Formative Moments
Hegel's Science of Logic (1)
A new video series will premier September 23rd at 8pm CET focused on Hegel’s Science of Logic:
This video series is a preview and preparation for a Philosophy Portal course on the same topic, which starts January 23rd 2023 (early bird prices available until end of September).
In the first video, we take an in-depth look at four major “formative moments” in Hegel’s thinking between 1800-1807, in order to better prepare for the Science of Logic itself. Here we can divide these four “formative moments” into four different categories which Hegel develops before releasing the Phenomenology of Spirit (which I have written about here):
Understanding to Reason (1801-02)
Intuition and Concept (1802-03)
Consciousness of the Whole (1803-04)
Conceptual Self-Differentiation (1805-07)
Understanding to Reason (1801-02)
Hegel develops his ideas on Understanding and Reason in relation to the notion of “bad infinity.” This is really a crucial notion to grasp as a window into Hegel’s thought, since it governs a step that has to be made correctly, if you are to really enter the rest of his thought, and more importantly, apply it to your own spiritual existence. He deploys this notion in relation to the “coming-to-be” of the philosopher, or more properly, philosophical knowing, which is really his deepest concern. In the coming-to-be of the philosopher, there is the risk of developing what Hegel calls a systematic logic of finite forms, which conveys a false impression of absoluteness.
In all systematic logics of finite forms, there is the appearance of what Hegel calls “bad infinity” which emerges on the level of the subject’s understanding (something missed by Spinoza, who is a actually a good example of bad infinity, of thinking substance of finite forms without self-relating subjectivity). A “bad infinity” can be defined as a spurious or indefinite series of finite forms without end, like, for example, a logical theory of all the stars and galaxies in the universe, or all the life forms on the planet, or all natural number known to mathematics. This “bad infinity” lacks what would bring depth to this indefinite series, namely, a “being-for-itself.” As we will find out in the Phenomenology of Spirit, “being-for-itself” and the “in-itself'“ are not separated, but fundamentally connected in a coming-to-be.
What rescues the understanding from its own lack of self-reflectivity, is reason, which destroys or tears apart the unreflective immediacy of the “bad infinity,” and rather puts the understanding (as the “most powerful force”) in the service of human or spiritual ends. This step is so important to get right, because it is all too often the case, that in the coming-to-be of the philosopher, the understanding starts to gain the quality of a “bad infinity” and convey the impression of an unreflective “false absolute.” In situation like this, we are deprived of a potentially good philosophical mind, and left with the tyranny of a fixed understanding, which not only does violence to others, but to itself.
Intuition and Concept (1802-03)
Many of Hegel’s contemporaries, like Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Schelling, were also interested in the distinction between intuition and concept. Hegel in particular develops his own philosophical system in working the tension of these two concepts. He suggests that this tension is first at work in life itself, between the sense-immediacy of an organic life form, which exists for-itself as a simple unity, but which must tarry with the fragmented and disparate otherness of its environmental medium, reflectively including within itself this otherness in order to differentiate itself and become what it is in truth. Here we can think of Hegel as a thinker of autopoiesis, in the sense that he is not simply interested in how external pressures are involved in selecting organic form, but also interested in the dynamic between the simple self-reflective organic unity and this external medium exerting selective pressures.
Hegel then suggests that this process takes on a different order in the human social world, from the immediate intuitive feeling of oneness (self-identity with the All), towards the establishment of unified institutions and laws responding to the conflicts, problems and difficulties of ethical life (which present to consciousness “a whole nest” of contradictions). For Hegel, this process moving from the immediate identification with universality in intuition, through the hard-work or labour of the concept on the level of society as a whole, involves recognising the way the universal moves through all particularity, and that particularity is caught up in constant antinomic tension (to which the institutions and laws are an attempt at a response, i.e. norm-setting in the void). Here we find Hegel’s theory of the formation of a religious peoples, which does not so much involve a relation to a supernatural world or being, but rather involves a relation to a common ground of normative practices enshrined in institutions and laws.
Therefore, when we think of the modern secular world, and we tend to assume it is of an areligious or non-religious character, we forget that, for Hegel, actual religious life is not taking place on the level of an extra-spiritual dimension separate from this world, but rather in our common ground. Perhaps that is why many contemporary philosophers seek to analyse contemporary religion on the level of libidinal and capitalist norms, which implicitly represents our shared ground, what we all recognise as our collective substance, even in the impossibility of shared agreements on the level of international institutions and laws.
Consciousness and the Whole (1803-04)
Next Hegel shifts his attention to consciousness as the expression of the highest point of nature, as nature reflecting itself, and in the process, becoming spirit. For Hegel there is a Nature in-itself, but it does not become fully intelligible for-itself until there is spiritual reflection in the form of consciousness. It is in the combination of nature in-itself and consciousness for-itself, that nature has the capacity for intelligibility on the level of reason and logic, which invokes or anticipates a type of quantum mechanical understanding of nature.
With the emergence of consciousness, there is the appearance of language, and with the appearance of language, there is the appearance of a people. In short, for Hegel, in order for there to be a people with a religious identity, there needs to be first the appearance of a consciousness with a shared language. Consequently, a people with a shared religious identity will break down, if there is a break down in their shared language and shared consciousness. Perhaps this is why all explicit religious peoples, maintain community and cohesion, through the privileging of essential texts, so that everyone can identify with a common language, and a common conscious experience or story of reality. The advantages of being within such a community, with a shared people and language, for Hegel, is the opening for a deeper capacity of self-differentiation, or subjective depth.
Here we reach Hegel’s concept of “true infinity,” juxtaposed against the previous concept of “bad infinity.” Whereas “bad infinity” is the indefinite series of finite forms, fixed in the understanding, “true infinity” is a self-relating to otherness or negativity opening a process of differentiation in the conceptual notion. The whole formation of the shared consciousness, language, and people, is made possible by, and deepens the capacities of, “true infinities,” which transform the shifting and transient nature of reality in-itself, into a stable whole that has the capacity of “being-for-itself” with the other. We reach the level of philosophical knowing, when the nature of the “in-itself” is known from the standpoint of this differentiated “being-for-itself” (not an “intuitive one,” but a conceptual “one and the other”).
Conceptual Self-Differentiation (1805-07)
Next, Hegel focuses on the idea that nature becomes certain of itself through self-reflexive social constitution. This is of course related to the idea that, for Hegel, nature’s highest point is consciousness, as spirit reflecting on itself. When we take this idea to its logical extreme, in the formation of a shared consciousness, language and peoples, it is the formalisation of this “new peoples” or “new religious community” which brings self-reflexive certainty to nature. Before the appearance of this shared reflexive social constitution, nature in-itself is indeterminate, not yet fully intelligible through the concept.
What thus opens up in a self-reflexive social constitution is the processes of self-differentiation on the level of art, science (inclusive of philosophy), and religion. This triad represents, for Hegel, the “science of the concept,” where the natural in-itself, and the spiritual in-itself, gains a logical determinacy, from the logic-work of spirit. From this logic-work, a universe of meaning emerges and constitutes the whole of spirit’s shared world. Art makes the concept’s own nature intelligible, science makes spirit’s natural world intelligible, and religion makes spirit’s nature intelligible. The conceptual determinations of art, science and religion, thus constitute the whole of a shared people’s certainty of being in indeterminacy.
Hegel’s logic on the level of the science of the concept, functions in a similar way to Kant’s Transcendental Logic, but without the assumption of a noumena or a thing-in-itself external to the phenomenal appearances of being. For Kant, intelligibility as “phenomenal objectivity” is only possible against an impossible background of a thing-in-itself (as the real objectivity) which will forever remain unknown and unintelligible. For Hegel, this is a presupposition of Kant’s understanding, a one without the other, a presupposition that is made unnecessary by seeing the negativity of reason (its contradictory nature, i.e. antinomies of art, science, religion), as a positivity of reason, or the power of reason. In other words, when we are in conflict in our various processes of self-differentiation via art, science and religion, it is the capacity of reason to work with the antinomies, which brings it to the site or the locus of the thing-in-itself or the noumenal dimension of phenomena (“the real objectivity”). Again, one should make sure to understand well Hegel’s first point about the transition from the understanding to reason, in order to understand his system as a whole, and also apply it practically, to one’s own spiritual existence.
THE PHILOSOPHER IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS
These four dimensions of Hegel’s early thought, or pre-Phenomenology of Spirit thought, are critical for understanding what, for Hegel, it means to be a responsible philosopher. Or to say it in another way, if the philosopher’s of a society do not take responsibility for the difference between “understanding and reason,” “intuition and concept,” “consciousness of the whole,” and “conceptual self-differentiation,” then the foundations of a society would no longer be capable of supporting the becoming of “true infinity,” and would quickly fall into “bad” or “spurious” infinities.
Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit in 1807
After the development of these ideas, Hegel published his much anticipated Phenomenology of Spirit in 1807, which was meant to be a science of experience functioning as a prelude to his next work, the Science of Logic. Hegel’s real aim was always the science of logic, not necessarily phenomenology or experience, since, for Hegel, logic was present as a seed from the very first (phenomenal experience), and is fully matured or developed at the very end (of phenomenal experience). That is to say that logic is present in the first distinctions of consciousness, on the level of sense-immediacy, and logic is present in a matured form of philosophical knowing, when the experience of having a “self” or an “I,” itself disappears (evaporates), and one simply becomes a becoming-other to the “self” or the “I.” This is where abstract immediacy really becomes concrete, where the “in-itself,” really becomes “for-itself.”
For more on the Phenomenology of Spirit, see: Phenomenology of Spirit
For more on the upcoming course on the Science of Logic, see: Science of Logic