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MITCHELL ABOULAFIA
In inquiring into the nature of alienation for Hegel we must explore the
dialectic. We will concentrate on the Phenomenology of Spirit, where the
movement of the 'selfs' development is observed and actualized. We will
then present Marx's view of this dialectic as found in the Economic and
Philosophical Manuscripts and attempt to systematize the points of
discord. Finally, we will summarize the problematic through a critique of
the various positions.
Before elucidating the nature of the dialectic in the Phenomenology, let
us see how certain terms will be employed. These terms will be further
clarified within this paper.
Alienation = Ent?usserung: For Hegel, it is the process of externaliza
tion through which 'consciousness' gives itself up so as to open itself, in the
movement of negativity, to otherness. Marx usually uses Ent?usserung for
what has become known as capitalist-specific alienation:
being) and the observation of the philosopher who knows the links between
the movements of the moments that will form the totality. The nature of the
experiences, i.e., moments, must be emphasized.
The experience that consciousness works through here is not only theoretical experience,
knowledge of the object; it is the whole of experience. The point is to consider the life of
consciousness both when it knows itself or intends a goal. Since it is the experience of
consciousness in general that is to be considered, all the forms of experience, ethical juridical
and religious, will be included. (Hyppolite)5
Truth (or Being, object, the in-itself) is never static for Hegel and exists in
a dialectical tension with Certainty (Knowledge, subject, the for-itself).
This tension gives rise to the movement of consciousness. Consciousness
'desires' not to be merely
certain but also to be in truth, i.e., to be Subject as
well as Substance. The discrepancy between what appears as truth for a
consciousness and its 'desire' to yield it as certain, i.e., for-itself, creates the
necessary movement between being-in-itself and for-itself which presses
the experience of one moment onto another moment. The constant press
forward to comprehend or be what one is, as opposed to how one appears,
is the work of agents that can make appearances divest themselves of their
'falsehood' and expose the universal elements in them. The agents are the
Subjects, human beings. Possessing Reason, human beings can negate
HEGEL'S DIALECTIC ANDMARX'S MANUSCRIPTS 35
That delusive mode of reasoning which regards diversity alone and from doubt of or aversion
to the particular form inwhich the universal finds its actuality, will not grasp or even allow this
universal nature, I have elsewhere likened to an invalid recommended by the doctor to eat
fruit, and who has cherries, plums, or grapes before him, but who pedantically refuses to take
anything because no part of what is offered him is fruit, some being cherries and the rest plums
or grapes.7
We must pass from what Hegel calls the realm of immediate experience
to one inwhich, through negation of existing appearances, we as the
Subject of history recognize ourselves as being able to mediate. To mediate,
very simply, is the process of moving through negation tot the negation of
the negation, where the truth of what was being negated is revealed and, as
a result, what is universal is retained. Hegel:
For mediating is nothing but self-identity working itself out through an active self-directed
process; or in other words, it is reflection into self, the aspect in which ego is for-itself,
objective to itself. It is pure negativity or reduced to its utmost abstraction, the process of bare
and simple becoming.8
There must be a self that can negate, can 'see'what is the opposite of a
in question, i.e., contradictions, become aware of appear
'thing' recognize
ances that were once thought to be the truth. History 'needs' the presence of
36 MITCHELL ABOULAFIA
negation and mediation, the activity of the Subject that can come to know
itself as the substance of'reality' through its own endeavors. 'Something'
can become fully known only after it has entailed its opposite, (so that is has
returned from its 'otherness'), i.e., only after it has been alienated and 're
Socrates: ...So now, what virtue is I do not know, but you knew perhaps, before you
touched me, although now you resemble one who does not know. All the same,
Iwish to investigate with your help, that we both find out what it is.
Meno: And how will you try to find out something, Socrates, when you have no notion
at all of what it is?Will you lay out before us a thing you don't know, and then
try to find it?Or if at best you meet it by chance, how will you know this is that
which you did not know?
Socrates: I understand what you wish to say, Meno. You look on this as a piece of chop
logic, don't you see, as if a man cannot try to find either what he knows or what
he does not know. Of course he would never try tofind what he knows, because
he knows it, and in that case he needs no trying to find; or what he does not
know, because he does not know what he will try to find.9
HEGEL'S DIALECTIC AND MARX'S MANUSCRIPTS 37
Of course, Socrates does not accept the paradox and the dialog then
moves on to the explanation of how learning is recollection. Itmay seem as
if Plato is only emphasizing the notion of learning as recollection when he
tries to show Meno how the slave boy appears to recall the answer to the
problem with which he is presented. Discussion of this 'slave boy' section of
the dialog has often centered about whether Socrates proves the notion of
recollectionusing the slave. The full thrust of Plato's Refutation of Meno's
paradox lies not in the theory of recollection per se, but in showing that
what appears to be true turns out to be false. Several times the slave boy
thinks he knows but at Socrates' questioning he sees that he did not know.
This parallels the ironic manner with which Socrates states Meno knew
what virtue was but now does not: of course, it is quite clear that Meno only
thought he knew, just like the slave boy thought he knew. One must be
numbed, i.e., feel the sting of negativity, of opposition, of denial, and
finally aporia, in order to develop.
The answer toMeno's paradox reveals basic aspects of the Hegelian
dialectic. For Hegel, the individual 'spirit' has within himself the spirit of
the age, i.e., participates in a 'collective awareness'. Ifwe did not reflect the
'truth' or in it, Meno's would hold, i.e., we would never
participate paradox
be able to be certain of truth when we came across it.Meno's paradox is
sound unless one avails himself of the dialectical position which under
stands negativity as destroying appearances which have been taken as
truths but can no longer maintain such a status once critiqued. Another
way of phrasing this from a Hegelian perspective might be: we cannot find
what we do not know but we actually do know, because each individual is a
manifestation (to some degree) of the truth (of an age). Appearances must
not merely be assumed as untrue in an undialectical manner, but the truth
inwhich they participate must be recognized (realized). To merely negate
or replace one appearance with another is sophistry. To actualize how
appearances are part of the truth is to think in a dialectical manner.
In discussing 'recollection', Hyppolite summarizes the nature of the
movement of consciousness. After a consciousness learns itwas 'false' the
new
Experience thus seems to consciousness to be a discovery of new worlds. And this is so because
consciousness forgets the course of those worlds. Like skepticism, it sees only the negative
result of its past experience. Facing its future and not its past, it is unable to understand how
38 MITCHELL ABOULAFIA
its past experience was a genesis of what for it is a new object.... (For the moment) the content
is, indeed, for it, but the origin of the content is not. // is as though consciousness forgot its
own development, which has made itwhat it is at every particular moment.10 (My emphasis)
Socrates: Then if the truth of things is always in our soul the sould must be immortal (For
Hegel, immanent); so that what you do not know now by any chance - that is,
what you do not remember - you must boldly try and find out and remember. ''
... the life of the mind is not one that shuns death, and keeps clear of destruction; it endures
death and in death maintains being. It only wins to its truth when it finds itself utterly torn
asunder.13
In this light the radical nature of the Hegelian dialectic is obvious. Itwas
an understanding of the principle of negativity that allowed others to
critique Hegel's own later conservatism. To the degree that his own
Philosophy of Right represented the appearance of what the state might
be, and not the reality of what the state was or was becoming, Hegel's own
method would insist that it be critiqued so that the truth of the new age
might be comprehended. The claim made here is that only a being that can
alienate (make other, what seemingly is), can truly comprehend a period in
history. This is asserted as the fundamental condition of knowledge for
HEGEL'S DIALECTIC AND MARX'S MANUSCRIPTS 39
Hegel. Each of us is not merely a mirror of an age, but a prism that can
differentiate the nature of an age into a spectrum that refracts and relates its
parts in order to comprehend the age, as opposed tomerely appearing as
white light, i.e., as an undifferentiated totality.
Marx's basic claim in regard to alienation is that it is, of course, capitalist
specific. It is as a function
of being social that human beings find
themselves We produce objects whether they be chairs or
objectifying.
ideas. These objectifications are only alien when the producer of the object
finds that it is no longer his production. The capitalist system is the specific
historical form inwhich this alienation of human beings from fundamental
'social relations' takes place. Since we do not intend to describe or critique
Marx's well-known theory of alienation under capitalism, we will assume
that alienation under capitalism has the results mentioned above in the
definitions of the various terms. The question here centers on whether
To be sensuous, i.e., to be real, is to be an object of sense, a sensuous object and thus to have
sensuous objects outside oneself, objects of one's sense perception. To be sensuous is to suffer
(to be subjected to the actions of another).
Man as an objective sensuous being is therefore a suffering being, and because he feels his
Finally mind, which is thought returning to its birthplace and which as anthropological,
phenomenological, moral, artistic-religious mind is not valid for itself until it discovers and
affirms itself as absolute knowledge and therefore as absolute, i.e., abstract mind receives its
conscious and appropriate existence. For its real existence is abstraction.17 (My emphasis)
... the latest, most modern and newest philosophy is the most developed, richest and deepest.
In that philosophy everything which at first seems to be past and gone must be preserved and
retained, and itmust itself be a mirror of the whole history... This, as may at once be remarked,
is no mere pride in the philosophy of our time, because it is in the nature of the whole process
that the more developed philosophy of a later time is really the result of the previous
operations of the thinking mind; and that it, pressed forwards and onwards from the earlier
standpoints, has not grown up on its own account or in a state of isolation.18 (My emphasis)
When, for example, Hegel conceives wealth, the power of the state etc. as entities estranged
from the being of man, he conceives them only in their thought form... They are entities of
thought, and therefore simply an estrangement of pure, i.e., abstract, philosophical thought.
Therefore the entire movement ends with absolute knowledge, (my emphasis)19
... for its own sake is and that wealth comes to signify the pre-condition of
cynically admitted,
being-for-itself....In this relation of self-consciousness to wealth the impossibility for the / to
discover itself as a thing appears. The /"sees that its self-certainty, as such, is that thing which
ismost empty of essence; it sees that its pure personality is absolute impersonality". Thus, it
arrives at the infinite judgement that 'wealth is the self, an opposition that ismuch more
deeply felt than the opposition that was expressed in the phrase 'L'Etat c'est moi'. (Hyppolite
commenting on and quoting Hegel)20
All unsatisfied endeavor ceases, when we recognize that the final purpose of the world is
accomplished no less that ever accomplishing itself... Good, the final end of the world, has
being, only while it constantly produces itself. And the world of spirit and the world of nature
continue to have this distinction, that the latter moves only in a recurring cycle while the
former certainly also makes progress. (My emphasis)22
The Idea is eternal for Hegel but it is surely not a static transcendent
Its very nature assumes never process.
eternity. ending
Because of the way inwhich Marx understood Hegel's concept of
44 MI TC HELLA BOU LA FIA
Boston College
NOTES
I Karl
Marx, Early Writings, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (tr. by Living
ston, R. and Benton, G.), Vintage, N.Y., 1975.
2 Jean Genesis and Structure Evan
Hyppolite, of Hegel's Phenomenology, Northwestern,
ston, 1974, p. 385.
3
Marx, op.cit., p. 431 (translator's note).
4
Marx, op.cit., p. 329.
5
Hyppolite,op.cit., p. 10.
6 Karl on Philosophy
Marx, Writings of the Young Marx and Society, The Holy Family,
Doubleday Anchor, Garden City, N.Y., 1967, p. 370.
7 G. W. F. Humanities
Hegel, The History of Philosophy, Press, N.Y., 1974, p. 18.
8 G. W. F.
Hegel, Phenomenology of Mind, Harper Torchbooks, N.Y., 1967, p. 82.
9 W. H. D. Rouse
(Tr.) Great Dialogues of Plato. The Meno Mentor, N. Y., 1956, p. 41.
10
Hyppolite, op.cit. p. 25.
II
W.H.D.Rouse,o/?.ri/.,p.5L
12
Hegel, Phenomenology, p. 92.
13
Hegel, ibid., p. 93.
14
Marx, Early Writings, p. 349.
15
Marx,/?/of, p. 390.
16
Marx, ibid., p. 383.
17
Marx,/?/?., p. 384.
18
Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Humanities Press, N.Y., 1974, pp. 41-42.
19
Marx, op.cit., p.-384.
20
Hyppolite, op.cit., p. 409.
21
Marx, op.cit., p. 392.
22
Hegel, Lesser Logic, Oxford Press, London, 1975, p. 291, Section 234, Zus?tze.