This
paper discusses some of the problems with justifications or explanations of
rights based in the application of philosophic theories. This paper also attempts, through the
examination of some philosophic works, to describe what it is about philosophic
works and the reality they deal with that makes their reduction into theory and
formula attractive, but ultimately unsatisfying. A philosophic work is not properly subject to
the same type of reduction and application as are works in such areas as
economics or engineering. While a philosophic
work might speak to economic or sociological or psychological concerns, these
do not constitute the philosophic heart of the work. Out of an economic work, for example, a
series of equations may be derived and applied to a variety of situations in
order to predict the potential outcomes of reforms. A treatise on tort law might leave one with
practical suggestions that can be applied to real tort cases or legislation
that will lead to the resolution of tort claims in a manner that is measurably
more efficient or more. A philosophic work,
on the other hand, completes its task within its own boundaries, giving insight
and understanding, but not leaving the reader or participant with anything that
can be applied directly to any concrete problems, including the general
explanation or justification of something like human rights. As will be discussed in the case of Hegel, a
philosophic work can establish a model system of the world that explains the
need for something like rights within that model system, and which
simultaneously gives great insight into the place of rights in the real world,
but the model of the philosophic work is in some respects closed. To the extent that a philosophic work can
effect greater comfort with something like a particular formulation of rights,
its success flows from its sophistical function. Whether a particular formulation of rights
expressed in a philosophic work that embodies law and sophistry succeeds in
securing those rights depends on the quality of the law and the sophistry, not
the philosophic part of the work. So too
can a treatise on tort be a philosophic work with irreducible elements. It is my contention that the closed aspect of
philosophic works follows from the fact that all philosophic works are
essentially dialectical. Philosophic
works which attempt a different method eventually reveal themselves to be
either dialectical or works of social, political, physiological, logical or
historic analysis and insight.
In the
derivation of a theory or formula from a philosophic work to an area such as
rights, the essential tensions and utility of the philosophic work as a
provider of insight is lost. Rather
than criticizing “rights” theorists’ abuse of philosophy, I will examine how
Hegel’s Philosophy of Right succeeds as a discussion of government and
“rights” despite what might appear from the outset to be a mere application of
his own previously developed philosophic theory to a practical setting. The Philosophy or Right succeeds
because it is in itself a philosophic work rather than a mere application of a
reduced version of prior established theories.
It is true that any work setting forth an application of any philosophic
theory can lay some claim to being a philosophic work itself. There is however such a difference between
the quality and enlightening features of the two types of works.
Before
examining the Philosophy of Right I will take a close look at some of
the key portions of Hegel’s Phenomenology which, through an exploration
of consciousness, sets out some of the philosophic approaches that are employed
and developed in the Philosophy of Right. Careful analysis of some parts of the Phenomenology
will reveal how far the Philosophy of Right is from merely employing a
formulaic Hegelian philosophy. In order
to more fully elucidate what it is that is essentially irreducible about a
philosophic work I will examine Edmund Husserl’s phenomenologic work and some
of Jaques Derrida’s commentary on Husserl.
I
believe Plato’s Meno addresses the issues discussed above. In this dialogue Socrates develops, among
other things, a theory of knowledge based on recollection. If the dialogue’s work in this area is
reduced to a mere epistemological theory, holding that all knowledge is
recollection, the dialogues value is lost.
The theory itself is intentionally incredible and the problem with any
attempt at the practical application of the theory obvious. At the same time, the idea that knowledge
rests in universals to which we already have access is compelling. The dialogue concerns itself with learning
and knowledge in order to come to an understanding of what it means to know
virtue. While many simple possibilities
of obtaining knowledge are easily refuted within the dialogue, it is also clear
from the less easily rejected theories that learning does not come from trade
in reduced theories. The dialogue gives
some insight into knowledge and learning, but not because the reader comes to
simply accept the theory of recollection.
The powerful, seductive, readily applied or impressively clever theories
of virtue introduced in the beginning of the dialogue, like all beautiful
language, can trick us into believing that something substantive or productive
is being conveyed. The work of eliciting
Socrates’ own theory of recollection may give insight into knowledge, but not
because of the end product which has little to say to a person when removed
from the dialogue. In the Meno
Socrates leads a slave-boy through a visual demonstration of the Pythagorean
theorem and when the initially unintuitive conclusion becomes apparent to the
slave boy, Socrates declares that this proves that the boy recalled the
knowledge. Without Socrates’ guidance
the slave-boy would not have had this particular recollection. Neither would the boy have really learned the
truth of the geometric relationships from a statement that the hypotenuse of a
right triangle is derivable from the lengths of the other two sides because the
square of its length is the sum of the squares of those sides. The boy had to work through a proof to
understand the theorem. The continued
use of the equation in practical applications is useful, but it does not
recreate the moment of insight and learning in the work of the proof that is
knowledge of the geometric relationships.
The object of the dialogue, to define virtue and what it means to know
virtue might not be obtained except through a working out of the rational
relationships of man in society through participation in family, civil society
and the State.
If
I take a moment to think about what it means for me to say I know or understand
the Pythagorean theorem I only realize that I can’t quite explain that
knowledge. I have used the formula to
solve real carpentry problems, but in similar situations I have also applied
other formulae whose proofs I have never worked through and that I clearly do
not understand. I can imagine the
squares on the shorter sides of the triangle shifting into the square of the
longer side, but I can also imagine a circle transforming into a square. I can work through the logic of Euclid’s or Socrates' or the oriental proof
and see the relationship as an inevitable consequence of the geometric
presumptions, but this is an insight that vanishes when I am not working
through a proof either formally on paper or through a shorthand version in my
mind. Given that the life of the proof
is abstract logic based on postulated presumptions such as that parallel lines
never meet, the insight into the truth of the relationships given in the proof
is itself closed from the other parts of my living relationship to the
world. A philosophic work attempts to
give insight without resort to presumption.
In so far as it succeeds in this it is not reducible to declaratory
language requiring presumed meanings. In
so far as the philosophic work necessarily entails resort to presumptions it is
closed in the system of the logical relationships derivable from those
presumptions. A successful philosophic
work entails both presumption and the suspension of presumption through the
dialectic process.
In
the Philosophy of Right Hegel argues for an understanding of the state
as the realization of the essential drive of the human will to freedom. The state is the unity of the raw impulse to
freedom of the individual subjective will and the universal, objective right of
all men. In that unity the individual
can achieve real freedom through action in conformity with the law of the state
which is an embodiment of the reason that is essential to himself as a
reasoning being. (This is described in
more detail in the second section of this paper and in the bibliography.) Only
through such action is freedom real. Freedom is meaningless outside of its
actual realization in such rational action.
This understanding of the world follows from elements of Hegel’s basic
philosophy which hold that the concept is only known through a unity of the
subjective individual perspective and the objective universals that give it any
sort of fixation. While we can describe
the process, all conceptualization requires such a process and so neither the
described universal nor the subjective perspective can be known as such,
independently, with any real meaning. (This is described in more detail in the
first section of this paper.) The
philosophic work is a realization of a philosophic understanding that is a
unity of a thought and a particularization.
Without action in the confrontation with the work, there is no
understanding. Neither the purely
abstract thought nor the particular expression alone has any rational purpose
or meaning. While summations and
reductions of philosophic works can be successful philosophic works themselves,
they can have no validity if they only direct a reader to a philosophic work as
an authority or precedent. Husserl’s
work reveals an essential aspect of philosophic work: that is must always be,
primarily, an examination of, or struggle to become, understanding itself rather than an
understanding of any other object. This
is not to say that a philosophic work ever succeeds in this task. The Husserl section of this paper also deals
with the issues of language and analysis and the setting aside of presumptions
that are central to the question of how philosophy approaches its task.
PART I
The Phenomenology
Hegel’s Phenomenology
lays out an analysis of consciousness.
Here we will examine particular aspects of this work that underlie the Philosophy
of Right and the place of rights within that work.
In
those aspects of the Phenomenology which explore the nature of our basic
consciousness as a relationship to the world, Hegel introduces a concept of the
subjective perspective that is inherently shaped by both the external object of
consciousness and the social forces of which influence and shape the
individual. Simultaneously, the object,
as it is known by the individual, and those social forces, are shaped by the
individual. Early in the Phenomenology
the particular events of consciousness are broken down into subjective and
objective elements that in their unity give reality and the known, which is for
Hegel the rational. As the Phenomenology
progresses the social elements emerge as necessary dimensions for an
understanding of even the most basic events of the individual
consciousness. However, the action of
the individual consciousness is never left behind. It is my hope that the close description of
some parts of Hegel’s work in the Phenomenology will serve to elucidate
the actual work of his philosophic approach better than a sweeping summary and
overview. The work of philosophy, for
Hegel, in striving to understand our relationship to being and consciousness
and the reality of our lives emerges through analysis of opposed elements and
recognition that they are real only in their fully “interpenetrating”
unity. However, this is not a simple
formula applied to different situations and yielding easy analysis. That all understanding of the world for Hegel
involves something of this parallel, dialectical analysis follows from the
basic reality of our consciousness as both individual to itself and
simultaneously known only through, and in, objects (including the object it
makes of itself). However, Hegel’s work
of understanding consciousness demonstrates intricate and creative analysis at
every step. Merely applying a dialectic
formula to a given phenomenon reveals nothing.
Hegel’s work introduces new insights and new dimensions of a problem at
every step that could not be predicted or justified through recourse to any
formula. In addition, to understand the
whole of any problem he addresses it is necessary to see not just both sides of
a single parallel analysis, but rather all the sides of the many layers of
analysis that he introduces. This is not
to say that his words are magical, or that like some poem, any minor alteration
or translation would destroy their value.
Rather, the intricacies of his analysis create perspectives that give
insights that can not be restated, meaningfully, as conclusion or
formulae. His work sets up oppositions
that give insight into the whole, not as the sum of the opposition, but through
consideration of the many different aspects of each side simultaneously with
the other. We see each artificially
abstracted and opposed side becoming the other in their logical extremes. This follows from the insights obtained from
his basic method. If reality is not
really composed of distinct, separate moments, but rather the unity of their
complete interpenetration, there will always be something false about the
division of those moments into isolated, identified components. Hegel’s divisions and analysis are not the
equivalent of taking a car a part and clearly identifying that it has both an
engine and a body, but rather an approach that creates fictions of isolated
components that have utility in each step of his analysis, and often for the work
of his analysis as a whole, but which can lose their value and ability to
generate real and useful insights if they are too far removed from the work
that gives them meaning. Of course, this
is true, to some extent for any language or work. No economic formula can be applied unless one
knows what the variables are and how they are defined. In philosophic work, because of the nature of
the study, the amount that has to be reproduced is much greater for any type of
understanding of the work. One of the
reasons for this arises from the very nature of consciousness and knowing as
described above. Another reason arises
from the immeasurable nature of philosophy.
While the worth of an economic work can be measured by its ability to
predict real world events, a philosophic work has no similar
measurability. “…there is no external or
autonomous philosophic standpoint from which a critical assessment of possible
claims to know could go on, no “bar of reason,” above the fray, to which
candidate accounts could be brought for a hearing. Any such standpoint is itself a mere
appearance, itself conditioned, or ultimately unable to account for its own
possibility.”[1] The immeasurability of the result implies the
incommensurability of the theories and their component parts. In this a philosophic work is something like
a work of art, complete unto itself, yet not successful unless it draws on
those objective truths of human existence and reality.
Summarizing
the Phenomenology is difficult, but in the Science of Logic,
Hegel says:
In the
Phenomenology… I have exhibited consciousness in its movement from the first
immediate opposition of itself and the object to absolute knowing. …this movement goes through every form of the
relation of consciousness to the object. …
Absolute knowing is the truth of every mode of consciousness because, as
the course of the Phenomenology showed, it is only in absolute knowing that the
separation of the object from the certainty of itself is completely eliminated:
truth [object, content] is now equated with certainty [subject, form] and this
certainty with truth.[2]
The real
end of analysis is always the actual knowledge of what is. That it seems absurd to believe that we can
grasp what actually is with necessarily subjective knowledge is a beginning
point of Hegel’s work in the Phenomenology. He considers whether the filtering effect
that obscures knowledge can be canceled out with a knowledge of the way
knowledge works. Such substitution only
brings us back to the first step of the problem of identifying knowledge. Hegel uses the example of defracting and
refracting light, explaining that unlike light, knowledge is not the divergence
of a ray, but the ray itself, by which the truth comes into contact with
us. The belief that knowledge can’t
grasp absolute truth, but that it can grasp other forms of knowledge, leads to
a confused distinction between absolute truth and other types of truth.[3] The analysis of consciousness that Hegel
takes us through in the Phenomenology, on the other hand, lays out the process
of knowing in the course of a process that itself summarizes the process by
reflecting it. This is not to say that
the process is not in some ways detached, but rather that it is not a mere
model, and isolated as an object. It is
a process of back and forth analysis that never bogs down with the problem of
setting forth a reducible conclusion.
The opposition of contraries throughout Hegel’s work do not resolve
themselves away into static pictures, but remain active as they make possible
other elements of recognition and knowledge within Hegel’s work and experienced
reality without.
Hegel
explains that “absolute” and “knowledge” are words that presuppose meaning not
yet attained. This sort of resistance to
the use of a system based upon defined terms from which truths are deduced is
central to Hegel’s approach. The meaning
of such terms, such conclusions, must arise slowly through the process of
analyzing each of the particular manifestations that he will address. Hegel believes that simple definitional
statements, rather than building on prior intellectual development, retard the
intellect and exploration of understanding by allowing it to pass over the real
problems. The results are theories that
elucidate nothing and only refer to each other.[4] Following Hegel’s analysis of consciousness
in the Phenomenology reveals the truth of consciousness as expressed
through itself, an exercise of consciousness considering itself. His analysis shows the postulations of
perspective to be necessary moments in the process of consciousness, but never
self standing or autonomous. For this
reason Hegel rejects sweeping generalization of subjective/objective
distinctions extending beyond their particular use in specific analysis.[5] Hegel says that these perspective are mere
“empty shoes” of knowledge. The very
process of analysis is itself a phenomenon, and must liberate itself by turning
against itself.
While the
natural consciousness (simple awareness) is only knowledge in principle, and
not real knowledge, it does take itself as real knowledge. There is a negative significance in the
realization of the possibility of knowledge which runs contrary to the idea of
knowledge itself: it loses its own truth.
That is, becoming aware of the possibility of knowing something entails
becoming aware of the limitations of our knowledge and our inability to know
everything or even anything in its entirety.
Hegel explains that the path to understanding truth is not a
disappearance of doubt and a return to the former (naïve) truth, but rather a
conscious insight into the “untruth” of phenomenal knowledge.[6] This is to say that we come to realize that
the most immediate, seemingly true presentation, (the sensual “here” and “now”)
is that element which is not realized or known, but rather only posited as
having existed before our intellectual mediation.
Hegel
explains that it makes no difference whether our belief in “being” is
prejudiced on the authority of others or the self and the concrete.[7] That is to say that whether we posit the
location for a faith in the reality of simple being in the existence of other
objects and individuals or in our own self as a concrete referent makes no
difference as both become, through such subjective mediation, unreliable
anchors for knowledge. Hegel goes on to
suggest that skepticism to the whole compass of phenomenal consciousness is an
important beginning as it enables the mind for the first time to be able to
test what truth is, since “it brings about a despair regarding natural views
that are filled with thoughts, opinions, etc,”.[8] The description of untrue consciousness is
not merely a negative process. Natural
consciousness adopts a one-sided rejection towards what is for it, untrue
consciousness Such skepticism sees in
the result only pure nothingness. From
the skeptical pint of view, consciousness abstracts the fact that this nothing
is determinate: it is the nothing of that out of which it (skeptical consciousness)
emerges as a result. The dead end of
skepticism, “nothing”, need not be rejected as useless, for if we apprehend the
result “nothing” as a “determinate negation” (a negation that makes the other
possible through recognition requiring negation,) then a new positive form
arises, “and in the negation the
transition is made by which the progress through the complete succession of
forms comes about of itself.”[9] Here Hegel is directing the reader to
understand the process described as pointing to that place where knowledge is
no longer compelled to go beyond itself, where it finds its own self and the
notion (of the self and knowledge)
corresponds to the object (knowledge and it perpetual relatedness) and the
object to the notion. This itself serves
as an example of the process that Hegel’s work employs.
When
Hegel asserts that in nature all is limited to its own existence and has no
existence when removed from that existence, he is not describing the simple
tautology that existence of a thing no longer exists when it no longer exists. His assertion prepares the way for the next
step involving an understanding of consciousness as a non-natural state. In the non-natural state of consciousness we
have both particular limited existence attributed to things existing in nature,
and the “beyond”. “Consciousness
therefore, suffers this violence at its own hands, destroying its own limited
satisfaction.”[10] The simple satisfaction of pure, unmediated
existence is destroyed by the consciousness' inevitable consideration of
existence as an infinitesimal “now” that can not be had for consciousness
except through description and secondary pointing. This is an example of how retreat from the
apprehension of truth might follow the disturbing realization of continual
separation from unmediated existence. It
is also an example of how the overview that consciousness posits of separation
is itself false and hollow.
Hegel
emphasizes that what is going on in this stage of the inquiry is a recognition
that “inquiry and critical examination is not the reality of knowing.”[11] Such inquiry is not possible without some
presupposition which is laid down as an ultimate criteria. This is to say that we always pre-establish a
specific framework that defines our analysis and limits it to less than
knowing. We believe that we need to
begin with a standard to measure the results of our inquiry. This limitation reveals consciousness in its
most basic function, which is to distinguish itself from something, to which at
the same time it relates itself.[12] If we ask about the truth of knowledge, it
seems that we are inquiring into what knowledge is in itself. The inability to separate the object of our
study from what we are studying about our object might be a problem if we were studying
something other than knowledge. However,
in the study of knowledge, this is not a negative problem; the explanation of
this problem reveals the process of knowing itself. Here Hegel is presenting an example of that
part of his process which in repeats a question (here “what is knowledge?”),
along with successive overlays of a better understanding of what prejudices and
perspectives necessarily underlie the question and our understanding of any
answer. This does not cleanse the
inquiry of dead ends such as described
above. These remain, but the process
reveals a truth beyond those limited inquiries.
Can
we remove the contradiction of the need for a standard and the standardlessness
of the inquiry required for an analysis of knowledge? Hegel says that we can make it more definite
and then remove it by calling to mind the abstract determinations of knowledge
and of truth as foundations of
consciousness. “Consciousness
distinguishes from itself something, to which at the same time it relates
itself.”[13] When asking what knowledge is, and
confronting the problem that knowledge is our object, we realize that our
question is not the truth of knowledge, but only our knowledge of it, and that
the standard for this knowledge is ourselves as reasoning beings. The truth of something, its rationality,
arises from its actual function in the world.
For consciousness, the function is self awareness, uniting the universal
of simple self identification with the particularization of the self in
determinate objects (including its own recognition of itself as an object).
While
consciousness focuses on the specific character of the moment, knowledge,
simultaneously, the other (the object of the knowing) is to consciousness not
merely something existing for it, but also (beyond conscious presumption)
outside this relation and possessed of being in itself. Consciousness establishes a standard for
itself which for consciousness is the essence of truth. This is a relationship to existence that it
“never fully articulates” because the simultaneously subjective and objective
reality consciousness requires is not simply stated.[14] Being for another and being in itself are
both parts of the knowledge being examined.[15] This is possible as consciousness is
necessarily both conscious of an object and conscious of itself simultaneously,
and this dual function is the heart of the process of consciousness.
When
Hegel leaves the overview of the procedure and moves into a seemingly direct
analysis of the process of understanding, the overview continues to informs the
analysis and is continually reintegrated into that analysis. Consciousness knows only the object as an
object of consciousness; we can’t get beyond that. We have two ideas: the inherent nature of the
object and knowledge that the being of the object is its being for
consciousness. Where these two do not
correspond, knowledge is modified by consciousness to fit the object. This
follows from our basic prejudice that the object in itself is the truth,
whereas the object as known is mediated and therefore not truth. However, this alteration in turn alters the
object in so far as it is only known as an object of knowledge. “Hence consciousness comes to find that what
formerly to it was the essence is not what is per se, or what was per se was
only per se for consciousness.”[16] Here the consciousness finds that what was
the seeming essential being of an object was actually not separate and
absolute, but rather a component in the process of knowing itself. In coming to this knowledge of the failure of
the object of knowledge to sustain itself, the standard for examining knowledge
is altered. The course of examination
alters each standard that might have been used as a criterion for examining
knowledge. Hegel says that the above
process is a dialectical process that knowledge performs on itself as well as
on its object, and that out of it a new true object arises and that this is
termed experience.[17]
There
is ambiguity in each truth as an object of knowledge. Consciousness has two objects, the thing and
the existence for consciousness of this thing.
The second is only a reflection of consciousness into itself, an idea
not of an object, but solely of its knowledge of that first object. Once the object becomes (through the process
described above) not the presumed thing in itself, but rather something for
consciousness, we have its truth.
The
difference between the result of the process described above, and the result of
skepticism is that the recognition of what Hegel summarizes in saying “since
what at first appeared as object is reduced, when it passes into consciousness,
to what knowledge takes it to be, and the implicit nature, the real itself,
becomes what this entity per se is for consciousness; this latter is the new
object, whereupon there appears also a new mode or embodiment of consciousness,
of which the essence is something other than the preceding mode.”[18] The consciousness matures, comes to accept
the truth in universalizations and sets aside what is merely a belief in a
mythical general interference of “real” truth through subjective knowing. The maturing consciousness comes to
understand the inevitable integration of all objective and subjective
perspectives, setting aside its belief in the false idols of the objective
thing itself and the general untruth of the mediating subjective perspective.
“When it grasps this, its own essence, it will connote the nature of absolute
knowledge itself.”[19]
The
basic movement above might be summarized as:
1) Consciousness believes it has an
experience of truth in an object. (The
object can be any “other”, be it a particular thing or more importantly, when
the consciousness is interested in understanding itself, itself as it is at a
particular moment.)
2) Consciousness realizes that the
other is not a truth because it is only experienced through mediation, through
the subjective perspective of the self.
Consciousness attempting to understand itself and knowledge realizes
that there is truth in its self as a certain and definite particularizing,
albeit prejudicing force.
3) The consciousness then
recognizes that its truth of itself and the world is only known through the sum
of the object and consciousness mediation of the object. The recognition that the first negation is
negated by the second negation results in a truth that of the particularization
of the self in the universals of the world and experience.
Sense certainty
Sense
certainty, the confidence in the present moment, is easily misconstrued as the
simple truth of consciousness and being.
The process by which the individual actually experiences and knows sense
certainty through universals including the “now” and the “here” serves to
illustrate the dialectic process of consciousness. Sense certainty reveals both the roots of our
proper relation to the world through the truth of reason and the obstacles that track all the way through
to the ethical life in the Philosophy of Right.
We
initially believe knowledge of the immediate to be what actually “is”. The definite content given by sensuous
certainty appears to be the most authentic knowledge. However, the bare fact of sense certainty, is
really “the most abstract and poorest kind of truth” as it says only that “it
is of what it knows.”[20] In sense certainty, the “I” is certain only
of the fact before it, and even this, once examined in the light of the
necessary mediation of our perception proves to be merely a belief in a
mythical something that never really occurs.
Even if certainty did exist in the way we imagine it to, the “I” in the act
of sense certainty does not process and review itself. Hegel reminds us that we nevertheless do
believe that something substantial is implied in the concept of unmediated,
pure being. The concrete actual
certainty of sense is more than pure immediacy, but rather, an example of pure
immediacy. It is a unity of both a
universal form of immediacy and a particularized subjective perspective. There is a fundamental differentiation even
in the experience of sense certainty: 1)the focus of attention, the immediate
object, and 2)the object as effected and given substance by the individual
“I”. Moreover, neither of these two is
itself immediate. Here Hegel sets out a
root movement of consciousness. Neither
the universalized object (the universal “this” that is focused on) as pure
being, nor the experience of the “this” as a particularized object event,
giving particularized form to the universals of the immediate, is merely
immediate. Both are mediated and recognized through each
other. Hegel explains that this
distinction is found in sense-certainty itself where we find both the object
and the mediated something that is the ego.[21] However, the object remains in some sense
for us, the real truth, the essence of reality, which stands despite being known
to us only through mediation. We deal
with the object only as it is contained in sense certainty, not as it might be
in truth, “The dialectic of the two
fold forms of existence in the now and the here is the dialectic itself.”[22] This is a dialectic of both sense certainty
and its awareness of itself as inherently false because it is mediated and a
dialectic of the two interdependent attributes of location and temporal
specification. Hegel explains that the
consciousness failing to find certainty in the object realizes that it is
itself the particularizing “I” in which certainty of something beyond either a limited particular
object or generalized universal exists, but that this recognition of self only
comes about in reflection of the object.
This double negation creates a movement towards truth that reinforces
more than existence as simply limited to the self as mere pure subjectivity or
as existent in the object.
Hegel
further illustrates the movement described above with an examination of the
central facet of sense certainty, the “now” itself. If we say that “now” is night, we are
expressing not a truth, but only a contingent circumstance. The “now” is
treated as something which is, “but it proves itself to be rather
something which is not”.[23] The
“now” is itself rather a universal without particular content. The “now” is not immediately knowable, but
rather necessarily mediated through particularized perspectives. The “now” that is true in itself as a
universal is indifferent to all contingencies that might be associated with
it. In that the “now” is the truth of
sense certainty, and the “now” is a universal, the truth of sense certainty is
universal, not the mythical fulfilled primitive experience.[24] Even the assertion that the sense certainty
of the present is most real through descriptive statements such as “it is”
reveals the truth of sense certainty to lie in the universalities of basic
experience. As the real truth of sense
certainty is the universal and language merely expresses this truth, “it is not
possible at all to express in words any sensuous existence which we mean.”[25] Rather, we express only the universals of the
experience.
The
demonstration of sense certainty as a universal rather than sensual immediacy,
establishes that the truth of the object as experienced through sense certainty
is experience as a universal, rather than particular otherness. We realize our failure to have sense
certainty reveal the particular characteristics of current now and
existence. This brings about a
reversal. We come to imagine that the
object (which had been thought of as the essential reality) is now the
nonessential element of sense certainty, for the universal, which the object
has come to be, is no longer what the object was for sense certainty. So certainty comes to be found in the
opposite element, that of knowledge and abstraction which was previously deemed
nonessential, in that it was thought of as only secondary mediation of the
thing itself; an interference with the thing itself as an object of knowledge.
So,
sense certainty disappears from the object, and is forced back into the “I”
that is capable of experience. Through
this process, one certainty disappears into the other. Sense certainty’s essential nature is neither
the object nor “I”, rather the whole
of sense certainty is its reality, not its particular moments. Only the whole of sense certainty exists as
something stable and in being taken as a whole, excludes all opposition which
arose in the initial conception of what it might be. The whole of pure immediacy comes finally to
be reasserted, after the process of the double negation, as having nothing to
do with “otherness”, an object entirely distinct and separate from the
individual.
Moving
past the opposition described above between the mediating I and the object,
through the first example of the double negation, the truth of self certainty
becomes secure as self identical, with no distinction between essential and non
essential, or between “I” and object.
The truth of sense certainty is neither the objective object proven to
be merely universals nor the mediating subjective “I” experiencing it and which
recognizes itself through the recognition that truth is not simply in the
object. This is the final step which
Hegel describes this as the real experience of life.
In summary,
the “now” necessarily makes a particularized stand on one immediate relation
such as “now is day.” Examined
afterwards, “now is day” has no truth.
So how is “now” the immediate constituted? The now is posited out, after it already
ceased to be, when it is pointed out.
“The now is the found to be that which is no longer the very time when
it is.”[26] It has no truth of being. The being of now is rather related only
through the pointing at a now that has always passed. The stages of this understanding reflect the
process of consciousness generally:
1) The pointing out of the “now”,
and assertion of its truth, is rather as something that has been, or as
something canceled and done away with.
In this it passes beyond that first truth which was never real.
2)There is an assertion of another
truth, that the “now” is only a “was”.
3)What was no longer “is”. So we then supersede and cancel its having
been, and the fact of its being negated is itself negated and we return to a
form of the first simple truth that the “now” is.[27]
This
seems like a lot of work to explain basic phenomenon, but it is necessary to
make sense of the developments that follow and to understand them as processes
invoking insights into the processes of life rather than fixed theses. It is useful to generalize the process
described as it applies to both our understanding of the “now” in sense
certainty related to knowledge and in the Philosophy of Right related to
our freedom as social beings and citizens in a nation: To begin with we have something that seems
outside of ourselves and definite and objective. We then realize that this thing, whatever it
is, has only relation to us from our perspective. We give it its reality, rather than it being
its own reality and truth. Finally we
negate this second negation to return to a simple truth. This final truth is not merely the
elimination of the process as a useless dead end, but its truth as both an
objective object and our subjective relationship to it. The other, the “this”, is superseded by the
other (“other” meaning something other than what the now would be in itself as
a simple immediate fact), and then this otherness (a canceling of the this) is
itself rejected, so finally we return to “this”.
Hegel,
in reviewing the dialect process of sense certainty states that it is only the
mere history of its process, (its experience).[28] However, we continually forget the reality of
this process, and return repeatedly to our belief that the reality of the being of external things in the sense of
“thises”, particular sense objects, has absolute validity and truth for
consciousness. As we have seen, the
universal of the common experience, is not particular “thises”, but the universals
of such features as “now” and the dialectic process of their relationship to
us, resolved into the sense certainty that is certain not of particular things,
nor as would be impossible in universals, but rather in the process of the
mediation and recognition between the two.
Hegel asserts that one who continues to hold that “thisness” in its
particularity is the validity and truth for consciousness “doesn’t not know
what he is saying.”[29]
Hegel’s
dialectic process is the unfolding, and distinguishing of the elements involved
through the process itself. These
elements, amount to the object, when taken together as a single totality. Both moments, that which perceives and that
which is perceived, are non essential.
This is a return to the distinction made between the point of view of
the exploration of the Phenomenology and that of actual
consciousness, whose procedure is being
analyzed.
Hegel
says that the truth of consciousness is something other than consciousness
itself. However, this truth disappears
in the course of our experiencing it.
The inherent being is consciousness, yet it is still as much that for
which an other is. Simultaneously it is
for consciousness that the inherent nature of the object, and its “being for
another” are one and the same. Ego is
the content of the relation, and itself the process of relating. The “I” is “ego itself which is opposed to
another and at the same time, reaches out beyond this other, which other is all
the same taken to be only itself.”[30]
At
this early stage of the analysis of consciousness, when self consciousness
distinguishes only itself as consciousness from itself, distinguishing it is
irrelevant and taken to be superseded by the event of interaction with
otherness. “Then the distinction is not
and self-consciousness only motionless tautology, Ego is Ego, I am I.”[31] The external world becomes only appearance
and forms a distinction from self consciousness that has no being. This opposition of its truth and appearance
finds real essence only in the truth, in the unity of self consciousness with
itself. Consciousness has the two fold
object of 1) immediate object sense certainty and perception which is limited
by the character of negation; and 2) itself, which is the true essence and is
found in the first instance in the opposition of the first object to it. So, self consciousness is here known in that
process in which this opposition is removed and oneness or identity with itself
established.
The object
of consciousness is the negative element of self consciousness. It is also the case that it returns to itself
as does consciousness. “Through this
reflection into self, the object has become life”.[32]
What
self consciousness distinguishes as having been distinct from itself, the
particular object, is, in that consciousness affirms its existence, more than
sense-certainty and perception; it is a being reflected into itself. This unity breaks down into the opposition of
self consciousness and life. Hegel says
that self consciousness is the unity for which absolute unity of differences
exists and that life is only this unity itself.[33] The independence possessed by consciousness
at this stage is only the independence which its object in itself
possesses. In the double negation
described above self consciousness finds only the object’s independence, rather
than its own.
So,
both sides of the movement collapse into one another. The later is: 1)both formation of independent
individual shapes and 2) a way of canceling a shape assumed. “The entire circuit of this activity is
life.”[34] Life is neither what is expressed initially
in the immediate fullness of the object, nor is it the continuity of the
universal form. It is neither the
discrete individual which exists on its own account, nor the bare process of this form, nor again
is it the simple combination of all these moments. Hegel says that life is rather the whole
which develops itself and resolves its own development.[35]
Self
consciousness is only assured of itself through “sublating” this other, which
is presented to self consciousness as an independent life.[36] Hegel’s analysis shifts its focus from the
moments of consciousness into the action of self consciousness. The idea of self consciousness’ necessary
subsumption of the other is in some ways more clearly addressed in the
introduction to the Philosophy of Right, discussed in part two of this
paper. Here it becomes clear that the
individual can not in self consciousness by itself know, evaluate or have his
own truth. Self consciousness itself
requires reflection in another self consciousness, following the same line
described above. This is not a
subsequent event, but simultaneous. The
self consciousness needing to recognize itself in another is an event of both
multiple individuals and of the self consciousness reflecting on itself. The lordship and bondage section that
follows, as with all of that follows should be understood as speaking to both
relationships. That the self
consciousness can relate to itself as an other is one of the conditions that
make the social dimension of subjectivity and the importance of the state
integral to understanding ourselves.
Although a necessary condition of self consciousness is its need for
recognition in another self consciousness, this should be understood as a
condition of consciousness that applies to self evaluation and that also
necessitates the understanding of its freedom as enabled through participation
in ethical life. Man’s innate social dimension
has relevance at every level of his activity in the world as a reasoning being
because of the basic capacity and need of the self consciousness to recognize
itself in others, including itself. The
social drive is not a mere biologic drive, but also a necessary dimension of
what it means to reason. The
circumstantially isolated individual is able to reflect on himself, to know
himself. He is even able to behave
justly and achieve the freedom that is described in the connection with ethical
life. However, given the normal drives
and needs which result in association and society, the social capacity of both
biology and reason, the relationships, organizations and the possibility of
real freedom in those organizations can be understood through the relationships
described in Hegel’s analysis. The
essential capacity of reason to know itself in another reasoning self is not
prior as a function of either the individual or the society. The condition of each is the other and both
simultaneously.
Taking
into account the need for this recognition of the self consciousness in another
self consciousness as an object, reflecting itself back into itself in the
following we can gain a new perspective on the prior discussion. Self consciousness is convinced of the
limitation of a particular of an object, it finds this “nothingness” to be the
truth of the other according to Hegel.
This is to say that self consciousness finds an object to be limited as
opposed to its own infinite capacity (the self can always imagine itself as
something other than any given particular).
The self thereby negates the individual object and acquires a certainty
of its own self; a certainty which has become aware of an objective form. However, this satisfaction includes
experience of the independence of its object.
Certainty only by canceling the other, but then, this canceling is only
successful if the other actually “is”.
So, consciousness can not abolish it.
Rather, it produces it again and again.
So negation is either (1) in another or (2) takes the form of determinateness
standing in opposition to another external individual indifferent to it. Self consciousness attains its satisfaction
only in another self consciousness.[37]
We
understand self consciousness through three moments:
1)Pure undifferentiated object is
its first immediate object. 2)This
immediacy (the object) is itself recognized to be mediation. It has its being only by canceling the
independent object. In Hegel’s terms, it
is “desire”. The satisfaction of desire
is the reflection of self consciousness into itself. It is the certainty which has passed into
objective truth. 3) The truth of this certainty is really twofold reflection,
the reduplication of self consciousness.
Self consciousness only is self consciousness when it has before it a
self consciousness.
Lordship and Bondage
As
described above, Hegel says that self consciousness exits in itself and for
itself only in so far as it exists for another self consciousness. Only by being acknowledged, or recognized
does the self consciousness exist in itself.
This is on the one hand only another way of stating what was said
initially, that the reality of the object is in the observer and the observer
is only real in observing; that the consciousness realized in sense certainty
is not simple being, but in so far as it recognizes itself as a mediating force
and then negates this negation of simple being. However, the emphasis on “acknowledgment”
and “recognition” here is more than a different way of stating the initial
simple thesis, but a development that furthers the analysis, explaining more of
the world and simultaneously developing the initial dialectic.
In
the first step, self consciousness has lost itself, since it only finds itself
as an other being. (It only recognizes
itself in its mediating force on an “other.”)
In the second step, self consciousness subsumes the other, in that it
does not regard the other as essentially real, but only a means for seeing its
own self. There is, however, in this
movement, a “sublation” of self as the other is only itself. Hegel says that through this “sublation”, the
self consciousness gets itself back, as it becomes one with itself again
through the canceling of its otherness.
From there, the otherness is given back to the other self consciousness,
for the self consciousness was aware of being in the other and it cancels this
aspect of its own being in the other and “thus lets the other again go free”.[38] This other is a moment of our consciousness,
which if not “freed” in the manner described, would remain merely a vessel for
the mediation of our subjective consciousness.
In that sate, all of our world and ourselves are “other” and we have
nothing in existence, no self consciousness, no stability. This is to say, that if the other is not real
we gain nothing through recognizing ourselves in our relationship with it. There would be no possibility of truth or
meaningful law as external manifestation of our universal subjectivity, by
which we can participate in society and ourselves. This result is the dead end of the cynicism
sighted above. Here, in using the
charged words of freedom and later bondage, Hegel directs us back, on the one
hand to the uselessness and shortsightedness of such analysis, and on the other
to the power of applying his more complete analysis to this problem and our
means of knowing as a continual process.
Only in action do we comprehend both the subjective and objective sides
of our reality without falling into a static image of a fixed relationship
between the two. For example, viewing
differences in cultures as the essential part of their autonomy and ability to
have law results in the intractable position of cultural relativism and the
impossibility of meaningful international human rights. Understanding the essential element of
autonomy of a nation to be realization of individuals through law and in rights
rather than in self identity with their own differences allows a positive
movement towards an international sovereign and a meaningful body of
international rights.
Hegel
says that the process of self consciousness in relation to another self
consciousness has been represented in the discussion above as the action of one
alone, but that it is also an action of both.
So, the process is “absolutely the double process of both self consciousnesses.” “The action from one side alone would be
useless, because what is to happen can only be brought about by means of both.”[39] Consciousness finds that it both is and is
not another consciousness, as the other is for itself only in so far as it has
self existence, canceling its existence for the initial consciousness. There is a necessary struggle for each self
consciousness to prove that certainty of being for itself, in order to bring it
into a state of validity as an objective truth, which makes it both a fact for
the other and self. The only way to
obtain freedom is through this recognition in the other, both dependent on the
other and displacing the other from the position of truth. Each self consciousness has to prove its
essential nature is not bare existence, the immediate and empty form of mere
appearance. Hegel calls this a “trial by
death” that cancels both the truth that was to result from it and the certainty
of self altogether.[40]
The crux of
this section might be Hegel’s explanation that in the experience of the
struggle, self consciousness becomes aware that life is, as described above, a
process of recognition. The first
experience is the dissolution of the simple unity of self consciousness. There are two opposed forms of
consciousness: One is independent,
immediate self consciousness whose essential nature is merely to be for
itself. This is the Master. The other, the Bondsman is, in the first
analysis, dependent. The bondsman’s self
consciousness is not purely for itself, but for another, the Master. The essence of this dependence is existence
for the Master. The Master appears to
exist for itself, but is only mediated within itself through another
consciousness. The other is the
Bondsman, whose nature implies that its involved with an other independent
being. The Master brings himself into
relation with both moments. The one
moment being the relationship to the thing as such and the second being the
relationship to the consciousness whose essential character is thinghood. The bondsman, however, is, as an abstraction,
independence as the object that the master must postulate as actual for his own
definition through that object to have any reality. The master is, in this, dependent on the
bondsman.[41] This analysis concerns ideas of master and
bondsman as abstractions. It does not
apply to the bondsman resisting bondsmanship, but to the abstract relationship
limited to that event of the master determining the bondsman’s actions. It applies to their abstract, ideal
relationship as a whole, but it also applies to each of the moments of the real
struggle between the two. In any real
human relationship there are moments where each individual assumes the role of
the master.
The moment
of recognition through the other consciousness cancels itself as self existent,
and itself does what the first does to it.
In terms of the ideal abstract relationship, the action of the bondsman
is only the action of the master. The
master exists only for himself but is only a negative. His only real action (in terms of the
abstract master/bondsman relationship) is the assertion that he is not
dependent.[42]
There
is a necessary attempt on the part of the independent master consciousness to
realize itself in the other, the
unessential (as replaceable and dependent) consciousness of the bondsman.
However, the object, the bondsman, does not fit this formulation,
because in the moment when the master has effectively achieved lordship, he has
not realized independent consciousness,
but rather, a consciousness dependent on the bondsman. The master is not assured of self existence
as truth, but rather that his truth is the unessential consciousness (the truth
of his limited, objective existence as master) and that the only truth of
independent consciousness is his consciousness of the bondsman and his
relationship to him. The relationship
comes to be understood as the opposite of its initial immediately appearance. “…being a consciousness repressed within
itself, it (bondage) will enter into itself, and change round to real and true
independence.”[43] Bondage only exists, only “is”, in relation
to lordship. However, the self consciousness of the bondsman is in
his own work, not as the master in the work of the bondsman. In the two moments we see that the reality of
the relationship, and the “being for self” of each individual depends on their
mutual existence. So too, in the case of
the individual analyzing his own self consciousness, there is no reality of
self consciousness without both moments of the self consciousness as subject
and object. Neither self consciousness
is free in this relationship.
We have
seen what bondage is only in relation to lordship. But it is a self-consciousness, and we have
now to consider what it is, in this regard, in and for itself. In the first instance, the master is taken to
be the essential reality for the state of bondage; hence, for it, the truth is
the independent consciousness existing for itself, although this truth is not
taken yet as inherent in bondage itself.
Still, it does in fact contain within itself this truth of pure
negativity and self-existence, because it has experienced this reality within
it. For this consciousness wants not in
peril and fear for this element or that, nor for this or that moment of time,
it was afraid for its entire being; it felt the fear of death, the sovereign
master. It has been in that experience
melted to its inmost soul, has trembled throughout its every fiber, and all
that was fixed and steadfast has quaked within it. This complete perturbation of its entire
substance, this absolute dissolution of all its stability into fluent
continuity, is, however, the simple, ultimate nature of self-consciousness,
absolute negativity, pure self-referrent existence, which consequently is
involved in this type of consciousness.
This moment of pure self-existence is moreover a fact for it; for in the
master it finds this as its object.
Further, this bondsman’s consciousness is not only this final dissolution
in a general way; in serving and toiling the bondsman actually carries this
out. By serving he cancels in every
particular aspect his dependence on and attachment to natural existence, and by
his work removes this existence away.[44]
In
the master, the need for recognition has found itself in the “pure negativity
of the object”, which is the bondsman’s condition of not being the master. Through performing the actual work, the
bondsman in effect delays his requirement for self recognition in another, rather
realizing itself, directly in its own work.
“The consciousness that toils and serves accordingly attains by this
means the direct apprehension of that independent being as itself.”[45] The laborer attains through the work the
direct apprehension of that individual doing the work as itself. However, this type of consciousness also has
a negative import. The bondsman only
becomes aware of its own ability to identify and so cancel out another through
the fact that it cancels the actual form controlling it. That is, its recognition of self in its labor
is effected only through the sort of process first described in the sense
certainty section, the process of the recognition of self in the object and the
double negation. However, the objective
element is the external reality. The
bondsman feels self existence is real, though external and objective, only in
the fear of whatever power the master has over him. Through labor the bondsman “becomes aware,
through this rediscovery of himself by himself, of having and being a mind of
his own.”[46] Without the discipline of service and
obedience (work on an object, but also the objectivity of truth in external
objects, realized as used beyond the double negation described above), the fear
Hegel mentions remains abstract and does not “spread over the whole reality of
existence” as it does in the work of the particularization of a thing, implying
its universality. Without the
generalization of this state into universality (an impossibility given the
undesirability of bondsmanship), the bondsman’s consciousness, when doing work
on a particular object has merely a vain and futile “mind of its own”, a
negativity that is not negativity per se.[47] The bondsman is limited to this particular
reactive state and cannot produce consciousness of itself as essentially
real. Hegel says that here there is only
anxiety, not real fear such as the fear of total dependence that the master
has, so the bondsman's “mind of his own” is simply stubbornness, a type of
freedom which does not get beyond the attitude of bondage.[48] Understanding the inherent limitations to
each self consciousness in the master/bondsman relationship helps us to better
understand the freedom in the ethical life of participation in family, civil
society and the state.
A
subordinate derived theory is like a bondsman doing the work of the master: “As
little as the pure form can become its essential nature, so little is that
form, considered as extending over particulars, a universal formative activity,
an absolute notion; it is rather a piece
of cleverness which has mastery within a certain range, but not over the
universal power, not over the objective reality.”[49]
Realization of Rational Self Consciousness
In
this section of the Phenomenology we see a further articulation of the
process described above plaid out in the full scale of human interaction. This section contains insights developed more
fully in the Philosophy of Right.
The course
of reason here, too, will again traverse the double movement of self-consciousness,
and from independence over into its freedom. …
The final result, of the process recognized self consciousness, which
has the certainty of itself in the other free self consciousness and finds its
truth precisely there, we find the realm
of social order, the ethical world. In
the ethical world, nothing more than absolute spiritual unity of the essential
substance of individuals in their independent reality–it is an inherent
universal self consciousness, which is aware of being given reality in other
consciousness, aware of its unity with the “thing” and is only then in self
consciousness, wherein unity with this objective being.[50]
Hegel has made the transition from
the abstract relationship of self consciousness to themselves and others into
an abstraction of all such relationships as constituting the “ethical
substance”. This is what is real in the
concept of law. In this, the law is not
reducible to a set of rights or restrictions (although these are integral), but
rather exists as the abstraction of all human relationships in a universal that
enables self recognition in other self consciousness as equals. This relationship of men, through the law is
not subject to the same limitations described above in the master/bondsman
relationship. The realization of self
conscious reason is a process of directly apprehending complete unity with
another in his independence, through the seeing of one’s own reasoning self,
the universal aspect of my self, in the other and in our relationship as equals.
This realization finds its complete reality and fulfillment in the life of a
nation.
R