La teoría sobre la memoria de trabajo a largo plazo

In chapter 2 I argued that Hegel’s Logic is both an ontology and a logic. It determines not only what it means to think, but also what it means to be. The "element’ of the Logicy as Hegel calls it, is, in other words, the unity or identity of thought and being.1 This is not to say that Hegel is a subjective idealist for whom the character of things or even their very presence depends in some way on the human mind. For Hegel, being is what it is in its own right and will continue to be such long after human beings have disappeared from the face of the earth. His claim, however, is that the structures or fundamental determinations of thought and being are identical. The process of discovering the immanent structure of thought - by letting the indeterminate being of thought determine itself - is thus at the same time the process of discovering the immanent structure of being itself. In this process being shows itself - within thought - to be intrinsically rational and dialectical. As Hegel puts it, "being is [thus] known to be the pure Concept [Begriff] in its own self, and the pure Concept to be true being’.2 In the Logic, therefore, being is not regarded primarily as that which stands over against thought and to which thought must somehow gain access. It is understood to be that which is what it is in its own right, but whose structure can nevertheless be discerned within thought itself.

Yet how can Hegel justify what many would regard as the height of philosophical pre­

sumptuousness: the claim that thought can divine the nature of things a priori without, as it were, ever leaving the comfort of its armchair? The justification for such "presumptu­

ousness’ lies in the fact that it is actuall^.the consequence of being radically self-critical and setting all one’s determinate assumptions about thought and being to one side.

As I noted in chapter 2, if thought is to be truly presuppositionless, it cannot take any determinate categories or rules of thought for granted but can begin from nothing but the sheer, indeterminate immediacy or being of thought. Furthermore, it may not at the outset make any determinate assumptions about the nature of being itself. We cannot start out from the idea that being is substance, nature or will to power, because in each case we would first need to prove that being necessarily takes this form. Initially, therefore, before any such proof has been provided, the most we may understand being to be is sheer being as such. But that means that at the start of philosophy we have no warrant to regard being as anything beyond the sheer immediacy of which thought is minimally aware. If, there­

fore, we are truly self-critical and suspend all determinate preconceptions about being, we have no alternative but to regard being as that which thought understands there to be and so to regard thought in turn as the awareness of being as such. This means that the true nature of being will be disclosed simply by determining what is entailed by the thought or category of being and that the structure of being and thought (properly understood) cannot but be identical. The apparently presumptuous claim that thought and being are identical in structure is thus, from Hegel’s point of view, the very opposite of presumptu­

ous. It is the claim that we are required to make by the demands of radical self-criticism.

By contrast, the seemingly more modest claim that being should be conceived from the outset as "that-which-might-possibly-difFer-in-structure-from-thought’ is in fact far from modest, because it takes for granted being’s possible difference from thought without first showing that the very idea of being as such entitles us to conceive of it in this way. It is easy to think that sceptical doubts about our ability to understand being properly are founded simply on the idea that our thought and understanding may be limited. But this is not the case: they are founded just as much on the idea that being itself might differ from the way we understand it. In Hegel’s view, however, this conception of being is one that we are not automatically entitled to adopt. Indeed, we will only be entitled to adopt it if and when it can be shown to be entailed by the very idea of being itself. In the absence of such a demonstration, all that the self-critical philosopher may assume being to be is pure and simple being - the very being of which thought is minimally aware. Hegel meets the chal­

lenge of the sceptic, therefore, not by showing how we can, after all, gain access to the realm of being that the sceptic deems to be beyond our reach, but by rejecting as unwarranted - at least initially - the conception o f ‘being’ (as possibly other than thought) on which such scepticism rests.

For Hegel, therefore, nothing is needed to begin presuppositionless onto-logic except a willingness freely to suspend one’s favoured assumptions about being and thought and to start from the bare thought of being as such. This is made clear in both the Science of Logic and the Encyclopaedia Logic. In the former, Hegel writes that at the beginning of specula­

tive logic all that is needed is simply ‘the resolve [Entschluss], which can also be regarded as arbitrary, that we propose to consider thought as such’. Acting on this resolve and actu­

ally setting all presuppositions to one side leads directly, Hegel explains, to the thought of pure being:

the beginning must be an absolute, or what is synonymous here, an abstract beginning; and so it may not presuppose anythingy must not be mediated by anything nor have a ground; rather it is to be itself the ground of the entire science. Consequently, it must be purely and simply an immediacy, or rather merely immediacy itself.. . . The beginning therefore is pure being?

This, then, is the direct route into Hegel’s ontological logic: ‘To enter into philosophy..

calls for no other preparations, no further reflections or points of connection’.4

A similar case is made in the Encyclopaedia Logic. In §78 Hegel writes that ‘a l l..

presuppositions or assumptions must equally be given up when we enter into the Science, whether they are taken from representation or from thinking; for it is this Science, in which all determinations of this sort must first be investigated’. Philosophy, or ‘Science’, thus requires that it be ‘preceded by universal doubt, i.e. by total presuppositionlessness\ Hegel goes on to note th a t‘this requirement is fulfilled by the freedom that abstracts from every­

thing, and grasps its own pure abstraction, the simplicity of thinking - in the resolve [Entschluss] of the will to think purely? Here, too, therefore, Hegel points out that there is a direct route into speculative logic. All one needs to do is freely suspend and abstract from

all determinate presuppositions about thought and being and render explicit whatever is entailed by the indeterminate thought (of sheer indeterminate being) that results from this act of abstraction. Since any rational person is capable of performing this act of abstrac­

tion, anyone is able to begin speculative logic.

Hegel recognizes, however, that not everybody will in fact be willing to perform such an act of abstraction and suspend his or her deepest assumptions about thought and being.

He anticipates resistance in particular from what he calls ‘natural consciousness’; that is, ordinary, non-philosophical consciousness. Such consciousness, Hegel believes, is invari­

ably convinced that its everyday assumptions about the world are beyond dispute and is unlikely to be minded to throw them all overboard in the interests of what it can only regard as the absurd demand for total ‘presuppositionlessness’ Furthermore, such con­

sciousness cannot fail to consider perverse the idea that the true nature of things can be discovered a priori within thought simply by ‘unfolding’ what is contained in the bare thought of being.

Everyday consciousness draws a clear distinction between itself and the objects it knows:

it considers itself to be ‘here’ and the things it is aware of to be over there’ As Hegel puts it, it ‘knows objects in their antithesis to itself, and itself in antithesis to them’.6 From the perspective of ordinary, natural consciousness, therefore, one cannot just close one’s eyes and work out by pure reason what the world is like; one has to go over and look. For ordi­

nary consciousness, indeed, Hegelian ‘Science’ is the complete ‘antithesis of its own stand­

point’. It overturns our common-sense conviction that things are irreducibly other than us and it presumes that we can know in some mysterious way purely from within thought what the world ‘out there’ is like. Hegel is well aware of the perplexity that is bound to over­

come consciousness when it first encounters speculative philosophy:

When natural consciousness entrusts itself straightway to Science, it makes an attempt, induced by it knows not what, to walk on its head too, just this once; the compulsion to assume this unwonted posture and to go about in it is a violence it is expected to do to itself, all unprepared and seemingly without necessity. Let Science be in its own self what it may, relatively to immediate self- consciousness it presents itself in an inverted posture [als ein Verkehrtes].7

Remarkably, Hegel does not just dismiss the bewilderment of ordinary consciousness as of no concern to the philosopher. He accepts that philosophy must show ordinary con­

sciousness why it is rational, rather than perverse, to believe with the speculative philoso­

pher that the true structure of being can be found within the structure of thought itself.

In other words, Hegel acknowledges that, if philosophy or ‘Science’ is to demand of con­

sciousness that it raise itself to the standpoint of ontological logic, ‘the individual has the right to demand that Science should at least provide him with the ladder to this stand­

point, should show him this standpoin^within himself’.8 Such a ladder will be provided by the Phenomenology of Spirit (1807).

The Phenomenology, as I understand it, can be bypassed by those who are prepared to carry out the free act of suspending all their presuppositions about thought and being, begin with the bare thought of ‘pure being’, and accept that, initially, being itself may not be understood to be anything beyond the bare, indeterminate immediacy of which thought is minimally aware. The Phenomenology is essential reading, however, for those who are deeply attached to the ordinary view of the world as something that stands over against us and who want to know why they should be persuaded to give up that common-sense view and adopt the standpoint of ontological logic. The role of the Phenomenology, on this inter­

pretation, is thus to justify the standpoint of ontological logic (or ‘absolute knowing’) to

ordinary, natural consciousness. It aims to provide such justification by demonstrating that, paradoxically, the seemingly perverse’ standpoint of philosophy is actually made necessary by the very certainties of ordinary consciousness itself. For ordinary consciousness (and those philosophers who are wedded to the ordinary view of things) the Phenomenology is, therefore, the indispensable presupposition of presuppositionless logic. Without it, Hegel believes, such consciousness cannot but regard the standpoint of ontological logic or spec­

ulative philosophy as illegitimate. The role of the Phenomenology is clearly set out by Hegel in these lines from the Logic.

In the Phenomenology of Spirit I have exhibited consciousness in its movement onwards from the first immediate opposition of itself and the object to absolute knowing. The path of this movement goes through every form of the relation of consciousness to the object and has the Concept [Begriff]

of science for its result. This Concept therefore . . . needs no justification here [in the Logic] because it has received it in that work [the Phenomenology]; and it cannot be justified in any other way than by this emergence in consciousness, all the forms of which are resolved into this Concept as into their truth.9

At least, it cannot be justified in any other way to a consciousness that refuses to suspend its cherished preconceptions about the world of its own accord.