In his first great work, the “Phenomenology of the Mind,” Hegel sought to establish the standpoint of absolute knowledge or absolute idealism. He furnishes in this work a history of the phenomenal consciousness (whence its title), a development of the formative epochs of the consciousness in its progress to philosophical knowledge. The inner development of consciousness consists in this, viz., that the peculiar condition in which it finds itself becomes objectified (or conscious), and through this knowledge of its own being the consciousness rises ever a new step to a higher condition. The “Phenomenology” seeks to show how, and out of what necessity the consciousness advances from step to step, from reality to being per se (vom Ansich zum Fürsich), from being to knowledge. The author begins with the immediate consciousness as the lowest step. He entitled this section: “The Sensuous Certainty, or the This and the Mine.” At this stage the question is asked the Ego: what is this, or what is here? and it answers, e. g. the tree; and to the question, what is now? it answers now is the night. But if we turn ourselves around, here is not a tree but a house; and if we write down the second answer, and look at it again after a little time, we find that now is no longer night but mid-day. The this becomes, therefore, a not-this, i. e. a universal. And very naturally; for if I say: this piece of paper, yet each and every paper is a this piece of paper, and I have only said the universal. By such inner dialectics the whole field of the immediate certainty of the sense in perception is gone over. In this way—since every formative step (every form) of the consciousness of the philosophizing subject is involved in contradictions, and is carried by this immanent dialectics to a higher form of consciousness—this process of development goes on till the contradiction is destroyed, i. e. till all strangeness between subject and object disappears, and the mind rises to a perfect self-knowledge and self-certainty. To characterize briefly the different steps of this process, we might say that the consciousness is first found as a certainty of the sense, or as the this and the mine; next as perception, which apprehends the objective as a thing with its properties; and then as understanding, i. e. apprehending the objects as being reflected in itself, or distinguishing between power and expression, being and manifestation, outer and inner. From this point the consciousness, which has only recognized itself, its own pure being in its objects and their determinations, and for which therefore every other thing than itself has, as such, no significance, becomes the self-like Ego, and rises to the truth and certainty of itself to self-consciousness. The self-consciousness become universal, or as reason, now traverses also a series of development-steps, until it manifests itself as spirit, as the reason which, in accord with all rationality, and satisfied with the rational world without, extends itself over the natural and intellectual universe as its kingdom, in which it finds itself at home. Mind now passes through its stages of unconstrained morality, culture and refinement, ethics and the ethical view of the world to religion; and religion itself in its perfection, as revealed religion becomes absolute knowledge. At this last stage being and thought are no more separate, being is no longer an object for the thought, but the thought itself is the object of the thought. Science is nothing other than the true knowledge of the mind concerning itself. In the conclusion of the “Phenomenology,” Hegel casts the following retrospect on the course which he has laid down: “The goal which is to be reached, viz., absolute knowledge, or the mind knowing itself as mind, requires us to take notice of minds as they are in themselves, and the organization of their kingdom. These elements are preserved, and furnished to us either by history, where we look at the side of the mind’s free existence as it accidentally appears, or by the science of phenomenal knowledge, where we look at the side of the mind’s ideal organization. These two sources taken together, as the ideal history, give us the real history and the true being of the absolute spirit, the actuality, truth, and certainty of his throne, without which he were lifeless and alone; only ‘from the cup of this kingdom of minds does there stream forth for him his infinity.’”
SECTION XLV.
HEGEL.
George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born at Stuttgart, the 27th of August, 1770. In his eighteenth year he entered the university of Tübingen, in order to devote himself to the study of theology. During his course of study here, he attracted no marked attention; Schelling, who was his junior in years, shone far beyond all his contemporaries. After leaving Tübingen, he took a situation as private tutor, first in Switzerland, and afterwards in Frankfort-on-the-Main till 1801, when he settled down at Jena. At first he was regarded as a disciple, and defender of Schelling’s philosophy, and as such he wrote in 1801 his first minor treatise on the “Difference between Fichte and Schelling.” Soon afterwards he became associated with Schelling in publishing the “Critical Journal of Philosophy,” 1802-3, for which he furnished a number of important articles. His labors as an academical teacher met at first with but little encouragement; he gave his first lecture to only four hearers. Yet in 1806 he became professor in the university, though the political catastrophe in which the country was soon afterwards involved, deprived him again of the place. Amid the cannon’s thunder of the battle of Jena he finished “the Phenomenology of the Mind,” his first great and independent work, the crown of his Jena labors. He was subsequently in the habit of calling this book which appeared in 1807, his “voyage of discovery.” From Jena, Hegel for want of the means of subsistence went to Bamberg, where for two years he was editor of a political journal published there. In the fall of 1808, he became rector of the gymnasium at Nuremberg. In this situation he wrote his Logic, 1812-16. All his works were produced slowly, and he first properly began his literary activity as Schelling finished his. In 1816, he received a call to a professorship of philosophy at Heidelberg, where in 1817 he published his “Encyclopædia of the philosophical sciences,” in which for the first time he showed the whole circuit of his system. But his peculiar fame, and his far-reaching activity, dates first from his call to Berlin in 1818. It was at Berlin that he surrounded himself with an extensive and very actively scientific school, and where through his connection with the Prussian government he gained a political influence and acquired a reputation for his philosophy, as the philosophy of the State, though this neither speaks favorably for its inner purity, nor its moral credit. Yet in his “Philosophy of Rights,” which appeared in 1821 (a time, to be sure, when the Prussian State had not yet shown any decidedly anti-constitutional tendency), Hegel does not deny the political demands of the present age; he declares in favor of popular representation, freedom of the press, and publicity of judicial proceedings, trial by jury, and an administrative independence of corporations.
In Berlin, Hegel gave lectures upon almost every branch of philosophy, and these have been published by his disciples and friends after his death. His manner as a lecturer was stammering, clumsy, and unadorned, but was still not without a peculiar attraction as the immediate expression of profound thoughtfulness. His social intercourse was more with the uncultivated than with the learned; he was not fond of shining as a genius in social circles. In 1829 he became rector of the university, an office which he administered in a more practical manner than Fichte had done. Hegel died with the cholera, Nov. 14th, 1831, the day also of Leibnitz’s death. He rests in the same churchyard with Solger and Fichte, near by the latter, and not far from the former. His writings and lectures form seventeen volumes which have appeared since 1882: Vol. I. Minor Articles; II. Phenomenology; III-V. Logic; VI.-VII. Encyclopædia; VIII. Philosophy of Rights; IX. Philosophy of History; X. Æsthetics; XI.-XII. Philosophy of Religion; XIII.-XV. History of Philosophy; XVI.-XVII. Miscellanies. His life has been written by Rosenkranz.
Hegel’s system may be divided in a number of ways. The best mode is by connecting it with Schelling. Schellings’s absolute was the identity or the indifference point of the ideal and the real. From this Hegel’s threefold division immediately follows. (1) The exposition of the indifference point, the development of the pure conceptions or determinations in thought, which lie at the basis of all natural and intellectual life; in other words, the logical unfolding of the absolute,—the science of logic. (2) The development of the real world or of nature—natural philosophy. (3) The development of the ideal world, or of mind as it shows itself concretely in right, morals, the state, art, religion, and science.—Philosophy of Mind. These three parts of the system represent the three elements of the absolute method, thesis, antithesis, synthesis. The absolute is at first pure, and immaterial thought; secondly, it is differentiation (Andersseyn) of the pure thought or its diremption (Verzerrung) in space and time—nature; thirdly, it returns from this self-estrangement to itself, destroys the differentiation of nature, and thus becomes actual self-knowing thought or mind.
I. Science of Logic.—The Hegelian logic is the scientific exposition and development of the pure conceptions of reason, those conceptions or categories which lie at the basis of all thought and being, and which determine the subjective knowledge as truly as they form the indwelling soul of the objective reality; in a word, those ideas in which the ideal and the real have their point of coincidence. The domain of logic, says Hegel, is the truth, as it is per se in its native character. It is as Hegel himself figuratively expresses it, the representation of God as he is in his eternal being, before the creation of the world or a finite mind. In this respect it is, to be sure, a domain of shadows; but these shadows are, on the other hand, those simple essences freed from all sensuous matters, in whose diamond net the whole universe is constructed.
Different philosophers had already made a thankworthy beginning towards collecting and examining the pure conceptions of the reason, as Aristotle in his categories, Wolff in his ontology, and Kant in his transcendental analytics. But they had neither completely collected, nor critically sifted, nor (Kant excepted) derived them from one principle, but had only taken them up empirically, and treated them lexicologically. But in opposition to this course, Hegel attempted, (1) to completely collect the pure art-conceptions; (2) to critically sift them (i. e. to exclude every thing but pure thought); and (3)—which is the most characteristic peculiarity of the Hegelian logic—to derive these dialectically from one another, and carry them out to an internally connected system of pure reason. Hegel starts with the view, that in every conception of the reason, every other is contained implicite, and may be dialectically developed from it. Fichte had already claimed that the reason must deduce the whole system of knowledge purely from itself, without any thing taken for granted; that some principle must be sought which should be of itself certain, and need no farther proof, and from which every thing else could be derived. Hegel holds fast to this thought. Starting from the simplest conception of reason, that of pure being, which needs no farther establishing, he seeks from this, by advancing from one conception ever to another and a richer one, to deduce the whole system of the pure knowledge of reason. The lever of this development is the dialectical method.
Hegel’s dialectical method is partly taken from Plato, and partly from Fichte. The conception of negation is Platonic. All negation, says Hegel, is position, affirmation. If a conception is negated, the result is not the pure nothing—a pure negative, but a concrete positive; there results a new conception which extends around the negation of the preceding one. The negation of the one e. g. is the conception of the many. In this way Hegel makes negation a vehicle for dialectical progress. Every presupposed conception is denied, and from its negation a higher and richer conception is gained. This is connected with the method of Fichte, which posits a fundamental synthesis; and by analyzing this, seeks its antitheses, and then unites again these antitheses through a second synthesis,—e. g. being, nothing, becoming, quality, quantity, measure, &c. This method, which is at the same time analytical and synthetical, Hegel has carried through the whole system of science.
We now proceed to a brief survey of the Hegelian Logic. It is divided into three parts; the doctrine of being, the doctrine of essence, and the doctrine of conception.