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Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary
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Hegel's Phenomenology of
Spirit as an Argument for a
Monistic Ontology
RolfPeter Horstmann

Humboldt Universitt , Berlin, Germany

Published online: 20 Aug 2006.

To cite this article: RolfPeter Horstmann (2006) Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit

as an Argument for a Monistic Ontology , Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of
Philosophy, 49:1, 103-118, DOI: 10.1080/00201740500497530
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00201740500497530

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Inquiry,
Vol. 49, No. 1, 103118, February 2006

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Hegels Phenomenology of Spirit as an

Argument for a Monistic Ontology1
ROLF-PETER HORSTMANN
Humboldt Universitat, Berlin, Germany

(Received 31 October 2005)

ABSTRACT This paper tries to show that one of the main objectives of Hegels
Phenomenology of Spirit is to give an epistemological argument for his monistic
metaphysics. In its first part, it outlines a traditional, Kant-oriented approach to the
question of how we can make sense of our ability to cognize objects. It focuses on the
distinction between subjective and objective conditions of cognition and argues that this
distinction, understood in the traditional (Kantian) way, is much too poor to do justice
to our very elaborated conception of kinds of objects. The second part deals with the
Phenomenology. Here it is claimed that Hegel reacts in a sophisticated way to the
shortcomings of the traditional epistemological view in presenting a theory which allows
us to understand why we have to distinguish between different kinds of objects and how
these kinds are related to conditions of cognition. This epistemological doctrine,
however, is not developed by Hegel for its own sake. Rather, it has the function of a
transcendentalistic (not transcendental) argument for a monistic ontology. Thus,
one can make sense of Hegels claim that the Phenomenology is to be understood as an
introduction into his (monistic) System.

Let me begin with some remarks about what I take to be interesting and
important in Hegels philosophy or why I think it to be worthwhile to care
about, if not all, then at least some aspects of Hegels philosophy. These
remarks are guided by my own interests in philosophy and hence are only
subjectively valid. I am mainly interested in what is traditionally called
metaphysics, especially in that branch of metaphysics that goes under the
name of ontology. What I take to be the task of ontology is to answer the
question: What is the right conception of reality? The right conception
does not have to be the true one, it might be that there are different right

Correspondence Address: Rolf-Peter Horstmann, Humboldt Universitat zu Berlin, Institut fur

Philosophie, Unter den Linden 6, D-10099 Berlin, Germany. Email: h1232eas@rz.hu-berlin.de
0020-174X Print/1502-3923 Online/06/01010316 # 2006 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/00201740500497530

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conceptions available. By right in this context, I just mean a conception

that best fits our way of dealing epistemically and practically with reality,
i.e. a conception that gives the best account of the fundamental features of
what we take to be our world according to our maximally informed
understanding of how this world is organized. Hence, ontology, as I
understand it, is a derivative discipline: it tells us what we have to accept as
the structure of reality if we want to make sense of our most basic beliefs
(e.g., that our world contains individual objects that are spatio-temporally
related), experiences (e.g. that there are other persons around) and attitudes
(e.g., that we care about our lives). Now, with respect to ontological theory
itself, two major options seem to be available. Either one can maintain that
what our epistemic and non-epistemic practices suggest is that we have to
endorse a pluralistic view of reality; or one can claim that, in order to make
sense of these very practices one has to favor a monistic conception. We all
know from the history of philosophy that both options have been pursued.
We also know that there is no real winner yet. Though I personally have no
strong opinions concerning which option should win, I am interested in
finding out what has been brought forward in favor of either of them. This is
not that difficult a task in the case of pluralism because this option seems to
accommodate best our common sense expectations and our normal
intuitions of what the world is like. However, things are not that easy with
respect to monism. Monism has almost no common sense basis and there is
an inclination to think of it as an irrational option mainly because it is so
close to theological speculations. If this is so, why did philosophers, who
were not particularly fascinated by irrationalism, think of monism as the
most promising metaphysical option? Did they have arguments, proofs, or
any other rational means to defend their monistic conviction, or was it just a
question of personal temperament, just a sign of their tender-mindedness, as
William James suggested? In order to answer questions like these, I address
Hegels philosophy, not because I am particularly fond of him, but rather, as
a case study. After all, Hegel is the most sophisticated monist of modern
times and he is the most resourceful. He is also the only one I am acquainted
with who really tried to give an argument for monism. In fact he tried not
only once but explored different arguments at different times. One of these
seems to me to be an epistemological argument and is put forward in the
shape of a Phenomenology of Spirit. What I am going to present here is to be
understood against the metaphysical background just described: It is an
attempt to outline a Hegelian argument for monism, or if not an argument
then at least a strategy for such an argument.
In order to delineate this argument in its systematic context, I will pursue
two clusters of themes that at first glance seem to have little to do with each
other. The first is actually not at all a proper theme, but rather, an attempt
to bring to the fore a question that in my opinion belongs in the theory of
knowledge broadly understood the question of how one can make sense of

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the fact that we relate our knowledge claims and assertions with great
confidence to completely different kinds of objects and facts; that is, we
think that we can have insight (true or false) about the most different kinds
of objects (as, for instance, tables, trees, humans, cities, countries, numbers,
works of art, religions, but also actions, events, historical constellations).
This practice assumes, relatively navely, that we have at our disposal a
considerable range of possibilities of identification, determination, specification and discrimination, whose subjective and objective basis is anything
but obvious. My first line of inquiry will be an attempt to draw out the
questions that are bound up with this practice.
The second theme that I will pursue has to do with Hegel; more precisely,
with his Phenomenology of Spirit. It is well-known that Hegel, at least at one
point in his life, was of the opinion that the Phenomenology could be seen as
an introduction to his system of philosophy. Yet even today no one knows
what exactly might have led Hegel to this opinion. Since Hegel developed
the Phenomenology as a Science of the Experience of Consciousness that
runs through various object-conceptions, the idea that Hegel wanted to
justify his fundamental metaphysical assumption, his monism of reason,
through a theory of kinds of objects and their epistemic conditions, does not
seem prima facie misguided. I believe that this idea can take us a long way
towards understanding the function that Hegel himself ascribed to his
phenomenological introductory project. In my second line of inquiry I will
present this idea in more detail.
I will divide my remarks into two sections: In the first section (I) I will
sketch the initial epistemological situation to which Hegel is reacting in the
Phenomenology. In the second (II) I will do two things; namely (1) lay out
the basic outlines of this reaction and (2) show that the specific mode of
Hegels reaction is bound up with the justification of his monistic
metaphysics.
I.
I want to start with a characterization of the initial epistemological situation
in which questions like the ones mentioned in the beginning show up. That
is, let me begin with a rather nave description of the situation from which
the questions first arise, which give occasion for a theory of knowledge to
provide the possible means with which these questions could be answered.
This description is nave in two ways: First, it uses the traditional
vocabulary of subject and object to describe the initial situation without
being able to connect very clear representations with this vocabulary;
second, it works with a very vague concept of knowledge/cognition insofar
as it assumes that a minimal characterization of this concept suffices to
secure for it some kind of meaning. Nonetheless, I believe that this
description is adequate in order to capture some central everyday and

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common sense beliefs that are bound up with the so-called problem of
knowledge and its analysis.
The world in which we find ourselves presents itself to us not only at
first glance as a relatively complex and complicated tangle of objects,
including things, facts and events, with which we interact in various ways. If
one brackets for a moment our various ways of interacting practically with
objects, facts, and events, and attends primarily to our more theoretical
attitudes to these objects, namely expressions of opinion, assertions of belief,
and claims to knowledge, then two things become almost immediately
apparent: (1) It appears to be simpler to form a correct opinion about some
of these objects, facts, and events, than about others: some appear easier to
grasp cognitively or easier to access epistemically than others. This seems to
point to the fact that some objects and facts are more cognitively or
epistemically evasive than others. No matter whether the question is about
identifying something as this or that, or about attributing or denying to
something this or that feature, or about distinguishing something from
something else, or finally about specifying the causal role of something,
some objects, it appears, are just simply easier to identify, to determine
(qualitatively), to discriminate and to specify causally, than others. If we call
the totality of such theoretical activities as identifying, determining,
discriminating, and specifying knowing or cognizing [Erkennen], then
this observation actually only makes the point that it is apparently easier for
us to know or cognize (something as) an apple or (as) a streetcar than, for
example, (as) a state (in contrast say to a civil society) or (as) a work of art
(in contrast to a functional object), not to mention cognizing something (as)
love or (as) labor. Questions like, Is this an apple? normally allow a
correct answer more easily than the question, Is this a work of art? or
even Is this (a case of) love? When one admits that this apparent
difference is real, that it is grounded in re, then the question soon arises of
how to account for this difference in theory.
(2) Another intuitively clear observation is the following: If one reviews
the totality of the objects that in our world appear for us as objects of
theoretical attitudes, one sees that they form an incredibly extensive
repertoire of the most different kinds of objects. These objects are
characterized through groups of features that partly overlap with each
other and even stand in conflict with each other, and therefore obviously
make completely different epistemic demands. Thus, we count among the
immeasurably great number of objects those as different as physical objects
and mental states, mathematical facts (numbers, functions, geometrical
constructions) and economic arrangements (the stock market, the trade
agreement), political, social and cultural institutions (the government, the
trade union, the church) and a huge number of things whose characteristic
features would be even harder to specify than is the case with the things just
mentioned. One need only think about waves or other weather phenomena

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such as wind or clouds, or about the distinction between living and nonliving objects. This diversity of kinds is mirrored in customary talk of
different worlds, which we think of as constituted through the totality of the
objects belonging to them: We know the world of physics, of mathematics,
of music; we know the social, the moral, and the spiritual world, the world
of right, of feelings and of thoughts; we know a dreamworld and a lifeworld,
etc. In short, we know just as many worlds as kinds of objects. But in
addition, we know that objects often tend not only to appear as
representatives of just one kind of object, but rather to exemplify several
kinds of objects, i.e. many objects belong simultaneously and with equal
justification to different worlds. Living and non-living objects, although
they belong, on the one hand, to incompatible kinds, are on the other hand
both physical things; pains and some other mental states are admittedly not
physical objects, but they have thoroughly spatio-temporal characteristics
(one has pain always at a certain place at a certain point in time), and the
state and other institutional objects present themselves sometimes as very
abstract entities although they can at other times act in extremely concrete
ways. In light of this undeniable and somehow irritating situation the
question arises fairly directly in connection with this second observation
whether and how one can give an explanation of this rather opaque order of
things.
First, a few remarks on my use of the concept of object, together with a
rather trivializing sketch of an idea about how one can make comprehensible the possibility of reference to objects that is (not without reason) very
popular. What we can consider as something to which we can refer to as a
fact be it an ordinary object, event or state of affairs with whatever
intention be it in order to experience something about it (assert, grant or
deny, recognize it) or to change it (adapt, strive for, reach it) depends on
which possibilities of reference we have at our disposal or think we have at
our disposal. Something we cannot refer to meaningfully does not count for
us as a fact, or, if one follows traditional terminology, an object. We can
refer to objects in very different ways and with very different means. Next to
action, the standard means of reference are sense perception in all its
different modes (seeing, hearing, etc.) and what one is ready to accept as
non-sensuous modes of representing something what we can just call
thinking. The standard means of reference include abilities and capacities,
sensitivities and impressions, as well as language and concepts. All these
ways and means constitute what one can count as the subjective conditions
of reference. Related to these subjective conditions of reference, there are
also those that can be viewed as objective. Objective conditions are normally
thought of as those which must be met on the side of the object, the fact, in
order for it to qualify as a possible object of reference.
According to the preceding sketch, whether something is for us and what
something is for us depends on a multitude of mutually influencing

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subjective and objective conditions. This assessment is not terribly

surprising, but certainly correct, and one can be satisfied with setting forth
for any given object or type of object a list of conditions, subjective and
objective. Nevertheless, such a procedure has its dangers, and also may for
various reasons be considered unsatisfying. I will give three such reasons.
First, one can doubt whether (within such a procedure) the distinction
between subjective and objective conditions can in general be stable enough
to have an explicative worth. This is because in many cases it appears rather
arbitrary whether one views a condition as subjective or objective.
Secondly, such a procedure assumes without question that there is
something like a natural manifold of different kinds of objects, which have
different (subjective and objective) conditions of reference. In the account of
reference sketched thus far, this manifold is viewed as a fact from which one
must start, and which, as such, requires no further explanation: There
simply are under this assumption living, non-living, abstract, physical,
economic, psychological, etc., facts, and we are not supposed to inquire into
how to account for this diversity, but rather, into the subjective and
objective conditions needed to comprehend them adequately.
Finally, this explanatory approach is also problematic insofar as it
appears to view the entire spectrum of reference conditions as exhausted
through only two kinds and their interplay namely through subjective and
objective conditions and interprets these conditions as rooted in the
subject or in the object. Subjective conditions are identified with
capacities and capabilities, which must be ascribed to the natural
constitution of the knowing subject in order to be able to refer to something
epistemically as this or that object. Objective conditions are equated with a
bundle of features and characteristics that the object must have if it can
appear as this determinate object. However, it is not at all immediately clear
that with this double limitation the spectrum of reference conditions is
already sufficiently demarcated. It may be that without these conditions no
object reference is possible for us; that they therefore depict necessary
conditions of object reference, but that taken together they are not
sufficient. We might require entirely (or at least fairly) different types of
conditions in order to be able to determine something as such and such an
object or as a case of this or that kind of object. As candidates for such
additional conditions one can imagine, for instance, social, cultural,
historical or scientific circumstances. Thus, it does not appear far-fetched
that to be able even to thematize something like a film, a war, or an electron,
one must be able to call upon some kind of cultural, political, or natural
scientific background, without which these kinds of facts cannot be
identified as what they are (namely, as films, wars, or electrons). And this
background cannot be reduced without further explanation to subjective
capabilities or to requirements lying in the object alone, but rather, depicts
genuinely self-standing conditions for the reference to such objects.

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Within the history of philosophy one can attribute this approach to the
topic of epistemic object-reference to Kant, who set forth his critical theory
of knowledge in the space of an analysis of subjective and objective
conditions. I cannot go into the details here, but there are quite good
reasons to suspect the following of Kants analysis of the possibility of
object reference: His claim to have found a sufficient basis for explaining
questions surrounding this reference, simply by recourse to the distinction
between subjective and objective conditions of reference, appears to lack the
conceptual resources necessary to be convincing. Not only does the
distinction itself tend to become somehow empty, but beyond that, it also
seems to account for the multiplicity of kinds of objects only at the price of
giving up their objective status. Finally, it does not indicate why we have to
conceive of subjective and objective reference conditions along Kantian lines
thereby excluding other kinds of reference conditions.
II.
However this discussion does not lead very far. The Kantian analysis may be
implausible, but the best one available; it may even be correct or true. After
all, the reproach of implausibility is not considered for quite good reasons
to be a very strong argument against the correctness or even the truth of
an otherwise original and well-worked out position. If one wants to express
more than merely ones discomfort, one has as is well-known two
standard options: One must either be able to demonstrate that the Kantian
analysis is doomed to failure for internal reasons, and/or one must offer
alternatives that are not vulnerable to the problems raised against Kants
project. Here is where Hegel finally comes into play. For one can and I will
in the following rather schematically illustrate this point understand Hegel
at a certain point in his philosophical development as someone who
attempted both strategies: to fundamentally destroy Kants conception and
also to offer an alternative to this conception. If one views Kant as the
paradigmatic exponent of an epistemological program, which is determined
through the procedure I sketched in the first part of this paper (namely to
depict knowledge as the product of certain subjective and objective
conditions), then one can affirm that Hegel is pursuing within this
framework (that is, starting from the very same conception of knowledge
as a product) a new paradigm in epistemology. The Hegel that I will attempt
to advocate in this essay is the late Jena Hegel, and the work that I think we
can view as this new attempt is the Phenomenology of Spirit.
Now there is no very direct way available for making this assertion
plausible if one does not want to deprive Hegels suggested solution of its
crucial point. This is the case because Hegel is not interested in the question
of the conditions of object reference for its own sake; but rather, it interests
him as a means for demonstrating at least insofar as he deals with it in the

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Phenomenology of Spirit a metaphysical thesis that stands at the center of

his entire systematic effort. In other words, the Hegel of the Phenomenology
of Spirit is interested in the epistemological problem of object reference
because of its potential for justifying his favored metaphysical position. One
is therefore required to embed his reflections on object reference in the
context of this basic metaphysical idea, because only in this way can we
make clear the distinctive character, consequences and originality of his
analysis. I will designate as Hegels basic metaphysical idea that only a
monistic theory of actuality, i.e. a monistic ontology, is in a position to
deliver a consistent total world view that neither takes off from
indemonstrable assumptions nor leads in the end to unacceptable
reductionist consequences. In the brevity demanded here, and without
doing too much injustice to it, Hegelian monistic ontology can be
summarized in the following (sufficiently obscure) thesis: The entirety of
actuality must be seen as a single all-comprehending, self-developing
rational entity, which achieves knowledge of itself in a spatio-temporal
process of realizing its distinctive conceptual determinations. More
precisely, this thesis claims that we must not view the entirety of actuality,
understood as a totality, as constituted through the multitude of its elements
i.e. of all objects, facts and events or as an additive collective unity.
Rather, we have to think of this actual totality as a whole that is prior to its
elements. The elements must be comprehended as products in a process of
internal differentiation of that totality. It is actually this conception of the
primacy of the whole that distinguishes monistic positions from their
pluralistic competitors. I understand as a pluralistic theory one in which the
wholes can be constituted through their elements. In these positions, the
elements count as, so to speak, self-sufficient building blocks out of which a
whole is put together. The whole should be thought of as reducible to the
sum of its elements. A monistic theory understands wholes as the existence
conditions of their elements. Something is only an element or a part of a
whole if the whole precedes it, because only then can it appear as a part/
element of this determinate whole. For monistic positions, then, Aristotles
dictum that the whole is prior to its parts often quoted by Hegel applies.
It is of secondary importance for the monistic character of a theory that this
whole is conceived at times as substance (Spinoza), as absolute I (Fichte and
Schelling) or, as in Hegel, as Reason.
Whatever this thesis which I will refer to in the following as the
monistic thesis is supposed to mean in particular, for Hegel it is not
meant as a mere sharing of a personal perspective, a private preference, but
rather it is supposed to count as an assertion for which indisputable reasons
can be adduced. This of course leads directly to the question: How can such
a thesis not only prove its plausibility, but also prove compelling? How can
one not only make such a thesis more or less comprehensible by taking
account of certain conditions or various presuppositions (as one makes

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many things comprehensible in sufficiently explaining it to someone ) but

also equip the thesis with such a persuasive force that it must be seen and
accepted as being without alternatives? If one views the Hegelian exposition
of the metaphysical (according to its content: ontological) thesis as the
Hegelian System or, in other words, if one agrees that the Hegelian System is
the attempt to develop the explanatory potential of this thesis, then one
must distinguish from the Hegelian system another undertaking, namely the
undertaking whose task it is to prove this metaphysical thesis itself as
compelling. This undertaking, distinguished from the dialectical exposition
(Darstellung) of the System, has been conceived by Hegel as an introduction
to his System, and he conceived of it differently at different times in his
career. One of these conceptions is set out in the Jena Phenomenology of
Spirit.
Before I can go into the details of the conception worked out in the
Phenomenology, we must first recall in outline what is involved with the
proof or grounding strategy of such an introductory undertaking. The
point for Hegel is to completely justify the monistic thesis according to
which actuality is a rational totality, a self-developing organic whole. A
complete justification is taken to be one which is not relying on an
unjustified condition. In order to accomplish this goal, one must secure this
thesis against at least two kinds of objections. One kind of objection insists
that any justification is tied to conditions which themselves cannot be
justified, so that in the end only a conditional justification is ever possible, a
justification under the assumption of a condition. This would mean that the
project of a complete or conditionless justification is already for
methodological reasons a fruitless undertaking. If one elaborates concerns
of this methodological kind, they lead to rather general skeptical
reservations about the possibility of complete justification. If one wants to
escape this type of skeptical methodological objection, then in a complete
justification one can claim nothing as established through an unsecured
presupposition, be it a postulate (Schellings suggestion at the end of the
Abhandlungen zur Erlauterung des Idealismus der Wissenschaftslehre) or a
self-evident fact (Reinholds principle of consciousness).
The second kind of objection exploits an epistemological point. It shows
that any assertion that refers to the entirety of actuality and Hegels
monistic thesis belongs to such assertions can never be completely justified
in the above sense because it attempts to grasp something conceptually just
this actuality in its entirety which for us is simply not conceivable in
discursive terms, i.e. it does not allow us to say anything meaningful about
it. This type of objection carries force because there are demonstrable
difficulties with the concept of an entirety or a totality, both mathematically
(indicated e.g. in van Fraasens The Empirical Stance) and also metaphysically (effectively shown through Kants critique of the cosmological
conception of the world). These difficulties raise the suspicion that there are

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insurmountable cognitive barriers for creatures like us when we try to grasp

the entirety of actuality, or actuality understood as a totality, so as to
understand it as an object in the sense of a possible object of cognition. In
order to withstand objections like this, one must be in a position to specify
what talk of actuality as a totality means such that it can be made clear
under which conditions and for whom the actuality as a totality can be an
object of epistemic reference at all.
How can one proceed then if one wants to justify the monistic thesis? One
possibility, which Hegel not only considered, but actually practiced in his
pre-Phenomenology attempts at an introduction, consists in discrediting the
pluralistic alternatives as contradictory or inconsistent. Another possibility
is to offer something like a so-called transcendental argument for the
monistic thesis. I will understand a transcendental argument here as an
argument that leads to necessary conditions for the possibility of knowledge
of an object through a subject. Such an argument, understood (in light of
various recent ways of using this term) in this somewhat restricted sense,
thus attempts to prove the truth of some thesis here the monistic thesis
by demonstrating that it is a necessary condition for some other assertion of
knowledge that is uncontroversial, e.g. a mathematical truth. It is however
difficult to see how Hegel, in light of the demands that he has placed on
what counts as justification, can accept a transcendental argument in the
description given here as a legitimate means for justification. As indicated
above, for Hegel recourse to some presupposition is forbidden, so that
already the opening move of a transcendental argument is not available to
him: He cannot operate with an assertion whose truth is uncontroversial,
meaning that he cannot infer the truth of another assertion which can be
demonstrated as a necessary condition for the uncontroversial one.
A third possibility to consider is what one could designate as a reverse or
negative transcendental argument: It consists in justifying the monistic thesis
indirectly by proving that in fact only under its presupposition can the
concepts of subject and object be so conceived that one can speak
meaningfully of knowledge of the object through the subject. This proof
is carried out in stages. One starts with some kind of nonmonistic
conception of what an object is really or in truth, and of a subject
who entertains this conception. One then shows that on the basis of this
conception one cannot formulate a consistent concept either of the object or
of a subject corresponding to it, but that it implicitly presupposes another
conception of subject and object, which itself is equally inconsistent for
other reasons, in the end leading to a monistic conception of subject and
object as the only consistent option. Such a strategy aims to prove that if
there is to be knowledge of something in sensu stricto, the conceptions of
subject and object that belong to the monistic thesis must be accepted. If one
calls such a reflection an argument, then it would be transcendental insofar
as it formulates a necessary condition for the possibility of knowledge, and

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negative because it restricts this possibility to one and only one subjectobject pair, namely the monistic. In order to avoid unnecessary misunderstandings and confusing associations with Kant and others, I will give the
reflection of this third kind another name, and designate it rather artificially
as a transcendentalistic argument.
One can see Hegel in the Phenomenology of Spirit testing this third
possibility for grounding his metaphysical thesis. Various and in part
external evidence for such a reading can be introduced, though I wont go
into it here. Yet even if one reviews only the procedure presented by Hegel in
the Preface and the Introduction to the Phenomenology for reaching the so
called standpoint of science, it is not difficult to notice the transcendentalistic claim of his procedure. We can see this if we ask how Hegel,
through the procedure given there, thinks he can reach his goal, the
standpoint of science. If one recalls the scenario that Hegel sets out in
these passages, the guiding idea is apparently (1) that one can reach this
standpoint of science through an analysis of the experience that a subject
has with what is an object to him, and (2) that this standpoint is to be
reached when the monistic thesis is demonstrated to be indisputable. This
leading idea is supposed to be realized in proving that the possibility of
cognitive reference to objects presupposes the monistic thesis. This is the
case, so Hegel asserts, because any conception of objects available to us is
parasitical on the conception that is established by the monistic thesis about
the constitution of actuality. If one expresses the whole conditionally, one
can grasp the goal of Hegels phenomenological reflection thus: If
knowledge of objects is to be possible at all, then it is possible only under
monistic conditions (because actually only the monistic object, or actuality
conceived as a totality, can be known even if not necessarily by subjects
like us).
One route that one can take in order to be able to at least in principle
allow for the epistemic accessibility of this object, consists in setting the
required conditions of access very exclusively, so that in the end only one
subject can fulfill them. This subject might have very little to do with us, the
normal subjects, generally referred to pejoratively by Hegel as finite.
The subject must satisfy a double demand: (1) to be an epistemic subject,
thus able to make knowledge claims (and not only to have or produce
intuitions or representations); and (2) to be related to something as
something other (although it may in the end find out that this other is
actually itself). Now one cannot take into consideration such a unique,
extremely exotic subject without some clear reason. In order to be justified
in assuming this subject, one must be able to demonstrate somehow what
would remain simply inexplicable without it. For Hegel, as mentioned
above, this is the possibility of knowledge. According to him, it can be
shown that without the assumption of this exotic subject the demand of
knowledge of objects of any sort through subjects of any sort must be

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abandoned. If this demonstration were to succeed, then one would have

justified the monistic thesis insofar as one would retain its primary player
namely the entirety of reality grasped as a unity differentiated in itself as
the only candidate left for a true object of knowledge. In this way, the
possibility of knowledge of objects depends on the acceptance of the
monistic conception, and so has delivered for this conception a transcendentalistic argument in the sense detailed above. In the Phenomenology, the
starting point of Hegels justification of the monistic thesis, a justification
based on examining the possibility of knowledge, is a characterization (that
I can reproduce only rather schematically here) of what he understands as
cognition or, what is the same for him, knowledge. Knowledge is for him a
relation that is present when a subject can correctly claim to grasp a fact or
an object as it is in truth. A knowing subject who stands in this relation is
to be distinguished through a certain number of assumptions called
experiences by Hegel which establish his concept of what is to be
understood by the fact as it is in truth. A knowing subject should thus not
be a purely receptive relatum in the knowing relation, simply taking up
passively some kind of data, but rather the subject should already have
available a conception of what it actually means to be something in truth.
The fact to be understood, the object, which forms the other relatum of the
knowing relation, is conceived as the intentional object of the knowing
subject. This object is conceived as that to which the knowing subject refers
with a certain attitude: the attitude that the object corresponds to the
subjects representation of what it in truth is. The object that is to play a
role in this cognitive relation is thus not some kind of merely present,
uninterpreted data, something that is simply and immediately given, but is
rather an object of reference already loaded with conceptual expectations of
its actual constitution. Knowledge is thus according to Hegel the result of
a relatively complex interplay of conceptually structured subjective
expectations and the objective conditions of their fulfillment. This interplay
can be successful or not: It is successful when the conceptual expectations
defined by the subject can be brought into agreement with what the intended
object demands in order for it to be grasped consistently as a self-unified
entity. This interplay is not successful when the subject does not manage to
describe his intended object with the means at his disposal. The assertion
that a subject knows an object says nothing about the success of that
cognition other than that with his concept the subject correctly claims to
grasp the object in its truth.
Taking off from this concept of knowledge, Hegel tries to make clear that
there is actually only a single constellation in which the subject and object
can be interpreted such that they realize this cognitive relation. In other
words, he wants to convince us that it is only possible in a single case to
speak of knowledge in sensu stricto. This constellation is the extremely
extravagant one in which the subject views his object as identical with

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himself viewed precisely, knowledge is actually always only possible as

self-knowledge; so goes Hegels epistemological credo, not congenial to
everyday knowledge, which stretches like a thread of continuity from his
Jena beginnings throughout his entire philosophical life. The phenomenological process is supposed to help us reach this insight. As we should
expect, Hegel depicts this process as a procession of different objectconceptions, each of which is correlated to a correspondingly different
subject. They have their natural endpoint as it were in the constellation
which I described above as extravagant the only object-conception that
meets the demand of being an object of cognition (and not the object of
belief, opinion or representation) is that in which the subject finds its own
concept realized. This rather formal characterization of the procedure and
goal of the phenomenological process conceived as the science of the
experience of consciousness with itself and its objects raises expectations
with regard to content that Hegel does in fact rigorously fulfill.
Above all, one thinks that Hegel needs to show, as he in fact does, that
each of the object-conceptions presented by him, and whose claim to truth is
destroyed, is distinguished from the preceding conception in that very
specific new conceptual elements have to enter the picture. These elements
must serve the function of requiring the subject who holds the following
conception to interpret himself, or what Hegel calls his own concept, in a
structurally different way. If there were only a progressive conceptual
differentiation on the side of the object-conception, it would be difficult to
see how at some point in the process Hegel could assert something like an
identity of object and subject in the sense relevant to his monistic concept of
knowledge. The experience in which the subject conceives of itself as
dependent on its current object-conception must, in addition, be of the sort
that the subject increasingly recognizes itself in the object. This leads one to
assume that Hegel is intent on distinguishing various ways in which
something can be identical with something else. And it is actually not hard
to see that he takes into account a whole spectrum of identity relations,
ranging from qualitative to numerical identity, in the various characterizations of the subject-object relation. Hegel already employed with great skill
this praxis of differentiating kinds of identity as a means of methodological
production of monistic constellations in the Metaphysics of the second
Jena draft of his Early Logic.2
So much for now about Hegels strategy for grounding his monistic thesis
through a Phenomenology of Spirit and the basic outlines of his exposition.
What should have become clear in this approach is what one could call the
metaphysical function of the Phenomenology, the function that leads to
the establishment of a monistic metaphysics. If one follows the reflections
indicated here, one is led to a result that is very gratifying for a monistic
metaphysician, but rather unsatisfying for everyone else because it is very
difficult to communicate intuitively and in fact rather skeptical. It can be

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summed up in the following words: From the metaphysical standpoint,

every claim to knowledge made through a subject that cannot conceive of
itself as the entirety of actuality is for structural reasons inadequate.
The concrete exposition of the phenomenological process should be
distinguished from the function of the Phenomenology within the Hegelian
System and the strategy of its exposition. It is the former process that leads
back to the opening question of reference to objects. Hegel construes this
process as an ordered succession of object-conception and subject
conception pairs, which results in a theory of the necessary conditions of
epistemic access for kinds of objects. The leading thought, together with the
presuppositions that he takes on board, is roughly the following: (1) We can
distinguish various ways in which subjects conceive of objects as the matter
[Gegenstand] of cognition. (2) Each of these ways is characteristic for a kind
of object, and there is no object which cannot be characterized in one or
more of these ways. (3) The thesis further holds that each of the objectconceptions must arise with the claim to grasp what the object is actually
or in truth. (4) Agreement counts as the criterion for truth. An object is
only known in truth when it agrees with the conception of it. According
to Hegel this means when the object is identical with its conception, or in
Hegelian terms, with its concept. Equipped with these guidelines, Hegel
thinks he can show two things: (1) that even the simplest kind of object
meaning the one whose concept is the most minimal in terms of conceptual
elements involved can only be conceived if one already implicitly employs
the conceptual resources characteristic for the concept of a more complex
kind of object, i.e. one whose concept is richer conceptually, and (2) that
there is a direct dependence relation between the conceptual resources of the
knowing subject and the kind of object accessible to him as an object of
knowledge (and not merely as an object of perception, opinion, representation, etc.).
This is not the place to follow out the path of the phenomenological
process in detail. More important here is the rough structure and the
epistemological message resulting from the entire process. The rough
structure can be summarized quickly. On the side of the object-concept,
Hegel first moves from the individual thing to the object defined through
natural laws and causal roles, a concept itself made possible through that of
the living thing, revealing the kind-genus difference; as the presupposition of
that conception of an object functions the self-conscious entity, whose
concept is founded in turn in the concept of kinds of objects which must be
interpreted as social, cultural and religious facts. On the side of the subject
conceptions, an interesting hierarchy results, very quickly leading to subjects
that one can only view as supra-individual constructs, as forms of what
Hegel calls Spirit. In light of the guidelines discussed above for the entire
process and the systematic task that it is supposed to serve, namely to justify
the monistic thesis, it is not surprising that the series of kinds of object and

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subject forms finally converge where one can no longer distinguish between
kinds of object and subject forms. This conclusion should also be expected
because it ingeniously exemplifies the central monistic intuition of the
primacy of the whole over its parts, which also means here the primacy of
the maximally complex over the elementary simple. Finally it also makes
clear that without the super-complex whole, the elementary parts, here the
various object and subject conceptions, cannot be understood at all.
So much for the possible role of the phenomenological process for the
justification of a monistic metaphysics. If one now puts aside this monistic
background of Hegels investigation, then one sees, as hopefully has become
clear, that this process is certainly also conceived as a theory of the
conditions of object reference. The many inventive peculiarities, with which
Hegel intends to enrich the theory of knowledge, may be surprising and also
may seem in part weird. Nonetheless, two things cannot be overlooked.
First, it cannot easily be contested that the theorys basic idea of our
epistemic situation is not without a basis in our everyday beliefs about
knowledge. It can be summarized in the maxim that not everyone can know
everything and that, for us and for other creatures, there are individual and
also collective limits which simply cannot be overcome. If that is so, then
one must grant to Hegels approach that he provides an explanatory
potential for questions which, even if seldom or never posed by traditional
theories of knowledge, nevertheless require genuinely epistemological
answers. Second, we should bear in mind that Hegels phenomenological
venture, compared to the Kantian theory I sketched and criticized at the
beginning, can claim to be much better equipped along several dimensions
at least if one does not take it to be hopelessly wrong either in its approach
or exposition.
I would like to indicate three of these dimensions: (1) Hegel can claim that
his theory allows for possible cognitive reference to many more and very
different kinds of objects that are exemplified through genuine objects
actually present in the world than its Kantian rival does. (2) In addition,
Hegels phenomenological theory of the conditions of epistemic object
reference succeeds, through the differentiation between various constellations of subjective conditions for reference to various kinds of objects, in
giving an attractive explanation for why we can refer epistemically to an
object although we cannot know it in a strict sense. (3) Finally, we cannot
overlook that the theory of various subject types developed in the
Phenomenology of Spirit allows at least in principle an answer to the
question of how we can represent to ourselves the fact that things which
remain and must remain epistemically opaque to us need not remain
inaccessible in every perspective.
With this comforting message the Hegel of the Phenomenology releases us.
I believe he held to that view throughout his whole life. However, I must
also concede that Hegel himself was obviously not always satisfied with the

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announcement of this message through the presentation of the phenomenological process. This is especially evident in that later he favored other
approaches to an introduction to his monistic metaphysics. One should
rather, in conclusion, keep in mind that Hegel certainly viewed his
phenomenological undertaking as the attempt to go an entirely new way
in epistemology. This is demonstrated tellingly in the published announcement of the Phenomenology written by himself (Selbstanzeige der
Phanomenologie), which reads The Phenomenology of Spirit should
replace the psychological explanations or again the abstract discussions
concerning the foundations of knowledge. It regards the preparation for
science from a perspective which makes it new, interesting and the first
science of philosophy. My reflections in this essay are to confirm if they
are not completely mistaken that Hegels self-evaluation goes to the heart
of the phenomenological project. This, however, does not change anything
about the correctness of Hegels last explicit self-assessment of this work: the
Phenomenology is and remains a Peculiar early work, so peculiar that
Hegel himself no longer trusted himself to revise it.
Notes
1.

2.

The paper printed here is a short version of a much longer article which will appear in a
volume containing essays on Hegels Phenomenology of Spirit, edited by Dean Moyar
and Michael Quante. I am grateful to Susan Hahn for giving me the opportunity to
present this version at her conference, Von Kant bis Hegel III, and to Dean Moyar for
translating this text from German.
G.W.F.Hegel Gesammelte Werke. Herausgegeben im Auftrag der Deutschen
Forschungsgemeinschaft. Band 7: Jenaer Systementwurfe II. Herausgegeben von RolfPeter Horstmann und Johann Heinrich Trede. (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag), 1971,
pp. 126 ff.