In his mature work293, Hegel makes a number of direct criticisms of the received philosophical use of the methods of analysis and synthesis (including their Newtonian- style juxtaposition characteristic of Kantian philosophy) as methods of finite cognition. As with Hegel’s analysis of modern attitudes of thought towards objectivity, this line of
292
In the Phenomenology, Hegel puts it this way: “The inner necessity that knowledge should be science lies in its very nature; and the adequate and sufficient explanation for this lies simply and solely in the systematic exposition of philosophy itself.” (PhG §5)
293
criticism is directed precisely at the features that make these methods incompatible with “objective thinking”. Briefly, it is centered on two points:
(i) The method of analysis followed by synthesis is external to the subject matter of philosophy – it is borrowed (uncritically) from mathematics and the empirical sciences; it is, therefore, an imposition on philosophy of an external conceptual scheme.
While praising Kant’s insistence that philosophical knowledge requires self-validation, Hegel argues that Kant cannot fulfill this requirement because he follows empiricism in uncritically adopting the prevalent natural-scientific methodology of his time.294 The analytic stage of this method of cognition is a kind of dissection of our cognitive faculties295 that separates various elements or moments of cognition (starting with a separation of sensibility and understanding), splitting the purely formal, a priori, aspects from the specificities of their activity and use. Yet Hegel contends that this method is not appropriate for reason’s self-investigation, which aims to comprehend its own self- conscious, self-determining nature (if we are not to preclude from the start the possibility of self-knowledge of reason as free thought that is actual). Rather, it is suited primarily to mathematics concerned as it is with abstract objects (abstract determinations of space and even more abstract algebraic structures) to which the concepts of activity, development and self-organization simply do not apply296. Philosophy, as thinking about thought, is
294
Kant’s theoretical philosophy in particular, having borrowed its method from subordinate disciplines, he claims, “cannot have had any influence on the way we deal with the sciences. It leaves the categories and
the usual method of cognition entirely uncontested” (EL §60). 295
See, e.g., (KrV B89-90/A64-5).
296
Hegel makes this point repeatedly, in the Phenomenology, in the Science of Logic, and in the
Encyclopedia Logic. Here, I discuss his criticism in relation to the analysis/synthesis model in particular,
essentially “objective thinking”, thinking that is immanent in its unique object. It, therefore, requires its own and “an altogether new concept of scientific procedure,”
“Philosophy, if it would be science, cannot…borrow its method from a subordinate science like mathematics any more than it can remain satisfied with categorical assurances of inner intuition, or employ arguments based on grounds adduced by external reflection. On the contrary, it can be only the nature of the
content itself which spontaneously develops itself in a scientific method of knowing, since it is at the same time the reflection of the content itself which first
posits and generates its determinate character.” (SL §8, p.27, my emphasis)297 Given that the object of philosophy is thought that thinks itself, the thinking subject, the object, and the method of philosophy are inseparable.
(ii) Both analytic and synthetic stages involve fixed presuppositions, making them “unfree” or “finite” methods of the “mere understanding”.
Both analytic and synthetic stages presuppose the strict separation between cognition and the object of inquiry as it is in-itself, independently of thought.
The starting point of analysis is always something that is taken as given or certain, be it experience, the articles of faith, facts of consciousness, logic, or something else. It is assumed that analysis can arrive at the definitions of the fundamental principles governing its object. Yet, definitions tend to vary significantly depending on what particular cases and elements of experience were the starting points of analysis and on the point of view from which the analytic inquiry was conducted. So that, “the richer the Science of Logic, Hegel writes, for example: “Before [the] dead bones of logic can be quickened by spirit,
and so become possessed of a substantial, significant content, its method must be that which alone can
enable it to be pure science. In the present state of logic one can scarcely recognize even a trace of scientific method. It has roughly the form of an empirical science… Hitherto philosophy had not found its method; it regarded with envy the systematic structure of mathematics, and, as we have said,
borrowed it or had recourse to the method of sciences which are only amalgams of given material, empirical propositions and thoughts— or even resorted to crude rejection of all method” (SL §62, my emphasis) See also, e.g., (PhG §48; SL §60; EL §117, §231).
297
As a system, philosophy “has to complete itself in a purely continuous course in which nothing extraneous is introduced” (SL §63).
object to be defined is, that is, the more numerous are the aspects which it offers to our notice, the more various are the definitions we may frame of it. Thus there are quite a host of definitions of life, of the state, etc”.298 The correctness of the definition is often unconsciously taken to lie in its correspondence with current beliefs and prevailing ideologies. It is now clear why Hegel thinks this method is inadequate. Its inadequacy lies in the fact that it inevitably introduces subjectivity and arbitrariness. Moreover, this method, in Hegel’s view, is unable to capture the essential nature of anything that is self- producing and self-organizing in either natural or spiritual life.299
Synthesis takes the results of analysis – the definitions analysis produces – as its own fixed and certain starting point. But, Hegel notes, these definitions do not contain anything that shows that and why these definitions necessarily apply to actual objects.
298
(EL §229).
299
Hegel claims that the presence of living nature and of artistic beauty leads to “the obligation, according to the Kantian presentation itself [in the Critique of Judgment], not to restrict the cognition of the products of nature to the categories of quality, cause and effect, composition, constituents, etc.” (EL §58) In other words, Hegel claims that there is an obligation to recognize inner purposiveness as at least having the same constitutive status as the categories of the understanding – it is inconsistent, on Kant’s part, to claim that we can have knowledge only of appearances and at the same time maintain that we can know the true nature of thought as it is in itself and to restrict this knowledge by fiat, as it were, to the finite forms of the
understanding derived from presupposed traditional logic. The obligation not to restrict cognition, at least of living nature, to these forms arises precisely from the need to remove this “supreme inconsistency”. It is the obligation to abandon the claim that we simply cannot know organized living beings as such (since we cannot know them through the categories of the understanding, and the concept of inner purposiveness serves as a merely regulative principle of judgment and does not constitute knowledge either): “The pigeon-holing process of understanding retains for itself the necessity and the notion controlling the
content, that which constitutes the concrete element, the actuality and living process of the subject- matter which it labels: or rather, understanding does not retain this for itself, on the contrary,
understanding fails to know it. …. It is not even aware of the need for such insight; if it were, it would drop its schematizing process, or at least would no longer be satisfied to know by way of a mere table of contents. A table of contents is all that understanding gives, the content itself it does not furnish at all. If the specific determination (say even one like magnetism) is one that in itself is concrete or actual, it all the same gets degraded into something lifeless and inert, since it is merely predicated of another existing entity, and not known as an immanent living principle of this existence; nor is there any comprehension of how in this entity its intrinsic and peculiar way of expressing and producing itself takes effect. This, the very kernel of the matter, formal understanding leaves to others to add later on. Instead of making its way into the inherent content of the matter in hand, understanding always takes a survey of the whole, assumes a position above the particular existence about which it is speaking, i.e. it does not see it at all..” (PhG §53).
This necessity is supposed to be demonstrated through the synthetic procedure itself. But, Hegel argues, since analysis disregarded the inner relationships and transitions that belong to the naturgemäße Darschtellung of its object (the presentation according to its nature), the synthetic procedure has only subjective insight to rely on in putting together what analysis separated (e.g. intuitions and concepts, empirical and pure interests, etc.). Thus, synthesis is able to demonstrate only the necessity that characterizes the way our reason conceives of the object, and not the inner necessity of the object itself. In other words, this kind of synthesis can give us only subjective certainty, not the truth. For this reason, Hegel claims, “the synthetic method of cognition is just as unsuitable for philosophy as the analytical: for philosophy has above all things to leave no doubt of the necessity of its objects”.300
3.2
Hegel’s criticism of analytic and synthetic methods does not imply that he wants to reject the use of analysis and synthesis in philosophy altogether. Clearly, analysis and synthesis figure in Hegel’s own dialectical procedure, but in a way that both interweaves analytic and synthetic steps and, more importantly, makes the whole dialectic both analytic and synthetic. For example, the Phenomenology may be said to proceed analytically insofar as it follows (simply looks on)301 the self-development of consciousness through the internal, or immanent, critique of its various shapes. This is a negative process of analysis or resolution, as it were, with respect to various finite conceptions of thought – “the path of despair”, as Hegel calls it. At the same time, the
300
(EL §229).
301
Phenomenology may be said to proceed synthetically, insofar as each stage preserves and completes the insights of the previous stages, and insofar as this very path also generates, and elevates us to the standpoint of absolute knowing – of philosophy as pure rational science that itself makes its object fully actual.
Recall Goethe’s claim that unlike the received method of the sciences, his “objective thinking” serves as a mediator between the subject and the object and, as such, is simultaneously analytic and synthetic. This feature of objective thinking becomes even more important for Hegel’s conception of the true method of philosophy as self- examination of essentially self-relating, self-determining thought:
“The philosophical method is analytical as well as synthetic, not indeed in the
sense of a bare juxtaposition or mere alternating employment of these two
methods of finite cognition, but rather in such a way that it holds them merged
in itself. In every one of its movements therefore it displays an attitude at once analytical and synthetic. Philosophical thinking proceeds analytically, in so far
as it simply takes up its object, the Idea, and lets it go its own way, while it simply watches the movement and development of it, so to speak. To this extent philosophizing is wholly passive. But philosophical thinking is equally synthetic as well, and it proves itself to be the activity of the Concept itself.” (EL §238, my emphasis)
However difficult it may be fully and precisely to specify this method, Hegel insists that it is the only method adequate to the nature of philosophical science. If philosophical science is conceived as the Aristotelian “thinking that is thinking of thinking,” then the way philosophical investigation proceeds must be identical with the method (or logic) of development and activity of thinking itself. That is, its method must be Hegel’s dialectic. In the Science of Logic, he makes this point emphatically:
“I could not pretend that the method which I follow in this system of logic – or rather which this system in its own self follows – is not capable of greater completeness, of much elaboration in detail; but at the same time I know that it is
the only true method. This is self-evident simply from the fact that it is not something distinct from its object and content; for it is the inwardness of the
content, the dialectic which it possesses within itself, which is the mainspring of its advance. It is clear that no expositions can be accepted as scientifically valid
which do not pursue the course of this method and do not conform to its simple
rhythm, for this is the course of the subject matter itself.” (SL §63, pp.53-54, my emphasis)
3.3
One of the results of the Phenomenology, which Hegel discusses again in the Introduction to the Philosophy of Right, is that will and intelligence should not be understood as two separate faculties. Rather, the will is a practical mode of thought. It is “a particular way of thinking – thinking translating itself into existence, thinking as the drive to give itself existence”.302 The distinction between theoretical thought and will, Hegel argues, is simply a distinction in attitude towards its object. It is, roughly, the distinction in the direction of fit. In the theoretical attitude, the thinking subject overcomes the opposition between thought and the object of thought by comprehending the object, by recognizing thought in the object. In the practical attitude, this opposition is overcome through the subject’s self-determination to action, for the subject identifies with the deeds and ends she brings about as something that she has done or made. As Hegel puts it, “they bear the imprint of [her] mind.” Moreover, the theoretical and the practical attitudes, thought and will, are mutually dependent. On the one hand, Hegel argues, the theoretical is essentially contained within the practical – one cannot will without theoretical understanding of what one aims to accomplish, for example. On the other, it is impossible to think without a will. Theoretical thought seeks knowledge – it is itself intentional, something the mind does. We may also say that theoretical judgments are commitments to what is true and to what other judgments can or cannot be true.
302
“These distinct attitudes,” Hegel concludes, “are therefore inseparable: they are one and the same thing, and both moments can be found in every activity, of thinking and willing alike.”303 Given this conception of the relationship between thought and will, it is important that we understand Hegel’s practical philosophy in light of his conception of the nature of thought and of philosophy as its pure rational science.
In the next chapter, I will consider the way in which the structural analogy between Goethe’s methodology of “objective thinking” and Hegel’s conception of philosophical science and its method bears on Hegel’s philosophical science of right and on his critique of Kant’s moral philosophy, in particular.
303
Chapter 5
Hegel’s Philosophical Science of Right, its Method, and its
Plausibility
In chapter 2, I gave an account of Kant’s method in moral philosophy as “broadly Newtonian”. I now turn to Hegel’s conception of a philosophical science of right and its method. This conception, I will argue, has the key features of Goethe’s model of science. That is, Hegel’s approach in the Philosophy of Right can be plausibly characterized as “broadly Goethean” objective thinking about freedom. Considering Hegel’s theory in this light brings to the fore the crucial connection between his critique of Kant’s moral philosophy and his rejection of Kant’s critical method, and is fruitful for judging the independent plausibility of Hegel’s positive account of ethics.
I proceed as follows. After drawing attention to the Goethean features of Hegel’s approach and to the methodological bases of his critique of opposing views, I offer some reasons that weigh against Hegel’s conception of the philosophical science of right as a viable alternative to Kant’s moral theory. On the one hand, we may doubt that Hegel’s ethical theory achieves the organic systematicity and inner necessity his conception of philosophical science demands. On the other hand, any attempt to achieve rigorous scienticity makes it impossible for Hegel’s ethical theory (or any Hegelian theory of the kind he envisions) to fulfill its “supreme and ultimate purpose” as philosophy of reconciliation – to demonstrate that our social world contains all the essential elements that express our nature as free rational beings and that it is a world in which our freedom can in fact be completely realized. If successful, the argument of this chapter raises more fundamental doubts about the plausibility of Hegel’s conception of philosophy as the
philosophical science of the Idea that extends Goethean “objective thinking” beyond its original empirical domain to reason itself.
If, as I try to show, methodological differences are central to Hegel’s critique of Kant’s moral philosophy, the same considerations that lead us to doubt the plausibility of Hegel’s approach also challenge the plausibility of some key aspects of this critique. In my view, these reflections support a new perspective on Kant’s conception of moral objectivity suggested by the discussion of Kant’s methodological Newtonianism. On this view, to be defended in the next chapter, the objectivity of the content of our practical thought develops as the background conditions of moral deliberation become progressively more inter-subjectively justifiable.
1. Hegel’s philosophical science of right and Goethean “objective thinking”