Abstract
Despite his commitment to universal explicability, a case can be made that Hegel is better labelled an idealist than a naturalist. As an analysis of his three syllogisms of philosophy reveals, he strictly differentiates between the domains of nature and Geist, suggesting in sequence that Geist replaces nature, Geist comprehends nature and that Geist and nature are comprehended as forms of the metaphysical idea and determine and mediate each other. Since Hegel grounds his accounts of the metaphysical idea and its forms nature and Geist in concept-metaphysics and these include a supernatural notion of undetermined, self-positing universality, Hegel’s entire ontological edifice is ultimately supernatural. This stands in stark contrast to the metaphysics of naturalism, which are based on categories Hegel associates with the logics of being and essence or which fail to sufficiently emancipate universality from its immediate connection to particularity.
That which always was, and is, and will be everliving fire, the same for all the cosmos, made neither by god nor man, replenishes in measure as it burns away.
(Heraclitus)
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Notes
- 1.
Or mind-related reality, what he calls Geist.
- 2.
For an alternative take on the idea cf. Gabriel 2016.
- 3.
Against this view cf. Gabriel 2016, 197: “Hegel’s absolute idealism is not intended as a direct contribution to the discipline of first-order metaphysics”
- 4.
In this context, philosophy functions as its own criterion. It is thus up to philosophical thought to decide how far into the empirical world’s particularity its categorial claims and deductions should go.
- 5.
Against this, cf. Gabriel 2016, 198: “Nature is what it is regardless of how we take it to be, which does not mean that nature might be entirely different from what we find out about it by employing the appropriate means.”
- 6.
See also Houlgate 2006: 171, 172.
- 7.
Cf. Houlgate 2006, 172.
- 8.
Against this cf. Gabriel 2016, 198: „Facts to be studied from the theoretical stance, for Hegel, are unified by belonging to ‘nature’ whereas facts to be studied from the practical stance, in his division of labour, belong to ‘Geist’ or ‘spirit’.”
- 9.
(Suhrkamp, author’s own translation) [Original: “Das Denken, als dies für sich selbst seiende Allgemeine, ist das Unsterbliche; das Sterbliche ist, daß die Idee, das Allgemeine sich nicht angemessen ist.”]
- 10.
To avoid this, Kant invoked the noumenal thing in itself and Fichte the I-external ‘Anstoss’.
- 11.
One could argue from a Kantian point of view that philosophies that ultimately - and often against their own proclamations to the contrary - undermine a notion of true consciousness-independent objectivity such as Sellars’, Brandom’s and McDowell’s encounter a variety of this problem: if one conceptually begins with finite consciousness, any claim about objectivity is made in the light of consciousness so that all objectivity is posited by and ‘for consciousness’. Unless one explains how consciousness-independent objectivity is possible from the logical beginning, any subsequent claim to objectivity’s independence can be questioned and accused of being reducible to subjectivity. To avoid the reduction of objectivity to subjectivity with the subjectivity-undermining consequences Kant associates with Hume and Berkeley, Kant and Fichte argue that there is a dimension to objectivity that escapes subjectivity (and its knowledge). However, this raises the question how any philosophical knowledge claim about subjectivity can have objective validity if true objectivity is beyond the reach of philosophy. Hegel attempts to avoid this issue by defining Geist’s subjectivity in contrast to nature’s objectivity and vice versa, thus avoiding either’s reduction to the respective other whilst grounding both of them in the idea.
- 12.
Translation by author. Original: “Die Naturphilosophie [...] ist es, welche die Trennung der Natur und des Geistes aufhebt und dem Geiste die Erkenntnis seines [vernünftigen] Wesens in der Natur gewährt.“ (Hegel 1986a, 15)
- 13.
It is the unity of the concept’s subjective and objective forms (Hegel 2010a, 282).
- 14.
mechanics, physics, organics.
- 15.
subjective (cognition), objective (action) and absolute (art, religion, philosophy).
- 16.
And thus an ‘objective’ rather than ‘subjective’ principle.
- 17.
Taking Hegel’s thought as a standard, the label naturalist would apply if one equates the notion of ‘nature’ with Hegel’s ‘idea’, maybe calling the logical idea ‘abstract nature’, the idea as nature ‘nature’ and the idea as Geist ‘self-referential nature’. While this is certainly possible, it might end up confusing interpreters of Hegel more than helping them orientate within his thought.
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Stein, S. (2023). Beyond Naturalism, Spiritualism and Finite Idealism: Hegel on the Relationship Between Metaphysical Truth, Nature and Mind. In: Corti, L., Schülein, JG. (eds) Life, Organisms, and Human Nature. Studies in German Idealism, vol 22. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41558-6_18
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