Sartreās Critique of Hegelās Logic
Being and Nothingness is considered by many merely as a commentary on or critique of Heideggerās Being and Time, supposedly owing a debt to this workāand to this thinkerāmore than to perhaps any other. In defense of such a Heideggerian interpretation of Sartreās early philosophical tome, it may legitimately be pointed out that the way in which Sartre staunchly advocates the prioritization of ontology over epistemology in this book reflects Heideggerās call for a return to the question of the meaning of Being.1 This demonstrates a commitment shared by these two figures to challenge the long-established primacy of Knowing over Being so prevalent in Post-Kantian thinking, endeavoring to expose the deleterious effects this ascendency of epistemology has had on the ways in which we have come to apprehend existence, not simply as its numerous facets are capable of being known but as it is capable of being livedāin all its wondrous complexity. And yet, this prioritizing of Being over Knowing is hardly sufficient to render judgment on Sartre as some sort of passive disciple of Heidegger. Indeed, Sartreās refusal to accept Heideggerās wholesale rejection of the Cartesian cogitoāand with it the activity of consciousnessāshould be enough to discard such facile criticisms of the supposed parasitism of Being and Nothingness on Being and Time. As this examination will endeavor to demonstrate, Sartreās theoretical Åuvre reveals a highly original and sadly underestimated philosophical perspective grounded in a novel conceptualization of ontology as necessarily phenomenological; which is to say, for Sartre Being requires for its revelation the activity of a conscious existent capable of existing for-itself and introducing nihilations into the pure positivity of Being as it is in-itself. As we seek to interrogate the grounding principles of Sartreās unique conceptualization of phenomenological ontology we must begin not with Heidegger nor with his mentor and father of Phenomenology, Edmund Husserl, but with a figure capable of shedding light on the foundational notions upon which Sartreās ontology is itself developed. To comprehend the titular concepts of Being and Nothingness, then, it is to Hegel that we must turn.
Of particular interest to Sartre in this regard is the opening dialectic of Hegelās Science of Logic2 in which Hegel begins his examination with the most fundamental thoughts that thought can think, namely āBeingā and āNothingā. Beyond this, however, it is not surprising that Sartre finds this elusive text so appealing for his purposes, since Hegelās objective in this work is to demonstrate the structures by which thought thinks itself and to clarify the vague representational notions characteristic of average everyday thought, subjecting such representational thought to speculative interrogation (cf. BN, 36/EN, 47; SL, 40). Indeed, in endeavoring to produce a logic of the way in which thought thinks itself, Hegelās work is one which is more than mere speculative epistemology; since it is thought which is thinking itself, which is subjecting itself to speculative interrogation, this text is one which is properly ontological as well. The movements of thought which Hegel takes himself to have discovered reveal the very Being of thought itself as it unfolds for itself. It is a text that does not privilege epistemology over ontology because it is the Being of thought in its movements towards knowledge (towards the Concept or Notion) which is under consideration: thought thinking itself in relation to Being, increasingly revelatory of Being and the Being of its own thought in its logical unfolding. While Sartre will be critical of this supposed mutual epistemological and ontological entwinement, it is for its ontological rather than its epistemic merits that Sartre will look to Hegelās Logic as a foil for shedding light on his own project.
It is important to bear in mind, then, that while Sartre sees much of value in Hegelās analyzes that he rejects the finality of Hegelās Logic just as he rejects the totalizing notion of āabsolute knowingā which emerges as the culmination of the Phenomenology of Spirit. For Sartre, such hypotheses transcend the bounds of ontology and belong more properly to a speculative metaphysics which cannot provide us with an adequate understanding of the epistemological potential of the conscious (human) existent. But this is not the place to discuss epistemological matters. Our present concern is ontological rather than epistemological, and it is precisely for its ontological rather than its epistemic merit that we can examine the opening dialectic of Hegelās Logic and see what exactly Sartre finds of such value.
Because this work is not as widely read as perhaps it should be given the depth and breadth of its theoretical implications, and because readers of Sartre are not always readers of Hegel, it is worth presenting the opening dialectic of the Science of Logic in its entirety:
- A. BeingĀ§ 132Being, pure being, without any further determination. In its indeterminate immediacy it is equal only to itself. It is also not unequal relatively to an other; it has no diversity within itself nor any with a reference outwards. It would not be held fast in its purity if it contained any determination or content which could be distinguished in it or by which it could be distinguished from an other. It is pure indeterminateness and emptiness. There is nothing to be intuited in it, if one can speak here of intuiting; or, it is only this pure intuiting itself. Just as little is anything to be thought in it, or it is equally only this empty thinking. Being, the indeterminate immediate, is in fact nothing, and neither more nor less than nothing.
- B. NothingĀ§ 133Nothing, pure nothing: it is simply equality with itself, complete emptiness, absence of all determination and contentāundifferentiatedness in itself. In so far as intuiting or thinking can be mentioned here, it counts as a distinction whether something or nothing is intuited or thought. To intuit or think nothing has, therefore, a meaning; both are distinguished and thus nothing is (exists) in our intuiting or thinking; or rather it is empty intuition and thought itself, and the same empty intuition or thought as pure being. Nothing is, therefore, the same determination, or rather absence of determination, and thus altogether the same as, pure being.
- C. Becoming1. Unity of Being and NothingĀ§ 134Pure being and pure nothing are, therefore, the same. What is the truth is neither being nor nothing, but that beingādoes not pass over but has passed overāinto nothing, and nothing into being. But it is equally true that they are not undistinguished from each other, that, on the contrary, they are not the same, that they are absolutely distinct, and yet that they are unseparated and inseparable and that each immediately vanishes in its opposite. Their truth is therefore this movement of the immediate vanishing of the one into the other: becoming, a movement in which both are distinguished, but by a difference which has equally immediately resolved itself (SL, 82ā83).
For those unfamiliar with this text, or with Hegel and his particular way of looking at things more generally, a bit of exegetical unpacking will be helpful.
For Hegel the most fundamental thought which thought can think is the thought of Being, pure Being. But this thought, which is the thought of a self-identical determination, cannot retain itself as such. Such a thought is in its essence a thought of no thing in particular, only a thought of pure fullness which reveals nothing to thought owing to its fundamental indetermination. As a thought of no-thing, it proves to be a thought which is no different than a thought of nothing at all. So thoughtās thinking the thought of pure Being leads it to think the fundamental emptiness of that very thought. Thought is thus led to think the absence of determination which reveals itself as constituent of this thought with no diversity within itself. The thought of pure Being as such proves to be āpure indeterminateness and emptiness. There is nothing to be intuited in it ā¦ it is only this pure intuiting itselfā. The essential emptiness of the thought of pure Being āis in fact nothingā, a thought of nothing at all but thought itself thinking an empty thought.
So thought is led to think the emptiness of this very thought; it is led to think the thought of Nothingness, of an emptiness which is equally nothing other than itself. Nothing, pure Nothing. But this thought, with its complete absence of determinationānot surprisinglyāturns out to be a thought as empty as that of the thought of pure Being. Thought would think itself into a vicious circle if it did not come to recognize that these thoughts are fundamentally the same, or rather, that their structure is the same. And yet, they are distinct. Being is not Nothing and Nothing is not Being, but each can only be what it is in its opposition to the other; each only proves not to be what it is in its vanishing into the other. The truth of Being, therefore, lies in its becoming Nothing, and the truth of Nothing lies in its becoming Being. The truth of Being, as with the truth of Nothing, is its becoming other than itself.3
What Sartre rejects in Hegelās analysis, however, is his insistence on the logical opposition of the concepts of Being and Nothing, since opposition entails a logical symmetry of these two concepts; which is to say, one could have just as easily begun with the thought of Nothing and ended up with the thought of Being (SL, 99).4 āBut,ā Sartre notes, ānon-being is not the opposite of being; it is its contradiction. This implies that logically nothingness is subsequent to being since it is being which is posited first, then denied [puisquāl est lāĆŖtre posĆ© dāabord puis niĆ©]ā (BN, 38/EN, 49; translation slightly modified).5 While this may appear to be a trivial quibble on Sartreās part, it most assuredly is not. It is because Hegel posits Being and Nothing as oppositional concepts rather than as concepts in logical contradiction that Sartre sees Hegel as ultimately lapsing into the traditional primacy of epistemology over ontologyāor, rather, in Hegelās case, of dogmatically reducing the latter to the formerāwhich he finds so disconcerting.6 For Sartre, Being has logical primacy over Nothing because it has existential primacy, which is to say it has ontological primacy.7 From a Sartrean perspective, Hegelās choice to take the concept of Being as his starting point could not have been otherwise (despite Hegelās protestations to the contrary), for since it is thought which is thinking itself, to think the thought of Nothing thought itself must first be (i.e. thoughtāand therefore the thinking beingāmust first be, must first exist) and as such must be aware that the thought of Nothing presupposes not only the thought of Being, but Being itself. Even if Hegel chose to begin his Logic with the thought of Nothingāas he declares is logically legitimateāthis thought of Nothing would have as its implicit presupposition the Being of the thought of which it is the negation. In order for there to be thought there must first be Being. This is why Sartre says in his critique of Hegel that, āIt can not be therefore that being and nothingness are concepts with the same content since on the contrary nothingness supposes a[n] irreducible mental act [une demarche irrĆ©ductible de lāesprit]. Whatever may be the original undifferentiation of being, nothingness is that same undifferentiation deniedā (BN, 38/EN, 49). Basically, what Sartre sees in Hegelās opposition of Being and Nothing is a failure to recognize that in order to think Nothing Being itself...