Dr. V.K.Maheshwari, M.A(Socio, Phil) B.Sc. M. Ed, Ph.D
Former Principal, K.L.D.A.V.(P.G) College, Roorkee, India
Before Hegel, both Fichte and Schelling had proceeded from Kantian pre- suppositions that mind is the principle of knowledge ; all philosophy is ultimately a philosophy of mind. Both accepted the dynamic view of reality : for both the ideal principle is an active living process. And, in spite of Romantic tendencies, both employed the logical method, seeking to explain the world of experience by exhibiting the condition without which such experience would be impossible. We may say that in Schelling philosophy again becomes metaphysics: nature and mind are conceived as progressive stages in the evolution of an absolute principle that expresses itself in the inorganic and organic realms, in individual and social life, in history, science, and art. Nature takes an important place in his thinking: unconscious processes are at work, not only in the so-called inanimate sphere, but in history, society, and the human mind as well.
Hegel builds on the foundations laid by Fichte and Schelling. He agrees with the former in insisting on a logical method, indeed, he undertakes to put the world-view on a rational scientific basis, in identifying logic with ontology or metaphysics; with both in conceiving reality as a living developing process. For him, too, nature and mind or reason are one ; only, he subordinates nature to reason. Indeed, for him, all being and reason are identical; the same process that is at work in reason, is present everywhere ; hence, whatever is real is rational, and whatever is rational is real. There is, therefore, a logic in nature as well as in history, and the universe is at bottom a logical system. The Absolute, then, is not an undifferentiated absolute, ” in which all cows are black,” as Schelling had taught (according to Hegel), but reason itself. Nor is the Absolute so much a substance as conceived by Spinoza as a subject, which means that it is life, process, evolution, as well as consciousness and knowledge. All motion and action, all life, are but an unconscious thinking ; they follow the law of thought ; hence, the more law there is in nature, the more rational is its activity. And, finally, the goal toward which the developing Absolute moves is self-consciousness ; the meaning of the entire process lies in its highest development : in the realization of truth and goodness, in the realization of a mind that knows the meaning and purpose of the universe and identifies itself with the universal purpose.
It is the business of philosophy, according to Hegel, .to know nature and the entire world of experience as it is, to study and probably comprehend the reason in it; not the superficial,
Philosophy transitory, and accidental forms, but its eternal essence, harmony, and law. Things have a meaning, the processes in the world are rational : the planetary system is a rational order, the organism is rational, purposive, full of meaning . Since reality is at bottom rational, a necessary process of thoughts or notions, a logical process, it can be known only by thought; and the function of philosophy will be to understand the laws or necessary forms according to which reason operates. Logic and metaphysics will, therefore, be one and the same. The world, however, is not static, it moves on, it is dynamic; so is thought, or reason; the notion, or the true concept, is an active, moving process, a process of evolution. In evolution, something that is undeveloped, undifferentiated, homogeneous, as we should say, and in this sense abstract, develops, differentiates, splits up, assumes many different, hence opposing or contradictory forms, until at last we have a unified, concrete, particularized object, a unity in diversity. The indefinite, abstract ground from which we have proceeded has become a definite concrete reality in which the opposites are reconciled or united in the whole. The higher stage in the process of evolution is the realization of the lower, it is really what the lower intends to be; in this sense, it is the truth of the lower, the purpose of the lower, the meaning of the lower. What was implicit in the lower form becomes explicit or is made manifest in the higher. Every stage in the process contains all the preceding stages and foreshadows all the future ones: the world at every stage is both a product and a prophecy. The lower form is negated in the higher, that is, it is not what it was; but it is also preserved in the higher, it has been carried over and sublimed. All these ideas Hegel expresses ; and the process, in the thing, of passing over into its opposites he calls the dialectical process.
This is what Hegel means when he declares that contradiction is the root of all life and movement, that everything is contradiction, that the principle of contradiction rules the world. Everything tends to change, to pass over into its opposite. The seed has in it the impulse to be something else, an other: to contradict itself and to transcend itself. Without contradiction there would be no life, no movement, no growth, no development; everything would be dead existence, static externality.
But contradiction is not the whole story; nature does not stop at contradiction, but strives to overcome it; the thing passes over into its opposite, true, but the movement goes on and oppositions are overcome and reconciled, that is, become parts of a unified whole. The opposites are opposites with respect to one another, but not with respect to the unity or whole of which they form the parts. Taken by themselves, they have no value or meaning, but considered as planfully articulated parts of a whole, of a process, they have value and meaning. They are expressions of the notion of the thing, of its reason or purpose. In realizing its purpose, its notion, the thing overcomes the contradiction between its being and its notion, between what it now is and what it has it in it to be. Thus, for example, all nature strives to overcome its material being, to divest itself of its phenomenal encumbrances and to make manifest its true essence, to put on immortality.
Again, the universe is a process of evolution, in which ends or purposes are realized, the purposes of universal reason. This is an organic or teleological conception. The complete organism is the realization of the purpose or form or notion or concept of the organism, the truth of the organism, as Hegel would say. The important thing in evolution is not merely what existed at the beginning, but what happens or is made manifest at the end. The truth lies in the whole, but the whole is realized only in the completed process of evolution ; being is at the end what it is in truth. And so we may say that the Absolute is essentially a result; the result as such, however, is not the complete whole; the result together with the entire process of development is the true whole; the thing is not exhausted in its purpose, but in its achievement.
Hence, philosophy is interested in results ; it has to show how one result emerges from the other, how it necessarily emerges from the other. This movement proceeds unconsciously in nature and even in history . But the thinker can become conscious of the process ; he may describe it, rethink the concepts. He has reached the highest stage of knowledge when he has grasped the Idea of the world, when he knows its meaning, when he can retrace the operations of the universal dynamic reason, its categories, its notions. The concepts in his head are of the same nature as the universal concepts ; the dialectical evolution of the concepts in the mind of the philosopher coincides with the objective evolution of the world ; the categories of subjective thought are likewise categories of the universe; thought and being are identical.
Now, if the business of philosophy is to follow the nature of things, to tell us the what, the why, and the where of reality, the existence, ground or essence, and purpose of things, its method must be suited to its end.
The method must reproduce the rational process, or the course of evolving reason in the world. This object can- not be attained by the artistic intuitions of genius or in similar mysterious ways, there is no other way than that of hard thinking. We cannot exhaust reality in abstract concepts; reality is a moving dynamic process, a dialectical process, which abstract concepts cannot faithfully represent: the abstract concept tells only a part, and only a small part, of the story. Reality is now this, now that ; in this sense it is full of negations, contradictions, and oppositions: the plant germinates, blooms, withers, and dies; man is young, mature, and old. To do a thing justice, we must tell the whole truth about it, predicate all these contradictions of it, and show how they are reconciled and preserved in the articulated whole which we call the life of the thing. Ordinary abstract thought takes the existing things in isolation, it looks upon them as the true realities, and considers their special phases and oppositions by themselves. The intellect can do nothing but distinguish, oppose, and relate; it cannot conceive the unity of opposites, it cannot understand life and the inner purpose of things; hence, for example, it can only wonder at animal instinct and its works. The intellect looks down upon the speculative method, but it can never grasp life as such. Conceived by themselves or torn from their relations, the contradictory aspects of things are meaningless appearances ; they can be understood only as parts of an organic, articulated system; or, as Hegel puts it, all existence has truth only in the Idea, for the Idea is the only true reality. One Idea pervades the whole and all the parts of the whole; all particu- lars have their reality in this unity. The activity which sees things whole, or unifies the opposites, is a higher function of mind, which, however, let it be remembered, cannot dispense with the intellect. The two functions work hand in hand.
Thought will, therefore, proceed from the most simple, abstract, and empty concepts to the more complex, concrete, and richer ones, to notions. Hegel calls this method, the dialectical method, and, with them, distinguishes in it three moments or stages. We begin with an abstract universal concept (thesis) ; this concept gives rise to a contradiction (antithesis) ; the contradictory concepts are reconciled in a third concept which, therefore, is a union of the other two (syn- thesis).
The new concept, however, suggests new problems and contradictions, which, in their turn, must be resolved in other concepts. And so the dialectical process, which seeks to follow the evolution of reality, goes on until we reach an ultimate concept or notion in which all oppositions are resolved and preserved. But no single concept, not even the highest, represents the whole truth ; all concepts are only partial truths ; truth or knowledge is constituted by the entire system of concepts, every one of which has evolved from a basal concept. Truth, like rational reality itself, is a living logical process. Or to say it in other words : One thought follows necessarily from the other, one thought provokes a contradictory thought with which it is united to form another thought. The dialectical movement is the logical self-unfolding of thought. Hegel speaks as though thoughts or notions thought themselves: there is an inner necessity in them, they are like a growing organism that unfolds its capacities and becomes a concrete organized whole, a concrete universal. Hence, all the thinker has to do is to let his thought follow its logical course in the manner described ; since this process, if correctly carried on, is identical with the world-process, it will be a reproduction of the development immanent in things. In this way, we can think God’s thoughts after him. Speculative or dialectical thinking, then, is a process that seeks to do justice to moving, living, organic existence, a process in which differences are reconciled, in which distinctions are not merely made, but comprehended. The philosophical notion is an organic unity of differences, a totality of parts, a unified and yet differentiated whole. When Hegel tells us that the concrete universal notion is the synthesis of opposites, he wishes to describe the nature of thought as well as the nature of reality.
Reality, then, is a logical process of evolution. It is a spiritual process, and we can, therefore, understand it only in so far as we experience such a process in ourselves. But, let us not forget, it is not the particular ideas, the empirical or psychological content, which we find in ourselves, that give us such understanding. There is a rational necessity in all thought that must be reproduced by us. Our thinking evolves or develops rationally; it moves logically, genetically, dialectically : in this sense, it is universal, trans-empirical, transcendental, or metaphysical, as Hegel calls it. Nor is truth expressed in this or that individual, it manifests itself in the species, it grows out of the life of the race. The divine mind or reason expresses itself in the evolution of the racial consciousness, in human history. But, it must always be remembered, only in so far as human history is rational, necessary, logical, can we speak of it as expressive of the divine reason.
Hegel calls God Idea, meaning the potential universe, the timeless totality of all the possibilities of evolution. Spirit or Mind (Geist) is this Idea realized. The Idea contains within itself, in posse, implicitly, ideally, the entire logical-dialectical process which unfolds itself in a world ; in it all the laws of its evolution are outlined which express themselves in the form of objective existence. The Idea is the creative logos or reason; its forms of action or categories are not empty husks or lifeless ideas, but objective thoughts, spiritual forces which constitute the very essence of things. The study of the creative logos, in its necessary evolution, is logic. It is not meant by this teaching that God as pure thought or logical Idea existed before the creation of the world ; for Hegel declares that the world was eternally created. The divine mind can never be without self- expression; God is the living moving reason of the world, he reveals himself in the world, in nature and in history; nature and history are necessary stages in the evolution of God into self-consciousness. The evolution is not temporal in the sense that there ever was a time when there was no evolution. The Absolute is eternally that into which it develops: the categories are eternally potential in it, they have never evolved out of nothing. Nevertheless, the categories are developed successively, one after the other, one being the condition of the other. God is not absorbed in the world, nor the world absorbed in God; without the world God is not God, he cannot be without creating a world, without knowing himself in his other. There must be unity and opposition in the Absolute : God is not separate from the world. The finite world could not exist without the Idea, it is not an independent thing and has no real being without God : whatever truth it has it owes to God. Just as in our minds thoughts and feelings come and pass away without exhausting the mind, so the phenomena of nature come and go without exhausting the divine mind. And just as our mind is enriched and enlarged by its thoughts and experiences, and rises to fuller and fuller self-consciousness in and through them, so the divine Idea is enriched by its self-expressions in nature and history, and rises through them to self-consciousness, becoming for itself what it was in itself. In the rhythmical process of self-alienation and self-deliverance, the universal mind realizes its destiny: it thinks itself in its object and so comes to know its own essence.
The Absolute becomes conscious only in evolution, and above all in man. Hegel, therefore, does not mean that God, or the logical Idea, exists as a self-conscious logical process before the creation of the world, he cannot be conscious without a world; he is a developing God and becomes fully self-conscious only in the minds of human beings who make explicit the logical-dialectical process that lies implicit in the universal absolute reason.
From all this it must appear that logic is the basal science, since it reproduces the divine thought-process as it is in itself. Dialectical thought expresses the innermost essence of the universal mind ; in such thinking the universal mind knows itself as it is ; here thought and being, subject and object, form and content are one. The forms or categories of thought which logic evolves are identical with the forms of reality: they have both logical and ontological or metaphysical value. In the essence of things thought recognizes its own essence, seeing it as in a mirror. Reason is the same everywhere, and everywhere the divine reason is at work: the universe, or that which is real and eternal in it, is the result of the thought of God. Hence it makes no difference where we begin: whether we study reason, the dialectical process, in ourselves (logic) or in the universe (metaphysics), we shall always reach the same results. In logical thinking, pure thought may be said to study itself, thinker and thought are one ; and in it, also, the thinker develops with his thinking. The other sciences are applications of logic: the philosophy of nature studies the Absolute, or universal reason, in its otherness in its self- objectification or self-alienation; the philosophy of mind shows how reason overcomes objective nature, returns to itself, as it were, or evolves into self-consciousness.
It is to be noted that in all these cases of the revelation of reason, whether as nature or mind, reason appears in an infinite variety of temporal and transitory forms. These accidental shapes showing on the surface are not the object of philosophy. It is the business of philosophy to understand the reason in things, the essence or substance of nature and mind, the eternal harmony and order, the immanent law and essence of nature, the meaning or rationale of human institutions and of history, the eternal element shining through the temporal and accidental, the inner pulse beating in the external shapes. Moreover, this reason in things we can know only conceptually, through the notion, through dialectical or logical thought; hence, the only knowledge worthy of the name is a priori or philosophical knowledge: philosophy of nature, philosophy of right, philosophy of history.
The Logic constitutes the first part of Hegel’s philosophical system . It was preceded by his larger work. The structure of the Logic is triadic, reflecting the organization of the larger system of philosophy as well as a variety of other motifs, both internal and external to the Logic proper. The Logic has three divisions: the Doctrine of Being, the Doctrine of Essence, and the Doctrine of the Notion (or Concept). In the Doctrine of Being , Hegel explains the concept of “being-for-self” as the function of self-relatedness in the resolving of opposition between self and other in the “ideality of the finite” . He claims that the task of philosophy is to bring out the ideality of the finite. In the Doctrine of Essence, Hegel explains the categories of actuality and freedom. He says that actuality is the unity of “essence and existence” and argues that this does not rule out the actuality of ideas for they become actual by being realized in external existence.The Doctrine of the Notion (Begriff) is perhaps the most relevant section of the Logic . This section is subdivided into three parts: the subjective notion, the objective notion, and the idea which articulates the unity of subjective and objective. The first part, the subjective notion, contains three “moments” or functional parts: universality, particularity, and individuality.
Logic deals with concepts, it shows how one concept springs from the other, that there is a necessary evolution in thinking, that if we think correctly, we are bound to pass Philosophy from stage to stage until we reach the highest stage . When we think these concepts, we are in the world of true reality, the eternal, imperishable process of the universe. The system of concepts which we think in logic, forms an organic whole and represents the true essence of things. It is not merely some- thing in our heads ; we find it revealed in the world-process, in nature and in mind, in the individual mind and in the social mind, in the history of the world and in human institutions. In logic, however, we envisage reason in its purity, in its nakedness, as it were; in this sense, it is a shadow- world of essenceless forms, the logical Idea, God before he created the world. It is a shadow-world because it lacks substance or body, because it is naked thought, because it is not clothed in the garments of a universe. This is what Hegel means when he states that logic has no actual being, that it is never actualized except in the thinking of man: outside of human thinking, universal reason is more than pure thought. We are not concerned, in logic, with its revelations, with nature, history, society, but with a system of truths, a world of ideas, as it is in itself. But we can also study it in its revelations, we can see how this skeleton. or framework, takes on flesh and blood, or, rather, we can see it in flesh and blood. In nature, reason reveals itself in its otherness, in its externality and succession, in space and time. Hegel treats these relationships as logical judgments and syllogisms but they do not merely articulate how the mind must operate (subjectivity) but also explain actual relationships in reality (objectivity). In objective reality we find these logical/dialectical relationships in mechanism, and teleology. Finally, in the Idea, the correspondence of the notion or concept with objective reality, we have the truth of objects or objects as they ought to be, i.e., as they correspond to their proper concepts.
We cannot truly say that the logical Idea passes over into nature : the logical Idea is nature, nature is a form of the logical Idea, it is the Idea in its spatial and temporal form. Nature is reason, it is conceptual, it is the Begriff in its ” side by sideness,” the notion in the form of extension. Hegel calls it petrified intelligence, an unconscious intelligence, concepts spread-out, so to speak. Moreover, nature is a stage of transition through which the logical Idea passes, in its evolution into mind or spirit (Geist). That is, the Idea, which embodies itself or is externalized in nature, returns into itself and becomes mind, or spirit: in mind the Idea reveals itself to itself.
The dialectic of self-determination is, for Hegel, inherent in the very structure of freedom, and is the defining feature of Spirit (Geist). The full actualization of Spirit in the human community requires the progressive development of individuality which effectively begins with the realization in self-consciousness of the “truth of self-certainty” and culminates in the shape of a shared common life in an integrated community of love and Reason, based upon the realization of truths of incarnation, death, resurrection, and forgiveness as grasped in speculative Religion.
Mind or spirit passes through dialectical stages of evolution, revealing itself as subjective mind, objective mind, and absolute mind. Subjective mind expresses itself as soul (mind dependent on nature), consciousness (mind opposed to nature), and spirit (mind reconciled with nature in knowledge) : corresponding to these stages, Hegel has the sciences of anthropology, phenomenology, and psychology. The Idea, or universal reason, becomes soul in the animal organism. It embodies itself, creates a body for itself, becomes a particular, individual soul, the function and vocation of which is to exercise its peculiar individuality; it is an unconscious production. This soul, which has fashioned an organic body for itself, becomes conscious of itself, distinguishes itself from its body; consciousness is an evolution from the very principle of which the body is the expression.
The function of consciousness is knowing. It rises from a purely objective stage, in which it regards the sensible object as the most real and truest thing, to a stage in which reason is conceived as the innermost essence of both self-consciousness and objective reality. Mind or spirit (Geist) in the highest sense unites both functions: it is productive knowing. We really know only what we create or produce. The objects of the spirit are its own products; hence, its essence, especially that of theoretical spirit, consists in knowing. Spirit or intelligence immersed in the object is perception. No one can speak or write illuminatingly of an object without living in it spiritually, i.e., without intuiting it in the true sense of the terra. Knowledge is completed in the pure thinking of conceiving reason. Presentation ( memory, imagination, association) is the mean between perception and reason. Reason evolves or un- folds concepts, i.e., conceives by pure thought the self-development of concepts. The understanding or intellect judges, that is, separates the elements of the concept; reason concludes, that is, binds together the elements of the concept. In the development of pure thought, theoretical intelligence sees through itself, knows itself; it becomes reason recognizing itself.
Intelligence or reason is the sole ground of its development; hence, the result of its self-knowledge is the knowledge that its essence is self-determination or will or practical spirit. Will appears as a particular subject or natural individual, striving for the satisfaction of his needs or deliverance from his ills. The will immersed in its impulses is unfree.
The Idea, or universal reason, expresses itself not only in nature or in individuals, but in human institutions and in history, in right or law (property, contract, punishment), Philosophy – n morality or conscience, in custom or ethical observances (family, civic society, State). In these institutions and in history reason realizes itself or becomes actual, i.e., appears in external form; in this sense it is called objective reason. The reason which has produced hu- man institutions is the same as that which seeks to understand them : the reason which has unconsciously evolved law, custom, and the State becomes conscious of the process in the philosophy of right. It is not the business of such a philosophy to tell us what the State ought to be, but to know it as it is, that is, to exhibit the reason immanent in it; and that can only be done by dialectical thinking. It is the function of philosophy to show how rational institutions follow from the very Idea or nature of right or justice. In studying institutions, it is possible to explain them historically, to show to what conditions, circumstances, and so forth, they owe their existence. But such a, causal explanation is not the true philosophical explanation; it is one thing to trace the historical evolution of institutions, to point out the circumstances, needs, events, which led to their establishment; another, to demonstrate the justice in them and their rational necessity. We can understand the reason of right, law, custom, State, only when we understand the notion of thing.
Objective reason is realized in a society of free individuals in which the individual wills the laws and customs of his people, In such a society the individual subordinates his subjective conscience (morality) to universal reason; in custom or the ethical observances of his people (Sitte) he finds his universal and true self expressed: he recognizes in the laws his own will and in himself a particularized expression of the laws. The evolution of the ethical spirit into a community of self-conscious individuals is the result of the evolution of active reason. After many experiences in society, the individual learns that in willing a universal cause he is willing his own will, or is free. The real and the ideal are one here: individual reason accepts universal reason as its own; the individual abandons his subjectivity and subordinates his individual reason to the universal reason.
The perfect State, which realizes perfect freedom, is the goal and purpose of universal history: progress means the development of the consciousness of freedom. The various peoples and the great historical personalities are the instruments by which the universal spirit realizes its ends: every great people has a mission to perform in the divine evolution and can be understood only in the light of the total development. When it has accomplished the purpose of its existence, it makes way for other stronger nations. The conquest of one nation by another is a confession that the Idea for which the one stands is subordinate to that of the victorious people : here might makes right, physical power and rational justice coincide. War, in so far as it is a war of ideas, is justified by Hegel on the assumption that the stronger cause will defeat the weaker and that the progress of humanity is furthered by physical and moral conflict, or universal reason, also makes use of the passions and private interests of individuals to realize universal ends: this is the strategy of the Idea ; great men are the executives of Reason. In his Philosophy of History Hegel tries to show how the universal spirit realizes the purposes prescribed by the dialectical evolution of its essence.
In none of the preceding stages of the development of mind, however, does the universal mind come to know itself as it is, or reach the highest plane of self -consciousness and freedom. In none of them can it be said that thought and being, subject and object, are one, or that all the oppositions are fully reconciled. The supreme stage in the evolution of the logical Idea is the Absolute Mind.
Every particular subject as a truly knowing subject is such an absolute subject. The Absolute Mind likewise passes through three stages: revealing itself in the art, the religion, and the philosophy of the human mind. The Absolute Mind ex- presses its essence or truth in the form of intuition in art; in the form of presentation or imagination in religion; in the form of conception or pure logical thought in philosophy. The mind perceiving its inner essence in perfect freedom is art, the mind imaging it reverently is religion, the mind conceiving and knowing it in thought is philosophy. ” Philosophy too has no other object than God and is, therefore, essentially rational theology, as well as an enduring worship of God in the service of truth.” Every one of these forms realizes itself in the dialectical process of evolution and has its history: the history of art, the history of religion, and the history of philosophy.
From 1820 to 1840 Hegel’s system was the reigning philosophy in Germany. It enjoyed the favor of the Prussian State, and had representatives in nearly every German university. What made it particularly attractive to many thinkers was its logical method, which seemed to avoid both the rigid abstractions of rationalism and the easy fancies of mysticism, its claim to absolute certainty, and its apparent success in overcoming difficulties and solving problems in nearly every field of human study.
The early socialists (Marx and Lassalle), with their economic interpretation of history, also based themselves on Hegelian premises. What was once rational, they reasoned, becomes irrational in the process of evolution : private property, which was once right and rational, will be superseded and overcome in socialism as a result of the dialectical-logical process of history.
The impetus which Hegel gave to the study of the history of philosophy and the history of religion produced a school of great historians of philosophy. He likewise exercised a great influence on the philosophy of history, the study of jurisprudence, politics, and indeed on all the mental sciences.
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