Abstract
In previous chapters I have argued that Hegel’s method generates a second-level realism, that is, that his examination of forms of consciousness purports to result in an account of the real nature of knowledge and its objects. I have also argued that the ontological aspect of Hegel’s brand of idealism is a realist account of the world, and thus is compatible with epistemological realism. However, I have only suggested that the form of consciousness purported to result from his examination is itself realist at the first-order level of empirical knowledge, and I have said nothing about the putative social and historical bases of this final form of consciousness. Though substantiating my interpretation of these matters would require a commentary unto itself, I owe the reader some specific indication of how to approach the body of Hegel’s text in view of the issues I have emphasized in earlier chapters. This chapter aims to make plausible my contention that there is a unified, sustained, if complex, argument throughout the body of the Phenomenology of Spirit, an epistemological argument purporting to prove that epistemological realism is true and that empirical knowledge is socially and historically grounded.
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Notes to Chapter Eleven
This view has been most prominently represented by Rudolf Haym, Hegel und seine Zeit (Berlin: Gaertner, 1857),
Thomas Haering, Hegel: Sein Wollen und Sein Werk (Leipzig and Berlin: Teubner, 1929). The same view has been more recently defended by Otto Pöggeler in ‘Zur Deutung der Phänomenologie des Geistes’ (Hegel-Studien I [1961], pp. 255–294) and ‘Die Komposition der Phänomenologie des Geistes’ (rpt. in: H. F. Fulda and D. Henrich, eds., Materialien zu Hegels Phänomenologie des Geistes [Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1973], pp. 329–390.). Robert Solomon has recently condemned the failure of the secondary literature to find a unitary conception of the whole Phenomenology (In the Spirit of Hegel [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983], pp. 211–215), and claims to find it in Hegel’s discovery that philosophy is an art (p. 225–226). However, Solomon gets to this impressionistic interpretation only by having previously distinguished “two Hegels,” one an academic philosopher, one an historicist {ibid., pp. 14–15). How reliance on two Hegels solves the problem of the unity of the Phenomenology is not explained.
Most recently, this error has been made by Joseph Flay, Hegel’s Quest for Certainty (Albany: SUNY Press, 1984), pp. 174–175. See his note 18 (ibid., pp. 350–351) for references to others whose suit he follows in this regard. These interpreters fail to give due weight to the fact that Hegel rejects this “subject-object” terminology in the Phenomenology—with good reason, since it is so misleading!
Night Thoughts (op. cit.), p. 53.
Charles Taylor’s essay, ‘Interpretation and the Sciences of Man’ (Review of Metaphysics 25 [1971], pp. 3–51), is largely an exposition of this Hegelian view.
See Chapter One above, pp. 8–9.
In particular, I do not wish to deny the ethical, social, and political aims of his argument, nor do I wish to deny the possible parallels between his argument in the Phenomenology and his contemporaneous logic and metaphysics. (On this last point, see H. F. Fulda, ‘Zur Logik der Phänomenologie von 1807’ [H. F. Fulda and D. Henrich, eds., Materialien zu Hegels »Phänomenologie des Geistes« {Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1973}, pp. 391–425] and J. Heinrichs [op. cit.].)
Hegel’s argument in “Sense-Certainty” has often been mistaken for an argument against the possibility of knowledge of particulars—as if Hegel didn’t start the next chapter talking about perceptual knowledge of a particular cube of salt! Among those who make this mistake is Ivan Soil, who, thinking that the target of Hegel’s attack is reference to (and with that, knowledge of) particulars, notes that definite descriptions, comprising solely universal terms, may successfully pick out particulars (Introduction to Hegel’s Metaphysics [op. cit.], pp. 101, 103–104). Soil’s point about definite descriptions is true, but beside the point: There is no use of definite descriptions without the use of universal conceptions, and the point of “sense-certainty” was to have knowledge without muddying things up with conceptions. “Sense-certainty” cannot, therefore, use descriptions either. For a detailed refutation of Soil’s interpretation of “Sense-certainty,” see Katharina Dulckheit, ‘Can Hegel Refer to Particulars?’ (The Owl of Minerva 17 No. 2 [1986], pp. 181–194).
Helpful interpretations of “Sense-Certainty” are provided by Willem deVries, ‘Hegel on Reference and Knowledge’ (Journal of the History of Philosophy 26 No. 2 [1988], pp. 297–307), and of the whole “Consciousness” section by Charles Taylor, ‘The Opening Arguments of the Phenomenology’ (op. cit.). Alston’s defense of “immediate knowledge” involves defending the claim that beliefs can be justified without recourse to other beliefs. He does not argue, and does not believe, that there is a-conceptual intuitive knowledge of the kind Hegel rejects (‘What’s Wrong with Immediate Knowledge?’ [op. cit.], p. 79). Alston recognizes the plausibility of contending that beliefs cannot be formed independently of other beliefs. For example, believing that 2+2=4 is impossible in the absence of related beliefs about simple arithmetic (e.g., 1+1=2); believing that ‘x is P’ requires having beliefs about what P’s are; and having beliefs about conscious states may require having beliefs about how those states are manifest in observable behavior. He argues that these sorts of dependence do not, however, undermine the possibility of immediate knowledge because the kinds of dependence just mentioned concern the very existence of a belief, while his doctrine of immediate knowledge holds that the justificatory status of an extant belief is independent of other beliefs (ibid., pp. 78–79). If some form of reliabilism is true, or if knowledge involves discriminating between distinct alternative possible states of affairs, then Alston’s argument for the compatibility of his brand of immediate knowledge with the causal dependence of the existence of beliefs on other beliefs fails. If reliabilism is true, then the conditions of belief production are the conditions for belief justification, so that if beliefs are causally dependent on other beliefs for their existence, they are similarly dependent on other beliefs for their justificatory status. This is all the more obvious if knowledge is discriminative, a thesis Hegel certainly holds.
(On discriminative aspects of perceptual knowledge, see Alvin Goldman, ‘Discrimination and Perceptual Knowledge;’ The Journal of Philosophy 73 No. 20 [1976], pp. 771–791.) Robert Audi argues that foundationalism doesn’t require the “excess baggage” of indubitability, infallibility, or incorrigibility and defends a “psychological” foundationalism. (‘Psychological Foundationalism,’ Monist 61 [1978], pp. 592–610. His remark dismissing the “excess baggage” occured during his Presidential Address to the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association; Cincinati, Ohio, April 29, 1988. The substance of his view, though not this remark, is published in “The Architecture of Reason” [Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 62 No. 1 {1988} Supplement] and in Belief, Justification, and Knowledge [Belmont: Wadsworth, 1988].) He retains the term “foundationalism” to suggest the structure of empirical knowledge and to emphasize his opposition to coherentism. His analysis of empirical knowledge is interesting and persuasive, but I find his retention of the term “foundationalism” infelicitous. Foundationalism standardly is internalist; and though Audi does not identify justification with externalist causal factors, the justificatory efficacy of Audi’s foundational psychological episodes does depend on externalist factors. Thus Audi is no less opposed to traditional foundationalism than he is to coherentism. Labeling his view “foundationalism” obscures this fundamental shift away from the paradigm foundationalist theories of knowledge in the Modern and contemporary periods. One of the alleged exclusive dichotomies Hegel opposes is that between ‘foundationalism’ and ‘coherentism.’ There are other options besides these, including a variety of externalist views. Alston’s locution, “an internalist externalism,” though less elegant, is far more perspicacious. Contemporary foundationalists, including Audi, typically grant that the “foundations” of knowledge may be revised in a variety of ways. Earlier foundations may “drop out,” due to e.g. lapses or fading of memory, or their relevance to various other beliefs may be reassessed so that they come to play a different role in justifying mediately justified beliefs, or perhaps no role at all. Additionally, contemporary foundationalists grant that foundations may be rejected in the light of other, newer foundations or in light of reconsidering the inferential relations among a set of foundations or other beliefs. This last concession to history and to coherentism disguises a difficulty which has not yet been fairly stated, much less addressed, by contemporary foundationalists. The justificatory properties of sensory foundations must be at least in part a function of their de facto reliability; rejecting a putative sensory foundation in view of other sensory experience or other indirect evidence implies that that sensory foundation was not reliable after all. What seemed to have been a sensory foundation is considered not to have been or to be a sensory foundation after all. Such revision of putative sensory foundations may affect any sensory foundation. It involves the same distinction which plagued both Descartes and his Stoic predecessors, the distinction between a sensory state’s being reliable (and hence a genuine foundation) and its seeming to be reliable. Neither the Stoics, nor Descartes, nor contemporary foundationalists have resolved how to distinguish these two crucially different epistemic statuses. (On Descartes, see Chapter Three §IVC [pp. 32–33]; on the Stoics, see Chapter Three note 51 [pp. 218–219].) Such discrimination may involve unconscious processes of various kinds, so that we may not need the ability to articulate such discriminative processes in order to perform them in many cases of unself-consciously adopted experiential beliefs. But foundationalists need to articulate them in order to account for what justification is in cases of such unselfconsciously adopted experiential beliefs, and even more so for self-consciously adopted beliefs, where these revisions are more overtly self-conscious. I, for one, will be surprised if the resulting analysis can involve “foundations” at all; externalist factors, sensory experience, psychological states yes; foundations, no. In any event, until such analysis is provided, the meatphor of “foundations” is little more than a promise of a hope.
Treatise (op. cit.), p. 200. See Robert Paul Wolff, ‘Hume’s Theory of Mental Activity’ (in: V. C. Chappell, ed., Hume: A Collection of Critical Essays [Garden City, N.Y.: Double Day Anchor, 1966], pp. 99–128), pp. 120–125.
This “phenomenological” or “abstractive” account of scientific laws must be distinguished both from instrumentalism and from phenomenalism. Instrumentalism admits “theoretical entities” into formulations of laws of nature, but regards them as calculative fictions. Phenomenalism may lead quickly to a descriptive, phenomenological account of scientific laws, but it is not required by such an account of laws. (These two doctrines tend to be conflated in discussions of Mach.) Ernst Cassirer quotes the Newtonian John Keill defending an entirely descriptive account of natural laws in his Introductio ad veram Physicam (Leyden: 1725; p. 15) (quoted in: Das Erkenntnisproblem [Hildesheim and New York: G. Olms, 1971], Vol. II, pp. 404–405). On Black’s heat theory, see Duane Roller, ‘The Early Development of the Concepts of Temperature and Heat’ §2 (J. B. Conant, ed., Harvard Case Studies in Experimental Science [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957], Vol. 1, pp. 119–214), pp. 125–155. The Scottish physicist and engineer W. J. Macquorn Rankine gives an especially succinct statement of the “abstractive” or phenomenological position in the first six sections of his ‘Outlines of the Science of Energetics’ (Proceedings of the Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow 3 No. 6 [1855], pp. 381–399), pp. 381–385 (rpt. in W. J. M. Rankine, Miscellaneous Scientific Papers [London: Griffin, 1881], pp. 209–228; pp. 209–213). The German physicist Gustav Kirchhoff espouses this descriptive ideal in his Vorlesungen über mathematische Physik (2nd ed.; Leipzig: Teubner, 1877), p. 1. I thank Val Dusek for help with these references.
For a discussion of the epistemological significance of Hegel’s ontology, adumbrated in “Force and Understanding,” and on the social dimensions of Hegel’s view of thought, which is developed in the remainder of the Phenomenology, see Willem deVries, ‘Hegel on Representation and Thought’ (op. cit.). On Hegel’s ontology and philosophy of nature, in connection with both “Force and Understanding” and “Observing Reason,” see Gerd Buchdahl, ‘Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature’ (British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 23 [1972], pp. 257–290), ‘Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature and the Structure of Science’ (op. cit.), and ‘Conceptual Analysis and Scientific Theory in Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature (with Special Reference to Hegel’s Optics)’ (in: R. S. Cohen and M. Wartofsky, eds., Hegel and the Sciences [Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science; Dordrecht: Reidel, 1984], pp. 13–36). To correct the myth that Hegel argued that necessarily there were seven planets, see Bernard Beaumont, ‘Hegel and the Seven Planets’ (Mind 62 [1954], pp. 246–248).
G116.3–5/M119.24–25. For a brief but helpful discussion of “Lord and Bondsman” and the “Freedom of Self-Consciousness” see Judith Shklar, Freedom and Independence: A Study of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), ch. 2, “Independence and Dependence,” pp. 57–73.
See Chapter One, p. 15.
G213.30–34/M235.20–25. This claim is crucial for Hegel’s social philosophy, for this is the key to melding classical economic theory into his socially based ethics. Hegel devoted much attention to this point both before and after writing the Phenomenology. It receives its most systematic exposition in the Philosophy of Right. For a helpful discussion, see Raymond Plant, ‘Economic and Social Integration in Hegel’s Political Philosophy’ (in: D. Verene, ed., Hegel’s Social and Political Thought [Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1980], pp. 59–90).
See below, pp. 184–185.
On “True Spirit” and “Self-Alienated Spirit” see Judith Shklar (op. cit.), chs. 2, pp. 74–95, and 4, “The Life Cycle of a Culture.”
See note 173.
On Hegel’s social ontology, see Richard DeGeorge, ‘Social Reality and Social Relations’ (Review of Metaphysics 37 [1983], pp. 3–20). DeGeorge sets out Hegel’s view without once mentioning Hegel.
G288.34, 288.36–289.1/M324.1, 3–5. Concerning pure insight’s lack of content, recall the Encyclopedists’ repudiation of innate ideas and their claim that all mental content is derived from experience. See A. M. Wilson, ‘Encyclopédie’ (Paul Edwards, ed.-in-chief, Encyclopedia of Philosophy [New York: Collier MacMillan, 1967], Vol. 2, pp. 505–508), and Crane Brinton, ‘Enlightenment’ {ibid., pp. 519–525) for brief backgrounds on this period and these issues.
For discussion, see Judith Shklar (op. cit.), ch. 5, “Beyond Morality: A Last Brief Act.”
See Moltke Gramm’s excellent essay, ‘Moral and Literary Ideals in Hegel’s Critique of “The Moral World-View” (Clio 1 No. 3 [1978], pp. 375–402). I offer two caveats about his discussion. First, he suggests that Hegel doesn’t successfully criticize Kant’s ethics because Hegel asks about the character of moral action, whereas Kant asks about the conditions for moral experience. Gram recognizes that the moral experience we justify by answering the latter question “may not be the moral experience we have” (p. 379), as discerned by answering the former question. Gramm fails to notice that any such result fails to justify the moral experience of beings like ourselves, but this is what we need and sought to begin with. Second, he suggests that the order of the forms of consciousness in Hegel’s Phenomenology is not set by deductive entailment, or by some sort of conceptual development of earlier into latter forms, but is rather a mere function of the historical sequence of the views Hegel criticizes (pp. 380–381). He’s right on the first count, and wrong on the second. As he himself remarks, latter forms of consciousness purportedly solve problems not solved by earlier forms (cf. pp. 379, 380, 383). Why he doesn’t see that such problem-solving relations constitute “dialectical connections” I don’t understand.
Hegel’s emphasis on the cognitive importance of socially-based mutual criticism comes very close to the kinds of considerations Tyler Burge has urged in opposition to individualistic conceptions of the mental. Mutual criticism is productive in cases of partial ignorance, and Burge’s original essay opposing individualism focused on the correlative (if not identical) phenomenon of partial understanding. See ‘Individualism and the Mental’ (P. French, T. Ueling, and H. Wettstein, eds., Midwest Studies in Philosophy VI: Metaphysics [Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1979], pp. 73–121.) Burge explores some of the normative bases of cognitive judgments in ‘Intellectual Norms and Foundations of Mind’ (Journal of Philosophy 83 No. 12 [1986], pp. 697–720). Like Hegel, Burge recognizes that these social dimensions to linguistic usage and social correctives to categories of thought do not entail that society is the ultimate arbiter of the content or the truth of thoughts, that for many cognitive states the natural world is the ultimate determinant of these matters (cf. ibid., p. 707).
On Hegel’s civil conception of religion, see Raymond Plant, Hegel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973), ch. 1, “Civil Theology and Political Culture.”
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Westphal, K.R. (1989). The Structure of Hegel’s Argument in the Phenomenology of Spirit . In: Hegel’s Epistemological Realism. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 43. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2342-3_12
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