The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics: Making Sense of Things (41 page)

25
Kant (
1998
), B71–72. Cf. also ibid., B145, where he talks in terms of ‘an understanding that itself intuits’; and Kant (
2000
), §§76 and 77, where he talks in terms of an ‘intuitive understanding’ (5:406) and an ‘intuitive intellect’ (5:409).

26
Cf. I, 459.

27
This trivially answers the Transcendence Question from §6 of the Introduction.

28
Elsewhere Fichte adverts to a thicker interpretation under which he himself hints that the argument fails, specifically in its second premise: the Division Principle. He writes, ‘Reason is enclosed within a necessary circle. I cannot go outside of my reason and still philosophize. I can, in turn, philosophize over this fact, but again, precisely in accordance with the laws of reason, and so on. Reason limits itself’ (
Vorlesungen
über Logik und Metaphysik
, in
Gesamtausgabe
, Series I, Vol. 3, p. 247, trans. in Breazeale (
1994
), p. 49).

29
The first is in several respects the least appropriate. That is why I have stuck with the term ‘
Wissenschaftslehre
’ as my abbreviation for Fichte (
1982
), though its English title is ‘
The Science of Knowledge
’.

30
This reflexivity is a focus of both Breazeale (
1994
) and Rockmore (
1994
). Cf. also
Foundations
, p. 89, where Fichte writes, ‘The question concerning the possibility of philosophy is … itself a philosophical question. Philosophy provides an answer to the question concerning its own possibility.’ (On the next page he identifies philosophy with metaphysics.)

31
Here an observation of Bernard Williams is relevant: ‘We may think sometimes … that in a happier world [such constraining] would not be [a] necessary [condition of an agent’s being some particular person, of living
a
life at all]. But that is a fantasy (indeed it is
the
fantasy)’ (Williams (
2006o
), p. 57, emphasis in original). Note: included in that which constrains the person in various ways are, crucially, other people.

32
Here we see again (one aspect of) the subordination of theoretical reason to practical reason. For the idea that a Kantian critique of the former is also thereby subordinated to a Kantian critique of the latter, see Copleston (
1963
), p. 5, and Gardner (
1999
), pp. 334–335. Cf. also Zöller (
2007
). For further discussions of the relations between Kant and Fichte, see Ameriks (
2000
) and Pippin (
2000
).

33
E.g. Kant (
1998
), B157 n.

34
The example given in the previous note is a case in point (as indicated in n. 21).

35
These are published as Kant (
1993
).

36
They also show him to have shared increasingly in Fichte’s opposition to Spinoza: see e.g. Kant (
1993
), 21:19 and p. 225, whose use of the word ‘enthusiastic’ is subsequently explained at 21:26 and p. 231. (I am indebted here to Guyer (
2000
), p. 50.)

37
The material alluded to in this paragraph is scattered throughout Kant (
1993
), but see esp. pp. 179ff. For contrasting views about how much of a departure there was from Kant’s earlier, published work, see Guyer (
2000
), §V, and Edwards (
2000
).

Chapter 7 Hegel Transcendentalism-cum-Naturalism; or, Absolute Idealism

1. Preliminaries

At the beginning of the
previous chapter
, I quoted a passage from the
Phenomenology
of G.W.F. Hegel (1770–1831).
¹
This passage appeared to be both linguistically deranged and, once one had somehow reckoned with the derangement, committed to precisely the sort of transcendent metaphysics that Kant had striven so hard to eliminate. Nor was the passage unrepresentative. There is scarcely a paragraph in Hegel’s vast philosophical corpus that would not have given the same impression.

I hope that this chapter will go some way towards dispelling the impression, in both its aspects. Thus I hope it will give some indication of Hegel’s reasons for wrenching language and for neologizing in the way he did.
²
And, more important, I hope it will show that his own philosophy was as much an attempt to eschew transcendent metaphysics as Kant’s, nay more so; also, relatedly, that his system, like Fichte’s, departed from Kant’s not
so much by reverting to what Kant had been fighting against as by trying to extend Kantian principles in such a way as to overcome tensions and oppositions in Kant’s own abortive use of them. As far as the second of these is concerned, there is a quintessentially Hegelian term, ‘
Aufhebung
’, which will occur sporadically throughout this chapter and whose use is already irresistible.
³
This term precisely captures the overall relation in which Hegel took his own philosophy to stand to Kant’s. For, as Hegel explains (
Science of Logic
, I.i.i.1C3, Remark, and
Encyclopedia
I, §96), in standard German ‘
Aufhebung
’ can mean both ‘annulment’ and ‘preservation’, two seemingly incompatible ideas that nevertheless come together in certain transitions from a lower stage of development to a higher stage of development, transitions in which the lower stage, which is both a necessary condition and a sufficient condition of the higher stage, is able in some sense to live on in the higher stage, but only by being superseded. (The relation between a baby and the grown man that he becomes serves as a model.)
⁴

A few caveats before I proceed. All philosophy is difficult: this is something that Hegel himself never tires of reminding us (e.g.
Phenomenology
, Preface, ¶¶3 and 67, and
Encyclopedia
I, §5; cf. also
Phenomenology
, Preface, ¶¶29, 63, and 70–71). But there are some special reasons why Hegel’s philosophy is difficult. One is its sheer breadth. If it is true, as I suggested in §2 of the Introduction, that the main section headings in the first part of Roget’s
Thesaurus
pretty much constitute a syllabus for a standard course in metaphysics, then the main section headings in all six parts of the book, from ‘Existence’ to ‘Religion’, pretty much constitute a syllabus for a standard course on the philosophy of Hegel. And although our own focus in this chapter will be specifically on Hegel’s metaphysics, and on his conception of metaphysics, there is a holistic interdependence between the various aspects of his philosophy that means that the rest of that philosophy will never be completely outside our field of vision. It also means that there is no natural starting point for any investigation of the kind that follows. Wherever we choose to start, we shall be dealing with material that presupposes ideas of which we cannot make sense until we have progressed from there.
⁵

If we eventually think not only that we have some understanding of Hegel’s system, but that we have sufficient understanding of it to know that we want to
reject
it, then we shall face another very special difficulty. The most direct way of rejecting a philosophical system is to controvert some particular idea or set of ideas within it. But one cardinal feature of Hegel’s system, as we shall see in §4, is its emphasis on the power of ideas to provoke just such opposition (opposition which is in turn opposed in an advance to a higher stage of development of the sort described earlier). Any attempt to reject Hegel’s system therefore runs the risk of corroborating it.
⁶
This is one of the many reasons why Hegel’s philosophy is so hard to resist. And this in turn is one of the many reasons why it is so hard to resist in the more colloquial sense of being enormously seductive.

2. Hegel’s Recoil from Kant’s Transcendental Idealism

One starting point that is as good as any is Hegel’s recoil from Kant’s transcendental idealism.
⁷

In
Chapter 5
, §8, we considered an argument for the impossibility of drawing a limit to sense-making which I called the Limit Argument: roughly, any attempt to do such a thing confronts the seemingly damning question, ‘What sense is to be made of the limit?’ But we also saw how Kant, in his own effort to draw a limit to sense-making, attempted to evade the Limit Argument. He distinguished between the ‘thick’ sense-making whose limit he sought to draw and the ‘thin’ sense-making whereby he sought to draw it. Later, Fichte invoked a variation on the Limit Argument to show that at any rate it is impossible to draw a limit to sense-making of the thin kind, provided that it is as thin and as inclusive as it can be, for, if it is, there is nowhere analogous to retreat in order to answer the seemingly damning question; there is no sense-making that is thinner still. (See
Ch. 6
, §3.)

Hegel, suspicious of whether a suitable distinction can be drawn between the thick and the thin,
⁸
in effect applies his own variation on the Limit Argument to Kant’s own original project. He concludes that Kant was unable to draw the limit that he sought to draw. And he accordingly rejects Kant’s transcendental idealism.

Here is a passage that neatly captures Hegel’s train of thought. (I have interpolated some phrases to indicate how it can be seen as a variation on the Limit Argument.)

It argues an utter want of consistency to say, on the one hand, that the understanding only knows phenomena [to draw this limit to sense-making]
and, on the other hand, to assert the absolute character of this knowledge [to assert that
this
exercise in sense-making lies beyond that limit], by such statements as ‘Cognition can go no further’; ‘Here is the natural and absolute limit of human knowledge.’… No one knows, or even feels, that anything is a limit [no one can make sense of a limit] … until he is at the same time above and beyond it [until he can make sense of what lies on both sides of it]…. A very little consideration might show that to call a thing … limited proves by implication the very presence of the … unlimited, and that our knowledge of a limit [our making sense of a limit] can only be when the unlimited is
on this side
in consciousness [can only be when our sense-making is not itself subject to that limit, nor therefore to any other limit of which we can make sense]. (
Encyclopedia
I, §60, emphasis in original, some emphasis removed, translation very slightly adapted)

In rejecting Kant’s transcendental idealism, Hegel rejects the fundamental Kantian distinction between how things knowably appear and how they unknowably are in themselves. This distinction is an anathema to Hegel. Not only does he see no satisfactory way of drawing it; he feels no compulsion to draw it. For Hegel, how things knowably appear is how they manifestly are. Reality is not opposed to appearance; it is discerned in appearance. Insofar as there is any distinction to be drawn, it is a distinction of the kind that we saw in the previous section between different stages of development, whereby how things are ‘in themselves’ is
aufgehoben
⁹
in how they ultimately appear. But not even that makes how things are in themselves unknowable. How things are in themselves can be known in its lower stage of development, as an abstraction (
Encyclopedia
I, §44); and it can be known in its higher stage of development, precisely through its manifestation in how things ultimately appear (ibid., §124; cf.
Phenomenology
, III, ¶160).

This is altogether more radical than Fichte’s recoil from the same Kantian distinction.
¹⁰
As I argued in §3 of the previous chapter, Fichte still retained a broadly Kantian conception of things as they are in themselves. He departed from Kant only in claiming knowledge of such things, testified by a particular minimalist account that he was prepared to give of them. He also retained a distinction of sorts between things as they are in themselves and things as they (merely) appear. For our knowledge of things as they are in themselves, attained through self-conscious reflection on the infinitude of our own freedom and rationality, was to be contrasted with the knowledge available to us in our finitude, attained through our engagement with what we are given in experience. Finitude, for Fichte, just as for Kant, was opposed to infinitude. And, insofar as we ourselves are finite, this means that there is something that in principle eludes us, something from which
we are in principle cut off. It means that there is something that is, for us,
transcendent
. The Cartesian separation of the finite self from an infinite reality beyond it still persists. Hegel wants to overcome that separation.
¹¹

He also wants to repudiate transcendent metaphysics. Indeed, as I intimated in the previous section, he is even more vehement in his repudiation of transcendent metaphysics than Kant. And we can now see why. It is not just that he thinks that there is no making sense of what is transcendent. He thinks that there is no transcendent.
¹²
Or more strictly, he wants to abnegate the very opposition between the transcendent and the immanent. That, for Hegel, is of a piece with the opposition between the real and the merely apparent.
¹³