UNDERSTANDING HEGEL 3
OR: NO MORE THESIS — ANTITHESIS — SYNTHESIS
Win Corduan
When other explanations don't work, resort to the Absolute. This is a time-honored principle in philosophy, going back to the beginnings of Greek philosophy when Anaximander argued that Thales' understanding of the universe did not hold water. Well, actually it did, but too much of it.
In case this attempt at humor is confusing to you, it's a play on the fact that Thales apparently believed that the basic substance underlying everything that exists is water. I am saying "apparently" because what we have of the writings of the pre-Socratic philosophers consists mostly of so-called fragments, viz. quotations and attributions by other philosophers, such as Aristotle. So, we need to be careful in attempting to reconstruct what they may actually have believed into coherent patterns. Given this understanding of Thales' cosmology, all objects in the universe are formed to varying degrees of water, which manifests itself as a highly adaptive kind of stuff. From the rocks of the Gobi desert to the content of your plastic bottle, it all merely depends on the concentration or thickness of the water. But Thales also said that the entire universe consists of gods, so what he meant by "water" may be something more refined than physical H2O.
In any event, Anaximander thought that this notion of limiting yourself to one substance as substrate to everything is far too restrictive. If you want to explain everything, you must look for something that will, in fact explain everything. The idea that water is the substance of dry things does not make any sense. The ultimate stuff of the universe must be able to clarify both wet and dry. In fact, it must encompass all mutually exclusive attributes: {wet--dry}, {hot--cold}, {long--short}, {sweet--bitter-- sour}, {light--dark--murky}, {happy--unhappy--sober}, and so forth. So, the ultimate principle of all must be all-encompassing, unbounded, infinite, or--to use the most relevant term for us at the moment--an Absolute.
In the standard sequence of the Presocratics, the next philosopher is Anaximenes (I distinguish the two by reminding myself that "a" comes before "e"), who, in turn, criticized his predecessor Anaximander. Remember, in philosophy it's not usually the conclusions that are half as important as the arguments used to support the conclusions. Anaximenes thought that Anaximander's idea was too open and vague. Why is this fire hot? Because of the Infinite. Why is this ice cold? Because of the infinite. Why is this color red? Because of the Infinite. Why is this color not red but blue? Because of the Infinite. If you can explain everything and its contraries with the same explanation, you're really not explaining anything. The obvious question becomes, why does the Infinite make one thing red and another blue? And so you're back to the starting point. Let Anaximander stand as an example, then, of the futility of positing something Absolute or Infinite as the ultimate explanation without mediation; it is too unspecific to explain anything. Nevertheless, he was the first example of similar attempts off and on throughout the history of Western philosophy. (As well as Eastern philosophy, though they dealt with it differently.) --- Anaximenes, by the way, stipulated air as the basic substance, which didn't float all that well either.
It is the idea of the Absolute that became the means for Kant's successors to cope with the lack of a thing-in-itself, which they considered unnecessary. As we said last time, if there is no flower-in- itself in the external world, it must be in our consciousness, but if the entire world actually exists in my mind, that's not only a lot of stuff to carry in my head, but I need some regulative principle to keep it coherent, and Fichte thought that he had found it.
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) began his philosophical explorations as a follower of Kant, but then branched out with his own system, which incorporated some of Kant's principles, but dispensed with others, notably the thing-in-itself. What Fichte retained from Kant was an inclination to substitute morality for metaphysics.
This gets complicated because Fichte tried to be not only logical and philosophical, but edifying as well. So, everything that he stipulated had a moral dimension with a basis in agency viz. in an action that someone performs.
So, Fichte had us begin by stipulating an absolute self, the "I," that posits itself as an action. That's right; I am absolute. I am everything. The world is "I,", and "I," am the world. What an easy way of solving all philosophical problems. So, the stipulation of the flower in my mind is only a small part of my self-consciousness.
But wait! Am I really the flower? I don't experience the flower as myself; I experience the flower as other than myself. In order for this explanation to work, I need to posit a "not-I" in opposition to my absolute "I."
So, I am a free and morally accountable "I." But so are you. And you and you. And just like the flower, I experience all those other "I's" as "not -I's." And so, a synthesis emerges: a finite, limited "I."
Okay, let me draw my conclusion: Fichte came up with the idea of positing an Absolute "I." From the Absolute "I," he then deduced the limited "I,", subject to moral and epistemological strictures. As we shall see, Hegel did not buy into this formalism.
