Heidegger, Hegel, & the Completion of Western Metaphysics
Part 2

4,093 words

Hegel pays his respects to Napoleon on his entry into Jena, 1807.

Part 1 here

Introducing The Phenomenology of Spirit

In the first installment of this series, I introduced readers to Hegel and to Heidegger’s commentaries on him. We found that Hegel is the creator of an all-encompassing system of ideas or a “complete speech of the whole.” He offers his system not as philosophy, the search for wisdom, but as wisdom itself, or, as he puts it, “science” (Wissenschaft). The Hegelian system is a super-science or “science of science” in that it synthesizes all areas of human knowledge and experience in a way that reveals their larger significance within a “theory of everything.” This theory purports to disclose the end or goal of human life and of the universe itself.

Heidegger regarded Hegel’s system as completing Western metaphysics. This is not because he thought Hegel’s system was true. In fact, Heidegger rejects Hegel’s system, though he does regard him as one of the greatest philosophers. (With apologies to Hegel, I will continue to use the terms “philosophy” and “philosopher” when speaking of him.) Heidegger is a critic of the Western metaphysical tradition itself. Thus, when he speaks of Hegel as completing that tradition he means, to simplify a bit, that Hegel took metaphysics as far as it could go, given its assumptions. Hegel actually saw himself as completing Western metaphysics, insofar as he brought it to certain conclusions that he believed were implicit in the tradition all along. Heidegger does not disagree – but he is a critic of those conclusions, and of the underlying assumptions that led to them.

In the last installment I also introduced readers to the parts of Hegel’s system, without actually discussing the function of those divisions at all. What we did discuss, however, was the way in which Hegel changed his mind over time about the structure of the system. This is a point that seems to have been significant for Heidegger, for he discusses it in more than one text. In brief, Hegel originally intended that The Phenomenology of Spirit, his first major work, would form “part one” of what he called his System of Science. Part two would consist of a text with three divisions: Logic, Philosophy of Nature, and Philosophy of Spirit.

Over time, however, Hegel changed his mind about this structure. He dropped the title System of Science, and came to speak of his system as consisting solely of Logic, Philosophy of Nature, and Philosophy of Spirit. The Phenomenology was then treated merely as a propaedeutic, or preliminary instruction, that prepared one for the system. Matters are further complicated by the fact that Hegel placed a truncated version of the Phenomenology, covering only some of its subject matter, within the text of the Philosophy of Spirit portion of The Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences. Thus, the place of the Phenomenology within Hegel’s philosophy becomes a real issue.

In this installment of the series, I will introduce readers to the Phenomenology and to Heidegger’s remarks on it. Our chief goal, quite simply, will be to arrive at an account of what the Phenomenology is about. Surprisingly, this is actually debatable. Heidegger offers us a very plausible interpretation of the text, and we will consider that interpretation carefully. In the next installment, I will discuss some of the major divisions within the Phenomenology. I will not, however, cover these in detail, nor will I attempt to offer a complete exposition of the text. Indeed, our major objective in considering the text will be to understand the beginning of the Phenomenology and its end. We will consider how the end is prefigured in the beginning, and, thus, how the text describes a circle. This means that we must skip much, including some of the most famous parts of the text, such as the so-called “master-slave dialectic.” But these parts have been discussed at great length in countless commentaries.

What the Phenomenology is About

As a first step in approaching the subject matter of The Phenomenology of Spirit, let us consider a few lines from an advertisement for the book that appeared originally in the Bamberger Zeitung in July 1807. The advertisement summarizes the content of the book, and most scholars believe it could only have been written by Hegel himself. As a statement of the purpose of the Phenomenology, this text is far more accessible than anything in the book itself.

The first line of the advertisement states “This volume is the exposition of the coming to be of knowledge.”[1] This suggests that the Phenomenology might somehow deal with intellectual history, with how man arrived at his knowledge. In a way, the Phenomenology does deal with this, but that is not Hegel’s point in this first sentence. To understand his real intention, we must ask what exactly Hegel means here by “knowledge” (Wissen). He will tell us in a moment.

The advertising text goes on to state that the Phenomenology “examines the preparation [Vorbereitung] for science from a standpoint through which it constitutes a new, interesting philosophy and a ‘first science’ for philosophy” (“preparation” is emphasized in the original).[2] Here we are being told, essentially, that the Phenomenology is a science (in the sense of the term discussed in the previous installment) that prepares us for another science. In the language of the later treatment of the Phenomenology, the text prepares us for the tripartite system of philosophy that is Logic-Philosophy of Nature-Philosophy of Spirit. Note that Hegel takes care to emphasize here the text’s preparatory function.

He then goes on to say that the Phenomenology “comprehends within itself the various shapes of spirit as stations on the way through which spirit becomes pure knowledge, that is, absolute spirit” (again, the emphasis is in the original).[3] We now have our answer to the question of what Hegel meant by knowledge, when he said that the book is an exposition of “the coming to be of knowledge.” He means true knowledge or “pure knowledge.” The Phenomenology will in some way be an account of how true or pure knowledge comes into being. Obviously, true or pure knowledge is not just any old knowledge, but something quite special.

But what does Hegel mean by “pure knowledge”? We can answer that question only if we first understand what he means by “spirit” (Geist), which is used three times in the above quotation. There are many misunderstandings about the meaning of this term in Hegel. Early translations rendered Geist as “mind,” but this is too restrictive. Hegel’s use of Geist refers to all aspects of human nature that are uniquely human. The term therefore refers to “the human mind” but also to all aspects of human consciousness, including those that are sub-mental (as Hegel discusses in the “Subjective Spirit” portion of the Philosophy of Spirit). But Geist also refers to our capacity to create culture, or simply to culture itself. It also refers to our historical being (because humans are the only creatures that have history). Art and religion are also Geist, or expressions of Geist, as is philosophy. In sum, we can say that roughly Geist means the same thing as “human nature.”

Hegel also often uses Geist simply to mean humanity, in contexts where other authors might use Menschlichkeit. Hegel’s idiosyncratic use of Geist to refer both to human nature and human beings is not unlike Heidegger’s use of Dasein, which has roughly the same denotation. “Spirit” is a natural translation of Geist and has already been used in other contexts, as when we translate Heiliger Geist as “Holy Spirit.” Though Geist is cognate with “ghost” (as in the alternative formulation “Holy Ghost”) Hegelian spirit should never be understood as something ghostly or disembodied. Spirit is not some kind of transcendent being distinct from humanity or the human.

Now what Hegel has said becomes a bit clearer. The Phenomenology will “comprehend within itself” the “shapes of spirit.” This means the forms in which the human has expressed itself, and refers to all manner of things: forms of knowing, ways of living, theories, techniques, methodologies, art forms, religions, forms of government, etc. Further, Hegel tells us that these forms of spirit are “stations” on the way “through which spirit becomes pure knowledge, that is, absolute spirit.” The Phenomenology thus depicts the process by which spirit does not just “arrive at” pure knowledge but becomes pure knowledge.

Note Hegel’s use of the language “stations [Stationen] on the way.” This must inevitably call to mind the Christian “stations of the cross,” which is not accidental. In the Phenomenology, Hegel refers to the path to pure knowledge as a “way of despair,” in a clear reference to Christ’s Via Dolorosa.[4] The Phenomenology, as we shall see, is a path of suffering through which spirit sheds its false or limited forms and arrives finally at true or pure knowledge, which had been its goal all along.

Quite simply, true or pure knowledge, for Hegel, is self-knowledge; spirit confronting itself. This is what Hegel means by absolute spirit. He argues in the Phenomenology that all forms of human spirit are ways in which it is somehow aiming to confront itself. Consider, for example, cultural expressions such as the moral code and legal code a people gives to itself. These are expressions of a particular people, of its own particular spirit. Thus, in the legislation of morality and law, a people is confronting itself – though it usually does not realize this. Instead, it may believe that its mores are universal and eternal, or bequeathed to the people by the gods.

Indeed, in all the forms of spirit traversed in the Phenomenology, spirit aims at self-knowing in a way that is ultimately inadequate, and without full consciousness that it has this aim. Only in absolute spirit is true self-knowledge attained. For now, let this suffice as to a description of what Hegel calls in the advertisement description “pure knowledge.” We will return later to the idea of absolute spirit and examine it in more detail.

The Science of the Experience of Consciousness

What we have learned thus far can be summed up very simply: the Phenomenology is an account of how spirit traverses a way of despair – a path along which it becomes disillusioned with various of its forms, which all somehow aim unconsciously at self-knowledge. Finally, it arrives at what it had sought all along, true self-knowledge or absolute spirit. Again, just exactly what this consists in will be discussed later. And much else also remains unclear. For example, just how does spirit traverse this path? Is Hegel offering an historical account? What exactly does he mean by “phenomenology”? And how does this text constitute a science?

To begin to answer these questions, let us consider the original title of The Phenomenology of Spirit, which Hegel abandoned. In the beginning, the complete title of the work was to be System of Science: Part One, Science of the Experience of Consciousness (with “Experience,” Erfahrung, in boldface). This subtitle was then dropped in favor of Science of the Phenomenology of Spirit, which was then shortened to Phenomenology of Spirit. In a number of texts, Heidegger has analyzed these changes in detail. He regards these titles as vital clues to the meaning of the work as a whole, and to what we can loosely call its “philosophical method.”

It is natural for us to understand “Science of the Experience of Consciousness” as referring to a science that is “of” or “about” an experience that is “of” or “about” consciousness. However, Heidegger challenges this. In Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, he writes that,

It is questionable whether the term “of” in the expression “experience of consciousness” is to be interpreted as an objective genitive, however much the ordinary meaning of the title may suggest such an interpretation. “Experience of consciousness” does not mean primarily experiences that are in and about consciousness. Rather, this expression suggests that it is consciousness itself that undergoes these experiences.[5]

And in the later essay “Hegel’s Concept of Experience,” Heidegger flatly asserts that “the two genitives ‘of the experience’ and ‘of consciousness’ are not objective genitives but subjective genitives. Consciousness, not science, is the subject that is in the mode of experience.”[6] In other words, the science in question is concerned with consciousness’s experience, not our experience of (or about) consciousness.

Heidegger analyzes the title Science of the Phenomenology of Spirit in the same way. First of all, to understand what “phenomenology” is we must avoid at all costs reading the Husserlian sense of “phenomenology” back into Hegel. Heidegger states unequivocally that “The Phenomenology has nothing to do with a phenomenology of consciousness as currently understood in Husserl’s sense – either in its theme or in the manner of its treatment, or above all in terms of its basic questioning and intention.”[7]

“Phenomenology” literally means “science (or study) of phenomena,” where “phenomena” usually means “appearances.” To (mis-)read Hegel’s Phenomenology in Husserlian terms would be take “Phenomenology of Spirit” as a science of the appearances of spirit. This is, indeed, how most scholars understand Hegel’s title, even those who have no special affinity for Husserl. Thus, Heidegger’s claims here are quite challenging. In opposition to the standard reading, Heidegger states:

In Hegel’s conception of the phenomenology of spirit, on the contrary, spirit is not the object of a phenomenology. Here “phenomenology” is by no means a title for an investigation of or a science about something like spirit. Rather, phenomenology is not one way among many but the manner in which spirit itself exists.[8]

In other words, “Phenomenology of Spirit” means that phenomenology is an expression of spirit. Indeed, it is, as Heidegger puts it, “the manner in which spirit itself exists.” Why? Because, as we have already noted, spirit in its highest or absolute form is self-aware spirit. Thus, when spirit comes into its own, when it reaches its highest form, it knows itself in all its appearances or phenomena: i.e., it issues a phenomenology. But the writing of the Phenomenology is not merely an “expression” of spirit in its highest form; it is the highest form. Spirit in its highest form is the writing of the Phenomenology by Hegel, and our reading of it.

When we read the Phenomenology and comprehend it we are absolute spirit itself. The Phenomenology of Spirit is thus not merely “a book about spirit,” it is spirit. Hegel’s composition of The Phenomenology of Spirit is spirit in its most perfect or complete expression; it is the consummation or completion of human nature itself. Hegel never comes right out and says “I have consummated or completed human nature itself.” But this is an implication of what he does say. Though Hegel would most definitely insist that he is merely a “vehicle” of spirit, and that there is nothing personal or idiosyncratic about the Phenomenology at all. This work is a work not of creation but of discovery – self-discovery.

In support of his manner of interpreting Hegel’s title, Heidegger argues that the standard interpretation is literally nonsensical. He writes that “according to current notions, phenomenology means the science of consciousness, and the Hegelian title [“Science of the Phenomenology of Spirit”] means only science of the science of spirit. Such a view is out of the question.”[9] It is out of the question because “science of the science of spirit” is complete nonsense. That cannot be what Hegel meant.

Heidegger takes the two titles “Science of the Experience of Consciousness” and “Science of the Phenomenology of Spirit” as meaning the exact same thing. He makes this clear in “Hegel’s Concept of Experience” when he writes that, “‘Experience’ identifies what ‘Phenomenology’ is.”[10] The original title speaks of consciousness’s experience (of itself), the second of spirit’s phenomenology, its study or experience of its phenomena, its forms. Thus, the two titles seem to say “the science of consciousness’s experience (of itself)” and “the science of spirit’s phenomenology (= consciousness’s experience of itself, of its various forms).” Thus, they are equivalent.

But not so fast. Heidegger makes it clear that he thinks that all the of’s in “Science of the Experience of Consciousness” and “Science of the Phenomenology of Spirit” are subjective genitives (in other words, none of them mean “about”). This means that we have one more step to take in understanding these titles, we must understand “Science of . . . .” Just as we said that “the experience of consciousness” means “consciousness’s experience,” so we must understand “Science of the Experience of Consciousness” to mean, in effect, “consciousness’s experience sciencing.”

Now, please bear with me. What I mean is that The Phenomenology of Spirit offers us consciousness’s experience coming into the form of science. A science always involves human awareness directed, in a systematic way, toward some subject matter. In the Phenomenology, human awareness is directed on itself. It is human awareness – consciousness’s experience – risen to the level at which it is aware of itself, at which consciousness experiences its own experience, at which it knows itself.

Thus, the Phenomenology is what we described earlier as “absolute knowledge.” And Heidegger can say this:

Experience, phenomenology, is the way in which absolute knowledge brings itself to itself. For this reason this experience is called the science. This science is not a science of experience. Rather, it is the experience, phenomenology as absolute knowledge and its movement.[11]

Let us dwell for a moment on these lines. Heidegger saying, in essence, that the Phenomenology is not about experience; it is the experience. Of what? Of absolute knowledge; i.e. of spirit aware of itself.

Hegel on Being: Preliminary Conception

Readers who already have some general knowledge of Hegel will have noticed that so far I have not used certain very familiar terms, including “the Absolute” and “dialectic.” However, these have been implicit in what has gone before. In this section, I will give readers a brief preview of the Absolute – a concept to which we will return in later installments. In the next part of this series, part three, I will introduce readers to Hegelian dialectic and how it operates in the Phenomenology (we will also return to the topic of dialectic in a later installment, when we deal with Hegel’s Science of Logic).

I stated in the first part of this series that I would focus my discussion on Hegel’s ontology, his theory of being, given that these essays deal, after all, with Heidegger’s treatment of Hegel. The reader may already have guessed that being, for Hegel, will have something to do with the Absolute, and this is correct. What will probably not have been realized, however, is that throughout the last section we have already been discussing the Absolute.

The previous section discussed at length Hegel’s use of the term “experience.” In the essay “Hegel’s Concept of Experience,” from which I have already quoted, Heidegger makes the following cryptic statement: “What is Hegel naming with the word ‘experience’? He is naming the being of beings.”[12] We have seen that the Phenomenology is a science of the experience of consciousness, or consciousness’s experience coming into the form of science – in and through which it experiences its own experience. This is just the same thing as what Hegel calls “absolute spirit.” Spirit’s experience, in its highest form, just is its experience of its own experience, or its experience of itself. Hegel calls this form of spirit “absolute” to suggest that it is pure: it is consciousness of its own consciousness and nothing else. Thus, it is also absolute in the sense of being supreme or perfect.

But what is the relationship between absolute spirit and the Absolute? Actually, Hegel does not use the term “the Absolute” quite as often as you may have been led to believe. More often, he uses “absolute” as an adjective, as in “absolute spirit” or “absolute knowledge.” Sometimes he uses “the Absolute” to refer to the whole. In our last installment we discussed how Hegel’s philosophy is a “complete speech of the whole.” “The whole” refers to the universe understood not as a mere collection of things, but as a totality, a One, in which all fundamental elements of existence are understood to be interdependent: each is what it is in terms of its place within the whole, and each is a necessary part of the whole. The whole, in other words, exhibits the principle of holism.

If we ask what is ultimately responsible for existence being an organic whole, or a One, we must look to that for the sake of which existence exists at all. This, as it turns out, is absolute spirit itself. For Hegel, the purpose or end goal of the universe is its achieving consciousness of itself. Though this striking thesis is commonly attributed to Hegel, he actually takes it over from Schelling, who was a major influence on him. The universe achieves consciousness of itself through a being in the universe that is able to achieve true or perfect self-awareness. This is humanity, or spirit, in its highest form as absolute spirit. Our self-knowledge is the universe’s knowledge of itself. Everything else in existence Hegel considers intelligible insofar as it somehow approaches to exhibiting the perfect self-relation characteristic of absolute spirit.

These ideas will seem strange and baffling at first, and rest assured that we will discuss them in much more detail in installments to come. But let us simply note here that if absolute spirit is that for the sake of which the universe is at all, then absolute spirit can be considered to be the Hegelian answer to the question “what is being?” Heidegger sees this very clearly. If absolute spirit is being, and absolute spirit is experience in its highest or purest form, experience of experience, then Heidegger is absolutely correct to say that “the word ‘experience’” names “the being of beings.”

Further, if absolute spirit is the being of beings, if it is the being of the whole, then we could also use the term “the Absolute” to refer to absolute spirit, which Hegel sometimes does. For example, in the Encyclopedia (in the Philosophy of Spirit division), Hegel states that,

The Absolute is Spirit—this is the supreme definition of the Absolute. To find this definition and to grasp its meaning and burden was, we may say, the ultimate purpose of all education and all philosophy: it was the point to which turned the impulse of all religion and science: and it is this impulse that must explain the history of the world.[13]

To express all of this in plainer language, it certainly seems that Hegel is saying that the universe exists to give rise to human beings. In a certain way, this is absolutely correct. We could also say that Hegel’s point is that the being of the universe is to be known by human beings. Up to a point, this is also correct. But we must carefully guard against the tendency to attribute some kind of “subjective idealism” to Hegel. Though spirit is being, this is not the same thing as saying that only spirit exists or that the universe exists only in our minds. In a later installment, we will discuss the sense in which Hegel is an idealist. However, he is also very much a realist in believing that a universe exists independently of our awareness of it.

In the third part, we will continue our discussion of The Phenomenology of Spirit. We will discuss the path that spirit takes towards absolute knowledge, and we will see that dialectic is the means by which spirit traverses this path. We will explore how the dialectic works, and thereby come to a deeper understanding of the Phenomenology through considering its beginning point in relation to its end.

Notes

[1] See Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. Terry Pinkard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 468 (Henceforth, Pinkard).

[2] Pinkard, 468.

[3] Pinkard, 468.

[4] G.W.F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit (trans. A.V. Miller, 1977), 49.

[5] Martin Heidegger, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1988), 21. (Henceforth, HPOS.)

[6] Martin Heidegger, “Hegel’s Concept of Experience” in Off the Beaten Track, trans. Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 148. (Henceforth, HCE.)

[7] Heidegger, HPOS, 28.

[8] Heidegger, HPOS, 24.

[9] Heidegger, HPOS, 25.

[10] Heidegger, HCE, 86.

[11] Heidegger, HPOS, 25. Emphasis in original.

[12] Heidegger, HCE, 135.

[13] Hegel, Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind, trans. William Wallace and A.V. Miller (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1971), 18. Emphasis in original. Hegel is referring to absolute spirit. Heidegger quotes these lines in HPOS, 25-26.