GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL (1770-1831)
DIALECTICS
Within the architectonic model, Kant’s categories were isolated from each other and appeared to impose themselves upon the structure. However useful the categories were in explaining Kant’s theory of human reason, Hegel wanted to find a starting point, a first cause. For Georg Hegel (1770-1831), “cause” was “reason”—-what is the reason that this event happened? The “reason” has a “consequence”—-because of this, that happened. Therefore the first cause must be reason and the world is the consequent of reason. Reason, for Hegel is not an ideology, as it was for the Enlightenment philosophers. Reason is an abstraction, which becomes part of a process, which produces a consequence. It follows that each category must be logically deduced from the other, so that they all relate, with each emerging from the other. The categories, then, had to be a single unified whole. The key concept of Hegel is the “organic,” which has less to do with the natural and more to do with the logical deduction of one thing from another, due to a process that binds all elements together into an organic whole. The whole that is produced is composed of necessary parts, none of which can be discarded. Hans-Georg Gadamer explained Hegel’s dialectic in his book, Hegel’s Dialectic: Five Hermeneutical Studies, stating: “Hegel felt that the essential methodological rigor was missing in his contemporaries use of dialectic, and, indeed, his own dialectical procedure is entirely peculiar to him. It is an immanent progression from one logical determination to another which, it is claimed, does not begin with any hypothetical assumption but rather which, in following self-movement of the concepts, presents the immanent consequences of thought in its progressive unfolding of itself.Here no transitions are determined externally.”
The first principle of the world, Hegel reasoned, must be Being. Being is both universal and necessary. All things have being and Being must be the highest possible abstraction. Having located the first cause, or first category, the philosopher then had to develop a mechanism from which other categories could be deduced from Being. These categories, unlike Kant’s, could not be arbitrary; they had to be necessary and universal, not just because they sounded “logical,” but also because the categories were linked through deduction. The method of deduction was the Dialectical Method. The Method was the philosopher’s way of avoiding pictorial thinking or the tendency of humans to think in images or things. For example, Kant’s philosophical structure was like a building or resembled an architectonic model. One could easily imagine a house within which the categories become rooms. Although one can certainly envision Hegel’s dialectic, the dialectic is process orientated and dynamic, compared to a more static model. Hegel invented the dialectical method, based upon his realization that every concept necessarily contains its own opposite, hidden away, and that this opposite must be extricated or deduced and revealed from the first term. For Hegel, his categories had to be objective and ontological, meaning that they had to be a proiri and independent.
Hegel with his students in Berlin
Therefore, Hegel began with Being. If Being was to be the starting point, it must be the primal cause. Being must necessarily be the first category because, without being, nothing else could exist. Being, Hegel reasoned, as an abstract and pure category contains Nothingness and therefore can be ultimately reduced to Nothingness–its logical opposite. But to have deduced nothingness from being is to also say that being and nothingness are the same. Being passes into Nothingness; Nothingness passes into Being. This passing (process) is called Becoming. In other words, from Being and Nothingness, we can deduce Becoming. These are the first three Categories of Hegelian Logic. It is not we, however, who deduce these categories; the categories necessarily deduce themselves.
The first triad: Being, Nothingness, Becoming is based upon a founding affirmative, the thesis, the founding negative, the antithesis, and the process that resolves the contradiction or the dialectic between the two, the founding synthesis. These are the three highest and most abstract categories, universal and existing by virtue of necessity and deduced by the method of deduction. Equally obvious is the consequence of the system which unfolds in three parts: the powers of Reason will always force the system forward. The Dialectic will push onward until a point is reached when no contradiction or antithesis is possible. At that point one has reached the Absolute. Here in the final category all distinctions are merged, because as the dialectic moves forward, nothing is lost, all is retained and assimilated. The unity of the Absolute is necessary, grounded in the Logic of the thesis/antithesis conflict itself. The antithesis will never discard the thesis and the synthesis will contain both the thesis and the antithesis, carrying the sequence of triads forward towards the Absolute. The terminus of Hegel’s system is the category of the Absolute Idea, where nature and idea are transcended be the Spirit.
The use of the triadic formation: thesis, anti-thesis and synthesis is convenient but too simplified. Hegel went in to detail in Encyclopaedia Logic (1817) where he explained the logic of the dialectic in terms of moments. This book can be looked like as a mature corrective to his early and definitive Phenomenology of Spirit (1807). In the Encyclopedia Hegel stated, “It is equally important, on the other hand, that philosophy should be quite clear about the fact that its content is nothing other than the basic import that is originally produced and produces itself in the domain of the living spirit. the content that is made into the world, the outer and inner world of consciousness; in other words, the content of philosophy is actuality. The first consciousness of this content is called experience.Since philosophy is distinguished only in form from other ways of becoming conscious of this same identical import, its accord with actuality and experience is necessary. Indeed, this accord can be viewed as an outward touchstone, at least, for the truth of a philosophy; just as it has to be seen as the supreme and ultimate purpose of science to bring about the recon ciliation of the reason that is conscious of itself with the reason that is, or actuality, through the cognition of this accord.”
Another term for “moment” is side and Hegel states that the structure of logic has three sides. The first moment is a fixed moment, a point before anything has begun to “move,” so to speak. Here in this frozen period, all definitions, all meanings are motionless, apparently accepted, apparently beyond questioning. Then the stability is shaken by the appearance of the opposite which both negates and retains the original concept. Hegel used the term aufheben, which allows the first moment to be retained out of necessity because the second movement would make no sense without its counterpoint, the first movement. Recall that Hegel insisted upon necessity: in order for logic to exist, its opposite must also exist and the negation evolves necessarily out of the positive. Necessity also propels the last moment, that of synthesis or more properly the “speculative movement.” This moment does not come from no where as an external force of negation. Instead, the third movement, called determinate negation, negates the first two by expressing fatal flaws in the first two concepts.
According to Robert Brandon, determinate negation (bestimmte Negation) is Hegel’s “most fundamental conceptual tool.” Hegel explained this third movement in the preface to his Phenomenology: “..in speculative Ibegreifenden) thinking.. the negative belongs to the content itself, and is the positive, both as the immanent movement and determination the content, and as the whole of the process. Looked at as a result, what emerges from this process is the determinate negative, which is consequently a positive content as well.” Then as the Introduction of the same book continues, “For it is only when it is taken as the result of that from which it emerges, that is, in fact, the true result; in that case it is itself a determinant nothingness, one which has a content. The skepticism that ends our with the bare abstraction of nothingness or emptiness cannot get any further from there but must wait t see whether something new comes along and what it is, in order to throw it too into the same empty abyss. But then, on the other hand, the result is conceived as it is in truth,namely as a determinate negation, a new form has thereby immediately arisen, and in the negation the transition is made through which the progress through the complete series of forms comes about of itself.” Hegel also stated, “Contradiction is the rule of the true, noncontradiction is the rule of the false.”
In his book,The Unity of Hegel’s “Phenomenology of Spirit”: A Systematic Interpretation, Jon Stewart helpfully explained, “The key idea behind this doctrine that is illustrated in these passages is that although any given position has been negated and rendered inconsistent, nevertheless something remains left over and provides a starting point or ground for a new position.” He also clarified the meaning of determinate, a term that Hegel always italicized: “..contradiction is not a pure or complex negation, but other in the negation something determinate remains.” Truth, as Stewart stated is to be found in contradiction and two contradictory propositions do not negate each other but become a higher truth. “..by means of the determinate negation, the old view is raised to a higher level which can be expressed with the Latin word elevate. With a new network of beliefs based on the datum or experience that contradicted the old belief system is able to account for more phenomena than the old. The new belief system can presumably account for all the same phenomena as the old system in addition to the set of facts or experiences which proved contradictory to the the old system.” This process can continue because, as Hegel argued, that which is finite contains its own opposite or “sublation.” The first and second moments contradict one another and rise above the first movement and its limitations, above the second movement and its limitations, in the third element of the triad evolves into a new moment, that Hegel described as “higher” and “richer,” because “it is the unity of itself and its opposite.” The movement from the finite to the universal is progressive and continuous, driving to a completion, a place that Hegel named the Absolute.
Read also “Kant and Reason” and “Friedrich Schiller” and “Hegel” and “Hegel and His Impact on Art and Aesthetics” and “Hegel, Art, and the Dialectical Method”
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Dr. Jeanne S. M. Willette and Art History Unstuffed. Thank you.