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