On Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Nature’ : A Free Reflex of Spirit — part thirteen.
‘To my soul’
by Umberto Saba (1883–1957)
You delight in your unending misery.
Such, my soul, should be the worth of knowledge,
that your suffering alone should do you good.
Or is the self-deceived the lucky one?
He who cannot ever know himself
or the sentence of his condemnation?
Still, my soul, you are magnanimous;
yet how you thrill to phantom opportunities,
and so are brought down by a faithless kiss.
To me my misery is a bright summer
day, where from high up I can make out
every facet, every detail of the world below.
Nothing is obscure to me; it’s all right there,
wherever my eye or my mind leads me.
My road is sad but brightened by the sun;
and everything on it, even shadow, is in light.
‘All’anima mia’
Dell’inesausta tua miseria godi.
Tanto ti valga, anima mia, sapere;
sì che il tuo male, null’altro, ti giovi.
O forse avventurato è chi s’inganna?
né a se stesso scoprirsi ha in suo potere,
né mai la sua sentenza lo condanna?
Magnanima sei pure, anima nostra;
ma per quali non tuoi casi t’esalti,
sì che un bacio mentito indi ti prostra.
A me la mia miseria è un chiaro giorno
d’estate, quand’ogni aspetto dagli alti
luoghi discopro in ogni suo contorno.
Nulla m’è occulto; tutto è sì vicino
dove l’occhio o il pensiero mi conduce.
Triste ma soleggiato è il mio cammino;
e tutto in esso, fino l’ombra, è in luce.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, (1770–1831). ‘The Philosophy of Nature’.
‘Nature is the Son of God, not as the Son however, but as abiding in otherness, in which the divine Idea is alienated from love and held fast for a moment. Nature is self-alienated spirit; spirit, a bacchantic god innocent of restraint and reflection has merely been let loose into it; in nature, the unity of the Notion conceals itself. The thinking view of nature must note the implicit process by which nature sublates its otherness to become spirit, and the way in which the Idea is present in each stage of nature itself Estranged from the Idea, nature is merely the corpse of the understanding. Nature is the Idea, but only implicitly. That was why Schelling called it a petrified intelligence, which others have even said is frozen. God does not remain petrified and moribund however, the stones cry out and lift themselves up to spirit. God is subjectivity, activity, infinite actuosity, within which the other is only momentary, and remains implicit within the unity of the Idea, because it is itself this totality of the Idea. Since nature is the Idea in the form of otherness, according to the Notion of the Idea, the Idea is not within it as it is in and for itself, although nature is nevertheless one of the modes in which the Idea manifests itself, and in which it must come forth. Secondly, it has to be established and demonstrated that this mode of the Idea is nature. In order to do this, a comparison will subsequently have to be made, to see if the definition corresponds to ordinary thinking about nature. In other respects however, philosophy need not concern itself with ordinary thinking, nor undertake the tasks it carries out with respect to nature; although such thinking is conformable however, there must, in general, be an agreement between these two aspects. The relation between the metaphysical aspect and this basic determination of nature has now to be indicated, and presents itself as the question of the eternity of the world’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature’
Nature is mind estranged from itself in nature, mind only lets itself go, a Bacchic god unrestrained and unaware of itself in nature the unity of the concept hides, estranged from the idea, nature is only the corpse of the understanding nature is the idea, but only implicitly hence Schelling called it a petrified intelligence others even a frozen intelligence and yet God does not remain petrified and dead the stones cry out and raise themselves to mind … the Philosophy of Nature can most productively be understood as theorizing nature upon a roust a priori basis which is to say theory is constructed by working out rationally the basic sequence of natural forms subsequently incorporating into the account the empirical claims and hypotheses that can be provisionally interpreted as corresponding to the claims of the own theory such an approach calling for an initial description of natural forms in sui generis terms for only through a description of nature in substantially different terms from empirical science can one avoid presupposing in advance the compatibility of particular scientific claims but rather incorporating such claims upon a merely interpretive and provisional basis. The ‘Philosophy of Nature’ starts out by describing natural forms in specifically philosophical terms as constellations of concept/matter relations and albeit Hegel will go on to re-interpret empirical descriptions to correspond to the sui generis descriptions such descriptions remaining esoteric enabling an advancement of a robust though non-obscurantist critique of contemporary science though a question arises as to why the difference of Hegel’s theory from science should be thought to confer epistemic advantage upon the theory and not make it merely a kind of chimerical escapism, well, the deviation from science can acquire epistemic advantage if the metaphysics that makes the theory original at the same time makes it more adequate, a possibility for a theory of natural development emerging from the overarching metaphysical project of describing forms of thought that organize reality and such a project can leads to an understanding of nature as a sequence of forms of thought which are instantiated in or combined with matter in ever more harmonious ways, and further each stage in the sequence is to be seen as the necessary consequence of the previous stage and in particular as its rationally necessary consequence in virtue of the fact that each stage resolves the contradiction in the one before it thereby pointing to a further respect wherein the theory of nature is distinctive for all natural forms are intrinsically rational which is to say they all arise have their being and behave in accordance with rational requirements.
This aspect of the theory once again is derivative of the the overarching metaphysical project in terms of which all the forms of thought that structure reality are intrinsically rational in that they each resolve the contradictions in their predecessors hence they are designated forms of thought (Denkbestimmungen) and they collectively constitute the idea or concept such forms not merely being universal ontological patterns or structures but more especially they are rationally interconnected structures, they intrinsically evince rationality. Accordingly elsewhere Hegel refers to reality in itself as the reasonable (Vernünftig) and given such an overarching metaphysics the forms of thought must be considered qua materially instantiated in nature to be intrinsically rational in the same sense.
‘The notion that ideas and ideals are nothing but chimeras, and that philosophy is a system of pure phantasms, sets itself at once against the actuality of what is rational; but, conversely, the notion that ideas and ideals are something far too excellent to have actuality, or equally something too impotent to achieve actuality, is opposed to it as well. However, the severing of actuality from the Idea is particularly dear to the understanding, which regards its dreams (i. e., its abstractions) as something genuine, and is puffed up about the ‘ought’ that it likes to prescribe, especially in the political field-as if the world had had to wait for it, in order to learn how it ought to be, but is not. If the world were the way it ought to be, what then would become of the pedantic wisdom of the understanding’s ‘ought to be’? When the understanding turns against trivial, external, and perishable objects, institutions, situations, etc., with its ‘ought’-ob-jects that may have a great relative importance for a certain time, and for particular circles-it may very well be in the right; and in such cases it may find much that does not correspond to correct universal determinations. Who is not smart enough to be able to see around him quite a lot that is not, in fact, how it ought to be? But this smartness is wrong when it has the illusion that, in its dealings with ob-jects of this kind and with their ‘ought’, it is operating within the [true] concerns of philosophical science. This science deals only with the Idea which is not so impotent that it merely ought to be, and is not actual-and further with an actuality of which those ob-jects, institutions, and situations are only the superficial outer rind’.
-’The Encyclopaedia Logic’
This principal idea that natural forms are intrinsically rational underpins the theory of natural development in its entirety and he starts off by describing nature’s initial state identifying its internal contradiction then working out what natural form must emerge to provide its resolution and each form exists with the structure it has, its determinate level of unification with matter, in virtue of this structure being a rational requirement given pre-existing problems in preceding natural forms, hence the intrinsic rationality of natural forms undergirds the more specialized descriptions of them as embodying definite stages in the progression toward unification of matter with thought, and furthermore the theory can describe natural forms better than empirical science in virtue of it attributing intrinsic rationality to those forms and in the more developed system we find the fundamental metaphysical conception of natural forms as intrinsically rational, a rationalist conception or rationalist metaphysics of nature, is more adequate than a contrasting conception of nature which is presupposed in empirical science and which makes scientific descriptions less adequate than those of Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature and such a scientific conception of nature can also be described as a metaphysical conception in that it represents science’s attempt to capture nature’s real character though it may be thought that such a conception is inadequate y comparison with the conception of nature as intrinsically rational that comes out of an absolute idealist metaphysics.
One must explicate this conception of natural forms as intrinsically rational in that they arise and act according to requirements of rational necessity and investigate further how such a conception of nature differs from the alternative conception presupposed in empirical science according to which all natural forms are bare things whose behaviour is intrinsically meaningless. ‘Whereas the scientist sees the world as a congeries of external phenomena, linked together by external laws, the philosopher of Nature is … aware of the Idea immanent in it; he sees Nature as implicit or potential mind. … The difference between Naturphilosophie and empirical science, therefore, is one of viewpoint’, explains Errol E. Harris. And one must distinguish the rationalist conception of nature from the traditional teleological conception of it while supporting the view that all scientific inquiry presupposes a metaphysics of bare things albeit science might well be thought to be much more internally diverse and sophisticated than this presupposes. And from the rationalist conception of nature clarification must be forthcoming with regard to the manner y which this conception connects to a robust a priori method of theorizing nature for the rationalist conception justifies and requires robust a priorism through one can insure that all his descriptions of individual natural forms reflect the appropriate metaphysics and through such a consideration of robust a priorism one can see how Hegelian metaphysics is more adequate than that of science though a possible objection would be that rather than being preferable to the scientific conception with such a rationalist view of nature a delusionary anthropomorphism rears its ugly head with the supposition that natural forms act rationally as if they were like human agents yet the contention of intrinsic rationality in natural forms is qualified through maintaining that they act rationally in a specifically non-conscious or if one can adopt the phraseology frozen or petrified manner.
According to this metaphysical account of nature all natural forms act non-consciously according to rationality a conception more adequate than the competing scientific conception of nature as a realm of bare intrinsically meaningless things so what is this metaphysical conception of nature and in what way does it differ from the metaphysical conception presupposed in empirical science? Well, with this rationalist conception of nature all descriptions of natural forms differ from any scientific descriptions in virtue of the fact that they embody a metaphysical conception of nature different from that presupposed in empirical science. The philosophy of nature distinguishes itself from physics on account of the kind of metaphysics [Weise der Metaphysik] it employs.
‘Theoretical consciousness, because of its one-sided assumption that the natural things over against us are persistent and impenetrable, creates a difficulty which is refuted point-blank by the practical approach, which displays the absolutely idealistic belief that individual things are nothing in themselves. In its relationship to things, appetite is defective not because its attitude towards them is realistic, but because it is all too idealistic. Philosophically valid idealism consists in nothing other than the determination that the truth of things lies in their immediate particularity or sensuousness, that they are in fact mere show or appearance. According to a metaphysics prevalent at the moment, we cannot know things because they are uncompromisingly exterior to us. It might be worth noticing that even the animals, which go out after things, grab, maul, and consume them, are not so stupid as these metaphysicians. The same determination, i.e. that we think natural objects, occurs in the second aspect of the theoretical approach already indicated. Intelligence does not of course familiarize itself with things in their material existence. In that it thinks them, it sets their content within itself, and to practical ideality, which for itself is mere negativity, it adds form, universality so to speak, and so gives affirmative determination to the negative of particularity. This universality of things is not something subjective and belonging to us; it is, rather, the noumenon as opposed to the transient phenomenon, the truth, objectivity, and actual being of the things themselves. It resembles the platonic ideas, which do not have their being somewhere in the beyond, but which exist in individual things as substantial genera. Proteus will only be compelled into telling the truth if he is roughly handled, and we are not content with sensuous appearance. The inscription on the veil of Isis, ‘I am what was, is, and shall be, and my veil has been lifted by no mortal’, melts before thought. Hamann is therefore right when he says, ‘Nature is a Hebrew word, written only with consonants; it is left to the understanding to add the points’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature’
What differentiates the two sciences philosophy of nature and empirical science is the metaphysics of both and fundamental to the Hegelian metaphysical conception of nature is his view that all its forms are intrinsically rational, in the theory of natural development natural forms are conceived as containing a conception grounded upon an understanding of the mechanism through which natural forms necessitate one another as exhibited in their development whereby each form follows its predecessor necessarily in that it provides the rationally necessary solution to the internal contradiction within the structure of that predecessor for instance the natural form of negativity (empirically, time) necessarily succeeds externality (empirically, space) because negativity provides the rationally necessary solution to the contradiction (Widerspruch) from which externality suffers and this contradiction is that externality is both completely homogeneous and thus conceptual and internally differentiated and thus material, which is to say space in itself is the contradiction of indifferent mutual externality and of undifferentiated continuity.
‘Space in itself is the contradiction of indifferent juxtaposition and of continuity devoid of difference; it is the pure negativity of itself, and the initial transition into time. Time is similar, for as its opposed moments, held together in unity, immediately sublate themselves, it constitutes an immediate collapse into undifferentiation, into the undifferentiated extrinsicality of space. Consequently, the negative determination here, which is the exclusive point, is no longer merely implicit in its conformity to the Notion, but is posited, and is in itself concrete on account of the total negativity of time. This concrete point is place’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Another example is that of bodies thoroughly qualifying their material parts (empirically, they must undergo chemical change) in virtue of this providing the rationally necessary solution to the contradiction that those bodies are partly individuated and partly identical with one another.
‘In order to understand the general position and nature of the chemical process, we have to look forwards and backwards. The chemical process is the third moment of shape. The second moment was differentiated shape, and its abstract process or electricity. Before shape was completed and neutral, it also had a process in magnetism. Just as shape is the unity of the Notion and of reality, so the mere primary abstract activity of magnetism is the Notion of shape. The second moment is electricity, or the particularization of shape in itself and with regard to its other. The third moment is the self-realizing motivity of the chemical process, which is the true reality of the Notion in this sphere. Like magnetism, it is a single form, which divides itself into differentials and exists as a unity; yet it is not confirmed to this. Difference within a single body occurs in magnetism. In electricity each differential belongs to a distinct body; each differential is independent, and the whole of shape does not enter into this process. The chemical process is the totality of the animation of inorganic individuality, for it exhibits whole and physically determined shapes. Bodies enter into the process not only on account of their having odour, taste and colour, but as odorous, gustable, or coloured matter. Their relation is not motion, but the alteration of their entire material differentiation, the passing away of their distinguishing character. The light of the body, which constitutes its abstract relation, is not merely abstract, but is essentially particularized. Consequently, the whole corporeality enters into this process, and the chemical process is therefore the reality of the electrical process. We have the whole shape therefore, as in magnetism, but it is not single, for there are now distinct wholes. The two sides into which form divides itself are the whole bodies therefore, such as metals, acids, and alkalies, the truth of which consists in their entering into relation. The electrical moment here consists of these sides falling apart into a distinct independence which is not yet present in magnetism. The indivisible unity of magnetism is however the governing principle here; this identity of both bodies, whereby they return once more into the magnetic relationship, is lacking in the electrical process’. — ‘The Philosophy of Nature’
Natural forms follow one another with rational necessity, each natural form contains an internal contradiction, each natural form provides the rationally necessary solution to a pre-existing contradiction within one of the other forms, and all these forms exist or arise because they provide the rationally necessary solutions to pre-existing contradictions in other forms.
Each natural form contains or suffers from an internal contradiction (Widerspruch) which is to say each form has two essential characteristics or features that are antithetical to one another and we can speak of contradictions in the context of the transitions between natural forms whether philosophically or empirically described) for instance negativity is a contradiction:
‘It is said that everything arises and passes away in time, and that if one abstracts from everything, that is to say from the content of time and space, then empty time and empty space will be left, i.e. time and space are posited as abstractions of externality, and represented as if they were for themselves. But everything does not appear and pass in time; time itself is this becoming, arising, and passing away, it is the abstraction which has being, the Cronos which engenders all and destroys that to which it gives birth. That which is of a real nature is certainly distinguished from time, but is just as essentially identical with time. It is limited, and the other involved in this negation is outside it. Consequently, the determinateness is implicitly external to itself, and is therefore the contradiction of its being. Time itself consists of the abstraction and contradiction of this externality and of the restlessness of this contradiction. That which is finite is transitory and temporal because unlike the Notion, it is not in itself total negativity. It certainly contains negativity as its universal essence, but as it is not adequate to this essence and is one-sided, it relates itself to negativity as to its power. The Notion however, in its freely existing identity with itself, as ego=ego, is in and for itself absolute negativity and freedom, and is consequently, not only free from the power of time, but is neither within time, nor something temporal. It can be said on the contrary that it is the Notion which constitutes the power of time, for time is nothing but this negation as externality. Only that which is natural, in that it is finite, is subject to time; that which is true however, 10 the Idea, spirit, is eternal. The Notion of eternity should not however be grasped negatively as the abstraction of time, and as if it existed outside time; nor should it be grasped in the sense of its coming after time, for by placing eternity in the future, one turns it into a moment of time’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature’:
And material bodies:
‘It is to be regarded as one of the many merits of Kant, that in his ‘Metaphysical foundations of Natural Science’, he made an attempt at a so-called construction of matter, and by establishing a notion of matter, revived the concept of a philosophy of nature. In so doing however, he postulated the reflective determinations of the forces of attraction and repulsion as being firmly opposed to and independent of one another, and although matter had to be derived from them, assumed it to be complete in itself, and therefore that that which is to be attracted and repelled is already fully constituted matter. I have dealt more fully with the fundamental flaw in this Kantian exposition in my ‘Science of Logic’. It should be noted moreover that weighted matter is the first totality and real nature in which attraction and repulsion can occur; it has the ideal nature of the moments of the Notion, of singularity or subjectivity. Consequently they are not to be regarded as independent, or as self-contained forces. It is only as moments of the Notion that they result in matter, although matter is however the presupposition of their appearance’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature’
And physical bodies:
‘As matter, material parts were merely in search of ideality, and it is here that this ideality reaches existence as the point of unity which is for itself, and in which, in their actual attraction, these parts would merely be negated. In so far as the parts are merely heavy, this point of unity is in the first instance external to them, and is therefore merely implicit. It therefore implies that these parts suffer a negation, within which this ideality is now posited. It is still a conditioned ideality however, for it is only one side of the relationship, the other side of which is the subsistence of the juxtaposed parts, the negation of which consequently passes over into their re-establishment. Consequently, elasticity is merely a change of specific gravity which returns to its former state’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature’
And electrical processes:
‘It is difficult to grasp the Notion of electricity, partly because of the basic determination of an inertia, both physical and mechanical, ascribed to the individual body in this process. It is because of this that electrical tension is attributed to another principle, i.e. the matter which is the source of that light which comes forth abstractly for itself, and distinguished from the concrete reality of the body which remains independent of it. Secondly, there is the general difficulty of the Notion as such, of grasping light in its relatedness as a moment of the totality. What is more, light here is no longer free, as sunlight is, but is a moment of the particular body, for implicitly it is the pure self of the body, and enters into existence as engendered within its immanence. The origin of the primordial light of the sun (§ 275), takes place only in the Notion as such. This originating also takes place here (as in § 306), but the light is differentiated, and arises out of an existence, in which the Notion is existing as a particular body’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature’
And animals insofar as they are sentient vis-à-vis their environment:
‘Only a living existence is aware of deficiency, for it alone in nature is the Notion, which is the unity of itself and its specific antithesis. Where there is a limit, it is a negation, but only for a third term, an external comparative. However, the limit constitutes deficiency only in so far as the contradiction which is present in one term to the same extent as it is in the being beyond it, is as such immanent, and is posited within this term. The subject is a term such as this, which is able to contain and support its own contradiction; it is this which constitutes its infinitude. Similarly, when reference is made to finite reason, reason shows that it is infinite, and precisely by thus determining itself as finite; for negation is finitude, and is only a deficiency for that which constitutes the sublated being of this finitude, i.e. for infinite self-reference (cf. § 60 Rem.). Through lack of thought, no advance is made beyond the abstraction of the limit, so that even where the Notion itself enters into existence as it does in life, there is a failure to grasp it. This thoughtlessness keeps to the determinations of ordinary thought, such as impulse, instinct, need etc., and does not ask what they are in themselves. An analysis of the way in which these determinations are regarded would show that they are negations posited as contained within the affirmation of the subject itself’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature’
Hegel employs additional terms as synonyms for contradiction in particular tension (Spannung) and dialectic and he describes the contradiction within electrical processes as a tension.
‘Mechanical contact posits the physical differentiation of one body in another; as these differentials simultaneously preserve their mechanical independence of one another, their mutual opposition constitutes a tension. Consequently, the physical nature of the body does not enter into this tension in its concrete determinateness; it is only as the reality of its abstract self as light, and indeed as an opposition, that individuality manifests and adapts itself within the process. This sublation of diremption, which is the other moment of this superficial process, produces an undifferentiated light. As this light is incorporeal it immediately disappears, and apart from this 5 abstract physical phenomenon, produces nothing of significance except the mechanical effect of a shock’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature’
… finding tension within, also, the meteorological process …
‘The process of the Earth is kindled perpetually by its universal self, which is the activity of light, or its original solar relationship. It is then further particularized into climates and seasons according to the position of the Earth in relation to the Sun. One moment of this process is the diremption of individual identity, or the tension established in the rigidity and selfless neutrality of the moments of independent opposition. Through this tension, the Earth tends to resolve itself on the one hand into the crystalline form of a Moon, and on the other into the fluid body of a Comet, while the moments of individuality seek to realize their connection with their independent origins’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature’
… and sentient animals …
‘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’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature’
And chemical processes embody a dialectic …
‘The chemical process now displays the dialectic by which all the particular properties of bodies are drawn into transitoriness however. It negates the immediate presuppositions which are the principles of its finitude. It is therefore solely the being-for-self of infinite form which endures, the pure incorporeal individuality which is for itself, and for which material subsistence is simply a variable. The chemical process is the highest expression of inorganic being, for it annihilates itself within it, and shows that its truth is nothing but infmite form. It is therefore through the sinking away of shape that the chemical process constitutes the transition to the higher sphere of the organism, in which infinite form assumes the reality of its nature. Infinite form is therefore the Notion, which here reaches reality. This transition is the raising of existence to universality. Nature has here reached the determinate being of the Notion therefore, and the Notion is no longer merely implicit, and submerged within the extrinsicality of its subsistence. This is the free fire (a) as purged of all materiature, and (b) as materialized in determinate being. The moments of that which subsists are themselves raised into this ideality, and do not fall back into limited subsistence, but have their being solely within it. It is thus that we have objective time, an imperishable fire, the fire of life. Heraclitus also said that the soul was of fire, and that dry souls are the best’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature’
… and insists that the dialectic asserts itself in all the particular domains and formations of the natural world. In the motion of the heavenly bodies, similarly, the physical elements prove themselves to be dialectical, and the meteorological process makes their dialectic apparent. The same principle is the foundation of all other natural processes.
‘Furthermore, the dialectic also asserts itself in all the particular domains and formations of the natural and spiritual world. In the motion of the heavenly bodies, for example, a planet is now in this position, but it also has it in-itself to be in another position, and, through its motion, brings this, its otherness, into existence. Similarly, the physical elements prove themselves to be dialectical, and the meteorological process makes their dialectic apparent. The same principle is the foundation of all other natural processes, and it is just this principle by virtue of which nature is driven beyond itself. As to the occurrence of the dialectic in the spiritual world, and, more precisely, in the domain of law and ethical life, we need only to recall at this point how, as universal experience confirms, the extreme of a state or action tends to overturn into its opposite’.
-’The Philosophy of Nature’
And externality is seen as both homogeneous and internally differentiated so in effect both homogeneous and nonhomogeneous.
‘Space is the immediate determinate being of quantity, in which everything remains subsistent, and even limit has the form of a subsistence. This is its deficiency. Space is a contradiction, for the negation within it disintegrates into indifferent subsistence. As space is merely this inner negation of itself, its truth is the self-transcendence of its moments. It is precisely the existence of this perpetual self-transcendence which constitutes time. In time therefore the point has actuality. Through the generation of difference within it, space ceases to be mere indifference, and through all its changes, is no longer paralysed, but is for itself’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature’
As the case of externality suggests each natural form is envisaged as defined by characteristics which negate one another which are literally contradictory. And so we may well baulk at this. It seems likely Hegel arrived at this understanding of natural forms by extrapolating the approach he had successfully applied to shapes of human consciousness in the ‘Phenomenology of Spirit’ in which he diagnoses how each shape falls into an internal contradiction calling for a determinate successor and yet it is not so evident that self-contradictory forms can exist in the nonhuman world. Hegel contends that there are contradictions in the world as well as in thought, Kant denied the possibility of contradictions in the world merely out of misplaced tenderness for mundane items.
‘What is made explicit here is that it is the content itself, namely, the categories on their own account, that bring about the contradiction. This thought, that the contradiction which is posited by the determinations of the understanding in what is rational is essential and necessary, has to be considered one of the most important and profound advances of the philosophy of modern times. But the solution is as trivial as the viewpoint is profound; it consists merely in a tenderness for the things of this world. The stain of contradiction ought not to be in the essence of what is in the world; it has to belong only to thinking reason, to the essence of the spirit. It is not considered at all objectionable that the world as it appears shows contradictions to the spirit that observes it; the way the world is for subjective spirit, for sensibility, and for the understanding, is the world as it appears. But when the essence of what is in the world is compared with the essence of spirit, it may surprise us to see how naively the humble affirmation has been advanced, and repeated, that what is inwardly contradictory is not the essence of the world, but belongs to reason, the thinking essence. It does not help at all to express this by saying that reason only falls into contradiction through the application of the categories. For it is also asserted that this application is necessary, and that, for the purpose of cognition, reason has no determinations other than the categories. Cognition really is determining and determinate thinking; if reason is only empty, indeterminate thinking, then it thinks nothing. But if reason is ultimately reduced to that empty identity (see the following paragraph), then it is, in the end, lucky to be freed from contradiction after all-through the easy sacrifice of all and import content’.
- ‘The Encyclopaedia Logic’
Were they to do so then true descriptions of such forms must themselves be contradictory since they must attribute to natural forms the antithetical characteristics that they really possess yet philosophers are hesitant to concede that there can be true contradictions in the main because as Graham Priest sums up, ‘a contradiction cannot be true since contradictions entail everything, and not everything is true’ and furthermore Hegel’s earlier analysis in the Phenomenology of how each shape of consciousness necessarily gives way to its less contradictory successor appears to rely upon the very same belief that contradictory views cannot be true and hence must be superseded by other, less contradictory, views. And were such a difficulty overcome there persists the problem with all natural forms harbouring internal contradictions for many of the natural forms described do not after all suffer from literal contradictions as externality putatively does, for example there is no contradiction in what Hegel views as the fact that bodies can only manifest themselves in their parts insofar as they react against the threat of fusion with other bodies for at most there is a tension in the way bodies depend upon external conditions to meet internal requirements and the notion of contradiction is frequently used to denote mere tensions or oppositions. As John Findlay declares: ‘By the presence of ‘contradictions’ in thought and reality, Hegel plainly means the presence of opposed, antithetical tendencies’. David Kolb summarizes the different positions in the controversy surrounding Hegel’s notion of contradiction explaining that the most common view is that Hegel ‘was not careful enough about formal logical terms and used ‘contradiction’ when he meant only contrary concepts or conceptual tensions of various types’. An alternative view is that Hegel endeavoured to structure his system around strict contradictions but failed. And another alternative view third view is that he actually succeeded in structuring the system around strict contradictions and a significant motivation for this third view is the thought that without strict contradictions Hegel cannot get his system to unfold with the necessity he claims for it. And yet as Alison stone has pointed out ‘Hegel’s quasi-technical notion of necessity makes it unnecessary that his system devolve upon strict logical contradictions’.
Hegel seemingly employs the term contradiction in an extended sense to embrace tensions of varying degrees (an extended usage reflected in his regularly taking tension (Spannung) to be synonymous with contradiction). And such an extended understanding of contradiction can enhance rather than mar the cogency of his overall view of natural progression for the extended understanding provides some range to rethink the literal contradictions he describes for instance the contradiction within externality as merely especially acute tensions and what this means is that Hegel’s theory of nature need not entail the objective reality of contradictions in the logical sense for provided Hegel can demonstrate that each natural form harbours a rationally unacceptable tension of some sort then he can maintain that each of these tensions requires resolution by some determinately improved natural structure and natural progression can unfold rationally by way of tensions just as much as logical contradictions. Yet we will abide by the reference to contradictions in nature on the understanding that it designates tensions and not contradictions in the strict logical sense. It is good Hegelian practice to also speak of tensions rather than contradictions as Hegel used the terms interchangeably
Natural form also provides the rationally necessary solution to the internal contradiction infesting some other form, for instance negativity provides the rationally necessary solution to the contradiction of externality because negativity is subdivided into units that negate one another and thereby individuate themselves, losing the homogeneity of externality and this solution is rational insofar as it resolves a pre-existing contradiction fulfilling the rational requirement that contradictions be eliminated. Is the solution which negativity offers rationally necessary? Is it the only possible solution to the contradiction of externality? Why doesn’t externality’s contradiction call directly for the more fully individuated items that is, material bodies each of which negates not just all other units but a determinate quantity of other units? These more fully individuated items resolve, in particular, the later contradiction within negativity not the earlier contradiction within externality.
Such discloses that the idea of a necessary solution is employed in a technical sense, for a structure provides the necessary solution to a pre-existing contradiction when this structure resolves that contradiction in a manner that introduces the smallest possible difference between itself and the structure whose contradiction it amends and here the kind of necessity with which natural forms follow one another is modelled upon the kind of necessity discovered in the transitions between shapes of consciousness in the Phenomenology. According to J. N. Findlay, (1903–1987), Hegel’s transitions are not necessary at all, but merely plausible in light of empirical knowledge yet Hegel himself emphasizes the necessity of his transitions. Michael Forster explains: ‘[T]he ‘necessity’ of a transition from a shape of consciousness A to a shape of consciousness B just consists in the complex fact that … shape B preserves shape A’s constitutive conceptions/concepts but in a way which modifies them so as to eliminate the self-contradiction, and moreover does so while departing less from the meanings of A’s constitutive conceptions/concepts than any other … shape which performs that function’. Forster says that B must depart less from A than any other known shape but this makes B’s necessity dependent upon our ignorance of or inability to imagine alternative shapes that depart from A even less and in virtue of this ignorance perhaps being culturally or psychologically contingent Forster’s view could well make B’s necessity no necessity at all yet the problem can be sorted by merely saying that B necessarily follows A if it departs from A as minimally as is compatible with its resolving A’s contradiction.
Richard C. Clark and J. M. Fritzman suggest that one cannot readily tell which of two different shapes departs least from a predecessor since they might introduce modifications that are different but equally extensive, yet forms never introduce equal levels of modification, but always gain complexity one characteristic at a time, this, at least, is implied by his view of nature as a hierarchy of complexity. Forster’s explanation leaves open what it means for a shape to depart less from its predecessor than any other, presumably a shape or natural form departs least when it introduces the minimal level of difference from its predecessor that is compatible with resolving its contradiction whereas all other forms introduce a greater level of differentiation yet what does it mean to say that a given difference is as small as is compatible with resolving the predecessor’s contradiction? In accordance with the substantive account of natural development negative units or moments differentiate themselves from units of externality to the smallest possible extent insofar as they introduce only one new characteristic in addition to those already present in external units, namely, negativity.
And this negativity is not itself analysable into a plurality of characteristics it is quite undifferentiated as evidenced by the way that units act negatively toward all other units and in contrast material bodies differ from negative units by adding another new characteristic for they always direct their negativity toward some determinate quantity of surrounding units, hence each natural form can be envisaged as differentiating itself minimally from its predecessor by adding only one new characteristic to those that the predecessor possessed and nature’s rationally necessary development is thus simultaneously a progression in levels of complexity, as natural forms accumulate ever more characteristics each incorporating or building upon those previously present and in terms of this notion of necessity any natural form provides the rationally necessary solution to another form’s contradiction just when it resolves that contradiction while introducing only one characteristic to distinguish itself from the preceding form. Such a notion of necessity captures the rationale behind the developmental pattern detecting within nature whereby it advances to its most perfect form not in a simple transition but through a series of stages consisting of many moments.
‘- Similar to the relationship just outlined is the way in which the philosophizing mind approaches external nature. That is to say, philosophical thinking knows that nature is idealized not merely by us, that nature’s asunderness is not an entirely insuperable limitation for nature itself, for its concept, but that the eternal Idea immanent in nature or, what is the same thing, the implicit mind at work in the interior of nature itself effects the idealization, the sublation of asunderness, because this form of mind’s realization stands in contradiction with the inwardness of its essence. Therefore philosophy has, as it were, only to watch and see how nature itself sublates its externality, how it takes back what is self-external into the centre of the Idea, or lets this centre emerge in the external, how it liberates the concept concealed in nature from the covering of externality and thereby overcomes external necessity. This transition from necessity to freedom is not a simple transition but a gradual progression of many moments, whose exposition constitutes the philosophy of nature. At the highest stage of this sublation of asunderness, in sensation, the implicit mind held captive in nature reaches the beginning of being-for-self and and thus of freedom. By this being-for-self which is itself still burdened with the form of individuality and externality, consequently also with unfreedom, nature is driven onwards beyond itself to mind as such, that is, to the mind which, by thinking, is for itself in the form of universality and actually free’.
- The Philosophy of Mind’
The third element in the idea that natural forms supplant one another with rational necessity is that of natural forms existing or arising because they provide the rationally necessary solutions to one another’s internal contradictions, the rational necessity of a given structure explains its existence or emergence and there are two distinct interpretations of how the existence of natural forms conforms to the requirements of rational necessity, the first a logical interpretation that emerges in a comment in the ‘Philosophy of Mind’ where it is implied that the series of natural forms are derived by a regressive argument whereby the differences into which the concept of nature unfolds itself are more or less mutually independent existences albeit through their original unity they stand in connection with one another so that none can be grasped [begriffen] without the others but this connection is to a greater or lesser degree external to them.
‘Nature as such in its self-internalizing does not attain to this being-for-self, to the consciousness of itself; the animal, the most complete form of this internalization, exhibits only the spiritless dialectic of transition from one individual sensation filling up its whole soul to another individual sensation which equally exclusively dominates it; it is man who first raises himself above the individuality of sensation to the universality of thought, to awareness of himself, to the grasp of his subjectivity, of his I — in a word, it is only man who is thinking mind and by this, and by this alone, is essentially distinguished from nature. What belongs to nature as such lies behind the mind; it is true that mind has within itself the entire content of nature, but the determinations of nature are in the mind in a radically different way from that in which they are in external nature’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Mind’
We begin with the knowledge that externality exists given the requirements of the logical idea then establish that externality is internally contradictory and hence can only subsist because some other form also exists which resolves its contradiction, a successor form which in turn only exists because it is accompanied by or embraced within something else which resolves its contradiction and this institutes a pattern to be found throughout nature, with each form depending logically upon the one that resolves its contradiction, and on this view the existence of nature conforms to rational requirements in the sense that nature embodies a comprehensive structure of logical relationships, therefore on this picture logical requirements exert a prior constraint upon the possible modes of nature’s existence. In this alternative conception of how natural forms conform to rational requirements each form responds to its internal contradiction by actually turning into the successor form that it requires and this we can derive from the descriptions of many natural developments, for example the development from externality to negativity, externality has to posit its possibility of internal differentiation which suggests that it actively realizes itself by metamorphosing into a set of more fully differentiated entities or empirical points and having then assimilated these entities to empirical lines the line therefore passes over into the plane.
‘Spatial difference is however essentially determinate and qualitative. As such it is (1) in the first instance the point, i.e. the negation of the immediate and undifferentiated self-externality of space itself. (2) The negation is however the negation of space, and is therefore itself spatial. In that this relation is essential to the point, the point is self-sublating and constitutes the line, which is the primary otherness or spatial being of the point. (3) The truth of otherness is however the negation of negation, and the line therefore passes over into the plane. Although one aspect of the plane is that it constitutes surface in general, in that it is a determinateness opposed to line and point, it also has the aspect of being the transcended negation of space, or the reinstatement of that spatial totality which now has the negative moment within it. It is therefore an enclosing surface, which divides off and separates a distinct part of space’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature’
And further planes must actualize or posit their essential lack of differentiation by making the transition to negativity though here is no clear distinction between the a priori and empirical components here of his account). In 1819–1820, Hegel said: ‘Space is self-contradictory and makes itself into time’ (‘Naturphilosophie Band’). The overall conclusion to this section clearly endorses the conception of natural rationality with which he is operating, the truth of space is time so that space becomes time, our transition to time is not subjective, space itself makes the transition. In representation space and time are far outside one another; space is there, and then we also have time. Philosophy calls this also into question.
There are many examples.
Light is posited as air:
‘The inner self of the individual body is the bond of its individuality or the reciprocal relation of its moments. This self-like nature, considered by itself as free and devoid of all posited individualization, is air. Nevertheless, this element contains the implicit determination of being-for-self, or puncticity. Air is the universal as posited in relation to subjectivity, to infinite self-relating negativity, to being-for-self, and is therefore the universal as a subordinate moment in the determination of relativity. Air is indeterminate and absolutely determinable; it is not yet determined within itself, but is merely determinable through its other; this other is light, because light is the free universal. Air is thus related to light; to light it is absolute transparency, it is passive light; in general, it is the universal posited as passivity. In the same way, the good, as the universal, is also passive, for it is first actualized through subjectivity, and does not activate itself. Light is also implicitly passive, but is not posited as such. As it is merely implicit individuality; air is not dark but transparent; opacity first occurs in terrestrialness’.
- The Philosophy of Nature’
Air posited as fire.
‘Air is already the negativity of particularity, although this is not apparent because it is still posited in the shape of undifferentiated sameness; but in its isolated individuality, differentiated from other modes of existence, and posited within a determinate place, it is fire. Fire exists only as this relationship to a particular, which it not only exhausts, rendering it tasteless and odourless by transforming its matter into an insipid indeterminateness, but whose particularity as matter it destroys. Heat is merely the appearance of this destruction in the individual body, and is therefore identical with fire. Fire is existent being-for-self, which is negativity as such. It is not however the negativity of another, but negation of the negative which results in universality and sameness. Primary universality is lifeless affirmation; fire is the true affirmation. Not-being is posited within it as being, and vice versa, so that fire is time. Fire is simply conditioned as one of the moments, and like air, exists only in relation to particularized matter. It is activity which is only in opposition, it is not the activity of spirit. In order to consume, it must have something to consume, and if it has no material, it disappears. The life process is also the process of fire, for it also consists of the consumption of particularities, although it is ceaselessly reproducing its material’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature’
Fire subsides into water.
‘That which is consumed by fire is sometimes concrete, and sometimes in opposition. To consume concrete being is to bring it into opposition, to animate or ignite it. The oxidation in the causticity of an acid works in this way. This is how concrete being is brought to the extreme point of consuming itself, and so into a state of tension with another. The other aspect of this process is that the determinate, differentiated, and individualized particularity which is present in all concrete being, is reduced to the unity and indeterminateness of neutrality. This is why every chemical process will produce water and give rise to opposition. Fire is air posited with a difference, it is negated unity, and an opposition which is however also reduced to neutrality. The natural element into which fire subsides, and by which it is extinguished, is water. The manifest unity of the triumph of ideal identity to which particularized being is brought, is abstract, the selfhood of light. Since terrestrialness remains over as the foundation of the process, and it is here that all the elements make their appearance’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
And all these elements constantly transmute into one another.
‘The physical process is determined by the transmutation of the elements into one another. This transmutation is quite unknown to finite physics, in which the understanding always holds fast to the persistence of abstract identity, whereby the elements, being composite, are merely dispersed and separated, not really transmuted. Water, air, fire, and earth, are in conflict within this elementary process. Water is the existent material of the process, and as it is neutral, mutable, and determinable, it plays the principle role. Air, as the unobstrusive destructive principle positing that which is of an ideal nature, is the activity which sublates determinate being. Fire is the appearance of being-for-self, the ideality which attains the moment of appearance in which destruction becomes evident. The simplicity of the relationship is therefore that water is transformed into air and vanishes; conversely, air becomes water, and breaks out of being-forself into the inert neutrality of its opposite, which for its part tenses itself to become being-for-self. The ancients, one might mention Heraclitus and Aristotle, regarded the process of the elements in this way. There is no difficulty in acquainting ourselves with this process, for it is evident in experience and observation. The formation of rain is the main point. Physics itself admits that rain has not been satisfactorily explained. The difficulty originates solely in the physics of reflection however, which despite all observation, holds fast to its double assumption that (a) ‘That which takes place within free connections, must also be possible within conditioned and external circumstances.’ (b) ‘That which takes place within conditioned connections, also takes place within free connections; consequently that which maintains its self-identity in the former case, is also a merely implicit identity.’ We maintain on the contrary, that once water has evaporated, the form of the vapour vanishes completely’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature’
Furthermore Hegel frequently passes between forms by saying that the first is the second, for example, motion is matter.
‘Where there is motion, there is something which moves, and this durable something is matter. Space and time are filled with matter. Space is not adequate to its Notion, and it is consequently the Notion of space itself which creates its existence in matter. People have often begun with matter, and then regarded space and time as its forms. This is a valid procedure in so far as matter is the reality of space and time, but for us space and time must come first because of their abstraction, and matter must then show itself to be their truth. Just as there is no motion without matter, so there is no matter without motion. Motion is the process; it is the passage of time into space, and of space into time. Matter on the contrary is the relation of time and space as a quiescent identity. Matter is the primary reality, existent being-for-self; it is not merely abstract being, it is the positive subsistence of space as exclusive of other space. The point should also exclude other points, but it does not yet do so, for it is merely an abstract negation. Matter is exclusive relation to self, and consequently the first real limit in space. That which is said to fill time and space, which can be grasped and felt, which offers resistance, and which is for itself in its being-for-other, is simply reached in the general unity of time and space’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature’
Density is cohesion.
‘At first, density is merely a simple determinateness of weighted matter, but as matter remains the essential extrinsicality, the determination of the form is still a specific mode of the spatial interrelation of its elemental multiplicity. It is in fact cohesion. Addition. Like specific weight, cohesion is a determinateness which distinguishes itself from gravity. It is more comprehensive than specific weight however, for it not only constitutes another general centrality, but a centre related to a plurality of parts. Cohesion is not merely a comparison of bodies according to specific weight; their determinateness is now posited so that the relation between them is of a real nature, the bodies touch each other’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature’
Cohesion is sound.
‘The ideality which is posited here is an alteration which consists of a double negation. The negating of the extrinsic subsistence of the material parts is itself negated as the reinstating of their juxtaposition and their cohesion. As the exchange of mutually cancelling determinations, this single ideality is the inner vibration of the body within itself, i.e. sound. Addition. The determinate being of this oscillation within itself seems to differ from the determination we had in elasticity. The being-for-other of this determinate being is sound, which is therefore the third determination’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature’
According to Judith Butler, (1956 — ), Hegel generally uses the word is to mean becomes and such seeming statements of identity in fact inform us that each form actively becomes its successor.
This second conception of natural necessity is the transformative conception whereby all natural forms are intrinsically rational uniformly transforming themselves so as to overcome their internal contradictions and upon this view nature does not as previously implied simply embody rationality as a logical constraint, rather each of nature’s component forms contains some inner locus of rationality which responds to the force of rational requirements by propelling that form to metamorphose in the way that corrects its self-contradiction. Karl-Heinz Ilting objects that this transformative conception of natural forms is nonsense without making clear why he thinks so or what he means that.
A transformative conception of the rational necessity in nature has to confront a quandary in that if each form actively becomes its successor this suggests that the successor must follow it not only logically but also temporally and this creates a paradox in the case of negativity which is equated with empirical time for any explanation of how negativity emerges must presuppose time even before its supposed derivation yet transitions within nature do not occur temporally, nature is to be regarded as a system of stages one proceeding necessarily from the other and being the direct truth of that from which it results and his is not to be regarded as a natural engendering of one out of the other but an engendering in the inner idea which constitutes the ground [Grund] of nature. Metamorphosis applies only to the concept as such, for only its alteration is development [Entwicklung].
‘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’
So each form becomes its successor not literally but conceptually in that it entails or presupposes the latter, regressive reading of natural rationality, though a third possibility is that natural forms do metamorphose actively into one another but that this metamorphosis occurs non-temporally, the antithesis to the temporal is the eternal, and that the inner idea, the totality of natural structures, exists eternally.
‘Absolute timelessness is eternity, which is devoid of natural time, and is therefore to be distinguished from duration. In its Notion, time itself is eternal however, for its Notion is neither the present nor any other time, but time as such. Its Notion is, like all Notion, eternal, and thus also constitutes the absolute present. Eternity will not be, nor has it been, it is. Duration is therefore to be distinguished from eternity, in that it is merely a relative sublation of time; eternity is however infinite, that is to say, not relative, but intro-reflected duration. That which is not in time, is without process; the most imperfect, like the most perfect, is not in time, and therefore endures. The most imperfect endures, because it is an abstract universality, such as space, and time itself; the sun, the elements, stones, mountains, inorganic nature in general, as well as works of man such as pyramids, have a barren duration. That which endures is regarded more highly than that which soon passes, but all blossom, all that is exquisite in living being, dies early. The most perfect also endures however, not only in the lifeless inorganic universal, but also in the other inherently concrete universal of the genus, the law, the idea, and the spirit. We have to decide whether something is the whole process, or merely one moment of it. As law, the universal is also inherently a process, and lives only as process; but it is not part of the process, it is not within the process, it contains its double aspect, and is itself without process. In its phenomenal aspect, law falls within time, because the moments of the Notion show themselves as independent; but in their Notion the excluded differences reconcile and relate themselves, and are harmoniously reassimilated. The Idea or spirit is above time, because it is itself the Notion of time; in and for itself it is eternal and unbreached by time, because it does not lose itself in its own side of the process. This is not the case with the individual as such, on one side of which is the genus; the finest life is that which completely unites its individuality and the universal into one form. The individual is not then the same as the universal however, and is therefore one side of the process, or mutability, in accordance with which mortal moment it falls within time. Achilles, the flower of Greek life, and the infinitely powerful personality of Alexander the Great, are no more, and only their deeds and influences remain through the world that they have brought into being. Mediocrity endures, and finally governs the world. Thought also displays this mediocrity, with which it pesters the world about it, and which survives by extinguishing spiritual liveliness and turning it into flat formality. It endures precisely because it rests in untruth, never acquires its right, fails to honour the Notion, and never realizes the process of the truth within it’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature’
But what is eternal is not absolutely outside of time but is uninterruptedly present, never coming into being or ceasing to be.
‘(a) Eternity is not before or after time, it is not prior to the creation of the world, nor is it the sequel to its disappearance; it is absolute present, the now, and has no before or after. The world is created, is now being created, and always has been created; this becomes apparent in the conservation of the world. The activity of the absolute Idea is created; like the Idea as such, the Idea of nature is eternal. (b) If one asks whether the world, nature, in its finitude, has a beginning in time or not, one has the world or nature in general before one’s mind, i.e. the universal; and it has already been shown that the true universal is the Idea, which is eternal. That which is finite is temporal however, and has a before and after; and if one has the finite as one’s object, one is within time. That which is finite has a beginning, but not an absolute beginning; its time begins with it, and there is no time without finitude. Philosophy is the timeless comprehension of everything in general according to its eternal determination, and including time’.
-’The Philosophy of Nature’
An example is that of the creation of the natural world by the logical idea which is and always has been going on incessantly and each natural form necessitates its successor by metamorphosing into it continuously while reciprocally being neverendingly regenerated from its own predecessor just as the logical idea continuously metamorphoses into the first natural form, externality, while simultaneously being continually regenerated itself from the preceding stage of logical development) and this third conception of how natural forms obey rational requirements explains why natural forms are generally described as actively changing into one another while not being temporally successive this third conception of natural rationality hence the most robust conception, the mechanism through which natural development takes place is best understood as that all natural forms follow one another with rational necessity in the sense that each form actively and continuously transforms itself into that successor which differs from it minimally while resolving its inner contradiction or tension and this understanding of the mechanism of natural development reveals a distinctive metaphysical conception of nature never stated explicitly and on this conception all natural forms are intrinsically rational.
‘The science of philosophy is a sphere, and each member of the sphere has its antecedent and sequel, so that the philosophy of nature appears as only one sphere within the whole of the encyclopaedia. Nature’s proceeding forth from the eternal Idea, its creation, the proof indeed that there necessarily is a nature, lies in that which precedes it (§ 244). Here we have to presuppose this as known. In order to determine what the philosophy of nature is, it is convenient that we should separate it from that which determines it; for all determining requires two terms. In the first place we find it standing in a peculiar relationship to natural science in general, that is to say, to physics, natural history, and physiology. It is indeed physics, but rational physics, and it is at this point of rationality that we have to grasp it, and in particular to determine its relationship to physics. This procedure might appear to rest upon a novel distinction. At first the philosophy of nature will tend to be regarded as new science, and there is no doubt that in one sense it is. In another sense it is not, for it is as old as all observation of nature. It does not differ from this observation, and thus has traditions more ancient than those of physics, which in Aristotle for example, is much closer to a philosophy of nature than it is today. It is only in recent times that the two have become separated’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature’
All natural forms contain an internal locus of rationality which propels them to resolve their internal tensions as is rationally necessary and his rationality is nature’s drive to make itself simple and eliminate its inner contradictions (Naturphilosophie Band). There is reason in the world, by which we mean that reason is the soul of the world, lives within it, and is immanent in it, as its own, innermost nature, its universal.
‘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’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature’
This is a metaphysical rationalist conception of nature according to which all its constituent forms are intrinsically rational.
We must inquire into this further. How does this rationalist conception compare with the metaphysical view of nature presupposed in empirical science? How do rationalist and scientific conceptions of nature differ? What is the metaphysical conception of nature presupposed in empirical science given that we do not find in the Encyclopaedia a sustained discussion of science in its own right? Despite appraising many scientific results the ‘Philosophy of Nature’ has little to say concerning the general methodology of science or its underlying assumptions. And little is said concerning the epistemology of natural science. As M.J. Petry explains, he ‘was interested first and foremost in what had been discovered, and … was very largely indifferent to the various procedures by means of which such knowledge had arisen. Throughout the whole of the Philosophy of Nature, the entire extent of this systematic survey of the multitudinous facts and theories of early nineteenth-century science, there is hardly any mention … of the epistemological issues which many still regard as the heart and soul of any … philosophy of science’. Hegel’s scarce overall statements on science are to e found in the introduction to the ‘Philosophy of Nature’, the account of understanding in the ‘Philosophy of Mind’, and two remarks on the structure of explanation (Erklärung) in the ‘Science of Logic’. In addition the ‘Phenomenology of Spirit’ has a discussion of explanation in the ‘Understanding’ chapter and an analysis of empirical science in the ‘Observation of nature’ (Beobachtung der Natur) chapter, albeit they feature in the particular epistemological and pedagogical project of the Phenomenology yet from such treatments of science we can understanding the metaphysical presuppositions informing scientific research.
Science is of course a distinctively empirical approach to the study of nature that reaches general conclusions on an observational basis yet the point of scientists’ endeavours to discern universal principles or laws organizing empirical manifestations is to explain (erklären) those manifestations and science is associated with the understanding, recall the universalised understanding which physics provides.
‘What is now called physics, was formerly called natural philosophy. It is, what is more, a theoretical and thinking consideration of nature, and while on the one hand it does not concern itself with determinations such as these purposes, which are external to nature, on the other hand it does aim at comprehending that which is universal in nature as it presents itself in a determinate form, i.e. forces, laws, genera. Here the content is not a simple aggregate, but is distributed through orders and classes, and must be regarded as an organic whole. In that the philosophy of nature is a comprehending consideration, its object is the same universal; it is however the universal for itself, which it regards in its own immanent necessity, according to the self-determination of the Notion’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature
A significant feature of the understanding is its endeavour to identify imperceptible factors primarily laws or forces that generate and so explain perceptible givens.
‘The proximate truth of perception is that the object is rather appearance, and its reflection-into-itself is by contrast an interior and universal that is for itself. The consciousness of this object is intellect. -This interior is, on the one hand, the sublated multiplicity of the sensory and is in this way abstract identity; but on the other hand, because of that, it contains the multiplicity too, but as inner simple difference, which remains self-identical in the change of appearances. This simple difference is the realm of the laws of appearance — a tranquil, universal copy of it’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Mind’
Scientists endeavour to explain perceptible facts by postulating explanatory factors including laws and forces, which cause and structure those facts and to explain a perceptible given in this way is to identify its ground (Grund), the non-empirical feature which is causally responsible for its existence. In the account of scientific observation of nature (Beobachtung der Natur) in the Phenomenology an argument is advanced whereby the search for explanatory grounds advances in two stages, classification and the formulation and testing of laws. These stages are Merkmale (differentiae) and Gesetze (laws). Hegel alludes back to this division in the ‘Philosophy of Nature’ stating that the universal that scientists seek in nature comprises forces, laws, and genera.
‘The empirical view of nature has this category of universality in common with the philosophy of nature, but it oscillates between regarding it as subjective, and regarding it as objective, and one often hears that these classes and orders are only formulated for the convenience of cognition. This uncertainty is even more apparent when distinguishing features are looked for not because it is thought that they are the essential objective determinations of things, but because they are a convenient way for us to distinguish things. If there were nothing more to it than this, one could for example select the earlobe as a distinctive feature of humanity, for no animal has it. One feels immediately however that such a determination is inadequate to the cognition of the essential nature of man. If the universal is determined as law, force or matter however, it will not be asserted that this is an external form, a subjective trimming; objective reality is attributed to laws, forces are said to be immanent, and matter is taken to be the true nature of the fact. Something similar is also asserted of the genera, i.e. that they are not such a ranging together of that which is similar, an abstraction made by us, that they not only have something in common, but that they are the peculiar inner essence of objects themselves: what is more, that the orders are not merely our mental vision, but form a graduated scale in nature itself. The distinguishing features are claimed to be the universal, the substantial element of the genus’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature’
In the classificatory stage scientists attempt to group empirical phenomena into natural kinds on the basis of universal properties that they instantiate, they seek the line of demarcation of what is distinctive of, say, elephant, oak, gold.
‘If it is no longer easy to find new whole things, then we must go back to those already found, divide and analyse them further, and bring to light fresh aspects of thinghood in them. This restless, insatiable instinct can never run out of material; to discover a new genus of major importance, or even a new planet which, although an individual, possesses the nature of a universal, can be the lot of only a lucky few. But the line of demarcation of what is distinctive of, say, elephant, oak, gold, of what is genus and what species, passes through many stages into the endless particularization of the chaos of animals and plants, of rocks, or the metals, earths, etc that only force and skill can bring to view. In this realm where the universal is undetermined, where particularization approximates again to singleness, and again, here and there, descends to it entirely, there is opened up an inexhaustible supply of material for observation and description’.
- ‘The Phenomenology of Spirit’
Yet they invariably come across new phenomena which confound their classificatory schemes, this holding fast to passive being that remains self-identical, inevitably sees itself tormented by instances which invalidate the universality to which it had risen.
‘If, now, on the one side, the determinateness gains the ascendancy over the universal in which it has its essence, on the other side again, this universal equally maintains its control over that determinateness, pushes it to its boundary and there mixes up its distinctions and essentialities. Observation, which kept them properly apart and believed that in them it had something firm and settled, sees principles overlapping one another, transitions and confusions developing; what it at first took to he absolutely separate, it sees combined with something else, and what it reckoned to be in combination, it sees apart and separate. So it is that observation which clings to passive, unbroken selfsameness of being, inevitably sees itself tormented just in its most general determinations — e,g. of what are the differentiae of an animal or a plant-by instances which rob it of every determination, invalidate the universality to which it had risen, and reduce it to an observation and description which is devoid of thought’.
- ‘The Phenomenology of Spirit’
Scientists continually hit upon such counter-instances in virtue of the fact that the phenomena they observe have an intrinsically indeterminate and protean character undergoing constant change through which they exchange one set of properties for another, each perceptible phenomenon in a chemical fashion, becomes something else than it is empirically, confuses cognition.
‘The plant, on the other hand, does not attain to a being-or-self but merely touches the boundary-line of individuality. It is at this boundary, therefore, where there is a show of division into sexes — that plants have been studied and distinguished from one another. What, however, stands on a still lower level cannot itself any longer distinguish itself from another, but in being contrasted with it gets lost. Being that is at rest, and being that is in a relation, come into conflict with each other; a Thing in the latter case is something different from what it is in the former state, whereas the single individual maintains itself in its relation to something else. What, however, is unable to do this and~ qua chemical object, becomes something else than it is empirically, confuses cognition — and gives rise to the same conflicting views as to whether it ought to keep to one side or the other, since the thing itself does not remain identical with itself, and in it the two sides fall apart’.
- ‘The Phenomenology of Spirit’
To keep alive their belief that empirical phenomena instantiate universal properties scientists advance to the more complex view that universal properties themselves change into one another, reason must move on from the inert determinateness, which had a show of permanence, to observe it as it truly is, namely relating itself to its opposite, disappearing. What are called differentiae are passive determinatenesses which, when expressed and apprehended as simple, do not represent their nature, to go over into their opposite.
‘Observation which confines itself in this way to what is simple, or restrains the scattered sensuous elements by the universal, thus finds in its object the confusion of its principle, because what is determinate must, through its own nature, lose itself in its opposite. Reason must therefore move on from the inert determinateness which had a show of permanence, to observing it its it is in truth, viz. as relating itself to its opposite. What are called differentiae are passive determinatenesses which, when expressed and apprehended as simple, do not represent their nature, which is to be vanishing moments of a movement which returns back into itself. Since Reason now reaches the stage of looking for the determinateness as some thing which essentially is not for itself, but which passes over into its opposite, it seeks for the law and the Notion of the determinateness. True, it seeks for them equally as an actuality in the form of immediate being, but this will, in fact, vanish for it, and the aspects of the law become pure moments or abstractions, so that the law comes to light in the nature of the Notion, which has destroyed within itself the indifferent subsistence of sensuous reality’.
- ‘The Phenomenology of Spirit’
Scientists now begin to postulate laws which explain how these universals change or go over into their opposites and here laws are presumed to be underlying factors that cause universals to develop according to given patterns and having first identified universals that explain empirical givens scientists then postulate underlying laws to explain how universals change. Universals change? Well, in Hegelian metaphysics nature’s basic forms continually change into one another, for instance, negativity continually changes into material bodies, while being incessantly regenerated from preceding forms as negativity is regenerated out of externality. In general the scientific project of explanation presupposes a metaphysical picture of the natural world according to which every natural entity or event has its ground in universals that are themselves grounded in an underlying realm of laws and scientists implicitly conceive of these universals and laws as the Ursachen, causes, of what they ground.
‘… the manifold determinations of the sensory, which are independent relatively both to one another and to the inner unity of each individual thing, are reduced to the appearance of an interior that is for itself, and the development of the object thus progresses from the contradiction of its reflection-into-self and its reflection-into-other to the essential relationship of it to its own self. But when consciousness ascends from the observation of immediate individuality and from the mixture of the individual and the universal, to the conception of the interior of the object, and thus determines the object in a manner similar to the I, then the I becomes intellectual consciousness. Only in this non-sensory interior does the intellect believe it has what is genuinely real. At first, however, this interior is something abstractly identical, undifferentiated within itself, an interior of this kind is presented to us in the categories of force and of cause’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Mind’
Scientists entertain a realist notion of universals and laws according to which these explanatory factors are really existing causes of empirical events and furthermore scientists believe that laws constitute an imperceptible substratum, existing at a different ontological level from the universals upon which they act. We may shares with scientists the realist assumption that empirical natural phenomena and events have grounds of existence and also like scientists we may take these phenomena to be grounded in the real universal forms which they instantiate, forms described in the ‘Philosophy of Nature’ and further we can share with scientists the assumption that these universal forms change into one another. However a point of departure from scientists is in the belief that universals change into one another not as a consequence of underlying laws but because it is rationally necessary that they do so and the basic difference between the Hegelian and the scientists’ metaphysical conceptions of universals is that the former explains the metamorphosis of universals by their intrinsic rationality whereas scientists appeal to underlying laws. Scientists are realists, which is not to say that realism per se is the aspect of scientific metaphysics to which he objects, rather we can share in the scientists’ commitment to realism, but disagree with how scientists conceive of real universals as inherently inert and thing-like.
There are reasons for the behaviour of each natural form to an Hegelian whereas scientists think that this behaviour has causes and the difference between Hegelian metaphysics and that of empirical science can be made clearer by connecting it to the distinction between interpretive understanding (Verstehen), which investigates agents’ reasons for action, and explanation, which studies the causes of events. The distinction is articulated amongst other things by R. G. Collingwood in his ‘The Idea of History’ where the concern is with demarcating history from natural science and thereby establishing a broader separation between the human sciences (Geisteswissenschaften) and the natural sciences. According to Collingwood history investigates events and artefacts as expressions of human thought or as what he calls actions, physical manifestations that are entirely directed by and expressive of thoughts and in particular actions express general conceptions that constitute the plans or intentions adopted by human agents and the historian aspires at reconstructing the meaning or point of actions by re-enacting the thoughts that they express so his or her basic activity is interpretation, the interpretation of actions as to the thoughts animating them and interpretive activity is inappropriate in the study of nature according to Collingwood because: ‘The events of nature are mere events, not the acts of agents whose thought the scientist endeavours to trace’. Natural entities do not think or have thoughts which renders pointless any attempt to re-enact meaning in their behaviour and what is appropriate for scientists is instead to search out causes that explain this behaviour a search that is redundant in relation to history: ‘For history, the object to be discovered is not the mere event, but the thought expressed in it. To discover that thought is already to understand it. After the historian has ascertained the facts, there is no further process of enquiring into their cause’, so history is interpretive and seeks reasons whereas science is explanatory and seeks causes.
Such a distinction between history and science jars with the distinction between Hegelian metaphysics of nature and the contrasting metaphysics presupposed in empirical science yet Hegel approaches natural development by presenting reasons why each natural form metamorphoses into its successor, apparently extending to nature the interpretive approach that for Collingwood applies exclusively within the human sciences yet in giving reasons for which is to say interpreting the development of natural forms the grounds of this development are adduced, nature as a whole has its ground (Grund) in the inner idea constituted of all the universal forms as they mutate into one another hence unlike Collingwood, Hegel believes that by providing reasons he is explaining the existence and character of natural forms, such a conviction underpinning the contention of giving better explanations of how natural forms develop than empirical science a claim presupposing that philosophical and scientific approaches to nature are both engaged in the same explanatory enterprise.
There is no categorial distinction between interpretation and explanation rather interpretation is just one form of explanation defined by its appeal to a specific type of explanatory factor or Grund, namely reasons and Hegel’s notion of a Grund embraces all types of explanatory factors including both reasons and efficient causes. But wait! I hear you object. Reasons cannot be causes because reasons justify actions whereas causes have no normative dimension. Well, in identifying the reasons for some natural development we postulate a special sort of cause which does carry normative significance which rings to mind the Aristotelian idea that a thing’s purpose or function both causally explains its development and simultaneously establishes that that development is good and if all natural developments have reasons then we must posit normativity throughout nature which we can as we may affirm that insofar as they act from reason all natural forms are intrinsically good’.
Reasons are a type of cause and when we interpret human actions we are giving them a causal explanation and against the view of Hegel as concerned merely with the hermeneutic study of human activity rather he considers the study of nature and history as essentially continuous with one another. Alfredo Ferrarin has observed that Hegel does not accept the division between natural sciences and Geisteswissenschaften (human sciences) and he does not as frequently thought devote himself to the latter, there are not merely two different models of explanation and approaches that belong to two radically different and exclusive realms. ‘Nature has a life that cannot be opposed to the life of the mind … it is [not] alien to reason’, explains Ferrarin. Hegel like empirical scientists is endeavouring to explain the behaviour of natural forms and it is characteristic of scientists to seek to explain this behaviour with reference to a different type of Grund from the reasons that he adduces. When scientists try to identify laws that cause change in universals, they are seeking external factors, external causes, which explain those universals’ development. The suggestion that scientists conceive laws as external causes does not seem evidently right as an account of the typical metaphysical commitments of empirical scientists yet in the end whether scientists believe in ontologically real laws exerting continuous causal influence upon universals is not essential to Hegel’s account for his principle point is that scientists consider natural forms as inherently non-rational and therefore explain their behaviour with reference to external causal factors of some sort and whether these external factors are identified as laws has no bearing upon this principle point.
Scientists search for external causes because they presume that the development of natural forms cannot be explained in terms of their intrinsic rationality, they assume that reasons are inadmissible as explanations of natural events, which suggests that empirical scientists operate from a metaphysical assumption according to which natural forms cannot in any sense be considered agents whose behaviour has meaning but rather are bare things whose behaviour makes up a mass of intrinsically meaningless events. Empirical science presupposing a metaphysical conception of natural forms as bare things is a reformulation of the familiar view that modern science disenchants the natural world, denuding nature of the spiritual meaning and value attributed to it in ancient and medieval times, and re-interpreting it as intrinsically meaningless and valueless. The idea of nature’s disenchantment (Entzauberung) derives from Max Weber who argues that in modernity ‘there are no mysterious, incalculable forces that come into play, but … one can in principle, master all things by calculation. This means that the world is disenchanted’. Appropriating Weber’s terminology, Charles Taylor has inquired into how the Romantic generation preceding Hegel took modern science to have disenchanted nature and Hegel hints at this view of modern science in his ‘Aesthetics’. The modern understanding centrally including empirical science strips the world of its enlivened and flowering reality and dissolves it into abstractions, since mind now upholds its right and dignity only by mishandling nature and denying its right, and so retaliates on nature the distress and violence which it has suffered from it itself.
‘These are oppositions which have not been invented at all by the subtlety of reflection or the pedantry of philosophy; in numerous forms they have always preoccupied and troubled the human consciousness, even if it is modern culture that has first worked them out most sharply and driven them up to the peak of harshest contradiction. Spiritual culture, the modern intellect, produces this opposition in man which makes him an amphibious animal, because he now has to live in two worlds which contradict one ,another. The result is that now consciousness wanders about in this contradiction, and, driven from one side to the other, cannot find satisfaction for itself in either the one or the other. For on the one side we see man imprisoned in the common world of reality and earthly temporality, borne down by need and poverty, hard pressed by nature, enmeshed in matter, sensuous ends and their enjoyment, mastered and carried away by natural impulses and passions. On the other side, he lifts himself to eternal ideas, to a realm of thought and freedom, gives to himself, as will, universal laws and prescriptions, strips the world of its enlivened and flowering reality and dissolves it into abstractions, since the spirit now upholds its right and dignity only by mishandling nature and denying its right, and so retaliates on nature the distress and violence which it has suffered from it itself. But for modern culture and its intellect this discordance in life and consciousness involves the demand that such a contradiction be resolved.
- ‘Lectures on Aesthetics’
And further:
‘… as through science thoughts penetrate the limitless multiformity of nature, its richness is impoverished, its spring times die, and the play of its colours fades. That which in nature was rustling with life, falls silent in the quietness of thought; its warm abundance, which shaped itself into a thousand intriguing wonders, withers into arid forms and shapeless universalities, which are like a murky northern fog’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature’
In suggesting that modern science operates with a disenchanting metaphysics there is no desire to reinstate the medieval view that natural forms express a hierarchy of spiritual principles emanating from God, against both medievalism and modern science the suggestion is that all natural forms develop in line with their own, intrinsic, rationality and if Hegel is looking to re-enchant nature the re-enchantment he envisages is very modern for a defining feature of modernity is the emergence of the idea of reason as a formal procedure for regulating thought in contrast to the Platonic idea of reason as the faculty for perceiving the world’s substantive order. As to the ancient and medieval substantive conception of reason versus the modern procedural conception this Taylor has looked into.
The rationality that Hegel attributes to natural forms is specifically modern, consisting in adherence to the formal procedure of resolving tensions in whatever way necessary, and the relationship between Hegel’s metaphysics of nature and that presupposed in empirical science can be understood in light of the the central difference between these metaphysical views for according to Hegel’s rationalist view all natural forms and the entities that instantiate them are intrinsically rational or contain a locus of intrinsic rationality, rational agents whose developments are meaningful making it fitting to explain those developments interpretively with reference to the rationality that guides them, and in contrast according to the metaphysics presupposed in empirical science natural forms and entities lack any inherent rationality that could constitute an inner principle of development and as a consequence science cannot regard these forms as agents, as beings that actively initiate their own development, rather science regards natural forms simply as things devoid of agency and furthermore in denying rational agency to natural forms scientific metaphysics has to deny that those forms’ behaviour has any inner dimension, internal motivating reasons that can be investigated interpretively and hence according to the metaphysics of empirical science the behaviour of natural forms is intrinsically meaningless and is appropriately explained with reference to external causal factors, and so modern science conceives all natural forms and entities as bare things insofar as it denies them rationality, agency, and intrinsic meaningfulness.
Concerning the difference between Hegel’s metaphysics of nature and that presumed in empirical science one might ask whether in proposing to explain natural developments in terms of reasons Hegel is resurrecting the traditional Aristotelian project of explaining this development teleologically and one might complain that Hegel’s conception of modern science is too simplistic for can it reasonably be maintained that the whole of empirical science however apparently varied or sophisticated its theories presupposes such a crude picture of nature as comprised of mere things?
Dedicated to my lovely One, my Muse.. Science .. ha! she blinded me with it .. 🤓 ❤️
Ha! It’s poetry in motion
She turned her tender eyes to me
As deep as any ocean
As sweet as any harmony
Mm, but she blinded me with science
(She blinded me with science!)
And failed me in biology, yeah
Huh-huh
When I’m dancing close to her
(Blinding me with science, science)
(Science!)
I can smell the chemicals
(Blinding me with science, science)
(Science!)
Mm, now but it’s poetry in motion
And when she turned her eyes to me
As deep as any ocean
As sweet as any harmony
She blinded me with science
(She blinded me with science!)
And failed me in geometry
When she’s dancing next to me
(Blinding me with science, science)
(Science!)
I can hear machinery
(Blinding me with science, science)
(Science!)
Hah! It’s poetry in motion
And now she’s making love to me
The spheres are in commotion
The elements in harmony
She blinded me with science
(She blinded me with science!)
And hit me with technology
I don’t believe it, there she goes again
She’s tidied up and I can’t find anything
All my tubes and wires and careful notes
And antiquated notions
But, it’s poetry in motion
And when she turned her eyes to me
As deep as any ocean
As sweet as any harmony
Uh, she blinded me with science
(She blinded me with science!)
She blinded me with
=====
Coming up next:
Nature and teleology.
To be continued …
