The Problem of Higher Knowledge in Hegel's Philosophy

Hegel Bulletin, 35/1, 33–55doi:10.1017/hgl.2014.3r The Hegel Society of Great Britain, 2014

The Problem of Higher Knowledge inHegel’s Philosophy*

Terje Sparby

Abstract

There are two main aspects of the problem of higher knowledge in Hegel’sphilosophy. Firstly, how exactly does Hegel appropriate Kant’s conception ofhigher knowledge in the shape of intellectual intuition and intuitive understanding?Secondly, how does Hegel envision the connection of higher knowledge toempirical reality? Recent attempts at answering these questions pull in oppositedirections. According to Eckart Forster, Hegel claims knowledge of a supersensiblereality, while others, such as James Kreines and Sally Sedgwick, deny this, focusingrather on Hegel’s claims to knowledge of nature. I suggest an interpretation whereHegel makes a modest claim to supersensible knowledge but at the same time isunable to provide a satisfactory account of the connection of higher knowledge toempirical reality.1

A common feature of the German idealists was the reluctance to accept the limitsof knowledge imposed by Kant.2 This reluctance was accompanied by anexploration of the significance certain higher, non-discursive forms of knowledgecould have for philosophy. The aim was to surpass the Kantian dualism of thetheoretical and practical perspective, which implied going beyond the constraintsof discursive knowledge. It was Kant, however, who formulated the ideas ofhigher knowledge that became important for the German idealists: Intellectualintuition and intuitive understanding. Fichte based his philosophy on the intellectual

*This essay was written as a part of a research project on higher knowledge and thesupersensible in German idealism, founded by the Fritz-Thyssen-Stiftung. Thanks go out to allthose who commented on an earlier draft of this essay when it was presented at TobiasRosefeldt’s reserach colloquium at the Humboldt Universitat zu Berlin, as well as twoanonymous reviewers who helped me improve my case on specific points. All translations aremy own unless otherwise specified.

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intuition of the I and Schelling applied it to nature. The pinnacle was reached asHegel developed ‘absolute knowledge’ into an elaborate, seemingly all-encompassing,philosophical system.

On one account, Hegel’s efforts of working out a system were in fact anattempt at doing philosophy from ‘a God’s eye view’, a view beyond humanfinitude.3 Hegel is seen as an ally of Spinoza and basically a traditionalmetaphysical philosopher.4 On the other end of the interpretative scale we havethe ‘normative Hegelians’5 who avoid metaphysics as far as possible, inaccordance with their deflationist intentions and naturalist inclinations: ‘Spirit’ isto be understood as nothing more than the complex structure of normativity thatwe call society.6

Recently, certain interpretations have tried to establish Hegel as aphilosopher who in fact tried to go beyond Kantian limits of knowledge, whileat the same time avoiding the pitfall of dogmatic metaphysics.7 What exactly itmeans to go beyond the limits of knowledge is unclear. For Kant it meantclaiming knowledge about the thing in itself beyond appearances. Does Hegelmake such a claim? As I will show, Hegel only claims access to the ‘in itself ’(without ‘the thing’) of reality, its basic structure as found in pure thinking.Understanding exactly what lies in this claim is the first aspect of the problem ofhigher knowledge in Hegel.

In Eckart Forster’s Die 25 Jahre der Philosophie, the most thorough-going andoriginal study of the question of non-discursive knowledge in post-Kantianidealism to appear recently, Hegel is understood as a philosopher who realizedKant’s quest for a scientific philosophy. This was done by applying the method ofintuitive understanding to the development of the shapes of consciousness inhistory. Though there may be problems in Hegel’s presentation of this development,8

Forster claims that the form of thinking on which it is based brings philosophyto its end.9 Furthermore, Forster’s reading opens up again the possibility ofinterpreting ‘spirit’ as something much more than society. Indeed, in Forster’saccount, by studying the development of consciousness based on the intuitiveunderstanding, the human being can come to recognize the workings of asupersensible, spiritual reality.10

According to James Kreines, Hegel does claim that we can know things inthemselves and the absolute, but this knowledge is not a form of divineknowledge; it is knowledge of nature (natural kinds and laws)11 and of ourselvesas part of a hierarchy of being ranging from basic mechanical processes tocomplex teleological organisms.12 In contrast to Forster, Kreines thinks thatspirit has nothing to do with a supersensible dimension beyond normal, humancognition. Kreines’ view is consistent with Sally Sedgwick’s recent interpretation,which stresses that although Hegel does claim access to an intuitive understanding,this does not involve a reference to the supersensible.13 Hence though it is agreed

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that Hegel’s philosophy makes use of non-discursive forms of knowledge, there isdisagreement about whether or not this implies that one claims access to knowledgeof a supersensible reality.

I think that Hegel indeed claimed such knowledge (as a knowledge of purethinking, the ‘in itself ’), but struggled with the question of how to connect it withthe knowledge of nature and actual spirit. Knowledge of pure thinking isknowledge of objects generated by thinking itself and results in the explication ofa synthetic universal. Knowledge of externality (of objects in space and time) relateto objects that are given and proceeds according to the principles of analyticuniversals. This concerns the second aspect of the problem of higher knowledge inHegel’s philosophy: How do you connect the higher knowledge of pure thinkingwith a knowledge of externality? My suggestion is that Hegel’s answer is: youcan’t—at least not in any satisfactory way. Rather, in the end, truth is reached bygoing into pure thinking, leaving all finite forms behind. This, however, I claim, isa break with the principles of pure thinking as found in Hegel’s logic. So Hegel isinconsistent here. In my view, Goethe—as interpreted by Forster—provides anintriguing way of conceiving how Hegel could have better connected the higherknowledge he developed in his logic with the knowledge of nature, and thus howhe could have avoided having to retreat into pure thinking, finding truth only in‘the realm of shadows’.14

I will make my case in three steps: First, in section 1, I will clarify the meaningand role of intellectual intuition and intuitive understanding in Kant’s transcendentalphilosophy. Then, in section 2, I will investigate Hegel’s appropriation of theseforms of knowledge, particularly in his logic. Since I believe that the logic is based ona form of knowledge that combines aspects of intellectual intuition and intuitiveunderstanding, I diverge from Forster’s interpretation, which assigns intuitiveunderstanding to Hegel (as well as Goethe) and intellectual intuition to Fichte andSchelling. Finally, in section 3, I will show how there is a discrepancy between whatHegel should have aimed for with his appropriation of the higher forms ofknowledge in Kant, and what he actually realized in his system. Section 1 and 2 dealforemost with the first aspect of the problem of higher knowledge in Hegel’sphilosophy, namely what kind of higher knowledge claims he actually makes. Section3 deals with the second aspect: How do you connect higher, speculative knowledgeof thinking with knowledge of empirical reality?

I. Intellectual Intuition and Intuitive Understanding in Kant’sTranscendental Philosophy

Here I will spell out the different forms of higher knowledge in Kant. I willmainly follow Forster, but I diverge from his view on specific points. Kant

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distinguishes between human and divine forms of knowledge in order to clarifywhat is the specific human way of knowing. Although we can conceive of otherforms of knowledge, we cannot know whether or not there exist any beings(angels or gods) that actually know in a different way than we do. However, thesubject of higher knowledge in Kant is not so simple and one-dimensional. Kantspeaks of different forms of higher knowledge. Some of the forms of higherknowledge seem to lie not too far away from what a human being could possiblyachieve15—at least that was what the German idealists thought. Indeed, it is notso easy to clearly identify the different forms of higher knowledge in Kant.16

Kant speaks of a form of intuition that is intellectual, which is to say that itis not like ours, namely sensible. To have an intellectual intuition means to have animmediate or direct access to objects as they are in themselves beyond appearances.17

Human knowledge does not involve such immediacy; it is a step-by-step processthrough which concepts are related to sensible intuitions. Though sensible intuitionspossess a certain immediacy, the process of knowledge through which concepts ariserequires work on the part of the knower. This is what is meant by the observationthat human knowledge is discursive.18

If we had access to intellectual intuition as knowledge of things inthemselves, we would not have to presuppose, from a practical standpoint,that we have a free will. We would be able to know it theoretically as well.19

Intellectual intuition would give us an understanding of the way teleological andmechanical systems interact or exist in harmony.20 When we speak of intellectualintuition this way, it seems to hold the possibility open that human beings couldin principle attain such knowledge. However, Kant also speaks of intellectualintuition in the sense of a capacity to create or generate objects intellectually thatare immediately present as intuitions.21 For such an intuition, possibility (thought)and actuality (being) are one. In contrast, human intuition, although presentingsomething to us immediately, is still derived. It depends on objects being given toit. Kant adds that intellectual intuition, in the sense of a capacity to produce realobjects through thought only, belongs to God, and in fact, Kant denies that wecan have access to intellectual intuition.22

By now we have distinguished two forms of intellectual intuition: (a) Aknowing-seeing of things as they are in themselves and (b) a capacity for generatingintuitable, real objects through thinking alone (i.e., a unity of possibility and actuality).23

Kant also presents another conception of higher form of knowledge, whichhe calls intuitive understanding. What is characteristic for the intuitive understandingis that its concepts are synthetic universals.24 In contrast, for discursive beings,concepts are analytic universals. Analytic universals contain their species underthem, forming a hierarchy of concepts with common and distinguishing markers.The synthetic universal contains its species in it. This has some strangeconsequences—the most problematic one being that it implies a contradiction.

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I will go further into this later on. For now it can be noted that I think it isHegel’s dialectics that offer a way to answer to the problems that arise whenconsidering the synthetic universal. In other words, Hegel thinks we can access anintuitive understanding, but this requires that we come up with a new way ofconceiving thinking.

In one instance Kant describes intuitive understanding as a form ofcognition that has nature as a whole as its object and therefore must be conceivedas a ‘cause of the world’.25 As I will argue, this is most likely not what Hegel hadin mind when he came up with a way of appropriating Kant’s idea of an intuitiveunderstanding. So we should distinguish between intuitive understanding as (a) aform of knowledge that deals with synthetic universals and (b) a form of‘knowledge’ that caused the world to exist. Again, these need not in principle bethought of as mutually excluding. Indeed, the intuitive understanding as a causeof the world might have to proceed according to the principles of a syntheticuniversal. Still, being ‘cause of the world’ seems to be something more powerfulthan knowing according to the principles of synthetic universality.

In this way we arrive at an account of higher knowledge in Kant that issimilar to Forster’s.26 To summarize:

1. Intellectual intuition is:(a) An intuition that allows for knowledge of things as they are in

themselves;(b)A way of knowing where being and thinking are not separate.

2. Intuitive understanding is:(a)Knowledge according to synthetic universality;(b)The knowledge that is also the cause of the world.

The strongest conception is 2(b). If 1(b) is interpreted to be similar to 2(b),then those together make out the strongest forms; if we had access to them, wewould be fully fledged creators of realities and worlds.

Forster’s claim is that Fichte and Schelling based their philosophies on thenotion of intellectual intuition that they found in Kant, while Hegel based hisphilosophy on a development of intuitive understanding. More precisely, Fichte andSchelling relied on intellectual intuition in the sense of a unity of being andthinking, not as a non-sensuous intuition of how things are in themselves. This isan expression of a certain epistemic modesty; we can go beyond Kantian limits,but we are still finite knowers.

I agree with Forster that none of the German idealists laid claim to have aform of knowledge identical to God’s knowledge. There are ways of conceivingof non-godlike intellectual intuition and a non-godlike intuitive understanding.However, like Forster, I do not think that intellectual intuition can be neatlysorted on the side of Fichte and Schelling, while intuitive understanding belongs

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to Hegel. In the following I will rather claim that Hegel’s logic involves both aform of intellectual intuition (a weak version of a unity of being and thinking thatreveals the ‘in itself ’ of appearances) and a form of intuitive understanding (aknowing that relies on conceiving universals as synthetic).

II. The Higher Forms of Knowledge in Hegel’s Logic

Four conceptions of higher knowledge that have their origin in Kant wereoutlined above. Here I will consider each one in turn in relation to Hegel’s logic,following the same order as outlined above (2.1 corresponds to 1(a), 2.2 correspondsto 1(b) and so on), before I suggest a unified conception of higher knowledge inHegel’s philosophy (2.5).

II.1 The Logic as a Revelation of ‘The in Itself ’All of the German idealists reacted against the idea of a ‘thing in itself ’ found inKant. Paraphrasing Jacobi, one could say that in transcendental philosophy onemust say something about the thing in itself, but at the same time one can’t. Hegelis on the one hand completely dismissive of the notion of a thing in itself, repeatedlycalling it an empty abstraction,27 but he also claims that his Science of Logic exactly is apresentation of the thing in itself in a certain sense. Hegel dismisses the notion of athing in itself, but believes to be able to give a presentation of it as ‘the in itself ’,28 i.e.,the pure determinations of thinking.

For Kant, the thing in itself is a something that is independent of oursensibility.29 Considered according to the ‘table of nothing’ it is a concept thatcompletely lacks a corresponding intuition (ens rationis).30 Therefore we canneither deny, nor affirm that it is really a possible object. However, we seem tohave no problem speaking about it, so in some basic sense it is ‘a something’. Inone place, Kant treats the concept of ‘something’ (Etwas) as the most abstract ofall concepts.31 Its opposite is nothing, with which it has nothing in common, andhence the distinction between something and nothing is basic; they are not united ina higher concept. In KdrV, however, Kant presents another view, namely that it isthe concept of an object in general that is the highest concept.32

I will not attempt to decide on which view best represents Kant here, butconsiderations like these provide a way of getting right into Hegel’s logic. Hegelwould agree that something is a more basic determination of pure thinking than anyof the other ones Kant mentions in his table of categories. However, Hegelbelieves that it is the task of a radical critical philosophy to investigate the formsof thought in themselves (i.e., independently of how thoughts stand in relation toempirical objects). Such a critical investigation will reveal, among other things,

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that something isn’t the most basic thought possible, but rather that of being. Something ismore determinate than being; the former implies a reference to a something, asopposed to something else. Being would be the common, underlying field ofsomething and something else, a field that is neither determinately this nor that.

However, one of Hegel’s fundamental points is that pure being cannot in anyorderly way be separated from nothing. Both notions are in a sense ‘somethings’that can only be determined in relationship to the other (similar to how no onecan be a daughter without having a mother). In fact, both determinations form aunity, becoming, out of which determinate being, something, arises. Something is amore concrete determination than pure being, it is this-as-not-that and thereforecontains the determinations from which it arose (being and nothing). This is theway that Hegel believes it is possible to go deeper into the intelligible structure ofwhat truly is, the ‘in itself ’.

One needs to bring to mind that in his logic, Hegel isn’t operating within theframework of what he calls the ‘opposition of consciousness’ (another term forempirical consciousness). What is opposed within empirical consciousness is simplyconcepts and intuitions. Though they can be united, they stem from twoindependent faculties, which is the reason for the discursivity of knowledge, ourinability to know things in themselves. Hegel believes to operate on a level ofknowledge beyond the opposition of consciousness in his logic. But this does notmean that he believes that he has revealed what the transcendental thing in itselfis. Hegel is convinced that any philosophy that relies on a conception of anabsolute beyond cognition will either succumb to skeptical objections or simplybe inconsistent. Consequently, he seeks to develop a new conception ofknowledge that does not rely on or refer to an absolute beyond.

The first mature example of this in Hegel is The Phenomenology of Spirit. HereHegel seeks to discover the ‘in itself ’ of human theoretical and practicalendeavors, which in its pure form is ‘absolute knowledge, a ‘knowing of knowing’as a dialectical structure. We can come to know what this structure is since we areourselves part of it; there is a continuity of the knower and what is known. Onsuch an account, Hegel does not want to say anything about reality but ratherbelieves philosophy should be a meta-reflection on our already establishedpractices of knowing and doing. We could interpret Hegel to mean thatphilosophy shouldn’t concern itself with receptive or empirical knowledge; atmost it should concern itself with the connection of different levels of scientificinvestigation of the empirical world. Sometimes Hegel seems to think that this isthe way to understanding philosophy—famously, the Owl of Minerva flies atdawn. However, I believe Hegel is ambivalent here. On many occasions he isprescriptive when it comes to how to conceive of empirical objects. He cannotrestrain himself from ‘meddling’ with how objects are conceived by discursiveconsciousness. And this is done on the basis of the analysis of the structure of

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knowledge, the dialectical method, which he develops in his logic. In a sense,Hegel can therefore be charged with thinking that he knows ‘how things reallyare’, that he thinks that he is in possession of an intellectual intuition of things asthey are in themselves. I will return to this in section 3.

II.II The Logic as a Unity of Thinking and BeingHegel’s logic could be seen as an attempt at developing a logic that by its inherentnature presents a unity of possibility and actuality, of thinking and being. Thiscorresponds to the second sense of intellectual intuition in Kant described above,namely the unity of possibility and actuality. Intellectual intuition in this sense is aform of cognition that generates the object of its own knowledge. In y17 of his Enz.,Hegel compares other sciences to the science of logic and states: ‘But what we havehere is the free act of thinking putting itself at the standpoint where it is for its ownself, producing its own ob-ject for itself thereby, and giving it to itself.’33 Not only doesthinking generate an object, it also presents the object that it has brought forth it toitself. Since the object is generated by thinking, the whole process in essence consistsof thinking presenting itself to itself. By generating objects and studying them,thinking investigates itself and comes to recognize its own structure and movement.In its purity, this is the process of knowledge represented by Hegel’s logic.

By conceiving logic as the investigation of the products of thinking in a waythat does not presuppose a basic distinction between possibility and actuality,Hegel breaks with certain traditional ways of understanding what logic is about.

Firstly, Hegel maintains that logic is never formal; it always has content. Byformal logic we usually mean logic that leaves aside any consideration of thespecific nature of the content of the matter at hand. We want, for example, toclarify the necessary connections between the elements of inferences. Formallogic cannot tell us what the truth is, only which structures of inference are truth-preserving. Hegel points out that logic indeed has a content of its own, forinstance the so-called ‘laws of thinking’ or the specific forms of truth-preservinginferences. Furthermore, for Hegel, the traditional laws of thinking can in a certainsense be said to be ‘untrue’ and we should therefore not take them for granteduncritically in a process of developing philosophical knowledge. Logic should not beseen as ontologically neutral. On Hegel’s view it is, for example, of great significanceif we only allow for abstract identity (‘everything is what it is and not another thing’)and not speculative identity (the ‘identity of identity and non-identity’). Only the latterallows for an organic conception of nature and spirit.34

Secondly, Hegel believes that the conception of a logic that is purely formalrests on three invalid notions, namely that

(i) there exists a world that is separate from thinking and that thinkingreceives its content from this world,

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(ii) thinking is somehow ‘less real’ than objects and(iii) thinking has to submit itself to the object in order to be true.35

Here Hegel takes a stance against the common notion that truth is achievedwhen thinking modifies itself in such a way that it corresponds to an object that isgiven to it. Hegel maintains that it must be the other way around. The object hasto correspond to what thinking discovers as truth. Objects are untrue when theyfail to correspond to the standard of thinking. This in a sense is a radicalization ofKant’s Copernican revolution. Hegel’s logic as a whole can be understood as anuncovering of the structure of truth, resulting in the concept of the concept, orthe idea, in which thinking and being are one.

Thirdly, Hegel points out that if we think of form and content as fundamentallyseparate, the end result is that the object really becomes inaccessible for thinking.36

When we consider thinking as something that has to submit itself to the object, wediscover that we don’t get a grip on reality, that there is no way of adequatelyrepresenting what is outside thinking.37 Here Hegel differs from both Fichte andSchelling, who insist that there must be something outside of thinking. As Fichtenotes in a letter to Schelling, ‘The absolute itself, however, is neither being norknowledge, nor is it identity or the indifference of both. Rather it is exactly—theabsolute—and every subsequent word is wrong.’38 Schelling would later on become arepresentative of a similar view with his doctrine of the ‘unprethinkable being’. Butthis isn’t necessarily only a point about the thing in itself or the absolute. InMind andWorld, McDowell opts for a Hegelian version of the infinity of thought, claiming that‘spontaneity is inextricably implicated in deliverances of receptivity’,39 becauseotherwise, if we suppose that there is a world fundamentally separate from thinking,we cannot give a good explanation of how the world can put any constraints on acognitive process.

But what, more precisely, is contained in the thesis that Hegel’s logicpresents a unity of being and thinking? It is, of course, not the outrageous claimthat one can, from thoughts alone, create real, empirical objects. Rather, the logicis an absolute (in the sense of separate) creation, consisting of the self-knowledgeof thinking. In it thinking investigates itself, its own, pure creations. Through thisinvestigation, and through the self-movement of the determinations of purethinking, the objective structure (dialectical connection) inherent in thesedeterminations is revealed. This objective structure is real insofar as it is necessary.The objects of pure thinking, of spontaneity, present thinking with their own lawsand principles of connection. So although thinking creates objects, these objectsreveal a nature of their own, a nature which is nothing other than the deeperstructure of thinking itself. The generation of the objects of pure thinking in thelogic can therefore be understood as, firstly, the creation of abstract objects(‘thought-seeds’, such as pure being), and, secondly, as the revelation of the deeper

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structure of such objects, which is comparable to how a seed grows into a plant.The objects take on a life of their own and develop into more concrete determinations(becoming, something, etc., ending with the idea). The process of uncovering the structureand movement of pure thinking involves both spontaneity and receptivity, but at thesame time it never really leaves the sphere of spontaneity. This leads to the problem ofhow to understand the connection between the thought-determinations of the logicand empirical reality. Again, this is a problem I will return to in section 3.

III.II The Concepts of the Intuitive UnderstandingWhereas the concepts produced by the intuitive understanding are syntheticuniversals, those produced by discursive understanding are analytic. As Kantstates, the difference between the two is that the discursive universality is a ‘unitywithin many’ while the intuitive universality consists of ‘many within one’.40 ForKant, discursive understanding brings forth universals through a process ofreflection.41 Intuitive understanding immediately intuits the whole and its parts.The act of accessing wholes that contain parts in it is a feature of intuition assuch.42 When we consider, for instance, the concept of a living being discursively,we cannot deduce how many species of living beings are possible, nor how manyspecies exist. If we had perfect access to the intuitive universality ‘living being’ wewould be able to do that.

Analytic universals are such that they contain their species under them, ratherthan in them.43 The reason for this is that otherwise a contradiction will arise. Ifwe consider the concept ‘living being’, we could say that its species all arecharacterized by having a metabolism. ‘Metabolism’ is the common marker of allspecies and therefore belongs to the universal concept of a living being. Theconcept of a living being can be divided into those beings that are earthbound(have roots) and those that are not, and thus can move about freely. The formerare plants, the latter animals. If the species were located within the genus, wewould have to both affirm and deny the differentia specifica (in this caseearthbound) of the genus, which is a contradiction. To avoid this we orderconcepts into higher and lower. The common marker can be said of both thehigher and lower concepts, but the differentiating marker can only be said ofeither of the lower concepts. When we speak of living beings abstractly, we only havethe common marker in mind. When speaking determinately about this or that livingbeing, we have both the common marker and the differentia specifica in mind. Thushigher concepts contain less in them, i.e., they are poorer in content than lowerconcepts; a higher concept is more abstract, a lesser concept more concrete.

Then we have the case of synthetic universals, which contains its speciesin it. If we conceive of ‘living being’ as a synthetic universal, we would say notonly that it contains beings that have metabolism but also those that are

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earthbound as well as those that are not. We could consider the parts of the conceptseparately, but we would then be considering them in abstraction from the whole thatit belongs to. In fact, when we recognize something as a part of a synthetic universalwe would also recognize its relation to all other beings of its same kind. Only throughan abstraction would I be able to recognize parts as parts; I would have to suppressthe relation the parts have to the whole. In other words, the synthetic universal isboth richer and higher when compared to its parts.

However, the synthetic universal seems to involve exactly the contradictionmentioned above: When we synthetically think ‘living being’, we think somethingthat is both earthbound and not earthbound at the same time. Here, one couldsay, the limits of our ability to grasp the synthetic universal from the discursivestandpoint shows itself. We seemingly cannot grasp what it means to intellectuallygrasp ‘many in one’; we cannot grasp how parts (species) can be containedwithin the whole (genus) and be inseparable from it. For sensible intuition, it isdifferent. In an intuition of space the parts are spatially arranged, which simplymeans that they can exist side by side within the same whole without excluding(‘contradicting’) the other parts,44 and we intuit directly how different parts belong tothe same whole.

However, the case can also be made that we indeed would need somethinglike a synthetic universal in order to have real knowledge through concepts. Whatjustifies the claim that two different attributes belong to the same thing? How canthey belong to the same if they are different? It seems that we would have to beable to proceed from the one attribute to another in order to account for theirunity; describing parts fully would imply describing the whole.

So it seems that we need something like the synthetic universal in order toaccount for the unity of things, but also that this would lead us into a contradiction.This is a problem that Hegel seeks to solve through dialectics. There is clear textualevidence that Hegel was aware that he was trying to formulate a conception of asynthetic universal. In one place he specifically states that the determinate negation,in the sense of a unity of opposites, is a concept that is both higher and richer thanthe preceding determinations that the unity develops from.45 Hegel also calls logicalreason itself that which contains all abstract determinations in it, that which holdsthem together and makes out their ‘massive, absolute-concrete unity’.46 This hasbeen a reason for claiming that Hegel’s dialectics is basically flawed; it implies a breakwith the traditional understanding of the relationship between the content andextension of concepts.47 I will return to this issue again shortly.

II.IV The Intuitive Understanding as ‘Cause of the World’Though there is clear evidence that Hegel sought to develop Kant’s conceptionof a synthetic universal in his logic, it is harder to find evidence that Hegel

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thought of the intelligible structures presented in his logic as somehow the causeof the world. One might cite the grandiose claim that Hegel makes in theintroduction of the logic, namely that the logic is ‘the exhibition of God, how Heis in His eternal nature before the creation of the world and a finite spirit’.48 Evenif we take this claim literally, Hegel does not say that thoughts cause the world.Rather, it is a matter of God’s thoughts before the creation of nature and finitespirit; the act of creation is separate from the thoughts concerning it.

If, however, the claim isn’t meant to be taken literally, what does it mean?Arguably, Hegel could be understood as an Aristotelian here. What is first in theorder of explanation is not the same as that which first in the order of existence.Thoughts are primary when it comes to explaining the world, but have no‘ontological force’; what pertains to the existence of the world cannot be deducedfrom thought. This is how I think we should take Hegel’s claim that reason(nou§) or spirit can be understood as ‘the cause of the world’.49 Still, as I havealready indicated, I don’t think Hegel is completely clear on this issue. I willreturn to this issue in section 3, after I have given an account of how I thinkHegel’s logic can be understood as a unity of intellectual intuition and intuitiveunderstanding.

II.V The Unity of Intellectual Intuition and Intuitive Understanding in Hegel’s LogicHere I will spell out the how I think Hegel’s logic can be understood as a unity of themodest form of intellectual intuition and intuitive understanding outlined above.

As already stated, Hegel’s logic consists of thinking’s investigation of itself.This investigation consists of pure thinking generating pure objects that reveal anobjective, developmental structure, which is also the structure of the source thatgenerated the objects, namely thinking itself. As such it is a form of thinking thatinvolves ‘reality’ in the sense of a minimal form of objectivity, which is also fullytransparent to thinking. Reality and concept are one. The relationship of conceptand reality that is established by the intellectual intuition is understood within astructure of determination that resembles the structure of the synthetic universalof the intuitive understanding. Since a synthetic universal is contradictory, onemust either reject it or make sense of how the contradiction is not destructive.

The key to understanding Hegel’s appropriation of the idea of a syntheticaluniversal in Kant is to recognize that Hegel does not understand concepts as acollection of attributes, but as a relation between moments. Pure logical thinking inthe Hegelian sense begins with pure immediacy, a universal that is determinedthrough other determinations posited by thinking alone, which then particularizesitself. This particularization consists, firstly, of a new determination being broughtforth from the universal as the continuation of the universal itself, and, secondly,of this new determination being opposed to the original universal.

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The opposite that is brought forth is then united with the original determinationin a new determination. There is a semblance of determining concepts throughmarkers here in that the immediate determination is characterized through otherdeterminations, but since the meaning shifts, and this shift of meaning is taken as anexpression of the deeper meaning of the determination, the similarity is onlysuperficial: Opposite determinations turn out to express the same. Hegel understandsthis as a process that both brings forth a contradiction and resolves it in a new unity ofthe preceding determinations. Within this process one can identify certain stages(moments): The original determination, the shifting of opposites into each other, andthe unity of the two. These moments are, however, when they are taken on their own,abstract, and demand a further consideration of the way they relate to each other.

When considered within the third moment, the initial two moments are‘ideal’.50 In the third moment the separateness of the two initial moments is gone,though their separateness still has a bearing on the determination of the third.For instance, becoming contains the moments of coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be, which emphasize either being or nothing as part of a more complexdetermination involving both. Consequently, understanding a concept as ‘higherand richer’ depends on making sense of the way particular determinations can beunified though speculative thinking.51

I believe, however, descriptions of concepts as higher or lower isinsignificant or redundant when it comes to Hegel’s logic. They express nothingof the inner workings of dialectics. Such terms rather give an introductoryindication of how the dialectical way of thinking differs from the traditional one.

Here I have left out of consideration the way Hegel’s logic is in a sense alsoan attempt at bringing together discursivity and higher forms of knowledge. Thisis already a well-researched subject and I have not challenged the standard viewhere.52 What I have attempted is a clarification of the role intellectual intuitionand intuitive understanding plays in Hegel’s thinking. To summarize withreference to the different forms of higher knowledge in Kant outlined in theprevious section: Intellectual intuition is, in Hegel’s philosophy, particularly thelogic, a revelation of ‘the (thing) in itself ’ (1a), but only as the intelligible Ansich (i.e.,not as a supersensible thing in itself). This Ansich is the unity possibility andactuality in pure thinking (1b), which, as a structure, is an explication of thesynthetic universal of the intuitive understanding (2a), but not at the same time a‘cause of the world’ (2b).

Pure thinking begins as an inner or supersensible intuition,53 and as such isa form of higher knowledge. Its material is at first abstractly universal, butdevelops into a synthetic universal. Grasping the synthetic universal could also besaid to require a new insight into a previously developed material, a mediatedimmediacy, and requires a transition from the principles of the understanding tothat of speculative reason. The turning point of dialectics into speculation, where

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opposites become one, can be understood as a successor to religious or mysticalinsight, which is usually taken to be ineffable. For Hegel, however, the ‘ineffable’is the speculative, and, though the speculative is related to higher, religiouscontent, it still represents higher knowledge; it is a function of thinking and notrepresentation. This concludes my treatment of the first aspect of the problem ofhigher knowledge in Hegel. Now I turn to the second aspect, i.e., the problem ofconnecting the higher knowledge of the logic with empirical reality.

III. Logic and Reality

There are two general ways of understanding the connection between Hegel’slogic and empirical reality. The first one, which can be called the epistemologicalinterpretation, says that Hegel’s logic presents principles that apply only to ourpractice of knowledge. With regards to empirical objects, the logic at mostpresents regulative principles.54 The second one is the ontological interpretation,according to which Hegel claims to present us with knowledge of natural kindsand laws.55 The problem for the epistemological interpretation is that Hegel seemsto present constitutive principles in his logic. The problem for the ontologicalinterpretation is that Hegel presents a strong critique of all empirical knowledge.

In many instances it is clear that Hegel prefers certain ways of understandingempirical reality over others, and he does that on the basis of the way he understandhow reason works, as explicated in his logic. Here is an example from Hegel’s Berlinlectures on metaphysics, where he speaks about colours:

Colour is genus, it is a dampening of brightness and darkness.That is the definition of the genus of colour. Now, theparticular colors, the species, arise from the relationship ofbright and dark; if something dark is the basis and we cover itwith something bright, then we have blue, or, conversely, ifsomething bright is the basis and is covered, then we have yellow.In this way, the differentiation follows from the determination ofthe genus. If yellow is raised to individuality, it is red, if it isneutralized, it is green. Here there is reason in the division.56

Though he doesn’t say so explicitly, Hegel is clearly speaking of Goethe’stheory of colours here. The particular colours form opposite pairs and canseemingly be deduced from the universal. The key statement is: ‘Here there isreason in the division.’ Certain ways of understanding things are in accordancewith reason, others aren’t. The Goethean way of understanding colours is anexample of a rational understanding of the empirical world. In the Goetheantheory, the principle of the differentiation of the species (colours) can be found in

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the genus itself (which therefore closely resembles a synthetic universal) and thespecies arise from various constellations of opposites. All of this is very much inagreement with Hegel’s exposition of the structure of rationality in the logic.Hence the logic at least gives us a blueprint for our choice of theory. But sometimesHegel seems to make an even stronger claim. He formulates universal, ontologicalprinciples, such as that all finite things have to pass.57 Similarly, the doctrine that theconceptual has priority over all given reality suggests that the logic cannot have apurely epistemological significance.58

At the same time, Hegel is deeply critical of all knowledge of empiricalreality. The critique is that the way we think about empirical objects is ultimatelycontingent. There is no way of knowing that the identifying markers we select in aprocess of knowledge really connects up with the essence of the thing we areconsidering. As Hegel states, even organisms such as fish are, as universals, ‘notbound to any particular aspect of its external existence.’59 Our knowledge oforganisms will be contingent, since nature itself is highly contingent. The forms ofnature cannot be brought into an ‘absolute system.’60 But Hegel isn’t alwaysconsistent here. For instance, he argues in favor of using the teeth and claws oforganisms as a starting point of their classification, since these are the parts of theorganism that it uses to secure and defend its own subsistence in the world.61 Thenwe have the doctrine that an essence, if it really is an essence, must appear.62 Hencewe should be able to discover instances of continuity between an essence and itsappearance also in empirical objects, given, of course, that they really have an essence.

So, on the one hand Hegel does seem to think that we can discover reasonin the world, but, on the other hand, he is ready to dismiss all knowledge of theempirical world as contingent.63 How can we understand this?

I propose the following: The dialectical way of understanding things thatemploys synthetic universals is ultimately only valid insofar as we are dealing withobjects of our own creation. On the level of pure thinking, we can have trueknowledge since there is no discontinuity between that which appears and theway it appears. We can also have true knowledge of the practices in which we areinvolved as rational beings, at least insofar as we consider the part of the practicethat we ourselves contribute, e.g., our theories about how something is.

The case is more difficult with regards to empirical reality. I think Hegeltries to establish something that could be called ‘rational faith’, by which I mean afaith in the rationality of the world: Our thoughts aren’t ultimately disconnectedfrom empirical reality. Hegel sometimes speaks of this as ‘the instinct ofreason’.64 We continue to reveal more of what truly is even though we keepmaking mistakes. The ‘otherness’ of nature isn’t impenetrable; thinking is exactlya capacity to engage with otherness.65 We have to approach nature and empiricalreality discursively, but we can be sure that nature does not pose any limit to ourunderstanding that cannot be surpassed.

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It follows from this, however, that higher knowledge, i.e., the specificcombination of intellectual intuition and intuitive understanding that Hegelproposes, is only realized outside of empirical reality. We can have faith that thefield of human, empirical existence will lend itself to rational illumination, but wecan have no direct and infallible knowledge of any essences ruling natural kinds,history or the world as a whole.66

At times Hegel points in the direction of an even deeper ‘between thethought and reality, of an even higher form of knowledge than that of pure,logical thinking. ‘Self-consciousness’’ is, he states, the ‘existing’, ‘empiricallyperceivable, pure concept’.67 In self-consciousness, the essence of something, theconceptual structure, is immediately and fully present as an intuition. The I asuniversal and particular is present as one.

However, how nature allows for such an intellectual intuition of the I andhow the I can interact with the body, if there are any other such beings besidesthe human I that can realize their plans in the world, is not something that theGerman idealists could answer. The main challenge of Kant’s philosophy thatthey tried to tackle—how to unite theoretical and practical reason—thereforestands unresolved. This, I believe, points to the main lack of Hegel’s philosophy.

According to the principles of understanding developed by Hegel in hislogic, it is clear that ideally, in order to know, one should seek to achieveknowledge of the supersensible ground that unites the human being with theworld. This follows from the speculative principle of ‘being with oneself inotherness.’ The idea (which in its concrete form is the I) establishes knowledgethrough finding itself in otherness; whatever opposes itself to the idea assomething different to it is false. The process of knowledge consists of turningwhatever presents itself as false into truth. But empirical objects present a ‘greatother’ to knowing spirit, an otherness or ‘objecthood’, which it has to leavebehind on its way to self-knowledge. The result is the lack of connection betweenlogic and reality. Hegel’s strategy in his system is that when an object turns out toinadequately reveal its essence, i.e., when it does not accord to the standards ofinfinite thinking, the object is left behind—it doesn’t become a constituent partof the next determination as is the case in the logic. The connections of the logicpropose to be necessary, the connections of the determinations of theRealphilosophie obviously aren’t: Being and nothing may necessarily be connectedto something, but husband and wife aren’t necessarily connected to child, though thelatter may represent the unity of marriage.68

According to Hegel we cannot come to have real knowledge of the real otherof spirit. More precisely, we cannot have direct, immediate and conceptualknowledge of the essences of natural kinds and laws in the same intimate way that wehave knowledge of ourselves as self-conscious beings. Again, this leads to a partialrealization of the principle of ‘being with oneself in otherness’ of the logic. The idea is

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in otherness only with itself.69 In other words: We can have full rational knowledgeonly of our own rational activity; philosophy can only adequately consider what wethink about being, not the real otherness of being, not empirical reality. According tothe logic, we should approach otherness in order to find ourselves in it, but it turnsout that we cannot really get beyond ourselves and know essences that are notourselves. So much for spirit being the whole of reality.

Let us now return to Forster’s interpretation. Forster’s claim is that Hegelmakes use of intuitive understanding in his philosophy, in particular in hisunderstanding of the development of spirit in The Phenomenology of Spirit. In thiswork Hegel, according to Forster, presents the development of a supersensiblespirit, and at the same time brings the history of philosophy to an end.

In contrast, I maintain that the core of Hegel’s philosophy, the logic, restson weak or modest unity of the conceptions of intellectual intuition and intuitiveunderstanding found in Kant. With regards to whether or not Hegel believes thatthere is a supersensible spirit that emerges as actual spirit out of nature andhistory, I do think that this is closer to the truth than to identify spirit withsociety. Though it may be the case, as Terry Pinkard has pointed out recently, that‘Hegel’s version of God is more like Aristotle’s than that of the Christian tradition’,it does seems clear that Hegel relies on some conception of a supersensible spirit.70

However, I do not think that Hegel can in any straightforward way be understoodas a representative of traditional onto-theological thinking.71 The way Hegelrevolutionizes the traditional paradigm of determination has deep consequencesfor the conception of God or spirit. God is not separate from the becoming of theworld and the human being. There is no one controlling the progress of historyand evolution from the outside. Rather, God is so deeply embedded within it thatwhatever telos it is that everything is intrinsically aiming at can only emerge andbecome present in time. In this sense, God is running history ‘from the inside’,which is to say that actual historical development and the development of God isn’tseparate.72

When Forster claims, however, that Hegel believes that he ends the historyof philosophy, I think he goes too far. On the one hand, the textual evidence isnot convincing, and on the other, a feature of dialectical thinking is that itdissolves any state of finality as soon as it has gained some foothold. Still, thecase Forster makes for Goethe’s way of knowing, his way of developing a scientiaintuitiva for the organic world, could provide Hegel with the link between logicand reality that I think is missing in his philosophy. Scientia intuitiva consists ofknowing an object according to its essence and Spinoza thought that suchknowledge is exemplified in geometry. Goethe applied scientiva intuitiva to nature,claiming to have discovered the ‘primal plant’, a spiritual entity that is present inall plants, and from which all possible plants can be derived. Though Hegelappreciates Goethe’s theory of colors, he is silent on the idea of a primal plant.

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Quite possibly this is due to the fact that Hegel has his own view of the organicworld. Consequently he seems blind to the possibility Goethe’s idea of the primalplant contains, when it comes to connecting reason and spirit with nature:Considering nature according to scientia intuitiva implies knowing nature as if wehave created it, i.e., from the inside, in a way similar to how we know purethinking and other objects of our own creation. The question is whether Goethe’sway of knowing would survive Hegel’s critique of empirical knowledge. And if itwould, if we could come to a knowledge of the primal plant as a spiritual entity,what can we say about the relationship of such natural, spiritual entities to theworld spirit? Giving an answer to the question of whether Hegel’s view ofempirical knowledge poses a critique of Goethe is beyond the scope of thisarticle. Answering whether there is a connection between ‘natural, spiritualentities’ and any ‘world spirit’ is possibly even beyond the scope of thephilosophical inquiry pursued in German idealism as a whole.

Terje SparbyJunior Visiting Scholar, Mind and Life [email protected]

Notes

1 List of Abbreviations: FGW is Fichte, J.G.: (1962ff.) Gesamtausgabe der Bayerischen Akademie derWissenschaften. Format: Section/Vol.:Page; TWA is Hegel, G.W.F. (1970): Theorie-Werksausgabe,Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Format: Vol.:Page; V is Hegel, G.W.F. (1983–2007): Vorelsungen.Ausgewahlte Nachsriften und Manuskripte. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag. Format: Vol.:Page.2 Longuenesse, Beatrice: Hegel’s Critique of Metaphysics, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge,2007, p. 217. See also Longuenesse, Beatrice: ‘‘Point of view of man or knowledge of god.’’In: The Reception of Kant’s Critical Philosophy. Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, Sally Sedgwick (ed.),Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 263.3 Longuenesse, Beatrice, Hegel’s Critique of Metaphysics, 217. See also Longuenesse, Beatrice:‘Point of view of man or knowledge of god’, 263.4 Beiser, 2005.5 A term from Gabriel, Markus, Transcendental ontology. Essays in German idealism, 2011, viii-ix.The ‘normativity Hegelians’ include Robert Pippin, John McDowell and Robert Brandom.6 Houlgate, Stephen, ‘Hegel and Brandom’, 2007.7 Cf. Kreines, James, ‘Between the Bounds of Experience’, Inquiry 50, 3, 2007.8 Forster, Eckart, Die 25 Jahre der Philosophie, 2012, 369f.9 Forster, Eckart, Die 25 Jahre der Philosophie, 2012, 365.10 Forster, Eckart, Die 25 Jahre der Philosophie, 2012, 369.

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11 Kreines, James, ‘Between the Bounds of Experience’, Inquiry 50, 3, 2007, 316:‘The metaphysical claim is that there are more laws than just the most general laws governingall matter — there are determinate laws governing specifically distinct natural kinds. And theepistemological claim is that we can have knowledge of these laws and kinds, without need ofdivine intuition grasping reality all at once.’ Kreines also states, on 329: ‘We are supposed to beable to gain knowledge of the whole of everything, then, not by breaking through to a higherstandpoint from which an otherwise hidden unity of the whole becomes apparent, but ratherby pursuing a form of philosophical inquiry into different levels of explanation and therelations between them.’12 Kreines, James, ‘Metaphysics without Pre-Critical Monism: Hegel on Lower-Level NaturalKinds and the Structure of Reality’, Hegel Bulletin, 57/58, 2008, pp. 48–70, here p. 50.13 Sedgwick, Sally, Hegel’s Critique of Kant, 2012, 60f.14 This places my reading somewhere between Forster’s and Kreines/Sedgwick’s: I agree withForster that the German idealists, including Hegel, sought supersensible knowledge. I disagreewith Forsters analysis of the role of the intuitive understanding in Hegel’s philosophy and thatHegel claims to have ended the history of philosophy. As I will argue, what Hegel attemptswith his logic is something that amounts to a unity of intellectual intuition and intuitiveunderstanding. I also agree with Kreines and Sedgwick on the importance of understandingHegel’s appropriation of Kant’s conception of non-discursive forms of knowledge, but I doubtthat these forms provide a basis for a substantial knowledge of nature and the place of thehuman being within it.15 Kant usually is categorical in denying the possiblity of higher knowledge, though he in oneinstance suggests that it is only ‘nach der jetzigen Einrichtung unseres Verstandes’ (AA IV:163)that we cannot have any knowledge of the thing in itself.16 See Forster, Eckart: Die Bedeutung von yy76, 77 der Kritik der Urteilskraft fur die Entwicklungder nachkantischen Philosophie, 2002, 177n10. Kant’s unclarity with regards to distinguishinghigher forms of knowledge reflects in the literature. As an example, Longuenesse does notdistinguish intuitive understanding from intellectual intuition in the way Forster does. CompareLonguenesse, Beatrice: Hegel’s Critique of Metaphysics, 2007, 173 with Forster, Eckart: DieBedeutung von yy76, 77 der Kritik der Urteilskraft fur die Entwicklung der nachkantischen Philosophie,2002, 179.17 AA XX: 276, AA V: 409.18 See Allison, Henry: Kant’s Transcendental Idealism, 13 and 77ff.19 AA V: 31.20 AA V: 409.21 AA III: 70, AA III: 112.22 See e.g., AA XVIII: 434 and AA III: 70.23 Although these are two forms of higher knowledge (of which the latter seems to be a morepowerful capacity), I see no reason to claim that they exclude each other necessarily. Anintellectual intuition of things as they are in themselves could be understood as implying aform of knowledge characterized by being a unity of possibility and actuality. However, it

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seems clear that intellectual intuition in the sense of seeing things as they are in themselvesleaves room for a stronger degree of receptivity (there are still in some sense pre-existing thingsto be known), while a capacity to generate things through thinking puts the emphasis onspontaneity.24 AA V: 407.25 AA V: 410.26 Forster, Eckart: Die Bedeutung von yy76, 77 der Kritik der Urteilskraft fur die Entwicklung dernachkantischen Philosophie, 2002, 179 and Forster, Eckart: Die 25 Jahre der Philosophie, 2012, 160.27 See for instance TWA 8:255 and TWA 6:135.28 TWA 5:130.29 AA III: 163.30 AA III: 232f.31 Logik, y6: ‘Der abstrakteste Begriff ist der, welcher mit keinem von ihm verschiedenen etwasgemein hat. Dieses ist der Begriff von Etwas; denn das von ihm Verschiedene ist Nichts, undhat also mit dem Etwas nichts gemein.’32 B 346.33 Hegel, G.W.F.: The Encyclopedia Logic. 1991.34 As explored by Susan Songsuk Hahn, in Contradiction in Motion: Hegel’s Organic Concept of Lifeand Value, 2007.35 TWA 5:37.36 TWA 5:37.37 As Hegel remarks in one place: ‘Ferner ist nun aber auch die Kantische Objektivitat desDenkens insofern selbst nur wieder subjektiv, als nach Kant die Gedanken, obschonallgemeine und notwendige Bestimmungen, doch nur unsere Gedanken und von dem, was dasDing an sich ist, durch eine unubersteigbare Kluft unterschieden sind.’ Hegel continues withstating what he believes is the correct conception of the relation of thoughts to objectivity:‘Dagegen ist die wahre Objektivitat des Denkens diese, daß die Gedanken nicht bloß unsereGedanken, sondern zugleich des Ansich der Dinge und des Gegenstandlichen uberhaupt sind.’TWA 8:116.38 FGW III/5:112f.39 McDowell, John: Mind and World, 1994, 40f.40 AA XXII: 342.41 As described in y6 of Kant’s Logik, this is a three-step process, consisting of comparison,reflection and abstraction. It might be noted that Kant here speaks of the creation of a conceptaccording to its form. The matter of a concept is its object (y2) and the form of concepts, asdiscursive representations, is always something created (y4). Concepts can, however, beconsidered according to their matter, which will reveal their origin as either empirical, contingentor intellectual, but such considerations belong to metaphysics (y5).42 B 39f.43 See Kant’s Logik y13.44 See Longuenesse, Beatrice: Hegel’s Critique of Metaphysics, 2007, 175.

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45 TWA 5:49.46 TWA 5:42.47 Schafer, Rainer: Die Dialektik und ihre besondere Formen in Hegels Logik, 2001, 256f.: ‘Mit derTheorie der bestimmten Negation hebt Hegel die Diskursivitat des Begriffs auf. Wenn namlichder allgemeinere Begriff den bestimmteren, besonderen Begriff in sich enthalt, dann kann dieRezipriozitat von Inhalt und Umfang diskursiver Begriffe nicht gelten. [y] Wenn nach Hegelder allgemeinere Begriff den inhaltlich reicher bestimtmen, besonderen Begriff in sich enthalt,dann muß der allgemeine Begriff auch den großeren Inhalt haben und mehr Inhalt in sichenthalten als der bestimmte, besondere Begriff. Nach traditioneller Logik ist dies einWiderspruch.’ On page 326 Schafer concludes that this is a case where Hegel’s dialecticsencounters ‘unuberwindbare Schwierigkeiten.’ Hegel has nothing to offer when it comes tomaking his doctrine of contradiction clear to rational thought beyond singing ‘vitalistic hymns’about life and spirit (267). This is plainly rhetorical, however. One could view the whole ofHegel’s logic as an attempt not only to clarify what dialetics is, but also what ‘contradiction’actually means.48 TWA 5:44: ‘Dieses Reich ist die Wahrheit, wie sie ohne Hulle an und fur sich selbst ist. Man kann sichdeswegen ausdrucken, daß dieser Inhalt die Darstellung Gottes ist, wie er in seinem ewigen Wesen vorder Erschaffung der Natur und eines endlichen Geistes ist.’49 TWA 8:51f.50 This relates to Hegel’s idealist thesis, which consists of saying that every seemingly separateexistence—every given, immediate existence—is in fact an abstraction. Everything exists and hasto be understood in its relationship to the whole. Another word for Hegel’s idealism is ‘holism’.51 We can, however, choose to follow the standards of discursive thinking, which would forceus to either locate particular concepts under higher ones, or to abandon the higher concept dueto its inherent contradictory markers. E.g., we could say that coming-to-be and ceasing-to-beare lower concepts of becoming, but, since they are indeed different, the first ending with beingand the second with nothing, they cannot both be said of becoming as such. We could reply,from the standpoint of speculation, that any coming-to-be presupposes a ceasing-to-be,namely the ceasing-to-be of nothing, and vice versa for ceasing-to-be, which indicates that theyare indeed two aspects of the same higher concept of becoming.52 See Schafer, Rainer, Die Dialektik und ihre besondere Formen in Hegels Logik, 2001, 41ff.53 TWA 6:553.54 See e.g., Pippin, Robert B., Hegel’s Idealism, 1989, 188. Other epistemological readingsinclude: Westphal, Kenneth, Hegel’s Epistemology, 2003; Fulda, ‘Hegels Logik der Idee und ihreepistemologische Bedeutung’ 2003 and Wildenauer, Miriam, Epistemologie des freien Denkens. Dielogische Idee in Hegels Philosophie des endlichen Geistes, 2004.55 This is James Kreines’ approach as prevously pointed out.56 V 10:220.57 E.g., TWA 5:139–140.58 TWA 5:245.59 TWA 9:5035Enz. y368Z.

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60 TWA 9:5035Enz. y368Z.61 See, e.g., TWA 3:190, TWA 9:501 and 6:526.62 TWA 8:2615Enz. y131.63 This is mirrored in the two main approaches to Hegel’s philosophy of nature. Certainreadings emphasize that Hegel’s philosophy of nature is in principle an open system, whileothers rather claim that Hegel thinks he can ‘deduce’ the main determinations of nature. SeeHoulgate, Stephen (ed.), Hegel and the Philosophy of Nature, xiii–xiv.64 E.g., TWA 8:3435Enz. y190: ‘Es ist der Instinkt der Vernunft, welcher ahnen laßt, daßdiese oder jene empirisch aufgefundene Bestimmung in der inneren Natur oder der Gattungeines Gegenstandes begrundet sei, und welcher darauf weiter fußt.’65 ‘Otherness’ means that which is initally opposed to the universal, opposed to thinking, i.e.particular objects or particular moments in time. However, as Hegel points out in ThePhenomenology of Spirit, the determination ‘now’ is universal, which means that it remains as it iseven as particular instances of times—this is what makes it universal: ‘Ein solches Einfaches,das durch Negation ist, weder dieses noch jenes, ein nicht dieses, und ebenso gleichgultig, auchdises wie jenes zu sein, nennen wir ein Allgemeines.’ TWA 9:65. So thinking, as the capacity toform universals, is the capacity to be both in what is common to the particulars as well as inthe particulars themselves.66 When it comes to natural kinds, Hegel seems to occilate between calling our knowledge ofthem imperfect and calling the natural kinds themselves imperfect. It seems plausible that Hegelthinks that we can know and make sense of at least the most general natural kinds (the idea ofa living organism, chemistry and mechanical relations) insofar as we relate them to thebecoming of spirit. But this seems to be open to the objection that it is all a projection ontoempirical reality; Hegel himself gives a critique of empirical knowledge that in effect denies thatwe can have knowledge of natural kinds. When Kreines claims that Hegel argues the naturalsciences ‘can discover real natural kinds and laws’ he ignores this critical element in Hegel. SeeKreines, James: ‘Metaphysics without Pre-Critical Monism: Hegel on Lower-Level NaturalKinds and the Structure of Reality.’ Hegel Bulletin, 57/58, 2008, pp. 48–70, here p. 50. Indeed,Hegel thinks it’s one of the tasks of philosophy to give the shape of necessity to the content ofthe empirical sciences (TWA 8:585Enz. y12).67 TWA 6:450.68 TWA 7:3255Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts y173.69 TWA 8:635Enz. y18.70 Pinkard, Terry: Hegel’s Naturalism, 189.71 One main of the reasons for this is the way Hegel’s logic involves developmentor ‘immanent dialectics’. As Wolfgang Janke calls Hegel’s philosophy an ‘Onto-theo-historico-Logik’, Die dreifache Vollendung des Deutschen Idealismus, 2009, 125, but this tends toblur the fact that Hegel’s thinking implies a break with the traditional framework ofdetermination.72 In order to avoid a Spinozian identification of God and nature, one can add that although fromthe beginning there is a drive for self-knowledge, self-knowledge is only actual in human beings.

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