On Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Nature’ : A Free Reflex of Spirit — part five.
‘The Lake at Evening’
by William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
Clouds, lingering yet, extend in solid bars
Through the grey west; and lo! These waters, steeled
By breezeless air to smoothest polish, yield
A vivid repetition of the stars;
Jove, Venus and the ruddy crest of Mars
Amid his fellows beauteously revealed
At happy distance from earth’s groaning field,
Where ruthless mortals wage incessant wars.
Is it a mirror? — or the nether Sphere
Opening to view the abyss in which she feeds
Her own calm fires? — But list! a voice is near;
Great Pan himself low-whispering through the reeds,
‘Be thankful, thou; for, if unholy deeds
Ravage the world, tranquility is here!’
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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, (1770–1831). ‘The Philosophy of Nature’
Concerning metaphysical disputes in matters of interpretation of the ‘Philosophy of Nature’ this includes the dispute about whether or not Hegel’s theory of nature should be construed as a posteriori or robust a priori which raises broader issues in Hegelian interpretation in general and upon close examination this dispute between the two interpretations can be seen fundamentally to concern Hegel’s metaphysics, hence it bears significantly upon how we should interpret Hegel’s philosophical outlook in its entirety and in particular upon whether and in what sense we should read Hegel as a metaphysical thinker, and in essence the robust a priori reading of the ‘Philosophy of Nature’ presupposes that Hegel is presenting a metaphysical theory of nature according to which nature is structured by successive forms that comprise a necessary chain. On the other hand the a posteriori reading implicitly presupposes that Hegel’s theory of nature is non-metaphysical and that the basic categories composing this theory follow one another merely contingently. According to robust a priorism the philosopher of nature must first describe in sui generis, non-scientific terms a sequence of objectively existing natural forms each deriving from the preceding one and then the philosopher must appraise how far forms described by scientists can be interpreted as identical to these sui generis natural forms and according to the robust a priori interpretation therefore the ‘Philosophy of Nature’ is essentially a metaphysical theory in the sense that it purports to describe really existing structures which are presumed to organize the natural world and these structures are initially characterized under specifically non-scientific descriptions that are subsequently compared against the descriptions that scientists have given of those structures and furthermore according to Hegel’s basic theory each objectively existing natural structure or form supplants its predecessor with necessity and he refers to the conceptually generated necessity of nature’s patterns (Gebilde).
‘The infinite wealth and variety of forms, and the utterly irrational contingency which mixes with the external order of natural formations, have been praised as the sublime freedom and divinity of nature , or at least as the divinity within it. It is to be expected that ordinary ways of thinking should mistake contingency, caprice and lack of order, for freedom and rationality. This impotence on the part of nature sets limits to philosophy; and it is the height of pointlessness to demand of the Notion that it should explain, and as it is said, construe or deduce these contingent products of nature, although the more isolated and trifling they are the easier the task appears to be. Traces of Notional determination will certainly survive in the most particularized product, although they will not exhaust its nature. The traces of this transmission and inner connection will often surprise the investigator, but will be particularly astonishing or even incredible to those accustomed only to seeing the same contingency in the history of nature as they see in that of humanity. Here one has to guard against accepting such traces as the determinate totality of formations, for it is this that gives rise to the analogies mentioned above. The difficulty, and in many cases the impossibility of finding clear distinctions for classes and orders on the basis of empirical observation, has its root in the inability of nature to hold fast to the realization of the Notion. Nature never fails to blur essential limits with intermediate and defective formations, and so to provide instances which qualify every firm distinction. Even within a specific genus such as mankind, monsters occur, which have to be included within the genus, although they lack some of the characteristic determinations which would have been regarded as essential to it. In order to classify such formations as defective, imperfect, or deformed, an invariable prototype has to be assumed, with the help of which we are able to recognize these so-called monsters’ deformities, and borderline cases. This prototype cannot be drawn from experience, but has as its presupposition the independence and worth of Notional determination’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature’
Each of these patterns constitute a stage (Stufe) which proceeds of necessity out of its predecessor (aus der andern notwendig hervorgeht).
‘Nature is to be regarded as a system of stages, the one proceeding of necessity out of the other, and being the proximate truth of that from which it results. This is not to be thought of as a natural engendering of one out of the other however, but as an engendering within the inner Idea which constitutes the ground of nature. Metamorphosis accrues only to the Notion as such, for development is nothing but the alteration of the same. In nature the Notion is however partly a mere inner principle, and partly an existence which is simply a living individuality; existent metamorphosis is therefore limited solely to this individuality’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature’
Which is to say each form is the necessary consequence of the one preceding it in a sense of necessity to be explained. On the other hand according to the a posteriori method the philosopher must trace out a series of categories each of which provides a perspective for apprehending a determinate range of empirical phenomena and in each case the philosopher must assess how these categories are contingently instantiated in the relevant range of empirical phenomena then reflect upon this whole range of phenomena to formulate a posteriori the next category in the series and on this a posteriori reading the basic framework of Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Nature’ is no longer a series of descriptions of objectively existing structures and it is now a set of categories for thinking about empirical phenomena and these categories are non-metaphysical for they do not purport to correspond descriptively to natural forms or structures that actually exist. Rather, these categories specify how we must think about empirical phenomena articulating the key stages in the process by which we render those phenomena intelligible to ourselves and John W. Burbidge confirms that his a posteriori reading implies that the ‘Philosophy of Nature’ is essentially non-metaphysical, he interprets the Logic as articulating the basic categories that crystallize ‘the operations of pure thought’, and in this Burbidge ignores Hegel’s contention that his logic is a metaphysics.
‘In accordance with these determinations, thoughts can be called objective thoughts; and among them the forms which are considered initially in ordinary logic and which are usually taken to be only forms of conscious thinking have to be counted too. Thus logic coincides with metaphysics, with the science of things grasped in though ts that used to be taken to express the essentialities of the things. The relationship of forms such as concept, judgment, and syllogism to others like causality, etc., can only establish itself within the Logic itself. But one can see already, though only in a preliminary way, that, since thought seeks to form a concept of things, this concept (along with judgment and syllogism as its most immediate forms) cannot consist in determinations and relationships that are alien and external to the things. As we said above, thinking things over leads to what is universal in them; but the universal is itself one of the moments of the Concept. To say that there is understanding, or reason, in the world is exactly what is contained in the expression ‘objective thought’. But this expression is inconvenient precisely because ‘thought’ is all too commonly used as if it belonged only to spirit, or consciousness, while ‘objective’ is used primarily just with reference to what is unspiritual’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Burbidge argues instead that ‘pure thought’ unfolds without any contact with an external reality’ and the confrontation with external reality marks the transition from Logic to ‘Philosophy of Nature’ at which point thought begins to assess how far its categories apply in the phenomenal domain and the basic framework of the ‘Philosophy of Nature’ therefore consists in categories devised a posteriori in the encounter with phenomenal reality just as the Logic centres upon categories devised a priori through thought’s entirely self-contained reflections upon its own processes and furthermore such natural categories constituting Hegel’s basic theory of nature compose a contingent series and any revisions in empirical knowledge demand the derivation of new, different, categories.
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Anatoly Liadov, ‘The Enchanted Lake’, symphonic poem Op. 62:
Through their implicit divergence over Hegel’s metaphysics the two readings of the ‘Philosophy of Nature’ broadly align with opposed positions that have emerged from the extensive debate among Hegel scholars over whether his philosophy should be read metaphysically or non-metaphysically and broadly speaking metaphysical readings contend that his philosophical system sets out to describe the structures of the world as it really is while by contrast non-metaphysical readings hold that Hegel’s system explicates a set of categories through which we must confer intelligibility upon our experience. The first non-metaphysical interpreter was Klaus Hartmann, who regards Hegel as a ‘category theorist’ who propounds a ‘scheme of ideas’ but ‘engages in no metaphysical commitment’. These categories do not purport to correspond to really existing structures within the world but merely to specify how we must represent things or how they must appear to us given the constraints of our mode of representation that which Henry Allison calls our epistemic conditions and some non-metaphysical interpreters, such as Robert Pippin give this a Fichtean inflection whereby the categories that Hegel explicates must constrain our thought in virtue of being necessary conditions for the possibility of self-conscious subjectivity. Broadly then the strong a priori construal of the ‘Philosophy of Nature’ aligns with the metaphysical interpretation of Hegel whereas the a posteriori construal is as Burbidge suggests closer to the non-metaphysical school of interpretation and this gives the interpretive dispute surrounding the ‘Philosophy of Nature’ wider importance and relevance for understanding Hegel’s entire philosophical outlook.
The distinction between metaphysical and non-metaphysical readings of Hegel could to some extent be reframed as a distinction between realist and non-realist readings albeit such nomenclature does not fully capture the complexity of either position and on metaphysical readings Hegel is a realist given that he believes that the world has objectively a determinate structure which we can know about as it really is. And though he is usually thought of as an absolute idealist but as he explains absolute idealism is the view that things have the ground of their being not in themselves but in the universal divine idea.
‘Now, it is reason, the faculty of the unconditioned, that sees what is conditioned in all this empirical awareness of things. What is here called object of reason, the unconditioned or infinite, is nothing but the self-equivalent; in other words, it is that original identity of the I in thinking which was mentioned in § 42. This abstract ‘I’, or the thinking that makes this pure identity into its ob-ject or purpose, is called ‘reason’. (See the remark to the preceding paragraph. ) Our empirical cognitions are not appropriate for this identity that lacks determinations altogether, because they are always determinate in content. When an unconditioned of this sort is accepted as the Absolute and the Truth of reason (or as the Idea), then, of course, our empirical awareness is declared to be untrue, to be [only] appearances … The naive consciousness has rightly taken exception to this subjective idealism, according to which the content of our consciousness is something that is only ours, something posited only through us . In fact, the true situation is that the things of which we have immediate knowledge are mere appearances, not only for us, but also in-themselves, and that the proper determination of these things, which are in this sense ‘finite’, consists in having the ground of their being not within themselves but in the universal divine Idea. This interpretation must also be called idealism, but, as distinct from the subjective idealism of the Critical Philosophy, it is absolute idealism. Although it transcends the ordinary realistic consciousness, still, this absolute idealism can hardly be regarded as the private property of philosophy in actual fact, because, on the contrary, it forms the basis of all religious consciousness. This is because religion, too, regards the sum total of everything that is there, in short, the world before us, as created and governed by God’.
-’The Encyclopaedia Logic’
Here the idea is understood as a comprehensive ontological structure that is not merely subjective not merely a function of human thought but in some sense exists objectively too and absolute idealism is not idealism in the usual sense where idealism denotes the view that the world either exists as for Berkeleyor acquires determinate character as for Kant only through the mind’s constituting activity whereas absolute idealism is a form of realism upon which all reality is structured by the idea. Non-metaphysical readings deny that Hegel is a realist, for on these readings Hegel’s system articulates a series of categories rather than attempting to describe any objectively existing structure ut such a line of interpretation suggests that Hegel held with Kant that reality cannot have in itself the character or structure that we represent it as having since this character is solely a function of our representing activity and hence that we cannot know about reality as it is independently of us and such an interpretation would seem to disregard Hegel’s adverse comparison of what he calls Kant’s subjective idealism with his own absolute idealism.
(EL §45A/88–89). In fact, though, nonmetaphysical interpretations avoid construing Hegel’s idealism as merely “subjective” by arguing that, for him, even the concept of reality as it is “in itself,” independently of us, is a category that we adopt — a self-contradictory category, in fact, which must be transcended. Thus, the nonmetaphysical Hegel can consistently hold both that our categories do not correspond to any real structures and that these categories are absolutely valid (rather than being merely “subjective” vis-à-vis “reality-in-itself”).
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The metaphysical reading of Hegel is generally rejected by contemporary scholars though not by me which might seem to appear at the same time against the robust a priori reading of the ‘Philosophy of Nature’ but frequently scholars reject the metaphysical view because they associate it with a particular reading of Hegel promoted by Charles Taylor for whom Hegel sees the whole universe as the creation and expression of Geist or God a macrocosmic subject which seeks to know itself by creating a natural world that embodies and reflects it, and Geist also creates finite human subjects who can come to recognize Geist’s presence in nature so that through them Geist attains full self-consciousness and the Hegel who emerges from such reading is a metaphysical thinker in that he attempts to describe the universe as it really is, a complex ensemble of relations between Geist, nature, and human subjects. Many commentators in particular those concerned with Hegel’s socio-political thought suppose Taylor’s reading to exhaust the possibilities for metaphysical interpretation of Hegel for instance Alan Patten assumes that any metaphysical construal of Hegel must following Taylor suppose him to ‘start out from [a] fantastical notion of cosmic spirit’, a reading which, Patten concludes, ‘leaves Hegel’s position looking pretty unattractive’. In a similar manner Allen Wood equates Hegel’s metaphysics with the theory of cosmic spirit and then concludes that this metaphysics is an ‘utterly unconvincing’ failure to be jettisoned in favour of Hegel’s concrete reflections on social issues so we should not equate Hegel’s metaphysics with Taylor’s construal of it as he appears to make an interpretive error in generalizing contentions that Hegel makes in particular within his philosophy of mind to encapsulate the content of his entire metaphysics and more precisely Taylor extrapolates Hegel’s claims about the character of human subjects onto the putative cosmic subject that he calls Geist/God.
When Hegel himself refers to a metaphysical reality embodied in nature and humanity however he typically speaks not of Geist but of the idea or the logical idea and by this in essence he means the sum-total of all the forms of thought described in his Logic and he explains that the differences between the particular philosophical sciences are only determinations of the idea itself and it is this alone which presents itself in these diverse elements and in nature it is not something other than the idea that is recognised, but the idea is in the form of externalisation [Entäußerung].
‘Just as a provisional, or a general, notion of a philosophy cannot be given, because only the whole of the Science is the presentation of the Idea, so the division of it, too, can be comprehended only from the whole presentation; [at this point] the division is only something anticipated, like the [coming] presentation from which it has to be taken. But the Idea shows itself as the thinking that is strictly identical with itself, and this at once shows itself to be the activity of positing itself over against itself, in order to be for-itself, and to be, in this other, only at home with itself. Hence, the science falls into three parts:
I. The Logic, the science of the Idea in and for itself.
II. The Philosophy of Nature, as the science of the Idea in its otherness.
Ill. The Philosophy of Spirit, as the Idea that returns into itself out of its otherness.
In § 15 above, it was remarked that what distinguishes the particular philosophical sciences are only determinations of the Idea itself, and that it is only this Idea that presents itself in these diverse elements. In nature, it is not something-other than the Idea that is [re]cognised, but the Idea is in the form of [its] uttering,- just as in the spirit we have the same Idea as being for-itself, and coming to be in and for itself. A determination of this kind, in which the Idea appears, is at the same time a moment that flows; hence, the single science is just as much the cognition of its content as an ob-ject that is, as it is the immediate cognition in that content of its passage into its higher circle. The representation of division is therefore incorrect inasmuch as it puts the particular parts or sciences side by side, as if they were only immobile parts and substantial in their distinction, the way that species are’.
- ‘The Encyclopaedia Logic’
Hegel does not equate the omnipresent idea with mind: rather, the idea eventually develops into mind, which is concrete and developed in contrast to the comparatively abstract, simple logical idea.
‘The difficulty of the philosophical cognition of mind consists in the fact that here we are no longer dealing with the comparatively abstract, simple logical Idea, but with the most concrete, most developed form achieved by the Idea in its self-actualization. Even finite or subjective mind, not only absolute mind, must be grasped as an actualization of the Idea. The treatment of mind is only truly philosophical when it cognizes the concept of mind in its living development and actualization, i.e. just when it comprehends the mind as a copy of the eternal Idea. But it belongs to the nature of mind to cognize its concept. Consequently, the summons to self-knowledge, issued to the Greeks by the Delphic Apollo, does not have the sense of a command externally addressed to the human mind by an alien power; on the contrary, the god who impels to self-knowledge is none other than the mind’s own absolute law. All activity of the mind is, therefore, only an apprehension of itself, and the aim of all genuine science is just this, that mind shall recognize itself in everything in heaven and on earth. There is simply no out-and-out Other for the mind. Even the oriental does not wholly lose himself in the object of his worship. But the Greeks were the first to grasp expressly as mind that which they opposed to themselves as the Divine, though even they did not attain, either in philosophy or in religion, to knowledge of the absolute infinity of mind; therefore with the Greeks the relationship of the human mind to the Divine is still not one of absolute freedom. It was Christianity, by the doctrine of the incarnation of God and the presence of the Holy Spirit in the community of believers, that first gave to human consciousness a perfectly free relation to the infinite and thereby made possible the conceptual knowledge of mind in its absolute infinity’.
So albeit Hegel does appear to believe in a nonmaterial reality of some sort which is instantiated in the natural and human domains he does not identify this reality directly with a cosmic subject as Taylor supposes and Hegel’s system is therefore quite amenable to a metaphysical reading very much distinct from that of Taylor.
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Hegel makes several statements supporting such a metaphysical reading of his philosophy and confirming in particular that he believes this non-material reality designated the idea or at times the concept [der Begriff] to structure and be embodied in all other beings and he explains that the concept is what truly comes first and things are that they are through the activity of the concept that dwells in them.
‘The singular is the same as the actual, except that it has issued from the Concept, and hence is posited as something-universal, or as negative identity with itself. Since the actual is still only in-itself or immediately the unity of essence and existence, it is potentially effective; but the singularity of the Concept is strictly what is effective-and of course it no longer works like a cause, with the semblance of producing something else: rather [it is] what produces itself.-Singularity, however, is not to be taken in the sense of merely immediate singularity-as when we speak of single things, or human beings, etc. ; this determinacy of Singularity is found only where we have the Judgment. Every moment of the Concept is itself the whole Concept (§ 160); but singularity, the subject, is the Concept posited as totality. Addition 1 . When people speak of the Concept. they ordinarily have only abstract universality in mind, and consequently the Concept is usually also defined as a general notion. We speak in this way of the ‘concept’ of colour, or of a plant, or of an animal, and so on; and these concepts are supposed to arise by omitting the particularities through which the various colours, plants, animals, etc., are distinguished from one another, and holding fast to what they have in common. This is the way in which the understanding apprehends the Concept, and the feeling that such concepts are hollow and empty, that they are mere schemata and shadows, is justified. What is universal about the Concept is indeed not just something common against which the particular stands on its own; instead the universal is what particularises (specifies) itself, remaining at home with itself in its other, in uncIouded clarity’.
- ‘The Encyclopaedia Logic’
Elsewhere he reiterates that all these things only exist insofar as they depend upon the idea. The proposition that the finite is ideal [ideell] constitutes idealism. The idealism of philosophy consists in nothing else than in recognizing that the finite is not a veritable being.
‘The claim that the finite is an idealization defines idealism. The idealism of philosophy consists in nothing else than in the recognition that the finite is not truly an existent. Every philosophy is essentially idealism or at least has idealism for its principle, and the question then is only how far this principle is carried out. This applies to philosophy just as much as to religion, for religion also, no less than philosophy, will not admit finitude as a true being, an ultimate, an absolute, or as something non-posited, uncreated, eternal. The opposition between idealistic and realistic philosophy is therefore without meaning. A philosophy that attributes to finite existence, as such, true, ultimate, absolute being, does not deserve the name of philosophy. The principles of ancient as well as more recent philosophies — whether ‘water’, ‘matter’, or ‘atoms’ — are universals, idealizations, not things as given immediately, that is, in sensuous singularity. Not even the ‘water’ of Thales is that, for, although also empirical water, it is besides that the in-itself or essence of all other things, and these things do not stand on their own, self-grounded, but are posited on the basis of an other, of ‘water’, that is, they are idealized. In thus calling the principle or the universal an idealization as we have just done (and the concept, the idea, spirit, deserve the name even more), and in saying then that the singular things of the senses are idealizations in principle, or in their concept, and even more so when sublated in the spirit, we must note, in passing, the same doublesidedness that transpired in the infinite, namely that an idealization is on the one hand something concrete, a true existent, but, on the other hand, that its moments are no less idealizations, sublated in it; in fact, however, there is only one concrete whole from which the moments are inseparable’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Hegel is declaring that his absolute idealism consists in his view that every existent depends ontologically upon the idea which embraces the totality of forms of thought, forms which exist, as Hegel tells us in his Logic, objectively (objektiv). Thoughts can be called objective thoughts; and among them the forms which are usually taken to be only forms of conscious thinking have to be counted too. Thus logic coincides with metaphysics, with the science of things grasped in thoughts, which used to be taken to express the essentialities of things. To say that there is understanding, or reason, in the world is exactly what is contained in the expression objective thought. This expression is, however, inconvenient precisely because thought is all too commonly used as if it belonged only to spirit, or consciousness, while the objective is used primarily just with reference to what is unspiritual. Hence the logical is to be sought in a system of thought-determinations in which the antithesis between subjective and objective (in its usual meaning) disappears. This meaning of thinking and of its determinations is more precisely expressed by the ancients when they say that nous governs the world’.
‘If we say that thought, qua objective, is the inwardness of the world, it may seem as if consciousness is being ascribed to natural things. But we feel a repugnance against conceiving the inner activity of things to be thinking, since we say that man is distinguished from what is merely natural by virtue of thinking. In this view we would have to talk about nature as a system of thought without consciousness, or an intelligence which, as Schelling says, is petrified. In order to avoid misunderstanding, it is better to speak of ‘thought-determinations’ instead of using the expression ‘thoughts’. In line with what has been said so far, then, the Logical is to be sought in a system of thought-determinations in which the antithesis between subjective and objective (in its usual meaning) disappears. This meaning of thinking and of its determinations is more precisely expressed by the Ancients when they say that nous governs the world. or by our own saying that there is reason in the world, by which we mean that reason is the soul of the world, inhabits it, and is immanent in it, as its own, innermost nature, its universal. An example closer at hand is that, in speaking of a definite animal, we say that it is [an] ‘animal’. ‘Animal as such’ cannot be pointed out; only a definite animal can ever be pointed at. ‘The animal’ does not exist; on the contrary, this expression refers to the universal nature of single animals, and each existing animal is something that is much more concretely determinate, something particularised. But ‘to be animal’, the kind considered as the universal, pertains to the determinate animal and constitutes its determinate essentiality. If we were to deprive a dog of its animality we could not say what it is. Things as such have a persisting, inner nature, and an external thereness. They live and die, come to be and pass away; their essentiality, their universality, is the kind, and this cannot be interpreted merely as something held in common. Just as thinking constitutes the substance of external things, so it is also the universal substance of what is spiritual. In all human intuiting there is thinking; similarly, thinking is what is universal in all representations, recollections, and in every spiritual activity whatsoever, in all willing, wishing, etc. These are all of them just further specifications of thinking. When thinking is interpreted in this way, it appears in quite a different light than when we simply say that, along with and beside other faculties such as intuiting, representing, willing, and the like, we have a faculty of thinking. If we regard thinking as what is genuinely universal in everything natural and everything spiritual, too, then it overgrasps all of them and is the foundation of them all. As the next step, we can add to this interpretation of thinking in its objective meaning (as nous) [our account of) what thinking is in its subjective sense. First of all, we say that man thinks, but, at the same time, we say too that he intuits, wills, etc. Man thinks and is something universal, but he thinks only insofar as the universal is [present) for him. The animal is also in-itself something universal, but the universal as such is not [present) for it; instead only the singular is ever [there) for it. The animal sees something singular, for instance, its food, a man, etc. But all these are only something singular for it. In the same way our sense experience always has to do only with something singular (this pain, this pleasant taste, etc. ) . Nature does not bring the nous to consciousness for itself; only man reduplicates himself in such a way that he is the universal that is [present) for the universal. This is the case for the first time when man knows himself to be an ‘I’. When I say ‘I’, I mean myself as this Singular, quite determinate person. But when I say ‘I’, I do not in fact express anything particular about myself. Anyone else is also ‘I’, and although in calling myself ‘I’, I certainly mean me, this single [person), what I say is still something completely universal.
- ‘The Encyclopaedia Logic’
The principle point here is that the forms of thought which make up the idea and on which all other existents depend are not merely subjective categories rather they primarily exist as objective structures embodied in both nature and mind. Thomas E. Wartenberg calls Hegel’s metaphysics conceptualism: a conceptualist ‘holds that concepts are the most basic objects in reality and the things that there are have reality only insofar as they reflect the structure of these concepts’. Wartenberg stresses that these concepts are primarily not items in the mind but blueprints for the development of finite beings: ‘Reality must contain the developmental plan of its own existence just as the seed does … ‘the idea’ is simply the developmental plan for all that exists’. Wartenberg shows that Hegel envisages these objective concepts on the model of Aristotelian substantial forms, which really embody and manifest themselves in finite phenomena. However, Wartenberg downplays Hegel’s distinctive view that these forms are logically interconnected to constitute a rational sequence. Precisely because of their rationality, Hegel calls these forms thought-forms or the idea we should recognize Hegel as a metaphysical thinker or absolute idealist in that he believes all reality natural and human to instantiate a sequence of conceptual forms that exhibit a distinctively rational interconnectedness.
For Hegel, mind necessarily develops to a point at which human beings start to think according to subjective categories which duplicate the content of the objective forms of thought (subjective categories which therefore accurately describe the world’s real structure). Thus, objective forms of thought do eventually assume subjective guise. Nonetheless, the forms of thought are not merely subjective — not merely functions of the human mind; rather, subjective categories are the highly developed form that hitherto non-subjective thought eventually assumes. Hegel’s idealism thereby dissolves the subject/object antithesis by arguing that objective thought must ultimately develop into subjective form and textual evidence exists this interpretation of Hegel’s metaphysics which eschews Taylor’s problem of postulating a creative cosmic subject.
‘Subjecting the determinations of the older metaphysics to investigation was without doubt a very important step. Naive thinking went about unsuspectingly in the thought-determinations that were formed directly and spontaneously. No one asked, at that stage, to what extent these determinations would have value and validity [if taken] on their own account. We have already remarked earlier that thinking that is free is without presuppositions. By this standard, the thinking of the older metaphysics was not free, because, without further ado, it let its determinations count as something given in advance, or as an a priori, although reflection had not put them to the test. By contrast, the Critical Philosophy set itself the task of investigating just how far the forms of thinking are in general capable of helping us reach the cognition of truth. More precisely, the faculty of cognition was to be investigated before cognition began. This certainly involves the correct insight that the forms of thinking themselves must be made the ob-ject of cognition; but there soon creeps in, too, the mistaken project of wanting to have cognition before we have any cognition, or of not wanting to go into the water before we have learned to swim. Certainly, the forms of thinking should not be used without investigation; but this process of investigation is itself a process of cognition. So the activity of the forms of thinking, and the critique of them, must be united within the process of cognition. The forms of thinking must be considered in and for themselves; they are the ob-ject and the activity of the ob-ject itself; they investigate themselves, [and] they must determine their own limits and point out their own defects. This is the same activity of thinking that will soon be taken into particular consideration under the name ‘dialectic’; and we can only remark here, in a preliminary way, that it is not brought to bear on the thought-determinations from outside; on the contrary, it must be considered as dwelling within them. The very first [task] in the Kantian philosophy, therefore, is for thinking to investigate how far it is capable of cognition. Nowadays we have gone beyond the Kantian philosophy, and everyone wants to go further. There are two ways of going further, however: one can go forward or backward. Looked at in the clear light of day, many of our philosophical endeavours are nothing but the (mistaken) procedure of the older metaphysics, an uncritical thinking on and on, of the kind that anyone can do’.
- ‘The Encyclopaedia Logic’
So upon Hegel’s metaphysics becoming free of Taylor’s interpretive ensnarement there are additional reasons that some commentators will persist in a lack of sympathy towards it on account of the principle problem being that the metaphysical reading can make Hegel seem like an implausibly pre-critical thinker airily unfazed with regard to Kant’s strictures upon the impossibility of knowing about how reality might be independent of our modes of representation, for example Pippin contends that: ‘[T]he standard view of how Hegel passes beyond Kant into speculative philosophy makes very puzzling, to the point of unintelligibility, how Hegel could have been the post-Kantian philosopher he understood himself to be … Just attributing moderate philosophic intelligence to Hegel should at least make one hesitate before construing him as a post-Kantian philosopher with a pre-critical metaphysics’.
And so it is upon philosophical grounds no few scholars are of the opinion that it unwise to construe Hegel non-metaphysically albeit this necessitates careful reconstruction of those passages in Hegel that seem unambiguously metaphysical yet his texts are multifaceted enough to permit such reconstruction although the objection that construing Hegel metaphysically makes him unacceptably naïve is not conclusive for in the first place as opposed to pre-critical metaphysicians Hegel does not endeavour to describe a reality that he conceives to exist independently of our representations. Although Hegel aspires to describe objectively existing structures that organize reality he does not think that these structures exist independently of our ways of thinking about and representing them for thought necessarily develops into subjective forms that replicate and describe its earlier merely objective structures therefore the really existing structures which Hegel attempts to describe are necessarily interrelated with and not independent of our forms of representation. ‘It is necessary to be extremely cautious in claiming that absolute idealism permits the absolute [that is, the ‘idea’] to exist independent of the knowing subject … [rather] the absolute comes to its fullest realization, organization, and development only in the …. knowing subject’ says Frederick Beiser. And secondly Hegel does not merely make assertions about these objective structures he painstakingly endeavours to support his metaphysical descriptions through his exhaustive critique of rival metaphysical views in the ‘Phenomenology of Spirit’.
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Ola Gjeilo — The Lake Isle ft. Tenebrae:
‘The Lake of Innisfree’
by. W. B. Yeats (1865–1939)
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
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And this critical strategy really does challenge traditional epistemology in that this metaphysical approach is not naïvely pre-Kantian but arises from careful prolonged confrontation with epistemological problems and elsewhere he distinguishes his logic from traditional metaphysics on the grounds that traditional metaphysics deployed categories uncritically without first investigating how they could be true of reality, or of what he designates the reasonable (Vernünftig).
‘The objective logic thus takes the place rather of the former metaphysics which was supposed to be the scientific edifice of the world as constructed by thoughts alone. — If we look at the final shape in the elaboration of this science, then it is ontology which objective logic most directly replaces in the first instance, that is, that part of metaphysics intended to investigate the nature of ens in general (and ens comprises within itself both being and essence, a distinction for which the German language has fortunately preserved different expressions). — But objective logic comprises within itself also the rest of metaphysics, the metaphysics which sought to comprehend with the pure forms of thought such particular substrata, originally drawn from the imagination, as the soul, the world, and God, and in this type of consideration the determinations of thought constituted the essential factor. Logic, however, considers these forms free of those substrata, which are the subjects of figurative representation, considers their nature and value in and for themselves. That metaphysics neglected to do this, and it therefore incurred the just reproach that it employed the pure forms of thought uncritically, without previously investigating whether and how they could be the determinations of the thing-in-itself, to use Kant’s expression — or more precisely, of the rational. — The objective logic is therefore the true critique of such determinations — a critique that considers them, not according to the abstract form of the a priori as contrasted with the a posteriori, but in themselves according to their particular content’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Such considerations imply that properly understood Hegel’s possible metaphysical project can be at the very least as cogent as his possible non-metaphysical project but I follow Stone in taking his metaphysical project of describing the world’s conceptual structures as more fruitful than the non-metaphysical project of a category theory and the metaphysical project is more fruitful both in its philosophical consequences and in its ethical and political implications and the metaphysical project is fruitful just because its endeavours to describe the conceptual structures organizing reality has to incorporate an attempt to describe the objective forms or structures that organize the natural world and to the extent that this description of natural forms belongs within the broader description of reality as pervaded by the idea this description of nature can be expected to diverge in important ways from any of the descriptions available within empirical science and the metaphysical project therefore must include the intention of developing a metaphysical theory of the natural world which characterizes it in substantially non-scientific terms and this places him in a position to advance a strong and persuasive critique of modern science. If he can demonstrate that his descriptions of natural forms rest upon a stronger metaphysical basis than the descriptions offered by empirical science then he can conclude that scientific claims and theories are inadequate in respect of their defective metaphysical basis and to the extent that Hegel takes a metaphysical approach to nature he can articulate a distinctive critique of the scientific approach, that it rests on inadequate metaphysical foundations, although thre is a reluctance in some quarters to view Hegel as critical of science itself, as Kenneth Westphal instance states that: ‘Hegel seeks to discredit not science, but those philosophical perspectives which are overawed by science and have come to worship it’. Similarly David views Hegel as critical of philosophical empiricism but not of empirical science: ‘Hegel is not critical of observational and empirical procedures within the sciences. Recall though as I stated in a previous article is to incorporate current ecological concerns about science into this discussion. A problem of this sort within science that is to say of the sort which Hegel articulates as the problem of science’s inadequate metaphysical foundations can plausibly be viewed as the root cause of widespread environmental degradation and in large part this degradation is directly attributable to modern technological developments which have a more ‘unprecedented and immediate impact’ on nature than has previously been possible as Christopher Belshaw explains and who observes premodern technological interventions to have been relatively localized and transient, tending to accommodate themselves to available natural materials. Yet these technological developments themselves stem from modern empirical science, not only in that they result from the application of science, but also, more deeply, in that they enact practical possibilities already encompassed and anticipated within the theoretical characterizations of nature that science provides. According to Max Horkheimer modern science conceives nature as uniform stuff or matter grasped in purely quantitative, mathematical, terms and because scientific theories thereby disenchant nature they inherently lend themselves to technological applications, and, moreover, specifically to technological applications of a kind which dominate the perceptible, qualitative, natural world. Herbert Marcuse concurs that scientific rationality in defining nature as stuff, defines it as manipulable thus anticipating the practical domination of nature. This is the ‘internal instrumentalist character of scientific rationality by virtue of which it is a priori technology, and the a priori of a specific technology … of domination’.
Hence it is reasonable to think that these technological developments are damaging because the scientific characterizations of nature in which they are grounded are in some way theoretically deficient in the first place and Hegel’s metaphysical approach identifies a basis for such a theoretical deficiency in modern science tat is to say that science has inadequate metaphysical foundations which both pervade and distort its accounts of nature and in proposing to outline a theory of nature based upon his own more adequate, metaphysics Hegel opens up the possibility that his more adequate theory could facilitate more environmentally sensitive technological applications and so a more sustainable way of life as a whole. A philosophically cogent metaphysical project and a fresh approach to nature and a sustained and forceful critique of modern empirical science while eschewing a simple-minded anti-scientism indeed the critique will view scientific claims and theories as straightforwardly false and worthless but as flawed by their inadequate metaphysical foundation hence we reject not the claims themselves but to engage with and reassess them re-describing them in more metaphysically adequate terms.
So Hegel was certainly a metaphysical thinker and I shall procced to delve into the ‘Philosophy of Nature’ treating it as a work of metaphysics employing a robust a priorism decry its absolutization of empirical claims all you like for robust a priorism actually incorporates scientific claims on a merely provisional and interpretive basis and further more a weaker a priorism which as Hegel presents it aspires to reconstruct scientifically described forms into a necessary sequence does entail the false absolutization of fallible scientific findings and in its unreconstructed form the weak a priori reading of the ‘Philosophy of Nature’ has to e discarded albeit a priorism can be reformulated into the considerably more plausible a posteriori method and robust a priorism may then be viewed as raising difficulties relative to a posteriorism in this instance because robust a priorism presupposes the validity of a metaphysical approach to nature which endeavours to describe nature’s objectively existing structures.
There is an issue here only if the project of describing reality’s objective structures is regarded as naïvely pre-Kantian but that really shouldn’t arise as Hegel metaphysician par excellence develops a sui generis theory of nature and an attendant critique of science and within this perspective robust a priorism becomes philosophically fruitful in addition to providing the method by which Hegel can develop a theory of nature couched in a language alternative to and more metaphysically adequate than that of empirical science and as part of reading Hegel metaphysically we should construe his ‘Philosophy of Nature’ in robust a priori terms which will allow us to understand his theory as a sui generis, specifically philosophical, description of nature, and to explore how he compares this description against scientific accounts and reinterprets those accounts in terms of his own metaphysical framework. A roust a priori reading of Hegel’s substantive account of nature in the Philosophy of Nature now follows, a reading will provide us with an initial overview of Hegel’s sui generis theory of nature and how it relates to empirical scientific accounts, a reading that will also enable us to see how Hegel’s sui generis theory of nature reflects his general metaphysical project and in particular, his central metaphysical thesis that all reality embodies and is structured by forms of thought.
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Klaus Schulze, ‘Crystal Lake’:
So off we go then. My adorable muse let us swing together forever.
Jolly boating weather,
And a hay harvest breeze,
Blade on the feather,
Shade off the trees,
Swing swing together,
With your bodies between your knees,
Swing swing together,
With your bodies between your knees.
Skirting past the rushes,
Ruffling o’er the weeds,
Where the lock stream gushes,
Where the cygnet feeds,
Let us see how the wine-glass flushes,
At supper on Boveney meads,
Let us see how the wine glass flushes,
At supper on Boveney meads.
Rugby may be more clever,
Harrow may make more row,
But we’ll row for ever,
Steady from stroke to bow,
And nothing in life shall sever,
The chain that is round us now,
And nothing in life shall sever,
The chain that is round us now.
Others will fill our places,
Dressed in the old light blue,
We’ll recollect our races,
We’ll to the flag be true,
And youth will be still in our faces,
When we cheer for an Eton crew,
And youth will be still in our faces,
When we cheer for an Eton crew.
Twenty years hence this weather,
May tempt us from office stools,
We may be slow on the feather,
And seem to the boys old fools,
But we’ll still swing together,
And swear by the best of schools,
But we’ll still swing together,
And swear by the best of schools.
Coming up next:
Divisions of a philosophy of nature.
To be continued …
