Georg W. F.

Hegel
Born: 1770, Stuttgart, Germany Died: 1831, Berlin, Germany

Major Works: Phenomenology of Spirit (Phanomenologie des Geistes, 1806); Science of Logic (Wissenschaft der Logik, 1812-16); Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline (Enzyklopadie der Philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse, (1817, 1827); Philosophy of Right (Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, 1821) Major Ideas: To identify the categories inherent in our own subjective thinking is at the same time to identify objective reality's fundamental character or meaning. "The Idea," "reason," or "God"--the full actualization of which is spirit-is reality's fundamental character. The stages both of nature and of human activity are stages through which the Idea passes in becoming actual as spirit. As beings with the power of thinking and so of willing and acting freely, we human beings are the bearers or vehicles of reality's actualization as spirit.

Although he is often thought of as the philosopher from whose idealistic "mystification" Karl Marx distinguished his own philosophical materialism, Hegel was not an idealist in the usual sense of the term, nor can his kind of idealism be contrasted in any simple way to materialism. Hegel did not agree with such a "subjective" idealist as George Berkeley in saying that things exist, or have reality, only if they are perceived by a human or divine "mind." Nor did he agree even with Immanuel Kant, his immediate predecessor with whom he otherwise had much in common, in maintaining that things as we know them-as contrasted with unknowable things as they are in themselves-are constituted as objects by the functioning of our minds. Things do exist independently of anyone's having knowledge or experience of them, Hegel made clear as against Berkeley and, in contrast to Kant's distinction between the "phenomenal" world of knowable objects and the "noumenal" world of unknowable things in themselves, Hegel maintained th at the world of knowable objects is the world: As we know or experience it, so "what is"--whether it be a stone, a tree, a dog, a person, or God in the sense of the Absolute that all finite beings manifest-really is.

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Hegel nevertheless was an idealist, however. For if the world is knowable by us, he reasoned, then--since knowing is an activity of thinking, and since thinking has its own inner principles and concepts--this world's fundamental character must be as we necessarily, that is, logically and validly, think or conceive it to be. As our thinking necessarily thinks or conceives it to be, so "what is" must be, such that by "deducing" in the science of logic the "necessary forms and self-determinations of thought," we thereby at the same time come to know the fundamental character or meaning of everything that is. "What is, is reason," then, according to Hegel, not in the sense that our subjective reasoning creates or invents the world of beings but, instead, in the sense that our subjective reason ("self-conscious reason") comprehends or grasps the "reason which is in the world." "Nothing is actual except the Idea," to be sure, Hegel said, and in saying this he surely was an "idealist." But "the Idea," "the Absolute ," "God," is not a "chimera" or "phantasm"; it is the fundamental character of "what is," and to call it "the Idea" or "reason" is only to indicate that our knowledge of it is by way of knowing the principles and concepts of logic, "the logical Idea." As is suggested by his identification of the deductions in the science of logic, "the logical Idea," with "the exposition of God as he is in his eternal essence," Hegel had a Strong interest in religion and, specifically, Lutheran Christianity. Indeed, his original, plan was to enter the Lutheran ministry, and, upon completing Gymnasium in 1788, he began a program of theological study at Tubingen Seminary (where he shared quarters with Friedrich Holderlin, the poet, and Friedrich Schelling, the philosopher who was to become his most prominent philosophical friend and rival and, later, his successor as professor of philosophy and rector of Berlin University). Having shifted his interest from theology to philosophy, but unable to secure a university post after his graduation from the seminary in 1793, he then worked as a tutor in Bern and Frankfurt. At Schelling's invitation, he moved to Jena in 1801, where, after submitting a dissertation on the orbiting of the planets; a critique of Kepler and Newton, he received his postdoctoral habilitation, the right to teach in a state university. Only in 1805, however, did he finally become an associate professor (with a very small salary) at the University of Jena. His tenure in this position turned out to be short. For in 1806 Napoleon defeated the Prussian Army at the Battle of Jena, the university was closed, and Hegel was forced to leave the city with his one copy of his just-completed first major work, Phenomenology of Spirit, in his hands and ready for the publisher. After working as editor of a newspaper in Bamberg in 1807, Hegel then became headmaster of a Gymnasium in Nuremburg in 1808, where he served until 1816. During this period, in 1811 at age forty-one, he married Marie von Tucher, age twenty, and, in 1812, his Science of Logic was published in three volumes. Then in 1816, at age forty six Hegel secured his first genuine university appointment. He became a full professor of philosophy at the University of Heidelberg, where, in 1817, his Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline was published. In 1818 Hegel was appointed to the position as professor of philosophy at Berlin University, for which he is best known and in which he remained until his death in 1831. His Philosophy of Right was published in 1821, a revision of his Encyclopedia was published in 1827, and, after his death, his lectures on the history of philosophy, on the philosophy of

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history, on aesthetics, and on the philosophy of religion were edited and published by his students. He had become rector (president) of Berlin University in 1829. Hegel was then and continues today to be one of the major enduring influences on philosophical thinking. Karl Marx, for example, in the generation directly after Hegel's, "openly avowed [him] self the pupil of that mighty thinker." And even though Hegel's influence diminished somewhat during the last half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries, it increased again around the middle of the twentieth century. Martin Heidegger's and Jean Paul Sartre's existentialist philosophies owe much to Hegel and even adopt much of Hegel's vocabulary, and in philosophical theology both the Catholic theologian Hans Kung and the Protestant theologian Paul Tillich acknowledge their indebtedness to Hegel. (When Tillich first came to this country, he was asked by students at Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University where he stood philosophically. His answer: Somewhere between Hegel and Schelling.) Even today the Hegel Society of America is an active and thriving professional association whose jo urnal, The Owl of Minerva, serves as a focal point for Hegel scholarship, and, as the brief bibliography attached here indicates, important books about and building upon Hegel's thought continue to be published and discussed. Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline "God does not remain petrified and dead," Hegel says in the introduction to part 3 of his Encyclopedia; "the very stones cry out and raise themselves to spirit." This formula points to the three main parts both of his Encyclopedia and of his philosophical system as a whole. "God"--the Idea, the Absolute, reason, "the Being," being-itself, of which all other beings both natural and spiritual, are finite actualizations or "differentiations"--comprises the subject matter of part 1, Logic; "stones," along with all other natural, prespiritual finite beings, comprise the subject matter of part 2, Philosophy of Nature; and "spirit," namely, the world of thinking (and therefore free) beings, comprises the subject matter of part 3, Philosophy of Spirit. Knowing is an activity of thinking, we need to note in order to make at least some sense, first, of Hegel's Logic and then of his Philosophy of Nature and Philosophy of Spirit. To know any object, a piece of sugar, say, to use Hegel's own example, is--by thinking--to assimilate it within oneself in the form of thought, conception. "In thinking an object," as he puts it, "I make it into thought and deprive it of its sensuous aspect; I make it into something which is directly and essentially mine." As comprehended in thought, the piece of sugar is no longer alien or strange to us. Even though the piece of sugar is still there before us, in the bowl, it is no longer something that is simply given to our senses of sight and taste; instead, insofar as by thinking we comprehend it conceptually, "it then ceases to stand over against me and I have taken from it the character of its own which it had in opposition to me." But how is this possible? Not merely by seeing and tasting the piece of sugar, Hegel argues. For, as Immanuel Kant demonstrated in his Critique of Pure Reason (1781), by seeing and tasting we can sense only such qualities as hardness and sweetness; we cannot know the piece of sugar as a piece of sugar, that is, as an object that unites or has these qualities. The

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piece of sugar's unity cannot be sensed. Yet we surely do experience the piece of sugar as a piece of sugar, as a whole, a unity, rather than merely as a collection of sense-qualities; we know it as a unity-in-difference. How? the unity of which we are aware must be contributed by our own thinking. "When ... we look at a piece of sugar, we find it is hard, sweet, etc. All these properties we say are united in one object. Now it is this unity that is not found in the sensation." Instead, Hegel maintains, "it is evident only to thought." Hence in addition to the principles of the "common logic," the laws of identity, contradiction, and excluded middle, there are concepts--thought-determinations (Denkbestimmungen) or categories-that are internal to our thinking that we bring to experience, so to speak, that make our knowledge of objects as objects possible, and it is the task of Logic, according to Hegel, to identify these concepts by analyzing our conscious, subjective thinking. There is a crucial disagreement between Hegel and Kant at this point, however. For whereas Kant draws the conclusion that, since objects are constituted as objects by the functioning of our subjective thinking, the objects of which we have knowledge ("phenomena") differ from things as they are in themselves ("noumena"), Hegel points out that, "though the categories, such as unity, or cause and effect, are strictly the property of thought, it by no means follows that they must be ours only and not also characteristics of the objects." He then concludes, instead (for r easons that cannot be explained here), that the categories of logic comprise "thoughts accredited able to express the essential reality of things." For Hegel, then, in disagreement with Kant, "logic therefore coincides with metaphysics, the science of things set and held in thoughts"; as we think or conceive "what is" by means of the categories inherent in our subjective thinking, so, according to Hegel, "what is" really is. "What is, is reason," not in the sense that it exists only in our subjective reason but, instead, in the sense that, as we conceive it in our rational thinking, so "what is" really is. Thus the question at issue is, If an object is known by us, then by what thoughts or concepts do we necessarily think it? Or, in another way of posing the same question, If it is to be thinkable by us, what must any being's fundamental character be? And the answer, Hegel maintains, is "the logical Idea," the highest and most adequate category of which is "the Notion," or, what is somewhat easier to explain, the concept of "concrete universality." No matter what the "what is" may be, Hegel contends, be it a piece of sugar, a stone, a tree, a dog, an "I," or being-itself-God--we think or conceive it as containing three "dialectical" aspects or "moments": universality, particularity, and individuality. Since thinking necessarily thinks it so, everything that is is rational, in that (although in varying degrees) it is "syllogistic"--"dialectical"--in form. "The syllogistic form is a universal form of all things," as Hegel puts it; "everything that exists is an individual [Besondere], which couples together the u niversal [Allgemein] and the particular [Einzeln]." (This is at bottom what Hegel means by his now-famous and often-misunderstood statement, "What is rational is actual and what is actual is rational.") Now if (according to Hegel's Logic) we "deduce" this syllogistic form to be the fundamental character of everything that is, including God, then (as he claims in the Philosophy of Nature and the Philosophy of Spirit) we "apply" logic to the worlds of nature and spirit by "recogniz[ing] the logical forms under the shapes they assume in nature and spirit," that is by comprehending natural and spiritual beings as expressions of this syllogistic form. Moreover,

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since the degree to which a being expresses the syllogistic form is also the degree to which the being is "true" or "actual," we can trace out, in nature and spirit, the stages through which the Idea, reason God passes on its way to becoming fully actual. Since "nature is weak and fails to exhibit the logical forms in their purity," we can most easily clarify what it means to say that to be something, not no-thing, is to be syllogistic, rational, by first considering spirit. Then, albeit only briefly, we can consider nature and show how stones, trees, dogs, and even humans (considered as biological! psychological organisms rather than as bearers of spirit, thinking beings), progressively actualize the Idea's syllogistic form. Spirit is "thinking being," and a thinking being is an "I," a person;, it is "thought as a thinker." Consequently we can understand what Hegel means by saying that "What is, is reason" by analyzing the "moments" comprising us as "I"s, thinking beings, persons. First of all, I can distinguish within myself the "I" that is actively thinking from any and all of its possible contents, that is, from all particular thoughts that it might think. "When I say 'I'," as Hegel explains in his Philosophy of Right, "I eo ipso abandon all my particular characteristics, my disposition, natural endowment, knowledge, and age. The ego is quite empty, a mere point, simple, yet active in this simplicity." This active but so far empty "I" is the "I" qua universal. But as a thinking "mere point," I also will and act. That is, I make myself particular or determinate; the "I" does not remain empty but in its activity it wills a content and so differentiates itself. If, for example, I will to affirm or believe a proposition, then in doing so I make myself determinate, particular, restricted; I hold this belief rather than other beliefs, and to this extent I am particularized, differentiated. My beliefs, opinions, and practical purposes are particulars that are now contents of myself qua "I." Qua "I" Tam universal in my activity of willing these contents, but I am particularized, differentiated, in having willed these contents. I am both universal and particular; specifically, in Hegel's language, I am a self-differentiated universal. As Hegel puts it, "Every self-consciousness knows itself (i) as universal, as the potentiality of abstracting from everything determinate, and (ii) as particular, with a determinate object, content, and aim." I am also in unity with myself in my differences or particulars, at least in some degree--since otherwise my beliefs and actions would not be mine at all--and to this degree I am an individual; that is, I actualize the syllogistic form and so am in this sense rational, "true." For "these moments [of universality and particularity] are only abstractions; what is concrete and true (and everything true is concrete) is the universality which has the particular as its opposite, but the particular which by its reflection into itself has been equalized with the universal. This unity is individuality ... in accordance with its concept [that is, its Notion or syllogistic form] ." A being--and of course being-itself, the Idea, as well--is "true" or "actual," then, to the degree to which it exhibits the syllogistic form, concrete universality, that is, to the degree to which it is a universal that is both differentiated and in unity with itself in its differences. Hence it follows, according to Hegel, that we can distinguish degrees of "truth" or "actuality" within the spheres both of nature and of spirit.

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A stone, for example, exhibits the syllogistic form only minimally. A stone is differentiated, to be sure, in that it is made up of grains of sand, and it is in unity with itself in its differences at least to the extent that the grains of sand are bound together in a whole. But its unity is only accidental. A stone does not have a center, a self, in which the differences, the grains of sand, are united; instead, the grains of sand remain "mutually external" to one another. Rather than concrete universality, a stone exhibits "asunderness." A living plant, however, exhibits the syllogistic form to a greater degree and so is more "true" or "actual." For "in the plant," as Hegel explains, "we see a center which has overflowed into the periphery, a concentration of the differences, a self-development from within outwards, a unity which differentiates itself and from its differentiation produces itself in the bud." But a plant nevertheless does not exhibit the syllogistic form (the Idea) adequately, and so lacks "truth" or "actuality," for the reason that it lacks a definite center. It is not conscious, "and consequently the organs are not held in complete subjection to the unity of the subject." The syllogistic form, the Idea, is exhibited in a greater degree, then, in an animal, since in an animal there is a conscious, "feeling" center in which the animal's differences are united. Here "the whole is so pervaded by its unity that nothing in it appears as independent, every determinateness is at once ideal, the animal remaining in every determinateness the same one universal." For "the animal is self-existent subjectivity and has feeling" so that "the animal is self-determined, from within outwards, not merely from outside." But while the animal's center is conscious, it is not yet self-conscious--the animal's self feels, but it cannot think-and so it is not fully in unity with itself in its differences, not free; "in the animal, the soul is not yet for the soul," as Hegel puts it, "the universal as such is not yet for the universal." And to this extent it falls short of "truth" or "actuality"; it is not yet an adequate expression of the syllogistic form, the Idea. It is only in spirit, then, that is, as thinking being, an "I," that the syllogistic form, concrete universality, can be (even if in fact it is not) fully expressed. This is so because thinking being's center, the universal "I," freely wills its differences--specifically, its theoretical beliefs and practical actions--whereas the animal's center, the "animal soul," "has no will and must obey its impulse if nothing external deters it." Qua "I"s, bearers of spirit, we human beings are free from determination by everything external to us, whereas the animal's center is "tied to one determinateness," namely, whatever happens to be its strongest impulse. As thinking beings, "I"s, bearers of spirit, we human beings therefore have it as our specific potentiality, our "specific Notion," as Hegel puts it, to exhibit the syllogistic form, concrete universality, in full and so to be fully "true" or "actual." But for us this is not something that is immediately given. We have to actualize this potentiality and, according to Hegel, it is our duty to do so. "To such an extent as man is and acts like a creature of nature," as he puts it in his Logic, "his whole behavior is what it ought not to be. For the spirit it is a duty to be free, and to realize itself by its own act." We are not born as concrete universals. We are born as animals, beings in nature, who by virtue of our power of thinking have the potentiality for spirit, and we thus have the duty to develop and express this potentiality.

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By willing--deciding what propositions to believe and what actions to do--in obedience to the Idea, reason, God, we develop our potentiality for spirit. We are free--that is, we fully express the syllogistic form within ourselves, or, again, the Idea is actual within us as spirit--if and when we "will what is rational." We do this in our practical activity, Hegel maintains, by forming and obeying the laws and customs of a "genuinely organized" state, namely, a community of existence" wherein everyone treats everyone always as a free "I" and never as an unfree "it" (which is the reason why, in a frequently misinterpreted passage in Philosophy of Right, Hegel refers to the state as "the march of God in the world"); and, in our theoretical activity, our knowing, we do it finally in philosophy, namely, by knowing, comprehending that "what is, is reason," or, in other words, that "what is rational is actual and what is actual is rational." Further Reading Fackenheim, Emil. The Religious Dimension in Hegel's Thought. Boston: Beacon Press, 1970 (by arrangement with Indiana University Press). A useful resource for anyone interested in the religious implications of Hegel's thought. Findlay, J. N. Hegel: A Re-examination. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958. A perceptive analysis by an eminent scholar. Kucheman, Clark A. "Abstract and Concrete Freedom: Hegelian Perspectives on Economic Justice." The Owl of Minerva, 15 (1), Fall, 1983. A discussion of the economic dimension of Hegel's work. Lauer, Quentin. A Reading of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. New York: Fordham University Press, 1976. A helpful guide. Reyburn, Hugh A. The Ethical Theory of Hegel: A Study of the Philosophy of Right. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1921. In spite of its age, this remains one of the most thorough, accurate, and clearly written accounts of Hegel's moral and political philosophy. Taylor, Charles. Hegel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975. The best of the contemporary interpretations of Hegel's thought. It also relates Hegel to the historical period in which he was writing and describes the influence of Hegel upon Karl Marx and upon contemporary philosophy and social theory. Wiedmann, Franz. Hegel: An Illustrated Biography. Translated by Joachim Neugroschel. New York: Pegasus, 1968. For a look at Hegel's personal background. ________________ This article is by Clark A. Kucheman, and is taken from Great Thinkers of the Western World, Annual 1999 p331. COPYRIGHT 1999 HarperCollins Publishers.

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