UNDERSTANDING HEGEL 18
OR: NO MORE THESIS — ANTITHESIS — SYNTHESIS

Win Corduan

Part 18 Hegel's Transcendental Method and its Limitations

This little segment is not so much a critique of Hegel, as pointing out some serious liabilities that comes with using a Kant-inspired transcendental method. The liability is this: if someone approaches Hegel metaphysically, as many interpreters continue to do, they will not only get a somewhat skewed version of Hegel, it will be impossible for them ever to properly connect with Hegel.

Here is one example. Fromtime to time various readers of Hegel have taken the section in the Phenomenology that deals with the "Master and his Slave" and interpreted it more or less as an independent stand-alone essay by Hegel on the idea of servitude and freedom. Well, if that is what it's supposed to be it's clever, but it also leaves out an awful lot of obvious content that should go with the topic, such as the moral issues connected to slavery, the potential reality of Hegel's metaphor, the social standing of slave owners, etc. 

The same apparent paucity of thorough engagement with an important topic shows up in many areas of the Phenomenology or the Encyclopedia: Hegel starts on a topic, works with it for a while, and then, while you're thinking, "But wait, what about . . ?" he is ready for his new topic. As a pure metaphysician, social analyst, historian of philosophy, theologian, ethicist, and so forth, his work is sometimes far short of exhaustive. 

However, it's not supposed to be exhaustive. Whether it is a vice or a virtue, this is how the transcendental method works. You examine a certain stage of consciousness. As you do so, you find the "potentially fatal flaw" in this stage of consciousness. So you need to find the next shape of consciousness that rectifies the flaw and keeps alive the stage with which you have just worked. Now you analyze this next stage to find where it conceivably may include a rational self-negation, and look for a way to save it and how presumably yet a third stage can avoid that from happening. The progress of stages in Hegel is constructive because each stage upholds the other lest it vanish in its own negation. The next stage does not negate the previous, let alone destroy or annihilate it; if I may put it drastically, there is not "homicide" between th stages, but the "prevention of suicide."    

Etiennne Gilson, whose original expertise was in Decartes, was one of the leaders, along with Jacques Maritain, who brought back Thomism in its original form, in contrast to various adaptations to a Cartesian or Kantian version, and I admire him for all the work he has done. 

However, Gilson's exposition of Hegel is even more hostile than Poppers'.  He asserts, 

When I first posted this quotation I did not have access to Lowenberg's anthology, and thus I couldn't evaluate the selection, translation, or Gilson's use thereof, though it was clear to me that either Lowenberg or Gilson were on a lost path. I am happy to report that as of this writing I found a used copy on the internet which I purchased for delivery in a few days. Then, just a few minutes later, I discovered a few minutes later that the entire text of Hegel Selections was now available on the internet.  In the meantime I also discovered the original German version of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, which is the original source of the quote. 

1) The purported passage is based on Hegel's Philosophy of Right, § 342, where Hegel discusses the concept of "war."

2) There is a problem that I have encountered several times already. A number of years ago I was asked to contribute a chapter on Hegel to a book that--tragically in a real sense--didn't make it to publication. At the time, the editor was quite happy with my production but also asked me to mention my sources in English translations. I sought to comply with that reasonable request, but I encountered a serious issue. For many citations I could not find the exact counterpart in English. Obviously, I found the corresponding section numbers, and I know enough to keep in mind that a translation always includes a certain amount of interpretation, but some of the renderings were apparently more guided by preconceptions than the exact content of what Hegel had said. 

I must admit that I did not expect Lowenberg to be an exception to these encounters, but I am still very unhappy that he fulfilled my pessimistic expectations.  Earlier in this series, when I summarized some of Hegel's content in the Phenomenology, I let you know that I was paraphrasing Hegel. Lowenberg's style does not differ all that much my rewordings, except that he claims that his renderings are translations when they are not. Here is a colorful declaration in Lowenberg's words: 

If you look for this passage in Hegel's text, you're not going to find it. There isn't any preaching from any pulpit mentioned in the original. Hussars with glistening sables create a memorable image, but Hegel did not come up with it. What constitutes a "necessary commotion"?

Prior to this section Hegel had just described his understanding of a state as necessary to protect the freedom of people. At times, the circumstances become such that a war becomes necessary, at which point the citizens have an obligation that transcends their own comfort and possessions. But, says Hegel (and I'm paraphrasing of course), wars in general have contributed to an improvement of a nation. He is not advocating any specific war but is making the transcendental point that wars, as bad as they are, may contribute to the rejuvenation of a state and contribute to the appearance of Absolute Spirit. Lowenberg undoubtedly intended to clarify Hegel's writing to make it easier for people to understand, even in translation. But in the process he turned Hegel's remarks on the sad necessity for war into a more greater justification  than I think Hegel intended. The consequences of this method is seen in the next point. 

3) Etienne Gilson apparenty found in Lowenstein's precis exactly what he had probably been conditioned to see. By the time that his book came out, he had seen serious action in World War I and had spent two years as a prisoner of war in Germany. One can see past any anti-German feeling he may have had. However, to blame it on Hegel is just plain too-far-fetched, and it could not have been just the dubious translations by Lowenberg--even though use of it in scholarship is not a good idea to begin with--that must have directed him to make this bizarre statement. And I might mention that The Unity of Philosophy was based on a series of lectures in English, so we can't qualify his statements by means of looking at the original French. 

The term "dogmatic relativism" could be understood as an oxymoron; theoretically you can't be both dogmatic and relativistic, and I would consider someone such as Richard Rorty to be a good example of it. However, I cannot see in what ways Hegel was either more "dogmatic" than any other philosopher; we all put forward our thoughts as sound reasoning. It is the term "relativism" that I find more baffling; apparently Gilson thought that the movement of Spirit in the System denies logical order, which would be a highly implausibility assessment. 

The acme of Gilson's confusion is his idea that progress in the system means that each new stage destroys the previous one, only to have a third stage shows up which annihilates the previous one. Very obviously Gilson did not understand Hegel as a transcendental philosopher (or if he did, he didn't apply it), and the idea that the progression of the system means that each stage executes its predecessor is far off the mark. You may want to go back to my description of the first three chapters of the Phenomenology to confirm this point. We use "Sense Certainty" to know the world around us, but it needs to be undergirded by "Perception." "Perception" plays an important role for us, which it could not do were it not for "Understanding," etc. 

Please read Hegel's account of "Absolute Freedom", as represented by France's reign of terror subsequent to the French Revolution, for his position on violence and warfare. Further, as I mentioned previously, Hegel and the German Nazi state were not compatible, and it is only by mutilating Hegel's works that the German leaders were appropriating his legacy. 

It is a fact that Hegel, in his analysis of history, referred to the necessity of war. But Hegel is not alone in doing so; explicitly or implicitly, no one can avoid designating wars as "necessary" once one has interpreted certain military events in retrospect as linchpins for subsequent happenings, such as, say, Charles Martel's victory at the Battle of Tours, which made the Carolingian empire possible. Thus, this war was "necessary" for the course of history, and thus, we can generalize that war is a necessary aspect of history as we have it (which is the only history that we have). However, the notion that a warlike destructiveness resulting in bloodbaths is a desired dynamic for Hegel's system is utterly alien to Hegel's thought. 

To return to where this line of thought started, "to prevent any possible misunderstandings," in the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Science, volume 3, "Subjective Spirit," Hegel states:

If as an American you celebrate Independence Day, if as a Frenchman you observe Bastille Day, if you are thankful that in WWII the Allied Forces removed the German Nazis who were responsible for the deaths of 6 million people in the Holocaust, then you are seeing this matter exactly how Hegel saw it. Revolutions are not good, but they may become good insofar they may to reinforce the freedom that people have naturally. Without some form of government, there would be nothing to stop people from harming each other simply if it gives them an advantage over others. "Unchecked freedom" is not really freedom but enslavement of the weak by the strong.

In the History of Philosophy makes the point that freedom only has meaning in the context of an orderly society.

"Freedom" balances itself between two opposites; one of them is obviously constraint. However, the other opposite of freedom is a chaos in which people can do whatever they will without rational motivation. The idea of sailing on a boat comes to mind as an illustration. I could try to swim in the ocean for the same distance as a boat could carry me. In the process I could practice various strokes, swim on my back, or tread water for a while; there would be not restraint—other than the fact that I would eventually drown. Freedom requires a society that makes it possible for its members to exercise their freedom, and thus, freedom needs the principles of law and protection. Hartmann uses Hegel's statements on war and peace as an example of the issues induced by the "linearity" of his system. He states,

I believe that last sentence is intended to say that when you discuss a topic only partially, you may wind up distorting the topic.

To return to yesterday's point, then, without taking into account the nature of Hegel's transcendental methodology, which entails this linearity, one is bound to misunderstand Hegel. If one reads any part of his system as though it were an independent discussion of the topic rather than one concept that both supports a previous concept and is supported by a further topic, there will be omissions.

Now, it seems to me that we have two issues here, namely whether this method is the correct way to understand Hegel and whether this method is the best way to make sense of the world. To the first question, I have tried to make it a major point of this series that any other way to read Hegel except as a transcendental philosopher is wrong. I mean that as hard and fast as it sounds. Contrary to various contemporary hermeneutical movements, we don't have the luxury of choosing among various options on how to understand a writer based on our preference. To read St. Thomas Aquinas as a theologian who wrote in the context of the rediscovery of Aristotle in the thirteenth century is right. To read Aquinas as a theologian using Cartesian methodology is wrong. To read Hegel as a metaphysician is wrong. To read him as a transcendental philosopher is right.

Hartmann applies the term "categorical philosophy" to Hegel, in the sense that Hegel's system in all of its gigantic fullness takes the place of the twelve synthetic a priori logical "categories" of judgment in Kant's epistemology. As I have argued throughout, whether we are talking about Kant's comparatively modest scheme or Hegel's highly complex system, the starting point for both is still the transcendental question: What are the conditions that make knowledge possible and certain?

However, once we we have come to grips with Hegel's method, it is legitimate to inquire from an external point of view whether he was successful with his project. Thus, the question remains whether his approach is the best approach for understanding the world.

And here we come to the Achilles heel of Hegel's philosophy. When all is written and read, Hegel did not make good on the promise, voiced in the introduction to the Phenomenology, to put knowledge on more certain footing than Kant did. He amplified Kant's construction beyond anyone's wildest dreams. Absolute Spirit was supposed to provide the certainty that was not attainable due to the epistemological subjectivity of Kant's thought, but Absolute Spirit is still nothing more than a category that makes knowledge possible. And it is a category that only exists embedded in the all-encompassing, but subjective, cycle of the system. Hegel did not actually give us any understanding of the world; what he gave us was one understanding-of-our-understanding of the world.

Just as we said with regard to Kant, we should not expect the impossible of a philosopher. Specifically, it is unfair to demand of him to give us knowledge of something apart from the faculties that make knowledge of that something possible. There is no knowledge beyond knowledge. But there is a vast difference between Kant and Hegel, namely, the vastness of Hegel's system in contrast to Kant's. Hegel, as idealist, included the entire content of knowledge in his equivalent to Kant's "synthetic a prioris." As I stated at the outset of this series, in contrast to Hume, Kant did not begin with a method only to find out what could eventually count as knowledge. He began with the assumption that some kinds of knowledge are possible (e.g. scientific knowledge) and then raised the transcendental question concerning them. Kant may have been too parsimonious in his selection, as evidenced by his premature elimination of the possibility of metaphysics. On the other hand, Hegel was too lavish, asking us to justify our knowledge by taking recourse to a system of colossal proportions that, in the final analysis, still originates with our subjectivity. Remember, when we peaked behind the curtain, what we saw was ourselves.

But wait! Before I get too carried away here, I must stop myself in my tracks and remember that Hegel asserted in the Philosophy of Right: "What is real is rational and What is rational is real."---"Was vernünftig ist, das ist wirklich; und was wirklich ist, das ist vernünftig." (Vorrede zu Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, p. 17). Am I missing something when I confine Hegel's concepts to the realm of transcendental categories rather than metaphysical reality? I need to pick up here next time.