On Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Nature’ : A Free Reflex of Spirit — part twenty eight.
‘It’s coming ‑‑ the postponeless Creature’
by Emily Dickinson, (1830–1886)
It’s coming — the postponeless Creature —
It gains the Block — and now — it gains the Door —
Chooses its latch, from all the other fastenings —
Enters — with a “You know Me — Sir”?
Simple Salute — and certain Recognition —
Bold — were it Enemy — Brief — were it friend —
Dresses each House in Crape, and Icicle —
And carries one — out of it — to God —
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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, (1770–1831). ‘Philosophy of Nature’. ‘Physics’.
A return to System III: the genesis of consciousness and the emergence of consciousness from nature.
Hegelian Spirit or Geist is the social structure of the historical world of individual agents and institutions and is constituted through recognition (Anerkennung), which is to say through processes of reciprocal interaction, recognition is taken to be the master concept of Spirit and its fundamental structure and the social world is understood in recognitive terms, the notion of recognition is important for social and political philosophy, and furthermore, recognition is also taken to be a process pulling itself up by its own bootstraps as it were, a self-positing and self-justifying normative social phenomenon that is intelligible within and of itself and independently of anything external to it. ‘Hegel’s theory of recognition has turned out to be a theory of practical rationality of a radically ‘boot-strapping’ (internally self-determining and internally self-justifyng sort)’, bemoans Robert Pippin.
From the start recognition is placed within the social and the historical and consequently a picture of Spirit arises as that whereby the genesis and constitution of which is open to independent investigation from natural processes and so normative recognition and Spirit tend to be conceived of as identical and a kind of circularity appears to come forth for if Spirit is explicated through recognition and recognition is identical with the fundamental normative structure of the social and historical sphere then it is as if Spirit were explicated through Spirit and one might object even further upon consideration that such a picture tends to lend support to a rather sparse image of sociality as something completely normative. And an even further reason for dissatisfaction with such as this as constituting the whole story is the fact that such a picture tends to overlook how much the notion of Spirit is entwined with natural processes in Hegel’s texts evidence of which emerges were we to the ignored but by no means small matter of the Hegelian contention that recognition emerges out of nature hence by some means preceding the spiritual sphere and not being totally identical with it. As we may discern from portions of the Jena manuscripts if Spirit is constituted through recognition then the fact that recognition in some manner depends upon nature then the consequences run deep with regard to how one is to conceive the genesis and the structure of the social and historical world.
Certain aspects of the natural genesis of spiritual consciousness the Jena writings are amenable to reconstruction the object of this latter being to highlight the genesis and the structure of the basic capacities that are presupposed by recognitive interaction for these early writings laid the foundations for a Naturphilosophie of recognition outlining a kind of natural history of the evolution of the recognitive relation to oneself, a relation that begins with an organic self that is endowed with communicative capacities that enable it to interact with its environment and other selves. From the Differenzschrif, 1801, to the lectures on the philosophy of Spirit presented by Hegel during the 1803 summer semester and the 1803–4 winter semester a pathway can be discerned down which we may travel thereby passing through five distinct junctures. First, the issue of natural recognition as emerging from sexual differentiation and interaction followed by an Hegelian conception of the proto-intentional organic self and of its proprioceptive and communicative structure then the practical structure of desire or appetite (Begierde) understood as a form of practical intentionality, and of the forms of conflictive, proto-recognitive interactions arising from it, then issue of the animal voice understood as an expressive act that manifests the natural being’s longing to see its own individuality recognized, and finally the form of recognition that manifests itself with procreation and that constitutes the natural root of reason as a first form of objectivation and upon outlining the defective sides of the natural forms of recognition we will see that the forms of reflexive consciousness that develop in the realm of Spirit presuppose the pre-reflexive recognitive consciousness and are more complex reorganizations of its fundamental structure.
Sexual differentiation and natural individuation. The philosophy of nature proposed in the fragments 1–15 of the 1803–4 lectures concerns itself with a system of the earth, mechanism, chemism, physics and the organic world. Fragment 15 in particular in addition incorporates the beginning of the philosophy of Spirit wherein natural recognition plays its critical part in the move from the philosophy of nature to the philosophy of Spirit in a manner that further develops the intuition which had already shown itself in the Frankfurt period according to which consciousness constitutes itself as a form of organization of the living being. And the concept of organism is vital here as it is the notion around which is articulated the natural development of the forms of consciousness and in particular of its recognitive structures that will be the medium, the middle term (Mitte) of Spirit.
Previously in the Differenzschft Hegel had introduced recognition (Anerkennung) as a natural phenomenon that concerns the genus (Gattung) and the polarity of sexes and sexual difference of organisms was considered to be the condition of manifestation of recognitive phenomena properly speaking and in the Differenzschrift recognition was hence understood as a natural phenomenon that manifests itself as a mechanism of coordination between natural interactions aimed at sexual reproduction and this provides a clue as to how to reconstruct the problem of natural recognition within the more articulated conception of the genesis of consciousness developed in the 1803–4 lectures for in the analysis of organism in the 1803–4 lectures the animal organism properly said is a new level of self-organization of the living being, a level that cannot be adequately grasped solely with the notions that apply to physical and chemical processes and as such the animal organism is a living unity (eine lebendige Einheit) that is to say a complex system that relates to its own states as to moments of its own process of differentiation and organization and the organism that preserves itself is thus determined and identifiable as a singularity (Einzelnheit) that is understood as a numerical unit (ein numerisches Ein) that is to say a quantitative determination albeit there are physical and chemical antecedents of the individuality of the organism and it is non reducibility to the previous levels.
In the positing of the individuated structure of the living organism the concept of Gattung plays a crucial part Organic individuality is defined as the absolute middle term (absolute Mitte) between two processes, the cycle through which the singular organism preserves and individuates itself and the cycle through which the Gattung, the universal moment, endures through sexual reproduction of individuals and hence the natural process is the start of a process of individuation through universalization and as Hegel explains:
‘Die Idee der organischen Individualität ist Gattung, Allgemeinheit; sie ist sich unendlich ein anderes und in diesem Anderssein sie selbst, existiert in der Trennung der Geschlechter, deren jedes die ganze Idee ist, aber die, sich auf sich
selbst als auf ein Äußeres beziehend, sich [im] Anderssein als sich selbst anschaut und diesen Gegensatz aufhebend’.
‘The idea of organic individuality is genus, universality; it is infinitely an other to itself and in this otherness [is] itself, exists in the division of the sexes, each of which is the entire idea, but such that it, relating to itself as to an other, intuits itself in otherness as itself and supersedes this opposition’.
– ‘Fragment 11’
Natural individuation is connected at a deep level to sexual differentiation and intercourse and it is through the proto-sociality of sexual intercourse that animal organisms begin to manifest themselves as individuals and to appreciate the individuality of other organisms as intercourse presupposes that mates recognize themselves as belonging to the same genus or species and at the same time that they recognize their sexual difference and the other’s individuality and from this point Gattung (genus) employed in biological contexts is in general translated as species and simultaneously the recognitive structure of relating to itself as to an other is here rooted at the organic level, the very possibility of relating to itself, the form of pre-reflexive self-relation that the natural organism displays at this level, is connected to the possibility of intuiting oneself in another organism of the same species and hence Hegel designates sexual differentiation a doubling (Verdopplung), using the term that in the Frankfurt writings had been employed to refer to intersubjectivity understood as doubling of life. And further naming organic individuality as a middle term (Mitte), an essence (Wesen) and a movement (Bewegung), again Hegel discovers at the organic level some aspects that will be constitutive of the dynamics of consciousness.
Organic individuality is already an individuality whose capacity of self-relation is mediated by the relation to the other and we discern here at the organic level the typical logical notion of the unity of self-relation and relation to the other that had already been placed in the Frankfurt writings, within the living process and that will characterize the structure of consciousness in the 1803–4 fragments. The other to which the individual is forever related, inasmuch as it relates to itself is the universal other of the Gattung and this universal immediately present in the individual is what the individual has to become through its own process of natural development and social individuation.
The Gattung the universal moment is present as an ideal moment within the organism while simultaneously the same time the Gattung exists through organic differentiation and the division of sexes in the other organisms of the same species with whom the individual interacts and this distinction of sexes that in the vegetal organism is still unstable gives rise in the animal organism to a proper form of determined differentiation and while the vegetal organism is a form of life deprived of selfhood with the animal organism a process of individuation begins and a first form of natural self comes into being. However in animal life the Gattung is ideal insofar as it is a living universal that does not exist as such or for itself and unlike in the spiritual domain where the universal manifests itself in the institutional structures through which individuals are socialized the natural process of individuation through social universalization exists only through the infinite division and differentiation of individuals and thus as their contact (Berührung) through intercourse.
The organic self, proprioception and communication. System III. This brings us to the second stage on our journey, the process of development of an organic self through proprioception and communication whereby the animal organism is a differentiated system of processes related to specific organs and functions and the development and the functional differentiation of the organism is indeed the process through which the singular being begins to individuate itself, a process that culminates in sexual differentiation. The crucial movement of the organism is an ensemble of three processes, an internal growth process, a process of preservation through assimilation of the external inorganic and organic nature, and the system of the senses (System der Sinne) that unifies internal and external processes and the relation between these systems is a living unity according to a non-reductionist conception of the relation between physical, chemical and biological levels, upper, biological levels have lower, physical and chemical levels as their conditions, and the latter reciprocally can be preserved only through the permanence of the self-organization of the former.
The system of the senses is properly the movement where the universalization of the individual starts, the universal becoming of the individual as such, ‘das Allgemeinwerden des Individuums als eines solchen’, that is to say. the process through which the universal of Gattung begins to be internalized and the system of the senses is also as a theoretical process, that is as the process of development of the cognitive structures of the organism. In the 1803–4 lectures this process is described as a kind of cerebralization, the brain is the differentiated part of the nervous system that unifies the sentient systems in which the nerves differentiate
Themselves and as such the brain develops as something universally communicating (das allgemein Mitteilende). On one hand such a communicative function is an internal system insofar as it coordinates different sentient systems of the organism, the developing of the internal communicative function between sentient systems through the brain renders it possible for the overall movement of the organism to return to itself and for it to feel its own feeling and on the other hand the communicative function of the internal sentient system through the brain develops into an external system of perception and communicative coordination with the other organisms that inhabit its environment. The internal self-relation
of the sensation as a feeling of oneself — a form of proprioception — is possible only insofar as the sentient organism encounters something external in which it feels its own feeling and hence external communication between different organisms and internal communication between sentient systems are tightly interrelated and seen in this light albeit it is more suited to darkness sexual interaction is one more time paradigmatic insofar as it can be characterized in cognitive terms as a form of mutual perception through which living beings communicate and learn to recognize themselves as different sentient individuals of the same species.
‘As this identity of singularity and universality of being — in its being superseded — it becomes the organic self, for the sentient animal its whole sensitivity becomes something external; what it relates itself to is itself as sentient, or for the sentient animal the ideality of sensation turns immediately into sexual difference’.
‘Als diese Identität der Einzelheit und Allgemeinheit des Seins in seinem Aufgehobensein wird es das Organische Selbst, und für das empfindende Animalische wird sein ganzes Empfinden ein Äußeres; das, worauf es sich bezieht, ist es selbst als Empfindendes, oder die Idealität der Empfindung wandelt sich dem Empfindenden unmittelbar in Geschlechtsdifferenz um’.
– ‘System III’
For those still wedded to the idea that we have only five senses with a possible sixth one by which we see dead people we do have more than that. Proprioception, for instance, self-feeling exerted by an organic self (organisches Selbst) an organic self that is the primitive intentional structure, the proto-intentionality which constitutes the precursor of that form of natural self which we can attribute to human beings and designate character (Charakter). Sensation (Empfindung) is heretofore not to be conceived of as a simple state of the subject but rather as the activity of a natural self that relates to itself and the recognitive capacity discovers here an organic support and is simultaneously defined in terms of communication and in fact the brain renders it possible for the organic self to relate to itself only insofar as it is communicating which is to say it exerts a sentient, internal communicative coordinating function betwixt and between particular sensations within the organism and further in addition it exerts outside the organism an external communicative function of perceptive and social coordination with the environment and other organisms.
‘The theoretical system as relation between sexes reflects itself just as little in itself; it is only the individual’s relation to another’.
‘Das theoretische System als Geschlechtsverhältnis reflektiert sich ebensowenig in sich selbst; es ist nur die Beziehung des Individuums auf ein andres’.
- ‘Jena System III
The development of the theoretical system that is to say of the cognitive structures of the sentient organism is analysed as something that is integrated within the course of action of a corporeal individual that is confronted with the environment and with other living individuals to which it attributes a practical value hence the theoretical system of the senses develops in this analysis into the relation between sexes that is to say into a form of practical interaction.
The practical relation of Begierde and conflict. And so onwards to the third stage of our journey that concerns the practical structure of appetite (Begierde) and the conflictive interaction that are the natural roots of the struggle for recognition and Hegel analyses the system of senses as a theoretical process which means that here cognitive capacities are developing even if they have not yet become conceptual capacities yet a practical value is attributed to these cognitive structures, indeed the sentient process encompasses both the self-preserving cycle of nutrition and the reproductive cycle of the Gattung. The theoretical process of the animal was a proto-intentional self-relation with the inorganic and organic environments that are the objects of its sensations and the practical side of this process is first of all its annihilating activity whereby the animal feels the object as something to be assimilated and destroyed, and this practical relation to the object that has to be destroyed, being cognitively mediated by sensation, is further characterized as Begierde. The organism preserves itself through this annihilating relation and consequently lives in a state of tension (Spannung) since it is both the subject of an annihilating activity and the object of the annihilating activity exerted by the inorganic and organic environments which surround it.
Begierde is not only an appetitive movement towards an external object to be obtained but also a form of cognitive and practical self-relation and the animal living in a condition of fear relates to itself with a feeling of defectiveness and this self-relation is characterized as a form of negativity, which takes different shapes: hunger, thirst, in particular, and further the tension proper to Begierde interpenetrates also the other cycle of the organism that is to say the reproductive cycle, the Spannung of sexual appetite, and in fact the universal of the Gattung is immediately present in the individual as something in which the individual is negated, the species perpetuates itself through the individual. On the one hand it is through sexual intercourse and reproduction that animal organisms first come to manifest their individuality in virtue of sexual intercourse requiring for individuals to let themselves be recognized as such by their mates and on the other hand once the reproduction cycle is completed the individual has exhausted its function, is destined to death, and is reduced to an instrument of the reproduction of the species. The life of the species just is the cycle of reproduction and annihilation of the individuals and in the animal organism endowed with a theoretical system the annihilating movement is mediated by its sensation in the form of hunger, thirst, sexual appetite and this means that the feeling of defectiveness and fear through which the animal relates to itself manifests the fragile condition of its natural individuality.
The relation between the individual and the Gattung which exists only in the form of another organism of the same species is itself an appetitive relation, a sensation of the individual’s own negativity which manifests itself by a tension to delay and oppose the annihilating activity exerted by the Gattung and the surrounding environment and this is expressed more precisely in the fact that organisms establish reciprocal negative practical appetitive relations by mutually reducing themselves to objects of exploitation and this negative, social relation of annihilation encompasses both the relation between the organisms of the same species and the reproductive cycle, (the presence of the motif of the struggle for life and death in animal sexuality is explored by H.S. Harris), in which appetite presents itself as a tendency to realize its own organic self in the sentient individual and this tendency is on the one hand a reaction to the annihilating activity of the Gattung and on the other hand an endeavour destined to fail to preserve its own individuality and to see it recognized as such. Here is to be discovered an animal root of the mechanism of the struggle for recognition, which in fact can be characterized as the perpetual return of the state of nature within historical relations, the struggle for recognition therefore spiritualizes this mechanism of natural confliction without ever suppressing it.
Animal voice and individuality’s expressive recognition. And so, there now emerges the expressive role of animal voice and its relation to the natural longing to see its own individuality recognized and another significant moment of the natural genesis of cognitive and practical structures of recognition is the analysis of the function of the voice (Stimme). The sentient process returns to itself as voice and the proprioception of the organism is connected to the internal and external communicative function, the voice is the most articulated modality of expression at the disposal of the organism in which internal and external communication come together insofar as the voice coordinates the social interactions of the individual both peace inducing and conflict stirring with other organisms.
The voice as the culmination of the universalizing process of the sentient self-relation of the theoretical system whereby this self-relation presents itself in its structural form as universal sense, feeling (Gefühl), a form of self-feeling, a feeling that relates to itself both in its generality and in the particularity of the five senses, and whose external manifestation is the face (Gesicht), the connection between the gestural attitude of the body and the expressiveness of the face manifests itself here already at the natural level and in the ‘System der Sittlichkeit’ we find a reconstruction of the genesis of the forms of linguistic communication as different layers of the systems of expressive recognition, beginning with the simple forms of face recognition.
One can better understand the nexus between voice and self-relation if we consider what Hegel wrote about the voice as “sense of sound (Sinn des Tones)”. The sensation differentiated into the multiplicity of senses returns to itself in the voice as to a whole and manifests itself in the feeling of its own individuality. The expressive function of the voice consists thus in bringing individuality into light. In the 1803–4 lessons Hegel writes:
‘The sense of sound as such is this simple infinity, in which the animal communicates absolutely that it is universal sense, opposed to every particularity of this sense, and in the voice it raises its singularity as such into the air and renders it universal in an untroubled and unbroken way, just as in hearing it perceives this very communication. […] The voice as active hearing and hearing as perceiving voice are that in which the individual’s sensation turns back to itself and constitutes itself as an absolute universal. The individual becomes as such immediately another to itself, and what it becomes, its simple voice, breaks itself: it hears what it says; the voice reflects itself in itself insofar as it realizes itself in another’.
‘Der Sinn des Tones als eines solchen ist diese einfache Unendlichkeit, in welcher das Tier dies, daß es allgemeiner Sinn ist, aller Besonderheit desselben entgegensetzt und in der Stimme seine Einzelnheit als solche in die Luft erhebt und ungetrübt und ungebrochen allgemein macht, absolut mitteilt, so wie es im Hören eben diese Mitteilung empfängt. […] Die Stimme als das tätige Gehör und das Gehör als die Empfangende Stimme sind es, worin die Empfindung des Individuums sich in sich zurücknimmt und sich als absolut Allgemeines konstituiert. Das Individuum wird sich als solches unmittelbar ein anderes, und die es wird, seine einfache Stimme, bricht sich; es hört das, was es spricht; sie reflektiert sich in sich selbst, indem sie in einem andern sich realisiert’.
- ‘Jena System III’
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John Tavener, ‘Annunciation’:
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And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth,
To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary.
And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.
And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be.
And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God.
And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus.
He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David:
And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.
Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?
And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.
And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren.
For with God nothing shall be impossible.
And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her.
- ‘Luke’, 26- 38
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The voice has an expressive function inasmuch as it expresses the singularity of the organism in the transparent medium of sound and furthermore the voice is communicative in virtue of it transmitting the expression of the organism and as such is produced in order to be heard hence the voice elevates the individual to the universal of social communication and this universalizing function consists in objectivating interiority and in making it perceivable by every other natural animal endowed with the appropriate sense of hearing and simultaneously the individual which hears itself emitting its own voice refers to itself, it has a feeling of itself as something objectivized in the sound. This is an idea found in Johann Gottfried von Herder, (1744–1803) and later developed by G.H. Mead, (1863–1931) who pointed out that vocal gestures having the quality of affecting both the agent and its interaction partners in the same way at the same moment are a natural evolutionary precondition for the emergence of consciousness of one’s own. ‘The individual becomes as such immediately another to itself’ as Hegel put it, and by the means of the vocal gesture one can induce the other’s reaction in oneself since one hears one’s own utterance as coming from the outside just like any other hearer. In the voice is therefore expressively posited the already given unity between self-relation and relation to the other. ‘The voice reflects itself in itself insofar as it realizes itself in another’ explains Hegel, and the animal voice encompassing the relation to the other and the relation to itself as another is both a universalizing and an individualizing act in virtue of it being an act of social expressive self-identification and it is in the animal voice which is not yet semantic and discursive language that natural structures of recognition begin to become reflexive.
Dedicated to my lovely One whose voice is ‘ever soft, gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman’, as William Shakespeare has it, a voice so sweet ‘As some soft chime had stroked the air; And though the sound had parted thence, Still left an echo in the sense’, as Ben Jonson has it. ‘Oh, there is something in that voice that reaches the innermost recesses of my spirit!… Thy voice is a celestial melody’, to borrow from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Thy voice is the most beautiful sound in the world to me, I hear it continually in my mind’s ear, it will be the last thing I hear as I depart this vale of tears and I will go hence to a blissful rest.
You teach my soul to sing ….
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Don’t promise me no diamond rings
Or castles in the sky
Just real life things like ???
True love and apple pie
I just believe no fancy cars
And no celebrity
Just a broken old shack in the wayoutback
Is good enough for me
Oh, to have a sweet old home
Where rambling roses climb
With hot and cold in every room
And air condition for the summer times
And in the winter time
We’ll be warm and cozy by the fire
The kids, the dog and I
And you can have your heart’s desire:
True love, true love and apple pie
Oh, to have a sweet old home
Where rambling roses climb
With hot and cold in every room
And air condition for the summer times
And in the winter time
We’ll be warm and cozy by the fire
The kids, the dog and I
And you can have your heart’s desire:
True love, true love and apple pie
Coming up next:
Further announcements.
It may stop but it never ends …..
