Published by Samuel Huckins on 21 Jul 2007 at 06:55 pm
Essential Reflexivity: The Role of Perspective in Describing Universal Development
Samuel Huckins
February 4, 2006
Written as my Senior Essay during my final year at
Can one define the universe or the process of its development? How would one even be able to discuss a truly universal process? This is what I set out to examine in my essay [entitled “Essential Reflexivity: The Role of Perspective in Describing Universal Developmentâ€]. It was unclear to me for some time how it would be possible to accurately speak at all about development which encompassed all things, in varying ways, including the thinker and his expression. In looking for a model of such a discussion, I found that in his Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel accomplished the very act which I wanted to understand, viz. of describing a process existing on a fully universal scale. If his method truly achieves what it claims it can, it seems to me that philosophy would have gained through his work a qualitatively new tool in approaching an understanding of the universe.
Although I did not attempt to set forth a comprehensive description of his method in my essay, I characterize it as one of multiple and interacting reflexive levels of description, action, and being. One of the most important of these levels is presented within Hegel’s claims about science in the Phenomenology. He describes the following progression: philosophy, the love of knowing, develops into actual knowing, or science. In the achieving of this is provided the justification, necessity, and proof for the achievement itself. In addition, the attainment of science only comes to be through the presentation of an ordered exposition, the idea of order being of paramount importance. The Phenomenology is such an exposition, indeed a paragon of it. The science which it creates is validated in its own explanation and this explanation also reifies it, makes it truly actual. This explanation and exposition can be understood as occurring in many places and ways, including individual minds, specific minds such as Hegel’s or our own, through history as a guiding force of events, or even in an atemporal realm of Absolute Spirit.
Spirit develops in history, being history, something of which Hegel and we are a part. The levels of reflexivity this relationship implies unfold to release one from the self-referential cycle, to allow one to achieve a comprehensive description of something universal. The Phenomenology is not merely the primary ordered exposition, the true progenitor of a science of knowing. It is also the coming to fruition of Spirit in the world. The difficulty of describing such a myriad-layered self-development is overcome by Hegel in working through the necessity of a perspective that is internal (with respect to the development). With this in place, he can cause the result of that internal perspective’s effects on the subject to push the subject to a new level, one which transcends the very perspective of the observation. This is the transcendence that allows for a complete understanding of the subject. It must also be kept in mind that this is achieved in a dialectic way. In moving the reader along the path that he does and with the tone that he takes, Hegel provides an example of the complicated and unique activity of describing the development of a universal process, and serves to illuminate the scale of such an endeavor.
A man finds himself staring at a painting, perhaps in a museum. His eyes flick across the brushstrokes rapidly, forming outlines of the image. Then he focuses on different shades and areas, for a reason he knows not what, but without self-conscious wonder at this fact. He only knows the painting, the lines, and the colors. The light streaming in through a window far overhead, the breeze that wafts across his face, the names of the colors, of the structures represented, these have no existence to him. Then his focus stops on a particular stroke—something occurs to him, he becomes aware of something: He deduces that the brush must have stopped in its selfless track, must have halted and turned, deciding on a different path, one which it had to take, which it would never have expected beforehand. This realization shocks him, for he had known nothing beyond the paint and the lines. Suddenly he is aware of a different level of being, something beyond looking and beyond the painting. He sees within that realization something of himself, something that he follows like a bright shining thread to its origins, sees it wind into himself, into what he knows himself to be. This strikes him with a feeling similar to the sound of a page being torn from a book. He realizes that he painted this picture, he was the artist, he the one who held the brush when it realized its purpose and moved mid-stroke. He returned to the state of lacking self-consciousness he had before the realization, but he knew himself as the artist, with complete purpose, having no awareness of anything but other. He knew that he caused that stroke as artist, that it occurred for him, as he watched, according to a plan, one which he did not create. Finally he knew that he had placed that stroke so as to remind himself that he was the artist, so as to immediately establish the fact to himself and for himself. The purpose, the beginning, of this stroke was the entire content and substance of the act of painting, only now made into an object for him and, in his lack of self-consciousness, into a subject for itself. Finally, knowing these things together, in their sequence, a sequence that was intended from a timeless beginning manifest from the sequence of all things, which had to be just as it was, he realized his nature as his nature, and smiled at the painting.
This is a description of the development of Geist, or “Spiritâ€, as put forth in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit 1 (hereafter the PS). It is one description among the many possible. The PS itself is such a description, and it is one that is utterly singular and unique. Through it, Hegel discusses the nature of spirit, how it moves, what it does, how it is known and by whom it is known. For the reader of the PS, it soon becomes clear that this work it is not merely an exposition of claims and evidence for them, such as might be present in more usual philosophical works. It is a qualitatively different sort of expression which had to exist when it did and in the form that it did. Its readers are subject to being pulled into a prodigious multi-faceted nexus of thought, culminating in a grand dream. Even beyond this, what may be most interesting concerning the work is: how such a description is crafted, how a such protean mass of light and shadow streaming from earliest history to the farthest future can be made to coalesce into a description that allows one experiencing it to enter the stream, know it, and be made into a part of it, or into its entirety, through certain combinations of revelations. Regardless of one’s opinion of whether or not Hegel’s notion of Spirit is correct, much less whether his claims of the development of history, culture, man’s mind, and the many other topics he discusses are accurate or not, it is clear, after becoming more acquainted with his notion of Spirit, that his self-defined success in describing its development is a monument to human thought and a testament to the ability of the human mind.
I. The Story of Spirit
Philosophical texts commonly contain an introductory explanation (or at least an enunciation) by their author, wherein he lays out what he will be attempting to accomplish. The Preface of the PS is rather extraordinary in this respect, for Hegel begins by saying that such an explanation is, when found in philosophical texts, superfluous, inappropriate, and misleading. He explains why this is the case and the limitations that such a convention places on the work and on the reader, and thus why he will not be including such a statement. Immediately after this defense comes a most interesting analogy. In order to illustrate how the “diversity of philosophical systems [should be comprehended] as the progressive unfolding of truthâ€, he compares their development to that of a flowering plant. Just as it would be absurd to claim that a bud on such a plant is refuted by what follows it, viz. the bursting-forth of the blossom, so too, Hegel says, would it be absurd to think that a given philosophical system is a thing to be accepted or rejected, and that the accepted one is the only truth, falsifying all predecessors. One should instead see that the fluid nature of these systems makes them “moments of an organic unity […] in which each is as necessary as the other; and [that] this mutual necessity alone constitutes the life of the whole.†Philosophy should, therefore, properly be understood as a whole, a process: a growth in which particular schools of thought, philosophers, and their expressions are seen as components of a whole, each growing naturally from the others, with them as its ground, the material from which they arise.
Although Hegel does not explicitly describe it as such, his analogy of the blooming plant has a reflexive nature. He states that all philosophical systems are part of one organic whole. However, the work that this comparison is made in is itself a philosophical text, as Hegel himself claims. Therefore, the PS too should be a part of this organic whole, part of one fluid nature with previous philosophies, which were necessary for its existence. While it does not seem (after its special nature is understood) that the PS is a part of the whole in the same way as other philosophies, this sort of reflexive expression occurs more clearly at other points in the PS, mostly in places where Hegel himself states what will be shown in, or what is the purpose of, the PS itself. One of the best examples of this can be found in §5, in the Preface:
The true shape in which truth exists can only be the scientific system of such truth. To help bring philosophy closer to the form of Science, to the goal where it can lay aside the title “love 2 of knowing†and be actual knowing—that is what I have set myself to do.
He goes on to make a most important claim:
To show that now is the time for philosophy to be raised to the status of a Science would therefore be the only true justification of any effort that has this aim, for to do so would be to demonstrate the necessity of the aim, would indeed at the same time be the accomplishing of it.
Hegel’s goal is thus to push philosophy to the level of science, to make it into an ordered exposition. His is the right time to do such a thing, and his accomplishing of this goal will be the only justification of the exposition itself. This is again mentioned in §17, after which he says that, in his system, “everything turns on grasping and expressing the True, not only as Substance, but equally as Subject.†His reasoning for why the expression of his system is its validation is better seen in §18, where he describes the True as a “self-restoring samenessâ€. Such a thing “is the process of its own becoming; […] and only by being worked out to its end, is it actual.†This unique sort of system must be explained to be validated, and it will only truly exist once it is exposited. This idea is amplified in §20, where the True is described as the whole, which “is nothing other than the essence consummating itself through its development.†Hegel’s system cannot be fully actual, fully certain, or fully true, until its exposition has been given. And §24 reveals that knowledge is only actual and can only be expounded as science. The nature of science in the PS will be discussed at length later. For now it can be said that, whatever science is exactly, philosophy (i.e. philosophy concurrent with Hegel) is not it. In §67, Hegel says that philosophy again needs to be made into “a serious business†(assumably, as it once was). It does things that are not proper for science, e.g. provide edification in place of insight. For this to be corrected, philosophy must be ordered and put on firmer foundations; thus will it be made into a respectable study.
But how does “Spirit†fit into this goal of the systematization or arrangement of philosophy? When Spirit is first mentioned in §7, it is provided no special introduction, and it is described in a way that seems to assume familiarity with the term, a fact which can be seen as rather disconcerting by the reader. Just before its first use, Hegel is examining the demand to posit that the true shape of truth is scientific in its proper context, i.e. how it “appears at the stage which self-conscious Spirit has presently reached.†Spirit has “got beyond the substantial life it formerly led in the element of thought†and “beyond the immediacy of faith, beyond satisfaction and security of the certainty that consciousness then had [in the age of faith.]†Spirit has gone beyond this, into a period of self-reflection, in which it finds disappointment. It requests that philosophy meet its need, not for knowledge, but merely for a replacing of its lost sense of substantial being. It is to do this by combining things that have been separated by thought and by restoring the feeling of a sense of being, thus providing “edification rather than insight.†Although it becomes clearer in later sections, it can be seen even by this point that Hegel has a very peculiar approach to describing Spirit. For him, Spirit seems to be something alive in the world, or at least a force, and one which may be self-guided. It is far from being merely a scholastic topic. It is not something to be simply deciphered. Nor is its examination the presentation of a lofty goal to which man’s soul should aim. There is an entire world to explore in Spirit, one filled with its own forces, discoveries, and characters. In the space of the philosopher’s mind, logical necessities arise, interact, and shift. Although each thing that comes about within this world is a being of necessity, and necessity governs the rest of the action and states of such beings as well, they nonetheless appear in a dramatic, dynamic form: struggling for life, attempting to understand themselves and their environment, achieving understanding, or alternately becoming hopeless. Each eventually collapses under dialectical pressure, restructuring into a new form, which reviews the previous form as well as its current state, only to begin the cycle anew. Such are the elements of the story of Spirit.
The story Hegel tells is not simply the story of Spirit, but equally the story of history, of Hegel himself, and of his time. It is also the story of its reader. This story is indeed profoundly complex, and I will not attempt to describe it in its entirety. Nor will I show how Hegel’s idea of Spirit emerges from his previous thought, or even how the historical forces of his day and the extant philosophical texts allowed for, or inspired, his particular expression. What I am interested in here is how he crafts his story, how it is connected with what he describes in it, i.e. with itself. I do not wish to fully enunciate the Hegelian notion of Geist, but merely to explore how certain aspects of the PS were shaped, and thus how one can tell a story about the evolution of something universal, a thing which encompasses teller, tale, and audience alike.
My intention in describing Hegel as a storyteller in the PS is not to impose a rigid framework over such a complicated work for the purposes of simplification, but rather to provide a model that seems to be helpful in providing a unification of some of the myriad threads that weave through his work. In the broadest strokes, I wish to know how one can speak of something completely universal. While I think that this question may be given its largest possible sense in the PS, a more manageable example of what I mean would be: How would one speak about the entire universe, as one entity? If it is all that is, and if to define a thing is to separate it from other things in some sense in order to apply the mind to it particularly, how could one even define such a thing as the universe? Would such a definition, if given, have any meaning? This exercise of description becomes even more difficult with Spirit, since the Hegelian notion of Spirit incorporates human thought, indeed the idea of consciousness itself, which brings along its own slew of reflexive conundrums. In addition, although it is difficult to consider universal things, it seems even more so to consider universal processes. 3 How would one speak about the development of the universe? Such a question can be more easily examined through the PS, since the development of Spirit, a thoroughly universal thing, is its topic.
II. Structure and Phases in the Phenomenology of Spirit
In examining the development of Spirit in the PS, the Preface and (to a lesser extent) the Introduction, are of critical importance. While there are myriad passages in the later sections of the work that describe particular details and movements necessary in understanding the whole, the Preface serves as a profitable outline and provides description in a distilled form that is rather lacking thereafter. It is ironic, though, that the preface to the PS is so useful, as Hegel himself seems to think lightly of prefaces. He says in §48, well into the PS’s own Preface, that a preface basically amounts to a piece of historical instruction designed to satisfy curiosity rather than to produce knowledge. He compares the method of description in prefaces to that of mathematics (of which he does not speak highly) made more arbitrary and accidental. Prefaces are mentioned a second time in §70, in the context of addressing those who ask for a “royal road†to science. If common sense is not sufficient for this sort of person, he should keep up with philosophical progress by reading reviews of the latest texts, “perhaps even to read their prefaces and first paragraphs.†Both of these references seem rather disparaging, yet both are contained in a preface. One may find his characterization more appropriate, however, if one considers it in the same context of philosophy which his Preface establishes as concurrent with it. As described above, Hegel says in §7 that the Spirit of his day has “lost its essential lifeâ€. Spirit wants its lost sense of being back, and it asks this of philosophy. Thus philosophy is to provide “edification rather than insight†to the Spirit of the day. This activity (of edification) is not science, of course, as is stated at the end of §9 and as was mentioned above, but it is what concurrent philosophy is to do (and does). Thus, it is fitting for Hegel to provide an informative preface for his philosophical text, for the purpose of such a thing is “to satisfy curiosity rather than produce knowledge†and to assist those who need an easier path to philosophy.
It can also be deduced from the conclusion that prefaces are necessary (or, at least, a necessary evil) that commentary is necessary (or, at least, is allowed to be given). Commentaries seem rather akin to prefaces, as they both usually attempt to provide simplification through alternate unification. By this I mean that prefaces and commentaries unify the information presented in their associated work in a different way, a way which can allow for easier understanding, but which, for various reasons, cannot be (or simply was not) employed in the primary work. They provide a summary of some of the text’s claims without including the entire process that the text goes through before stating them. This removal of process in these “secondary†expressions causes them to exhibit some lacking. From one common perspective (viz., a Platonic one) such expressions would be deficient in that they are “imagesâ€: inferior copies of an original which skew certain details in the retelling. For Hegel though, it seems that the deficiency goes deeper than this. The original in the case of the PS is preferable because it is an ordered exposition of how Science comes to be, how Spirit comes to its complete form. And it is only in this very form, i.e. through a comprehensive, ordered expression, that this exposition itself can be understood, shown to be necessary, and proven. It is also only in this form that the exposition can accomplish its purpose: to cause Science to arise fully, and to give Spirit its fullest expression. From this perspective, it seems that a preface preceding such a work, or a commentary upon it, would be adventitious, i.e. extrinsic to the primary endeavor, by their very nature. These secondary structures do not seem to be part of the scientific exposition, but merely part of philosophy that has not yet achieved the level of science. This depiction is acceptable, however, if the PS is allowed to begin as a philosophical work (in the sense of concurrent philosophy) and that it does not achieve its fuller, scientific form until later elements emerge. The import of this is that what I am providing in this essay, if it too lacks the process contained in the PS and so is commentary, is something “allowableâ€, at least as much as Hegel’s own Preface is allowable in the context of his work. This is a concern because it involves the main difficulty that I wish to explore, viz. how a completely universal process can be described. For in considering the method Hegel used in his work, and thus on his system, I too am considering something which claims to be completely universal. Thus, from the perspective of the method employed in the PS, my examination is itself also a part of the topic of the PS, since it is contained within Spirit by emulating the Preface, and by being part of current thought. To clarify, what is normally called “commentary†would be, from this perspective, something like “meta-commentaryâ€, and would be something impossible to accomplish, because all expressions of a mind are part of Spirit.
I have employed the terms “mind†and “consciousness†several times thus far, along with “Spiritâ€. In Hegel, 4 “mind†and “consciousness†are translations of Bewußtsein, or “being consciousâ€, from bewußt, or “consciousâ€. “Spirit†is the usual translation of Geist. (From this point on, I will only refer to “consciousness†and “Spiritâ€, as “mind†is rarely employed in the Miller translation.) When initially looking at the structure of the PS, it seems confusing that it is entitled the “Phenomenology of Spirit“, and yet almost exclusively discusses various phases of consciousness, and then has a particular section well into it called “Spiritâ€. It must be kept in mind, however, that: 1) consciousness and Spirit are not separate things in the PS, and 2) consciousness starts out as natural consciousness and not as self-consciousness. In §36, the first fact, as well as another important detail about the connection between consciousness and Spirit, are revealed. Hegel says that “the immediate existence of Spirit [is] consciousnessâ€, in the context of explaining various aspects about the life of Spirit. But what sort of relationship does a thing being the “immediate†or “direct†existence of another have to it? He continues:
Since it is in this element [of consciousness] that Spirit develops itself and explicates its moments, these moments contain that antithesis [of the two moments of knowing and the objectivity of knowing], and they all appear as shapes of consciousness.
Thus, the development of Spirit is manifested in the form of consciousness. This more readily establishes the notion I introduced at end of Part I: that Spirit is a thing that develops. In the first part of the PS (A. Consciousness, I. Sense Certainty), Hegel begins with the “knowledge or knowing which is at the startâ€. The following sections illustrate what the form of consciousness known as Sense-certainty is, and how (and why) it changes into the other forms of consciousness, viz. Perception, Understanding, etc. The final section of the PS seems to describe some sort of completion for consciousness. Thus the work could be characterized (and oversimplified) as a description of the development of Spirit, through consciousness. More consideration will be necessary to see what exactly “development†means in this sense. At this point, however, it does seem clear that understanding how the development of consciousness is described, and what sort of structure is implied within consciousness through this development, will be sufficient, or at least greatly expedient, to allow for a greater understanding of how the development of Spirit is described. And since Spirit is a thoroughly universal thing, the understanding of its development is the understanding I seek.
Consciousness in the PS is just as reflexive as the form of its exposition. In §80, Hegel says that “Consciousness […] is explicitly the Notion of itself. Hence it is something that goes beyond limits., and since these limits are its own, it is something that goes beyond itself.†This admittedly confusing characterization of consciousness is not achieved until the last sections of the book, when consciousness reaches its final form. That final form is best described in §808, at the very end of the book: “The goal [is] Absolute Knowing, or Spirit that knows itself as Spiritâ€. When manifest in consciousness, this state is science. This is revealed in §798, in the description of the last shape of Spirit (viz. Absolute Knowing): “Spirit, manifesting or appearing in consciousness in this element […] is Science.†Considering that (as was stated in Part I) in §24 Hegel says that knowledge can only be actual and expounded as science, the description of science in §24 becomes even more interesting. It can also be seen to mesh well with another of his claims, viz. that his system can only be justified by its exposition. Therefore, his system is science, as otherwise it could not be given an exposition, which it must be for it to be completed and proven. In addition, it cannot be completed until the final form of consciousness is achieved. But the description itself is of the development of science! “It is this coming-to-be of Science as such or of knowledge, that is described in this Phenomenology of Spiritâ€, says the beginning of §27. Consequently, there seem to be three levels of reflexivity at work here. Firstly, the PS is an expression of Spirit (as it comes from a consciousness, viz. Hegel), and it is about the development of Spirit. Secondly, its goal is to show how science comes about, but in order to be proven it itself must be science. Thirdly, for science to exist, Spirit must have reached its final form, viz. Absolute Knowing, and this can only occur after the other phases have been gone through in their proper order, an order provided by science. However, there is one element that helps to clarify these levels by separating scientific study from the content that it examines. In §87, Hegel says that there is an element in the exposition of experience which does not agree with experience. By “exposition of experience†at this point, he means that which the PS itself will attempt to do: give an ordered account of the phases that consciousness experiences. By “experience†it seems clear that he means the experience of individual consciousnesses, i.e. the mental experience of individual humans. So his claim can be restated in a different way: there is something in the recounting of the experience of consciousness, i.e. in the PS, that does not match the progression of phases as seen by a consciousness in itself. Appropriately enough, the difference in the description is found in the transition between phases of consciousness. When the transition is made from the first object (or the first “in-itselfâ€, by which I believe he means the first object for consciousness, which is covered in his section on Sense-certainty) and the knowledge of it, to the other object which creates experience, experience says that the second object is something that one comes upon by chance and externally. But the account that Hegel is giving says that the knowledge of the first object, the being-for-consciousness of the first in-itself, becomes the second object. Thus the new object would come about through a “reversal of consciousness itselfâ€. He explains this change thus:
This way of looking at the matter is something contributed by us, by means of which the succession of experiences through which consciousness passes is raised into a scientific progression—but it is not known to the consciousness that we are observing.
This is the essential addition. By viewing the first transition in this way, the actual path of consciousness and the path of the scientific study of consciousness diverge, which allows for the latter to order the former more properly, providing the path of consciousness with an exposition. The divergence also facilitates science reaching its goal, viz. “Spirit’s insight into what knowing is.â€
There is a difficulty which exacerbates some of the arduous reflexivity that has been pointed out thus far. §87 reveals the perspective that was implicit throughout the Preface and Introduction, and it turns out to be a very complex perspective indeed. As just described, in order to make the stages of consciousness be seen as a scientific progression, a certain stage, or more accurately, a certain facet of a certain stage, must be changed in the transition of the phases of consciousness. According to Hegel, this is added by “usâ€. But who does Hegel mean by this “usâ€? I immediately think of three possibilities: 1) Hegel with the adherents to his system, 2) with any reader of the PS, and 3) with humans in general. From the tone at beginning of the Preface, the second option seems most likely, since there he began addressing concerns that any reader (at least one even minimally acquainted with philosophical texts) would have. It is also helpful to remember that his descriptions earlier in the Introduction seem to describe the changing awareness of consciousness as a shift that is caused by self-examination. In §87, however, he says that the aspect which “we†have added is not something known to the consciousness that is being observed.
And so perhaps he intended himself and those who accept his ideas by “usâ€, since it seems that an average man would more immediately begin with his own consciousness than that of others when trying to understand thought. In attempting to address this issue, the section on Sense-Certainty is of some assistance. There, when Hegel refers to “our object†and “our approachâ€, it seems much clearer in the context that he means man/’s approach to his knowledge, in the sense of each individual man, while also sublating humanity as a whole and the followers of Hegel’s system. “Sublating†here means to preserve and also to destroy, or more accurately, to remove certain aspects while holding on to certain aspects, as philosophical systems to do older systems. In fact, by the time one gets to §95 -§96, it becomes even clearer that he likely means each and every man by his references to “usâ€. He leads the reader through a series of experiments, by which one might realize (or, as it seems, by which one already should have realized) various aspects of particular phases of consciousness. In general, one would think that by using the first personal plural pronoun he means something like “humanity as a wholeâ€, thus implying that the action is something that “people doâ€. This becomes a bit more personal (if that term can be used), and also seemingly more genuine, in, for example, §105, when he says things such as “let us, then, see how that immediate is constituted that is pointed out to us.†The only time Hegel refers to himself directly is when he is speaking about the purpose of the PS, in speaking on what he set out to do in his work. Throughout the endeavor, he nobly includes the reader as an equal. The exposition of the phases of consciousness is not something like the contemplation of Aristotle or Plotinus, something for the highly specialized or dedicated few – it is something that all consciousnesses can do, and perhaps that all must do. This, like certain other elements, seems to make him into an extraordinary guide. He never really seems to speak from his own voice, i.e. from a unique, individual perspective. Even when he says “Iâ€, one never feels anything specific to him as a person, specific as in different from something that the reader can imagine himself saying. He reaches a serenely universal tone such that his “I†becomes equivalent to any individual. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he achieves the same state through tone and form that he seems to be intending, implicitly, that his readers achieve in their minds, viz. one of passive observation. That being said, his is still a very unique and specific system. However, his descriptions in it do not inform one of this by virtue of their form or tone. Indeed, if one is not self-conscious about what is occurring (perhaps “circumspect†would be more apt under the current circumstances) the things that he says might seem to come from one’s own thoughts.
Through this tone, one which seems to come from a individual without unique content, being achieved, a fourth type of reflexivity emerges: the reader, along with Hegel, adds the element to the experience of the progression of consciousness that makes it scientific, even though the reader’s experience as a being of consciousness does not agree with the progression thus formulated. This particular example of reflexivity, or one isomorphic to it, would presumably be present in the description of anything as thoroughly universal as the development of Spirit. For, when something truly universal is described, the perspective from which the description is made is itself contained in the thing described, while not being equivalent to it. This is like a mirror trying to reflect itself. How this final aporia might be solved will be discussed in the last Part of this essay. Hegel does not discuss this difficulty at all when he describes the addition to the progression of the phases of consciousness. However, the addition is indispensable, since he does say that it is what allows the progression to be a scientific one, and thus what allows the study of the progression to be made into science, which is the goal of the PS.
Now that the flow of the phases of consciousness, which is what is to studied, has been stemmed into a more scientific channel by the consciousnesses studying it, how does it proceed? I.e. what is the method of the newly prepared science? §34 speaks to this directly: “This movement of pure essences constitutes the nature of scientific method in general.†In order to be able to understand this statement, the “movement of pure essences†(which is hardly a self-explanatory description) must be put into context. In this section, Hegel is discussing the life of Spirit, specifically how the manner of current study differs from that of ancient times. What must be accomplished by modern studies is to free “determinate thoughts from their fixity so as to give actuality to the universal, and impart to it spiritual life,†a task which is harder than that of ancient times: to purge the more immediate, sensuous mode of apprehension from man’s thoughts. The modern task, of making thoughts fluid, is accomplished when pure thinking recognizes itself as a moment, i.e. a moment within the progression of consciousness.
When these pure thoughts move, by letting go of the “fixity of their self-positingâ€, they become Notions, which are “self-essencesâ€. These are the “pure essences†which move, constituting the scientific method. Becoming pure and fluid when they no longer posit themselves, and so lose the fixed self-consciousness they previously had, the sort which was a particular moment. They now act only as thoughts, and not as thoughts creating themselves. This allows for (or, more accurately, is) the growth of the scientific structure, which is described directly after the sentence from §34: “Regarded as the connectedness of their content it [i.e. the movement of pure essences] is the necessary expansion of that content into an organic whole.†When pure thoughts cease positing themselves, their content expands in its connections to form an organic whole. A necessary progression, this expansion must occur if consciousness is present. It is also an expansion which forms an order, which is what Hegel means by “organicâ€, since science (i.e. that which is formed through the scientific method) is only possible through systematic exposition. The progression which necessarily follows this shift causes the path to the Notion of knowledge, i.e. to Science, to Absolute Knowing and to the completion of Spirit, to become a necessary and complete process of becoming. Through this movement this path “will encompass the entire sphere of secular consciousness [â€complete worldlinessâ€, Weltlichkeit]5 in its necessary development.†It is unclear what Hegel means by the “sphere of secular consciousness†here, until one considers that science only comes about when Spirit is completed, as was mentioned above (from §798). For this to occur, the World-Spirit must proceed through all of the various phases of consciousness, until it reaches Absolute Knowing. Thus it seems sensible to equate the path of knowledge (the path that leads to Absolute Knowing), a thing which encompasses the whole of secular consciousness, with the development of the World-Spirit, another thing which leads to the emergence of Absolute Knowing. In this final stage, “world†qua outer world and “consciousness†are sublated, lacking their previous distinction.
The shift of each stage of consciousness is intrinsically necessary, as is shown in their respective sections. Once the cycle of shifts begins, it must proceed along the stages until the final form is reached. The final form can only be reached by the process being worked out, by being put into an ordered form, which brings about science (since science can only be fully achieved when Absolute Knowing has manifested in consciousness) and which is itself science. Thus the expression of §88: “the way to Science is itself already Science, and hence, in virtue of its content, is the Science of the experience of consciousness.â€
The development of consciousness, and the science of its experience, has been described in a rather abstract way for the most part. “Phases†moving in certain ways have been said to “lead to scienceâ€. But it should be remembered that there is an individual aspect to this. Science is achieved through the efforts of individuals, for it can only come about when Absolute Knowing is reached, and Spirit only develops in consciousness. One of the levels, if not the primary level, of consciousness is what the term “consciousness†usually means, viz. an individual human mind. This fits well with the thought I expressed above concerning how Hegel includes the reader in the endeavor at hand. In addition, he says in §58 that: “What, therefore, is important in the study of Science, is that one should take on oneself the strenuous effort of the Notion.†As is clearer from other passages in which study is mentioned along with references to the reader performing some action or consideration along with Hegel, the study of science is a thing that individual humans do. Or, at least, it is something humans do, but perhaps not individual people, for, in §69, Hegel says that “human nature only really exists in an achieved community of minds.â€
For Hegel, an individual is essentially immersed in the culture of his time, as well as in his nation, or the region which influences him. With respect to the larger spiritual structure, viz. the World-Spirit, the “single individual is incomplete Spiritâ€. As he develops, the “single individual must also pass through the formative stages of universal Spiritâ€. Such a movement is reminiscent of the idea expressed by Ernst Haeckel that “ontogenesis is a brief and rapid recapitulation of phylogenesisâ€.6 As each person develops, their consciousness passes through all of the phases that universal Spirit has passed through, i.e. the development of the individual is a reflection of the development of the World-Spirit.7 It is an easier matter for the individual to reach these stages as they have already been “implicitly accomplished†by the World-Spirit in its creation of history (cf. §29). This would make for a beautiful symmetry: the individual, part of the World-Spirit, developing in his own consciousness, following the path that the World-Spirit has been guided down by necessity in its own development, all the while the individual’s development pushing the form of the World-Spirit to its final form.
There is a rather confusing point that may cause some difficulty, however, concerning the first stage of consciousness, viz. Sense-certainty. Just after the sentence that states that the PS describes the coming-to-be of science in §27, Hegel lays forth the steps that knowledge will need to take to become genuine. The first stage of knowledge, Sense-certainty, he calls “immediate Spirit, […] the non-spiritualâ€. I have a difficult time understanding exactly how Sense-certainty can be “immediate Spirit†as well as be non-spiritual. But I would hypothesize that Hegel means the following: A form of Spirit will be manifested in consciousness. For a stage to be consciousness, it requires some sort of mediation. Since Sense-certainty lacks mediation, being “in this certainty only as a pure ‘I’†(§91), it is not consciousness in the same way as all the phases that follow after it, beginning with Perception. They all share some sort of mediation, in various senses. And so it is immediate, i.e. not mediated, and so not consciousness. But for it to make sense in the entire progression of Spirit, it must be a part of Spirit. Thus it is “immediate Spirit†and “non-spiritualâ€. Immediate Spirit is Spirit which is only implicitly spiritual, and thus Spirit which is non-spiritual in a pure sense.
Perhaps this predicament can be circumvented by something already to be added within Hegel’s system. In §87, a moment was added to the exposition of the course of the phases of consciousness which does not agree with what a consciousness going through the phases actually experiences, as was discussed above. Although I did not focus on this aspect before, it is important to note where the added moment is present with respect to the progression of phases. It is the moment of transition between the first object, and the knowledge of it, to the second, which is where the difficult-to-characterize stage of Sense-certainty lies. Perhaps, then, the reason why Hegel employs the terms that he does is because he is speaking to two perspectives: 1) The reader (and himself; in general: the one studying the development), and 2) the stage itself as part of the entire progression. Referring to Sense-certainty as an object in description is a problematic task since “weâ€, the ones observing and commenting on the progression (a group which includes Hegel) see it as being non-spiritual when considering it in itself, since it is not mediated. But when considering it as a moment in the progression of phases, it must be seen as a shape of Spirit, and so a consciousness. By the observer’s application of the proper order, a movement not present for the stage in itself becomes evident.
The complex mix of perspectives which I have been describing is ubiquitous in the PS. It seems to be one of the main factors why the language of the PS is, oftentimes, abstruse. Hegel does not directly address this complexity as a problem in the PS, which only adds to the confusion. But it is an understandable confusion: multiple interacting levels of reflexivity do not facilitate clear speech, at least not speech pertaining to reason and the dialectic. The usually clear cut subject and object distinction is not present, for the subject and the object present are sometimes the very ideas of “subject†and “object†themselves as well as the one examining, from varying perspectives, and all these are presented in a moving, changing development. The complexity of perspectives can either be a hindrance or a boon, for, in some ways, the process of consciousness examining the development of consciousness is easier than the examination of something external and alien. §83-5 speak to this indirectly. §83 claims that in inquiring into the truth of knowledge, one would be looking for a criterion which would exist inside oneself. Such a situation arises because asking for the truth of knowledge is equivalent to asking for knowledge in itself. But knowledge (specifically knowledge “for the inquirerâ€) is already the goal, viz. knowing of what the truth of knowledge is. Thus, whatever is claimed to be its essence would merely be the knowledge of it for the inquirer. However, §84 supports this claim, stating that the nature of consciousness itself overcomes this problem, since “consciousness provides its own criterion from within itself, so that the investigation becomes a comparison of consciousness with itselfâ€. No external criteria are needed to determine the essence of knowledge. It is something that the peculiar being which is consciousness is able to handle on its own, through itself. Amusingly, Hegel also adds that, in this investigation (viz., assumably, in the PS), the inquirer will not need to employ any of his “own bright ideas and thoughts.†In fact, he says, “it is precisely when we leave these aside that we succeed in contemplating the matter in hand as it is in and for itself.†It is interesting that he adds this last claim, for it seemed that it was precisely in this, another level of reflexivity, that one would be able to address certain topics, such as the nature of knowledge. But this is not unique: there are other, indeed much more important, places where a certain transcendence within a level of reflexivity is claimed to be the key to a more complete understanding, as will be shown.
There are forms of this reflexivity which are beneficial, though, and which do not need to be overcome for the sake of understanding. §85 mentions that what is really occurring when two moments such as “Notion†and “objectâ€, and “being-for-another†and “being-in-itself†are examined, is that consciousness is examining itself, because both of the moments involved are contained by the very knowledge that is being investigated. This is what removes the necessity (indeed, the capacity) for outside criteria for judgment and investigation. From this, one can conclude with Hegel that all that the observer, i.e. the one studying the development of the phases of consciousness, need do is observe consciousness looking at itself. Consciousness, for itself, will exercise a dialectical movement upon, or in, itself, creating a new object. At the same time, this movement will be, for the observer, merely a movement in the process of the becoming of knowledge, whose goal is to become genuine. This goal is reached when consciousness itself grasps its own essence, at which point it will signify the nature of absolute knowledge itself. The development of consciousness as a whole, the observing of the studying consciousness, and the development of consciousness being a watching of itself, involves most of the levels of reflexivity, which must be combined for the structure to hold together at all, as its components are so unique in this way.
At this point, it would be helpful to know how the actual transitions of the phases of consciousness are described in the PS. In the Preface, through §11, Hegel discusses the current state of Spirit and philosophy, with some generalized commentary on the emergence of culture. His time is one of flux, and its Spirit “has broken with the world it has hitherto inhabited and imaginedâ€, thus giving him occasion to describe what causes and characterizes a stage transition, at least in broad strokes, in §11-14, where he moves back to the current era. The beginning of the shift to a new form of Spirit is gradual, in which the old form is slowly dissolved, causing subtle signs of weakness. This movement is at some point “cut short by a sunburst, which, in one flash, illuminates the features of the new world.†But this is still just the nascent form of the new stage, and it has much development to undergo before it matures. This “sunburst†level of change is manifested in the forms of culture, which greatly change during the shifts between stages. The arduous effort which results in this is the return of the whole structure of Spirit to itself, i.e. the compound of the moments of consciousness present before the current stage returning to itself. In the new stage, the previous moments develop anew, in a different context. Before this working out, this fleshing out of the moments of consciousness within themselves in a current context, the stage lacks the variation of the previous one, whose complexity is still available to consciousness through memory. Eventually, the stage develops sufficiently, giving the science present in it an “articulationâ€, i.e. a power to examine effectively, and provide for universal intelligibility. From this point, the stage of consciousness is basically mature, although its internal development necessarily continues. This eventually leads to some sort of contradiction, disappointment, failure, or confusion (as is illustrated in the specific sections, e.g. Sense-certainty changing to Perception), and the process returns to the place equivalent to where my description of the previous stage began: the denouement of the stage through dialectical forces. It is the experience of this sort of development in itself which allows consciousness to comprehend itself fully, i.e. the “realm of the truth of Spirit†(§89).
The majority of the PS consists in the observing consciousness being shown through the stages in the necessary procession of the phases of consciousness, from Sense-certainty through Absolute Knowing. On the whole, Hegel’s explanations consist of descriptions of particular phases of consciousness, what they imply, and what they will result in, i.e. what internal contradictions will emerge in the process of their evolution. In this process will emerge critical moments in which the given stage of consciousness is forced to restructure itself due to dialectical pressures. This generalization can be, on the whole, applied to the majority of the PS. There are elaborations and digressions at various points, of course, where facts about the previous stage are revealed as they become pertinent to potential motions and restructurings of the current stage under examination. Nonetheless, it seems that all of the shifts of stage fit into a general form, and the action of consciousness as it progresses can be described by a sort of dialectical algorithm, which I have represented in the following image:
Figure 1
The items connected by the solid line along the top of the figure represent the activity of the given stage of consciousness. It acts in ways dictated by necessity, or at least as bound by it, and observes its own activity in some fashion (either as true self-consciousness or, for the earlier phases, through external consciousnesses observing it). This observation results in a crisis (a dialectical one, which is also internal for the later phases), from which must come a resolution, in the form of a new stage. This new stage can consider the nature of the previous stage before itself going through the same cycle.
III. Movement and Development in the Phenomenology of Spirit
The structures, and the transitions between them, discussed in the PS have been considered, as well as the place of consciousness, science, and the observers of the progression of Spirit. I have also said that there are various ways in which Spirit as a whole moves. But of what sort of movement does this consist? When the change represented in the diagram above continues for various phases, both in the individual, the world, and the intermediate levels (e.g. the nation), what kind of a move is it? One option would be a movement that occurs in time. There are several points in the PS where the interpretation of a temporal movement would make sense: 1) Where the individual consciousness’ development is compared to that of the World-Spirit, in that the latter has implicitly achieved the various stages, and 2) Where certain phases of consciousness which are reached by individuals are discussed in the context of particular philosophical schools or groups, e.g. Stoicism. In fact, §29 claims that the World-Spirit is what is responsible for history, something immanently temporal. Thus, the World-Spirit seems to be something whose points of development could be determined in time, since it “took upon itself the enormous labour of world-historyâ€, and because when the individual consciousness develops through various phases, its path is made easier by the fact that the World-Spirit has already achieved these phases. For Spirit more generally, there definitely seems to be events which occur in time. For example, in describing the stage of Stoicism, Hegel says that it “could only appear on the scene in a time of universal fear and bondage, but also a time of universal culture which had to be raised to the level of thought†(§199). This is a reference to particular historic factors, social and cultural forces which changed through time, in particular centuries, which seems to be a clear indicator that at least this level of movement of Spirit is something that can be seen in a temporal sense.
But if my goal is to formulate the most general description of the movement in the PS, in order to specify a method for understanding universal processes, then a temporal characterization will not be sufficient. This is because at one point in its development, Spirit no longer appears in time. Indeed, it annuls time. This is stated in §801, just after time is said to present itself to consciousness as “empty intuitionâ€: “Spirit necessarily appears in Time, and it appears in Time just so long as it has not grasped its pure Notion, i.e. has not annulled Time.†When this does occur, however, i.e. when Spirit grasps its pure Notion, its essence, and achieves the stage of Absolute Knowing, it “sets aside its Time-formâ€. Even though Spirit is in time, and necessarily so, for all but the last stage of its development, temporality is not something essential to Spirit. Since it is something that is eventually transcended, it should not be accepted as a characterization of the movement of the whole.
The necessity which presents itself in each of the phases of consciousness, as the force which both drives their transitions and their internal development, seems to point to another characterization for the movement of Spirit. This necessity is a logical sort, just as the crises within each stage are of a dialectic nature. And in §48, Hegel says that the method of the movement of the shapes of Spirit in philosophy is science, and that its proper exposition is logic. Thus can the movement of the phases of consciousness be characterized as a logical one. This would be atemporal, removing the problem enunciated above arising at the advent of Absolute Knowing. It would also allow for the characterization to itself seamlessly participate in science, the ordered exposition of the development of the phases of consciousness. However, it would have the possible problem of having to describe stages that lack logic, in themselves. Sense-certainty, for example, is not concerned with logic itself, even though its development and transition are guided by it. Thus one must ask whether the goal is to be able to describe the movement of the phases properly in itself, or merely from the perspective of the observer.
To avoid losing progress and to more finally resolve the problem of describing movement, movement in the PS may be seen in a developmental sense, e.g. a formal system, albeit one moved by logical necessity. This characterization also removes the immediate necessity to resolve the problems surrounding how the different phases of Spirit could exist before individual consciousnesses (otherwise the claim in §29 that it is easier for the individual to reach the various phases of consciousness since they had been reached by the World-Spirit would seem to make no sense) and thus how what Hegel says in comparing them would hold. Also, if there is not a developmental sense of movement, if the logical and temporal are not sublated by a notion present before Hegel began writing the PS, then it would make little sense for Spirit to be attempting to understand itself as Spirit in the work. In general, however, this developmental characterization may not be very different from a logical one. Science is what the PS is aspiring to, and science is the ordered exposition of Spirit, accomplished through logic. Precision beyond these distinctions cannot be had in the PS itself, for Hegel himself is not any clearer (explicitly) concerning movement therein.
In investigating the idea of a characterization of the movement of the phases of consciousness, it is important to keep in mind, as in previous considerations, the perspective and the role of the one observing the movement. As discussed, §87 reveals that the formulation of the movement by the consciousnesses observing the movement contains changes with respect to what the consciousnesses actually experiencing the movement observe. But this is only the most superficial and apparent role of the observer of the movement of the phases of consciousness, i.e. of the reader of the PS. As touched upon briefly above, the reader is a much more intrinsic component of the PS than a mere receiver of information. Understanding the various ways in which the reader is contained by the subject of the PS is key to exploring how Hegel is able to discuss the universal development of Spirit.
In this context, §349 is rather helpful. It is here that the structural level of the nation is introduced, which is necessary to form the “ethical orderâ€, a theme which is a focus throughout much of the section “Spiritâ€, as well as in the sections on Reason and Religion. In addition, the cultural aspect of Spirit begins to emerge steadily and explicitly from this point onward. This is concretized further by the fact that the section “Spirit†which follows has for its focus the ethical order, which is followed by a discussion of culture. Although the entire PS is concerned with Spirit, the fact that the section entitled “Spirit†is about ethics and culture reveals the deeply social and national elements of Spirit, at least in some of its primary manifestations. After this section, religion is introduced, and finally Absolute Knowing, which transforms the cultural and social aspect of Spirit into something new, emerges. It takes the form of a region and a people unto itself, the true “realm of Spiritâ€, that which knows itself for what it is. This adds yet another dramatic layer to the story of Spirit, and makes explicit something that was implied all along: Hegel and the reader are part of this grand scheme, viz. the development of Spirit, in a different way than might have been thought when beginning to read the PS. Of course, from the perspective of Hegel’s system, both the reader and Hegel are each at a particular level of consciousness (which need not be the same), one which should be described as one of the phases of his system. In addition, his exposition reveals that there is a historical World-Spirit, of which Hegel and the reader would be a part too, as they are each existent in particular nations at particular times in history. Lastly, another aspect is revealed: not only is there an ever-present, always-repeating development within each individual consciousness, and identical moments of development on the level of states and peoples, but there is a motion within Spirit itself, perhaps something beyond the World-Spirit. This is what is leading to “Spirit which knows itself as Spiritâ€. It is the notion of conscious history, of history as the becoming, the kenosis, of Spirit, from an external perspective. By its nature, this final form removes the distinctions and qualifications I made before, sublating concepts like “individual†and “nationâ€. It is the “realm of succeeding Spirits in the realm of Spirits formed in the outer worldâ€. To reach this, however, the individual consciousness seems to be needed. Specifically, I believe, the very readers of the PS itself are necessary. This is the most difficult of the layers of reflexivity to understand, if it is present and accurate at all. To try to make this clearer, it will be helpful to see the relationship between the individual and the level of nation or culture, with respect to development.
One difference between the individual and mankind as a whole is that establishing what the ideal form for culture is has a nature rather distinct from considering the ideal form for the individual, much less from these ideals placed together as one. Plato described goals for the state, for localized pockets of mankind, for each polis, which were to be achieved through the state’s interactions with individuals via the actions of specialized individuals. But even this does not reach the level of universalization and abstraction that Hegel’s World-Spirit achieves. Perhaps more detailed and useful levels of structure that cam be applied to the individual consciousness’ development can be found when considering the development of mankind, similar to the method employed in the Republic of exploring the soul by exploring the city. For, in Hegel’s case, the World-Spirit and the nation are indeed the individual consciousness “writ largeâ€. This may be concluded from the claim in §78: “The series of configurations which consciousness goes through […] is, in reality, the detailed history of the education of consciousness itself to the standpoint of Science.†This “education†may be taken to be the mistakes that consciousness makes in its various phases, what it finds as it is forced to restructure due to dialectical forces. The history of this, at least from science’s perspective, is the World-Spirit.
The level of reflexivity that I am exploring right now, involving the readers of the PS, also finds expression through Hegel’s tone in the PS. One thing that I think makes Hegel rather singular as a philosopher is how he exudes the sense that he is an immediate participant in the processes he is describing. Plato comes very close to this. Aristotle and the philosophers who are more systematic and less personal, write as observers or, even more distantly, as historians, historians of humanity. They speak of how people are, and do so in a way which also includes how they were in the short term. With regard to the long term past, however, they usually imply that they were worse, or better, but not always that their current state is a necessary and developmental result of this past state. More modern philosophers include a sense of brotherhood with the reader. They acknowledge that they are part of humanity as well, which allows them to speak of the “human conditionâ€. Plato speaks in a totally different way from this. He speaks through people, both normal and extraordinary people, a fact which allows him to speak about philosophical topics which, in his view, may be unspeakable by a direct approach, viz. through a system. Hegel, from his Preface onward, shows the reader that he is part of a vibrant, active, and current stream, one which is in a necessary and inescapable order. He is united with the reader almost as an afterthought, as I described in speaking of his universal tone in Part II. In addition, since Hegel qua consciousness has reached the stage of Absolute Knowing (which it must have in order for him to be able to discuss its nature and emergence), the progression he presents in the PS must have a retrospective character for him, but not for the readers (at least those who have not achieved the goal). Through this aspect he can emphasize the development in ways which assist the readers in their own progress.
As a result of Hegel’s implied state, when combined with the several levels of interacting reflexivity present because of the subject and form of the PS, those who follow Hegel through the progression of the phases of consciousness are necessarily drawn into the very subject matter. It is like reading the sort of novel that claims that the reader himself is part of the story. To finally understand why the reader needs to be involved, it is necessary to bring to mind what Hegel is doing in the PS, in the terms that he describes within the subject of the investigation. As noted above, Hegel explicitly claims that the PS will have as its focus the development of science. Following his own requirements, in order for this to be performed, and for Hegel’s own view to be explained and validated, an exposition must be given, i.e. a system must be presented. But a system can only be knowledge, and can only be given an exposition, as science. Science for Spirit only truly exists when it has reached Absolute Knowing. Science is the crown of a stage of Spirit. Thus Hegel, as an individual consciousness, and so being part of Spirit, is trying to crown his world of Spirit. He is Spirit completing itself, crowning its knowledge as it must do. And he does this through presenting an ordered exposition to other consciousnesses. This last step adds a wondrous symmetry to his effort since, as noted above, human nature only really exists in an achieved community of minds (§69). So it seems that it is not just that the reader is participating in the phases as Hegel describes their development, or even that Hegel himself has thus gone through this development, but that the readers of the PS are needed to form a community with him. They complete a human nature in order to work, along with Hegel, towards crowning their world of Spirit with science in its ordered exposition. In this does Spirit crown itself, through the union of its own parts teaching themselves and realizing their common essence. Interestingly, this also provides the PS a demonstration of its own completeness, so to speak, since it allows it to meet its own standard of justification, completion, and proof: its successful exposition.8 The addition of the reader is what allows the myriad movements in the PS to come to fruition, and it is the sort of model of a description of a universal and completely reflexive development that I am seeking.
IV. Towards a Description of Universal Evolution
I stated above that when something truly universal is described, the perspective from which the description is made is itself contained in the thing described. I have shown the presence of this sort of description with several variations in the PS. The path to the goal is shown to be contained in the goal itself. But how does Hegel’s presentation of the development of Spirit given in the way that it is assist in solving the aporia I described of a mirror trying to reflect itself, or, more accurately, of it trying to reflect the self that contains and subsumes it? In the final sections of the PS, when Absolute Knowing is most fully described, consciousness becomes equivalent to the whole in realizing its essence. By this I mean that, by this point, Spirit empties itself out into time and external existence, becoming history and nature (§807-08). It understands itself as Spirit, as what it is itself, for itself. For this Spirit, certainty and truth become one, and it has achieved its purpose. After this, it observes its own becoming from itself, in itself. It watches the
slow-moving succession of Spirits, a gallery of images, each of which, endowed with all the riches of Spirit, moves this slowly just because the Self has to penetrate and digest this entire wealth of its substance.
And it is the essence of that wherein the forms of Spirit are made manifest, consciousness, which allows this; it is what allows Spirit to reflect and observe itself. This is possible because consciousness is the Notion of itself.
The difficulty of describing this myriad-layered self-development is overcome by Hegel in working through the necessity of a perspective that is internal (with respect to the development). With this in place, he can cause the result of that internal perspective’s effects on the subject to push the subject to a new level, one which transcends the very perspective of the observation. This is the transcendence that allows for an understanding of the subject. And this is why there are so many levels of reflexivity and complexity: all the retracings, the circumlocutions, and the diverse reformulations are necessary for the proper circumstances to be established by the time the final stage emerges to allow for the internal perspective to be seen fully as it is and thus comprehended.
However, this is not the total structure that the PS can be seen to contain by its completion. The PS is a story, and therefore it too, as has been mentioned, has its own observers. The readers of the PS, it seems, can exhibit a special nature as a result of their exposure to the work. By being led through the development of consciousness as they are in the carefully (and intentionally) structured stages presented in the PS, they develop as well. To be more precise: By considering, in an ordered exposition, the progression of consciousness (in different senses of the word, e.g. World-Spirit, actual individual consciousnesses, etc), the reader’s individual consciousness can emulate the same progression. I, at least, experienced this sort of reflexivity personally while writing this essay as well. I came across this possibility of an answer to the question of describing universal development because I examined the PS in particular to try to find a solution. Only in it are there sufficient reflexive elements present, where Hegel, myself, and all other readers are intimately involved in the single, necessary solution to the problems he presents, to illustrate the level of solution that would be necessary.
This is similar to part of the description of the dialectic given by Plato through his various dialogues. One of the best ways for a student to gain understanding of the most difficult topics (e.g. knowledge of the forms), says Socrates, is for him to be led by an experienced and learned teacher along the path that the particular student needs to take. There are many ways in which this was described and in which it was performed in the dialogues (e.g. the philosophical aspects of the lover and loved relationship found in the Symposium and elsewhere). But there is a general sense that the teacher describes the topics in certain ways in order to point the student’s thoughts in a direction which cannot be pointed to directly. Thus dialectic, as opposed to didactic, methods are needed.
The most apt analogy of the way in which the PS alters the reader, however, seems to be to the activity of watching a play. When one watches a play being performed, one acts as a spectator, i.e. one observes the work unfold, and can gather varying amounts of knowledge from it. But there is something more than mere observation in this activity. One can speak of becoming a character on stage in a certain sense, of putting oneself in the story, and like phrases. By the fact that a play is the thought and work of someone else, something not-self, one has to take on an awareness, an observing mode of consciousness. There is a sort of emptiness in this idea. One must become a receptacle in a sense, taking in information and not merely existing internally, in one’s own thoughts. A confusion of roles would seem to emerge from these two facets of being a spectator: one must be passive to take in information, and active in some way, in order to consider oneself as a character. This confusion of roles is at the same time a confusion of distance, as was mentioned as present in various sections of the PS already. One is outside the play since one did not create it, but also “in†it to various degrees by entering into the characters. But the activity of “entering a character†has something selfless about it. When one puts oneself into the character of Hamlet, for example, one’s own attributes are not present in a conscious way. One is Hamlet while reading or watching the play, experiencing his struggles, his woes, his triumphs. It seems that one’s own concerns and thoughts fade away to nothing during this time, being overshadowed by the dramatic events of the character being experienced.
This activity of “empty participation†is the middle ground that provides insight into how Hegel’s description in the PS functions. For in moving the reader along the path that he does and with the tone that he has, Hegel provides an example of the complicated and unique activity of describing the development of a universal process, at the same time illuminating the scale of such an endeavor. When this happens, consciousness accomplishes its purpose, at least as described in the PS itself, by becoming aware of its true nature, and gaining the ability to transcend it, to sublate all previous stages, and even to sublate consciousness itself, becoming true Spirit. Thus, for the description of the universal process that Hegel wishes to discuss (which for him is the universal process) to function, all possible elements play essential roles: Hegel, Spirit, history, and the reader. His description “functions†because it meets its own goal, which the only goal it can meet, since it subsumes all others. His method of describing a universal process is self-referential in the most profound way, and seems to be a most promising method indeed.
Endnotes
- The primary edition that I utilized of the Phenomenology of Spirit was the translation by A. V. Miller. On occasion, in attempting to understand overly difficult passages, I also consulted the translation of J. B. Baillie. Another text of great assistance was A Hegel Dictionary by Michael Inwood.
- In all quotations given from Hegel, emphasis is from the Miller translation.
- It may be objected that unless a description of what I intend by “universal†is given, it may not make sense for me to mention more than one such process. If I mean “pertaining to the entire universeâ€, then an argument could be given that there can only truly be one such process. However, as this conclusion is not the only possible one, I do not wish to specify “universalâ€, for I think that the method of description that I discuss by the essay’s end itself does not eliminate other arguments being given concerning the nature of “universal processes“.
- I.e., from the Miller translation of the PS. “Mind†was chosen for some instances of Geist over “spirit†by Baillie. For a helpful account on the various related German terms on this (viz. Geist, Seele, and Gemüt) see Inwood, “Mind and Soulâ€, pg 189-91, and, for Bewußtsein, “Consciousness and Self-Consciousnessâ€, pg 61-3.
- Thanks to Mr. Umphrey for this alternate rendering, as well as general assistance with the German.
- Riddle of the Universe at the Close of the Nineteenth Century, pg 80.
- The analogy to Haeckel’s idea only works literally if an individual consciousness is related to the World-Spirit as an individual organism is related to the phylum. Or if, in Haeckel’s own terms, as the development of the individual consciousness is completed by the movement of the World-Spirit, so is the origin of the embryo completed by the history of its race.
- The standard as stated in §17 of the Preface is that Hegel’s view can only be justified by the exposition of his system. But his view includes the idea that Spirit aims for the stage of Absolute Knowing, which can only be had by the giving of an exposition, i.e. through Science. And it is the action and nature of the PS which allows for Science to arise. Thus it describes and then meets the condition for its own justification and completion. It is also interesting to consider the idea of the PS providing a demonstration of its own completeness in light of Gödel’s work on the Incompleteness theorems.
Bibliography
Haeckel, Ernst. Riddle of the Universe at the Close of the Nineteenth Century . Trans. Joseph McCabe.
Hegel, G. W. F. Phenomenology of Spirit . Trans. A. V. Miller.
Hegel, G. W. F. The Phenomenology of Mind . Trans. J. B. Baillie.
Inwood, Michael. A Hegel Dictionary .
Tags: Commentary, Hegel, Phenomenology, Philosophy, SJC
