Abstract
The general intent of this paper is to examine Hegel’s preoccupation with the question of beginnings. To anticipate, in Hegel’s view every account in respect to its beginning — indeed, everything in respect to its beginning — is both immediate and mediated. All things therefore begin having already begun; all things begin in medias res. But if all things begin having already begun, all things begin as a rupture of one sort or another.1
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Notes
The term “rupture” is used in order to put into stark contrast the two aspects of a beginning on which Hegel focuses. Certainly, one form of mediation could involve only the famous Aufheben, in which the mediation serves only to transform and raise something to a “higher” level. But to have that is to have mediation take precedence over immediacy, and that, it is clear, Hegel will not do. There are also clear breaks, for example in the “surrender” [Aufgeben] to reason at the end of “Unhappy Consciousness,” the “reversal” [Umkehrung] which carries us from reason to spirit, the “reconciliation” which resolves the problematic of conscience, and the “compulsion” (Drängen] which moves us from religion to absolute knowing. But most importantly, there is the “resolve” [Entshluß] to which Hegel resorts in order to sort out the radical ambiguities in which we are caught with the demands for both immediacy and mediation (WL32, 56; compare WL12, 34, where it is put negatively: “Man muß zugeben”). See note 5 for full references to these editions.
WL12, 35; WL32, 57. However contradictory to claims of openness and rupture, this circle metaphor and the claims for immediacy entail closure. For Hegel’s view on this matter as it concerns the system as a whole, compare The Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences ¡ì¡ì 15, 17, 573, 574. The themes include those of a circle of circles, self-thinking thought, and the unity of absolute spirit. This constant in bringing together rupture and closure cannot be ignored. See note 3, below.
There is no justification in forcing Hegel to give up or to give priority to one of these theses for the sake of “consistency.” Contradiction and ambiguity in Hegel is not a sign of “inconsistency,” but usually a sign that one is perhaps near to some truth. Nonetheless, most interpretations of Hegel do this, and it is this, I think, which is at the heart of criticisms that Hegel has absorbed the particular or effaced difference. These criticisms, as they usually stand, are unsupportable in any justified way.
There is also, of course, the question of closure and rupture concerning the end or result. For some discussion of some aspects of this, see my “Hegel, Heidegger, Derrida: Retrieval as Reconstruction, Destruction, Deconstruction,” in Ethics and Danger, Arleen B. Dallery and Charles E. Scott (eds), (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992) 199–213.
Both the 1812–16 and the 1832 editions of the Science of Logic have been consulted. Since the only passages from the Logic relevant to the present essay come from Part I of the Science of Logic, reference will be to Wissenschaft der Logik, [Gesammelte Werke, Bd. 11], hrsg. von Friedrich Hogemann and Walter Jaeschke (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1978) for the 1812 edition, hereafter abbreviated as WL12; and to Wissenschaft der Logik,[Gesammelte Werke, Bd. 21], hrsg. von Friedrich Hogemann and Walter Jaeschke (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1985) for the 1832 edition, hereafter abbreviated as WL32. If there is any significant difference between the original edition and the 1832 version, it is noted in the text. English translation: Hegel’s Science of Logic, translated by A.V. Miller (London: George Allen and Unwin; New York: Humanities Press, 1969. Hereafter abbreviated as SL. I have usually followed this translation except where the 1812 edition differs from the 1832 edition and also in a few cases where I have some disagreement with Miller’s translation.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, Gesammelte Werke, Bd. 9], hrsg. von Wolfgang Bonsiepen and Beinhard Heede (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1980). Reference is to the 1807 edition, hereafter abbreviated as PhG. If a change was made in the 1832 editing by Hegel, and I thought it significant, the 1832 version has been appropriately noted. English translation: Phenomenology of Spirit, translated by A.V. Miller (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977). Hereafter abbreviated as PhS. I have usually followed this translation except in a few cases where changes have been made without notice.
This maieutic dialectic is the dialectical method of the early Socratic dialogues of Plato and must be clearly distinguished from the method recommended to the young Socrates by Parmenides in The Parmenides, as well as the other versions of dialectic discussed in various contexts by Plato. That recommended by Parmenides was later developed by Aristotle and then in medieval philosophy, and was taken over by Kant. But no version of dialectic other than the maieutic will meet the conditions required by Hegel. For a discussion of this in the context of the Science of Logic, see my “Hegel’s Science of Logic: Ironies of the Understanding” in George DiGiovanni (ed.), Essays on Hegel’s Logic (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990) 153–69. For a discussion of the general problem, see my Hegel’s Quest for Certainty (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984) and “The Dialectic of Irony and the Irony of Dialectic,” Owl of Minerva 25 (1994) 209–14.
I have tried to work out some of these difficulties in my Hegel’s Quest for Certainty.
Another classical problem in Hegel ¡ª that of the relation between system and method ¡ª is here also broached. If I am right about this problem of beginnings, then if the opposition between system and method is seen as the basis for a negative critique of Hegel, the critique is misplaced. Among a host of other question affected by the discussion of beginnings is the challenge to Hegel in the form of William Desmond’s critique of self-mediation. Again, if I am right, then self-mediation does not end inevitably with the erasure of radical otherness. This issue will be taken up tangentially at the end of the present essay.
This ambiguity (Zweideutigkeit,Doppelsinnigkeit) reflects, internal to the system itself, the ruptured nature of beginnings, now not pointing backwards to the mediating beginning of the immediate beginning, but rather forwards to the system itself in its closure. Throughout his work unresolved ambiguity ¡ª but not ambivalence ¡ª is at the heart of the matter. The relation between this ambiguity and the general problem of beginnings is worth a separate essay. In my view it is also at the heart of Desmond’s own authentic ambivalence about Hegel’s dialectic in contrast to Desmond’s own “metaxological” position.
WL32, 54–55; SL, 68. This precise passage from “With What Must Science Begin” did not appear in the 1812 edition. However, the matter of the immediacy and the mediation of the beginning is taken up in essentially the same spirit at the beginning of this section in the 1812 edition and continues for the first two pages. See WL12, 33–34.
PhG, 431–32; PhS, 490–91.
PhG, 22–24; PhS, 14–16. The revisions made here in the 1832 edition do not significantly change the original view of 1807. This passage will be discussed in more detail below. See also the Introduction, PhG, 56; PhS, 50.
When the Preface was written is of no concern here. The question is one of system, and it is the Preface that begins the mediated introduction to the introduction to the system.
Hegel writes that a beginning is only a beginning; however, “when this activity [proper to a Preface, namely that of stating aims and results and the relationship of a philosophical work to other philosophical works,] is taken for more than the mere beginnings of cognition, when it is allowed to pass for actual cognition, then it should be reckoned as no more than a device for evading the real issue¡ ” [emphases mine] (PhG 10; PhS 2) Compare also the discussion in the first paragraph of the Preface concerning what is “appropriate” and what is “inappropriate.” PhG, 9; PhS, 1. The same sort of claim is made in the Logic. See Preface, WL12, 7; SL, 27; WL32, 12; SL, 33; and Introduction, WL12, 15; SL, 43; WL32, 27; SL, 43.
It should be noted also that, as in the Logic, Hegel begins the Phenomenology proper by addressing beginnings. “The knowledge or knowing which is at the start or is immediately our object cannot be anything else but immediate knowledge itself, a knowledge of the immediate or of what simply is. Our approach to the object must also be immediate or receptive; we must alter nothing in the object as it presents itself. In apprehending it, we must refrain from trying to comprehend it.” (PhG, 63; PhS, 58)
PhG, 11; PhS, 3. As noted elsewhere in this essay, there is a complexity to Hegel’s treatment such that both immediate or natural consciousness and certain inadequate philosophical consciousnesses are being addressed. Furthermore, both natural consciousness and the historical-philosophical dialogue are at issue. But in this and other passages which I am discussing concerning the way in which the Phenomenology of Spirit itself presupposes an interruption in natural consciousness, Hegel is clear that he is discussing the latter, addressed in the present passage as “the immediacy of substantial life [Unmittelbarkeit des substantiellen Lebens]. Compare also the passage already cited, PhG, 22–24; PhS, 14–16, where the standpoints of natural consciousness are compared with the standpoint of science.
Compare the discussion in the Logic concerning mediated and immediate beginnings in the system, cited above, note 9. There is, of course, another rupture, a rupture in the historical-philosophical dialogue to which Hegel belongs. This complicates the situation of rupture and closure, but in no way reverses anything I am going to claim about this rupture in natural consciousness. For a further discussion of the historical-philosophical dialogue in this respect, see my Hegel’s Quest for Certainty.
PhG, 12; PhS, 4.
Ibid.
It is this consciousness of alienation that comes into contradiction with the memory of traditional philosophical discussions. “Turning away from the empty husks, and confessing that it lies in wickedness, [natural consciousness] despises itself for so doing, and now demands from philosophy, not so much knowledge of what it is, as the recovery through its agency of that lost sense of solid and substantial being” (Ibid.)
Ibid.
PhG, 13; PhS, 4.
PhG, 14–15; PhS, 6.
PhG, 15; PhS, 7.
Ibid.
PhG, 15–16; PhS, 7–8.
See my Hegel’s Quest for Certainty.
PhG, 22–23; PhS, 14–15.
What can be said here, of course, is only anticipatory. So we remain true to the nature of a Preface or Introduction. See PhG, 41; PhS, 35.
PhG, 39; PhS, 32.
PhG, 44; PhS, 39.
PhG, 55; PhS, 49.
PhG, 59; PhS, 53–54.
PhG, 59; PhS, 54.
PhG, 61; PhS, 56.
Thus, what is at work here is only what is at work with every question, regardless of what it is. If there is to be an answer to a specific question, the response must be to that specific question and to no other. Hegel does not begin by assuming the absolute standpoint; he begins by assuming the question of the absolute standpoint. See my discussion of this in Hegel’s Quest for Certainty.
For a full discussion of this, see my “Hegel’s Science of Logic: Ironies of the Understanding.”
As I have argued elsewhere, the so-called “end of philosophy” claimed by Hegel is only a completion up to his own time in history. Hegel does not make any claims for any absolute end to history. See my “The History of Philosophy and the Phenomenology of Spirit,” in Hegel and the History of Philosophy, edited by Joseph O’Malley, et al, (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1975) 194–236.
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Flay, J.C. (1997). Rupture, Closure, and Dialectic. In: Browning, G.K. (eds) Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit: A Reappraisal. International Archives of the History of Ideas / Archives Internationales D’Histoire des Idées, vol 149. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8917-8_14
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