Marina F.

Bykova, Raleigh, NC

On Thinking and Knowing

Hegel’s Response to Kant’s Epistemological Challenge

Traditionally, rationalists like Descartes and Spinoza had associated „pure thinking“ with a con-
ceptual understanding of how the world actually is. Challenging this approach, Kant limited the
application of concepts (and categories) to only the realm of our experience. Thus, he declared
the world as it is in itself to be beyond the reach of human thinking and knowing. This, in turn,
put some serious constraints upon the modern concept of thinking, restricting the latter’s scope,
capabilities, and autonomy. Thinking had to rely upon a particular faculty  – the understand-
ing – for providing the integrating unity of cognitive activity. Furthermore, the very possibility of
thought was grounded in something other than the thought principle itself: the transcendental
unity of apperception. This served as the underlying, formal condition of synthesizing a manifold
of intuition into the cognition of an object.
Unsatisfied with the results of Kant’s probing into the ground of rational thinking, as well
as with the purely subjectivist modifications of Kant’s principle of apperception undertaken by
Fichte, Hegel vigorously rejects the understanding of thinking as primarily referred to a narrowly
construed human cognitive faculty alongside perception, intuition, or representation. Instead,
he conceives thinking as something that is „responsible for the humanity of all that is human“.1
This paper examines Hegel’s notions of thinking and knowing that he develops in response to
Kant’s declaration that the world in itself cannot be grasped by human thought and knowledge. It
shows that not only does Hegel affirm that thinking grasps reality, but he also promotes epistemo-
logical realism. He reveals that our concepts reflect the world as it actually is by capturing not only
the logical principles of thought but also the metaphysical principles of reality. With this move he
goes beyond Kant, for whom not everything that I can think about may be present in experience
and thus be an object of knowledge. Contrary to Kant, Hegel holds that the sphere of knowing
coincides with the sphere of thinking, i. e., all we can think about can be known. And since the
activity of thought is unlimited, not only is thinking capable of exploring reality in its totality, but
the flow of thought leads us to true cognition of what is actual.

1 Toward a New Concept of Thinking

Attempting to justify the claim that thinking grasps reality  – the idea that modern rationalists
had enthusiastically defended but failed to prove – Hegel explores the fundamental concepts that
govern our thinking. To substantiate his argument Hegel needs to determine a new concept of think-
ing which can explain the possibility of cognition, grasp its own processes, and capture the meta­
physical principles that underlie and govern all reality. This becomes the project of his Science of
Logic, whose subject matter is „thinking or more specifically conceptual thinking“.2 Understood in
this way thinking is not the causal „thought“ that is rooted in a stream of consciousness and is thus
arbitrary and limited, but the careful thinking that „conceives concepts.“ Hegel’s initial approach is

1 G. W. F. Hegel, Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Basic Outline, Part I: Science of Logic, trans. and ed. by
Klaus Brinkmann and Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Cambridge 2010, 29 (GW 20, § 2).
2 G. W. F. Hegel, The Science of Logic, trans. and ed. by George di Giovanni, Cambridge 2010, 23 (GW 21: 27).
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202   Hegel-Jahrbuch 2016

somewhat akin to empirical science. He starts with something assumed to be self-evident and then,
through analysis and critique of our implicit presuppositions, develops a positive theory of thinking
that can venture beyond our experience and produce concepts capturing the nature of reality itself.
Hegel uses „thinking“ (Denken) to designate the activity of thought, distinguishing it from
„thought“ (Gedanke) as the product or content of thinking. The notion of activity already implies
a dynamic that moves and develops. And indeed, thinking is never static; it is in constant flux:
thoughts lead to others which, in turn, produce new ones that grasp and describe reality with
more precision and adequacy. Thus thoughts, concepts, and their interrelations are in flux as
well. There is no moment when thought can pause; similarly, at no point in time can concepts
stop evolving or merging into one another. Thus thinking, caught in a restless dialectical pro-
cess,3 leads concepts to move beyond any fixed determination and precisely defined term onto the
next. Thinking is then a process of the continuing evolvement of thoughts. Hegel emphasizes the
ongoing change, active growth, and progression of thinking development. It would be incorrect,
however, to understand thinking simply as a linear sequence of thoughts. Instead, it is a self-con-
tained dynamic (dialectic) that, while constantly increasing in complexity, sustains and preserves
its comprehensive unity.
Talking about thinking as an activity usually involves discussing and exploring the capabili-
ties and functions of the human intellect. Hegel rejects such an approach. For him thinking is not
a narrowly construed human cognitive faculty, one among others. Instead, he conceives thinking
in a rather inclusive sense: „everything human is human … only as a result of thinking“.4 As activ-
ity of universalization, thinking is unlimited, infinite, and as much objective as it is subjective.
Hegel begins his investigation into thinking by comparing it, first, with other human faculties
and psychic activities such as perceiving, intuiting, representing, imagining and so on; second, with
the thinking subject or the „I“ who thinks; and third, with the object of the thinking „I“. He rejects the
identification of thinking with each of these as erroneous and partial5 and, instead, argues for their
dialectical sublation into a new concept of thinking. Thus it is important to understand why Hegel
believed that all of those three approaches are limited and not able to properly explain thinking.
Hegel embraces Aristotle’s doctrine that what distinguishes man from other living creatures is
the ability to think. He takes this further by stressing that thinking permeates (durchdringt) all other
properly human activities and that, as a self-sustaining and unlimited dynamic, thinking overreaches
(übergreifen) what is other than itself. This claim includes two important ideas: (a) that every human
activity necessarily involves thought; and (b) that whereas thinking serves as the ground of all other
activities, it does not require an underpinning itself. Hegel maintains that „thinking [is] at work in
everything human“.6 Humans alone have religion, right, and morality due to the fact that, although
in these spheres we rely on feeling, belief, or representation, the thinking „activity and its products
are present and contained therein“.7 By „contained“ Hegel means not just that perception, intuition,
willing and other human faculties are infused with thinking, but that they are „merely further speci-
fications of thinking“ itself8 – as whatever humans do is determined (bestimmt) by thinking. Further-
more, while all other psychical activities can be objects of thought, thought itself is not an object for
them. Hegel argues that the unification function of conceptual activity is derived from the universality
inherent to thinking and cannot – contrary to Kant’s assessment9 – be furnished by any other faculty

3 This insistence on an equally dynamic nature of both thoughts and thinking takes Hegel beyond Frege, who dis-
tinguishes sharply between pure concepts and the contingencies of the mind that thinks them. Isolated from any
contamination by the latter, Frege assumes thoughts and concepts to be unchanging and static.
4 Hegel, Encyclopedia, 29 (GW 20, § 2).
5 Ibid., 50–67 (GW 20, §§ 20–25).
6 Ibid., 29 (GW 20, § 2).
7 Ibid (GW 20, § 2R).
8 Ibid., 59 (GW 20, § 24 A 1).
9 Cf. I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. and ed. by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood, Cambridge and New York 1998,
209–213, 226–34 (I. Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft A 76–80 / B 102–105, A 95–110).
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  Marina F. Bykova, On Thinking and Knowing   203

of mind whose objects are singularities. As universalizing activity par excellence, thinking generates
syntheses.10 Pure thought, always implicit in intuition, perception, and representation develops the
scope, relations, and internal structures that make cognition possible.
Although Hegel is largely sympathetic to traditional philosophical views that associate the „I“
and its identity with thinking rather than with other psychical activities,11 he rejects an instrumen-
talist approach to thinking. For Hegel, the „I“ is not „in possession“ of thought; it does not „have“
thought, at least not in the same way as it can „have“ sensations, desires, intuitions, emotions, or
feelings. Thinking is not a tool that the „I“ can use or discard. It is the very essence of the „I“. However
hard I may try, I cannot distance myself from my own thinking without losing myself altogether.
The „I“ is „constituted“ by thinking, and, in this sense, is identical with it; it is thought
thinking itself.12 This is why Hegel claims that there cannot be a proper subject of thought other
than thought itself; thinking, in other words, must be its own substratum. Hence, Hegel rejects
traditional substantialist conceptions which either merge thinking with one of its appearances,
namely representation (thus making thinking into a sort of permanent idea of the mind) or else
equate „thinking“ with the „thinker“.13 Although thinking reveals to us all things, including our-
selves, as universal activity it cannot be a singular substance.
Building upon an established view that thinking always tends toward, intends, or is „about“
something, Hegel formulates two important ideas concerning the structure of thought and its rela-
tion to the object: (a) thinking is capable of transcending itself, and (b) the content of thought is
an essential part of thought itself. Both ideas need some further clarification.
Since thinking is an activity, and activity involves interaction, the structure of thinking can
be described as a system of relations, the most fundamental of which is a relation to objects. Thus
the fundamental insight about thinking is that it is also directed toward something other than
itself: thinking is able to „overreach“ beyond itself. When the object of thinking is thinking itself,
Hegel speaks of a strictly logical activity. This is „pure“ thinking in a self-relating mode, i. e., it is
a thought form (Denkform) that enables attainment of „the cognition of the infinite form, that is, of
the concept“14 and is thus able to „reconstitute“ (i. e., grasp conceptually) the identity of thought
and object. Although the pure concept of the structural identity of thought and object becomes
intelligible only in the science of logic, all experience is a result of the overreaching activity of
thought that goes beyond itself in a quest to know and grasp (internalize) its object. Everything that
may at first be viewed as alien to thought can ultimately be grasped only through thinking, because
the objective independence of things is itself a product of thought – not of sensation, perception or
understanding alone. Thinking provides a synthesis of multiple qualities and patterns by tracing
their objective connections and holding them together in the concept of the oneness of the object.
Given that all thinking is thinking about something, an object or content is essential to thought
itself. This structural identity between thought and object provides a foundation for knowing the
world as it is and not merely as we experience it. Thinking does not just make strong cognitive
claims; it actually provides cognitive means unavailable to perception, intuition, or even the
understanding. Conceptual comprehension (Begreifen) provides concepts that capture the nature
of reality; as such, comprehension is the process of knowing proper. Stressing the cognitive role
of conceptuality, Hegel points out that just as the essence of things can be traced back to thoughts
(and not to any perceptible features available to our senses), the most important structures and
patterns of reality are discerned by conceptual thinking.

10 Hegel, The Science of Logic, 73–74 (GW 21: 84–86).

11 Cf. Hegel, Encyclopedia, 59–60 (GW 20, § 24 A 1).
12 Cf. ibid., 51 (GW 20, § 20).
13 Ibid., 51–52 (GW 20, § 20R).
14 Hegel, The Science of Logic, 42 (GW 21: 48).
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204   Hegel-Jahrbuch 2016

2 H
 egel’s Epistemological Realism
and the Concept of Knowing
Hegel rejects Kant’s view that in the process of cognition thoughts are imposed upon reality. He
insists instead that thoughts are embedded in things independently of our thinking. Things are
self-determined unities, and not united solely by the activity that thinks them. This claim has two
implications: first, it implies that thoughts are as much objective as they are subjective – affirming
the identity of thought and being that is central to Hegel’s system; second, the claim also sup-
ports Hegel’s epistemological realism by implying that the world is genuinely independent of our
thinking and contains objective structures that can be discovered. Thus to know is not to figure out
preordained thoughts; it is to disclose the intelligible structure of the world, those law-like regu-
larities that can be systematized and shown to be conceptual or rational in form. In the attempt to
gain knowledge, we seek to grasp reality as it actually is – not as it is experienced by us.
But how do we come to know reality? This question is central to the 1807 Phenomenology of
Spirit, whose project Hegel describes as „the exposition of phenomenal knowledge“.15 Here he
develops a sophisticated account of epistemology, defending it against a wide range of skeptical,
subjectivist, and relativist views, and criticizing these internally on the basis of their own principles
and definitions. Hegel begins his 1807 inquiry by rejecting a traditional view – common to empiri-
cists but also shared by Kant – according to which knowledge is a kind of instrument or medium by
which we grasp reality. He argues that this view separates knowledge from reality, thus challenging
our ability to truly know anything that actually is. We must therefore abandon these „useless ideas
and expressions“ about knowledge as an instrument or medium and embrace a completely new
approach. „But the examination of knowing cannot take place other than by way of knowing. With
this so-called instrument, examining it means nothing other than acquiring knowledge of it“.16
Thus, obtaining true knowledge presupposes being engaged in a process, just as learning to swim
presupposes that we first „venture into the water“. In order to have „actual cognition of what there
is in truth“17 we must plunge into the stream of consciousness and examine it as it appears to itself.
Hence, the Phenomenology of Spirit traces the progression of consciousness in its restless search
for true knowledge. Hegel takes us along the itinerary of a consciousness that, appearing on the
scene in a simple form, makes strong claims to genuine knowledge only to find relative and partial
cognitions. Thus one Gestalt of consciousness must develop into another which in turn, proving
inadequate, evolves into a third and so on, until consciousness reaches knowledge without any
residue of partiality. As such, thinking is able to grasp reality as it truly is, i. e., to grasp it absolutely.
Hegel uses the term „knowing“ (Wissen) to emphasize the dynamic character of cognition. Like
thinking, knowing too is neither immediate nor can it remain fixed and unchanged. Knowing devel-
ops over time; it grows into what it becomes. It can be described as coming to know, a cumulative
process that involves a full development and display of the concepts that express our cognitions.
Knowing progresses and modifies itself as it explores and stirs deeper into its object. In the search for
more adequate concepts, knowing constantly revises itself; it opposes its own previous formulations
and overcomes them in more advanced concepts, thus revealing its dialectical nature.
Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit shows that the concepts we presuppose are not just subjec-
tive features of thinking. They are rather products of our human historical experience. By closing
this work with Absolute Knowing, Hegel shows that we may have genuine knowledge of the world,
a knowledge resulting from a long process of intensive „training and educating“ our thinking
through our interactions with and within the world. Thinking comes to incorporate individual

15 G. W. F. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, Wolfgang Bonsiepen und Reinhard Heede (Hg.), Hamburg 1980, GW 9,
55.
16 Hegel, Encyclopedia, 38 (GW 20, § 10R).
17 Hegel, Phänomenologie, GW 9: 53.
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  Marina F. Bykova, On Thinking and Knowing   205

and collective experience  – including specific outcomes of practical applications of ideas and
thoughts. Hence, our concepts reflect the world as it actually is by capturing not only the logical
principles of thought but also the metaphysical principles of reality.
With this move Hegel goes beyond Kant, who argued that we can think but not know things-
in-themselves, since they supply no intuitions for our concepts. Kant held that „To cognize an
object, it is required that I be able to prove its possibility […] But I can think whatever I like, as long
as I do not contradict myself, i. e., as long as my concept is a possible thought.“18
For Kant, then, not everything that I can think may be present in experience and thus be an
object of knowledge. And although all that I know has actual existence (concepts of the understand-
ing have objective validity), not everything that exists or has real possibility can be known. Reject-
ing this view, Hegel maintains that the following are both true: all objects of our knowledge actually
exist – the thesis strongly defended by Kant19 and all existing objects can be known, the claim that
Kant refuses to accept. Furthermore, Hegel holds that the sphere of (possible) knowing coincides
with the sphere of thinking, i. e., all we can think about can be known. And since there is no limit
to the activity of thought, not only is thinking capable of exploring reality in its totality, but the flow
of thought (driven by its inner dialectical momentum) leads us to true cognition of what is actual.
Hegel is not saying that we always know the truth of everything we encounter in our think-
ing. Neither does he predict the course that thinking will actually travel. Thought’s path is neither
linear nor predetermined, but rather a dialectical progression; we discover it as we go along,
learning from our failures. What counts as known or as knowable is revealed as thought examines
itself in action, scrutinizing and correcting what it takes to be genuinely true at each stage of its
development. One of the most valuable lessons of this process is that every concept that allegedly
captures the truth of a particular separate experience is limited, partial, and abstract. Yet to truly
know is to grasp reality in its totality, namely as a rational whole of interrelated moments. Thus
individual concepts must become increasingly encompassing in order to „match“ the true struc-
ture of reality and thus generate a true grasp of the world. Accordingly, even though the quest for
„absolute knowing“ is the basic theme of Phenomenology of Spirit, it eventually becomes the focus
of Hegel’s entire system. This is not just because such a „system“ of philosophical sciences treats
a wide range of substantive epistemological issues. Hegel argues that the most adequate, com-
plete account of absolute knowing is only attainable in form of an organized totality of cognitions
constituting itself as system (die Wissenschaft). This system of knowledge develops from a kind of
thinking that generates its categories internally and that – through self-criticism – overcomes its
own limitations at each stage.
Reality, then, can be adequately and fully rendered in concepts. Such knowledge is the result
of the whole process of philosophizing, which resembles a circle that presupposes its end (or its
goal) but is actual only when completed.20 The important feature of knowledge that this circular-
ity points to is that the very process (coming-to-be) of cognition is an integral part of the result
reached. Thus comprehensive knowing involves not only the exploration (carried out in Phenom-
enology of Spirit) of the possibility of absolute knowing, but the actual grasp of this possibility as
provided by the account of thought in and for itself. This investigation into the „pure“ structure
of thinking is undertaken in the Science of Logic. Yet knowledge results from internalization of
the materials of our historical experience. Hence, the philosophical account of knowing must be
validated in terms of thought’s manifold relations to natural and social givens. This is masterfully
portrayed in the Encyclopaedia’s Philosophy of Nature and Philosophy of Spirit.
The philosophical system thus represents the unfolding of a cognitive process that leads to
a comprehensive and complete form of knowledge. At whatever stage philosophical inquiry may

18 Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, B xxvi.

19 Cf. I.Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, trans. and ed. by Paul Guyer, Cambridge and New York 2000, § 76. (I.
Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, AA 5: 401–404).
20 Hegel, Phänomenologie, GW 9: 18.
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find itself, it is always a quest for absolute knowing. Consequently, concepts and ideas resulting
from rational inquiry, however partial and inadequate at any given point in time, are only diffe­
rent ways of rendering reality intelligible through the medium of thought. The fact that concepts
can capture the structures of nature and society (or that thinking can grasp the essence of reality)
affirms the validity of the claim to absolute knowing, and indicates that the patterns of thought are
patterns of actuality as a whole. What thoughts and concepts reveal is the inherent rationality of
the real, which is a distilled result of human social and historical experience. Thus Hegel’s episte-
mological realism is not just consistent with a social and historical account of human knowledge
but is based on his „social ontology“.21 The question of the possibility of absolute knowledge can
be adequately discussed and answered only within the context of human development, namely in
terms of an analysis of our experiences of the world through history. Grasping these experiences
conceptually is how our thinking comes to match the world we are capable of knowing.

Prof. Dr. Marina F. Bykova

Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies
North Carolina State University
Campus Box 8103
Raleigh, NC 27695-8103
USA
mfbykova@ncsu.edu

21 For a concise summary of Hegel’s „social ontology“ see Kenneth R. Westphal, „Spirit (Geist)“, in: A Dictionary of
Continental Philosophy, ed. by J. Protevi, New Haven 2006, 555–556.
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