spiritual and natural universe is philosophy, or rather, as they bar the entrance to philosophy, must be discarded at its portals (SL 45/WdL I 25).
Strong words indeed, but they give us a good idea of what Hegel considered his real task to be – to overcome this opposition of consciousness and the theories of
67 One cannot but notice the parallel here with Kant’s famous Copernican line “Hitherto it has been
assumed that all our knowledge must conform to objects” from the Preface to the B edition of the Critique (B xvi).
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cognition and truth connected with it. For with the introduction of the separation between object and thought the notion of [objective] truth is lost; it is limited to knowing only subjective truth, only phenomena, appearances, only something to which the nature of the object itself does not correspond: knowing has lapsed into opinion (SL 45/WdL I 26).
In Hegel’s eyes, Kant’s contribution marks the first step in the task of overcoming this opposition and of retrieving the idea of objective truth. It is also the decisive step. Even Fichte’s work (and Schelling’s as well) is of less importance in comparison. Although Fichte took his point of departure from Kant’s revolutionary insight, he later “abandoned” the attempt to “develop the content of pure science” (SL 47/WdL I 28). It was Kant who with the idea of an original synthetic unity proposed the new paradigm of cognition and truth that would replace the old. But, as we already saw in the preceding sections, Hegel believes that Kant was not able to free himself completely from the influence of the old paradigm. Accordingly, critical philosophy was “overawed by the object” (SL 51/WdL I 32), overawed, that is, by the externality requirement of the content of knowledge. Kant’s Copernican turn remained burdened with a commitment to the older paradigm based on the opposition of consciousness, and it is this older paradigm that in the end emerged as the authoritative one for Kant. Kant had initiated the paradigm shift, but he did not complete it. Hegel’s task as he himself understood it is therefore to overcome the remnants of the old paradigm, to hold on to Kant’s transcendental insight and to bring it to fruition. With the benefit of hindsight, the emergence of the opposition of consciousness, which at first looked like “a loss and a retrograde step” (SL 46/WdL I 26) in comparison with the Ancients, was in truth a necessary stage in the development of reason. It forces thinking to examine the naïve belief in cognition’s capacity for truth in a critical light. Although this examination may at first lead to skepticism, it will eventually prepare the ground “on which rests the elevation of reason into the loftier spirit of modern philosophy” (ibid.). Indeed, as Hegel remarks in the General Division with reference to Kant . . . if philosophy was to make any real progress, it was necessary [my italics] that the interest of thought should be drawn to a consideration . . . of the ego, consciousness as such, i.e. of the abstract relation of a subjective knowing to an object, so that in this way the cognition of the infinite form, that is, of the Notion, would be introduced (SL 63/WdL I 46).
Hegel’s phrase “infinite form” refers to the original synthetic unity of selfconsciousness, which is “infinite” precisely because it no longer stands in opposition to an external world or a reality opposed to thought, but instead conceives of mind and world as one original unity of subject and object. According to Hegel, this is the Kantian nucleus that is to be preserved. However, there is yet another opposition of consciousness that affects Kant’s argument apart from the matter-form distinction operative in the Transcendental Deduction, and this is the distinction between appearances (in the transcendental sense) and things as they are in themselves. In Hegel’s later exposition of Kant’s theory as we find it in the Introduction to the 1830 Encyclopedia, Hegel’s assessment focuses more
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on the distinction between the immanence and transcendence of consciousness than that between the matter and the form of cognition. Now Hegel seems to think that the opposition between matter and form, or subjective representation and objective truth, has indeed been resolved in Kant’s transcendental stance. Note that this is something Hegel wasn’t quite willing to concede in Faith and Knowledge. It would in fact mean that he is now prepared to recognize the success of the Transcendental Deduction per se and that he objects only to the restriction thesis that Kant imposes on knowledge. In any case, rather than focusing on the internal structure of the Deduction, Hegel now claims that in overcoming one opposition Kant has simultaneously created another. Commenting on the treatment of the categories, he remarks that Kant’s investigation of them concerns only their formal characteristic according to which these concepts of the understanding qua subjective nonetheless are constitutive of objectivity. But Kant does not examine the content of these concepts and ask whether that content is itself a true content.68 While the “antithesis” between the subjective and the objective is thus overcome within experience, the Critical Philosophy nonetheless extends the antithesis in such a way that experience in its entirety falls within subjectivity; i.e., both of these elements [i.e., the subjective and the objective] together are subjective, and nothing remains in contrast with subjectivity except the thing in itself (E § 41).
Now it is no longer the empirical manifold that makes the unity of apperception a finite whole but the opposition between appearances and things in themselves. By qualifying the realm of empirical objects as appearances, Kant has redefined the objective dimension of experience as again only subjective, which entails a new opposition between the subjective and the objective, but an objectivity that now transcends experience entirely and is therefore by definition unknowable. Now, if we set aside the thing in itself and concentrate on the Kantian version of the immanence of experience as a domain of objectivity that is grounded in subjective acts of synthesis, Kant’s position does not seem to be that far apart anymore from the contemporary positions we discussed in the previous chapter, in particular those of Abel and Lenk. On closer inspection, however, we notice that Kant’s universalist position rejects an ingredient that is essential to interpretationism, viz. the pluralism of what counts as objective in accordance with different interpretive practices and forms of life. Conversely, interpretationism lacks an account of the necessity of universally normative standards of cognition. On the other hand, it need not subscribe to Kant’s restriction thesis such that the scope of experience extends beyond the world of the senses and the natural sciences.
68 Cf.
E § 41. If Kant had examined the content of the categories, he would have realized that these concepts generate objects that are not the true objects of knowledge but finite entities that are appearances not only for us but in themselves, i.e. objectively. Consequently, they should not be considered to constitute the norm of objectivity. By contrast, the true objects of knowledge, viz. the ideas of reason, are considered to be subjective epistemic principles. For Hegel, this is a case of standing things on their head.
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Whether the unity of apperception is limited by a heterogeneous empirical manifold or whether the domain of possible experience of objects is limited by the concept of things as they are in themselves (Kant’s noumenon in the negative sense), the dual source model of cognition and thus the opposition of consciousness prevails in either case and with it an essentially empiricist model of cognition containing a speculative nucleus. The consequence Hegel draws from his diagnosis of this situation is to advocate the enlargement, so to speak, of this nucleus, i.e. the extension of the sphere of experience such that it incorporates the empirical manifold (qua already determined manifold) together with the realm that transcends consciousness into the immanence of consciousness. We thus achieve a position of radical immanence, an immanence without transcendence, or an immanence in which all transcendence is transcendence within immanence. As we shall see shortly, this position marks the point of departure and the trajectory of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Beginning with a manifold that is poor in determinations, we progressively integrate a richer transcendence that is a transcendence only for an as yet finite consciousness, but is already part of the immanence of experience. In the process, consciousness learns to integrate this transcendence. At the same time, it thereby transforms itself, steadily extending the nucleus of rationality until that nucleus is transformed into the totality of experience. To be sure, Hegel’s argument does not end there, i.e., with the chapter called Absolute Knowing in the Phenomenology of Spirit. Indeed, this part of Hegel’s project serves only as the necessary preparation and groundwork for the subsequent task of reconstructing the normative standards of objectivity that are valid for and within this radical immanence of experience, a task undertaken in the Logic and the system as presented in the Encyclopedia. But more on this later. For now, I would like to point out that Hegel re-traces the trajectory of his argument very deliberately and very clearly in the Introduction to the Science of Logic. Taking his point of departure from Kant’s transcendental unity of apperception he comments that this unity had to be liberated from its finitude so that the “infinite form”, “untainted by the finitude of consciousness” (SL 63/WdL I 46), could then freely determine itself: . . . in order that this cognition [sc. of the infinite form, i.e. the Concept] could be reached, that form has still to be relieved of the finite determinateness in which it is ego, or consciousness. The form, when thus thought out into its purity [in ihre Reinheit herausgedacht], will have within itself the capacity to determine itself, that is, to give itself a content, and that a necessarily explicated content – in the form of a system of determinations of thought (SL 63/WdL I 46).
Here, in a few lines, we see Hegel describing the program of the completion of Kant’s Copernican revolution. First, Kant’s transcendental unity of apperception, still burdened by an opposition to the empirical manifold or, alternatively, the limiting concept of the thing in itself, will have to be thought out into its purity until radical immanence is reached (= the project of the Phenomenology of Spirit) in order then to let thinking determine its own categorial structure and its standards of objectivity (= the project of the Science of Logic).
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Hegel’s philosophy, in particular the Logic and the Encyclopedia, are often said to be a metaphysics, occasionally even a metaphysics of the hubristic kind.69 I would like to emphasize that Hegel is a philosopher of the immanence of experience and, in the Logic, of the immanence of thought. That means that metaphysics with its stipulation of supersensible entities and causes that are located outside the immanence of experience in a transcendent realm has no proper place in Hegel’s thought. No other philosopher (with the exception perhaps of Spinoza) has repudiated and systematically dissolved the separation of the mundane and the supersensible as thoroughly as Hegel, and in such a way that both spheres are unified into one homogeneous sphere of experience.70 We should not be misled by Hegel’s frequent reference to the Absolute or God. These are technically speaking expressions for the immanence of experience and thought, or the closed totality that, like the Parmenidean One, has nothing outside itself, not even nothingness. It is true that in the Encyclopedia, Hegel goes so far as to characterize his Logic as a theory of the “definitions of the Absolute, as the metaphysical definitions of God” (E § 85). But again, this needs to be understood properly in its context. First, the fact that the Encyclopedia, especially with its posthumous Additions to Hegel’s published text, belongs to what one might call Hegel’s exoteric writings71 should be an indicator that this language includes a dose of pedagogic popularization and/or a deliberate attempt on Hegel’s part to intervene in public controversies about the nature of his philosophy.72 And second, what is meant by “metaphysical” should be seen in the light of Hegel’s definition of metaphysics in the Logic, viz. as the “scientific construction of the world in thought alone” (SL 63/WdL I 46). This definition excludes any connotation of metaphysical realism, representationalism, or reference to supersensible entities. Moreover, the Science of Logic, which I would call an esoteric work by comparison, avoids almost all references to God, and its technical definition of the Absolute makes this category an abstract precursor of the Spinozistic substance, the identity of the inner and outer aspects of essence. In other words, the Absolute is here strictly speaking one moment of the totality of the “system of concepts” [System der Begriffe] (SL 54/WdL I 36) or the “system of the determinations of thought” [System der Denkbestimmungen] (SL 63/WdL I 46). I suggest, therefore, that Hegel is primarily the philosopher of the immanence of experience and of thought and, in this respect, much closer to contemporary interpretationist theories than any traditional classical philosopher. But in addition he 69 Frederick
Beiser has been a proponent of the interpretation of Hegel as a metaphysician against those who see in Hegel a philosopher of a broadly transcendental orientation or one who advances an ontology or a non-metaphysical theory of categories. A good overview of the arguments pro and con can be found in Wartenberg (1993), Beiser (1993, 1995), Pinkard (1990), and Pippin (1990). I will address these interpretations in greater detail again below (see Section 4.3). 70 Cf. Brinkmann, 2006. 71 See below, Section 4.3. 72 These intellectual, religious and political controversies have been retraced in Toews, 1993, Jaeschke, 1986, and Dickey, 1993, among others.
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also offers the possibility of studying a conception of philosophy that allows for the defense of the objectivity of knowledge. Indeed, in this combination, I submit, consists in large part his contemporary relevance. He has room for many forms of life and interpretive practices and therefore avoids reductionisms of any kind, although he insists on a critical evaluation of the standards of objectivity and truth built into different interpretive practices. According to the view presented here, the theory that comes out of the self-critical, self-corrective review of the shapes of consciousness in the Phenomenology of Spirit is not a metaphysics but a critical ontology, a grammar of thought, i.e. a reconstruction of the fundamental conceptual framework that conditions and makes possible the adjudication of truth claims at all levels of experience. The method of this critical self-evaluation of thought is not a Kantian-type transcendental argument but the dialectic that relies on the autonomous conceptual logic inherent in the categories, a logic that defines the space or latitude of our interpretations but is not itself an interpretation. In my view, then, Hegel should be taken at his word when he says that his “objective logic . . . takes the place . . . of the former metaphysics . . .” (SL 63/WdL I 46). And while elsewhere he admits that his philosophy discusses (in part) the same fundamental concepts as the former metaphysics, his emphasis on their development and transformation should be taken seriously as well.73 There are two passages in particular that show Hegel’s commitment to a reconstruction of the framework of the fundamental categories of thought from within the immanence of experience. One is the discussion of the methodological procedure followed in the Phenomenology of Spirit presented towards the end of the Introduction to this work. This I will examine in greater detail in the opening section of the following chapter. The other such passage comes from § 6 of the Introduction to the Encyclopedia Logic and is worth quoting at length: . . . philosophy should be quite clear about the fact that its content (Inhalt) is nothing other than the basic content (Gehalt) that is originally produced and produces itself in the domain of the living spirit, the content that is made into the world, the outer and inner world of consciousness; in other words, the content (Inhalt) of philosophy is actuality. The first consciousness of this content is called experience . . . Since philosophy is distinguished only in form from other ways of becoming conscious of this same identical basic content (Gehalt), its accord with actuality and experience is necessary.
Hegel here makes a distinction between the content of philosophy generally and the way or form in which one becomes conscious of or analyzes and appropriates this content. The content of philosophy according to this explanation is none other than the world of experience, such that experience and philosophy have one and the same content, also called “actuality” (Wirklichkeit).74 This “outer and inner world of consciousness” encompasses all of human experience and includes the domains 73 Cf.
E § 9R: “Speculative Logic contains the older logic and metaphysics; it preserves the same forms of thought, laws, and objects, but it develops and transforms them with further categories.” See also SL 31, 52–53/WdL I 9, 34. 74 Which is why the “accord” of philosophy with actuality and experience is “necessary” and “an outward touchstone, at least, for the truth of a philosophy” (E § 6).
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of “freedom, spirit, and God” (E § 8). For although the latter “are not experienced by the senses,” still “everything that is in consciousness at all is experienced” – this, Hegel adds, is even “a tautological proposition” (ibid.). The form in which this content exists or is immediately present to consciousness is likewise that of experience, whereas philosophy’s purpose is to “translate” the “genuine content of our consciousness,” i.e., “our feelings, and representations (Vorstellungen)” into thoughts (E § 5, cf. § E 3R), and furthermore these thoughts into the concept (cf. § E 20R). Philosophy is a thinking over of the content of experience in order to comprehend it and to determine “what is true in things and occurrences, as well as in feelings, intuitions, opinions, representations, etc.” (E § 5). To sum up, Hegel makes it very clear that the content of philosophy is the same as the content of human experience, that this experience is all-inclusive in the sense that whatever is in consciousness is part of our experience, and that philosophy consists essentially in translating the content of immediate experience into the form of thought.75 This translation occurs in a two-step conceptualization such that the representational, emotional, practical, religious, etc. content of experience is transformed into concepts (= the business of philosophy and the sciences generally throughout history and, more specifically, the business of the Phenomenology of Spirit) in order then to be further re-connected and reconstructed in a “system of concepts” in the Logic. It now remains to be seen how Hegel, taking the immanence of experience as his starting-point, manages to establish a normative standard of truth and objectivity while at the same time accepting the proposition that the content of experience is already saturated with a priori structures or principles. It seems that the only way to avoid an obvious petitio here is to critique each proposed a priori structure or principle in such a way that it reveals itself as preliminary. How this can be done without presupposing other, as yet unexamined a priori structures or principles as a normative standard of critique will require a satisfactory explanation, if Hegel’s project is not to disqualify itself from the start. This is why I suggest that we start the next chapter with an examination of the methodological presuppositions of Hegel’s argument in the Phenomenology.
75 See
also E §§ 1–3.
Chapter 3
The Argument of the Phenomenology
3.1 Methodological Presuppositions As we saw earlier, to overcome the opposition of consciousness and to establish complete immanence of consciousness means to transcend the limitations of finite consciousness as a principle of a priori determination of objectivity and to transform the finite unity of intuition and concept into the infinite “form” of the Concept. This means that the Phenomenology must begin with a finite consciousness, and then show why and how this finite principle develops into the radical immanence of the Concept or of Absolute Knowing. Hegel’s candidate for the initial form in which finite consciousness comes on the scene is sense-certainty. But the conditions under which the Phenomenology unfolds its argument are complex. To understand this complexity, I will first look at the larger picture, i.e. the location of the Phenomenology within Hegel’s system. As is well known, Hegel integrated a truncated version of the Phenomenology into the Encyclopedia system where it occupies the second stage in the Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, preceded by the Anthropology (Hegel’s theory of the human soul) and followed by the Psychology (Hegel’s theory of subjective reason in its cognitive and practical aspects). Next, I will discuss the methodological strategy Hegel develops in the Introduction to the Phenomenology with which he hopes to demonstrate how the self-transformation of finite consciousness into infinite self-consciousness or pure thought is possible and how it can be seen to be a necessary one.1 At both the macro-level of the system and at the level of the Phenomenology’s internal methodology there exists an issue with the circularity of Hegel’s argument that we will need to address. Consciousness is characterized by the opposition between itself and an other – the world, or what it takes to be the real. It understands itself as confronting something “immediately given” and external (cf. E § 415A), a world of particulars existing independently of it to which it relates as “something essentially other than it” (E § 416A). Thus consciousness is from the start in relation to an other by which it knows itself to be limited – hence the opposition between a “mental” sphere that is 1 In
the Preface to the Phenomenology, Hegel uses “pure I”, “pure self-consciousness”, “pure thought”, “pure Concept”, “pure spirituality” more or less synonymously.
79 K. Brinkmann, Idealism Without Limits, Philosophical Studies in Contemporary C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011 Culture 18, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-3622-3_3,
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believed to be “subjective” in nature and an extra-mental, “objective” world that represents “true” reality on the other, a distinction typical of “our ordinary, phenomenal consciousness” (SL 45/WdL I 25). Due to this opposition between a “subjective” mind and an “objective” world, consciousness understands itself as finite, limited by an independent object that is more or less opaque to it. Sense-Certainty, however, with which the Phenomenology’s argument begins, is only implicitly in opposition to its object. While the distinction between self and world is already present, sensecertainty represents the immediate relation of self and object. Hegel must therefore show how and why the opposition of consciousness emerges out of sense-certainty. In the chapter on Perception, this opposition becomes explicit and fully manifest. It is there, too, that a first attempt will be made to overcome it. We will take up this part of Hegel’s argument below. Now the description of consciousness as relating to something other than itself only partially captures the conditions already in place at the start of the argument of the Phenomenology. For how could consciousness overcome the opposition between itself and the object, let alone develop into the infinite unity of the Concept, if in truth it represented only one element within this unity, viz. the form of knowledge in separation from its object? There would then be no epistemic continuity between consciousness and Concept. Consciousness could not become identical with the Concept, nor the Concept emerge from consciousness. They could not be said to be at bottom identical. As a result, nor could there be an overcoming of the opposition of consciousness either, and consciousness could not develop into pure self-consciousness or pure thought. Clearly, then, consciousness can embark on its educational journey only, if it is already implicitly reason, pure thought or the Concept. The 1807 Phenomenology is relatively silent on this important fact, at least in the discussion of its own methodology in the Introduction. There, Hegel creates the impression that we could start with the standpoint of consciousness itself. Only at the very end of the Phenomenology does he comment on the fact that the content of consciousness, i.e. the various stages of its experience from sense-certainty to religion, “is Spirit that traverses its own self” (PS § 799/3, 583). In other words, from the very start consciousness is already in some sense the totality that is to emerge from it – except that it is not conscious of this fact. That consciousness “produces” reason, spirit or the Concept from out of itself is therefore an oblique way of saying that pure thought or the Concept come to manifest themselves in and through consciousness as their medium. To understand this unspoken assumption underlying the Phenomenology’s project, we turn to the opening sections of the Encyclopedia Phenomenology (E §§ 413–417). There we can see that consciousness already has a history or a conceptual genealogy. It is preceded by the soul as the immediate identity of self and world, which Hegel describes in the Anthropology in its various stages of oneness with nature, internal differentiation, and of the emerging integration of soul and nature in the form of a soul-body unity.2 In developing a “feeling” for itself the soul
2 The
soul assimilates the otherness of nature by making the body a sign and tool of the soul: see Dodd, 1995.
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gradually overcomes its immersion in and its symbiosis with nature and as “actual soul” acquires a sense of its own identity (cf. E § 411). The soul’s emerging sense of selfhood marks the point at which it becomes conscious of itself as distinct from its natural immersion in nature. Herein lies the origin of consciousness as a self and the opposition it posits between itself and an other, an opposition paradigmatic of this form of cognition. Consciousness is relational and representational precisely because it is soul become conscious of having emerged from its immersion in nature. In other words, consciousness is relational and representational because in grasping itself as an “I” or subject the soul ipso facto begins to differentiate between its selfhood or its being-for-self and its relatedness to something other than itself – a world existing independently of it to which it relates as an external object but which also exists for it qua represented in consciousness (cf. E § 413). Hegel thus captures the dual nature of consciousness that cannot be conscious of an object without also being conscious of itself and vice versa. Consciousness understands itself as related to an independent other because it is implicitly already self-consciousness. Interestingly, Hegel portrays consciousness as objectifying what for the soul still existed in undifferentiated unity with itself, viz. the inner world of the unconscious. The world confronting consciousness is its own pre-conscious life made external and objective. It is nature with which the soul previously existed in immediate symbiosis and which as consciousness it now differentiates from and opposes to itself.3 Already at this point it is apparent that for Hegel there is no real division between nature as “physical” and nature as merely “mental” content of experience. Such a division would make world and self into two things inhabiting the same spatiotemporal world and relating one knows not how (causally?) to one another.4 Soul, consciousness, self-consciousness, reason, spirit, Concept – these are not “things” (or properties of things such as persons) relating to other things in the world. Rather, soul, consciousness, reason, etc. are cognitive forms or modes that contain within themselves a relation of self and other. Thus consciousness is a form of cognition in which the self relates to the world insofar as the latter is for it an external datum, something given and existing independently of itself. At the same time, however, this world which is experienced by consciousness as external to itself is also the content of the form of cognition called consciousness. This content, however, is not merely a mental content opposed to an extra-mental world. Instead, this content is the world itself, albeit the world as experienced in the form of an external, independent, spatio-temporal reality. In other words, for Hegel the world as experienced by consciousness is not a mental phenomenon but reality in the form of an external
3 For
a more detailed analysis of the soul’s relation to nature see Brinkmann, 1998.
4 Cf. the slightly ironic description of the usual understanding of the relationship between judgment
and object (here called “the subject”): “When considering the judgment, one usually thinks first of the independence of the extremes (the subject and the predicate): that the first is a thing or determination [that stands] on its own, and that the predicate likewise is a universal determination outside that subject (for instance, in my head), which is then brought together with the subject by me, and is thus ‘judged’ ” (E § 166R).
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world.5 Hegel’s point is simply that this form is not the only form in which reality can be known. Already the understanding in the Phenomenology relates to the world as essentially characterized by a distinction between (sometimes deceptive) surface phenomena and the causes underlying them. What kind of world we experience or know depends on the form of cognition we adopt as our framework. The different forms of cognition, however, while presenting us with different realities, always present us with the same world and in this sense with the same content in different forms. These forms, then, are merely different ways of objectifying the same content. Hegel expresses the fundamental methodological situation as follows: The ‘I’ . . . is in-itself the identity with itself in the otherness; ‘I’ is itself and it overarches the object as something that is in-itself sublated, it is one side of the relationship and also the relationship as a whole, – the light that manifests itself as well as something else (E § 413, my translation).
This, in a nutshell, is the fundamental idea of Hegel’s philosophy. The self or subject, whether it is consciousness in the form of sense-certainty, perception, or understanding, or whether it is I, intuition, reason, thought, or spirit, is viewed from the start as a sphere of immanence. As such this self represents (a) a form of selfrelatedness that correlates a mode of cognition with its proper type of object and (b) one pole within this form. However, because the way in which the object pole displays itself to the cognitive self is determined by the form that the self takes with a given mode of cognition, we can say that the object pole, while representing the object of this cognitive self, is likewise and simultaneously the content of this form of cognition. In this sense, then, i.e., as a unity of content and form, the subject is both itself and the totality encompassing its object. These comments should help us understand why at the beginning of the Encyclopedia Phenomenology Hegel can define consciousness as a reflection of spirit into itself. Obviously, this also means that at the beginning of the Phenomenology of Spirit we find ourselves already within the immanence of consciousness. In other words, we do not start with an original division between mind and world that then needs somehow to be bridged. The totality called spirit represents the original starting-point and divides itself into two poles or sides, consciousness and external reality, or mind and world. Both, however, are at bottom two manifestations of the same totality called spirit, pure thought, or the Concept. That is to say, they are fundamentally one. It is only from the point of view of consciousness that the reality it experiences as other than itself cannot (yet) be understood as spirit. Nonetheless, both sides, although different in appearance, are the same 5 At E § 3 Hegel puts the matter in this way: “In any one of these forms [sc. of being conscious of an
object] . . ., the content is the object of our consciousness. But in this objectivity the determinacies of these forms supervene on the content; with the result that each of these forms [sc. of cognition] seems to give rise to a particular object [e.g. an object of perception, memory, desire, definition etc.], and that what is in-itself the same can look like a different content” (GHS modified). In other words, the forms of cognition are forms of objectification. Klaus Hartmann has pointed out the affinity between Hegel and Husserl in this respect (cf. Hartmann, 1999, p. 15).
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in substance. The process of overcoming the opposition of consciousness consists in the gradual realization of this identity by consciousness. As a consequence, the development of consciousness must be seen to occur within the already unified totality of spirit. From the larger perspective of the Hegelian system this means that the Phenomenology of Spirit operates under systemic conditions that cannot be articulated prior to the completion of its own argument, conditions that can become clear only once we have come “full circle”. The circularity of the Phenomenology’s argument should thus be evident. The full text of Hegel’s definition of consciousness at the beginning of the Encyclopedia Phenomenology gives us insight into the multiple mediations that are presupposed at the beginning of the Phenomenology of Spirit: Consciousness constitutes the stage of the reflexion or of the relatedness of Spirit, Spirit as appearance. ‘I’ is the infinite relation of Spirit to itself, but as subjective, as the certainty of itself; the immediate identity of the natural soul has [here] been elevated to this purely ideal (ideell) identity with itself, and the content of the former is [now] the object of this reflection which is for-itself (E § 413, my translation).
What was content of the natural soul is now the “idealized” object of a self, i.e. something whose externality and independence is negated even as it is being affirmed, so that the object is likewise the content, albeit a content not experienced as such. However, consciousness is not only the reflection of spirit into itself – and in this sense its internal self-differentiation into two relata –, it is also spirit’s “appearance”. To whom or what, then, does spirit appear? Obviously, since spirit is reflected into itself, it can only appear to itself. That is to say, spirit as object of consciousness appears to itself in the form of consciousness. Consequently, the external world that constitutes the object of consciousness’ experience is already spirit extended in space and time, known by consciousness only as an external sensible reality. The fact that spirit appears to itself is equivalent to saying that it does not yet know itself as spirit. Rather, it appears to itself in the guise of an external reality just because it is conscious of itself only as consciousness and not yet, say, as reason or spirit. What spirit knows itself as determines the form in which it becomes objective to itself. Mode of cognition and mode of objectification go together.6 Viewed in this way, the 1807 Phenomenology begins in the middle of an ongoing development of spirit. Let us also note explicitly that Hegel identifies spirit with the “I” or selfconsciousness, while consciousness, as we have already seen, is only implicitly self-consciousness. Spirit and the I are structurally the same “infinite relation to self,” and so, therefore, is consciousness. That is to say, both spirit and the I as self-consciousness relate to an other that they know to be an other in appearance
. . . appears variously determined in accordance with the variety of the given object, and its further development appears as an alteration in the determinacy of its object. . . . [T]he logical determination of the object is what is identical in the subject and in the object, it is their absolute connectedness” (E § 415, my translation). See also E § 3.
6 “Consciousness
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only (while consciousness does not yet know this). The other is therefore not a limiting factor, some permanent beyond, but distinct only through an internal, “ideal” (ideell) difference in virtue of which self-consciousness represents a specific form of self-relatedness. The internal difference does not separate or disrupt the two poles. But unlike self-consciousness, the I of consciousness is reflected into itself merely immediately – this being the result of the soul’s emergence from its unity with nature. Its reflectedness out of the object and into itself is the mere tautology of the thought that I am I, and hence unlike self-consciousness or spirit the I in consciousness does not yet possess a content of its own. Instead, it excludes that content from itself as an “independently existing opposite” (E § 413A). The I as such thus has a conflicting determination. In truth, it is infinite self-relation, but as the self of consciousness that emerges from the “unconscious unity of spirit and nature” (ibid.) it is at first an empty, tautological identity. For this very reason, the object, i.e. its own content, initially appears to it as something external to itself: The pure abstract freedom [of the ‘I’ that relates immediately to itself] releases its determinateness, i.e. the natural life of the soul, from itself as something equally free, as independent object; and ‘I’ knows this object initially as something external, and it is in this way that it is consciousness (E § 413, my translation).
To be sure, qua sensible reality the independent object remains external to consciousness even beyond the further development of the latter. What happens is that through referring this externality to some essence, cause, or ground consciousness begins to “internalize” this other. The sensible form of the object-world obviously is never overcome or dissolved, but its meaning is altered from being an ultimate reality in its own right to being understood as “the sight of the unseen,” to use Anaxagoras’s incomparable aphorism.7 Now due to its lack of inner content, the I must view its object rather than itself as the source and foundation of all determination, reality, and truth, while it itself is certain only of its empty identity. Its certainty is thus merely “subjective”. This is just to say, however, that the I is initially consciousness, i.e. a self relating to an object that to it appears as an alien, external other, as a given, independent, “objective” world, a world that really is alien and opaque for consciousness in its merely sensible, external appearance. And so, granted that consciousness is in truth that which the I is in truth, viz. infinite self-relation, a dialectic must ensue: Just as [the category of] relatedness in general, . . . so consciousness represents the contradiction of the independence of both its sides as well as their identity in which they are sublated (E § 414, my translation).
In this dialectic, the alien other, the world existing independently of the mind, comes to be re-appropriated and re-possessed by consciousness as something intelligible and transparent to it, something to which it can again relate freely (for instance, insofar as it has understood the laws this world must obey and thus is able to “master
7 According to Anaxagoras, appearances (ta phainomena) are the sight or look (opsis) of the unseen
or the concealed (ton adelon): DK 59B 21a.
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nature”). Consequently, it must be the goal of the development of spirit in the form of consciousness to make its appearance [as a relationship of two independent relata] identical with its essence [as infinite self-relation], and [thus] to elevate its [mere] self-certainty to the level of truth (E § 416).
In the process, consciousness is thereby transformed into a self relating freely to the world as something it now knows to be fundamentally intelligible and therefore as its “possession”. Its relation to the other will again be an infinite self-relation, and its finitude or limitedness by a brute “given” will have been overcome. At that point, consciousness itself will have changed. It will then have been transformed into reason (cf. E § 417).8 We can see very clearly, then, that while consciousness is a form of cognition for which initially two mutually opposed poles, viz. mind and an extra-mental reality, seem to be related to one another, this picture does not correspond to what consciousness is at bottom. In truth, consciousness’ relation to the world is not this fractured relationship of mind separated by a gulf from the world, as Descartes came to view it. On the contrary, its fractured relationship with reality is essentially an appearance only, one that is made necessary by the nature of consciousness itself, to be sure, but that does not represent the final word about the bond between mind and world and is not even accepted by ordinary consciousness itself as the definitive truth. Consciousness would never be able to feel at home in the world and to engage actively with it were it not for the fact that it already understands the world as something that is open to its investigation and intervention, something with which it may develop a free relationship. We who have now witnessed the emergence of consciousness from the immediate unity of soul and nature know that the opposition of consciousness marks only a transitional phase within the development of spirit, a truth consciousness will come to understand more explicitly in due course: To consciousness, the object does not appear as something posited by the ‘I’, but rather as something immediate, existent, given; for it does not yet know that the object is in-itself identical with Spirit and that it has been released into a seemingly complete independence only through a self-separation of Spirit. That this is so, only we who have advanced to the Idea of Spirit know, only we who have thus raised ourselves above that abstract, merely formal identity of the ‘I’ [with itself] (E § 414A, my translation).
So while in the Encyclopedia Phenomenology Hegel treats consciousness as the result of a preceding development that explains how the opposition of consciousness arises in the first place, in the 1807 Phenomenology the opposition of consciousness at first seems to be the starting-point. Consciousness and object seem initially to be separate from one another, the object being experienced as an extra-mental reality
8 What
we have retraced here so far relying on the text of the Encylopedia is the basic structure of the argument of the Phenomenology of Spirit in its transition from consciousness to selfconsciousness to reason, an argument that we will examine in greater detail in the subsequent sections.
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beyond consciousness. It must be said, however, that in his discussion of the methodological presuppositions in the Phenomenology’s Introduction Hegel is careful to point out that this divorce of consciousness from its object is an appearance only, as we shall see shortly. Still, Hegel essentially takes up the finite perspective of consciousness itself and then tries to show how from the inside of consciousness, so to speak, its opposition to the object world that it confronts is at bottom not an opposition and can therefore gradually be transformed into a unity of self and world on the basis of consciousness’ own reflection on and its rethinking of its own experience. We will discuss in a minute how Hegel believes this self-transformation of consciousness can be made to work. But before we return to the 1807 Phenomenology, a word on Hegel’s characterization of the philosophies of Kant and Fichte at E §§ 415 and 420 may be helpful. After our earlier discussion of Kant and the references to Fichte, it will not come as a surprise that both Kant and Fichte are treated by Hegel as philosophers of consciousness. Their approach, Hegel claims, views spirit not as spirit but instead limits spirit to consciousness: The Kantian philosophy can most appropriately be regarded as having viewed Spirit in terms of consciousness; it contains exclusively the determinations of the phenomenology, not of the philosophy of Spirit. . . . The Fichtean philosophy shares the same standpoint . . . (E § 415R).
In Kant’s and Fichte’s philosophy the truth is determined from the perspective and through the lens of consciousness, so to speak. This sounds as if Hegel completely ignores the transcendental approach these philosophers take. After all, for them our ordinary phenomenal consciousness is not a starting-point and a principle, but is itself the result of various transcendental conditions. There are two comments that Hegel would likely make in response. First, from his point of view the transcendental foundation of empirical consciousness and of its world of experience means the elevation of mere appearances to the status of genuine truth, a position he argued is self-contradictory.9 Consequently, Kant’s and Fichte’s ingenuity and sophistication are lost on Hegel because all their transcendental efforts achieve, Hegel believes, is the constitution of the world of empirical consciousness. Kant in particular is viewed as having limited the perspective of consciousness to the cognitive mode of perception which, Hegel claims, represents the standpoint of our ordinary consciousness that is also “more or less” that of the empirical sciences.10 Kant essentially introduces necessity and universality into the observations of ordinary, sensory certainties and thus transforms them into truths of experience. This echoes Hegel’s remark at E § 42 that Kant basically shares the same approach with the empiricists, the difference being only that Kant tries to give a “different explanation” for the presence of the structures of necessity and universality in
9 Cf.
SL 46/WdL I 27; see also E § 60 R. E § 420 R.
10 Cf.
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our experience.11 Second, Kant contrasts these necessary components of knowledge with an unknowable beyond and thus turns objective knowledge of objects of experience into subjective knowledge, knowledge that is possible for a finite consciousness. In the Science of Logic, Hegel advances a similar critique of Fichte’s so-called Anstoß: It may well be that the infinite obstacle [Anstoß] of Fichte’s idealism has no underlying thing-in-itself, so that it becomes purely a determination in the ego; but for the ego, this determinateness . . . is at the same time immediate, a limitation of the ego . . ., so that although the limitation is in the ego, it contains an immediate non-being of the ego (SL 397/WdL II 10).
In other words, both philosophers espouse a finite consciousness to serve as the foundation of knowledge and determine the concept of truth accordingly as limited to what can be given or constructed in sense-experience. In this sense, they are both philosophers of consciousness, notwithstanding their transcendental approach. Apart from the characterization of Kant as a philosopher ultimately beholden to the referential paradigm of knowledge, these comments are valuable in that they support the claim that the Phenomenology does indeed constitute an argument in favor of overcoming the Kantian restrictions on knowledge, even if only implicitly. With the exception of a few obvious allusions, Hegel’s references in the Phenomenology to other philosophers are notoriously vague. Hence it is important to be able to claim that despite the fact that Kant’s Analytic does not seem to be discussed in any specificity anywhere in the Phenomenology, the book’s argument is nonetheless meant to provide, among other things, a critique of Kant’s transcendental philosophy insofar as it remains dependent upon and limited by the opposition of consciousness. Looking now more closely at the extended and – at least at first sight – labyrinthine argument that is the Phenomenology, we find that the third stage is disproportionately long compared to the first two. The first two are contained in the two chapters Hegel calls “Consciousness” and “Self-Consciousness” while the third is titled “Reason.” Reason is in fact the third and final stage of the development. The chapters we customarily think of as following Reason – viz. Spirit, Religion, and Absolute Knowing – are in truth subdivisions of Reason itself, as a look at the original table of contents makes clear (cf. PS XXXIII-XXXV/3, 5–8). The irregularity here consists in the fact that Reason is also the first subdivision in Reason, but the latter could easily be distinguished from the former by calling it “Abstract Reason.” Reason serves the purpose of functioning as the concluding stage well, given the fact that already in Faith and Knowledge Hegel had used the concept of reason to refer to the ultimate unity beyond all opposition.12 In the
11 One
that is not based on empirical psychology as in Hume’s case, it might be added. FK 69–70/GuW 326–327. Hegel continues to refer to reason as a principle of unity in the Encyclopedia, except that there he distinguishes between a “pure” reason, which is equivalent to the logical Idea, and embodied reason or reason in actuality: see, e.g., E § 6. Their consummate union would be absolute spirit.
12 Cf.
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Phenomenology, the entire third stage culminates in the concluding chapter entitled “Absolute Knowledge.” The fact that Reason, Sprit, and Religion are synthetic unities of self-consciousness, but fall short of the ultimate unity called Absolute Knowledge indicates that even at this level we are to expect some form of the opposition of consciousness, although now within an immanence of reason where this immanence is no longer opposed to anything outside itself, not opposed, that is, to an object in the way in which consciousness posits an object-pole over against itself in the form of an object-world. This particular organization of the work, the fact that the book seems to grow out of proportion once Hegel reaches the third stage of the overall argument, has made scholars wonder whether he changed his mind about the structure and content of the Phenomenology.13 Thus, having arrived at reason as the first totality that integrates all oppositions within itself such that for reason the world is no longer an opposite, Hegel may have realized that plenty of internal oppositions still remained and that reason is the ultimate ground of unity only in principle or abstractly, not yet explicitly. That reason does mark a closure is clear from Hegel’s description of it at the beginning of the Reason chapter: Now that self-consciousness is Reason, its hitherto negative relation to otherness turns round into a positive relation. Up till now it has been concerned only with its independence and freedom . . . at the expense of the world, or of its own actuality. But as Reason . . . it is at peace with them . . .; for it is certain that it is itself reality, or that everything actual [wirklich] is none other than itself, its thinking is itself directly actuality . . . (PS § 232/3, 178–179).
Quite obviously, then, with reason we have arrived at a unity of thought and reality that is comprehensive and no longer finite or “merely” subjective – “everything actual” is supposed to be none other than self-consciousness in the form of reason. The otherness of “the world” vis-à-vis self-consciousness has been negated – Hegel’s double negation. Consequently, the relationship between thought and reality has now become “positive”. If we remember that the proposed task is to show that subjectivity functions as the ground of objectivity, then this task has in principle been achieved at this point. As we shall see shortly, while finite self-consciousness emerges as the ground of an equally finite objectivity at the end of Consciousness, the end of Self-Consciousness and the beginning of Reason argue that the ground of objectivity has now become infinite self-consciousness – and so has objectivity. With this, the original task of overcoming the opposition of consciousness has in principle been resolved. What has not yet been accomplished at this point is the demonstration that (a) individual self-consciousness is identical with infinite subjectivity and that (b) infinite subjectivity or the Concept is not only the ground of the totality of objectivity but is in fact identical with the latter. Hegel’s demonstration in 13 I
cannot enter into an examination of these issues here, nor are they crucial for our current concerns. For an excellent discussion of the complexity of the problem and the scholarly debate around it see Aschenberg, 1976. For a more recent review of the issue, see Harris, 1997, I pp. 193– 195. Harris’s division of the Phenomenology into two halves (I 195) makes sense. Nonetheless, based on the systematic issue involved (viz. the overcoming of the opposition of consciousness) I will be suggesting a slightly different organization of the argument.
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support of (a) is contained in the long series of shapes of consciousness from Reason through Religion – with Forgiveness and Revealed Religion as crucial moments in the process – while Absolute Knowledge responds to (b). The question we need to ask now is: What are the methodological assumptions Hegel must make in order to justify the move from the opposition of consciousness to the immanence of reason, and how might he justify those assumptions? Evidently, the transformation of the finite ground of objectivity – in Hegel’s interpretation, Kant’s original unity of self-consciousness – must begin with the finite principle of knowledge itself. A mere juxtaposition of an infinite ground and the claim that it is in fact superior to the finite principle would not constitute an argument but only an assertion. Consequently, the infinite ground must emerge from the finite ground, or the finite ground must transform itself into the infinite ground. Against this strategic plan it might be objected that finite and infinite ground are absolutely distinct and that there is no continuity between them. In this case, there seems to be no telling how the first could ever develop into the second. Hegel must therefore first convince us that the assumption of a continuity between the finite and the infinite ground is warranted – in other words, that the unity between the two is already present, at least for us, if not for consciousness. Indeed, if we interpret the nature of consciousness as inevitably representing a merely subjective or relative perspective on the world or on whatever comes before it as its object, it would seem that the entire argument of the Phenomenology is doomed from the start. In order to reject the interpretation of consciousness as merely subjective and relative, Hegel, in §§ 81–89/3, 75–81 of the Introduction, offers his own analysis of the nature of consciousness and of the kind of knowledge available to it. This knowledge, it turns out, is by its very nature always more than merely phenomenal or relative, i.e. more than knowledge of appearances. In fact, consciousness knows to distinguish, from the start, between its own “subjective” perspective on things on the one hand and the way things are “objectively” on the other, a distinction widely held to be impossible from within the immanence of consciousness, except in so far as we can form hypotheses about the way things are in themselves. So we will now turn to an examination of Hegel’s analysis of the structure of consciousness, and we shall see that it furnishes the foundation without which the argument of the Phenomenology would in fact be impossible. After suggesting that something needs to be said about the “method of carrying out the inquiry” ahead of us (PS § 81/3, 75), Hegel himself brings up a potential aporia. If we cast the project of transforming the finite synthetic unity of consciousness into an infinite unity in terms of a comparison between the standpoint of consciousness and its phenomenal knowledge on one hand and the allegedly superior standpoint of the Science and its presumed absolute knowledge on the other, we would need to appeal to the “scientific” concept of what constitutes true cognition as the standard or criterion against which to measure the limitations of phenomenal knowledge. However, the scientific standpoint – i.e. the standpoint of pure thought – is not yet available because the philosophical “science” itself has not yet been developed. Indeed, since it is supposed to emerge from the examination of phenomenal consciousness itself, it cannot be appealed to in advance. But in the absence of a
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“scientific” criterion of truth, it seems, the examination of the capability of phenomenal knowledge for truth cannot even begin – the proverbial catch twenty-two situation. This aporia seems to become even more exacerbated, when we analyze the structure of the phenomenon we are to investigate, viz. the structure of consciousness and its typical understanding of what it means to relate to an object and to know the object as it exists in-itself, i.e. in truth. As Hegel points out, succinctly summarizing the cognitive model upon which epistemology since the “reflective turn” had been based, phenomenal knowledge characteristically exhibits two structural features. Consciousness both relates to and distinguishes itself from its object. Or, in Hegel’s terminology, in that consciousness relates to something as an object, the latter is or exists for consciousness, a structural feature that may be called the beingfor-consciousness or, for short, the “being for-itself”, of the object – the “look” the object presents to consciousness, as it were. For this “look” consciousness takes responsibility as the subjective perspective or the appearance of the object which is at least in part dependent on consciousness itself, but without which no relation to an object would be possible either. Without something being or existing for consciousness, it is even unclear whether there would be consciousness in the first place – all consciousness being object-consciousness, even consciousness of ourselves. Apparently, Hegel anticipates and acknowledges one aspect of what following Brentano and later Husserl came to be called the intentionality structure of consciousness, or the fact that consciousness is always consciousness of something, i.e. it is always objectifying. But just as much as consciousness must be related or have access to an object in some way in order to be conscious of it, so it also distinguishes itself, including the way in which the object presents itself to consciousness, from that object and thereby simultaneously posits the object as it is in-itself, its existence independently of consciousness, or its essence or nature as it exists objectively or “untainted” by subjective admixtures or distortions. The object’s in-itself may therefore be contrasted with its appearance for consciousness, or its being-for-another. Indeed, to relate to an object already presupposes a distinction between that which relates and that to which one relates. So while relating to the object, consciousness simultaneously knows that the way it perceives the object must not be identified with the object itself and that while its immediate acquaintance with the object may in many circumstances be a reliable indicator of its nature the two must nonetheless be kept distinct. To put it differently, except in cases of deception or illusion, consciousness usually will not confuse its immediate acquaintance with or view of the object, which it knows to be partial only, with the object’s nature or its true concept. The distinction between the being-for-itself, i.e. the being of the object for consciousness or its “being-for-another” [sc. for consciousness] and its being in-itself, or again, the distinction between the side it presents to consciousness and its independent being, is built into the very structure of consciousness itself. This distinction is a determination of consciousness as a form of cognition. Its importance may be seen in the fact that the being-in-itself can be understood as the objective nature of the object and its being-for-consciousness as its subjective aspect. The latter may again be understood
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as either belonging or not belonging to the object itself, whereas the object’s “objective” being may be thought to be either a mere construct or independently real, and if independently real then either accessible or inaccessible. But whether the appearance of the object for consciousness is believed to be part of the object itself or not, or in part the one and in part the other, consciousness does not normally take the object to be a mere fiction of the mind, but to have an independent existence of its own. That is to say, consciousness posits the object as one transcending the immanence of consciousness itself. It posits a world, an independent reality, or an other – this being perhaps its most fundamental act of all.14 By its very nature, consciousness is “beyond itself”, i.e. it is anything but solipsistic. Hegel characterizes the situation as follows: . . . whatever is related to knowledge or knowing is also distinguished from it, and posited as existing outside of this relationship [my italics]; this being-in-itself is called truth (PS § 82/3, 76).
We can now see how this structural feature of consciousness, which requires the positing of the object as a transcendent entity, might make the task of establishing an objective concept of truth impossible. If the being-in-itself of the object is its truth (or is what the object is “truly” or “objectively”), and if at the same time this truth by definition transcends consciousness and is believed to be distinct from the object in so far as it exists for consciousness, it may be concluded that what the object is in truth can never be established. For it seems natural to assume that since only that of the object which exists for consciousness can be known about it, the object’s in-itself can never be known, if its transcendence were to be synonymous with its inaccessibility to consciousness. Consciousness, while never solipsistic, may nonetheless be irremediably perspectival and subjective or, in Hegel’s terminology, finite. Now the “reflective turn” at the beginning of modern philosophy had precisely the effect of driving a wedge between the being of the object for consciousness (its representation or idea in the mind) and its existence independently of this relation. That is to say, in retreating into the immanence of the mental, modern philosophy radically opposed this immanence to the transcendent sphere of independent reality and completely segregated the two – the most famous example being Descartes’ elimination, discussed above, of all transcendence from the immanence of consciousness in Meditations I and II, such that only an empty reference remained.15 We should now be in a better position to understand why Hegel thinks he is committed to the strategy of having finite consciousness overcome its limitations on its own and of letting the “scientific” standpoint emerge from that process of self-sublation. Because consciousness believes that the truth exists “outside of the relationship” between itself and the object, it may conclude that the truth (about the 14 Husserl
called it the Generalthesis: see Husserl, Ideen I, § 30. should be mentioned, however, that Hegel did not view Descartes’ contribution exclusively as one initiating the reflective turn. Rather, he believes that Descartes relapsed into the opposition of consciousness only after having successfully overcome it with the cogito, understood by Hegel as the speculative unity of thinking and being: see Brinkmann, 1996.
15 It
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object, nature, the world in general, etc.) is in fact unknowable. What has apparently happened in this case may be described in two ways. Either consciousness has identified the truth with the object’s in-itself and posited both as existing outside of its relationship to the object (of which it now retains only the for-itself aspect or its appearance – the skeptical position), or consciousness – influenced by the first alternative – has separated the truth from the object’s in-itself and has posited this truth as existing beyond the relation between itself and the object in both its beingfor-it and its “objective” being (the Kantian position). That for Hegel the Kantian situation is best captured by the second scenario was apparent in the passage quoted earlier from the Encyclopedia, a passage whose precise meaning may now be even more transparent. There Hegel said of the Kantian approach: . . . the Critical Philosophy extends the antithesis [of subjectivity and objectivity] in such a way that experience in its entirety falls within subjectivity, i.e. both of these elements together are subjective, and nothing remains in contrast with subjectivity except the thingin-itself (E § 41).
In the light of our present analysis this means that Kant draws the line distinguishing consciousness and truth between the for-itself and the in-itself on the one hand and the true, but inaccessible and unknowable, in-itself on the other. He thus ends up with two concepts of the in-itself, viz. the empirical and the noumenal thing-in-itself. He can therefore call the empirical thing-in-itself an appearance and insist that the distinction between this kind of being-for-itself and in-itself is merely empirical. The basic structure of consciousness is nonetheless preserved. All that has happened is a duplication of the meaning of the in-itself and, concomitantly, a duplication of the meaning of the for-itself. In this situation, Hegel now argues, it would be futile to claim to be in possession of a better, higher, “truer” standard of knowledge, since from the vantage point of a theory of truth that is predicated on this particular understanding of the structure of consciousness any such “scientific” standard would by definition transcend the truth deemed to be accessible by consciousness. Objective objectivity is beyond the reach of the subjective objectivity which alone is accessible to consciousness. Hence consciousness “would not necessarily have to recognize the validity of such a standard” (PS § 83/3, 76). With this, we have arrived at a second impasse that seems to make the Phenomenology an impossible project. The problem is, in short, that (a) at the beginning, a scientific standard of truth is not available and (b), even if such a standard were available in advance, it would not be recognized by finite consciousness, because the latter is already convinced of the radical transcendence of such a standard and hence of the impossibility for it to be accessible by consciousness. According to (a), the examination of the capacity of consciousness for truth cannot rely on an independent standard of truth, according to (b), finite consciousness does not seem to be a suitable basis on which an independent standard of truth could emerge, because it seems to deny the possibility that such a standard could even exist. In this situation, the idea of letting the scientific concept of truth emerge from consciousness seems unworkable. How, then, is the investigation of the Phenomenology to be made possible at all? What, if any, methodological basis
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can be found for it, given the conditions now in place, i.e. the fact that the scientific standard of truth does not yet exist and that finite consciousness must develop this standard out of itself? Hegel’s proposal is as follows. We need to make consciousness question its own assumptions about what it believes the true nature of the object to be. To do this, consciousness needs to see for itself that its experience of the object contradicts its own a priori beliefs about the object. If consciousness could be made to face such an internal contradiction, it would be forced to rethink either the nature of its experience or its a priori beliefs about the object, or both. Consciousness would then be in a position to correct its a priori assumptions about the object in the light of its experience – and likewise to re-interpret the meaning of its experience in the light of its revised beliefs about the true nature of the object. With such a dialectic in place, consciousness might be able to work its way up from a less adequate to a more adequate conception of the truth and thus gradually transform its initial beliefs about the truth into “scientific” form. Consciousness would then engage in a process of successively replacing one framework of objectivity with another, more adequate framework. To anticipate one of several potential objections. What I have sketched here sounds as if a priori beliefs about the true nature of objects were to be tested against experience. But no such test, it seems, could have any real force, since, according to Kant, a priori beliefs rest on synthetic a priori judgments which are universal and necessary truths that can only be confirmed but never be contradicted by experience. If so, it is impossible to see how a Kantian position in particular could be vulnerable to a dialectic that relies on experience as the foundation of truth. This concern can, however, be dispelled. We only need to remember what we already concluded as a result of our earlier analysis of Hegel’s critique of Kant. There we saw that if the unity of self-consciousness is truly original, experience must always already be informed by a priori beliefs. In other words, the experience against which consciousness’ beliefs about the true nature of things is to be tested, will itself be shot through with a priori structures and will certainly never be a “pure”, completely uninterpreted experience. Such an experience that involves “bare, naked perceptions” of objects or a “pure” manifold of intuition will have to be rejected as a myth. In case experience contradicts a given a priori belief about the nature of its object, the assumptions built into this experience will differ from the assumptions underlying consciousness’ initial beliefs. Hegel relies on this presupposition to make the case that the experience against which a given a priori belief is tested is itself informed by and progressively reveals a richer, more comprehensive, and more adequate a priori framework in the light of which consciousness likewise makes sense of a progressively richer, more comprehensive, and “truer” experience. In effect, therefore, one a priori framework comes to be tested against another a priori framework. To be sure, the a priori frameworks that are systematically elicited by the confrontation between consciousness’ initial a priori beliefs and an experience that is at variance with them because it is itself informed by different a priori beliefs will then no longer be a priori frameworks in the Kantian sense, i.e. universal, necessary, and incorrigible. As soon as a framework undergoes the test of experience, it will take on the meaning of
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a preliminary, limited, and corrigible framework, i.e. it will have the significance of a putative a priori. The notion of a putative a priori will replace the Kantian notion of the incorrigible a priori.16 This obviously marks a major paradigm shift in the history of post-Kantian epistemology, one that seems to have spread beyond Hegel and Hegelianism. However, it bears pointing out that, contrary to the way he is sometimes perceived, Hegel is not prepared to relinquish the belief in an ultimate a priori framework. Since an ultimate framework would by definition have to be incorrigible, the characterization of Hegel’s approach as corrigibilist should be taken with a grain of salt.17 Assuming that the transcendental significance of the dialectical procedure can be preserved in the way just described, we would now need at least a preliminary demonstration that such a comparison between the experience of consciousness on the one hand and a putative a priori belief about the true nature of the object on the other is in fact possible. After what has been said, we may have serious doubts about this – unless we question the assumption that the transcendent nature of the truth is synonymous with its unavailability for consciousness. This is precisely what Hegel proceeds to do in § 84/3, 76–77. The in-itself or objective nature of the object to which consciousness relates, while transcending consciousness’ immediate acquaintance with the object, is nonetheless immanent to and thus knowable by consciousness – it is, in short, a transcendence within the immanence of consciousness, a characterization we used earlier when referring to contemporary interpretationism. Hegel’s argument is as follows. Because the distinction between the for-itself and the in-itself is itself a distinction within the immanence of consciousness . . . the investigation becomes a comparison of consciousness with itself [my italics] . . . In consciousness, one thing exists for another, i.e. consciousness regularly contains the determinateness of the moment of knowledge; at the same time, this other is to consciousness not merely for it, but is also outside of this relationship, or exists in itself: the moment of truth. Thus, in what consciousness affirms from within itself [my italics] as being-in-itself or the True we have the standard which consciousness itself sets up by which to measure what it knows. . . . [T]he essential point to bear in mind throughout the whole investigation is that these two moments . . . both fall within that knowledge which we are investigating (PS § 84/3, 76–77).
Both the a priori beliefs about the object as well as the actual experience of the object which reveals the in-itself, fall within consciousness. In other words, the comparison does not (and never could) occur between an idea or representation of the object and the object as an entity not mediated by any representation at all, but 16 For
the claim that the argument of the Phenomenology has transcendental significance see Charles Taylor 1972. Recently, Terry Pinkard has criticized, rightly, it seems to me, the particular form Taylor’s argument takes: see Pinkard, 1996, pp. 350–351. In my view, Hegel’s procedure is perhaps best described as a critique of the idea of putatively incorrigible a priori frameworks of cognition. The opening argument in Sense-Certainty makes yet an additional point, however, as we shall see in the next section. 17 Pinkard’s reading of Hegel in Pinkard 1988 and 1996 might be called corrigibilist. The term has recently been used with great heuristic benefit by Allen Speight with respect to Hegel’s philosophy of agency: see Speight, 2001, pp. 3–6.
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rather between the object’s putative nature and consciousness’ actual experience of it. Or again, the comparison occurs in the immanence of consciousness between its preconceived concept of the object on one hand and its actual concept as revealed through experience. An appeal to some “pure” object beyond consciousness that could somehow be known independently of any representation of it, is both impossible and unnecessary. Only if we let ourselves be guided by the mistaken idea that the required comparison would have to be made between an object available to consciousness and the same object as an absolute transcendence will we be caught in the impasse Hegel initially described. Hegel thus anticipates the conclusions drawn by the interpretationists. Looking at the structure of phenomenal consciousness, we find that it is in the very nature of cognition to compare its prior assumptions about an object with its actual experience of it and to correct the former in the light of the latter. Acquisition of knowledge always operates on the basis of an internal standard of truth which consciousness tests against appearances. Appearances in turn may suggest a different standard which then leads to the re-definition of the original standard. Short of appealing to superhuman intuition there does not seem to be another possibility of explaining the process of acquiring objective knowledge. Hegel’s argument for the internalization of the in-itself is as follows. The object is synonymous with its conceptualization, since its concept represents the (putative) objective nature of the object. If so, consciousness’ direct experience of the object is nothing but the experience of its own concept of the object, or of the objective nature of the object “as it exists for an other” (PS § 84/3, 77). Consequently, to compare our experience of the object with our “idea” of it comes to the same thing as comparing the object with its own concept: If we designate knowledge as the Notion, but the essence or the True as what exists, or the object, then the examination consists in seeing whether the Notion corresponds to the object. But if we call the essence or in-itself of the object the Notion, and on the other hand understand by the object the Notion itself as object, viz. as it exists for an other, then the examination consists in seeing whether the object corresponds to its Notion. It is evident, of course, that the two procedures are the same (PS § 84/3, 77).
In other words, to compare my (putative) concept of the object (i.e., the Notion) with my experience of it (i.e., the object itself) is the same as comparing the appearance of the object (i.e., its being for an other) with the object’s essence (i.e., its Notion). My experience of the object is therefore not merely “subjective”, rather, it reveals the nature of the object. In short, experience reveals the adequacy or inadequacy of my own conception of the object, and this in the immanence of consciousness itself, since what is being compared is my direct experience of the object with my putative knowledge of it. Obviously, for this identification of experience, appearance, and essence to work we must already be convinced that the way in which the object displays itself for consciousness (its subjective appearance) is a manifestation of its objective nature, and that its objective nature is identical with the object’s conceptualization by consciousness. The being-for-consciousness of the object is just as much the subject’s experience of the object as it is the beingfor-another of the object, and the object’s in-itself is just as much consciousness’ concept of the object as it is the object’s objective nature. What Hegel specifies here
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in § 84/3, 76–77 of the Introduction is his transcendental condition for the possibility of knowledge. The Phenomenology’s argument rests on the viability of this internality assumption, i.e. the assumption that not only the experience of the object but also its objective nature are internal to consciousness. What we have just witnessed, then, is nothing other than Hegel’s claim that the opposition of consciousness must be discarded before we reach the starting-point of philosophy. Hegel defends this assumption in §§ 85 and 86 (3, 77–79) and in the process clarifies the testing procedure. One might object, he suggests, that when comparing the experience of the object with the putative concept of it consciousness is merely comparing one subjective idea with another: The object, it is true, seems only to be for consciousness in the way that consciousness knows it; it seems that consciousness cannot, as it were, get behind the object as it exists for consciousness so as to examine what the object is in itself, and hence, too, cannot test its own knowledge by that standard (PS § 85/3, 78).
This mentalistic objection, however, rests on a fallacy. It assumes that the “objective” object or the in-itself must exist in a sphere of reality that is not accessible to consciousness just because anything that is accessible also exists for consciousness. Such an object, however, would not exist for consciousness at all. Consequently, . . . the distinction between the in-itself and the knowledge is already present in the very fact that consciousness knows an object at all. Something is for it the in-itself; and knowledge, or the being of the object for consciousness, is, for it, another moment (ibid.).
The distinction between the for-itself and the in-itself is built into the intentionality structure of consciousness, and hence is internal to it. However, Hegel makes a crucial assumption at this point that he does not explicitly argue for, but that we need to understand before we can proceed. For he posits without much explanation that the comparison between the for-itself and the in-itself will yield a contradiction between the two.18 Why this should be so may not be immediately obvious. For example, if we look at Husserl’s analysis of perception in Ideas I, we can see that no contradiction arises at all between the appearance of something and its presumed essence. While the two are clearly distinguished by Husserl, he generally finds that they match one another. The perspectival appearances of the table or of a sound, for instance, are held together by consciousness’ knowledge of the typical ways in which spatial objects display themselves in perception.19 The essence or noema is a valid rule for the synthesis of the appearances, the one confirms the other, and the case of disillusionment is not a contradiction between the correct correlation of appearance and essence, but an indication of a mismatch between a for-itself and an in-itself which are correlated with one another only by mistake. Interestingly, Hegel’s scenario is very different. His for-itself is already a synthesis of appearance and essence because for him the separation of the two would
PS § 85/3, 78: “. . . consciousness thus finds that its knowledge does not correspond to its object . . ..” 19 Husserl, Ideas I § 95. 18 Cf.
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yield an artificial phenomenon, one that is not part of our actual experience. Isolated aspects of appearances such as impressions or sense-data are not objects of experience, only creations of philosophical reflection. Experience therefore always presupposes an interpreted object or something seen and understood as something. Hence nothing could be truer than that while all our knowledge begins with experience not all of it is derived from experience – because part of our knowledge must always precede experience. The question is only whether our preconceived, a priori interpretation is adequate or not. Now at first, consciousness simply believes that its interpretation of the object is in fact adequate. What this interpretation entails can be spelled out because it is precisely what consciousness knows the object to be. In a second step, however, this belief is subjected to actual experience, i.e. to an observation of the actual behavior of the object as compared to what consciousness believes it to be. As was mentioned above, the object’s actual behavior must be regarded as the manifestation of the object’s own independent nature, and hence as the object’s true in-itself. Here, then, we have a second for-itself/in-itself, viz., the true nature of the object as it displays itself for consciousness. Consequently, we now have two concepts of the object, one a naïve, untested concept, the other a more refined concept of a consciousness wizened by experience. It is only when viewing the matter in this way that we can discern Hegel’s rationale. Hegel’s point is simply that two different a priori conceptions of the same object cannot both be true. The contradiction arises because one and the same object is here supposedly explained by recourse to two different essences or conceptual frameworks. For Hegel, then, both the for-itself and the in-itself are two different conceptions of the in-itself, the one known and explicit, the other not yet known and implicit, but explicit after consciousness’ experience of the object’s actual behavior. In this sense, the “for-itself” now stands for the preconceived a priori, the “in-itself” for the a priori disclosed by experience. The conflict between the two per se conceptions of the same object is the source of the “dialectical movement” that drives the learning process called experience (cf. PS § 86/ 3, 78–79). We start with a for-itself that is for consciousness the object’s in-itself or true nature (consciousness’ knowledge) and that when compared to the in-itself revealed in actual experience (the object) is no longer the true in-itself: Hence it comes to pass for consciousness that what it previously took to be the in-itself is not an in-itself, or that it was only an in-itself for consciousness (ibid.).
With this reversal two things have changed. The old standard (in-itself) is replaced by a new standard, but the previous object is likewise replaced by a new object or reality because . . . the knowledge that was present was essentially a knowledge of the object: as the knowledge changes, so too does the object, for it essentially belonged to this knowledge (ibid.).
In a sense, Hegel acknowledges the interpretationist (but also Kantian) point that an object is an object in virtue of being “interpreted” by consciousness. But unlike interpretationism he also argues that there cannot be two true concepts of the same
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object. Hence, when the concept changes, so does the object change as well. It takes on a new meaning because experience has shed a new light on it. To use an example from the Phenomenology itself, what was previously thought to be “in reality” an individual thing with a unique essence through experience comes to be viewed as the manifestation of some underlying force or the result of causal processes and hence changeable. Causal processes in turn imply the presence of laws, and thus a new sphere of objectivity and a new sphere of experience is opened up. We still perceive individual things, but instead of taking them only to be individual substances that are supposed to be ontologically independent (first per se conception), we now also view them as in truth dependent on mechanical laws and physical or chemical processes (second, revised per se conception). From having been primary constituents in our ontology they have become derivative. The dependent object is now a different object for consciousness. The new object is what the previous object was in truth and its revised concept also contains a new putative in-itself, viz. the idea of the ground on which the object depends for its existence or nature. In this way, what was previously thought to be the objective nature of something comes to be understood by consciousness as the appearance of another objective nature, or as a for-itself that was an in-itself only for a less experienced consciousness, so to speak. To revise the projections of our a priori conceptualizations of reality in this way and replace them by new interpretations of changed aspects of what at bottom is one and the same reality is what we call experience (cf. PS § 86/3, 78–79). Hegel’s claim is that for every new putative per se conception of reality experience will disclose another per se conception that underlies it and that is more comprehensive and pro tanto more objective than its predecessor. In this way, experience generates a series of correlations of appearance and underlying reality or ground where every ground is subsequently reinterpreted as one more appearance of yet another underlying in-itself. The most pressing objection a potential critic might raise against this interpretation is probably this. If Hegel takes the view that the truth must be determined from within consciousness, how can he possibly maintain the objectivity of such a determination? If, as Hegel claims, the in-itself exists for consciousness just like the for-itself, the radical distinction between the subjective and the objective collapses, and the in-itself becomes no less subjective than the for-itself. Are we not, then, in the very same situation Hegel attributes to Kant? Does not Hegel also propose a mere subjective objectivity when he argues that every in-itself reveals itself as an “in-itself only for consciousness” (PS § 85/3, 77–78; § 86/3, 78–79)? This is indeed a serious objection. For it would seem that if every in-itself turns out to be only a subjective objectivity, objective objectivity will forever elude consciousness. Alternatively, it could be argued that the opposition between for-itself and in-itself is constantly recreated. Apparently, that opposition will be overcome only if and when the in-itself and the for-itself become identical – which, it seems, they never will as long as our cognitive standpoint is that of consciousness itself! The difference between the for-itself and the in-itself is a structural feature of consciousness and is precisely what makes consciousness finite. Without it consciousness would no longer be consciousness. Consequently, if Hegel is to deal with this objection successfully, his project in the Phenomenology must include a demonstration of
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how the standpoint of consciousness itself is eventually overcome, for to overcome the opposition of consciousness is synonymous with overcoming the structure of consciousness as the basis for cognition.20 The consequence of this is that to make the in-itself internal to consciousness by showing that it is really an in-itself for consciousness is merely the first methodological step and does not yet accomplish the goal of the Phenomenology which consists in the explicit transcendence of the opposition of consciousness – explicit, because, as we saw above, implicitly it has been overcome already. The opposition exists only for the standpoint of consciousness or “for it”, not for the standpoint of “the Science”, or “in itself”. The standpoint of consciousness is not itself the standpoint of objective thought. It must be left behind because this standpoint implies the subjectivity of every in-itself or, if you will, the merely relative nature of all truths. While consciousness is able progressively to correct its conception of the initself, what it really needs to “correct” is its standpoint as consciousness. Objective objectivity can arise only when the in-itself can no longer be re-interpreted as merely an in-itself for consciousness. Apparently, this can never happen as long as we view matters exclusively from the point of view of consciousness. In other words, consciousness itself must become objective thought in the process. It is strange that in his methodological comments in the Introduction Hegel comments on the all-important transition from the standpoint of consciousness to that of objective thought or reason almost as an afterthought. After all, the whole point of the Phenomenology is to make this transition happen. But all Hegel has to say on this crucial point is that [i]n pressing forward to its true existence, consciousness will arrive at a point at which it gets rid of its semblance of being burdened with something alien, with what is only for it, and some sort of ‘other’, at a point where appearance becomes identical with essence, so that its exposition will coincide at just this point with the authentic Science of Spirit. And finally, when consciousness itself grasps this its own essence, it will signify the nature of absolute knowledge itself (PS § 89/3, 80–81).
Clearly, for consciousness to become identical with absolute knowledge means for it to transcend itself, to become something other than consciousness. This final step, therefore, falls outside the methodological framework Hegel has set up in the Introduction and one would wish that Hegel had to say something more about this transition. Indeed, from an interpretationist viewpoint, this situation could be used to argue that the horizon of consciousness can never be transcended in the way Hegel claims – and therefore interpretationism must be right. The task Hegel has set himself looks like a typical case of lifting oneself up from the ground by one’s own bootstraps.21 Consciousness, it seems, must somehow be able to transform itself into something larger than itself, or to overcome its own limitation from within itself. It must come to view itself as the appearance of 20 The
opposition of consciousness is ostensibly overcome in the transition from Consciousness to Self-Consciousness. However, the opposition is thereby only internalized. It persists up until the transition from Religion to Absolute Knowing. 21 Reinhold Aschenberg has pointed out that the apparent paradox is in fact three-fold (the so-called Münchhausen-Trilemma): cf. Aschenberg, 1976.
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objective thought, and its object as the objective truth insofar as it exists for another. But in order to do this, it must apparently also possess knowledge of the objective truth itself – the truth as it exists independently of its being-for-consciousness. This seems impossible – unless, as we already concluded, consciousness from the start is nothing but absolute knowledge in disguise. The progression towards the standpoint of objective thought will then have the meaning of re-establishing an original totality of knowledge which through the introduction of the standpoint of consciousness had been temporarily obscured. It will then not be the standpoint of consciousness that is the true source of knowledge: the latter is, rather, a deficient mode of objective thought. Nor is it really finite consciousness that does the heavy lifting. Instead, science or objective thought provides the “ladder” with the help of which consciousness is able to climb to the top: Science . . . requires that self-consciousness should have raised itself into this Aether [sc. of objective thought] in order to be able to live . . . with Science and in Science. Conversely, the individual has the right to demand that Science should at least provide him with the ladder to this standpoint, should show him this standpoint within himself [my italics] (PS § 26/3, 29).
We may wonder, then, how the petitio Hegel himself warns us of in § 83/3, 76 will really be avoided. If science must hand consciousness the ladder, science must precede the ascent of consciousness to the position of science. This consideration will be crucial for assessing the so-called introductory function of the Phenomenology within the Hegelian system as a whole. It seems to confirm what we indicated earlier, viz. that the Phenomenology cannot make a beginning from scratch or even with the standpoint of the opposition of consciousness as its true standpoint. To put it differently, the ladder cannot, as might have been thought, be constructed as we go along, it must be offered to consciousness, while consciousness must learn to negotiate, but cannot itself generate, its rungs. But if the project of the Phenomenology presupposes the solution to the problem it is supposed to solve, its introductory function needs to be reconsidered. We will eventually address this problem at the beginning of the next chapter.22 For now, we turn to the argument of the Phenomenology itself in order to see how the opposition of consciousness that is already overcome for us is also overcome for consciousness.
3.2 Sense-Certainty: The Particular and the Universal We now turn to the examination of the Phenomenology of Spirit as the key work in which Hegel attempts the completion of the Copernican revolution in its methodological aspect. The Phenomenology, it should be pointed out, does not yet develop Hegel’s actual account of objectivity, a task which is left to the Logic and the Encyclopedia. It only prepares the methodological basis for such an account. It functions as the ladder that is supposed to demonstrate the epistemic continuity between 22 See
Section 4.1 below.
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immediate experience and explanatory ground. The constant re-interpretation or revision of the ontological ground-grounded relationship is in fact what constitutes epistemological progress and secures the epistemic continuity between the successive stages of reinterpretation. To establish this epistemic continuity between the initial position of Sense-Certainty and the concluding stage of Absolute Knowing is what it means, and what it takes, to overcome the opposition of consciousness for consciousness. In the following sections, our aim will be to retrace Hegel’s argument in the Phenomenology, to determine the different forms the opposition of consciousness takes, and to see how this opposition is in fact overcome. The intention is to highlight the major stages and turning points of the argument of the Phenomenology. The reader should not expect a commentary or a detailed analysis of the entire work, only a précis of Hegel’s argumentative strategy.23 We begin with the Phenomenology’s first chapter. As we saw, this beginning already operates under certain preconditions. Most important among them is the fact that the Phenomenology must assume the position of the immanence of thought from the start. The implication of this is that Hegel cannot but view the process of overcoming the opposition of consciousness as one of the self-transformation of consciousness into reason (and ultimately into absolute knowing). This in turn seems possible only, if consciousness is viewed from the beginning as a limited form of reason, reason as it exists in a finite form – hence the remark in the Introduction to the Science of Logic quoted earlier that Kant’s finite unity of consciousness needed to be “thought out into its purity” and developed into a non-finite principle. Conversely, therefore, the successive transformation of consciousness into reason is synonymous with the unfolding of reason itself from finite reason (i.e., consciousness) to infinite reason (i.e., absolute knowing). Moreover, to the extent that consciousness becomes identical with reason, reason becomes more and more conscious of itself – and in this sense becomes infinite self-consciousness. The initial appearance of reason as opposed to consciousness and of a world existing independently of consciousness gradually vanishes. As this appearance vanishes, consciousness’ transformation into reason is at the same time the “appearance of absolute knowledge,” i.e. its emergence in consciousness. This means quite literally that the “thing” or the “forces” and “laws” of nature that successively become the object of consciousness are objective forms of reason. For consciousness, however, these configurations of reality have the meaning of a facticity and of something given. Consciousness’ transformation into the comprehensive identity of thought and reality called reason is therefore a two-fold process. Insofar as consciousness is already reason, albeit in a finite form, it is made to shed its own limitations until it becomes reason itself (and ultimately absolute knowing). On the other hand, insofar as consciousness is individual consciousness, it is transformed into a moment of and 23 For
this reason I will be able to include only a limited number of secondary references into the discussion. For a detailed commentary on the Phenomenology the reader should consult the standard works such as Hyppolite, 1974, Heinrichs, 1974, Taylor, 1975, Lauer, 1976, revised 1993, Flay, 1984, Pinkard, 1996, Siep, 2000, Vieweg/Welsch, 2008, and Harris’s invaluable two volume study of 1997 titled Hegel’s Ladder.
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within the comprehensive sphere of immanence called the Notion. In this way, finite consciousness is grounded in infinite reason, but insofar as finite consciousness is a form of reason, reason actually grounds itself in itself. In the Phenomenology, “Notion” or “Concept” is Hegel’s technical term for the ultimate unity of consciousness and its object. The Notion “is the Self that is for itself” (PS § 795/3, 580). With the Notion, then, we arrive at that point at which both ground and grounded, or consciousness and its object, have assumed the structure of infinity. What appeared initially to be an independent world over against finite consciousness has become a duplicate self. Immanence will have turned into a comprehensive totality in which the distinction between self and other is itself only an appearance. At the same time, we will witness a reversal of the relationship between ground and grounded. Whereas consciousness first develops into the ground of the world (roughly, up until the end of Reason), it turns into the moment of a larger structure in Spirit. Turning now to the opening chapter on Sense-Certainty, we will keep in mind that the fundamental unity of self and other which Hegel variously refers to as self-consciousness, reason, the Notion/Concept, or spirit, is tacitly presupposed. The opposition of consciousness emerges against the background and within the immanence of this subject-object unity. It constitutes an internal division within the immanence of experience. Arguably, this is Hegel’s smartest methodological move. It allows him to combine the idea of a fundamental unity of consciousness and object with consciousness’ referential nature. It could be said with some justification that this principle of the cognitive immanence of all objects of knowledge, or the principle of cognitive immanence for short, represents the major methodological correction, if correction it is to be called, vis-à-vis Kant. For according to this principle, both the appearance and the thing-in-itself are available to consciousness. The independent object-world, or what consciousness takes to be the true, transcends consciousness as subjective mind, but this transcendence is a transcendence within the overall cognitive immanence. This is why in the Science of Logic Hegel criticized Kant for having been interested “only” in “the so-called transcendental aspect of the categories” (SL 63). Kant, so Hegel had argued, had failed to extend the principle of cognitive immanence beyond appearances to include things-in-themselves. The transcendental logic could for this reason not be a logic of truth as that which is both for consciousness and in-itself, but only a logic of truth-for-consciousness. Consequently, at the very start of Sense-Certainty we find that Hegel does not begin with a clearly marked opposition of consciousness and object, but with a consciousness that is in direct, immediate contact with its object. The reason for this is methodological. Every beginning for Hegel must be a beginning with an immediate, i.e. a “zero”, relationship or a coincidence of two relata because all oppositions must be derived from an original unity. No opposition is original or irreducible for Hegel, so all oppositions must be shown to emerge from a unity in order for us to understand why they arise in the first place. At the beginning of Sense Certainty, then, the opposition between consciousness and object cannot yet have emerged, although it is already implicit in the fact that consciousness is supposed to be in touch with something external to and other than itself. That this opposition is as yet implicit
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also means that the difference between appearance and essence, between what is for it and what is in-itself, has not yet become explicit for consciousness – everything seems to be up front, so to speak. Consciousness will articulate and reflect on the opposition between what is for it and what it takes the object to be in-itself in Perception, and it will begin to overcome it in Force and Understanding. By the time we reach Self-Consciousness, this opposition will have become internal to consciousness while another seemingly external opposition will arise until we reach Reason, at which point all oppositions have been internalized (but not yet overcome). Here at the very beginning, however, the opposition between the in-itself and the for-itself has yet to arise. Sense-certainty is still unaware of it. For it, there is no difference between what is for it and what is in-itself – what you see is what you get is its initial presumption. The aim of Hegel’s argument in Sense-Certainty is therefore to show how through its own experience consciousness is led to confront the fact that there is a difference between appearance and in-itself, surface and depth. It is that difference with which it will try to come to terms in Perception. It is likely that Hegel also has a more specific reason for beginning with a type of cognition so simple that the subject-object divide is not yet clearly manifest. Sense-certainty is the first form of cognition of consciousness, i.e. it is the first and most basic form of knowledge. The soul does not yet “know” an object. It lives in symbiosis with nature, it “feels” its body, it is unconsciously active in the routines that the body executes, but it does not objectify or reflect on the difference between itself and its body. What Hegel aims to show in Sense-Certainty is that even the most basic and minimal type of knowledge involves an experience of the objectworld that is typically due to the presence of conceptual structures that “synthesize” and thus transform the sensory data or, rather, the content of the “actual soul” (cf. E § 411). There is no absolutely unmediated “intake” of “simple ideas” at the level of consciousness. Nor is there a separate intuitional material that could be identified and characterized prior to and independently of our form of awareness of it. In other words, the Kantian separation of matter and form of cognition resulting in two independent “sources” of knowledge is ontologically spurious as is the idea of a pristine sensible “given” unaffected by the form in and through which it is presented. Even space and time, Hegel will argue, are already conceptually permeated, are more than formal intuitions.24 How does Hegel go about demonstrating these points? As we would expect from our discussion of the Phenomenology’s argumentative strategy in the preceding section, he essentially plays off consciousness’ putative a priori against its actual experience of the object. The conflict between the two leads to a corrected a priori which then forms the presumptive a priori of the next experiential cycle beginning with Perception. The putative a priori of sense-certainty is described by Hegel as follows:
24 If
there is any non-subjective, natural given at all, it would have to be sought at the prerepresentational level which Hegel discusses under the title of the “natural” and the “feeling” soul (cf. E §§ 391–410).
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Because of its concrete content, sense-certainty immediately appears as the richest kind of knowledge, indeed a knowledge of infinite wealth for which no bounds can be found, either when we reach out into space and time in which it is dispersed, or when we take a bit of this wealth, and by division enter into it (PS § 91/3, 82).
Later in Sense-Certainty and with apparent reference to a philosophical position, he says that those who believe in this kind of reality describe it as an infinite wealth of singular external sensible particulars, all of them real, unique, i.e. unlike every other, even “wholly personal” (cf. PS § 110/3, 91).25 The objects of sense-certainty are concrete individual things in space and time whose existence is in no doubt by virtue of the immediate contact sense-certainty entertains with them. In parenthesis, it should be noted that in the later Encyclopedia version Hegel corrects the Phenomenology’s subsumption of spatio-temporal particulars under Sense-Certainty. Instead, he argues, spatio-temporal particulars are properly discussed only in connection with the cognitive form of Anschauung, or intuiting, which in Hegel’s system marks a much higher cognitive level, one even that follows the Phenomenology and forms the first stage of the Psychology (cf. E § 445A).26 The reason Hegel gives for this reassignment of the subject matter of the Phenomenology’s Sense-Certainty to the Encyclopedia’s Psychology is that spatio-temporal particulars are thought to be independent individuals that are not only external to consciousness, but external to, and therefore distinguished and separate from, one another (cf. E § 418R). In other words, spatio-temporal particulars are regarded as having an intrinsic identity of their own by distinguishing themselves from one another in terms of spatial and temporal location as well as a host of properties attaching to them.27 By contrast, in the form of cognition called sensecertainty these particulars are supposed to be experienced not as spatio-temporal objects with an identity of their own and with rule-governed connections among themselves, but merely as the singular ad hoc objects of our sensory awareness (cf. E § 418). While external particulars, they are distinct entities only on account of the immediate characteristics they exhibit for consciousness, not as particulars with a nature and a contextual setting of their own. Sense-certainty, Hegel implies in
25 The
position implicitly referred to is in all likelihood that of Jacobi: see Falke, 1996, p. 71 ff., Harris, 1997, I 214, Siep, 2000, p. 84. Graeser, 1998, pp. 40–41 plausibly establishes a connection with Epicurus. 26 See E § 418R: “The spatial and temporal singleness, Here and Now, as which I determined the object of sensory consciousness in the Phenomenology of Spirit . . . properly belongs only to intuition.” See also E § 449A, where Hegel suggests that the mere sensory awareness of objects in sense-certainty might already be called intuition, but it would be more like a “mindless intuiting” (geistloses Anschauen) than intuiting proper. 27 Intuition proper, Hegel argues, grasps the external object in its totality, as a wealth of determinations held together by a concept rather than treating it, as sensory consciousness does, as a singular particular that immediately falls apart into many different aspects (cf. E § 449A). Intuition is also the gift of the poet who is able to give exemplary expression to a strong emotional experience and thus to objectify and “domesticate” it, so to speak: see Hegel’s reference to Goethe’s Werther at E § 448A.
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the Encyclopedia, is impressionistic. Rather than gathering the multifaceted appearances into ordered complexes of objects and objective relationships, as intuition will do, it fractures them into a myriad of sense-impressions. For sense-certainty, reality is one big unorganized mosaic, similar to the routed soldiers in Aristotle’s famous battle metaphor before they have started to regroup.28 For the sensory consciousness we are dealing with here, then, these external objects are concrete sensible particulars such as a house or a tree (cf. PS § 98/3, 85). Furthermore, due to the immediate contact sense-certainty entertains with them, these particulars are supposed to be the rock bottom of reality, undeniably given and objectively real. Sense-certainty will undergo three major cycles of testing during which it is successively disabused of its putative a priori. Consciousness is asked to reflect upon and summarize its experience of the object, of itself, and of the relationship it entertains with the object. How does what consciousness believes to know about its object, itself, and its relationship to the sensible particular translate into knowledge, i.e. into informative cognitive content? The result of the test is the opening up of a contrast – in fact, a contradiction – between consciousness’ doxa and its actual knowledge. It believes the object to be a unique singular thing with an inexhaustible wealth of features and to be the true reality in its experience, but what it knows about this object is something quite different: All that it says about what it knows is just that it [sc. the object] is; and its truth contains nothing but the sheer being of the thing. Consciousness, for its part, is in this certainty only as a pure ‘I’; or I am in it only as a pure ‘This’, and the object similarly only as a pure ‘This’. I, this particular I, am certain of this particular thing . . . It is; this is the essential point for sense-knowledge, and this pure being, or this simple immediacy, constitutes its truth (PS § 91/3, 82–83).
The knowledge sense-certainty has of its object is limited to knowledge of its bare existence, Hegel claims. This is a puzzling diagnosis. Why, it may be asked, does Hegel characterize the sensible particular as a This of whose existence consciousness is certain, but which has no further determinations than being present? Is the object of sense-certainty not a thing with many, indeed infinitely many, features? A thing of “infinite wealth for which no bounds can be found, either when we reach out into space and time in which it is dispersed, or when we take a bit of this wealth, and by division enter into it,” as Hegel described it earlier (PS § 91/3, 82)? Why, then, can sense-certainty know this particular only in the form of a featureless This? As a preliminary explanation one might offer the following. Sense-certainty has reasons to restrict itself to a deictic language that can pinpoint objects only by referring to them as “this here now”, “or that there now”, etc. To be sure, the sensible particulars could be described in greater detail, but such description would properly belong to the cognitive level of perception which possesses a richer language. Hence, the point is not that the sensible object could not be described in more informative ways. Rather, sense-certainty denies itself any such richer description because it believes
28 Cf.
Aristotle, An post. II 19, 100a 12–13.
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that anything beyond pointing out the “this something” would either reduce the infinite wealth of this reality to an abstraction or import concepts that over-interpret what is actually “given” in sensation. What sense-certainty attempts to do on this assumption, then, is to refuse to conceptualize its experience in the belief that any such conceptualization might either falsify or distort the immediacy and purity of its sensations or become vulnerable to the skeptic who might call into question the objective reference of any ascriptions of objective features to the content of sense-experience. There is some evidence that Hegel here attacks a position that tries to disarm skepticism by assuming nothing but the possibility of an immediate sensory contact with what is real that is as yet untainted by any mental intervention.29 This position limits itself to a purely deictic language because a richer language might already contain the danger of unwarranted subjective additions or conceptual abstraction. Sensory consciousness believes, Hegel says, that “it has not as yet omitted anything from the object, but has the object before it in its perfect entirety” (PS § 91/3, 82). He might have added that consciousness also believes it has not as yet added anything to what is purely given. In other words, the position perhaps targeted here by Hegel is a misguided attempt to defeat skepticism by refusing to conceptualize one’s experience. But, as Hegel will point out, the “sin” of conceptualization is an original sin which has in any case already been committed. Still, sense-certainty is curiously Janus-faced. On the one hand, it knows its object merely as a This that seems to be a wholesale abstraction from the actual content of its experience, on the other it believes to be in possession of the object “in its entirety,” i.e. as yet untouched by any abstraction. To be a This means to be an indeterminate something, a something or other or a something that is nothing in particular. How can such a This also be the object in its entirety, i.e., a unified object? How is this duality of being both infinitely determined and at the same time indeterminate to be explained? Unless Hegel is confusing the issue, it must be sense-certainty itself that is confused about what its experience consists of. And so it is, nor does this come as a surprise. Sense-certainty, we have seen, represents an immediate relation between consciousness and object, one in which there is as yet no distinction between appearance and essence or between belief and knowledge. These distinctions are yet to emerge in order to become distinct opposites for it. Consequently, the object of sense-certainty is necessarily Janus-faced. It is simultaneously an infinitely rich reality in virtue of its being “dispersed” in space and time, and an indeterminate something in virtue of the immediacy with which it is being experienced. Necessarily, qua this singular thing the object is infinitely individuated
29 Cf. PS § 109/3, 90: “It is therefore astonishing when . . . it is asserted as universal experience and put forward, too, as a philosophical proposition, even as the outcome of [sc. an attempt to defeat] Scepticism, that the reality or being of external things taken as Thises or sense-objects has absolute truth for consciousness.” For the influence of ancient skepticism on Hegel’s argument here see Düsing, 1973.
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and is therefore dispersed, at least potentially, into infinitely many “Thises”.30 What is being objectified is merely the having of an experience now, while the content of that experience is still a matter of feeling (Empfindung).31 As a result, the unity remains blank. Conceptual unity and sensory quality are not yet united into one object. Whether this is a plausible scenario is debatable. It is difficult to decide, if what Hegel is describing here is a genuine form of cognition at all or whether he is reconstructing what he thinks to be the conceptual underpinnings of some theory such as Jacobi’s. Since he retains sense-certainty in the Encyclopedia (where its importance as a form of cognition seems minimal, however32 ), and since he does refer to an anti-skeptical position at PS § 109/3, 90, it is possible that he believes to be doing both.33 We can leave aside the question which anti-skeptical position is supposed to be in the background. As far as the cognitive form of sense-certainty itself is concerned, whether genuine or not, there is a strong systemic reason for describing it the way Hegel does. As indicated above, sense-certainty represents an immediate relation of consciousness and object such that in it consciousness is as yet unaware of the distinction between in-itself and for-itself, essence and instance (or type and token), conceptual unity and sensory diversity. This difference must become evident for consciousness, but it must also already be implicit in the way in which it understands its object. Hence the difference must be present in an unmediated form. As a result, sense-certainty is by nature ambiguous about whether its object is a unique singular This or a myriad of “Thises”. It is necessarily both at the same time without experiencing a contradiction between the two. If one were to ask what a given This is, the answer would be that nothing else could be said about it other than that it is a This. And if one were to insist on some distinguishing mark of the This, one would have to say that this This is different from another This by not being the other This. Sense-certainty possesses only one tool, viz. the indexical “this” and its deictic cognates “that”, “now”, “here”, “there”, “I”, to pick out and identify its object
30 Here
Hegel’s comment at E § 419A is helpful: “The content of sensuous consciousness is in itself dialectical. It is supposed to be the single, isolated individual; but it is just this that makes it not a single individual but all individuals . . . ” 31 See E § 418: “That rich contents is constituted by the determinations of feeling; they are the matter of consciousness (§ 414), the substantial and qualitative in which the soul consists. . . and which it finds in itself. ” And: “The specific contents of the sensible, such as smell, taste, color, etc., belongs to feeling (Empfindung), as we saw in § 401.” 32 Note again that the content of the experience belongs to feeling, not to consciousness per se. The object of sensuous consciousness possesses as yet no other thought-determination than that of existing and of being some singular external thing which is other than consciousness (E § 418A). This sounds very much like bumping into some unidentified object in the dark. 33 For the likelihood that Jacobi is the target see footnote 3 above. That Hegel’s account here is puzzling, perhaps even problematic, has not escaped the attention of scholars: see Stederoth, 2001, pp. 283–285 and Westphal, 1973, p. 89. Westphal has suggested, quite persuasively in view of E § 418 it seems to me, that Hegel’s sense-certainty very much looks like an artificial abstraction, not a genuine form of cognition.
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or to refer to itself.34 Hence Hegel’s use of “house”, “tree”, “day”, “night”, etc. is strictly illustrative, borne of the need to give the reader an idea of what kinds of particulars sense-certainty would be referring to, if it were not just sense-certainty. In no way do universals such as “house” and “day” as such belong to the descriptive level of sense-certainty. The descriptive language of sense-certainty consists entirely of deictic expressions. This is perhaps useful to underline, since it highlights the fact that Hegel is not analyzing the use of indexicals here, which as such, are not descriptive.35 The error from which sense-certainty suffers is that “this” picks out a unique individual with a wealth of features, something both indubitably real and knowable in all its richness. As consciousness will learn, this is not the case. Sense-certainty is not really engaged in the language game of picking out things with the help of indexicals to which it can, in the manner of ostensive definitions, give a name and to which it then attributes qualities. To be sure, the aspect of referring to sensible particulars is part of the scenario of sense-certainty. Thus consciousness is asked to report which sensible particular it has picked out, and one of the answers is that “Here is a tree” (PS § 98/3, 85). But again, the point is that for sense-certainty the tree is a This and not yet a tree. As the discussion in the text shows, by playing off the This as tree against the This as house Hegel wants to challenge sense-certainty to see whether it can still come up with a definite description of the object when it is denied the use of the object’s name.36 It cannot. All it can do, if use of this richer, already representational language is ruled out, is the empty description offered by deictic expressions. Hegel, it seems, understands the deictic expressions in the subject position as empty descriptions, not as indexicals. Interestingly, by locating the vocabulary of sense-certainty at the pre-representational level, he seems to be suggesting that we regress to Kant’s “undetermined object of an empirical intuition” called “appearance” (A 20/B 34), only to find that even at this reduced level we are already using universals such as “This”, “Here”, “I”, etc., i.e. concepts. This brings us to the crucial point of Hegel’s argument.37 When used in deictic reference, indexicals do indeed pick out individual sensible particulars. Hegel’s analysis, however, is not concerned with deictic reference, ostensive definitions, and the question of how definite descriptions can be used unambiguously to pick out individual things. Generally speaking, Hegel does not intend to deal with the use of words in referential contexts but with the question how words conceptualize the
34 It should be noted right away that Hegel uses these indexicals not just as deictic expressions, but
also as predicates, i.e. concepts (see below). is apparently the reason why Terry Pinkard expresses misgivings about Charles Taylor’s treatment of the deictic expressions as indexicals: see Pinkard, 1996, pp. 350–351, footnote 11. 36 I am therefore skeptical of Harris’s insistence that Sense-Certainty is about a common sense position and that those who argue that the position is at least somewhat artificial must be mistaken: see Harris, 1997, I 230–231, footnote 12. In everyday life we are not denied the association between the perceived This and its name. Hence Harris’s reference (I 211) to G.E. Moore’s “This is a hand” obscures the strategy and aim of Hegel’s argument. 37 Incidentally, a point that I have not seen articulated all that well in the literature. 35 This
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objects they stand for. The referential link between word and object is not at issue, because due to the position of immanence Hegel adopts the word is the object. His scenario in Sense-Certainty assumes that while picking out a familiar object, “this” thereby primarily and directly picks out a This, and only secondarily and indirectly (i.e. for a more advanced form of cognition) a house or a tree. The object of sensecertainty is a “this something” (or a “something here” or “something now”), an “x”.38 Analysis shows, however, that the conceptual information contained in the concept of This (or of Here, or Now) is close to zero. “This” as an deictic pronoun refers to a particular, but to be a This means nothing other than to be a particular something or other with which I am currently in sensory contact. Everything is some particular thing, and hence while “this” picks out a This, the This picked out could be anything whatsoever – there vanishes the uniqueness of the This. The belief that the concept of the This predicated of “this here now” means something unique and absolutely singular or that it conveys a wealth of information must be revised. In other words, Hegel asks us to consider that in the type of cognition called sense-certainty the deictic expression is also used as a predicate and functions as the concept of the object that it also picks out (“This is a this”). Sense-certainty is in touch with something which may be called either a tree or a house or anything else, but which is ontologically speaking a This. House, tree, etc. are the names of different “Thises”, but they do not express what kind of object houses, trees, or rivers are when they are objects of sensory contact. If asked that question, sense-certainty can only answer: a this something (a tode ti, to use the Aristotelian expression). Ontologically speaking, therefore, the object of sense-certainty is nothing but a bare particular. But a bare particular is not something that is immediately experienced. Here again we can see that the position Hegel analyzes under the title of sensecertainty is artificial insofar as it assumes contact with objects at a level “below” ordinary perceptual relationships.39 The rationale for this artificiality, as I see it, is Hegel’s intention to experiment with the idea of a pre-representational language and to show that even this reduced language cannot but operate with universals and that therefore to posit Kantian pre-conceptual “undetermined objects of empirical intuition” or “singular representations” is an impossibility. Conceptualization of experience is logically prior to sense-experience itself. To be a This is the most minimal characterization of objects that can qualify as knowledge, and it already presupposes conceptualization. Consequently, consciousness can have access to the sensible particulars only through the mediation of a concept, not in perfect immediacy. Hegel’s examination of sense-certainty is designed in part to disabuse sense-certainty of its belief in the possibility of an access to sensible objects that would be completely unmediated by concepts.
38 One may be reminded here of the deictic expressions in so-called protocol sentences. But again,
the idea is not to pick out some spatio-temporal object by “this” for the purpose of further description, but to ask what conceptual information the expression “this” conveys about the object thus picked out. 39 See again the reference to M. Westphal in footnote 11 above.
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The first question with which Hegel challenges the putative a priori of sensecertainty is therefore: “What is the This?” (PS § 95/3, 84). Is it really the kind of rock solid reality consciousness believes it to be? Can consciousness really know the unique singular item it believes to possess in the This? If not, what is it that consciousness can really know about the This? And finally, can the This really be accessed by bypassing any conceptual mediation or presupposed framework of reference? The answer to all these questions is negative. The This can be anything since any sensible particular is a This. Everything is a This, but the This is nothing in particular. Hence it is not very helpful to insist that what I really mean is this This, not that This. A This is what it is by both excluding and including any specific sensible particular. It is all of them, but none of them specifically, and yet, the This is also meant to pick out unambiguously one thing and not another. As a deictic expression it can do so, as a concept it cannot. As such, it is not a particular at all, but a universal: A simple thing of this kind which is through negation, which is neither this not that, a notThis, and is with equal indifference This as well as That – such a thing we call a universal. So it is in fact the universal that is the true [content] of sense-certainty (PS § 96/3, 85).
The This, then, while being represented as a unique singular particular such as “this house here now”, can at the level of sense-certainty be characterized only by means of universals, viz. as “This x here now is a This here now,” and it can therefore be known only as or in terms of an (empty) universal. If the universal is a name such as “house”, the particular could be known at least minimally. But as we have seen, such general names are denied sense-certainty. If, however, the universal is “x”, the particular referred to cannot strictly speaking be known at all. The sensory content that falls outside the deictic universals is variable and perishable, its reality is as abstract as that of the This. In fact, the sensible particular taken as a This possesses no intrinsic being (cf. PS § 109/3, 91).40 The This may now be day and later night, as in “Now it [i.e., this This] is night,” but a little later “this This” is day, i.e. it is that This, not this This – a futile attempt to distinguish one particular from another conceptually by their common characteristic and the only characteristic they each possess at the level of sense-certainty.41 The sensible reality is such that it changes on its own accord. One reality is replaced by another, one sensible particular by the next. The individual sensible object vanishes. It is there now, and gone the next moment. Its reality is fleeting and unstable. The This is like a window through which one observes the passage of the clouds in the sky – an ever changing scenario, but nothing stable except the window itself. Hegel claims that die Tiere . . . bleiben nicht vor den sinnlichen Dingen als an sich seienden stehen . . . ” the point is not that we can distinguish two Thises by pointing. The point is that both are conceptually speaking a This, hence indistinguishable with respect to their conceptual determination. – It is tempting to suspect that in using day and night as examples Hegel may have a reference to Heraclitus in mind (see fr. 67). A reference to Pyrrhonian skepticism has also been suggested (which by no means excludes a further “background” reference to Heraclitus): see Köhler/Pöggeler, 1998, p. 9. Hegel’s point in any case is the same as Heraclitus’, viz. that the logos is that which unifies things by affirming and negating their difference at the same time.
40 “Auch
41 Again,
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the content left in the universal is the notion of “pure being”, or mere existence (cf. PS § 99/3, 85). This does not seem to be quite accurate. To be a This apparently connotes being a determinate particular, an individual. But it is also not more than that, it has no description whatsoever. Looked at in this way, the sensible particular is hollow at its core, it is a “nothingness” [Nichtigkeit] (PS § 109/3, 91). Are we supposed to associate a Platonic reference here in the sense that if knowledge is what we are after we should leave the Thises behind and turn to the more substantial universals? What, then, does consciousness really know when it knows this universal? Essentially, it knows a bare particular, a “mediated simplicity, or a universality” (PS § 98/3, 85). As a concept or category of what is being picked out in sense-certainty, This (or Here, Now, I) rejects all further determination. It is “indifferent to what happens in it,” but is “permanent and self-preserving . . . through the fact that something else, viz. Day and Night, is not” (PS § 96/3, 84). But now we need to ask, Where is the variable content of the This to be found? Is this content not also part of the experience of sense-certainty? Hegel responds that the (variable) content of the This is to be found in consciousness’ putative knowledge (Meinen).42 Consciousness’ putative knowing (Meinen) stands against its actual knowledge, what it merely believes or purports to know against what it can actually put into words. What consciousness merely means – in the sense of gropes towards, but cannot articulate – turns out to be strictly ineffable. The variable content of the This can be known only if it is likewise
42 In this particular usage, meinen is difficult to capture in translation. It can be used in German the
same way it is used in English, for instance when we ask “What do you mean?” – Was meinst Du? Meinen may also mean “to believe” or “to think” as in “If I am not mistaken, I believe (meine or, alternatively, glaube) that Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel.” But Hegel’s use of Meinen here is special. It is closer to having something in mind, but not being able to articulate exactly what that is. The phrase “If you see what I mean” perhaps uses “mean” in a way closest to Hegel’s here. For often we fail to see what somebody means when they are struggling to put it into words. In those cases we may divine or speculate what the other person means, but sometimes we simply remain clueless – and so may the speaker himself. He purports to communicate something but does not arrive at expressing it. This is the situation Hegel envisions in Sense-Certainty. Hegel elsewhere (E § 20R) draws on the etymological connection between meinen in the sense of “believe” and the possessive pronoun mein (“my”). What I mean is strictly what I mean, what belongs to me as my opinion or putative knowledge and what may therefore also be subjective to the point of being incommunicable. The connection with a Wittgensteinian argument against the possibility of a private language suggests itself. Hegel would agree that language is not such that it could express something supposedly exclusively mine. The reader should be cautioned against drawing parallels too quickly between Hegel’s point and Wittgenstein’s private language argument. The question of what affinity exists here, if any, should be examined in the light of Hintikka and Hintikka, 1986, pp. 241–271. As far as Hegel is concerned, language subverts the attempt to establish any kind of “private” meaning, i.e. a meaning that could not possibly be shared with others but that I could nonetheless “share” with myself. Hegel’s way of putting this is that “What I only mean is mine; it belongs to me as this particular individual. But if language expresses only what is universal, then I cannot say what I only mean” (E § 20R). However, neither Hegel nor, following Hintikka & Hintikka, Wittgenstein deny that there exist private experiences that can be meaningfully talked about in the context of a publicly available language-game. In a sense, the issue in both Hegel and Wittgenstein comes down to exposing a simple fallacy, viz. the idea of a language of the ineffable.
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translated into a This or, rather, infinitely many Thises. But it is immediately clear that since the variable content of the This is supposed to be infinite this translation could never actually be accomplished – the sensible particular would “crumble away” (PS § 110/3, 92) long before the list of its features could be completed. If, as sense-certainty seems to believe, the unique singular particular of sense is unique on account of being infinitely individuated, then what I mean when I say “This unique individual sensible particular” can never be expressed or “cashed in”. As Hegel puts it: . . . the sensuous This that is meant cannot be reached by language, which belongs to consciousness, i.e. to that which is inherently universal (PS § 110/3, 91–92).
Language, Hegel asserts, is more truthful than sense-certainty’s mistaken belief in the truth of the sensible particular. In language, he says, We ourselves directly refute what we mean to say, and since the universal is the true [content] of sense-certainty and language expresses this true [content] alone, it is just not possible for us ever to say, or express in words, a sensuous being that we mean (PS § 97/3, 85).
Nor, and this is typical of Hegel, would it be worth the effort. From the point of view of knowledge and intelligibility the sensuous content of the sensible particular is of no particular interest, because all that could be said about it is that it is a This here now. What is ineffable is not for this reason precious but, to the contrary, not worth expressing.43 We might try to enumerate the features of sensible particulars or make a list of their names. But for one thing, this would have to be done in a language that employs a richer vocabulary than sense-certainty is allowed to utilize and for another it would be rather pointless. The result of Hegel’s argument thus far is that the This represents the most minimal conceptualization of the content of consciousness’ experience. It expresses what consciousness knows about the object of sense-certainty which is, as we have seen, nearly nothing. But even the most minimal form of conceptualization already contains mediation or synthesis, i.e. negation of internal difference. The matter of pure intuition is left behind as either ineffable at the level of sense-certainty itself or irrelevant in a context of acquiring knowledge about objects. Modifying Aristotle’s wistful phrase concerning the relationship of particular and universal in perception, Hegel might have said that while we “mean” the particular, we nevertheless express the universal.44 For this reason, meaning, in the sense of semantic information or conceptual content, does not depend on what we “mean” in the sense of “purport 43 Cf. Hegel’s similar comments on the supposedly inexpressible meaning of thoughts at E § 462A.
actual phrase is “. . . for though one perceives the particular, perception is of the universal – e.g. of man but not of Callias the man” (An. post. II 19, 100a 17- b 2). The wistfulness lies in the fact that the Greek uses the same word for “perceiving” and “perception” (α´ισθησις), so that the sentence “means” to express the difference between sensing the particular and recognizing the universal in it, but does not actually express it, except through the morphological variation of verb as opposed to noun. And for good reason, since in the act of perception the two are immediately one. This means that while the proper name “Callias” is not a universal it could not be understood
44 Aristotle’s
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to know but cannot say”. Generally speaking, the meaning of what we say does not depend on what you or I subjectively associate with it. Semantic meaning is universally available through language. At the level of consciousness, all intuited matter has been translated into conceptual determinations. The This in its own right already contains the element of differentiation – every This is both a simple one and a multitude of Thises: . . . by pointing out this bit of paper, experience teaches me what the truth of sense-certainty in fact is: I point it out as a ‘Here’, which is a Here of other Heres, or is in its own self a ‘simple togetherness of many Heres’; i.e. it is a universal (PS § 110/3, 92).
This also means that the heterogeneous element of Kantian intuition is replaced by conceptual heterogeneity expressed through negation. As our quote indicates, not only is the concept of the This a “mediated universality”, a spatio-temporal framework, too, must already be presupposed for any deictic reference to be successful. A This can be picked out deictically only if it is understood that “here” presupposes an understanding of “not there” – i.e., of negation – and “now” an understanding of “not yesterday”, etc. An entire framework of reference must be in place for even the most “immediate” act of pointing to indicate more than an empty directionality.45 It is not the case, then, that there is such a thing as pointing out something in pure immediacy. All reference, even deictic reference, is context dependent. But furthermore, even these Kantian forms of intuition, space and time, already contain universality and negation. A Here is a plurality of many Heres, a Now a plurality of many Nows (cf. PS § 107–8/3, 89–90). This proof constitutes the third cycle of the experience of sense-certainty (cf. PS §§ 105–8/3, 88–90). Previously, consciousness had made the experience that just as “this” picks out a This, so does “I”. For the purposes of knowledge, the I referred to in sense-certainty is likewise a simple universality. When speaking of myself as “I”, I do indeed mean a single ‘I’, but I can no more say what I mean in the case of ‘I’ than I can in the case of ‘Now’ and ‘Here’. . . . when I say ‘I’, this singular ‘I’, I say in general all ‘I’s; everyone is what I say, everyone is ‘I’, this singular ‘I’ (PS § 102/3, 86–87).
Again, it should be understood that “I” here functions as the concept of the self, not as an indexical – for obviously, the indexical does not pick out the same “I” when used by different speakers. As a concept, “I” does not and cannot pick out any particular I. It picks out all of them and none. What, then, is the end result of the argument in Sense-Certainty? Knowledge is knowledge of the universal from the start, i.e. it is conceptual. The most primitive form of conceptualization presupposes mediation, i.e. negation of negation. The This maintains itself as a unit of meaning by excluding all other meaning from if it were not taken to name a particular that falls under a universal. Without the implicit relation to a universal such as “man” or some other kind of thing, “Callias” would be a word without meaning. 45 This point was made in a different way brilliantly by Strawson in Individuals. The argument is that deictic expressions would be unable to fulfill their referential function without relying on a spatio-temporal framework that constitutes their a priori semantic condition (cf. Strawson, 1990, p. 31 ff.).
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itself and by subsuming all other particulars under itself qua Thises – it is “permanent and self-preserving . . . through the fact that something else . . . is not” (PS § 96/3, 84). It expresses the thought of “this particular item and no other”, but then all particulars are conceptually just that. In other words, the most primitive universal is already a synthesis, one that does not include an intuitional element that is radically different from thought. Now this result, it should be pointed out, in a way does not contradict Kant’s complementarity thesis. Indeed, it might even seem to confirm it – no knowledge without a synthesis of intuition and concept.46 Hegel’s critique of sense-certainty’s claims to knowledge does not deny the existence of a manifold. However, a fine line needs to be observed here. The pure heterogeneous manifold Kant talks about is not the manifold that is part of the universal called “This”. Rather, in Hegel’s scenario the intuitional element is represented in the concept by a potential conceptual diversity, i.e. an internal conceptual differentiation waiting to be explicated. The intuitional manifold is thus in principle homogeneous with the concept, not heterogeneous, or heterogeneous only in degree and not in kind. Depending, then, on how one reads the complementarity thesis, Hegel’s proposal in Sense-Certainty in one sense does and in another does not conflict with Kant’s approach. If the heterogeneity of sensibility and understanding is thought to be a matter of degree, Hegel’s position might be compatible with Kant’s. There can, however, be little doubt that for Kant the complementarity thesis implies the radical heterogeneity of sensibility and understanding. If that is so, Hegel does not so much overcome as reject Kant’s complementarity thesis. For his argument in SenseCertainty has the effect of “purifying” the transcendental unity of apperception by leaving aside the heterogeneous manifold of intuition as an ineffable content. In other words, the pure manifold is excluded from, not taken up into, the unity of the concept. It is excluded partly because it is ineffable and partly because to the extent that it can be made intelligible the information it contributes about the object is entirely vacuous from the point of view of knowledge. The information may indeed not be trivial for purposes of identifying an object unambiguously in a perceptual context. But as we have seen, the study of how linguistic expressions are used to perform certain referential functions is not Hegel’s concern. There is yet another reason why the idea of a pure sensible manifold or an undetermined empirical manifold may lead us in the wrong direction. When we ask what in our experience is really unique or private in an exclusive sense such that it cannot be shared or experienced by anyone else, the only aspect that remains after all that is effable has been said is the fact that it is my experience, i.e. something that by definition cannot have been experienced by anyone else. But what is that exclusively private aspect? It is obviously not what we experience, since that is sharable and can be experienced by others as well, nor is it so much how we experience, since even that is communicable and sharable. It is merely the fact that it is I rather than someone else who has or undergoes or makes the experience. The 46 This
is what Hegel has in mind when, in the Science of Logic he approvingly refers to Kant’s complementarity thesis by saying that “it is an essential proposition of the Kantian transcendental philosophy that without intuitions concepts are empty and are valid solely as relations of the manifold given by intuition” (SL 585).
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exclusive privacy of the experience consists in its noetic aspect, not in its noematic content, so to speak. Both are effable, but it is the noetic performance or the mental event that is strictly private, not what they are of or about. It is private in the sense that only I can know incorrigibly whether or not I had the experience, whereas others are left to speculate. It is private in the sense that nobody else can strictly speaking make this experience on my behalf. It is unique in its aspect of being a token, not in its aspect of being of a certain type. The stipulation of a pure or undetermined manifold wrongly suggests that there is some matter in our experience that we somehow experience but that remains ineffable unless and until it is being conceptualized. What in fact happens, however, is that there is an aspect of experience that in one respect (and only in one respect) remains strictly private while still being effable (we can report our experiencing pain). But this has nothing to do with content, only with performance. Hence, paraphrasing Gorgias we might say, a pure or undetermined manifold as part of the content of experience does not exist. Even if it existed, we could not know it. Even if we could know it, we could not communicate it. In conclusion, we may summarize the issue as follows. The question of a pure or undetermined (pre-conceptual) sensible manifold in sense-certainty concerns the issue whether or not there is an ineffable intuitional element involved in sensecertainty or not. To this Hegel answers that the ineffable is something we mean but cannot express. This, however, should not be taken as an endorsement on Hegel’s part of a deep problem of ineffability (at most, what Hegel might endorse, if he were to care enough about it, is the privacy of mental experience). That we cannot say what we merely mean is not an endorsement of “strong” ineffability, because it simply makes no sense just to mean something without being able to express what we mean. Merely to mean without somehow giving to understand that we mean something and yet to convey something intelligible by doing so is an impossibility. If sense-certainty were like that, it could not even be treated as a form of knowing and hence could not have a place in the Phenomenology. Merely to mean while giving to understand that something is being meant is a case of weak or circumstantial ineffability. It is like a gagged person trying to say something but managing to utter only unintelligible noises. We clearly understand that something is being conveyed, but not what that might be.47 Some interpreters of Hegel’s argument in Sense-Certainty may have been confused by taking Hegel to argue in favor of strong ineffability while what he likely has in mind is a critique of weak or circumstantial ineffability. Granted, then, that there exists no strictly ineffable content and that ineffability only results from a factual, artificial, or forced limitation on the means of expression, i.e. accidentally, there are still three possible interpretations of how Hegel’s argument in Sense-Certainty could be construed. What may also have contributed 47 There
are of course many ways to illustrate weak ineffability. Imagine yourself at a dinner table with guests while you are trying to communicate to your husband some embarrassing little fact that you could not possibly convey openly under the circumstances etc. Here, ineffability is simply a consequence of a restriction on your means of expression required by etiquette, i.e., it is weak, not strong ineffability.
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to confuse some interpreters of this section of the Phenomenology is the fact that the text can seem to support all three interpretations. The first would be to say that to spell out the determinacy of the content of sense-certainty in full with the severely limited semantic means of deictic expressions alone would be tedious and totally uninformative. It would indeed be very much like trying to say something with a band aid taped over one’s mouth. A slightly modified version of the same interpretation could go as follows. Assuming that consciousness for the most part is in contact with full-fledged sensible objects in perception, this richer representational content would certainly be effable, but since sense-certainty is artificially restricted to deictic expressions (i.e. in this sense “gagged”), this content cannot be expressed. Second, assuming that Hegel meant to allow for a minimally richer vocabulary with which to convey the contents of sense-certainty, such as “This is white” or “This is a white piece of paper” (which strictly speaking belong to the level of perception or even intuition, not to sense-certainty proper), it would still be utterly futile, even if not completely uninformative, to try to spell out the determinacy of the content of sense-certainty. It would be like trying to describe a blank piece of paper by superimposing a pixel grid upon it and then start to describe each pixel by saying “The paper is white here” etc. After having finished the process we would be able to conclude that indeed the entire piece of paper was white, but depending on how small we chose to make the pixels (and we may make them as small as we like) we more likely would “not be able to complete the description, but would be compelled to leave it to others” (PS § 110/3, 92), until in the end the paper would “crumble away” (ibid.), before anyone had finally determined that it was white all over. According to this interpretation, Hegel’s aim would have been to show that sense-certainty is incapable of conveying the simple truth that a perceptual judgment would be able to express based on just one quick glance, viz. that the entire piece of paper is white. Or, since an exhaustive description of any object insofar as it is an infinite aggregate of Thises or Heres in an infinite number of Nows is impossible, the intended result, i.e. the judgment that the whole piece of paper is white, could never be established. In this sense, not to be able to express everything would be equivalent to expressing nothing – one would “finally have to admit to speaking about something which is not” (ibid.), i.e. is not anything whole and substantial. Finally, the third interpretation takes the argument of Sense-Certainty to be that the language of sense-certainty is “This is a This” or “Here is a Here” or “Here is a This,” etc. The argument then proceeds to show not only that “This is a This” is entirely uninformative, but also and above all that the concept of the This connotes determinacy, while saying something about the This which is true of everything and anything. The concept of a This or Here would be the most minimal conceptual determinacy, but as such it would already imply a conceptualization. A concept or universal would be understood as a determinate content that by definition is true of or applies to more than one thing, i.e. that has the refusal to be true of only one particular built into its very structure. The Now is now night, but a little later the Now is day, i.e. night and day are both a Now. As such, a concept is a negation of a negation. In rejecting identification of its meaning with only one thing, it nonetheless determines whatever it is true of or applies to as something
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definite.48 Except that in the case of the This the determinacy of the concept converges on zero. All it says about a thing is that it is something or other, an “x”. This is certainly not nothing. But it is something only minimally determinate, i.e. an indeterminate something. This is what it means to be a This. In principle, though, the entire content of sense-certainty could be dissolved into an aggregate of infinite Thises, Heres, Nows, and I’s. One would then still not have reached a purely intuitional, pre- or non-conceptual, ineffable content of experience which Kant claims is an indispensable condition of something being given in experience, but only an infinite aggregate of minimal determination. The most basic element of cognition is not a pure or an undetermined sensible manifold, but the empty universal designating a non-descript particular. The “hard work” of conceptualization starts with the effable, not the ineffable.
3.3 Perception and Understanding: The Immanence of Thinking and the Meaning of Aufhebung Earlier we indicated the complex structure of the Phenomenology’s argument on its two levels, viz. the dialectic between the in-itself and the for-itself that reoccurs with every cycle of consciousness’ experience, and the successive transformation of the relationship between grounding principle and grounded experience that works itself out over the course of the entire Phenomenology. After our discussion of Hegel’s argument in Sense-Certainty, it may be useful to introduce in a more formal way the three aspects we will be paying specific attention to for the remainder of our analysis of the Phenomenology. This will help us to stay focused on the major steps that are supposed to demonstrate how and why consciousness progresses on its path from knowledge of the sensible world via knowledge of the “supersensible” world to knowledge of the unconditioned. To capture the essential aspects of Hegel’s argumentative plot, we may distinguish between a thematic and a methodological level. At the thematic level, we see Hegel introducing new object domains of consciousness as well as new forms of experience that are directly dependent on the mode of cognition consciousness has reached. At the methodological level, we follow the gradual transformation of the ground-grounded relationship from a “realistic” model in which the ground is both an other over against consciousness as well as the touchstone of truth (Consciousness and Self-Consciousness) into a speculative model. In the latter, consciousness first recognizes itself in the ground in Reason. While reason is universal, however, consciousness is individual. Consequently, the two do not completely coincide. The ground first needs to assume the nature of 48 Thus
I cannot quite agree with Matthias Kettner that the argument in Sense-Certainty is primarily a critique of ontological atomism which in my view is the target rather of the third cycle of Perception: see Kettner 1990, 9. The reader may want to turn to Kettner for an excellent discussion not only of Sense-Certainty, but also of all the relevant literature on this chapter since Feuerbach and Purpus up to and including W. Becker, K. Düsing, J. Simon, E. Tugendhat, M. Westphal as well as analytic approaches from Frege, Quine and Searle to Putnam.
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subjectivity or self-consciousness in Spirit for individual consciousness to be able to identify with it completely. It then remains for consciousness to realize that this self-conscious ground recognizes itself in consciousness (in Religion, particularly in revealed religion). On this basis, consciousness can proceed to the final identification of itself with the self-conscious ground, i.e. it can itself become self-conscious spirit in Absolute Knowing.49 Third, in addition to following these two aspects we may on occasion also want to comment briefly on Hegel’s implicit critique directed at other philosophical positions that are successively rejected or overcome as a result of the advance of consciousness. To take these aspects in reverse order and putting to one side for the moment the question of Hegel’s implicit historical references, we may say that, among other things, Sense-Certainty can be read as Hegel’s rejection of the dual source model of cognition as well as the ‘myth’ of immediacy. That model gives way to a single source model in which the manifold of purely sensible intuition is replaced by conceptualizable diversity. The argument is that a purely sensible element would be strictly unintelligible. From the point of view of knowledge and of what can be said it would become the ineffable. Nor is our understanding in any way the poorer for it, because contrary to a widespread belief the ineffable is not the most precious truth. What really remains unsaid at the level of sense-certainty is not the ineffable but the determinable. That which is implicitly determinate but which has not yet been explicitly determined replaces the irreducibly sensible and non-conceptual and becomes the conceptually determinable matter of knowledge. To be sure, it can be and has been argued that elimination of the non-conceptual element in knowledge is impossible because without it we lose the reference to spatio-temporal reality and the possibility to refer to things or states of affairs in the world.50 Independently of difficulties inherent in the dual source model itself,51 it may be said in response that if referentiality presupposes intelligibility of the referent, intelligibility cannot itself be derived from the referent. For that reason, a purely sensible, entirely nonconceptualized referent could not even become an object of consciousness. It does not make sense to divide the object into a purely sensible aspect (its matter) and a purely intelligible aspect (its form) because such matter would remain ineffable. 49 Hegel
details these developments at the beginning of Absolute Knowing, PS §§ 788–799/3, 575–583. 50 For a persuasive (although in my view not entirely successful) argument in defense of Kantian dualism see Guyer, 2000, pp. 37–56. 51 I argued earlier that the most serious difficulty for the empirical manifold, i.e. the matter of cognition (“the raw material offered by sensibility,” as Kant called it at A 1), is probably to be either determinate or indeterminate. To recapitulate briefly, if the manifold is pure, it is indeterminate and hence cannot generate determinacy. Since the categories do not themselves contain determinate content, determinacy of the structures of objectivity remains unaccounted for. If the manifold is empirical, i.e. determinate, it cannot account for determinacy either, because an empirical manifold must already be the product of some synthesis. We cannot, therefore, avoid the conclusion that the manifold is always already determinate. If so, the task becomes one of reconstruction of determinacy, not the construction and then superimposition of determinacy where allegedly there was none in the first place.
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Consequently, the intelligibility of our experience, including our sensory experience, must be presupposed. The question is only how important the truths are that the various forms of cognition are able to deliver. Hegel’s answer is that all these forms of knowledge are possible, but not all are equally valuable from a philosophical point of view. His interest lies in the value of the truths expressed in sentences, not in the truth value of sentences. A radically non-conceptual element, whatever its function in human experience, by definition is not part of what is knowable. Nor does its ineffability detract from what is knowable because it could not contribute to it anyway. So it seems that a fairly good case can be made against the dual source model of knowledge, if one is willing to let the problem of reference take care of itself. We perceive (sense) the particular, but perception (knowledge) is of the universal. The purely sensory in the end reduces to the performance aspect of cognition, the fact that I am aware of something. But this performative aspect does not contribute to what it is that is being experienced. To turn next to the methodological aspect, what has emerged through the experience of Sense-Certainty is the opposition between particular and universal and the assumption that the sensible object is the essential truth-validating element in knowledge. This opinion will in fact be re-enforced through consciousness’ experience in Perception before it is replaced by the realization, at the end of Perception, that reality is best understood as a self-differentiating process which exhibits a ground-grounded relationship within itself. This result will serve as the basis for the transformation of the ground as object into the ground as self or subjectivity. Since self-referentiality is characteristic of life generally as that which renews itself by turning what is other into a part of itself, life as the most immediate embodiment of self-referentiality is the phenomenon with which the chapter on Self-Consciousness begins. Perception starts with a realistic position which assumes that the object is immediately accessible to consciousness as a unified whole and that its unity is unproblematic. As it turns out, this belief is mistaken. A straightforward realistic interpretation of the object founders on its contradictory nature. It is simultaneously one and many things such that its oneness and its multiplicity need to be mediated with one another. Consciousness again takes this result at its face value and concludes that since its realist interpretation of objects of sense has come to grief it should now try a non-realist, constructionist reading of the object. This second cycle of consciousness’ experience in Perception can be read as Hegel’s implicit critique and rejection of empiricism insofar as the latter attempts to construct the object of sense out of sensory data. A reference to Plato’s Theaetetus is likewise possible.52
52 In one of the analyses of the Theaetetus the sensible thing is indeed resolved into its sensory data which are then unified by the soul (see Theaet. 184D). There is an interesting parallel here between the Theaetetus and the Phenomenology’s Perception in that the soul as unifier is introduced after the sensible object has for all intents and purposes been “dissolved” in a Heraclitean flux (cf. Theaet. 182C – 183C), just as at the end of the first cycle of the experience in Perception consciousness learns that “the truth of perception is its dissolution” (PS § 118/3, 98), i.e. the dissolution of the realist conception of the object.
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Hegel’s analysis here has also been read as a comment on a transcendental approach which imposes objectivity structures on a manifold of sense.53 However that may be, the solution to the failure of the constructionist approach to come up with a coherent model of what kind of thing a thing is Hegel, in the third cycle of the experience of perceptual consciousness, interestingly proposes a form of essentialism which might be called atomic essentialism and which one could identify with certain aspects of Aristotle’s theory of substance in Metaphysics Zeta and Eta. At the thematic level, the three positions indicated just now, viz. perceptual realism, empiricism or constructionism, and atomic essentialism, follow the usual three-stage dialectic of immediacy, opposition or contradiction, and resolution. The object has now revealed itself as a mediated but simple universal (cf. PS § 112/3, 94), or as a more determinate This of many Thises, or Here of many Heres, in short, as a thing with many properties (ibid.). Compared to the Thises of Sense-Certainty, the object now displays the dialectic of a polarized structure such that one pole is more “substantial” than the other and vice versa. However, just as the This, which is now conceptualized as a thing, is a universal, so are the many Thises or properties. The thing is therefore at first the togetherness of universals in a dominant universal. Perception perceives the thing as something, i.e. as the instantiation of a type. And similarly it perceives the properties as features of a certain kind (such as kinds of colors and of shapes). The problem to be resolved in Perception is to bring together in one coherent conception the two aspects of the thing, viz. its unity and its determinacy as a particular. At the most basic conceptual level, any particular thing is both one and also many. It is one because it is a singular thing, and it is many because it must have characteristics in virtue of which it differs from other singular things. The dialectic that ensues is already contained in these simple determinations. That the thing is singular is a character it shares with all other particulars. If to be this singular thing were its only characteristic, it could not be conceptually distinct from any other thing. It must therefore be its properties that mark it off as this particular thing. This is a first contradiction, since to be singular already means to be unmistakably this specific thing and no other. Purported meaning and conceptual analysis point in opposite directions. Furthermore, the individuating properties themselves are universals that are shared by other things as well and so cannot account for the singularity of the thing – a second contradiction. Perceptual consciousness will discover these difficulties for itself during its first cycle of experience. The next two cycles, i.e. the constructionist and the essentialist phase, are an attempt to respond to the initial contradictions and to find a conception of thinghood that would combine the singularity and the universality aspects of the thing in a manner free from contradiction. In keeping with the realist orientation of perception and to maintain the sense of the objectivity of the object, the thing should in the end emerge as a particular that while intrinsically determined in and of itself coexists alongside all other intrinsically determined things.
53 For a possible Kantian background to the second cycle in Perception see Hyppolite, 1974, p. 113.
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Without going into the detail of the dialectical development, the first cycle of consciousness’ experience can be sketched as follows.54 Perception starts with the putative a priori that the unity of thing and properties is an unproblematic concept. But it soon finds out upon further analysis that the unity aspect by itself does not characterize the thing as a determinate or specific thing. The oneness of the thing is an empty determination without specificity. Nor do the properties belong exclusively to any one particular thing since they are universal and therefore “transcend” the singularity of any given object. Consciousness therefore reinterprets the thing as a “medium” or “community” of properties. It is obvious, however, that the thing, if conceived of as a mere medium or community is not intrinsically unified. Rather, it is a mere aggregate of properties. How the thing can be something intrinsically unified or something substantial and self-standing, so to speak, cannot be understood in this way. Indeed, it could be said that under these circumstances a real conception of thinghood has not yet arisen. (Instead, we might be closer to a Protagorean or Anaxagorean conception of sensible particulars.) The problem, then, consists in incorporating specificity or determinacy into the oneness of the thing, i.e. to make determinacy an intrinsic feature of the particular. Looking more closely now at the properties as that which gives the thing its specificity, consciousness realizes that they are themselves determinate and hence differ from each other. Their difference indicates an opposition between any two given properties – blue is not yellow, and yellow is not round, etc. – and hence an exclusionary relationship between them. As a result, if attention is paid to the specific character of these universals, the continuity of the thing as medium is broken up and its two aspects, i.e. the simple oneness and the diversity, again fall apart. A property, however, that does not intrinsically determine the thing of which it is a property, is not really a property but an isolated characteristic just like the This of Sense-Certainty, a “pure relating of itself to itself” (PS § 117/3, 98). So the unity of the thing continues to be empty while its diversity is scattered into a mere multiplicity of accidents that do not belong to anything in particular. Hegel comments that with this outcome consciousness “has ceased altogether to perceive and has withdrawn into itself” (ibid.). Consciousness must make a fresh attempt to bring together the oneness or singularity of the thing with its diversity or determinacy such as to be able to understand the thing as intrinsically determined by its properties. Because consciousness, during its first learning experience, has been forced to re-think and re-interpret its perception several times it has also drawn attention to itself as the subject that undertook the re-interpretation. This is an important moment, for consciousness has now become aware of itself and of the fact that the object is not a mere “given”, but something to whose givenness it must itself make a contribution so that the object may be perceived by it as this or that thing in the first place. Its experience therefore becomes reflective and self-critical.
54 Hegel
97–98.
summarizes the first cycle of the experience of perceptual consciousness in PS § 117/3,
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Consciousness will now take responsibility for whatever appears to be incoherent in its perception of the object.55 At first, then, the particular’s many features fall into the perceiver, not the object – the thing “is white only to our eyes, also tart to our tongue, also cubical to our touch” (PS § 119/3, 99). The perceiver thus lets his mind be furnished with simple ideas and regards himself as “the universal medium in which such moments are kept apart and exist each on its own” (ibid.). But the thing’s properties must soon be re-ascribed to the object itself, if the latter is to be more than a something we know not what, while the unity of the object’s two aspects of singularity and diversity will now be contributed by consciousness.56 The thing thus becomes a “genuine Also” and its properties assume the character of “stuffs” – they are the reality that remains after the thing with properties has turned into a “collection of ‘matters’” and its oneness now is no more than “an enclosing surface” (cf. PS § 121/3, 101).57 With this, what was initially a self-standing, self-supporting thing (an individual substance) has become an epiphenomenon while its material constituents are now the primary reality. From “substance” in the sense of bearer of properties we have moved to “substance” in the sense of stuff. Hegel summarizes the experience of perceptual consciousness thus far by explaining that the object has now revealed itself to consciousness in a twofold way, viz. as something that is both a one and a diversity not only for consciousness but also in and of itself. That is to say, because even in its constructionist attitude consciousness found it necessary to view both aspects of the thing not only as subjective but also as objective, the concept of the thing as a unity of oneness and diversity is by no means a mere mental construct but has objective reality, so to speak: Our experience, then, is this, that the Thing exhibits itself for the consciousness apprehending it, in a specific manner, but is at the same time reflected out of the way in which it presents itself to consciousness and back into itself; in other words, it contains in its own self an opposite truth (PS § 122/3, 101).
Consciousness has now caught up with the situation described in the Introduction. Not only does the way in which the thing displays itself outwardly exist for consciousness, the in-itself or essence does so, too. The object’s in-itself appears in and through the requirements it imposes on consciousness’ constructionist efforts such that consciousness knows what the in-itself would have to be like.
55 The
second cycle of the experience of perceptual consciousness is detailed at PS §§ 119–121/3, 99–101. 56 Interestingly, Hegel locates the emergence of the Principle of Non-Contradiction at this juncture in the construction of thinghood. The PNC lets us avoid having to say that something is simultaneously F,G, and H “all over” by offering the escape hatch of the “insofar” (cf. PS § 121/3, 100–101). Insofar as x is F it is not G etc., notwithstanding the fact that in the thing all these properties interpenetrate – the grain of salt is not white on one side and tart or soluble on the other or now one thing and then the other, rather in perception it is all these things at once and everywhere. 57 We are all familiar with this way of looking at things as collections of matters. When we pick up a box of margarine in the supermarket, for instance, the nutrition information tells us that we hold in our hands a composite of various “matters” combining x percent of fat, y percent of cholesterol, z percent of carbohydrates etc. From the chemist’s point of view, our piece of margarine is just that.
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The anti-realist, constructionist phase concludes on a contradictory note, however. Either the unity marks the in-itself aspect and the diversity falls into consciousness, or the unity falls into consciousness and the diversity into the object. Both seem to be true, but cannot be true with equal right. Consciousness now returns to a position of realism and tries to reconcile both aspects on the side of the object. This construal of the intrinsic determinacy of the thing takes the form of metaphysical or essence realism58 : [t]he object is now for consciousness this whole movement which was previously shared between the object and consciousness (PS § 123/3, 101).
In other words, the elements of oneness and determinacy that had emerged as a form requirement contributed by consciousness must now be united on the side of the thing itself. The candidate for this position is, I suggest, atomic essentialism which distinguishes between an in-itself that determines a thing intrinsically and which is called its essence, and the thing’s relatedness to other things, its being-for-others on account of which the thing is connected with other things.59 A thing’s relatedness to other things makes possible a comparison between itself and other things which reveals both differences and commonalities. However, perceptual consciousness already knows through its experience during the first cycle that the common properties cannot individuate the thing since they are universal and are also found in other things. Accordingly, they cannot constitute the thing’s essential identity or nature and are therefore separated from its intrinsic determination as that which is inessential.60 It must therefore be the in-itself which constitutes the thing’s essence. The essence is here conceived of as negative self-relatedness or an as yet incomplete being-for-self. That is to say, it is self-related in opposition to its other-relatedness. The thing’s self-relatedness is therefore no longer an immediate relation. Rather, the thing’s in-itself is a result of its being “reflected into itself” (ibid.) out of its being-for-another. It is not difficult to see that the thing’s self-relatedness or being-for-self is logically possible only in contrast to its other-relatedness. Hegel’s point is thus that the thing’s essence cannot be viewed as something existing in splendid isolation from its being related to other things. On the contrary, the thing’s inessential being-for-another is a necessary presupposition of its self-relatedness because self-relation here is a negation, not an immediacy. On the basis of these assumptions, atomistic essentialism turns out to be a total
58 Cf. Pinkard, 1996, p. 32. Pinkard does not explicitly suggest any particular metaphysical position
that might be associated with this cycle of consciousness’ experience. 59 It is probably not a coincidence that this terminology is reminiscent of Aristotle’s similar expres-
sions kath’ hauto and kat’ allou. For Aristotle’s atomic essentialism cf. Metaph. VII 13, 1038b 9–11: “. . . primary substance is that kind of substance which is peculiar to an individual, which does not belong to anything else.” 60 In an Aristotelian context the unessential aspect of the thing is similar to both the accidental properties (symbebekota) and the matter which, according to Aristotelian doctrine, is not part of the essence of something (cf. Metaph. VII 10, 1035a 26–32).
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fiasco. For not only is it contradictory to say that that which is inessential is nonetheless a necessary condition, it is also paradoxical to believe that something like the in-itself which exists as the negation of an opposite determination could enjoy complete autarky. To be itself, the thing must negate its relation to other things, but this negation, if true, undermines its self-relatedness. As Hegel puts it: . . . the Thing is demolished by the very determinateness that constitutes its essence and its being-for-self . . . (PS § 126/3, 103).
The claim that to be a thing is to be an independent, intrinsically determined bearer of properties cannot be sustained. The allegedly self-subsistent nature of substances – so strongly advocated by Aristotle – cannot be upheld. The other-relatedness of the particular is the negation of its self-subsistence, and it is really the essential property of the Thing that is its undoing (PS § 125/3, 103).
Hegel’s general point in all this, it seems to me, is that particulars are not the kind of thing that can be self-subsistent or independent. Self-subsistence and independence can be achieved only if the relation to the other is internalized and has thus effectively become a self-relation via an immanent other. From being “an other” of something the other must be transformed into “its other”.61 The relation to an external other which is necessary for the thing’s self-relation makes the thing dependent on that other and thus compromises its isolation from others. The being-for-another, instead of being excluded from the in-itself needs to be included in it, if the beingin-itself is to be a genuine being-for-self. As long as this has not happened, the thing remains “afflicted with an [external] opposition” (PS § 129/3, 104) and “burdened with a being-for-another” (PS § 130/3, 105). A contradiction persists between the thing’s self-relatedness, its self-subsistence, and its dependence on external conditions. The allegedly “substantial” being is a “conditioned being-for-self alongside which appears another being-for-self” (ibid.). This other being-for-self, however, does not merely exist alongside the thing, it is the thing’s own diversity or beingfor-another which is, after all, only the reflection of the fact that a particular is necessarily one among many. Other-relatedness is built into the very concept of the supposedly serenely self-related particular. The phenomenon that expresses this situation is force, and the appropriate form of cognition of consciousness is called the understanding. Hence, “Force and Understanding” is the title of the chapter following Perception. A note on the concept of the understanding. For Hegel, the understanding is the intellectual activity that intelligently observes, makes inventories of, categorizes, analyzes, scientifically explains and tries to form an accurate theory of reality. In Force and Understanding the understanding’s activities are associated with the great scientific discoveries since the Copernican revolution and the philosophical response to them from Galileo through Kant, Fichte and Schelling. The understanding is the great bookkeeper of reality and its scientific investigator. It embodies the 61 See
SL 118/WdL I 105 (something is “das Andere seiner selbst,” “the other in its own self”).
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analytic skill of thought. Its guiding principles in the ordering and explanation of data are discrimination, accuracy of distinctions, inductive and deductive reasoning, and that combination of comprehensiveness and simplicity which makes for the elegance of theories. It strives for unity of knowledge while strictly adhering to the principles of non-contradiction and excluded middle. Hegel is known for holding the understanding in relatively low esteem, in contrast to reason which is the unifier of opposites and thus the real synthesizer whereas the understanding brings uniformity rather than unity to diversity. He refers to the philosophies of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz and the British Empiricists as a metaphysics of the understanding and criticizes Kant for having made the understanding, rather than reason, the primary source of knowledge.62 Indeed, for him the understanding is intelligent consciousness, but as such also affected with the opposition of consciousness. And yet, Hegel does not think badly of the understanding. It is true that he chides Kant for having treated reason as if it were even less capable of knowledge than the understanding. But then he also believed that Kant’s original synthetic unity of self-consciousness represented the genuinely speculative principle of philosophy anticipating his own concept of the Notion, even if described in accordance with the terms of the understanding.63 It is the understanding that resists reason which is really the target of Hegel’s critique. As long as the understanding prepares the ground for the work of reason, it fulfills a valuable, even indispensable role: . . . the thinking of the understanding must unquestionably be conceded its right and merit, which generally consists in the fact that without the understanding there is no fixity or determinacy in the domains either of theory or of practice. First, with regard to cognition, it begins by apprehending given objects in their determinate distinctions. Thus, in the consideration of nature, . . . distinctions are drawn between matters, forces, kinds, etc. and they are marked off, each on its own account, in isolation one from another. . . . Understanding is just as indispensable in the practical sphere . . . Character is an essential factor in conduct, and a man of character is a man of understanding who (for that reason) has definite purposes in mind and pursues them with firm intent. . . . Furthermore, the understanding is an essential moment in culture generally. A cultivated person is not satisfied with what is cloudy and indeterminate; indeed, he grasps subject matters in their fixed determinacy . . . (Enc. § 80A).
The weakness of the understanding consist chiefly in its incapacity to establish an intrinsic connection among its various partial insights. Its modus operandi is the “either/or and not both” (cf. E § 80A). Its primary form of expression is the judgment or proposition, and its idea of truth is that no true proposition should ever contradict another – an idea that is analyzed further in the Logic under the title of “formal identity or identity-of-the-understanding.”64 Left to its own devices, the understanding gets caught between, and is paralyzed by, the Scylla of tautology and the Charybdis 62 See
WW 19, 328–331.
63 The categories of the understanding have, after all, objective reality, whereas the ideas of reason
are merely regulative. Cf. Hegel’s comment in Differenzschrift (IV 6) that Kant’s theory of the understanding in the Transcendental Deduction had been held over the baptismal by reason (and thus was graced with a genuinely speculative spirit), but that afterwards – i.e. in the Dialectic of the Critique – reason was treated as if it was even more obtuse than the understanding. 64 See E § 115 and SL 411–4116/WdL II 26–32.
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of contradiction. However, Hegel also believes that the understanding is in essence a form of reason, reason in its immediacy. Consequently, when the understanding is made to reflect on itself, its true nature should emerge in due course. This is what Force and Understanding will try to show. The analysis of atomic essentialism corresponds to the dialectic of something and its other in the Logic.65 This lets us suspect that the third cycle of Perception marks the transition to what in the Logic is called the genuine infinite.66 However, while in Force and Understanding Hegel does indeed discuss structures that implement infinitude and exhibit being-for-self or self-referentiality, these structures, such as the laws of physics, are at first still merely objective in the realist sense of existing independently of consciousness.67 Methodologically speaking, being-in-itself and being-for-another are at first united on the side of the object, but the object itself is not yet united with consciousness in an immanent subject-object relationship. Unity of being-in-itself and being-for-another on the side of the object as well as the subject is the pattern that underlies the subsequent confrontation of two selfconsciousnesses. The chapter on Force and Understanding is meant to achieve the incorporation of the objective into the subjective and thus to prepare the way for the emergence of the concept of genuine reason. Hence the content-form opposition characteristic of consciousness is still operative in Force and Understanding and is overcome only at its very end. Prior to that conclusion, consciousness does not yet understand its object as its own other. Instead, it sees the structure of infinity emerge on the object side first so that it may eventually recognize its own self-referential nature in its object as if in a mirror, a moment that will have arrived towards the conclusion of Force and Understanding. Talking about the infinite, it should be recalled that infinity for Hegel is not a problematic notion. Genuine infinity for him is nothing but “affirmative” selfrelation, i.e. relation to self via an other whose otherness has been negated or internalized (hence the characterization of this structure as a negation of negation68 ): As the “consummated return into self,” the genuine infinite is The relation of itself to itself, is being – but not indeterminate, abstract being, for it is posited as negating the negation; it is, therefore, also determinate being for it contains negation in general and hence determinateness. It is and is there, present before us. It is only the spurious infinite which is the beyond, because it is only the negation of the finite posited as real . . . (SL 148–149/WdL I 138).
65 For
the detailed analysis of being-in-itself and being-for-another see SL 122–129/WdL I 110– 116. 66 Hegel confirms this at PS § 163/3, 133: “Infinity . . . has been from the start the soul of all that has gone before . . ..” 67 Hence Hegel comments that the object of the understanding “which is now the true object of consciousness is still just an object for it” (PS § 132/3, 107–108), that the object has “become Notion in principle; but consciousness is not yet for-itself the Notion” (ibid.), or that consciousness “converts” its insight “into an objective inner [i.e. an inner being of the object], and distinguishes this reflection of Things from its own reflection into itself. . . . This inner is, therefore, for consciousness an extreme over against it . . .” (PS § 143/3, 116). 68 Cf. SL 137/WdL I 126: “The infinite is the negation of negation, affirmation, being which has restored itself out of limitedness.”
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Nor should it be forgotten that such affirmative self-relation and inclusion of the other in the self also transforms the self, broadens and enlarges it in such a way that the initial self in turn becomes a moment within the new inclusive structure. To indicate the main methodological task of Force and Understanding, Hegel’s purpose will be to show that epistemological dualism, including its Kantian version, must be replaced by a thoroughgoing idealism which incorporates the objects and their ground completely into the immanence of thought. Force and Understanding thus goes beyond the otherwise necessary “reflective turn” in philosophy about which we heard earlier in the Introduction to the Science of Logic and which Hegel recapitulated very briefly in the second cycle of Perception. At the end of Force and Understanding, “the true”, which had so far been thought to exist independently of consciousness and to be opposed to it, will then be included in it, albeit “in theory” or “subjectively” only and not yet objectively or in actuality. With this move, however, consciousness is no longer just consciousness.69 Since consciousness is defined by the so-called opposition of consciousness, once the first, immediate form of that opposition is overcome consciousness itself is transformed into a moment of the new, more comprehensive structure called self-consciousness. Insofar as inclusion of the other is a characteristic of reason it is also correct to say that Force and Understanding effectively anticipates the concept of reason, just as the chapter on Self-Consciousness will anticipate the concept of spirit.70 Force and Understanding is as much about the concept of truth and the nature of theorizing as it is about the concept of force and the explanation of the sensible world. Looking at the methodological aspect of Force and Understanding in more detail, it appears that there are three major oppositions of consciousness that the understanding must work through in order to penetrate to the nature of truth. The first is the opposition between the concept or Notion of force and its reality. This opposition is transformed into the unity of Notion and reality of force which Hegel calls the “inner being of Things” (PS § 136/3, 111; § 142/3, 115–116). The second opposition expresses at first a quasi-Platonic distinction between “a vanishing present world” of sensuous reality over against a “supersensible world” which forms a “permanent beyond” (PS § 144/3, 117). This opposition is then further developed into the notorious Kantian distinction of appearance and thing-in-itself, or phenomena and noumena. The realm of noumena is also characterized as a “supersensible world” (PS § 144/3, 117) and a “tranquil kingdom of laws” (PS § 157/3, 127). Finally, the third opposition is in a sense a variation on the second. In it the first supersensible world is transformed into a second, so-called “inverted” world that is now the inverted opposite of the first supersensible world (ibid.). This development is prompted by the attempt to incorporate the phenomenon of polarity in nature and human life into the supersensible realm. It also addresses the Schellingian divide between the principle of indifference and the subject-object duality. Interestingly, 69 In
fact, as we saw above in Section 3.1 consciousness was never merely consciousness. explicitly confirms this. The concept of reason appears first, if only in an “imperfect” form, at PS § 144/3, 117 during the introduction of the so-called supersensible world. In SelfConsciousness, the mutual relation of one self-consciousness to another marks the presence of spirit, if only at first the “Notion”, not yet the actuality, of spirit (cf. PS § 177/3, 144–145).
70 Hegel
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this final opposition within understanding finds its resolution in Fichte’s intellectual intuition which serves as the radicalized version of Kant’s transcendental unity of apperception. We will briefly summarize these oppositions and their resolution in what follows. Thematically, Hegel starts with force. By force we should not understand this or that specific physical force but rather the ground of nature as well as nature itself as it appears. It is perhaps not too far off the mark to see in the concept of force an equivalent of what in Spinoza is called natura naturans and natura naturata. In other words, Hegel’s notion of force here is very broad – we are asked to look at the world as a manifestation of force. The result of Perception was that reality is best understood as a self-differentiating and self-determining process existing independently of consciousness. Accordingly, reality now appears in the form of a “play of forces” that is intrinsically determined by the unchangeable laws of physics. This captures both the “dynamic” interpretation of reality by the modern scientific mind and its objectifying attitude for which the world is essentially a manifestation of objective forces. In a philosophical context such as Descartes’ we meet with the idea that the universe is a mechanical system – particles of matter having been set in motion with a certain initial amount of motion. Whatever happens in the world is an outcome of the impact of infinitely many particles on one another. In Leibniz we witness an understanding of reality as dependent on the intrinsically determined behavior of individual monads that are moved by a force called appetition. Leibniz’ idea of an “inner reality” of things that is non-spatial and non-temporal and of which the visible world is merely a “well-founded phenomenon”, and his belief that the laws of physics have no metaphysical necessity but can be suspended by an act of God71 may serve as paradigmatic illustrations of Hegel’s argument in Force and Understanding, viz. that the world of sensible substances and physical forces is but an ideal moment within a larger “kingdom of laws”. The conceptual structure of force is that of an “unconditioned universal” (PS § 132/3, 107). This means that, unlike in the case of the atomic essence, difference is internal to it, not external. Force is therefore the first object of consciousness that is intrinsically determined.72 It is the paradigmatic phenomenon representing the unity of being-for-self and being for-another that has resulted from Perception.73 Hegel calls the moment that corresponds to the being-for-another of the thing and to the universal medium of many subsistent matters “the expression of Force” (PS § 136/3, 110) and that which corresponds to its being-in-itself or oneness “Force proper” (ibid.). Both are related as mutually dependent on one another, but dependent in such a way that unlike things with properties they no longer exist in opposition to one another but instead form two aspects of one reality. The conceptual framework of 71 Cf.
Leibniz, Discourse of Metaphysics §§ 6, 7. force, Hegel says, “the absolute antithesis [of being-for-self and being-for-another, of independent and dependent being, ground and grounded] is posited as self-identical essence” (PS § 134/3, 108). 73 As a result of the development in Perception, “the unity of ‘being-for-self’ and ‘being-foranother’ is posited” (PS § 134/3, 108). 72 In
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an atomism of particulars has been replaced by one of internal relations. Taking our cue from Kant’s table of categories we may say that one aspect of the relationship here discussed is that expressed by the second category of relation, viz. causality, while the other is that of Kant’s third category of relation, i.e. reciprocal action. This is confirmed by Hegel’s discussion of causality and reciprocal action in the Jena Logic which parallels that of force in Force and Understanding,74 even though the discussion of Force at PS §§ 136–142/3, 109–116 never mentions the concepts of cause and effect and only hints at that of reciprocal action when talking about “the interplay” of forces (PS § 139/3, 113).75 Hegel’s basic argument is that the duplication of what is at bottom one reality into two independent phenomena – i.e. cause and effect and two separate interacting forces, respectively – is on one hand necessary in order for force to be “real”. On the other hand, however, this independence is merely an appearance, or, rather, is characteristic of reality as appearance. The argument is designed to show that the “idealization” of sensible reality, i.e. its transformation into a dependent manifestation of the “inner being” of things is an inevitable and logically necessary development as well as an actual experience of consciousness. To begin with, then, force has two aspects, force proper or force as potentiality and force expressing itself. Both aspects are necessary. If force expresses itself, it must do so from an opposite state of being “driven back into itself” (PS § 136/3, 110). Likewise, force must manifest itself in order to be force. A force that could not possibly become actual would not be force, since force is force in virtue of having a manifestation. This is simply the logic of the concept of force and it leads us to posit an “expression” of force distinct from “force proper” – or an effect of a cause. But on the other hand, what is thus posited as an effect is in fact the same force that already exists as the cause. The force expresses itself in its effect, but to say that it causes the effect is merely to say that the same force continues to exist as a manifestation of itself. The effect just is the cause, if by effect we understand, as Hegel does, the force in the
74 The
substance-accident relationship, it might be argued, was taken up in Perception under the title of the Thing and its many properties. In the Jena Logic Hegel says of force: „Über den soeben erläuterten Kausalzusammenhang erhebt sich der Begriff der Kraft; die Kraft vereinigt in sich die beiden wesentlichen Seiten des Verhältnisses, die Identität und das Getrenntsein“ (JL 50). The basic argument in the Jena Logic is also the same as that in the Phenomenology, viz. that the distinction between cause and effect or between two mutually reacting substances is only a formal one since the content is the same on both sides. See, for instance, JL 43: “Man sieht, daß die Kraft eigentlich das ganze Kausalitätsverhältnis in sich ausdrückt oder die Ursache, wie sie mit der Wirkung eins und in Wahrheit wirkliche Substanz, aber auch das Kausalitätsverhältnis aufgehoben ist” (my emphasis). Hegel even argues that the identity of cause and effect (which he continues to defend in SL and E) is the real reason why Hume was justified to deny any necessity to the cause-effect relationship – not, as Hume thought, because it could not be observed, but because the two relata are separable only in appearance (cf. JL 48). – For the question to what extent the Jena Logic serves as the foil for the argument of the entire Phenomenology see J. Heinrichs’ still indispensable study Die Logik der, Phänomenologie des Geistes’ (Heinrichs, 1974). 75 The Miller translation interprets the text by adding “reciprocal” and “mutually” (end of PS § 138 and beginning of § 139/3, 113), expressions that have no direct counterpart in Hegel’s text.
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process of expressing itself.76 If we take the single event of a billiard ball in motion, the movement of the ball is the expression of the force that moves it and hence is its effect. But while the ball keeps moving the force continues to be a cause and therefore remains “force proper” or force “driven back into itself” (PS § 136/3, 110) even while expressing itself. In other words, we distinguish force as cause from force as expression while in fact the two are indeed the same force. Hegel can therefore claim that in expressing itself force is nonetheless “remaining within itself” (ibid.), i.e. in its expression it remains force proper. This is just another way of saying that the same force is both cause and effect. The distinction between the two aspects of force is merely conceptual while the content or reality of force is identically the same. I take this to be Hegel’s conceptualization of the Newtonian concept of inertia. He concludes therefore that “the difference exists only in thought” (PS §136/3, 110). In expressing itself force has only made itself into an effect of itself, i.e. it has caused itself to appear. This effect, however, is nothing but the actuality of force, i.e. the being effective of force proper.77 The distinction between force proper and expression of force is only a formal one. This should not mislead us into thinking, however, that the distinction is only nominal or verbal. If force could not be separated into cause and effect, neither would there be a distinction between a ground and a grounded. And without the latter, force would serve no explanatory purpose. It would merely be a descriptive concept. Consequently, the distinction must be established in such a way that force proper and the expression of force differ not only in thought but also in existence. Hegel takes this to mean that the concept (or “Notion”) of force itself must become real. So if we really want to be able to distinguish cause and effect from one another we need to redefine our concept of force in such a way that the aspect of being a cause and that of being an effect can be separated in reality. However, just because the two have already been seen to be aspects of one force this “realization” of the concept of force requires that we duplicate force into two forces. The positing of two forces allows us to maintain the cause-effect distinction as a real distinction, or a distinction in content, not in form only. Hegel therefore introduces a distinction between a soliciting and a solicited force (PS § 137/3, 111–112). The soliciting or active force solicits another, passive force to manifest itself. This is actually what happens in what is normally considered a simple cause-effect connection where we think of a force being transmitted from one body to the next through contact. In truth, however, any such cause-effect relation is a case of reciprocal action in which the effect also reacts to the cause (the billiard ball that is hit makes the ball hitting it come to a stop, for instance, and the effect is thus also the actualization of a latent 76 In
order to avoid a misunderstanding we should keep at bay the Humean analysis of two events following one another. To make sense of what Hegel means here we should be thinking of one event only, where the event is itself the manifestation of force. The billiard ball rolling is already an “expression” of force, quite independently of its impinging on another ball. The conventional cause-effect sequence is discussed in what immediately follows under the title of a duplication of forces. 77 Cf. also E §§ 153–154.
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force in the second ball). Effects are responses by a latent force in the object affected by the cause and the cause therefore has “repercussions”. Effects are also causes, not only in the sense of propagating other effects linearly but also in the reciprocal sense of affecting their causes due to being prompted to manifest their latent forces by a cause acting on them. The usual cause-effect relationship in which a force is transmitted from one body to the next reveals itself as an abstraction of a more complicated scenario of reciprocal action. In this scenario, causes are affected by their effects and effects are causes. Although the two are distinct, they also exchange their determinations. Moreover, the force itself is again only one force – each action calls forth a counteraction in kind. A push meets with resistance, i.e. with a push in the opposite direction, a pull results in a pull in the opposite direction, a centrifugal force is opposed to a centripetal force. Indeed, without such counteraction there would not be a duplication of force but the previous indistinguishableness of cause and effect. In cause and effect, inertia collides with itself. Looked at superficially, two bodies related by reciprocal action are merely two things unaffected in their identity by what is happening between them – the two billiard balls are essentially the same balls before and after the impact. But Hegel is not concerned here with these two things but with the forces that explain their behavior. And at that level, a truly remarkable phenomenon reveals itself. First, obviously there would not be an impact or the deployment of force without resistance, i.e. without some counteraction. Hence the actualization of force necessitates the “duplication into two Forces” (PS § 141/3, 114). But secondly, these two forces do not alternate in their activity. That is to say, when force manifests itself in action and reaction it is not the case that one force is first active and then becomes passive while the other force is first passive and is then activated. Rather, the activity of both forces occurs simultaneously – or not at all. Without a centripetal pull there could not be a centrifugal pull. And yet the two are opposites. It is therefore correct to say that the actuality of force is a paradox. An action or state such as the deployment of force is realized and held together by two opposites. And looked at more closely it is not just a matter of their existing simultaneously either. If one of the opposites were suspended or eliminated, the phenomenon itself would disappear. This can only mean that the reality of the phenomenon exists by virtue of the opposites that create it through their opposition. The opposites in fact create and maintain the unity of the phenomenon. This is no doubt what Heraclitus tried to convey to “those who prove to be uncomprehending both before they have heard it and when once they have heard it” (KRS # 194, p. 187), viz. that They do not apprehend how being at variance it agrees with itself [lit. how being brought apart it is brought together with itself]: there is a back-stretched connexion, as in the bow and the lyre (KRS # 209, p. 192).
Just as Heraclitus attributes this paradoxical fact to the operation of logos, so Hegel sees in the analysis of the actuality of force the proof that the concept or Notion of force represents the true reality of force. Against this reality, the manifestation of force in the form of a duplication of two forces is an appearance only. For the conceptualization of this appearance leaves no other choice than to say that
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the two opposing forces are mere “moments” of force itself. The actuality of force is characterized by the fact that two opposites form a unity in which they are both distinct and identical. They are distinct in appearance, but identical in kind, and both this identity and distinctness are reflected in the concept of actual force. Behind the appearance of two independent forces, actual force thus exhibits the structure of the Notion as a unity of opposites both of which are constitutive of the identity of the reality called force. The true reality of force consists in its concept. In other words, thinking reveals the true nature of force. Its concept, not its appearance, is what force really is: . . . the truth of Force remains only the thought of it; the moments of its actuality, their substances and their movement, collapse unresistingly into an undifferentiated unity, a unity which is . . . its Notion qua Notion (PS § 141/3, 115).
Hegel continues that the realization of force is thus “at the same time the loss of reality” (ibid.). That is to say, its conceptualization is at the same time the loss of the apparent substantiality and independence of the sensible phenomenon that ordinary consciousness takes as a given and that misleads us, for instance, into treating the behavior of the approaching billiard ball and the impacted ball as something occurring between two separate substances or independent things (such that Hume famously concluded that all events seem to be entirely separate and unconnected). The duplication of force is a matter of its appearance which, while required by the concept of force, is also superseded by it. Taking force as a paradigm of the ground of the sensible world generally we can say that this sensible world has now been made dependent on the “inner being” of appearances which is none other than “the Notion of Force qua Notion” (PS § 142/3, 115–116). It is interesting to note that Hegel singles out just this concept, i.e. the concept of force, as the dominant category of the theoretical world-view of early modernity. With this step Hegel’s argument has made a significant advance. The inner being of appearances has now become the truth of the sensible world, not in the sense of being separate from, but in that of being intrinsic to it. The sensible world is seen as dependent upon this inner being and is thus superseded in its immediacy – the idea that the world of appearances represents an independent, self-sustaining reality has been put to rest. This marks the transition to what may loosely be called the metaphysical standpoint. It has now been understood that thought, not perception, grasps the true nature of phenomena and that that nature is “noumenal”. In principle, from now on thought itself is the “inner being of things”.78 At the same time, however, the dualism of this new “supersensible world” (PS § 144/3, 117) and the world of appearances has not been left behind. For one thing, although consciousness knows the inner being of things to be the true reality, it does not identify with this inner being. In typical fashion, it “converts” the inner being again into an “objective inner,” a “permanent beyond” (PS §§ 143–4/3, 116–117). While this mundus intelligibilis is purely noumenal, i.e. an object of thought and therefore “the 78 Frank-Peter
Hansen expresses this very well: „Der Begriff der Sache ist der Begriff der Sache“ – the concept of the matter is the concept of the matter: see Hansen, 1994, p. 53.
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first,” if “imperfect, appearance of Reason” (§ 144/3, 117), it is also “an extreme” over against consciousness, i.e. separated from it by the immediately observed sensuous world. As understanding, consciousness does not yet recognize itself in this reason – reason is something above and beyond it, it is divine like a Cartesian or Spinozistic infinite substance, a Leibnizean monad of monads, or an impersonal Law. Because in the order of discovery consciousness has inferred the true nature of things from and on the basis of the sensible world, this sensible world continues to be for it the stepping stone or “hypothesis” to reach the supersensible world: [The] true essence of Things has now the character of not being immediately for consciousness; on the contrary, consciousness has a mediated relation to the inner being and, as the Understanding, looks through this mediating play of Forces into the true background of Things (PS § 143/3, 116).
What, then, does consciousness see behind the veil of appearances? From a philosophical point of view, the inner being may lack any determinacy whatsoever. This happens, if the inner being is understood as the mere “nothingness of appearance” (PS § 146/3, 117). In that case, the ground of appearances is effectively cut off from the appearances themselves. Appearances do not manifest the inner being of things which therefore disguises itself as an unknowable thing-in-itself. Hegel dismisses this Kantian scenario as a red herring: Certainly, we have no knowledge of this inner world as it is here in its immediacy; but not because Reason is too short-sighted or is limited . . ., but because of the simple nature of the matter in hand, that is to say, because in the void nothing is known (PS § 146/3, 117).79
Instead, he sees in the awakening of the scientific consciousness of modernity the true standard bearer of the metaphysical spirit. Modern science will fill the supersensible void with the “law of Force” which is “the stable image of unstable appearance” (PS § 149/3, 120). The “absolute flux of appearance” (ibid.) will be reduced to the identity of equations in which the values of variables change while the equation remains imperturbably and steadily selfsame. Soon, however, the dualism of the sensible world and the “realm of laws” (PS § 150/3, 120) develops into a new contradiction. The laws of nature turn out to be idealizations of the actual behavior of phenomena and thus lack accuracy. There are numerous other forces operative in the observed sensible world whose influence is ignored in the formulation of a law, so-called marginal conditions, ideal or standard assumptions, etc. The understanding must try to accommodate these impure circumstances by adding more and more specific laws. This triggers the opposite motivation to unify all laws and to discover 79 He also formulates the critique that later reappears in the Introduction to the Science of Logic, viz.
that if the supersensible realm is posited as necessary and affirmed to be unknowable nonetheless, we are left with the world of appearances as our object of knowledge, a world which, however, as something explicitly made dependent on the supersensible world is simultaneously known not to contain the truth. In other words, we then “perceive something as true which we know is not true” (PS § 146/3, 118). At SL 46/WdL I 27 Hegel calls this view “absurd” [ungereimt]. That the concept of the thing-in-itself is essentially a logical construct and a contradiction, viz. a ground whose grounding function is both affirmed and denied (and thus becomes a dysfunctional concept), is also Hegel’s view in the Logic (see, e.g., SL 489–490/WdL II 111–112; E § 124).
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“the theory of everything”, for instance in the form of one fundamental force. The theory supposedly would enable us to explain all phenomena by recourse to a single law. But it is clear that the explanatory value of such a theory would be very limited. In its simplicity, such a theory would not be much more than a tautology. The actual behavior of appearances could not be explained in this way, specific explanations would again belong to the particular laws. For instance, The unification of all laws in universal attraction expresses no other content than just the mere Notion of law itself . . . Universal attraction merely asserts that everything has a constant difference in relation to other things. The Understanding imagines that in this unification it has found a universal law which expresses universal reality as such; but in fact it has only found the Notion of law itself, although in such a way that what it is saying is that all reality is in its own self, conformable to law (PS § 150/3, 121–122).80
There opens up, then, another opposition between “the inner world as a simple unity” (PS § 151/3, 122) and the specific laws “in which the differences are expressed as independent moments” (PS § 152/3, 122). The simple unity of the inner world cannot, however, comfortably be maintained, once science discovers seemingly paradoxical phenomena that suggest an irreducible dualism within reality itself. Thus magnetism and electricity exhibit a polar nature for which no unified origin seems imaginable. Typically, a plus pole cannot exist independently of a minus pole and vice versa.81 While this sounds like a repetition of the earlier unity of opposites we saw in the case of force, it is not. The two opposites are not only, Hegel wants to argue, opposites vis-à-vis each other but opposites of themselves, or each is not only the opposite of an other but also its own opposite. The earlier opposition has been sharpened to become an “antithesis within the antithesis itself” (PS § 160/3, 130). To illustrate, if it is really the case that a magnetic pole is radically inseparable from its opposite, then the idea that there could be a pole that is only positive or only negative must be rejected even though on the surface, i.e. on the basis of mere observation, any given pole is either the one or the other. Instead, following this line of reasoning we seem compelled to accept the idea that the positive pole is in itself also the negative pole and vice versa. In other words, the two must coexist not just as two different aspects of a third element that keeps them together, but each must literally be both itself and its opposite. Each opposite thus carries an “inner difference” within itself (PS § 157/3, 128; § 161/3, 131). Moreover, while each opposite has its opposite within its own self, each is also opposed to the other opposite that likewise carries its opposite within itself. Each thus possesses both an internal and an external opposite, an antithesis within the antithetical relata. Each “repels” its internal opposite in the sense that in its manifestation it can be only negative or positive but not both, and it “attracts” its external opposite. But it also 80 It
should be noted, however, that while Hegel’s tautology objection may be correct, the point is not the formula alone but its quantifiability that allows the scientist to derive non-tautological measurements and predictions. 81 It was reported not too long ago that scientists have apparently managed artificially to isolate one magnetic pole. I am not competent to judge whether this invalidates the traditional belief in the inseparability of the polar opposites or whether the isolated pole can still be called a magnetic pole.
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attracts its internal opposite simply because it is its own opposite, and it repels its external homologue. From this complex opposition there results the unified reality of a magnet. For the understanding, this situation is a conceptual conundrum, but for Hegel it expresses the structure of infinity or of the Notion (cf. PS § 160/3, 131). What we have here is a negation of the negative relation of two opposites resulting in a stable unity. Both opposites carry the same inner difference of a positive and a negative aspect and are in this respect identical, and both relate to each other as opposites that attract one another. The understanding thus learns, Hegel explains, that . . . it is a law of appearance itself, that differences arise which are no differences, or that what is selfsame repels itself from itself; and similarly, that the differences are only such as are in reality no differences and which cancel themselves; in other words, what is not selfsame is self-attractive” (PS § 156/3, 126–127).
It is important to understand that with this experience difference or opposition has now penetrated into the thing itself, i.e. into the inner being or inner world insofar as the latter is the true ground of appearances (cf. PS § 155/3, 126).82 The inner being of things is no longer a “tranquil kingdom of laws” (PS § 157/3, 127), but affected by “the principle of change and alteration” (PS § 157/3, 128). What is more, a contradiction has entered into the realm of laws for which there does not seem to be an immediate solution. If the identity of something consists in the fact that (a) it is simultaneously positive and negative and (b) cannot exist without uniting with an opposite that is equally both positive and negative, the understanding, which is committed to the principles of tautological identity and external difference, finds itself severely challenged. Hegel discusses three solutions to this situation. To the first he gives the name of the “inverted world” (PS §§ 157–9/3, 127–130). The second represents his own dialectical “sublation” of the contradiction (PS §§ 160–2/3, 130–133). The third proposal is not clearly identified, but the formulation of the text suggests very strongly that it is Schelling’s philosophy of indifference that Hegel has in mind (PS § 162/3, 132–134).83 Schelling’s position is criticized and unceremoniously dismissed as the result of “fretting” over a pseudo-problem. Force and Understanding ends with the argument that the position reached with Hegel’s proposed solution corresponds to the Fichtean version of Kant’s transcendental unity of apperception, i.e. the idea that the original unity of self-consciousness is an absolute I that reveals itself to itself as the ground of all reality (PS §§ 164–5/3, 134–136). At the end of Force and Understanding, then, the experience of consciousness has caught up 82 The
penetration of difference into the inner being of things occurs indirectly at first with the tautological process of explanation discussed earlier in the text, in which a difference between theory and reality is stated which “is not [yet] a difference belonging to the thing itself” (PS § 154/3, 125). Indirectly, because the self-differentiation is supposed to happen only “theoretically”, i.e. in the understanding, and does not yet affect things themselves (cf. PS § 155/3, 126). I take the discussion of explanation at PS § 155 to contain an implicit reference to Kant’s analysis of the Paralogisms and the Antinomies which so to speak explains away any possible contradiction so that from the point of view of the understanding everything is in good logical order in the noumenal realm. 83 See also Falke, 1996, pp. 125–130.
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with the beginning of the Copernican revolution in philosophy, the position Hegel elsewhere calls subjective idealism.84 The inverted world is notorious among Hegel scholars for its obscurity.85 It is called a “second supersensible world” (PS § 157/3, 128) and is supposed to be the inversion not of the world of appearances but of the first supersensible world (ibid.). I suggest that the enigma of the inverted world may be resolved in the light of our earlier discussion of the dualistic nature of phenomena. But first let us look again at the genesis of the inverted world. It arises through the incorporation of duality or opposition into the first supersensible world. In other words, the inverted world is on one hand the inversion of the first supersensible world but on the other it contains latter within itself.86 As such it is at the same time the mirror image of the world of appearance that exhibits the same dualism and contradiction, albeit in an unexplained, immediate fashion. Just like the first supersensible world, however, the inverted world is supposed to be the explanatory ground of the sensible world, and because it mirrors the latter it is both its duplicate and its ground, i.e. it has completely absorbed the sensible world into itself while at the same time supplying its foundation. With this step, then, we have reached Fichte’s position of the theoretical immanence of finite self and world, I and not-I, within an absolute self that “posits” the duality of subject and object within itself. Since the inversion now exists within the immanence of the second supersensible world, everything that is like itself in the first supersensible world is in truth unlike itself in the second and everything that is unlike itself in the first is in truth like itself in the second: Expressed in determinate moments, this means that what in the law of the first [supersensible] world is sweet, in this inverted in-itself is sour, what in the former is black is, in the other, white. What in the law of the first is the north pole of the magnet is, in its other, supersensible in-itself [. . .], the south pole (PS § 158/3, 128).87
84 If
correct this interpretation strongly suggests that a possible proto-version of the Phenomenology would not have ended with Force and Understanding but with the Reason chapter at the earliest. 85 Gadamer’s account seems least persuasive: see Gadamer, 1976, pp. 35–53. For a more recent treatment and comments on other interpretations see Harris, 1997, pp. I 294–300 and footnotes 38–43. 86 Cf. PS § 160/3, 131: “. . . the supersensible world, which is the inverted world, has at the same time overarched the other [sc. supersensible] world and has it within it . . ..” Hegel rejects the view that the opposition between the first supersensible world and the inverted world is only external as if the first supersensible world were now a world of appearance and the inverted world contained the true “in-itself” of the first supersensible world: “Looked at superficially, this inverted world is the opposite of the first [sc. supersensible world] in the sense that it has the latter outside of it and repels that world from itself as an inverted actual world: that the one is appearance, but the other the in-itself . . .” (PS § 159/3, 129). If this were the case, duality and contradiction would not yet have entered into the supersensible world. We would just have produced an inverted version of the sensible world, i.e. a caricature (see below). 87 As an interpretive addendum Miller’s translation puts “viz. in the earth” in the bracketed