Freedom and Tradition in Hegel

Reconsidering Anthropology, Ethics, and Religion

Thomas A. Lewis

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9780268159726
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophical Metaphysics

Freedom and Tradition in Hegel stands at the intersection of three vital currents in contemporary ethics: debates over philosophical anthropology and its significance for ethics, reevaluations of tradition and modernity, and a resurgence of interest in Hegel. Thomas A. Lewis engages these three streams of thought in light of Hegel's recently published Vorlesungen über die Philosophie des Geistes. Drawing extensively on these lectures, Lewis addresses an important lacuna in Hegelian scholarship by first providing a systematic analysis of Hegel's philosophical anthropology and then examining its fundamental role in Hegel's ethical and religious thought.

Lewis contends that Hegel's anthropology seeks to account for both the ongoing significance of the religious and philosophical traditions in which we are raised and our ability to transcend these traditions. Pursuing the implications of the integral role of practice in Hegel's anthropology, Lewis argues for a more progressive interpretation of Hegel's ethics and a "Hegelian" critique of Hegel's most problematic statements on political and social issues. Lewis concludes that Hegel offers a powerful strategy for reconciling freedom and tradition.

This fresh interpretation of Hegel's work provides a challenging new perspective on his ethical and religious thought. It will be of significant value to students and scholars in religious studies, philosophy, and political theory.

1Developing toward Spirit

Logic, Nature, and Human Beings

Hegel was not simply a theoretical philosopher concerned with the problems of the logic who—as an afterthought—tried to draw out implications for political and religious questions. Nor was he basically an ethical and political thinker for whom the logic functioned as a mere background to justify his views on the social and political issues that really concerned him. An adequate approach to Hegel must keep all of these foci—and his understanding of their interconnection—in view. His entire corpus responds to what he saw as the complex, multidimensional crisis of his day. Representing for Hegel a turning point in world history, this crisis was at once social, political, cultural, religious, and philosophical. While the French Revolution and Napoleon shattered the European political and social orders, the Enlightenment and its aftermath called for new understandings of religious traditions. In philosophy, Immanuel Kant’s critical philosophy was agreed by many to have brought about a Copernican revolution in thought that undermined metaphysics as it had previously been understood. External authority—whether in ethics, politics, or religion—was highly suspect. In each of these spheres, inherited traditions were challenged by calls for freedom.¹

Hegel saw the many facets of this crisis as deeply interrelated. For instance, since concerns about the limits and possibilities of reason and faith were inseparable from concerns about human freedom and its limits, an adequate social and political vision would need to confront Kant’s claims about the limits of theoretical reason. In Hegel’s view, the need for a unified response to these various crises called for a system, for a philosophy conceived as a science made up of spheres that together constitute a whole. Hegel provides the most comprehensive statement of his system in his Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline, three editions of which were published in 1817, 1827, and 1830. The logic, the philosophy of nature, and the philosophy of spirit constitute the three parts of the Encyclopaedia. More than a merely formal logic, Hegel’s logic—both in the Science of Logic and in the shorter version presented in the first part of the Encyclopaedia—treats the self-development of the concept “in the abstract element of thinking” (Enz. § 19), and in particular the “determinations of thought” [Denkbestimmungen] that constitute the structure of reality. The philosophy of nature seeks to provide not a comprehensive account of nature but rather a philosophical analysis of the elementary concepts or structures of nature. Finally, the philosophy of spirit provides Hegel’s treatment of philosophical anthropology, ethics, politics, history, art, religion, and philosophy.

The relationship among the different aspects of Hegel’s thought is much debated. Hegel himself claimed that his analysis of the distinctly human spheres treated in the philosophy of spirit depends upon his logic; the proof of the former cannot do without the latter. Others, however, have argued that most if not all of Hegel’s ethical, social, and political thought can be maintained without adopting the metaphysics that they see as central to his logic; for them, it is in the former realms that his greatest contribution lies. Allen Wood writes, “The Hegel who still lives and speaks to us is not a speculative logician and idealist metaphysician but a philosophical historian, a political and social theorist, a philosopher of our ethical concerns and cultural identity crises.”² Both in separating these aspects of his thought and in focusing on the enduring relevance of Hegel’s social and political thought, Wood follows Charles Taylor.³ Both suggest that Hegel’s driving insight was his “vision of human agency and its products.”⁴ As Wood writes,

This is not necessarily to contradict the assertion that we cannot understand Hegel’s social and political concerns without reference to his speculative metaphysics. But we are likely to miss the connection between the two if (with Hegel) we suppose that Hegelian thought is grounded in Hegelian metaphysics, and conclude that speculative logic is a propaedeutic to Hegel’s theory of modern society. In fact, the relation between the two may be very nearly the reverse of this; often Hegel’s treatment of metaphysical issues is best viewed as an attempt to interpret these issues as an expression of cultural and existential concerns.⁵

In recent debates over the relationship between the logic and Hegel’s social and political thought, however, the logic whose relationship to Hegel’s political thought is being investigated has appeared as something of a moving target. That is, while interpreters such as Robert Pippin and David Kolb have rejected Taylor’s claim to be able to separate the logic and politics as he does, they simultaneously reject Taylor’s understanding of Hegel’s logic. Pippin is one of the most prominent of a number of recent interpreters who have rejected interpretations of Hegel as developing a metaphysical spirit monism.⁶ For Pippin, Taylor’s interpretation of Hegel’s logic as thoroughly metaphysical produces a dilemma: “The metaphysical Hegel looks like some premodern anachronism (or totalitarian bogeyman in some versions), and accounts of Hegel’s political and social theory cannot be said, finally, to be genuinely Hegelian without some reliance on the speculative system.” The way out of this dilemma is to interpret Hegel’s logic “in a way that is not committed to a philosophically problematic theological metaphysics.”⁷ This line of interpretation has become extremely influential—particularly in the English-language secondary literature—in recent years.⁸ By challenging the spirit-monist interpretation, Pippin and others have demonstrated that using central elements of the logic to interpret Hegel’s social and political thought does not commit one to the strong metaphysical claims that many people claim to find in Hegel and see as a basis for rejecting him.

This development in Hegel scholarship reinforces the point that even a concern with Hegel’s contemporary relevance should not induce us to dismiss Hegel’s logic too quickly. In the course of the logic, Hegel analyzes and develops precise conceptions of elementary terms—”thought determinations,” to use Hegel’s language. Consequently, the meaning of terms such as “object,” “reason,” and “actuality” [Wirklichkeit] cannot simply be assumed or taken from daily usage when they are encountered later in the system. Moreover, the logic contains Hegel’s most explicit treatment of the notion of immanent development that is central to the structure of his argument and analysis in the higher spheres.

Because of the central role of immanent development, articulating the logical background most essential to interpreting Hegel’s philosophy of spirit requires two basic tasks: tracing the development of Hegel’s system up to the beginning of subjective spirit and providing an account of the method of development (articulated in the logic) that should continue to operate throughout the higher spheres of the system. My concern here is with the project, structure, and goals of the logic. Thus, where particular concepts from the logic are important for interpreting a particular point later in the system, I return to the logic at that point rather than attempting to set out such terms in my overview of the logic. Finally, Hegel’s actual method does not always correspond to his avowed method. Consequently, while the logic is important for understanding the metaphysical status of claims Hegel is making in the philosophy of spirit, one cannot take for granted that the method set forth in the logic will always determine the structure of the higher spheres. This difference suggests that there is no general solution to the question of the relation between the logic and the higher spheres.⁹ While we cannot ignore the logical background, neither can we view it as a straitjacket in the interpretation of other elements of his system.

To complete the background necessary to frame the analysis of subjective spirit in chapters 2 through 4, the discussion of the logic will be followed by an analysis of the conception of the philosophy of nature and the “Concept of Spirit” that Hegel provides as an introduction to the third part of the Encyclopaedia, the philosophy of spirit. The final section of this chapter will introduce subjective spirit as a whole by discussing it as a type of philosophical anthropology.

Logic

Providing an overview or sketch of Hegel’s logic is intrinsically problematic. The Science of Logic is one of the most difficult works in the history of philosophy. Central to its argument is the claim that the argument itself progresses through immanent development that resolves the emerging contradictions. Any summary necessarily passes over the details of this development. An overview of the central concepts and terms necessarily treats them externally, providing stipulative definitions, rather than analyzing how they emerge from the other terms. Yet Hegel’s goal is not simply to provide definitions of terms but to show their necessity and necessary interrelationship. In light of this situation, I focus here on identifying the task of the logic—what Hegel sees it as accomplishing and the kinds of claims that are being made. Moreover, because one of the principal results of the logic is the articulation of the developmental structure that permeates his system, this structure merits particular scrutiny.

In the Encyclopaedia, Hegel introduces the logic as “the science of the pure Idea, that is, of the Idea in the abstract element of thinking” (Enz. § 19).¹⁰ The logic deals with “pure abstractions,” because it considers the movement of thought, of the concept, as it is in itself rather than manifest in actuality (as do the spheres of nature and spirit). The logic therefore consists, Hegel claims, of a systematic analysis of the determinations of thought [Denkbestimmungen] necessary for thinking: “the system of pure reason, as the realm of pure thought” (WL 1:44/50). These include abstractions such as being, nothing, becoming, quantity, quality, and so forth. These distinct determinations do not simply coexist, indifferent to each other. Rather, the analysis begins with what initially seems to be the simplest, least presupposing concept: being. “Being” reveals itself to be unstable, to proceed to reveal another determination, nothing. Then being and nothing yield becoming. The advance is not produced by the application of a pregiven, external method but by transitions produced by the determinations themselves (Enz. 11–12/1). This development continues throughout the logic. As Hegel describes it, “[f]irst of all, this advance is determined as beginning from simple determinatenesses, the succeeding ones becoming ever richer and more concrete” (WL 2:569/840). This immanent development continues until it comes to have itself as an object and grasps its own beginning.

While these determinations are necessary for thinking, they are more than subjectively necessary for human thought. They are more than arbitrary forms that human thought must assume. For this reason, Hegel’s logic is more than a purely formal logic. To the contrary, the Idea constitutes the truth of the actual:

[E]verything actual is only in so far as it possesses the Idea and expresses it. It is not merely that the object, the objective and subjective world in general, ought to be congruous with the Idea, but they are themselves the congruence of concept and reality; the reality that does not correspond to the concept is mere appearance, the subjective, contingent, capricious element that is not the truth. . . . [W]hat anything actual is supposed in truth to be, if its concept is not in it and if its objectivity does not correspond to its concept at all, it is impossible to say; for it would be nothing. (WL 2:464/756)¹¹

This and similar passages easily appear to make a boldly metaphysical claim that entirely rejects Kant’s claims about the limits of theoretical reason. That interpretation generally yields an onto-theological reading of Hegel as a spirit monist. This strongly metaphysical reading need not claim a traditional Christian theism, but may bear more similarity to an Aristotelian conception of God.¹² For this line of interpretation, Hegel’s claim that “[t]he objective logic [the first two parts of the logic], then, takes the place rather of former metaphysics” entails that Hegel resurrects a pre-Kantian, pre-critical metaphysics (WL 1:61/63).

Such claims about the relation between the concept and reality, however, need not—and should not—be interpreted in this manner.¹³ Rather, in passages such as the lengthy one quoted above, Hegel seeks to articulate the “conditions necessary for objects to be objects at all. . . .”¹⁴ In this sense, the logic is neither metaphysics—as this term was understood before Kant—nor merely an analysis of our own thought games. It is an account of the determinations that make objects, existence, actuality, and so forth possible. Central to Hegel’s project, then, is undermining the presupposition of some “spectral thing-in-itself” behind or beyond phenomena—not claiming knowledge thereof (WL 1:41/47).¹⁵ His claim is not that we can overleap the chasm and limits to reason highlighted by Kant but that this chasm and the so-called “thing-in-itself” are themselves presuppositions that collapse upon further analysis. Hegel states the result concisely at the end of the passage above: “[W]hat anything actual is supposed in truth to be, if its concept is not in it and if its objectivity does not correspond to its concept at all, it is impossible to say; for it would be nothing” (WL 2:464/756). Similarly, “The object [Gegenstand], kept apart from thinking and the concept, is an image [Vorstellung] or even a name; it is in the determinations of thought and the concept that it is what it is. Therefore these determinations are in fact the sole thing that matters; they are the true object and content of reason, and anything else that one understands by object and content in distinction from them has value only through them and in them” (WL 2:560/833). In such passages, Hegel articulates the role of thinking in constituting the object without claiming that these objects are metaphysical substances or that they are created by some supersensible being, God. Kant’s shortcoming, for Hegel, is to assume there is some residue, some metaphysical substance, left outside of or only approached by thinking; to do so is to posit a chimera, which itself is generated by metaphysical presuppositions. To read Hegel as claiming more than this—specifically, to read him as claiming knowledge of metaphysical substances—is to underrate dramatically the extent of Kant’s influence. Hegel sees Kant’s theoretical philosophy as “incomplete,” not having gone far enough (because he kept the thing-in-itself) rather than too far (because he undermined traditional metaphysical claims) (WL 1:45/51; see also 1:59/61 note). As Pippin writes, “Hegel’s rhetorical bark is worse than his appropriating bite when it comes to Kant.”¹⁶

Understanding Hegel in this light stresses the importance of the precise meaning that he develops for particular terms. Although the resonance with everyday language is important to Hegel, he criticizes metaphysics for taking concepts such as “soul,” “world,” and “God” from representation [Vorstellung] as “ready-made or given subjects” (Enz. § 30). While such terms “seem at first to provide thinking with a firm hold,” they reveal themselves to be anything but stable; consequently, “what they need all the more is to receive firm determination only through thinking” (Enz. § 31). The same must be said of terms such as “object,” “objectivity,” and “actuality” (all of which are central to the interpretation of the status of Hegel’s logic), as well as for Hegel’s use of traditional theological language.¹⁷ Many misreadings of Hegel are grounded in interpretations of terms in precisely the manner that Hegel has undermined. This recasting of central terms enables Hegel to reappropriate much from the broader tradition of Western metaphysics, particularly the work of Aristotle, within a distinctly post-Kantian frame. To read him as post-Kantian, therefore, is not to see him as intellectually indebted only to Kant and Fichte.

The development of logic culminates in the stage at which it has itself as an object. For this reason, the method driving the logic, which Hegel also claims to be the method driving the development in the other spheres of philosophy, is here treated explicitly. In the introduction to the Science of Logic, Hegel offers a provisional account of this method, which can only be preliminary precisely because the method is understood to be developed through the process, not something pregiven and somehow applied or added to material. There, Hegel begins his discussion of the “General Concept of Logic”:

In no science is the need to begin with the subject matter itself, without preliminary reflections, felt more strongly than in the science...