Hegel, Part 2b
Introduction to the System of Ethical Life
Here follows an approach to Hegel:
In the ancient world of the
Greeks and the Romans, and in the Italian Renaissance, there was a Humanism
that saw humanity as creating itself in the process of interaction with the
external, physical world (in other words: through labour).
In philosophical terminology,
this is the interaction between the human Subject and the Objective world. It
generates the study of the relation between Mind and Matter, which has been the
fundamental question of Philosophy in all eras.
Rational Humanism has always
been challenged by more-or-less superstitious belief-systems. So, for example,
the Humanists of the Italian Renaissance were overtaken by Platonists and
Mannerists and by the mystical Counter-Reformation.
The Italian Renaissance was
followed by its mostly Protestant, North European equivalent, usually called
“The Enlightenment”. Humanists of the Enlightenment such as Descartes and
Spinoza were later contradicted by romantics such as Rousseau and Kant.
Hegel came into a Kantian
world, wherein Kant was, in his own words, the “Critic of Pure Reason”. Kant
wanted a way around pure reason. Kant wanted a license, or permission, to be
irrational, or merely lazy. Kant wanted to escape the most difficult questions.
Kant wanted a short cut.
To recover philosophy from
Kant’s cop-out, Hegel did not go back to a static vision of the Human Subject,
whether individual or social, facing an objective wilderness that must be
tamed.
Hegel shows more than that.
Hegel shows that the Objective universe is really an observed universe, and is
in that sense a Human creation. As much as it has objective (material) existence
separate from humans, yet what defines it is not that alone, but also the
attention that it gets from humans. The Objective Universe is
that-which-is-known, as well as being that-which-is-other.
In the Introduction
to “The System of Ethical Life” (attached; download linked below) Hegel
uses two terms in his first sentence, the meaning of which we need to note. “Intuition” means sense-perception. “Concept” means knowledge. “Perfect adequacy between intuition and
concept” means that what is sensed, is known. What is felt, is understood.
When sense and understanding correspond, then we have what Hegel calls “The Idea”.
“But because
they [Intuition and Concept] are then held apart from one another in an
equation as its two sides, they are afflicted with a difference.”
They must exchange their
qualities. They do not remain separate. They develop...
“But what is
truly the universal is intuition, while what is truly particular is the
absolute concept. Thus each must be posited over against the other, now under
the form of particularity, again under the form of universality; now intuition
must be subsumed under the concept and again the concept under intuition.”
And so on. There is movement.
Hegel’s is a theory of how change happens. It is a theory of human development.
The word “subsumed” is
typically Hegelian, and it carries over into Marxism.
We strive to understand these
paragraphs. What we can see is that Hegel is describing, not merely a static
relation of Subject and Object, but a development of the relationship such that
the opposing terms can change places, or one can be subsumed under the other,
but their union, perfect or not, does not negate their identity. A simple
relation is not perfect. There is more. The last line of the Introduction says:
“Or in this
way the identity of the particular (i.e., the side onto which the intuition has
now stepped) with the universal is determined as an imperfect unification or as
a relation between the two.”
It may be better not to
strain to understand such passages. It may be better to leave them open, so
that meaning can accumulate around them as we look at more of Hegel’s output
over the remaining eight parts of this course.
As much as this is simply
good study practice (e.g. as advocated by Tony Buzan),
yet patiently deriving meaning from incomplete or "broken" data is
also very Hegelian, as we shall see later on.
·
The above is to
introduce the original reading-text: Introduction
to The System of Ethical Life, 1802-3, Hegel.
