Hegel and the German Idealists
At the turn of the 19th century, a group of German philosophers would take changes in epistemology set in motion by Immanuel Kant, and lay them at the foundation of a bold new way of doing metaphysics. Taking as their starting point Kant’s revolutionary Transcendentalism Idealism, the German idealists – chief among them Hegel, Fichte, Schelling and Schopenhauer – would devise a radical conception of reality which placed the human mind at its centre, while the world and all its objects orbit around it like so many satellites around their solar fulcrum.
In the 1780s, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) rocked the world of philosophical inquiry when, with his impossibly dense Critique of Pure Reason, he seemingly put an end to 150 years of debate between feuding Enlightenment camps.
While the rationalists, spearheaded by Descartes (1596 – 1650), had maintained that all knowledge was a priori, or already contained in the mind in the form of latent ideas, ready to be “picked” by conscious reasoning like ripe fruit from a tree, the empiricists had held the opposing view. John Locke (1632 – 1704), most heralded of the latter group, thumbed his nose at Descartes in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), arguing that an a priori theory of knowledge was clearly misguided. Knowledge of ideas could not be innate, for if this were so, then all ideas would be universally known by all, and even children and simpletons would possess an awareness of them[1]. Since this is patently untrue, Locke deduced, all knowledge must be derived, not from the inner workings of the mind, but from experience. We are therefore born Tabula Rasa, or blank slates, ready to imbibe all we come to know of the world through sensory input.
By the mid eighteenth century, when David Hume (1711 – 1776) published his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1740), it appeared that Enlightenment epistemology had reached a dead-end. Taking Locke’s empiricism to its logical conclusion, Hume grimly proclaimed the impossibility of all scientific knowledge. If our basis for knowing the world is, as Locke had argued, sense experience, then how can we, in all honesty, confidently state we know cause-and-effect when all we can directly observe is the constant conjunction of two events (say, A and B) in time, and we have no method of individuating the causative fibre binding them?[2]
Simply because A consistently leads to B, it doesn’t mean that it is destined to do so invariably. It could just as easily lead to C, D or even Z. It is merely habit that has accustomed us expecting B, creating a belief that the two are causatively conjoined, rather than a scientifically foolproof certainty.
Hume’s assertion that we are governed more by belief than by knowledge, more by passion than by intellect, and that true insight into the mechanistic goings of the physical world is impossible, hugely influenced Kant. Kant’s discovery of Hume’s ideas, in fact, allegedly awoke him from his “dogmatic slumbers”, setting him to work on an epistemology of his own. Agreeing with Hume on the inherent limitations of Enlightenment thought, but at the same time refusing to surrender to his colleague’s extreme skepticism, Kant devised a theory that he hoped would marry the best of rationalism and of empiricism.
In his Critique of Pure Reason (1781), Kant argued: “Percepts without concept are blind; concepts without percepts, empty.”[3] Though at first glance cryptic, this tersely phrased aphorism is straightforward enough. Knowledge, according to Kant, is both a priori and experience-derived. In this sense, the rationalists and empiricists were both half right. Ideas that fall upon our consciousness have their origin in perceptions located in the external word, yes. But before they register, in our minds, as ideas from which we can construct our knowledge of the world, they pass through a perceptive filter that is innate, necessary and universal – in a word, a priori.
As they pass through this inbuilt conceptual apparatus they are, in turn, transformed, moulded to suit our inner faculties. Mental categories, such a time, space and cause-and-effect (concepts), serve as modifiers of sense-based stimuli (percepts), and ready them for our understanding. In this sense, the mind is, not a passive recipient of reality, but an active agent in its formation. It is not the mind that adapts itself to suit the world, but rather the other way around.
It was precisely this game-changing assertion that would prove so intoxicating to the Idealists. Kant’s theory that the mind inescapably shapes our reception of reality – his Transcendental Idealism – would be taken up, first by Johann Fichte (1762 – 1814), then by others, who were at once galvanized and disconcerted by it.
For the idealists, by asserting the centrality of the mind Kant had taken a giant and vital leap, but he had stopped frustratingly short of the finishing line. Kant’s theory of conceptual mental categories carried with it one unfortunate shortcoming: the cognitive barrier. Since we are forever separated from the external – or noumenal – world, and are therefore confined to experiencing reality as it appears to us in our internal – or phenomenal – world, we must surrender ourselves to the bleak fact that we will never know reality as it actually is. We can never experience the ‘thing-in-itself’ (Ding-an-sich), but only the version of it that falls upon our consciousness after its been processed conceptually: the so-called ‘thing-for-me’ (Ding-für-mich).
This troubled the Idealists, who refused to concede that reality was ultimately unknowable. So the somewhat unintuitive solution they devised was that reality and Mind were, in fact, one and the same. Using Kant’s Transcendental Idealism as his basic methodology, Fichte, first of the Idealists, puts forth the bold postulation that, since all is Mind, the workings of reality can be understood in terms of Mind alone:
…[reason]…is all that exists. So everything it is must be founded in itself, and explained solely from itself…In short, the science of knowledge is Transcendental Idealism.[4
What may, at first, appear a simple rehashing of Kantian epistemology is, in fact, a substantial advance on it. Reason comprises everything that exists, not only inside the mind but, critically, also outside of it. It is the essential substrate of all that is, and since we are, to that extent, one with what envelopes us, we must understand reality by recourse to that very same oneness. Simply by accessing our inner world, we can comprehend the outer one. Or, in the words of Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 – 1860): “Inner nature cannot be reached from without… Knowledge comes from within.”[5]
If all is Mind, then there can be no cognitive barrier. The thing-in-itself is no longer something from which we are irreparably separated. As Schopenhauer would later put it, the Ding-an-sich is an ignis fatuus, the ‘phantom of a dream’[6]. There is no independently existing external reality, or better, it exists as an extension of my inner world. The Ding-an-sich and the Ding-für-mich are one of the same. Kant had argued that cause-and-effect, space and time were categories of the mind merely. The Idealists took this a step further, stating that they are categories of the mind and categories of reality. The structure of reality is the structure of the mind.
In a sense, the Idealists were re-modelling an age-old Platonic concept. The ideal world, for Plato, was one inhabited by ‘forms’ – or perfect, heavenly incarnations of physical objects – which we could access by exercising our reason. The idealists also believed the world was populated by rational forms but, unlike Plato, they didn’t see this reality as having its own independent existence. The world of ideal forms is the none other than world we inhabit, and the forms that populate it are extensions of the ideas that fill our minds. It is as if we are sitting in Plato’s cave, except in this case, the projections are coming, not from an unidentified source behind us, but from the light of our own reason.
The Idealists may have had different names for it, but they all agreed that Mind possessed certain basic properties. The first of these is that Mind is all-encompassing and all-constitutive. For Fichte, it is the ‘Self’ that comprises “the absolute totality of the real”[7]. Friederich Schelling (1775–1854), who names it ‘Will’, asserts that no other being exists beside it[8]. For Georg F.W. Hegel (1770 – 1831), ‘Spirit’ is an all-pervasive force, comprising the whole existence[9]. Schopenhauer, who favours Schelling’s nomenclature, similarly states, “The whole world is Will.”
The second of Mind’s properties is that it’s all-generative. If all of reality is Mind, it follows perforce that all things are reliant on Mind and ultimately originate from it. Fichte renders the idea genealogically: “The Self engenders all being.”[10] Schelling, in turn, chooses a linguistic metaphor: “Will is primal Being (Ur-Sein) to which alone all predicates of Being apply”[11]; as does Schopenhauer: “That which knows all things and is known by none is the subject.”[12]
Thirdly, the idealists see Mind as an ‘intelligence’[13] possessing decidedly anthropomorphic attributes. For Fichte, it is a force that strives toward its goal[14]. Hegel sees it as a conscious being that, by passing through increasing levels of self-awareness, can approximate a state of enlightenment, or ‘absolute knowledge’[15]. For Schopenhauer, the Will is a relentless force whose aim is its own self-preservation no matter the cost.
When contemplating the Idealist notion of Mind, parallels with the Christian Logos are almost impossible to resist. Like the Logos, Mind is an all-encompassing structuring principle that bestows order and unity on the cosmos. And like the Logos, Mind is all pervasive and all-generative[16]. The Mind also shares aspects of the Logos’ nature as an intelligence, or a force possessing intent and conscious purposefulness.
The critical difference lies in its divine provenance. For the Medieval, the Logos was one and the same with the second member of the holy trinity, the son of god who was ‘made flesh’ and ‘walked among us’[17]. The Idealists (with the possible exception of Schelling) had all but pruned Mind of its theistic overtones.
Furthermore, where in the Middle Ages the Logos stood apart from humanity and illuminated the otherwise relatively fallow human mind only in select moments, when it deigned to, but otherwise remained aloof and far-removed, the idealist saw no distinction between the two; the all-pervasive cosmic Spirit and its human instantiation are one and the same. In order to achieve enlightenment, no external illumination is necessary; we need look no farther than inside ourselves and fathom our oneness with reality. In this sense, the Idealists are aligned more with the Pre-Socratics than the Christian theologians, more with Heraclitus and Anaxagoras than Origen or Augustine.
The most elaborately teased-out narrative of Mind is, without a doubt, Hegel’s. In his Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), Hegel gives a comprehensive account of, not only the substance of all reality (‘Spirit’), but also the process by which it changes and evolves over time, ascending to ever-greater embodiments of itself. In direct contrast with the Newtonian world-conception, with its lifeless, mechanistic laws, Hegel sets forth a dynamic metaphysic of process, in which reality is, at once, uniform and fluid, unitary and multi-componential.
For Hegel, being is a “union of union and non-union”[18], and here beneath the enigmatic wording, lies a simple idea with grand implications. The world is both a unity, an infinite oneness whose underlying essence embraces all, and a plurality, a maelstrom of finite, individual parts moving around independently within the totality while never ceasing to partake in it.
Hegel, who admired the Pre-Socratics, was attempting to marry two Ancient world-conceptions: that of Heraclitus (c. 535 – c. 475 BC), who posited a world that was in constant flux, and Parmenides (fl. late sixth century BC), who believed in a changeless unity. And his reason for doing this was twofold: firstly, to reconcile the apparent phenomenal diversity of the universe with the oneness of Spirit he felt bound it together; and secondly, to account for the ongoing state of change that evidently characterises us as a species, on the individual, social and historical level.
Change, in fact, is a fundamental tenet of Hegel’s philosophy. ‘Spirit’, or the all-pervasive being, manifests itself on a number of different levels of ‘consciousness’. As it moves from one level to the next, its accedes to higher degrees of ‘self-consciousness’, and inches ever closer to its final goal, to the highest manifestation of itself.
The process by which this progression takes place is generally referred to as ‘dialectic’. Essentially a ‘logic of change’, dialectic can take several forms and operate on a number of levels, micro and macro. Arguably the most famous of these is the Hegelian unfolding of thesis-antithesis-synthesis. This entails a ‘scuffle’ between two opposing consciousnesses that, once resolved, produces a new-and-improved hybrid of its two progenitors. Second in importance is the Master-Slave dynamic, which is arguably a variant of the first, one involving a ‘fight to the death’ and a subsequent acknowledgment of inter-dependency[19].
The end goal toward which all dialectical processes of this sort relentlessly strive is a state Hegel terms ‘Absolute knowing’. This is Spirit’s last embodiment[20], a terminal stage of freedom and enlightenment that comes about when Mind, having progressed through the various degrees of being, achieves a perfect awareness of itself. Hegel depicts it as follows:
As it presses on toward its true existence, consciousness will reach a point at which it sheds the illusion that it’s beset with something alien… There at last, as consciousness comprehends this its own essence, it will disclose the nature of absolute knowledge itself.[21]
And here we have Hegel’s philosophy in a nutshell: the world, and all degrees of consciousness, of ‘Spirit’ inhabiting it, strive toward a pure or ‘absolute’ state. And the method of reaching this state is to understand that we are no different from the reality outside us, that we are ‘beset with nothing alien.’ Enlightenment, or absolute knowledge, is the acknowledgement of the true unity of Spirit.
On a micro level, this will take the form of the individual ‘looking within’ in the Schopenhauerian sense, fathoming the true nature of his consciousness as being one with everything. On a macro level, it will resemble the collective ‘Spirit’ striving toward its freedom, ‘advancing the form of self-knowledge’ and ‘accomplishing actual history.’[22] In Hegel, all processes – small and the large alike – are interconnected. Just as a person’s reason will feel compelled to push on dialectically to greater levels of self-awareness, so too will our species collectively. We are all Spirit, all Mind, striving toward the Absolute.
[1] Essay Concerning Human Understanding, p. 27
[2] Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, p. 15
[3] Section I: Of logic in general
[4] The Science of Knowledge, p. 48
[5] The World as Will and Representation, Book 2, Ch. 17
[6] The World as Will and Representation, Book 1, loc. 586
[7] The Science of Knowledge, p. 125
[8] Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom, loc. 586
[9] The Phenomenology of Spirit, locc. 1369 & 5190
[10] The Science of Knowledge, p. 226
[11] Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom, loc. 568
[12] The World as Will and Representation, Book 1, loc. 586
[13] Fichte: The Science of Knowledge, p. 226
[14] Ibid., p. 231
[15] The Phenomenology of Spirit, loc. 1369: “There at last, as consciousness comprehends this its own essence, it will disclose the nature of absolute knowledge itself.”
[16] John: 1: “All things came to be through [the Word] and without him nothing came to be.”
[17] John: 1
[18] Fragment of a System (1800)
[19] The Phenomenology of Spirit, loc. 2384
[20] Ibid., loc. 9415
[21] Ibid., loc. 1369
[22] Ibid,. loc. 9427
