On Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Nature’ : A Free Reflex of Spirit — part fifty.
‘Feast’
by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950)
I drank from ev’ry vine.
The last was like the first.
I came upon no wine
So wonderful as thirst.
I gnawed at ev’ry root.
I ate of ev’ry plant.
I came upon no fruit
So wonderful as want.
Feed the grape and bean to
the vintner and monger,
I will lie down lean with
my thirst and my hunger.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, (1770–1831), ‘Philosophy of Nature’. ‘Organics’.
‘Medicaments have mainly to be regarded as something which is indigestible. Indigestibility is a relative property however, although not in the vague sense that only that which can be tolerated by weaker constitutions is easily digestible, for the stronger the individuality, the more difficulty it will find in digesting such substances. The immanent relativity of the Notion, which has its actuality in life, is of a qualitative nature; expressed in its quantitative aspect, in so far as this aspect is valid at this juncture, it consists in the intrinsic independence of the opposed moments increasing in accordance with increased homogeneity. The lower forms of animal life, which have not reached the stage of internal differentiation, resemble the plants in that they are only able to digest the unindividualized neutrality of water. Infants digest the completely homogeneous animal lymph constituting mother’s milk; this is a substance which has already been digested, or rather converted directly into animality in a general way and without any further internal differentiation. They also digest those differentiated substances which have matured least in individuality. For invigorated constitutions, substances such as these are indigestible however. …. In so far as they are negative stimuli, medicaments are poisons. When the external and alien substance of an indigestible stimulant is administered to an organism alienated from itself by disease, this organism is forced to counter its effect by drawing itself together and entering into a process, by means of which it regains its sentience and subjectivity’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
The main point of view from which medicine must be considered is that it is an indigestible substance, the medicine force or forces is the organism to come out of its self-absorption and not merely to concentrate itself inwardly but to digest the external substance, the organism is thus drawn back again into the general activity of assimilation, a result which is obtained precisely by administering to the organism a substance much more indigestible than its disease to overcome which the organism must pull itself together.
Before proceeding with an account of medicine however some words on the philosophy of digestion.
The process of digestion has proven itself to be open to interpretations from within a cultural point of view. In the early nineteenth century chymification, the conversion of food into chyme, (a pulpy acidic fluid which passes from the stomach to the small intestine consisting of gastric juices and partly digested food) by the digestive action of gastric juice, and chylification (chyle being a milky bodily fluid consisting of lymph and emulsified fats or free fatty acids formed in the small intestine during digestion of fatty foods and taken up by lymph vessels specifically known as lacteals) persisted as objects that engendered certain disagreement albeit empirical science was starting to to discover the means by which to recognise the processes at work. Hegel was very much interested in the physiology of digestion and interpreted the results of empirical science in ways that connect digestion and all it entails physiologically with other realms of animal and human assimilation of the external world, digestion thereby becoming a master trope of assimilation albeit his interpretation does not proceed by analogy and metaphor but rather through chasing down the corporeal and material links that connect the body and the scene of eating to other human activities.
Hegel thereby created a practical model out of precise rigorous metonymical thinking that could reveal philosophical meaning in the most primary of physical processes, and in our modern age a number of movies have exploited the narrative and visual possibilities of cinema in presenting material around the themes of nutriments and consumption, for instance Itami Juzo’s ‘Tampopo’, 1985, is the tale of a lady’s quest for the perfect noodle soup and it was promoted as the first Japanese noodle western having in mind the so-called Italian spaghetti westerns of Italy, although the oldest evidence of noodles was from 4,000 years ago in China, and Marco Polo may have introduced pasta to Italy, when he came back from China, anyway, be that as it may, Tampopo the noodle western or rather noodle eastern is literally about noodles whereby the very physicality of eating is interspersed with scenes relevant to the noodle theme only to a limited extent concerning a stylized gangster underground that celebrate gastronomic eroticism and violence, and the movie closes with an extended zoom shot of what eventually resolves into a baby’s mouth suckling upon a nipple leaving the viewer with an impression that he or she has just sat through a forceful statement concerning the link between orality and human culture in general. Or a movie about noodles.
Gabriel Axel’s Babette’s Feast, 1987, delves into the transmogrifying potencies of comestibles in a backdrop of a small nineteenth-century Danish island the sparseness of which is only outdone by the rigidity and bloodlessness of the Protestant Christianity that is practiced there. After winning a lottery French refugee Babette who has become cook and housekeeper to the deceased minister’s spinster-daughters squanders her winnings upon a lavish feast in the consummate tradition of haute cuisine and subsequently set upon disregarding the seductions of the palate the small gathering of parishioners is carried away to new levels of discourse and community. Tsui Hark’s ‘The Chinese Feast’, 1995, mingles ingredients from the two aforementioned movies thereby producing a recipe of fast-paced gangster luxuriance and affable humour (‘Tampopo’) with culinary excesses (‘Babette’s Feast’) the movie climaxing in an extravagant cooking competition that requires master chefs to transform the most improbable raw materials, for instance bear paw and monkey brains, into works of culinary art, and the murderous rivalry between gangs and the blurring of martial arts technique with culinary skill and the violence brought to bear upon the variety of exotic and mundane food stuffs in the process of cooking are all thrown into the mix in a probing investigation into the fundamental complexities of oral culture.
It would appear that what such movies are trying to achieve is to shed some light upon the philosophical implications of eating for the desire for food certainly is a very significant driving factor behind entire world economies, directly or indirectly generating a good deal if not most human activity, food brings humans in relation with each other, with other animals, with the Earth, relations of varying degrees of kindliness, brutality, practicality, ethical and aesthetic value, and the cultural realm of eating and cooking is not merely one among others and hence not ready to hand as a simple metaphor for other human activities and relations. Such movies demonstrate the material connections between human life and the desire for food going back to the suckling lips of the nursing child hence the scene of eating is correctly understood as a metonymy for the cultural productions of humanity, it was Simon Richter who suggested that the cinematic poetics of the three movies may best be understood as metonymical, which is to say, ‘a tracking of the profound material links that radiate from the scene of eating’.
__________________________________________
====
This is my favourite movie with ‘feast’ in the title .. well, this is more up my street when it comes to movies to be honest rather than the arty European stuff where the characters do an awful lot of talking … about what? I can never remember …
Although see ‘Weekend’ below.
__________________________________________
The process of ingestion and digestion seen as a product of culture culminates and ends in the sensation of taste even as the process of digestion starts with the admixture of saliva to the food, or to put it another way apart from the feelings of dyspepsia or overall contentment that could accompany digestion our experience of the latter is disconnected from the pleasures of the table and palate and no finely discerning sense apparatus delivers feedback so to speak pun intended concerning the continuing progress of the food. Only at the moment of excretion and renewed visibility do distinct sense perceptions resume and this is the case for the movies just discussed, however much they succeed in revealing the importance of food culture they halt at the moment that aliments pass the gullet. And the reason for this is that such disruption corresponds to our experience as food slides down the esophagus to undergo a process we’re dimly aware of that continues for several hours after the meal even as we engage in other activities, and the cultural significance that can be attributed to digestion obtains due to digestion being historically and remaining the province of physiology, a discourse that at least since the seventeenth century if not previous is guided by and sticks to the rules and practices of empirical science.
From the time of physiologist Albrecht von Haller, (1708–1777), the stress has been placed upon devising experiments and methods that allow for first-hand observation of the processes at work, the chymification and chylification of aliments in the the terminology of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century physiology, and if such processes have retained something of a mystery in the first decades of the nineteenth century it was simply because only living subjects and not the anatomy table could give forth the answers for by means of vivisection of animals and other stratagems to bypass ethical dilemmas knowledge was slowly forthcoming though hardly the kind to arouse interest in philosophical speculation. For after all digestion proceeds without exercise of the will, but this does not mean that there were no speculative traditions of interpreting nature and the human body at that time as you will know by now if you have read my previous forty nine articles on the subject. German Naturphilosophie, ‘one of the most bizarre episodes in the history of physiology’ according to Karl Eduard Rothschuh, (1908–1984). Stemming from the principles of the philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, (1775–1854), Naturphilosophie aspired to the total explanation and interpretation of nature by asserting its complete identity with human spirit, it was merely a matter of placing natural and spiritual phenomena in relation with each other an exercise most readily attainable through a liberal use of analogy and upon the foundation of a system of polarities. As Rothschuh explains:
‘The so-called ‘romantic’ physiology stressed its departure from investigations dealing with particular subjects. The result of such a shift in emphasis was the neglect of experiments and careful evaluation of individual experiences. Moreover, the principle of analogy was carried to extremes difficult to understand today. If two appearances in the macro-as well as the microcosm showed any potential similarities, a concentrated effort was launched to achieve complete correspondences between all other properties related to the analogy’.
- ‘History of Physiology’
In the long run in spite of the popularity of Naturphilosophie on the continent and in England empirical science’s response was disdainful traces of which we can discern in the tone of Rothschuh’s remarks but through a rejection of Naturphilosophie science in addition is rejecting or at least neglecting the issue of the interpretability of the physiology of digestion or any other natural process. A critique of Schelling and Naturphilosophie emerging from the same interpretive desire would be more fruitful on the question of the philosophy of digestion. Hegel, one-time friend and associate of Schelling, known for his dialectic (but remember that whatever you now about Hegel is in all probability wrong) and the manner he employed it as an interpretive instrument to comprehend human experience in the ‘Phenomenology of Spirit’, history in the ‘Philosophy of History’, logic in the ‘Science of Logic’, and art in the ‘Aesthetics’. Less known but I aim to rectify that is his philosophy of nature part of the ‘Encyclopedia of the Physical Sciences’ wherein in line with the aspirations of Naturphilosophie he also endeavours to explain the totality of nature and its processes.
But there is as far as Hegel saw it a significant difference between Schelling’s undertakings in this area and his own a difference amounting to what distinguishes the dialectic from the formal application of analogy and polar opposites Hegel designating the latter an external manner of apprehension hence adroitly connecting Schelling’s idealism with empiricism’s materialism in terms of their external manner. He mentions a number of scientists who work within Schelling’s paradigm, Lorenz Oken, (1779–1851), Ignaz Paul Vital Troxler, (1780–1866), and others lapse completely into an empty formalism as when Oken calls the woody fibers of plants their nerves or when the roots of the plant are called its brain and likewise the brain is supposed to be the human sun and in order to express the concept of an organ of vegetable or animal life the name is taken not from the sphere of thought but from elsewhere but one should not fall back again on sensuous forms for the purpose of determining other forms rather it is from the Notion that they must be derived:
‘The external manner of interpretation mentioned in the paragraph is certainly rampant in the philosophy of Schelling, who often oversteps the mark in drawing parallels. Oken, Troxler and others also fall into an empty formalism; we noticed above for example (§ 346 Addition III. 74, I), that Oken called the wood-fibres of plants their nerves, and that others have called the roots their brain(see above § 348, Add. III. 92, 13): similarly, the brain is supposed to be the human Sun. In order to express the thought determination of an organ of vegetable or animal life, the name is taken not from the sphere of that thought, but from another sphere. Forms must be created from the Notion if they are to be used for determining other forms; they ought not to be derived a second time from the intuition’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
__________________________________________
‘If you have any edible fantasies now’s your time’
When you’re tired of winning
When you get tired of fame
Or when your head is spinning
And you’ve drunk all the best champagne
Then we’ll all sing together
To society we’ll be true
Then we’ll all sing together
Society waits for you
Oh how we all get richer
Playing the rolling game
Only the poor get poorer
We feed off them all the same
Then we’ll all sing together
To society we’ll be true
Then we’ll all sing together
Society waits for you
Some may call us sinners
We think of ourselves as saints
Some may call us killers
It’s done with such restraint
Then we’ll all sing together
To society we’ll be true
Then we’ll all sing together
Society waits for you
Some may call us sinners
We think of ourselves as saints
Some may call us killers
It’s done with such restraint
Then we’ll all sing together
To society we’ll be true
Then we’ll all sing together
Society waits for you ….
__________________________________________
Hegel’s dialectic does not rely upon simplistic analogies and neither is it in need of the formalism of polarities to do its interpretive work and this is a significant point that calls for some extended accounts straight from the horse’s mouth:
‘The process which is of a real nature, or the practical relationship with inorganic nature, begins with the self’s internal diremption, the awareness of externality as the negation of the subject. The subject is, at the same time, positive self-relatedness, the self-certainty of which is opposed to this negation of itself. In other words, the process begins with the awareness of deficiency, and the drive to overcome it. The condition which occurs here is that of an external stimulation, in which the negation of the subject which is strung in opposition, is posited in the form of an object’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
‘An important advance in the true conception of the organism has been made by changing determinations, and replacing the action of external causes by stimulation through external potencies. This is the seed of idealism, which realizes that nothing whatever could have a positive relation to living being, if living being in and for itself did not constitute the possibility of this relation, that is to say, if the relation were not determined by the Notion, and therefore not simply immanent in the subject. For a long time now, certain formal and material relationships in the theory of stimulation have been regarded as philosophical, although their introduction is as unphilosophical as any other scientific hotch-potch of reflection-determinations. An example of this is the wholly abstract antithesis in which the faculties of receptivity and action are supposed to be related to each other as factors in an inverse ratio of magnitude. As the result of this, the difference in the organism, which is to be grasped, has fallen into the formalism of a merely quantitative variety of increase and decrease, strengthening and weakening, i.e. into the uttermost violation of the Notion’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
‘In general, it is ignorance of the Notion and contempt for it, which perpetrates this facile formalism by making use of sensuous materials, such as the matters of chemistry, and of relationships belonging to the sphere of inorganic nature, such as the north and south of magnetic polarity, or even the difference between magnetism itself and electricity. Instead of making use of the determinations of the Notion, an attempt is made to grasp and develop the natural universe by externally fixing upon its spheres and differences a schema prepared from material of this kind. A great number of different forms is available for this, for selection remains a matter of choice. One may for example, take as one’s schema determinations as they appear in the chemical sphere, and then transfer oxygen and hydrogen etc. to magnetism, mechanism, electricity, male and female, contraction and expansion etc., in general, to draw opposites from anyone sphere, and to apply them to the others’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
It is this ignorance and contempt for the Notion which gives rise to facile formalism and for this purpose a great variety of forms is possible for it remains a matter of choice whether one employs for the schema determinations as they appear in the chemical sphere for instance oxygen, hydrogen, and so on transferring them to magnetism, mechanism, vegetable and animal life, and so on, or whether one takes opposites from any one sphere, for instance magnetism, electricity, male and female, contraction and expansion, and then applies them to the other spheres. The productive tension for which polarities are valued is to be discovered in the dialectic itself, the dialectic of absolute opposition, insofar as it depends upon a restless negation known as sublation (Aufhebung) whereby the negated term is not merely destroyed but raised to a new level where a subsequent negation continues the process:
‘The process which is of a real nature, or the practical relationship with inorganic nature, begins with the self-internal diremption, the awareness of externality as the negation of the subject. The subject is, at the same time, positive self-relatedness, the self-certainty of which is opposed to this negation of itself. In other words, the process begins with the awareness of deficiency, and the drive to overcome it. The condition which occurs here is that of an external stimulation, in which the negation of the subject which is strung in opposition, is posited in the form of an object ….. A theory of medicine based on these arid determinations is completed in half a dozen propositions, so it is not surprising that it should have spread rapidly and found plenty of adherents. The cause of this aberration lay in the fundamental error of first defining the Absolute as the absolute undifferentiation of subjective and objective being, and then supposing that all determination is merely quantitative difference. The truth is rather, that the soul of absolute form, which is the Notion and animation, is solely qualitative self-sublating differentiation, the dialectic of absolute antithesis. One may think, in so far as one is not aware of this genuinely infinite negativity, that one is unable to hold fast to the absolute identity of life, without converting the moment of difference into a simply external moment of reflection’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
Of significance for the purpose of understanding Hegel’s dialectics of digestion is to recognize that Hegel is not about establishing vast networks of analogy and correspondence but rather lingering intensely over the matter at hand which here our concern is with digestion in the form of the latest empirical science and aspiring to interpret the operations and processes from the sphere of thought which is to say dialectically. And given that Hegel’s philosophy is totalizing the outcome will still be a system of inter-related parts yet the significant issue is that the connecting trope here is not metaphor with its undisciplined jumps of analogy but rather metonymy in its diurnal materialism and literalness and it is exactly this factor that links Hegel’s dialectics of digestion with the gastronomic poetics of the movies mentioned above. A distinctly and appropriately philosophical and systematic account of Hegel’s thought concerning digestion requires an indication of its precise situation in the overall scheme, an exercise, pursued by Mark C. E. Peterson, but for now the point to grasp is that it is sufficient to note that strictly speaking digestion is understood as a type of assimilation. to which a whole section in the ‘Philosophy of Nature’ is devoted. Assimilation signals that stage in the movement towards subjectivity when the organism attains some kind of awareness however rudimentary of an external, opposing inorganic nature (the animals and plants which the animal consumes are, it is true, themselves organic structures, but for this animal they are relatively its non-organic nature. What is particular and external has no enduring existence of its own, but is a nullity as soon as it comes into contact with a living being, says Hegel), against which it must maintain itself and this relationship is dialectical and replete with tension for as Hegel explains the animal encounters the world as its own negativity as well as its external condition and material:
‘Assimilation: The sentience of individuality is to the same extent immediately exclusive however, and maintains a state of tension with an inorganic nature to which it is opposed as to its external condition and material’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
The organism has to posit what is external as subjective, appropriate it, and identify it with itself. and this is assimilation, and the forms of this process are threefold, first, the theoretical process [sense perception], second, the real, practical process [digestion], third, the unity of both, the ideally real process, the adaptation of the non-organic to the purposes of the living creature, in other words, instinct, including the constructive instinct:
‘The Idea of life is in itself this unconscious creativeness, it is an expansion of nature, which in animation has returned into its truth. For the individual however, inorganic nature is a presupposition with which it is confronted, and it is this which gives rise to the finitude of living being. The individual is for itself, but as the organic being has this negativity within itself, the connection here is absolute, indivisible, internal, and essential. Externality is determined only as having being for organic being; organic being is that which maintains itself in opposition to it. Organic being is orientated towards externality to the same extent that it is internally strung in opposition to it, and this consequently gives rise to the contradiction of this relationship, in which two independent beings come forth in opposition to each other, while at the same time externality has to be subIated. The organism must therefore posit the subjectivity of externality, appropriate it, and identify it with its own self; this constitutes assimilation. The forms of this process are threefold; firstly the theoretical process, secondly the real, practical process, and thirdly the unity of both, the process which is of an ideal and real nature-the adaptation of inorganic being to the end of living being, that is to say instinct, and the nisus formativus’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
[nisus formativus (Latin): formative tendency, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach’s, (1752–1840), term for the creative impulse (Bildungstrieb)].
The practical process or digestion is initiated by ‘a feeling of deficiency […] in the face of external nature and the drive to overcome both this feeling and the external nature identified as its source’ explains Peterson. Albeit it seems that digestion is simply a form of assimilation the figurative dimension of Hegel’s discourse implies that digestion is nevertheless the master trope for representing assimilation in any case and whereas speaking from a logical point of view assimilation is subdivided into three types of which digestion is the model of the second speaking from a figurative point of view digestion directs us from the first (sense perception yet in the service of identifying food for consumption and through taste initiating digestion) to the last (the constructive drive or Bildungstrieb, which includes both sexual reproduction and artistic creation, extrapolated from the excretion of faeces at the conclusion of digestion). Observing this voracious tendency of digestion in Hegel’s account of developing subjectivity J.N. Findlay remarked: ‘It is curious and touching that a dialectical idealism such as Hegel’s should lay so much stress on eating’. Perhaps Alexandre Kojeve, (1902–1968), is more on target in beginning his explication of the Lord/Bondsman dialectic from the Phenomenology with the example of eating:
‘The being that eats, for example, creates and preserves its own reality by the overcoming of a reality other than its own, by the ‘transformation’ of an alien reality into its own reality, by the ‘assimilation,’ the ‘internalization’ of a ‘foreign,’ ‘external’ reality’.
- ‘Introduction to the Reading of Hegel’
The mysteries of digestion and the sheer prominence of hunger in determining the activity of all organisms ruled out of the question any shallow treatment by Hegel who invested the scene of eating with philosophical significance and furthermore this is the first moment in Hegel’s account of nature wherein a subject separates itself from the world and confronts external nature and does so in terms of hunger and this is and can only be the first step in achieving that which Peterson terms ‘the characteristics of subjectivity’.
The use of the term assimilation to categorize these relations to external nature is justifiable enough but it has the effect of associating sense perception, eating, reproduction, and artistic creation under the master trope of digestion and in close connection with the body, connections of metonymy rather than metaphor, and similarly it sets the scene for intellectual and voluntary forms of assimilation, those that will be and were investigated in the Phenomenology as the reference to Kojeve indicated. It will in addition prompt Hegel to analyze disease and medicine in terms of assimilation and what intrigued Hegel concerning digestion was its transformative power. Digestion was generally understood in the early nineteenth century as a two-step process whereby heterogenous foodstuffs were transformed into successively homogenous materials, into chyme in the stomach and chyle in the small intestine, and questions persisted concerning how such transformation transpired, whether by the mechanical process of grinding (trituration) or by a chemical action or some combination of the two. Hegel was familiar with the work of the Italian physiologist Lazzaro Spallanzani, (1729–1799), whose experiments included swallowing ‘small linen bags containing meat or bread, perforated wooden tubules with food, and some sponges, all of which he vomited again after certain intervals’ as Rothschuh explained.
Albeit Spallanzani noted some properties of the gastric juices that it could dissolve food in vitro, was accelerated by heat, and that it retarded if I may use that word, and even prevented putrefaction, he was unable to express clearly what was involved. Hegel’s drawing upon Spallanzani’s work reflects this circumstance for he cites the latter both to refute the chemical as well as the mechanical explanation of chymification. Hegel was not familiar with the work of William Beaumont, (1785–1853), the American doctor who had the rare opportunity of experimenting upon a human subject with a permanently fistulated stomach. Through a series of contracts Beaumont purchased the right to extract gastric fluid from this man for in vitro experimentation as well as to dangle various food stuffs into his stomach to be removed for periodic inspection. and published as ‘Experiments and Observations on the Gastric Juice and the Physiology of Digestion’, Beaumont’s results went a long way towards establishing the solvent properties of gastric juice independent of mechanical motion though enhanced by heat.
Nonetheless the dream of a precise chemical analysis went unrealised albeit Swedish chemist Baron Jöns Jacob Berzelius, (1779–1848), whom Hegel quotes in connection with the chemical analysis of faeces was impeded and an early essay version of Beaumont’s results was published in Germany in 1825 in time for Hegel to read it had he known about it. Nevertheless the material details of Beaumont’s experiments and his complicated and tense relations with his subject not to mention the thought of vials of gastric juice being delivered to the Swedish embassy to be carried across the Atlantic would lend themselves to Hegelian analysis albeit under such circumstances as these many plumped for a compromise explanation made more palatable with vitalism, Andrew Combe’s Physiology of Digestion of 1836 providing a good instance of this:
‘A more recent and much more accurate view of digestion is that which considers it as neither more nor less than a chymical [sic] solution of the food in the gastric juice. This theory is supported by a greater number of facts and experiments than any other; but although substantially correct, it is, perhaps, too exclusive and limited in its principles. It is true, that by the agency of gastric juice on food out of the body, a change very similar to chymification can be effected on it; but when we remember that chyme, or the result of real digestion, is essentially the same in its elementary or component principles, whatever be the kind of food from which it is formed, and that as yet we are acquainted with no purely chymical agent which, applied to different substances, gives rise to the same uniform product, we shall be more willing to believe that chymification is neither a purely mechanical nor a purely chymical operation; but the result of a vital process, to which both mechanical and chymical forces contribute, and which no action or combination of inanimate matter can either exactly imitate or supersede’.
- ‘Physiology of Digestion’
__________________________________________
…..
__________________________________________
For Combe as for Hegel what is of significance is the homogeneity of chyme relative to the diverse components from which it was produced and furthermore chemical analysis of chyme could indicate the presence of elements not contained in the digested foods and Combe’s position is essentially that of Hegel who while similarly conceding the explanatory powers of chemistry nevertheless insisted that the transformation of food into chyme and eventually chyle could not be exhaustively explained by chemistry, his objection involving the dialectic, for assimilation cannot be a chemical process either since in the living being we have a subject which preserves itself and negates the specific quality of the other whereas in the chemical process each of the substances taking part, acid and alkali, loses its quality and is lost in the neutral product of the salt or returns to an abstract radical and there the activity is extinguished whereas the animal is a lasting unrest in its self-relation.
‘The process begins with the mechanical seizure of the external object. Assimilation itself is the enveloping of the externality within the unity of the subject. Since the animal is a subject, a simple negativity, the nature of this assimilation can be neither mechanical nor chemical, for in these processes, the substances, as well as the conditions and the activity, remain external to one another, and lack an absolute and living unity’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
‘Use has recently been made of chemical relationships, but assimilation cannot be susceptible of a chemical interpretation either, for in living being we have a subject which maintains itself and negates the specific nature of the other, whereas the acid and alkaline being of the chemical process loses its quality, and either sinks into the neutral product of a salt, or reverts to an abstract radical. In this case, the activity is extinguished, whereas the animal is the persistent unrest within self-relatedness. Digesting may certainly be grasped as a neutralization of acid and alkali: it is correct to say that such finite relationships begin in life, but life interrupts them, and brings forth a product which is not chemism. It is like the moisture in the eye which refracts light. These finite relationships may be pursued to a certain point therefore, but then quite another order begins. A chemical analysis of the brain will certainly reveal a good deal of nitrogen, just as an analysis of exhaled air will reveal constituents other than those of the air that is breathed in. One is therefore able to trace the chemical process until even the separate parts of living being disintegrate. It should not be assumed however, that the processes themselves are chemical, for chemical being only accommodates that which is lifeless, whereas the animal processes are perpetually sublating the nature of chemical being. There is plenty of scope for tracing and indicating the mediations which occur in living being and in the meteorological process, but this mediation is not to be confused with the real nature of the phenomena’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
But Hegel is not so much interested in chyme than he is in chyle, the product of a process so difficult of empirical access that even Beaumont’s fistulated patient could give up information. As Combe said: ‘If physiologists experience much difficulty in satisfactorily explaining all the phenomena of chymification, the reflecting reader will not be surprised to learn that they are still more puzzled to account for those of chylification. The organs concerning the latter are so deep-seated and inaccessible during life, that very few opportunities occur of obtaining accurate information on the subject’. The chyle according to early nineteenth-century science was the result of the action of bile and pancreatic juice on the chyme as it entered the small intestine and if chymification had already transformed the diversity of aliments into a homogenous mass with barely detectible traces of its original components chylification completed the process to an extent that its chemical composition stood in no relation at all to the material from which it was formed. Chylification is for Hegel pure assimilation and the specific qualities of the inorganic matter have been annihilated and the result is chyle which is nothing other than animal lymph, the universal element of animality, that into which the non-organic is directly transformed:
‘If a diet consists solely of meat dishes for example, it will be so much easier to digest immediately, on account of its homogeneity. It is into the animal lymph, which is the universal element of animality, that the inorganic being is immediately transformed. The animal digests the food from without, as well as it digests its own viscera, muscles, nerves and so on, and in the same way that it absorbs even the phosphate of lime constituting bones, as it does for example when it absorbs the splinters of bone in a fracture. It eradicates the specific particularity of these formations, and turns it into the general lymph or blood; it then specifies this lymph into particular formations once again’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
To put it another way the organism has both annihilated a piece of the external world that opposed it and preserved it in a new condition as a part of itself, thereby fulfilling a lack and reproducing itself, and so we can see the dialectic at work in the digestive process, and by considering chyle as the equivalent of animal lymph Hegel can generalize digestion to transformative phenomena that occur outside of the digestive tract. With recourse to lower animals such as worms, zoophytes, hydra, and so on, and citing the biologist Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus, (1776–1837), Hegel distinguishes between immediate and mediate assimilation. Lacking specialized digestive organs, the lower animals illustrate what assimilation is, assimilation is the immediate fusion of the ingested material with animality, an infection with the latter and simple transformation.
‘Living being is the universal power of its external and opposed nature; initially therefore, assimilation is the immediate fusion of animality with that which is taken up into it. That which is taken up is infected with animality, and a simple transformation occurs (§ 345 Rem. and § 346). In the second instance, assimilation consists of the mediation of digestion. Digestion is the opposition of the subject to that which is external to it; it is further differentiated into the aqueous process of the animal, i.e. gastric and pancreatic juice and animal lymph in general, and into the animal’s igneous process or bile, in which the organism has returned into itself from its concentration in the spleen, and is determined as being-for-self and active consumption. These processes are to an equal extent particularized infections however’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
The lower forms of animal life which, moreover, are nothing more than lymph coagulated into a membranous point or tube, a simple intestinal canal, do not go beyond this immediate transformation.
‘… it has been shown for example, that a great deal of nutriment passes straight from the stomach into the mass of gastric juices without having passed through the further intermediary stages, and that the pancreatic juice is nothing more than saliva, so that it might3 well be dispensed with etc. The final product is the chyle, which is taken up by the thoracic duct and discharged into the blood. It is the same lymph as that which is secreted by each separate intestine and organ, which is appropriated everywhere by the skin and the lymphatic system in the immediate process of transformation, and which is already prepared wherever it is appropriated. Certain lower animal organizations, which are however nothing more than a simple alimentary canal, or lymph curdled into a point or tube, do not progress beyond this immediate transformation’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
Higher animals also display forms of immediate assimilation and Hegel mentions the case of shipwrecked sailors who quenched their thirst by moistening their shirts and even dipping themselves into the sea, their skin, therefore, had absorbed pure water from the sea without the salt:
‘Man also digests immediately, as is shown by the account of the English ship, the crew of which ran out of water while it was on the high seas. The rain-water very laboriously collected in the sails also running out on them, they slaked their thirst by soaking their shirts, and dipping themselves in the sea, so that their skins absorbed only the water from the sea, not its salt. In animals which have organs by means of which they digest, the digestion which takes place is partly of this general and universal kind, and partly distinct and particular. In this latter case the assimilation is initiated by organic heat. The stomach and the intestinal canal themselves are nothing but the outer skin however, which is simply adapted, and which is developed and remoulded into a special form’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
He also refers to cases of the external absorption of opium rubbed on the skin and Treviranus is appealed to again for the account of experiments in which small bits of meat enclosed in small linen bags were placed in the abdominal cavity of a live cat, and were dissolved, down to tiny bits of bone, into a pap in a similar way as if in the stomach, the same thing happened when such meat was conveyed subcutaneously on to bare muscles of live animals and left there for a time and in the case of bone fractures, too, nature discharges a quantity of moisture around the fracture, softening and quite dissolving the sharp ends of the bones:
‘Treviranus makes a more detailed comparison of these various membranes (loc. cit. vol. IV, p. 333 et seq.). If ipecacuanha and opium are rubbed in on the outside of the stomach, they have the same effect as when they are taken internally; but ipecacuanha has also been rubbed into the shoulder, and equally well digested. ‘Tiny pieces of flesh, enclosed in small linen bags, and placed in the abdominal cavity of a live cat, have been found to decompose into a pulp and tiny scraps of bone, as they do in the stomach. Precisely the same decomposition occurred when flesh of this kind was inserted under the skin of living animals next to their bare muscles, and left there for a time. An apparently similar phenomenon occurs in the case of bone fractures; nature discharges a quantity of moisture around the fractured part, by which the sharp ends of the bones are softened and entirely dissolved. A further phenomenon of this kind occurs when the congealed blood in contused parts of the body is gradually dissolved again, becomes fluid, and is finally absorbed once again. The gastric juice does not act therefore as a wholly special animal fluid, quite different from any other. It acts merely as a watery animal fluid, supplied in plenty to the reservoir of the stomach by the exhalatory arteries. It is secreted from the arterial blood, which just prior to this secretion, was exposed in the lungs to the action of oxygen.’ Treviranus also observes (loc. cit. vol. IV, pp. 35 348–349) that, ‘The bones, flesh and other animal parts which P. Smith inserted into the abdominal cavity or under the skin of living animals, were entirely decomposed there (Pfaff and Scheel’s “Nordic Archive for Natural Science” etc. vol. III pt. 3, p. 134). This explains a remarkable phenomenonwhich Cuvier discovered while observing the Salpa octofora. In many of these creatures, although not in their stomachs, he found parts of an Antifera, all of which had decomposed and vanished, apart from the outer skin, and which had probably come in through the orifice by which Salpas take in water (“Annales du Museum d’Histoire naturelle” vol. IV, 5 p. 380). These creatures certainly have a stomach, but they may well digest as much outside it as they do inside. They constitute the transition to organisms in which respiration, digestion and various other functions take place through similar but distinct organs.’
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
All of these instances of assimilation illustrate or derive from the fundamental relation of the organism, this simple contact in which the other is transformed directly and in one go.
‘This immediate digestion is also to be found higher up the scale in more complex animals. It is well known to those who catch Thrushes and Fieldfares for example, that if these birds are quite thin, they will fatten up considerably in the matter of a few hours, after a misty morning. In this case, an immediate transformation of this moisture into animal matter takes place, without any further secretion and passage through the separated moments of the assimilation process’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
Moving through the body in the service of metonyms Hegel generalizes the immediate assimilation of the lower animals to the higher animals espying examples of immediate assimilation (absorption) and forms of mediated assimilation (digestion within and outside of the digestive tract) and such reasoning grants him leave to characterize respiration and blood circulation as types of assimilation under the trope of digestion. Now why is the blood connected with this ideal assimilation of the abstract element of air? The blood is this absolute thirst, its unrest within itself and against itself, the blood hungers to be ignited, to be differentiated, the blood, after the manner of the other digestive process perpetually appeases its hunger or quenches its thirst name it what you will and achieves being-for-self through negativity of its otherness:
‘Now why does the blood relate itself to the ideal nature of this digestion of the abstract element? It relates itself because it is this absolute thirst, and is in an incessant agitation, both within itself and in opposition to itself. The blood is motivated towards the differentiation of animation. More exactly, this digestion is at the same time a mediated process with the air; that is to say, it is a conversion of air into carbon dioxide and dark carbonated venous blood, and into oxygenated arterial blood. I attribute the activity and vivification of the arterial blood to its satiation rather than to its material alteration. It seems to me in fact that the blood resembles other forms of digestion by perpetually appeasing what one may call its hunger or its thirst, and achieving being-for-self by negating its otherness’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
A measure of arbitrariness may appear suggested, one may call … , but the option is restricted to thirst or hunger and the point is that air is assimilated by a process best compared to digestion, that is philosophically in terms of the dialectic initiated by lack and insofar as this fundamental relation between the animal organism and the external world is seen as one involving negation and destruction the production and reproduction of the self in the face of opposing forces Hegel thereby casts the relation in terms of violence and if you have read the Phenomenology and the explication of the Lord/Bondsman dialectic which escalates rather quickly into a fight to the death, will recognize the terms, the teeth and claws are understood as weapons:
‘For the determination of the species however, the distinguishing characteristics have, by a happy intuition, been selected from the animal’s weapons, i.e. its teeth and claws etc. This is valuable, because it is by its weapons that the animal, in distinguishing itself from others, establishes and preserves itself as a being-for-self’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
The process of digestion consists in this, that the organism in angrily opposing itself to the outer world is divided within itself.
‘Digestion as a whole is therefore as follows. By its hostility towards that external to it, the organism divides itself internally in two. The final product of digestion is the chyle, and this is the same as the animal lymph into which the animal in its immediate appropriation transforms its nutriment, which it acquires either fortuitously or on purpose’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
__________________________________________
====
‘In so far as instinct accomplishes a formal assimilation, it forms its determination within externalities. It gives the material of these externalities an outer form appropriate to the purpose, and leaves the objectivity of these things untouched, as in the building of nests and lairs etc. It is process of a real nature however, in so far as it individualizes inorganic things, or relates itself to those already individualized, and assimilates them by consuming them and destroying their characteristic qualities, i.e. through air entering into the process of respiration and of the skin, water into the process of thirst, and the particular formations of individualized earth into the process of hunger. Life, which is the subject of these moments of the totality, constitutes a state of tension between itself as Notion and the external reality of these moments, and maintains the perpetual conflict in which it overcomes this externality. At this juncture, the animal functions as an immediate singularity, and can only overcome this externality in the singular, and by means of all the determinations of singularity, such as this place and this time etc. Consequently, this realization of itself is not adequate to its Notion, and its satisfaction is perpetually reverting to a state of need’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
__________________________________________
Hegel is preparing the way there for a discourse upon the excretion of faeces, so why the language of violence and anger, although if you have ever been severely constipated as I have you will understand, who says men don’t know what giving birth is like? According to M.J. Petry: ‘By using the word Zorn (wrath, choler), Hegel is evidently indicating the part played by the bile in the formation of the chyle. He evidently has in mind the Hippocratic doctrine of the four juices of the human body, and Galen’s parallel doctrine of the four temperaments. According to these doctrines the bile is the predominant factor in the development of choler or wrath’. It is indeed the case that Hegel goes on to note a physiological connection between the feeling of anger and the release of bile but again he is thinking literally and materially for just as anger is the feeling of the being-for-self which flares up in a person when he is insulted, so bile is the being-for-self which the animal organism turns against this potency placed in it from outside; for the pancreatic juice and the bile attack the chyme:
‘A physiology which investigated such connections would be extremely interesting; it might explain for example why a feeling of shame is accompanied by blushing in the face and bosom. Just as anger is the feeling of being-for-self which flares up when a person is offended, so bile is the being-for-self which the animal organism turns on this potency posited within it from without; for the pancreatic juice and the bile attack the chyme. The bile, which is this active destruction, in which the organism has returned into itself, originates in the spleen. The spleen presents physiologists with certain difficulties. It is a sluggish organ belonging to the venous system, and related to the liver. It seems to function solely as a focal point for venous inertia, in opposition to the lung. This sluggish being-for-self, which has its seat in the spleen becomes the bile when it is ignited. Animals possess liver and bile as soon as they are developed, that is to say, as soon as they do not merely digest immediately or simply remain at the lymphatic stage’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
Anger, hostility, and violence permeate the interaction between the organism and the external world at least at this primary level of assimilation from the seizure and killing of food and the initial mastication to the total transformation into chyle, the eradication of all specific qualities, and the restlessness of Hegelian dialectic, its appetite for ever new contradictions, will not permit the anger’s focus to remain fixed upon the external world particularly not because Hegel follows the transformation of the food into both chyle and the ingested though undigested material that passes through the intestines. The animal organism is overcome by the indignity of its inadequacy and its dependence upon the external world to survive and redirects its hostility against itself which partially consists when all is said and done of the external matter that it had ingested and made identical with itself. The immediate result of this is simply that when the animal comes to itself and recognizes itself as this power of transformation, it is angry with itself for getting involved with external powers and it now turns against itself and this false opinion; but in doing so it throws off its outward-turned activity and returns into itself.
‘The true externality of animal being is not the external object, but its irritated hostility towards external being. Animal being has to free itself from mistrusting itself in this way; it has to overcome this false bent, which makes the struggle with the object look like the work of the subject. In this struggle with that external to it, organic being is on the point of putting itself at a disadvantage, for it hinders itself somewhat in the face of this inorganic being. It is its own process, its being involved with external being, that the organism has to overcome, and its activity therefore runs counter to its outward orientation. This activity is the means to which the organism reduces itself, although only in order to return to itself through removing and discarding this means. If the organism were actively hostile to inorganic being, it would not get its due; in its precise constitution it is however the mediation of engaging itself with inorganic being, and yet returning into itself This negation of outward orientated activity has a double determination, for while the organism exerts its hostile activity towards inorganic being, and posits its immediate self-identity, it also reproduces itself in this self-preservation’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
What is being described here in dialectical terms is the meaning of excretion whereby once again the animal is divided against itself and by excretion by ridding itself of this lack of self-confidence comes to a sense of itself unmarred by lack and dependency. Excrement has no other significance than this, that the organism, recognizing its error, gets rid of its entanglement with outside things; and this is confirmed by the chemical composition of the excrement.
‘The conclusion of the process of assimilation is excretion, which is the abstract repulsion of itself by which the animal constitutes its self-externality. As the animal only converts itself into an external being, this externality is inorganic; it is an abstract other which is not identical with the animal. In thus separating itself from itself, the organism expresses its loathing for its lack of self-reliance; it does this by giving up the struggle, and ridding itself of the bile which it has discharged. Consequently, the significance of the excrements is merely that through them the organism acknowledges its error, and rids itself of its entanglement with external things. This is confirmed by the chemical composition of the excrements. The moment of excretion is usually regarded as nothing but the necessary evacuation of useless and unusable material. The animal need not have ingested anything useless or superfluous however, and although there is such a thing as indigestible material, the material evacuated in the excrements is either mainly assimilated, or consists of whatever is added to the ingested matters by the organism itself, i.e. the bile, which has the function of combining with the victuals’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
With the latter Hegel is referring to the work of Berzelius whose analyses of excrement showed that it consisted of much more than useless and indigestible matter but rather contained large amounts of digestible matter and what the organism had added itself, namely, bile. This is critical for Hegel in that this excess of digestible matter calls out for an explanation beyond mere function and allows the interpretation to take into account the visible activity of excretion with its multiple associations, and anticipating Freud and psychoanalysis Hegel recognises that excretion is a form of production, even reproduction, because what the animal excretes is a part of itself, the nature of the organism is to produce itself as something external to itself and by this dialectical turn Hegel is able to make excretion, the last step in digestion and the conclusion of the process of digestion , the basis for other forms of reproduction, not, once again, in terms of simplistic analogy but on the grounds of metonymic corporeal associations.
‘The plant falls apart into its differentiation, and there can be no doubt that animal being also displays differences. In the case of animal being however, the independent being from which it distinguishes itself is not merely something external, but is at the same time posited as being identical with it. This real production, in which the animal duplicates itself by repelling itself, constitutes the final stage of animality in general. This real process in its turn has three forms: (a) the form of abstract, formal repulsion, (b) the nisus formativus, and © the propagation of the species. In nature, these three apparently heterogeneous processes are essentially inter-connected. In many animals, the excretory and genital organs, which constitute the highest and lowest features of animal organization, are intimately connected: just as speech and kissing on the one hand, and eating, drinking and spitting on the other, all focus upon the mouth’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
This real production in which the animal in repelling itself duplicates itself is the final stage of animality as such this real process has in its turn three forms, the form of abstract, formal repulsion [excretion], the constructive instinct [Bildungstrieb or artistic impulse], and the propagation of the species, these three seemingly heterogenous processes are essentially connected with one another in nature, in many animals the organs of excretion and the genitals, the highest and lowest parts in the animal organization, are intimately connected, just as speech and kissing, on the one hand, and eating, drinking and spitting, on the other, are all done with the mouth.
__________________________________________
…
__________________________________________
This passage reveals the extent to which Hegel reads and interprets from the body and it is exactly this manner of analysis that Richter calls metonymical and Hegel transfers a similar pattern of thinking to his discussion of disease and medicine, and that again digestion is the master trope, as a matter of fact disease and medicine only vary from digestion with respect to the initial location of the dialectical opposition that sets everything in motion, and while digestion and assimilation start off as a relation to the external world, in disease and medicine the opposition is to be discerned within the organism from the beginning and not in relation to the external world albeit the latter can play an accidental role in instigating disease or to put it another way disease in essence amounts to a discord in assimilation, in the relation of the animal to the external world while health consists in the commensurate relationship of the organic to the non-organic so that for the organism there is nothing non-organic which it cannot overcome.
‘In a state of health, there is no disproportion between the organic self and its determinate being; all its organs give free play to the fluidity of the universal. When this state prevails, there is a commensurate relationship between organic and inorganic being, as the result of which inorganic being does not offer any insuperable resistance to the organism. Disease is not an irritation incommensurate with the susceptibility of the organism; its Notion consists of a disproportion between the organism’s being and its self, and not of a disproportion between certain mutually dissociating factors within it. Factors are abstract moments, and cannot dissociate. When disease is spoken of as a heightening of excitation and a lessening of excitability, as if this were a matter of qualitative contrast, and an increase in the one were accompanied by a corresponding decrease in the other, the interpretation is immediately suspect therefore. To bandy about the concept of disposition, as if it were possible to be implicitly ill without being infected and sick, is no improvement; the reason for this being that the organism itself constitutes this reflection, within which that which is implicit is also actual. Disease occurs when the organism as a being separates itself, not from inner factors, but from inner aspects which are completely real’.
-’Philosophy of Nature’
In disease, the split between the organic and the non-organic is found within the organism itself, appetite, too, the feeling of a lack, is to its own self the negative, relates to itself as a negative: is itself and is also in relation to itself as a being feeling a lack; but with this difference, that in appetite this lack is something external, that is, the self is not turned against its structure as such, whereas in disease the negative thing is the structure itself:
‘Disease occurs when the organism as a being separates itself, not from inner factors, but from inner aspects which are completely real. The cause of disease lies partly in the age, mortality and congenital defects of the organism itself, and partly in its susceptibility, as a being, to external influences. As a result of this susceptibility, there is a build up of a single aspect which does not accommodate the inner power of the organism, and the organism then exhibits the opposed forms of being and self, the self being precisely that for which the negative of itself has being. A stone cannot become ill, for as its form is unable to survive chemical decomposition, its negative involves its destruction. A stone is therefore devoid of the self-negation found in sickness and sentience, which is capable of taking in its opposite. Appetite, which is awareness of a deficiency, is also self-relating in constituting its own opposite, for it is both itself and its state of deficiency. In this case however, the deficiency is something external, so that the self is not opposed to its shape as such, while in the case of disease, the negative thing is the shape itself’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
The way of articulating this most clearly is that the animal feeds on itself, in disease where the organism’s interaction with the outer world is interrupted, the human being consumes himself, converts himself into aliment.
‘To appear is to have life; what the philosophers of nature have in mind however, is merely an external reflection. They are unable to comprehend life because they fail to reach it, and stop short at inanimate gravity. One of Mr. Gode’s particular tenets seems to be that in the first instance, the diseased form enters into conflict with its own essence, not with the organism, ‘The collective activity of the whole is primarily a consequence and reflex of the checking of free movement in its individual parts.’ He considers this to be a truly speculative remark. But what is this essence if it is not animation? And what constitutes actual animation, if it is not the organism as a whole? Consequently, when he says that the organ is in conflict with its essence, with itself, this must mean that it is in conflict with the totality which is within it as a general animation or universal. It is the organism itself which constitutes the reality of this universal however. Here we have true philosophers, for they are of the opinion that essence is what is true, and that in order to express what is internal and correct, they merely have to mention it! I can find nothing worth considering in their prattle about essence however, for they proffer nothing but abstract reflections, while if essence is to be made explicit, it has to be made apparent as a determinate being’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
In this manner we perceive that disease is simply a pathological variant of assimilation under the trope of digestion, it may appear that all that is needed to restore an organism to health is to halt the process of self-digestion but this process functions like a pharmakos, it is by a concentrated effort of self-consumption that the organism heals itself and medicine’s role is to encourage and assist the process and in this matter Hegel concurs with romantic medicine. What occurs in disease is that for one reason or another a single vital function breaks out of the smoothly coordinated system of the whole organism, which is to say, in Hegelian terms, it particularizes itself, and the outcome is a split in the organism whereby the particularized part or function assumes the aspect of the nonorganic, the external within and the response that is evoked and needed is the re-assimilation or digestion of that function. The disease can begin in the organism as a whole, can be an indigestibility in general for after all it is digestion which is involved or in a particular part which establishes itself, for example, in the process of the gall or the lungs.
‘Disease in the full sense of the word is established in so far as the determinateness has become the centre and self of the whole, so that a determinate self is dominant, instead of the free self. On the other hand, so long as only a single organ is stimulated or weakened, so that the disease is peculiar to one particular system, and is confined to the development of that system, it will be easier to effect a cure in a case such as this. The system has only to be freed from its involvement with inorganic being and established in its proper proportion. At this juncture therefore, external remedies are also useful; generally speaking, remedies in cases such as these can be restricted to the stimulation of the system concerned, use being made of emetics, purgatives, blood-Iettings and the like’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
If not treated effectively the disease of a single function can spread into the general life of the organism.
‘Disease also passes over into the general life of the organism however; for when a particular organ is affected, it is principally the general organism which is infected. The whole organism is involved in this therefore, and because one of its circulations has turned itself into a centre, its activity is disturbed. At the same time however, in order that the isolated activity may not remain an excrescence, but may become a moment of the whole, the whole animation of the organism also turns against it. If the digestion isolates itself for example, the circulation of the blood and muscular energy etc., will also be affected; in the case of jaundice, the whole body secretes bile and is thoroughly hepatic etc. The third stage of disease is therefore coction, in which the weakening of one system becomes an affection of the whole organism. At this stage, disease is no longer confmed to a particular organ and external to the whole, for the entire life of the organism is concentrated into it’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
__________________________________________
====
====
__________________________________________
It is at this stage that fever should occur and fever also termed coction by Hegel, with all its significance for digestion is the pharmakos, because the particular morbid affection has become an affection of the whole, this disease of the whole organism is itself at the same time a cure.
‘It is therefore comparatively easy to cure, for as we saw above (III. 198,6), it is always easier to cure acute diseases, than it is to cure chronic pulmonary diseases for example, in which the lungs are no longer capable of infecting the whole organism. As the entire organism is infected with a particularity, a dual life begins to emerge. The whole becomes a differentiating motion opposed to the stable universality of the self, and the organism posits itself as a whole in opposition to the determinateness. In a case such as this, the physician can do nothing; in general moreover, the whole art of medicine does no more than aid the forces of nature. As the particular morbid affection transforms itself into the whole, this very disease of the whole is at the same time a cure; for it is the whole which is motivated, and which breaks itself apart in the sphere of necessity. It is therefore the characteristic constitution of disease, that the organic process now follows its course in this hardened and subsistent shape, so that the harmonious processes of the organism now form a succession. What is more, the general systems are torn apart, so that they no longer constitute an immediate unity, but display it by passing into one another. Health can only be restored by a succession of activities, but although this disruption is harmful to it, it does not drive it out of the organism’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
Fever is disease in pure, proper form, nothing less than the diseased, individual organism liberating itself from its specific disease, as the healthy organism does from its specific processes, that is., in digestion and excretion, as a matter of fact through this movement of the fever the disease is at the same time sublated, digested, it is an interior process directed against the organism’s non-organic nature, a digestion of medicine.
‘Health consists of the whole process, and its abnormality is not implicit in or relative to the form of disease or the system; it is relative only to this succession. This motion now constitutes fever. Consequently, fever is disease in its purity, or rather the ailing individual organism, freeing itself from its specific disease in the same way as the healthy organism frees itself from its specific processes. As fever constitutes the pure life of the diseased organism therefore, it is actually only when fever is present that the diagnosis of a distinct disease becomes possible. As fever is both the constitution and fluidification of this succession of functions, the disease is simultaneously sublated by it, i.e. digested by its motion. This sublation constitutes an interior circulation opposed to the inorganic nature of the organism, a digestion of medicines. Consequently, although fever is certainly a morbid state and a disease, it is also the means by which the organism cures itself. This is only true of a severe and virulent fever which affects the whole of the organism however, for a lingering and consuming fever which never really develops is a very dangerous sign in chronic diseases. Chronic illnesses are therefore of a kind which cannot be overcome by fever. In the course of a lingering fever, the disease does not dominate the digesting 5 organism, for all the individual processes of this organism merely produce themselves in an untrammelled manner, each operating of its own accord. In this case, fever merely follows a superficial course, and fails to subdue these individual parts of the organism. In the case of violent inflammatory fevers, it is mainly the vascular system which is attacked, while in the case of asthenic fevers it is mainly the nervous system. When it is attacked by a true fever therefore, the organism subsides initially into the nervous system, which is the general organism; then into the internal organism, and finally into its shape’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
The evidence of this is the production of sweat whereby yhe organism in the reproduction of itself reduces to lymph and this is sweat, the existence of the organism in fluid form, and the significance of this product is that in it the isolation, the single system, the determinateness, ceases, for the organism has produced itself as a whole, in general, has digested itself.
‘The reproducing organism reverts to lymph, and so gives rise to the fluid subsistence of sweat. The significance of this product is that within it, the isolated singularity of determinateness disappears, the organism as a whole having brought itself forth, and generally digested itself. Sweat is concocted morbid matter; it was the physicians of antiquity who described it as such, and they were fully justified in doing so. Sweat is the critical secretion; in it, the organism attains to a self-excretion, by means of which it eliminates its abnormality, and rids itself of its morbid activity. The crisis is the organism’s mastering of itself, reproducing itself, and putting this power into effect by excretion. It is not the morbid matter which is secreted of course; it is not the case that the body would have been healthy if it had never contained this matter, or if it could have been ladled out of it. The crisis, like digestion in general, is at the same time a secretion. It has a dual product however, so that critical secretions differ widely from the secretions of exhaustion. These latter are not really secretions at all, they are dissolutions of the organism, and in significance they are therefore the direct antithesis of the critical secretions’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
In analogy to digestion but somewhat more than analogy because of the involvement of lymph thereby supplying a material connection the organism has transformed a particularized function into the universal element of animality, exactly what digestion does to the nonorganic matter it processes.
‘The organism is the coalescence of itself with itself in its outward process. It wins and takes over from this process nothing but chyle, which is its universal animalization. Consequently, as the being-for-self of the living Notion, it is to an equal extent a disjunctive activity which rids itself of this process, separates itself from the one-sided subjectivity of its hostility towards the object, and so becomes explicitly what it is implicitly. It therefore becomes the non-neutral identity of its Notion and its reality, and so finds the end and product of its activity to be the already established beginning and origin of its being. It is thus that satisfaction conforms to reason; the process which enters into external differentiation turns into the process of the organism with itself, and the result is not the mere production of a means, but the bringing forth of an end, the unity of the self’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
Unlike the chyle the sweat is expressed to the surface, sweat is the critical secretion, in it, the organism attains to an excretion of itself, through which it eliminates its abnormality and rids itself of its morbid activity and evidently enough this duplicates the process of excretion in digestion whereby the organism likewise divests itself of its nonorganic entanglement and attains a sense of being for itself, and as for medicine, our conception of healing must follow the lines of our treatment of digestion, the organism does not will to subdue something external to it but it is healed by disentangling itself from something which is particular and which it must regard as beneath its dignity, and by coming to itself.
‘Our treatment of digestion should be borne in mind when healing is being considered. The organism does not attempt to subdue an externality, but is healed by coming to itself, and abandoning its involvement with a particular determination which it has to regard as being subordinate to it’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
What medical treatment does is attend the animal in its effort at excretion and in order to achieve this it administers a relatively indigestible substance, something that is difficult to assimilate and overcome, so that the organism is confronted by something alien to it against which it is compelled to exert its strength.
‘It is by means of the healing agent that the organism is excited into annulling the particular excitement in which the formal activity of the whoIe is fixed, and restoring the fluidity of the particular organ or system within the whole. This is effected by the agent by reason of its being a stimulus which is however difficult to assimilate and overcome, and which therefore presents the organism with an externality against which it is compelled to exert its force. By acting in opposition to an externality, the organism breaks out of the limitation which had become identical with it, by which it was indisposed, and against which it is unable to react so long as the limitation is not an object for it’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
Thus we find the Brownian nosological categories in Hegel except that he has assimilated them to his trope of digestion and each of these medicines, the debilitating and the fortifying, should induce the organism, overcome by its disdain for the outer world which sickens it, to digest its negative self and be drawn back again into the general activity of assimilation.
‘On the whole, remedies have tended to become more general in character. In many cases, all that is necessary is a general shake-up, and physicians themselves have admitted that one remedy may work as well as its opposite. Thus, although the debilitating and restorative methods are antithetical, they have both proved to be effective, and ailments which prior to the teaching of Brown had been cured by means of emetics and purging, have since been cured by means of opium, naphtha and brandy’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
[John Brown, (1735–1788), Scottish physician and the creator of the Brunonian system of medicine].
Hence it is exactly this extrication from the entanglement that allows and realises the return of the organism into itself by way of assimilation, and recovery merely means that in this accomplished withdrawal into itself the organism digests itself and with regard to actually assigning the appropriate medicines not a single rational word has been uttered in this connection, according to Hegel, for experience alone is supposed to decide this. It may be the logic of the digestion trope that inclines Hegel towards past remedies, the kind that used to belong to the purgative regimen, arguing that experience with chicken dung has as much value as that with medicinal plants; for in order that medicine should be nauseating, human urine, chicken dung, and peacock dung were formerly used.
‘Deciding which remedies are the right ones now presents us with a difficulty. The materia medica has not yet uttered a single rational word on the connection between a disease and its remedy; experience alone is supposed to decide the matter. Experience with Chicken droppings is therefore as valuable as that with the various officinal plants, for human urine, and the droppings of Chickens and Peacocks were formerly used medicinally, in order to produce nausea. Each particular disease does not have its specific remedy. If it did the connection here would have to be found, i.e. the form in which a determinateness occurs within the organism, and the way in which it occurs in vegetable nature or elsewhere, as an inanimate and external stimulant’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
And once again Hegel’s partiality towards the literal and the metonymical is exposed, it is excrement that will best induce excretion and hence permit the real process of assimilation to resume. What is at issue here concerning Hegelian dialectics of digestion and disease is not an argument for Hegel’s contribution to medicine but rather to demonstrate philosophy’s interest in the relevant empirical science and her (Lady Philosophy I mean) ability to interpret its results in ways that connect digestion and all it entails physiologically with other realms of animal and human assimilation, call this literal and material manner of interpretation metonymical if you wish, that does distinguishing Hegelian method from that of Naturphilosophie and Hegel’s contribution is understood in terms of the interpretation of medicine and the body whereby a model of actual practices in metonymical thinking is delivered able to reveal philosophical meaning in the most primary of physical processes and the movies mentioned above may have stopped short of exploring digestion but their representations of the complexities and contradictions inherent in the scene of eating are predicated upon Hegelian thought and the dialectics of digestion.
__________________________________________
I have worked up quite an appetite, Lady Philosophy does that to me, but what I am really hungry for is the love of my dear adorable muse to whom I dedicate this morsel ❤️🥩
Rien de dormir cette nuit
Je veux de toi
Jusqu’à ce que je sois sec
Mais nos corps sont tout mouillés
Complétement couvert de sueur
Nous nous noyons dans la marée
Je n’ai aucun désir
Tu as ravagé mon coeur
Et moi, j’ai bu ton sang
Mais nous pouvons faire ce que nous voulons
J’aurais toujours faim de toi
Mais nous pouvons faire ce que nous voulons
J’aurais toujours faim de toi
Tout le Monde est à moi
Je l’ai gagné dans un jeu de cartes
Et maintenant je m’en fous
C’était gagné trop facilement
Ça y est alors ma belle traîtresse
Il faut que je brûle de jalousie
Tu as ravagé mon coeur
Et moi, j’ai bu ton sang
Mais nous pouvons faire ce que nous voulons
J’aurais toujours faim de toi
Mais nous pouvons faire ce que nous voulons
J’aurais toujours faim de toi
Mais nous pouvons faire ce que nous voulons
J’aurais toujours faim de toi
Mais nous pouvons faire ce que nous voulons
J’aurais toujours faim de toi
No matter what I do I’m still hungry for you
No matter what I do I’m still hungry for you
Rien de dormir cette nuit J
e veux de toi jusqu’à ce que je sois sec
Mais nos corps sont tout mouillés
Complétement couvert de sueur
Hungry for you
Hungry for you
I’m still hungry for you
I’m hungry for you
I’m hungry for you
I’m still hungry for you
Coming up next:
The indigestible.
It may stop but it never ends.
__________________________________________
‘Der Mensch ist, was er ißt’
‘Man is what he eats’.
- Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach, ‘Die Naturwissenschaft und die Revolution (‘Natural science and the revolution’), 1850, repeated in ‘Das Geheimnis des Opfers, ober der Mensch ist was er ißt’, (‘The Mystery of Sacrifice, or Man is What He Eats’), 1862.
Piers Morgan must eat a lot of a***holes then.
Drawing ©Kurt Vonnegut, (1922–2007).
_________________________________________
