Abstract
Hegel’s defense of the possibility of self-criticism rests on two main points. First, our being conscious is fundamentally a cognitive relation to the world, whether we realize it or not. Second, our fundamental cognitive relation to the world has a certain structure that allows us to critically assess and revise our conceptions of knowledge and of the world. The task of this chapter is to document and analyze these two points. More specifically, in section II, I reconstruct Hegel’s analysis of the self-critical structure of consciousness by analyzing four points made in his discussion of commonsense realism (§IIA), noting the problem to which Hegel’s analysis responds (§§IIB and IIC), and distinguishing eight aspects of cognition as a relation between subject and object (§IID). This background then enables a reconstruction of Hegel’s criterial inference, an inference to the correspondence of a form of consciousness’ conceptions of knowledge and of the world with knowledge and the world themselves (§III). In section IV, I defend attributing a correspondence conception of truth to Hegel and explain why he has been taken to reject this conception of truth. I close in section V by noting that, even were Hegel’s criterial inference sound, it would take further measures to undo epistemically opaque metaphysical distinctions between appearance and reality and that Hegel takes such further measures. Epistemological realism must be a substantive result of his investigation and not a trivial corollary to the criteria he proposes.
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Notes to Chapter Seven
“This contradiction [i.e., the problem of the criterion] and its removal will become more determinate if the abstract determinations of knowledge and truth are first called to mind as they occur in consciousness” (G58.22–24/D18/M52.31–33).
G58.24–31/D19/M52.33–53.1. Konrad Cramer, in ‘Bemerkungen zu Hegels Begriff vom Bewußtsein in der Einleitung zur Phänomenologie des Geistes’ (in: R.-P. Horstmann, ed., Seminar: Dialektik in der Philosophie Hegels [Frankfurt: Surhkamp, 1978], pp. 360–393), devotes detailed attention to interpreting the first clause in this passage, “consciousness distinguishes from itself something to which it at the same time relates itself.” However, when he finally comes to interpreting it in its “philosophical context” (p. 384), he seizes Hegel’s claim in the Encyclopedia that Kant’s philosophy is a phenomenological analysis of consciousness (Enz. §415). This involves two errors. First, it ignores the immediate context of the problem of self-criticism Hegel faces in the Introduction (on which, see below); and second, Cramer quite unwarrantedly assumes that with this remark Hegel adopts Kant’s analysis of consciousness, rather than simply designates the purported domain of Kant’s analysis (pp. 384–385). This generates spurious puzzles that occupy the remainder of Cramer’s article.
See Chapter One, pp. 4–5, and Chapter Eleven, pp. 158.
G54.6–8/D9–10/M47.18–19. See Chapter Six, p. 91 and note 1 (on p. 252).
Compare Kant’s remark explaining the import of his Critique: “I do not mean by this a critique of books and systems, but of the faculty of reason in general, in respect of all knowledge after which it may strive independently of all experience. It will therefore decide as to the possibility or impossibility of metaphysics in general, and determine its sources, its extent, and its limits—all in accordance with principles” (CPR Axii).
See Chapter One, p. 4.
Hegel’s rejection of the priority of epistemology over metaphysics does not, as many critics have charged, lead hegel to pursue metaphysics unbridled by any cognitive concerns. On the contrary, Hegel’s view is that “speculative” metaphysics is answerable to actual scientific and historical knowledge of the world (see Chapter One, p. 10). However, to be answerable to actual knowledge is importantly different than being answerable to a philosophical theory about what that knowledge (or, more currently, what the language for expressing that knowledge) is.
G30.36–37/K60/M22.40–23.1.
G30.37–38/K60/M23.1–2. See §IV below, pp. 111–114.
G30.38–31.5/K60/M23.2–10.
G59.35–37/D22/M54.17–22.
‘Begriff und Realität’ (rpt. in: R.-R Horstmann, ed., Seminar: Dialektik in der Philosophie Hegels [Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1978]; pp. 324–359), p. 330.
G59.37–60.3/D22/M54.22–27.
“… das Bewußtseyn sich selbst prüft...” (G59.29–30/D21/M54.10).
G59.21–22/D21/M53.38–40; Hegel’s emphases have been omitted.
G59.8–13/D20/M53.22–29.
Ulrich Claesges recognizes that consciousness’ standard has to do with a view it “maintains” (behaupten), but he fails to analyze the relation between consciousness’ declaration and the term “ansich” and so he fails to see the ambiguity of this term (Darstellung des erscheinenden Wissens [Hegel-Studien Beiheft 21 {Bonn: Bouvier, 1981}], pp. 76, 86). Thus the richness of the answer to the problem of self-criticism given in the “first phase” of Hegel’s discussion escapes Claesges (p. 86). Having misconstrued the first phase, Claesges is in a poor position to reconstruct the second. The very problem that Hegel addresses (roughly, how can consciousness determine if what seems to it to be true is true?) infects Claesges’s hypothesis for resolving this problem. His hypothesis is that “the untruth of phenomenal knowledge lies in that it generally takes (hat) its content in a double form, as knowledge and as truth. So long as knowledge is untrue, consciousness must make such a division (Trennung), and so long as knowledge makes such a division, it is untrue knowledge” (pp. 92–93). The problem remains of how consciousness is to discern that what may in fact be false but seems to it to be true is in fact false. That there is in fact such a distinction in no way entails that consciousness is in a position to draw it, or if consciousness draws the distinction in abstract reflection, this in no way entails that consciousness is able to apply this distinction in any particular instance in order to test its own knowledge. Consciousness may in fact be untrue knowledge, but how can it tell? Claesges’s hypothesis papers over rather than solves the basic problem. I disagree with other points of his analysis, but discussing them here would lead too far afield.
The importance of Hegel’s distinction between dative and accusative cases has been stressed by M. Theunissen (‘Begriff und Realität’ [op. cit.], pp. 326–330 and note 5) and by Kenley R. Dove in ‘Phenomenology and Systematic Philosophy’ (in: M. Westphal, ed., Method and Speculation in Hegel’s Phenomenology [N.J.: Humanities Press, 1982], pp. 27–40), p. 30. However, Dove does not notice that there are two different dative objects in Hegel’s analysis, he does not notice the ambiguity of the term “in itself,” and he does not develop these distinctions into an analysis of the structure of Hegel’s notion of a form of consciousness. Also see note 24 below.
G59.38–60.2/D22/M54.22–25; quoted above, p. 103.
This four-fold distinction of aspects of consciousness (and its subsequent elaboration below) has been developed independently. However, the analysis I offer is similar to that offered by Michael Theunissen in the first section of his essay, ‘Begriff und Realität’ (op. cit.). He notes an ambiguity in Hegel’s use of “Ansich” and he distinguishes between the object itself and the object for consciousness (ibid. p. 326). Furthermore, Theunissen stresses Hegel’s point that the object is also an object to consciousness (p. 327f.) and he emphasizes that according to Hegel consciousness declares something from within itself as the in-itself or truth (p. 330). Thus he notices each of the four aspects that I have isolated and analyzed above, although he does not, in the confines of one short section, attempt to systematize them. Theunissen also does not analyze this “declaration” as the adoption of a conception and he does not develop the double list of aspects that I discuss below.
G57.25–26/D17/M51.28–29.
G59.31–32/D21/M54.11–13; cf. ‘Bewußtseinslehre für die Mittelklasse’, Philosophische Propadeutik 4 (1809f.), §1 (Werke Vol. IV, pp. 9–302), p. 111.
Ernst Tugendhat rejects the attempt to understand conscious or intentional relations with “unclarified” notions of “positing” and “subject/object” relations, and he faults Hegel for doing so (‘Kehraus mit Hegel I’ [Selbstbewußtsein und Selbstbestimmung {op. cit.}, 13. Vorlesung], p. 303). What Tugendhat misses is the fact that Hegel agrees with him on these points. What I have argued shows that Hegel does not leave these notions undeveloped, and indeed that what Hegel presents when all is told covers what Tugendhat suggests as an alternative (‘Kehraus mit Hegel II’ [ibid., 14. Vorlesung], p. 325)—and then some!
Hegel’s criterial inference is thus similar to Donald Davidson’s view of how “coherence generates correspondence” in ‘A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge’ (D. Henrich, ed., Kant oder Hegel? [Stutgartt: Klett-Cotta, 1984], pp. 423–438), except that Hegel’s project has a second-order and categorial concern with the truth of theories of knowledge, a concern that plays no role in Davidson’s argument.
Hegel’s doctrine of “determinate negation” is discussed in Chapter Eight §IIIB and chapter 9 §VII, pp. 125–126 and 135–136, respectively.
G57.18–20/D16/M51.19–22.
This point is discussed in Chapter Nine §V, pp. 133–134.
G57.20/D16/M51.22.
G59.14–15/D20/M53.29–32.
G59.15–19/D20/M53.32–36.
G59.19/D20/M53.36–37.
Hegel mentions this indifference again on G103.16–22/M 104.16–23 and G221.31–32/M244.13–14.
CPR Bxvi, quoted more fully above, Chapter Three p. 38.
Recall Hegel’s trenchant remarks on truth and knowledge of “the absolute” at the beginning of the Introduction. (These are discussed above in Chapter One, pp. 4–10.)
M. Theunissen notes that Hegel upbraids Kant with his two equivalent formulations of the relevant correspondence (‘Begriff und Realität’ [op. cit.], pp. 325–326), but he too quickly identifies Hegel’s second formulation (the object for consciousness’ corresponding with the object itself qua concept) with Hegel’s further conception of value judgments as judgments concerning the correspondence of an object with its own concept (ibid., p. 332). On this point, see the following subsection (§IVC).
WL II p. 266/SL p. 593. I do not claim that Hegel provides an analysis of “correspondence” as the nature of truth; only that he is committed to such an analysis. For an excellent analysis of the relevant “correspondence” in terms of reference, see Scott Shalkowski, ‘Concepts and Correspondence’ (Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 47 No. 3 [1987], pp. 461–474), and his reply to Catherine Elgin, ‘Correspondence Revisited’ (ibid., pp. 481–483).
Chapter Four §VF, pp. 62–64.
Hegel himself uses just this example to illustrate this second notion of truth in Enz. §24z2.
I use “correspondence” here to translate Hegel’s “Übereinstimmung” (Enz. §24z2). Miller continues a long tradition of misunderstanding by translating Hegel’s term as “consistency."
Hegel himself indicates that one can of course have correct (richtige) conceptions of deformed objects, conceptions that correspond to their deformed natures (Enz. §24z2).
G431.36–432.1, 9–19/M490.33–37, 491.6–17.
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Westphal, K.R. (1989). Self-Criticism and Criteria of Truth. In: Hegel’s Epistemological Realism. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 43. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2342-3_8
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