On Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Nature’ : A Free Reflex of Spirit — part thirty seven.

David Proud

41 min readOct 19, 2023

‘De profundis’ (excerpt)

by Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)

…

People point to Reading Gaol and say,

‘That is where the artistic life leads a man.’

Well, it might lead to worse places.

The more mechanical people to whom life is a shrewd speculation

depending on a careful calculation of ways and means,

always know where they are going, and go there.

They start with the ideal desire of being the parish beadle,

and in whatever sphere they are placed

they succeed in being the parish beadle and no more.

A man whose desire is to be something separate from himself,

to be a member of Parliament, or a successful grocer,

or a prominent solicitor,

or a judge, or something equally tedious,

invariably succeeds in being what he wants to be.

That is his punishment.

Those who want a mask have to wear it.

But with the dynamic forces of life,

and those in whom those dynamic forces become incarnate,

it is different.

People whose desire is solely for self-realisation

never know where they are going.

They can’t know.

In one sense of the word it is of course necessary,

as the Greek oracle said, to know oneself:

that is the first achievement of knowledge.

But to recognise that the soul of a man is unknowable,

is the ultimate achievement of wisdom.

The final mystery is oneself.

When one has weighed the sun in the balance,

and measured the steps of the moon,

and mapped out the seven heavens star by star,

there still remains oneself.

Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?

When the son went out to look for his father’s asses,

he did not know that a man of God was waiting for him

with the very chrism of coronation,

and that his own soul was already the soul of a king.

I hope to live long enough and to produce work of such a character

that I shall be able at the end of my days to say,

‘Yes! this is just where the artistic life leads a man!’

Two of the most perfect lives I have come across in my own experience

are the lives of Verlaine and of Prince Kropotkin:

both of them men who have passed years in prison:

the first, the one Christian poet since Dante;

the other,

a man with a soul of that beautiful white Christ which seems coming out of Russia.

And for the last seven or eight months,

in spite of a succession of great troubles reaching me from the outside world

almost without intermission,

I have been placed in direct contact with a new spirit

working in this prison through man and things,

that has helped me beyond any possibility of expression in words:

so that while for the first year of my imprisonment I did nothing else,

and can remember doing nothing else, but wring my hands in impotent despair, and say,

‘What an ending, what an appalling ending!’

now I try to say to myself, and sometimes

when I am not torturing myself do really and sincerely say,

‘What a beginning, what a wonderful beginning!’

====

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, (1770–1831). ‘Philosophy of Nature’. ‘Physics’.

Rationality and Dynamism in Elemental Nature. Hegel thus far has contended that his theory of nature is special in the manner by which it articulates sensible experience and that this makes it more adequate than any competing theory and in particular he suggest, empirical science can by no means engender a similarly adequate theory since it operates from a metaphysics according to which all natural forms are mere things and not in themselves rational. Hegel, at least on Alison Stone’s reading but see my previous article on philosophy and phenomenology, maintains that he can develop a phenomenologically adequate theory only through an alternative metaphysics according to which all natural forms are intrinsically rational hence he regards this rationalist conception of nature especially adequate since it permits him to formulate this theory and in this connection he presents two specific arguments that are not fully explicit but are implicit in some comments that he makes in the ‘Philosophy of Nature’. To begin with the suggestion is that his rationalist conception enables him to conceptualize the elements in a phenomenologically appropriate way as indeterminate, mutable, and dynamically interrelated, and secondly is the suggestion that his rationalist conception permits him to conceptualize bodies as struggling to individuate themselves both through and against the elements and so to accommodate our basic sense that the elements both pervade objects of experience and introduce indeterminacy into them, we have to conceptualize the elements as developing out of one another or as he puts it undergoing a ceaseless transmutation into one another.

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**‘Ezekiel’s Vision’, c. 1518, Raphael**

Now it came to pass in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, in the fifth day of the month, as I was among the captives by the river of Chebar, that the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God. In the fifth day of the month, which was the fifth year of king Jehoiachin’s captivity, The word of the Lord came expressly unto Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the river Chebar; and the hand of the Lord was there upon him. And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber, out of the midst of the fire. Also out of the midst thereof came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance; they had the likeness of a man. And every one had four faces, and every one had four wings. And their feet were straight feet; and the sole of their feet was like the sole of a calf’s foot: and they sparkled like the colour of burnished brass. And they had the hands of a man under their wings on their four sides; and they four had their faces and their wings. Their wings were joined one to another; they turned not when they went; they went every one straight forward. As for the likeness of their faces, they four had the face of a man, and the face of a lion, on the right side: and they four had the face of an ox on the left side; they four also had the face of an eagle. Thus were their faces: and their wings were stretched upward; two wings of every one were joined one to another, and two covered their bodies. And they went every one straight forward: whither the spirit was to go, they went; and they turned not when they went. As for the likeness of the living creatures, their appearance was like burning coals of fire, and like the appearance of lamps: it went up and down among the living creatures; and the fire was bright, and out of the fire went forth lightning. And the living creatures ran and returned as the appearance of a flash of lightning. Now as I beheld the living creatures, behold one wheel upon the earth by the living creatures, with his four faces. The appearance of the wheels and their work was like unto the colour of a beryl: and they four had one likeness: and their appearance and their work was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel. When they went, they went upon their four sides: and they turned not when they went. As for their rings, they were so high that they were dreadful; and their rings were full of eyes round about them four. And when the living creatures went, the wheels went by them: and when the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up. Whithersoever the spirit was to go, they went, thither was their spirit to go; and the wheels were lifted up over against them: for the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels. When those went, these went; and when those stood, these stood; and when those were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up over against them: for the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels. And the likeness of the firmament upon the heads of the living creature was as the colour of the terrible crystal, stretched forth over their heads above. And under the firmament were their wings straight, the one toward the other: every one had two, which covered on this side, and every one had two, which covered on that side, their bodies. And when they went, I heard the noise of their wings, like the noise of great waters, as the voice of the Almighty, the voice of speech, as the noise of an host: when they stood, they let down their wings. And there was a voice from the firmament that was over their heads, when they stood, and had let down their wings. And above the firmament that was over their heads was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone: and upon the likeness of the throne was the likeness as the appearance of a man above upon it. And I saw as the colour of amber, as the appearance of fire round about within it, from the appearance of his loins even upward, and from the appearance of his loins even downward, I saw as it were the appearance of fire, and it had brightness round about. As the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness round about. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. And when I saw it, I fell upon my face, and I heard a voice of one that spake.

- Ezekiel, 1.1–28.

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‘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-for-self 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’.

– ‘Philosophy of Nature’

Hence can we accommodate our sense that the elements are not stable objects but media lurking in the shadows and that shade indeterminately into one another and the contention is that we can only conceptualize the elements as transmuting into one another if we regard them as intrinsically rational, unlike the chemical elements that are quite heterogeneous to one another the physical elements are universal matters particularized solely according to the moments of the concept.

‘The elements are universal natural existences, which are no longer independent, and yet are still not individualized. In chemistry, an element is to be understood as a general constituent of bodies, all of which are supposed to consist of a definite number of these elements. The assumption here is that all bodies are composite, so that thought has as its object the reduction of the infinite variety of qualified and individualized corporealities to a few incomposite and therefore general qualities. On the basis of this criterion, the concept of the four elements, which has been a commonplace since the time of Empedocles, has been rejected as a puerile phantasy, the elements being regarded as composite! No educated person, and certainly no physicist. or chemist is now permitted, under any circumstances, to mention the four elements. The search for the sort of simple and universal existence present-day chemists have in mind is a matter only for chemistry. The chemical point of view will be treated later on. Chemistry assumes the individuality of bodies, and then attempts to break down this individuality and the point of unity in which the differences are contained, and to free these differentiae from the force which constrains them. The combination of acid and base gives rise to a salt, which is their unity, the third term. As crystallization, this third term also has shape however, so that it is not just the simple abstract unity of chemical elements, but individual unity of form. If the body is merely the neutrality of its differences, we shall be able to point out its aspects when we break it down. These aspects are not universal elements and original principles however, they are merely qualitatively, i.e. specifically determined constituents. The individuality of a body is much more than the mere neutrality of these aspects however; it is infinite form which is the main thing, particularly in living existence. When we have exhibited the constitutents of a vegetable or animal, they are no longer its constituents, for the vegetable or animal will have been annihilated. Consequently, in its attempt to attain simplicity, chemistry destroys individuality. If that which is individual is neutral, as a salt is, chemistry will be able to exhibit its distinct aspects, for chemical analysis will only destroy the merely formal unity of its differences. If an organism is broken down however, it is not only the unity which is destroyed, but also the organism one is attempting to understand. In dealing with the physical elements, we are not in the least concerned with elements in the chemical sense. The chemical standpoint is certainly not the only one, it is merely one particular sphere, with no right whatever to impose itself upon other forms, as if it were their essence. It is merely the becoming of individuality that we have before us here, and at first, only the universal individual, the Earth. The elements are the diverse matters, which constitute the moments of this becoming of the universal individual. In short: we must not confuse the standpoint of chemistry with that of the still wholly universal individuality. The chemical elements exhibit no order whatever, and are quite heterogeneous as regards one another. The physical elements on the contrary are universal matters, particularized solely in conformity with the moments of the Notion. There are consequently only four of them. The ancients certainly asserted that everything is composed of these four elements, but they only had the abstract thought of this truth before them’.

– ‘Philosophy of Nature’

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And there was a day when his sons and his daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house: And there came a messenger unto Job, and said, The oxen were plowing, and the asses feeding beside them: And the Sabeans fell upon them, and took them away; yea, they have slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The fire of God is fallen from heaven, and hath burned up the sheep, and the servants, and consumed them; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The Chaldeans made out three bands, and fell upon the camels, and have carried them away, yea, and slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, Thy sons and thy daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house: And, behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men, and they are dead; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped, And said, Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord. In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.

- ‘Job’, 1.13–22.

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That is to say each physical element assumes the form or mode of existence that is the particularization that is needed by rational necessity that is the concept in the sense that it resolves the tension in the preceding element, and by viewing the elements as intrinsically rational we can understand how they develop into one another, while by contrast, empirical science does not believe in nature’s intrinsic rationality and hence is unable to grasp that its forms develop internally. This compels scientists to theorize the elements as chemical rather than physical, they view the qualities of bodies as inherently static, changing into one another only through external laws, and therefore grasp these qualities as precisely, chemical elements defined by their essential separation from one another. To put it in the way that Hegel does in the absence of a rationalist metaphysics scientists finish up adopting the fixed representation of the substantial and unalterable variety of the elements, a representation carried over by the understanding from the processes of singularised materials and once and for all established which not only pushes aside the concept, above all else experience itself is pushed aside within this perspective.

‘Consideration of this field suffers from a basic defect, which has its origin in the fixed conception of a substantial and unalterable variety of elements. This conception is taken over by the understanding from the processes of isolated substances and used without discrimination. Where more complex transitions also appear in these finite processes, where for example, water is fixed in a crystal, or light and heat vanish etc. reflection has recourse to nebulous and meaningless expressions concerning dissolution, ligation, latence, and suchlike (see below § 305 Rem. and Addition). This way of thinking may be seen in the wholesale transformation of phenomenal relationships into partly imponderable ‘stuffs’ and ‘matters’, a transformation which pitches each physical existence into the chaos already mentioned (§ 276 Rem.), in which pores are postulated, through which matters are supposed to enter and leave one another, so that not only the Notion, but even commonsense is put to rout. It is mainly simple experience which is pushed aside, for assertions of this kind still assume an empirical existence, even when they can no longer lay claim to empirical evidence’.

– ‘Philosophy of Nature’

And furthermore a Hegelian rationalist metaphysics enables us to conceptualize bodies as individuating themselves against their elemental background and therefore to accommodate our sense of bodies as both pervaded and rendered unstable by this background. And when bodies incorporate elements as their qualities this provokes the dissolution of those bodies so that they can persist only by altering their elemental qualities to sever them from their context and we we can only understand this activity of alteration if we view bodies as intrinsically rational and so driven to respond rationally to the tension that their possession of elemental qualities has introduced into them namely the tension that these qualities precipitate the dissolution of the bodies.

In the absence of the metaphysics of intrinsic rationality scientists are unable to understand how bodies gradually attain individuation and they thereby assume that this individuation is a self-evident given and as a matter of fact such an assumption is embedded in the scientific metaphysics according to which natural entities are bare things, sheer individual items, from which we conclude as Hegel puts it science feels too much compassion for matter, if it wishes to proceed purely empirically it must admit that matter passes away into the elements.

‘Animal forms which are no longer alive, may be preserved from decay if they are removed from contact with the air. This destruction can be mediated however, as when humidity brings the process to a certain product. This is only mediation however, for it is still the air as such which destroys. As the universal, the air is pure, but it is not an inert purity, for that which evaporates into the air does not preserve itself there, but is reduced to simple universality. In mechanical physics it is supposed that when such a body has been dissolved, fine particles of it continue to float about in the air, and can no longer be smelt simply because they have been so finely dispersed. Physicists are in fact reluctant to allow these bodies to disintegrate, but we ought not to feel so much compassion for matter, for it is only in the understanding’s system of identity that it has permanence. Air purifies itself and converts everything into air; it is not a mish-mash of matters, and neither odorousness nor chemical investigation suggests that it is. The understanding employs the expedient of tenuity of course, and has an overriding prejudice against the word ‘transmute’, but empirical physics has no right to assert the existence of that which is not given by perception. If it wishes to proceed purely empirically, it has to admit that this body passes away’.

– ‘Philosophy of Nature’

Only Hegelian rationalism licences the construction of a theory of nature that articulates our sense of the dynamic struggle through which its component bodies individuate themselves and any theory that articulates sensibility must be constructed on the basis of the rationalist metaphysics of nature. Only upon this foundation can we comprehend the dynamism of the elements and the volatility of elementally located natural bodies, while by contrast, scientific accounts, embodying a metaphysical conception of nature as a realm of bare things, have to regard both elements and bodies as firmly bounded items in a way that breaks with, or in Hegel’s phrase pushes aside, sensibility, and this renders his rationalist metaphysics of nature adequate as its scientific competitor is not.

Hegel’s phenomenological argument as Stone calls it is the argument that his rationalist metaphysics is most adequate in that it uniquely enables him to develop a phenomenologically adequate theory of nature that remains appropriately faithful to sensible experience. Why should such fidelity to sensibility make Hegel’s theory or derivatively, his rationalist metaphysics adequate in the sense of being true to nature’s real being? For certainly a theory that stays attuned to our sensible experience is likely to enhance our well being as humans doing away with the harmful opposition of understanding to sensibility which renders us amphibious as Hegel puts it. The cultural diffusion of such a theory would foster a social world in which humans can be and feel at home promoting a climate of reconciliation (Versöhnung) rather than alienation (Entfremdung).

The concept of reconciliation plays an important role in Hegelian social philosophy, with its vision of a more habitable culture that articulates sensibility instead of repressing it, nonetheless this does not establish that theories that articulate sensibility are more true to nature’s real being. In defence of science it may be said that such theories are necessarily less true to nature’s real being since the deep-rooted sense of nature that they articulate is imbued with naïve and uncritically anthropomorphic projections and from this perspective it is in fact science’s empirical methodology relying centrally upon experimentation and intersubjective criticism and confirmation that opens the way for the break with such distorting projections and attain a more accurate grasp of how nature objectively is. What is in need of explanation is why congruence with sensibility should be thought to render the theory adequate rather than distorting and chimerical and especially what needs to be demonstrated is that humanity’s basic form of awareness of the natural world as embedded in the senses is veridical.

Hegel’s concern is to demonstrate that sensible experience is veridical and he must demonstrate that this form of awareness connects us with objective structures or patterns that really obtain in nature where these structures are not only the elements but also the objective processes of self-qualification and individuation that natural bodies undergo and were sensible experience to be demonstrated to be essentially veridical in this manner then the conceptual articulation of its basic contours will count exactly as articulating its veridical element and thereby engendering a theory of nature that is adequate in the sense of being substantively true and Hegel does indicate that sensibility is essentially veridical by suggesting that the structures of which sentient subjects are basically aware have already been shown to exist in the ‘Philosophy of Nature’.

‘But it is more by its relation to the mental interior than by this peculiar measure of sensitivity that outer sensation becomes something peculiarly anthropological. Now this relation has manifold aspects, though not all of them pertain to our consideration here yet. In particular, the determination of a sensation as a pleasant or unpleasant one remains excluded from consideration here — this comparison, more or less interwoven with reflection, of outer sensation with our nature determined in and for itself, whose satisfaction or non-satisfaction by an impression makes the impression in the first case a pleasant, in the second case an unpleasant, sensation. Just as little can the arousal of urges by impressions be drawn into the field of our inquiry. This arousal belongs to the realm of practical mind which still lies far ahead. What we have to consider at this stage is simply and solely the unconscious relatedness of outer sensation to the mental interior. Through this relation there arises in us what we call mood, -an appearance of the mind of which, admittedly, we find an analogue in animals (just as we find an analogue of the sensation of the pleasant or unpleasant and of the arousal of urges by impressions) , but which (like the above-named other mental appearances) at the same time has a peculiarly human character and which moreover becomes something anthropological, in the narrower sense we have indicated, by being something not yet known with full consciousness by the subject. Even when we were considering the natural soul not yet advanced to individuality, we had to talk about its moods, which correspond to an external factor. At that stage, this external factor was still entirely universal circumstances, of which one really cannot say, precisely owing to their indeterminate universality, that they are sensed. By contrast, at the standpoint to which we have so far brought the development of the soul, external sensation itself is what arouses the mood. But this effect is produced by outer sensation in so far as an inner meaning is immediately, i.e. without conscious intelligence needing to intervene, associated with it. By this meaning, the external sensation becomes something symbolic. We must note, however, that what we have here is not yet a symbol in the proper meaning of the word; for strictly speaking a symbol requires an external object distinct from us in which we become conscious of an internal determinacy, or which we generally relate to such a determinacy. But in a mood aroused by an external sensation we are not yet in relationship to an external object distinct from us, we are not yet consciousness. Consequently, as we have said, the symbolic does not yet appear here in its proper shape’.

– ‘Philosophy of Mind’

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**‘Seascape with Jonah and the Whale’, 1615–75, Gaspard Dughet**

Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me. But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord, and went down to Joppa; and he found a ship going to Tarshish: so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. But the Lord sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken. Then the mariners were afraid, and cried every man unto his god, and cast forth the wares that were in the ship into the sea, to lighten it of them. But Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship; and he lay, and was fast asleep. So the shipmaster came to him, and said unto him, What meanest thou, O sleeper? arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God will think upon us, that we perish not. And they said every one to his fellow, Come, and let us cast lots, that we may know for whose cause this evil is upon us. So they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah. Then said they unto him, Tell us, we pray thee, for whose cause this evil is upon us; What is thine occupation? and whence comest thou? what is thy country? and of what people art thou? And he said unto them, I am an Hebrew; and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, which hath made the sea and the dry land. Then were the men exceedingly afraid, and said unto him. Why hast thou done this? For the men knew that he fled from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them. Then said they unto him, What shall we do unto thee, that the sea may be calm unto us? for the sea wrought, and was tempestuous. And he said unto them, Take me up, and cast me forth into the sea; so shall the sea be calm unto you: for I know that for my sake this great tempest is upon you. Nevertheless the men rowed hard to bring it to the land; but they could not: for the sea wrought, and was tempestuous against them. Wherefore they cried unto the Lord, and said, We beseech thee, O Lord, we beseech thee, let us not perish for this man’s life, and lay not upon us innocent blood: for thou, O Lord, hast done as it pleased thee. So they took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea: and the sea ceased from her raging.

- ‘Jonah’, 1.1–15

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Stone believes this argument to be circular because Hegel’s theory of nature is itself supposed to be made adequate by its prior consonance with sensible experience. Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Mind’ also implies an alternative line of argument that albeit not fully developed seems to offer more as its basic thought is that human individuals have emerged from nature …..

‘But it is already evident from our discussion so far that the emergence of mind from nature must not be conceived as if nature were the absolutely immediate, the first, the original positing agent, while mind, by contrast, were only something posited by nature; it is rather nature that is posited by mind, and mind is what is absolutely first. Mind that is in and for itself is not the mere result of nature, but is in truth its own result; it brings itself forth from the presuppositions that it makes for itself, from the logical Idea and external nature, and is the truth of the logical Idea as well as of nature, i.e. the true shape of the mind that is only within itself, and of the mind that is only outside itself. The semblance of mind’s being mediated by an Other is sublated by mind itself, since mind has, so to speak, the sovereign ingratitude of sublating, of mediatizing, that by which it seems to be mediated, of reducing it to something subsisting only through mind and in this way making itself completely independent.23-What we have said already implies that the transition of nature to mind is not a transition to an out-and-out Other, but is only a coming-to-itself of the mind that is outside itself in nature. But equally, the determinate difference of nature and mind is not sublated by this transition; for mind does not emerge in a natural manner from nature. When we said in §222 that the death of the merely immediate, individual form of life is the emergence of mind, this emergence is not in the flesh but spiritual, it is not to be understood as a natural emergence but as a development of the concept, the concept that sublates the one-sidedness of the genus which does not reach adequate actualization, proving in death to be rather the negative power opposed to that actuality, and also sublates the opposite onesidedness of the animal reality bound to individuality; both one-sidednesses are sublated in the individuality which is in and for itself universal or, what is the same thing, in the universal which is for itself in a universal manner, the universal that is mind’.

- ‘Philosophy of Mind’

‘What belongs to nature as such lies behind mind; certainly, mind has within itself the whole content [Gehalt] of nature, but the determinations of nature are in mind in a thoroughly different way than in external nature’.

- ‘Philosophy of Mind’

… human individuals have emerged from nature and that as a consequence their basic form of experience of nature necessarily connects with how nature really is or more precisely Hegel’s notion is that since we have emerged from nature the system of our senses arises as a recapitulation of preexisting patterns that objectively structure various natural forms and the different determinations that we have observed in inorganic nature are in addition diversified ways in which what is organic relates to the inorganic, that is to say these exis] as modifications of sentience, and for precisely this reason they are called senses.

‘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. Addition. The process outwards is the real process, in which the animal no longer converts its own nature into inorganic being, as it does when it is diseased. In this process, the animal must also release the other, which is a moment within the organism, into the abstraction of an immediately present outer world, with which it enters into relationship. This basic division, or expulsion of the Sun and everything else, constitutes the precise standpoint of animation. The Idea of life is in itself this unconscious creativeness, it is an expansion of nature, which in animation has returned into its truth. For the individual however, inorganic nature is a presupposition with which it is confronted, and it is this which gives rise to the finitude of living being. The individual is for itself, but as the organic being has this negativity within itself, the connection here is absolute, indivisible, internal, and essential. Externality is determined only as having being for organic being; organic being is that which maintains itself in opposition to it. Organic being is orientated towards externality to the same extent that it is internally strung in opposition to it, and this consequently gives rise to the contradiction of this relationship, in which two independent beings come forth in opposition to each other, while at the same time externality has to be subIated. The organism must therefore posit the subjectivity of externality, appropriate it, and identify it with its own self; this constitutes assimilation. The forms of this process are threefold; firstly the theoretical process, secondly the real, practical process, and thirdly the unity of both, the process which is of an ideal and real nature-the adaptation of inorganic being to the end of living being, that is to say instinct, and the nisus formativus’.

- ‘Philosophy of Mind’

And so the system of our senses is structured in parallel to objective natural forms, and accordingly insofar as this system is a structured cognitive system it constrains us to perceive these objective natural forms as having essentially the structure that they in actual fact do possess.

Antonio Lucio Vivaldi (1678–1741)

Such an argument for the veridical character of sensibility is not fully worked out but the basic idea that the human senses are continuous with nature and that this continuity means that the senses are constrained at least in broad terms to represent nature as it really is reasonable enough to generate further thinking on the matter albeit Stone contends that because this argument for the veridical character of sensible experience is insufficiently developed Hegel’s phenomenological argument for his rationalist metaphysics of nature remains itself rather inconclusive the most we can conclude being that his idea that sensibility must be essentially veridical since it emerges from nature has promise and that we should thus look with favour on his overall phenomenological argument in particular on his idea that science is detached in a manner beset with problems from sensible experience of nature toward which it directs an inappropriate scepticism. By separating their accounts of nature from sensibility scientists make such accounts inadequate notwithstanding science’s distinctively empirical method yet remember that Hegel uses sensibility in a technical sense to refer to our basic sense of nature as elemental therefore it is precisely through its empirical method that science creates accounts of nature that are separated from sensibility and this is because empirical method is itself underpinned by science’s metaphysics of nature that already breaks with sensibility at a deeper level and yet scientists are constrained into this by their metaphysical presupposition that nature is a realm of bare things.

Such a presupposition compels scientists to attribute to particular natural forms a degree of inertia and separateness that is not present in those forms insofar as they are objects of sensibility and the inadequacy of scientific accounts therefore stems fundamentally from their underlying metaphysics that wrongly pushes aside sensibility.

Albeit the supposed phenomenological argument remains incomplete it points the way towards a realization of its potential for criticizing modern science and proposing an alternative specifically philosophical re-description of nature with increased sensitivity towards ecological matters for modern science presupposes an inadequate conception of nature as a realm of bare things a conception that disconnects with our basic sense of natural forms as fluid, dynamic, and elemental. This basic experience is essentially veridical so that in disconnecting itself from sensibility scientific metaphysics makes itself inadequate and incapable of generating accounts that are true to nature’s real, elemental, mode of being and this inadequacy infects in turn the technological applications which scientific accounts anticipate ensuring that these applications will tend to be inappropriate and destructive also.

The solution to such problems is to encourage scientific accounts to become incorporated into an Hegelian theory of nature, a theory that remains more true to sensibility emphasizing nature’s dynamic and elemental character and such heightened adequacy of the theory stems from its organization around the underlying metaphysical conception that all natural forms are intrinsically rational and this conception is more adequate than the metaphysics presupposed in science precisely since it enables the articulation of sensibility, to conceptualize nature’s elemental fluidity and dynamism in terms of its intrinsic rationality. Through this alleged phenomenological argument support can be found for the claim that Hegelian metaphysics of nature is more adequate and truer to nature’s real, elemental, mode of being, and further this implies that Hegel’s metaphysical re-description of nature could make possible correspondingly more appropriate and less damaging ways for us to inhabit and respond to the natural environment.

And so as Stone points out there is ecological potential in an Hegelian vision of a future in which our interchange with nature would be regulated by this metaphysical re-description of nature within which scientific accounts would always be reinterpreted and incorporated and this ecological potential is fleshed out in Hegel’s fourth and final main argument for this rationalist metaphysics of nature, the argument that this metaphysics is most adequate since it recognizes intrinsic goodness in all natural forms. In this matter this metaphysics of nature differs once again from the standard scientific conception of nature as an essentially value neutral domain,and by proposing a future re-contextualization of science within philosophy of nature Hegel foresees science’s value-neutral accounts of natural forms being re-interpreted within the framework of a theory that locates intrinsic goodness throughout the natural world and from the Hegelian perspective it is this value-rich theory that should ultimately direct and regulate our conduct with respect to nature for an examination of the fourth argument for this rationalist conception of nature shows us how the environmental relevance of this approach can be most completely developed.

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**‘Moses before the burning bush’, Domenico Fetti, (c. 1589–16 April 1623)**

Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father in law, the priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb. And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt. And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I. And he said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. Moreover he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God. And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows; And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites.

- ‘Exodus’, 3.1–8

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Divertimento 4: The Preface to the ‘Phenomenology of Spirit’ (continued).

An occasional diversion upon some central features of Hegelian philosophy that makes it distinctive and that must continually be borne in mind if we are to properly understand what is going on.

Philosophy as a Science. Immanuel Kant put forward a problem destined to define the task of philosophy in Germany for decades:, that is, how can philosophy become a science [Wissenschaft]? Hegel addresses it early on:

‘The true shape in which truth exists can only be the scientific system of such truth. To help bring philosophy closer to the form of Science, to the goal where it can lay aside the title ‘love of knowing’ and be actual knowing-that is what I have set myself to do. The inner necessity that knowing ,should be Science lies in its nature, and only the systematic exposition of philosophy itself provides it. But the external necessity, so far as it is grasped in a general way, setting aside accidental matters of person and motivation, is the same as the inner, or in other words it lies in the shape in which time sets forth the sequential existence of its moments. To show that now is the time for philosophy to be raised to the status of a Science would therefore be the only true justification of any effort that has this aim, for to do so would demonstrate the necessity of the aim, would indeed at the same time be the accomplishing of it’.

- ‘Phenomenology of Spirit’

It is a mistake to interpret Hegel’s work through this issue as many have done. Following Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes Kant suggested that to become a science, philosophy must try a new method and numerous modern philosophers eyed with favour methodological revolution since they looked at the history of philosophy sceptically and to them it seemed to be a stalemate of the sort Kant represents in the antinomies of pure reason and equally valid arguments appeared to support mutually exclusive ontologies. It appeared that philosophers had argued as cogently for the eternity of the world as they had for its beginning in creation and in response to this putative deadlock Kant suggested turning philosophy on its head and rather than asking about whether our concepts conform to objects we should ask if objects conform to our concepts. Kant took this to be a novel approach that promised novel results which may lead us to suppose that upon approaching Hegel’s work as an answer to the Kantian question we might already expect a novel solution like Kant’s and so high on anticipation we ask ourselves what Hegel’s new move might be And the answer we are usually given is …. the dialectic. A dialectical method applied with rigour will allow philosophy to become a science, but this response while not totally wrong is a substantial misrepresent of the matter at hand. For Hegel dialectical movement that posits and sublates differences is not a new method applied to thinking but rather it is merely how thinking works anyway on its own and without assistance.

Thinking is naturally and inherently dialectical and a clear indication of this is that when we begin thinking through an issue we frequently stake out two opposed conceptual extremes in order to identify a bounded field or terrain of thinking, being and non-being, great and small, finitude and infinity, matter and spirit, and so on, and this tendency of thinking is so forceful that we frequently turn ideas that are not even logically opposed into conceptual extremes, for instance capitalism and socialism. We also discover that once the contraries are available and the field of inquiry is defined the differences start to interact and point us toward new thoughts and without any training in dialectical method if it even is a method Heraclitus and Aristotle and Descartes and numerous others have gradually refined the nature of their inquiry by positing, negating, and sublating opposed thoughts.

Hegel does not believe thinking is in need of correction and consequently he does not look upon the history of philosophy sceptically, indeed philosophy has no need to reinvent itself in the least but rather to recover itself, philosophy must become completely the activity that it has been all along in a partial way and the road to philosophical science has to pass through whatever was genuinely philosophical in the works of all philosophers worthy of the name, be they Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, and in addition Anaxagoras, Epicurus, and Leibniz.

For Hegel, and this is important my thesis focusses on this, philosophy has to become a recollective science for how odd it would be if the activity of philosophy had until Kant entered centre stage merely failed to be genuinely philosophical because it was turned in the wrong direction. Hegel is concerned that in the Kantian quest to set philosophy upon properly scientific footing philosophers have been emulating the methods of recognized sciences like anatomy or geometry and the problem here is that both historically and conceptually all of the recognized sciences developed out of the activity we designate philosophy and are thus subordinate to it in the sense that they depend upon it for their very birth.

The word science and the activity that it names can and should be traced to the inquiries ancient Greek philosophers made about episteme and seen in this light Kant’s question is not so much about discovering a new method which is the focus of so much early modern philosophy but more about recovering the bigger picture of from whence science came and whither it goeth. And for Hegel science has to be reconceived broadly to incorporate the whole history of philosophy rather than limited to the narrow range of experimental methods associated with the new science. The meteoric rise of mathematical physics and the mechanical sciences in the seventeenth century obscured the long and patient gestation of ideas that led to it and Hegel saw philosophers busily imitating these new sciences without an appreciation for how their adopted methods sometimes limited and distorted the broader nature of philosophical inquiry, modern philosophers with their novel methods were forbidding concrete discussion of traditional philosophical subjects such as final purposes or teleology.

Where there is the perception of a purposiveness an intelligence is assumed as its author, required for purpose is hence the concept’s own free concrete existence and teleology is above all contrasted with mechanism in which the determinateness posited in the object being external is one that gives no sign of self-determination. The opposition between causæ efficientes and causæ finales, between merely efficient and final causes, refers to this distinction, just as at a more concrete level the enquiry whether the absolute essence of the world is to be conceived as blind mechanism or as an intelligence that determines itself in accordance with purposes also comes down to it. The antinomy of fatalism along with determinism and freedom is equally concerned with the opposition of mechanism and teleology; for the free is the concept in its concrete existence.

‘Earlier metaphysics has dealt with these concepts as it dealt with others. It presupposed a certain picture of the world and strived to show that one or the other concept of causality was adequate to it, and the opposite defective because not explainable from the presupposed picture, all the while not examining the concept of mechanical cause and that of purpose to see which possesses truth in and for itself. If this is established independently, it may turn out that the objective world exhibits mechanical and final causes; its actual existence is not the norm of what is true, but what is true is rather the criterion for deciding which of these concrete existences is its true one. Just as the subjective understanding exhibits also errors in it, so the objective world exhibits also aspects and stages of truth that by themselves are still one-sided, incomplete, and only relations of appearances. If mechanism and purposiveness stand opposed to each other, then by that very fact they cannot be taken as indifferent concepts, as if each were by itself a correct concept and had as much validity as the other, the only question being where the one or the other may apply. This equal validity of the two rests only on the fact that they are, that is to say, that we have them both. But since they do stand opposed, the necessary first question is, which of the two concepts is the true one; and the higher and truly telling question is, whether there is a third which is their truth, or whether one of them is the truth of the other. — But purposive connection has proved to be the truth of mechanism. –’

- ‘Science of Logic’

Modern philosophers were shrinking the expansive human endeavour to know into the narrow shape of the latest fruit it had created while at the same time alongside this concerning scientization of philosophy Hegel observed a backlash against scientized philosophy from primarily religious factions, and here immediate knowledge and faith and conscience and genius were to lead to new philosophical presentations that hoped to avoid the deadlock in the history of philosophy by consulting our deepest intuitions which sat below the problem ridden questions and distinctions and these two tendencies for scientization and against it therefore came to take up the entire discursive space of philosophy at the opening of the nineteenth century.

The Kantian quest to turn philosophy into a science had descended into a dogfight between those who borrowed their method from the natural sciences and those who without much thought borrowed their method from religious discourse and this dogfight obscured what was philosophical and what was not… enter Hegel’s 1807 preface hoping to give us a sense of how to tell faux philosophy and real philosophy apart, like distinguishing real and counterfeit money, and Hegel was aware that Kant’s question misled people in virtue of the narrow way that they interpreted the word science [Wissenschaft] and he aspired to give the word a more expansive register by recollecting the historical usage whereby science was synonymous with philosophy that was synonymous with accounting for knowledge or knowing knowing.

But to achieve this he had to begin with fight his way through the faux philosophical tendencies into which post-Kantian philosophy had devolved and it may appear that Hegel is merely assailing rival views to assert his own here, but he means to do something quite different, he works to disclose something about the essence of philosophy, all genuine philosophy and not just his own project by highlighting the ways that faux philosophy falls short of doing justice to philosophical content. For instance Hegel’s prefaces contain significant claims that should assist us in separating the philosophical spirit of Baruch Spinoza’s work from the formalistic presentation of his ‘Ethics’. Hegel’s concern is that without such a separation we will lose the valuable effort of Spinoza’s thought altogether and fail to grasp how philosophical thinking has developed and reached its current state through the work of Spinoza and many others for among his peers Hegel recognised that enthusiasts for Spinoza and detractors of Spinoza-detractors and the two groups completely missed their common ground. The enthusiasts were correct that Spinoza was a genius, the pivot point of modern philosophy, and the detractors were correct, Spinoza’s geometrical method was rigid and taken on its own led to mechanism and atheism that is to say to an overly narrow view of philosophy’s scope and content.

There are tendencies in Spinoza’s work fighting it out between themselves whereby it is both a catalyst for and a limitation on thinking and a study of faux philosophy (not his term but I rather like it) of the sort Hegel undertakes in his 1807 preface discloses both why Spinoza’s formalistic presentation appeals to us and why it limits us and how it can be corrected. Sundered form their distracting formalistic structure key concepts in Spinoza’s work disclose their place in a continuous line of developing thought descending from the first Greek philosophers and through grasping this continuous act of thinking we are grasping philosophy not as a mound of isolated viewpoints that cannot be brought to common ground but as a single activity, as the universal science of thinking itself.

At this you, gentle reader, may baulk. Offering the universal science of thinking itself? It is this kind of thing that gives Hegel his reputation for self-aggrandising arrogance but such a reaction is itself founded on a prejudice namely the prejudice that each person has an individual point of view or position and that philosophy is not a single activity at all but a mishmash of individual views. Starting from the assumption that philosophy has no single essence and actually consists of individually distinct philosophies, independent viewpoints that must war against each other, then looking for a single essence of philosophy in all past philosophies will seem as merely another point of view just another viewpoint.

And even worse it will seem like an hegemonic endeavour to silence the diversity of points of view by asserting itself as the supreme one that incorporates all others and this is a common way of dismissing Hegel’s work, but take note that the premise of this interpretation of philosophy’s history is similar to the intuition that grounds empiricism, a plurality of particulars are real and the universals that gather them up into kinds are convenient fictions. And by contrast were we to allow instead that philosophy might name a single activity that is imperfectly expressed by any individual thinker including Hegel then our concern is for what this or that work discloses about the common essence of philosophy. Whatever our inclination might be it will only be by studying the history of philosophy that we actualize and demonstrate its truth and to even test the plausibility of Hegel’s presentation of philosophy as a single enterprise, that is a universal science of thinking, we must to begin with be able to recognize the giveaway indications of faux philosophy so that their failures and limitations do not get imputed to philosophy proper and tarnish the reputation, indeed scurrilously slander our beloved Lady Philosophy.

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**‘The Creation of the World and the Expulsion from Paradise’, 1445, Giovanni di Paolo**

And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day. And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

- Genesis 1.17–21.

And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

- Genesis 3.22–24.

The one who sins is the one who will die. The child will not share the guilt of the parent, nor will the parent share the guilt of the child. The righteousness of the righteous will be credited to them, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against them.

- Ezekiel 18.20.

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Dedicated with love to the One from whom I have imbibed much learning of immeasurable value, through whom I have learnt about the beliefs and traditions, values and influences, of a rich and ancient culture, and in the course of which I have learnt a great deal about myself, my presuppositions and the things I have merely taken for granted, and of course I have been blessed with especially precious lessons in love.

‘Lover Lover Lover’

I asked my father, I said, ‘Father, change my name

The one I’m using now it’s covered up with fear and filth and cowardice and shame’