The Difference between Fichte's and Schelling's System of Philosophy [1 ed.] 0873953363, 9780873953368, 0887068278, 9780887068270

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G. W. F. Hegel

The Difference Between Fichte's and Schelling's System of Philosophy Translated by H. S. Harris and Walter Cerf State U niversity o f N ew Y ork Press

A lbany

1977

Published by State University of New York Press 99 W ashington Avenue, Albany, New York 12246 Translation © 1977 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the U.S.A. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1770-1831. Difference between Fichte's and Schelling's Systein of Philosophy in connection with the first fascicle of Reinhold's Contributions to a more convenient sur­ vey of the state of philosophy at the beginning of the nineteenth century, first fascicle. Translation of Differenz des Fichte'schen und Schelling'schen System s der Philosophie in Bezie­ hung auf Reinhold's Beyträge zur leichtern Übersicht des Zustands der Philosophie zu Anfang des neun­ zehnten Jahrhunderts, erstes Heft. Includes bibliographical and analytical indexes. 1. Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 1762-1814. 2. Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von, 1775-1854. 3. Faith and Reason. I. Title: Difference between Fichte's and Schelling's System of Philosophy . . . B2848.H3313

193

76-9821

ISBN 0-87395-336-3 ISBN 0-87395-337-1 microfiche ISBN 0-88706-827-8 (pbk )

Contents

T ran slato rs' Preface

vii

Speculative Philosophy and Intellectual Intuition: An Introduction to H egel's E ssay s

xi

W alter C erf A N ote on the T ext and on Conventions

xxxvii

Introduction to the Difference E ssay

1

H. S. H arris

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FICHTE'S AND s c h e l l in g ' s

SYSTEM OF PHILOSOPHY

G.W .F. Hegel Preface

79

V arious Form s O ccuring in C ontem porary Philosophy

85

Exposition of Fichte's System

119

Com parison of Schelling's Principle of Philosophy with Fichte's

155

O n Reinhold's View and Philosophy

174

Bibliographic Index

197

Analytic Index

205

Translators' Preface

The occasion for the initial attem pt to translate H egel's essay on the Difference between Fichte's and Schelling's S ystem s of Philosophy (1801)1 into English, w as the giving of graduate courses on 'T h e Young H egel" and on "P ost-K an tian P h ilosop h y" by W alter C erf at the U niversity of the City of N ew Y ork and the U niversity o f W is­ consin during the 1960s. O ur first thanks m ust go to the students in those courses, who never tired of su ggestin g im provem ents, and to the C ity U niversity of N ew York, which contributed $100 to help cover the expense of typing and m im eographing that first draft. The m im eographed translation w as duly registered with the T ran s­ lation Center of the U niversity of Southern Illinois. W e owe a great debt o f gratitude to Professor Fritz M arti w hose brainchild this Center is. H e never w avered in his interest in, and encouragem ent of, our translation and he put at W alter C erf's d isp osal certain pages of his own translation. H ad it not been for M arti's T ran slation Center, it is very doubtful that H. S. H arris (at G lendon College of Y ork U niver­ sity in Toronto) would ever have learned of the existence o f the C erf translation, and C erf is certain that w ithout the cooperation of H arris the translation w ould not have reached the stage of publication. H arris becam e involved during a sabbatical leave from Y ork U ni­ versity in 1971-72. T h an ks are due both to Y ork U niversity and to the C anada Council for providing the leisure that m ade his participa­ tion possible. The research gran t that went with his C an ada Council Leave Fellow ship also paid for the typing of the final draft o f the translation. W e also w ish gratefully to acknow ledge the help of Sir T. M alcolm Knox, who went over the whole body of our second draft and m ade m any useful suggestions. O ur cooperative effort w as from beginning to end under a lucky star of com plem entarity. T ran slatin g the Difference E ssay fitted in nicely with H arris' research for the second volum e of his H egel's D e­ velopm ent.2 C e rf's interest in Hegel, on the other hand, h as been mo1. As likewise Faith and Knowledge (1802), Albany: State University of New York Press, 1977. 2. The first volume— Toward the Sunlight, 1770-1801— was published by the Clarendon Press, Oxford, in 1972.

viii T ran slators' Preface tivated more by his studies of K ant. The reader will find therefore, that H arris' introduction to the Difference essay seeks both to connect it with the earlier and later thought of Hegel, and to offer explanatory com m ents on the detail of the rather difficult text. C erf's introduction, on the other hand, is directed to readers who m ay not be too fam iliar either with K an t's Critical Idealism or with Schelling's Philosophy of Identity.1 He deals in the m ain with the difference between reflective and speculative philosophy and with the concept of intellectual intui­ tion. We have each studied and criticized the other's contribution, and both of us have profited greatly (though of course we have not alw ays agreed perfectly). H arris is a native speaker of English, but his know ledge of G erm an is by no m eans perfect. C erf is a native G erm an w hose forty years of sojourn in the United States have not prevented G erm an from rem ain­ ing in the full sense his m other tongue. C erf m ust therefore bear the m ain responsibility for m istakes in the rendering of H egel's text. But H arris assum es a full share of the responsibility for any errors of inter­ pretation, since he will not allow the fault to rest with H egel (though C erf m aintains, and H egel's own first audience agreed, that H egel's Germ an offers difficulties frequently insurm ountable even to a native Germ an). We were agreed on m aking a translation that would be as faithful to H egel's G erm an as could be reconciled with its readability in Eng­ lish. H arris w as more inclined to sacrifice readability to faith fuln ess, C erf faithfulness to readability. M oreover, while H arris believed he could detect in the language of the E ssays a consistency and precision com m en su rate to th eir content, C erf ten d ed to detect in it sp e cu la ­ tive insouciance and even sim ple carelessness, the latter no doubt due to the extraordinary speed with which H egel w rote the Essays. The translators hope that they have hit an acceptable balance in trying to reconcile their divergent tendencies. O ur paragraphin g generally fo l­ low s that of Lasson rather than Hegel. The frequently m onstrous sen­ tences of the original, some of which cover m ore than a full page of sm all print, were ruthlessly cut into m anageable pieces. But H egel's 1. Cerf wrote two introductions: one inquiring into ways of making the Hegel of the Essays interesting to contemporary analytic philosophy, the other putting the accent on existentialism's relation to Hegel. The first one, of which there was only one copy, was lost in transit between Toronto and Brandon. But as the sec­ ond introduction was also meant to be useful to readers having little acquaint­ ance with either critical or speculative philosophy it was decided to print it with each of the two Essays.

T ran slators' Preface actual language has been rendered with a sort of flexible rigidity. T hat is to say that although there are m any cases where the sam e Germ an expression is rendered by two different English expression s, there are alm ost no cases where the sam e English word is used for two differ­ ent w ords in Germ an. O ur desire to m aintain this m uch consistency has led us to adopt the artificial expedient of m arking three breaches in it with daggers. The English w ords "fo rm a l," "id e a l," " r e a l" are, in m ost contexts, the only possible representatives of the three pairs o f term s fo rm a l/fo rm e llf, ideaW / ideel and re ali/ree ll. For the m ost part Hegel appears to use these pairs as syn on ym s; but there are oc­ casions where we suspect that he intends som e distinction of m eaning between them. We have therefore m arked the occurrence of the less frequent m em ber o f each pair with a dagger (i.e., the daggers in our translation indicate the G erm an w ords here m arked). We m ust draw the reader's attention to our using "R e a so n " for the peculiarly He­ gelian conception of what K an t called Vernunft, and "in tellect" for his conception o f w hat K ant called V erstand. For both of us, the labor of translation w as far greater than we had expected at the outset. The work had to be relegated to hours that we could spare from other assign m en ts; and our lucky star w as often hid­ den behind the clouds of a postal service that ranged from dead slow at the best to dead stop during the C anadian postal strikes. W e are all the more grateful therefore to Caroline G ray, who helped with the Bibliography, and to Law rence Lyons, who did much of the dullest work for the analytical Index. N or should the labor of several willing and able typists be forgotten, though their nam es are not here re­ corded. A bove all, we w ish to thank our respective spouses w hose love and patience sustained us over the years. Finally, acknow ledgm ent is due to P rofessor M arvin Farber, editor of the series M odern Concepts of Philosophy, and W arren H. Green, the publisher o f the series. A fter years o f patiently w aiting for our translation they very graciously perm itted us to transfer the publica­ tion to the State U niversity o f N ew York Press whose director, N or­ m an M angouni, and editor, W. Bruce Johnson, have been m ost coop­ erative and helpful. H, S. H arris W alter C erf Brandon and Toronto, Lady D ay, 1976

Speculative Philosophy and Intellectual Intuition: An Introduction to Hegel's Essays. I.

SPECULATIVE

PHILOSOPHY:

A FIRST

SKETCH

"S p e cu la tio n " is a bad w ord now adays. O n the stock m arket specu­ lators are people who, w anting to get rich fa st and w ithout w ork, invest their m oney in untested stocks or on the basis of inform ation that gives the prediction o f success only a h azardously low degree of probability. A nd so, when we believe that a scientific hypothesis or a presum ed psychological insight or indeed even a statem ent claim ing to be "fa c tu a l" h as no evidence or hardly any evidence that could serve as foundation o f its truth claim s, we say : "T h is is mere specu­ latio n ." Y et when the congressional committee investigating the wild girations o f the stock m arket asked Bernard Baruch w hat he did for a living he is supposed to have answ ered proudly, " I am a specu lator." R ather surprisin gly, old Bernard Baruch and the young H egel o f these E ssays have one thing in com m on: they were proud of being engaged in speculation. O f course they m eant two different things by "sp e c u ­ latio n "— even though the latter-day use of the w ord is connected in som e bizarre w ay with the earlier m eaning. The term "sp e cu latio n " com es from "sp e c u la re ," which is taken to be synonym ous with "in tu ire " (from which comes "in tu itio n "). In a very prelim inary w ay we can describe w hat the author o f the E ssays m eant by speculation as the intuition or vision of the true nature of the relations am ong G od, nature, and self-consciousness or reason. "S e lf-co n scio u sn ess" and " r e a s o n " are interchangeable on the b asis o f the K antian " I th in k "— " I think the cate g o rie s"— rather than on the b asis of the C artesian "c o g ito ," which com prises acts other than those o f thinking, let alone " p u r e " thinking. It w as Schelling who tried to articulate this vision of the true nature of the relation o f G od, nature and self-consciousness in his Philosophy of Identity— so called because the relation w as to be one o f identity, a basically sim ple design trying to hold together a com plex com position. The vision w as o f course not a sen suous intuition, bu t an intellectual intui-

W alter C erf tion.1 W hen H egel speaks of speculative philosophy he h as the Philosophy o f Identity in m ind and its intellectual intuition o f the allcom prising and ultim ate whole o f G od, n ature, and self-consciousness. The Philosophy o f Identity h ad to h ave the form of a system w hose organic w holeness, reflecting the w holeness of the vision, w as to be the test o f the truth o f the vision. T he system consisted o f two p arts: the Philosophy o f N ature and the T ranscendental Philosophy, a division obviously at odds with the K an tian as well as the preK antian divisions o f philosophy. A t the time when H egel wrote the E ssays Schelling had published several d rafts of the Philosophy of N ature2 and one of the Transcendental Ph ilosoph y.3 A lthough Schel­ ling w as forever revising his system , the holistic vision behind it is clear. It w as a singularly beautiful vision. If ever the time should come when philosophy is judged in term s of aesthetic criteria, the general scheme o f the Philosophy of Identity (rather than the detailed execution) w ould surely be am ong the crow ned victors. Its vision o f the whole is the vision o f an unconscious G od (Spin oza's natura naturans) revealing H im self in the ever ascending levels of nature (natura naturata) until self-con sciou sn ess em erges in rational man. This is the story the Philosophy o f N ature tells. The Transcendental Philosophy, on the other hand, claim s to trace G o d 's coming to know H im self in a sequence of stages that culm inate in art, according to Schelling; in religion or rather, a re-union of art and religion, ac­ cording to the young H egel; and in ph ilosoph y, according to the m a­ ture Hegel. For although H egel's m ature thought and system becam e more complex and subtle, they never com pletely lost their connection with the basic vision and division o f the Philosophy of Identity. H is Philosophy o f N ature, like Sch elling's though critical o f it, w as still m eant, if not to replace the natural sciences altogether, at least to p ro­ vide them with the basic fram ew ork w ithout which they lose them ­ selves in the infinite chaos o f experience and remain atom istic and m echanistic instead of becom ing holistic and dynam ic. And H egel's Logic, his Philosophy o f H istory , and perh aps even his Phenom enol­ ogy , m ay be said to explicate them es that Schelling's T ranscendental Philosophy w as unable to shelter and develop in its relatively sim ­ plistic fram e. Further, H egel could integrate these them es into the total vision. In any case, the H egel o f the E ssa y s, follow ing Schelling though not w ithout reservation s, is convinced that philosophy h as finally come into its own as speculative ph ilosoph y envisioning the inner unity of G od, nature, and self-con sciou sn ess, and it h as gained its system atic presentation in the Philosophy o f Identity with its two

xiii Speculative Philosophy organic parts, the Philosophy o f N ature tracing the em ergence o f selfconsciousness, and the T ranscendental Philosophy tracing the em er­ gence o f G o d 's know ledge o f H im self. N one of this is likely to sound convincing to a reader with an analytically trained intellect. I shall try in Section III of this Introduc­ tion to m ake the conception of speculative philosophy appear less strange by pointing out how speculative philosophy takes care of objections which non-speculative philosophy raises again st it. N or will speculative philosophy m ake sense to any historian o f ph iloso­ phy who know s that "sp e cu la tio n " is ju st another term for "in tellec­ tual intuition" and is aw are of w hat K an t did to that concept. In Section IV I hope to show where in K an t's w ork the speculative phi­ losophers believed to find justification for reintroducing intellectual intuition into the cognitive enterprise o f philosophy. In Section II, how ever, I shall try m y hand at an entirely different approach to the Philosophy o f Identity, an approach by w ay o f the hum an or, to use a fashionable term, existential m otivations that drove Hegel into the arm s o f Schelling's Philosophy of Identity. But first we m ust return for a m om ent to the term "sp e cu la tio n ." It w as o f course precisely its Philosophy o f N ature that brought speculative philosophy into disrepute. The trium phant m arch o f the natural sciences throughout the nineteenth century turned specula­ tion qua intellectual intuition into speculation qua unw arranted by any acceptable evidences. In their Philosophy of N ature Schelling and Hegel were like two brave m edieval knights fighting a division of tanks. The battle w as lost before it began. Y et the thought is perhaps not w ithout som e tw ilight charm that som eday the sciences them ­ selves will feel a hankering after a unity that could not be satisfied by the logical reconstruction of the lan guage of science and to which the holistic p assio n that shaped these now forgotten Philosophies of N ature m ay be congenial. To be sure, the fuzzy-heads that m ake up the sm all but noisy arm y of to d ay's anti-science and anti-technology prophets m ay joyfu lly return to the speculative Philosophy of N ature and claim it as an ally. But its sound re-appropriation, if there is to be another one after the debacle o f B ergson 's elan vital, will have to arise from a need within the sciences them selves.

II. H E G E L

AND

THE

PHILOSOPHY

OF

IDENTITY

In his introduction to the Difference essay H egel writes that philoso-

xiv W alter C erf phy becom es a need in times when the sim ple and beautiful harm ony o f existence is sundered by the aw areness o f basic dichotom ies and antinom ies, when the believers becom e alienated from the gods, m an from nature, the individual from his comm unity. In historical situ a­ tions of this sort philosophy is born and re-born in order to prepare through its system atic thought the revolution through which civiliza­ tion's m any-dim ensional alienation will be overcom e in a higher cultural synthesis. We can see by inference from his early theological w ritings4 and by what we know of the circum stances o f his first thirty years that these views reflect H egel's own existential situation. O n the level o f values he w as torn apart by clashing loyalties, loyalties to G reek A pollo, Christian Je su s, and Judeo-Prussian K ant. Liberated in mind by the French Revolution like every young Germ an worth his salt, he yet remained in political bondage to the absolutist D uke o f W ürttem ­ berg. He w as tied down to the study of dogm atic theology, although there w as probably little that interested him less at the time. He who later drew the wide panoram a o f hum an h istory and civilizations into his philosophy lived as a young m an in exceedingly narrow condi­ tions of financial, social, and sexual deprivation as stipendiate in Tübingen and as tutor in private hom es o f the m oderately w ealthy in Bern and Frankfurt. O nly an iron self-discipline can have kept him from exploding and going m ad as his friend Hölderlin did. H is w as a thoroughly alienated existence in which the clash between the life he led and his aspiration s, betw een w hat w as the case and w hat should and could be the case drove him , as it drove so m any of his genera­ tion, to dream the idealizing dream of the Hellenic age and of the Christian M iddle A ges and to trust in philosophy to prepare the revo­ lution of the G erm an situation. It is im portant to be aw are of the personal urgency in H egel's com m itm ent to philosophy. W hat m oti­ vated and energized his philosophical beginnings were not at all intellectual puzzles, but the deeply felt disturbances of the situation in which he found h im self and his generation, with the clash between A pollo, Je su s, and K ant the m ost articulate of these personal aspects o f the general m alaise. A t least that much the young H egel and our own existentialists have in com m on: m atters of personal urgency rather than an interest in intellectual puzzles m otivated their philoso­ phizing. A nd when K ierkegaard com pared the later H egel's Logic with a dance of skeletons he w as not aw are— and in fact could not have been aw are— of how sim ilar the person al problem s behind his Either-Or were with the clash of value constellations that split the

XV

Speculative Philosophy young Hegel. A lthough their m otivational situation w as sim ilar they took off in very different directions indeed, doing so on the b asis of the sort o f decision which is not exactly m ade by men, but which rather m akes m en: K ierkegaard to explore, and lead his public into w hat, in this time and place o f his, it should m ean to be a Christian in C hristianity, and H egel to explore and finally present w hat, in this time and place o f his, the system of philosophia perennis is. H ow did the existential situation o f the young Hegel lead him in the E ssays to em brace Schelling's Philosophy o f Identity? T o be sure, H egel m ight never have becom e a Schellingian if the accidents of life had not brought him together with Schelling in T übingen and m ade them good enough friends to remain in contact even after they w ent their different w ays from T übingen, Schelling to fam e and p rofesso rsh ip in Jen a, Hegel to the obscurity o f a private tutorship in Bern and Frankfurt. N or m ust it be forgotten that Schelling, in m aking H egel his neighbor and his colleague at the U niversity of Jen a, freed H egel from the social and financial— if not sexual— fru stration s of the preceeding decades. It is not cynical to ascribe im portance to biographical data o f this sort. O n the other hand, there m ust have been som ething in Schelling's Philosophy o f Identity that m ade it look attractive i o H egel as philosophy from the perspective of his own existential travail. K an t's Critical Idealism lay before the public in its whole extension and depth. There w as Fichte's philosophy as W issenschaftslehre. H e­ gel w as fam iliar with both. In the rich firm am ent o f G oethe's G er­ m any there w as a m ultitude of other ph ilosoph ers, now know n only to specialist scholars but then quite visible stars, a few o f them generally believed at the time to be stars of the first m agnitude. W hat Hegel could see in Schelling's philosophy and in none o f the others w as the construction— or at least the sketch for it— o f a harm onious whole in which H egel's own basic conflicts, though expressed in the m ost abstract term s, found their solution. He w as able to project the longing after harm ony that w as energized b y his personal turmoil into Schelling's philosophy, a philosophy which aim ed at overcom ing and bringing into system atic unity the basic conceptual dichotom ies and antinom ies that had evolved in m odern m etaphysics from D e s­ cartes to K an t around the relation between the infinite and the finite (G od and H is creation) and between the subject and object (m an and nature, the know er and the know n). It w as not at all im possible to project one's own alienations into these and connected dichotom ies and to consider the Philosophy o f Identity, with the interdependence

xin W alter C erf of its two parts and their intrinsic relation to the A bsolute, as the vehicle of one's own reconciliation w ith God, nature, and society. T hus H egel, quite unlike K ierkegaard, took the first and decisive step aw ay from his existential m otivation s and m oved tow ard the grand tradition o f m odern p h ilosop h y— whose Plotinus he w as d es­ tined to become. H is E ssays are the docum ents m arking the b egin ­ ning o f his career. W ithout this first step Hegel rather than K ierke­ gaard m ight have becom e the father o f existentialism . H is g ift s — am ong which ordinary logical th in kin g w as conspicuously absen t — m ight have well prepared him for th is; and the influence which parts of the Phenom enology h ad, for exam ple on Sartre, corroborate it.

III. S P E C U L A T I V E

VERSUS

REFLECTIVE

PHILOSOPHY

O ur excursion in the preceding section w as intended to aid in an understanding o f how the general schem e of Schelling's sy stem — with its view o f the A bsolute revealin g itself in nature and rational self-consciousness and revealing itself to itself in the two p arts o f the Philosophy o f Identity— found a read y response in Hegel. T he schism s characteristic of his situ ation and that of his generation, when expressed in philosophical dichotom ies such as those of the in­ finite and finite and of subject and ob ject, could find their harm onious solution in the Philosophy of Identity, which seem ed to offer on the academ ic level a view o f the whole unitin g in harm ony all so rts of opposites. A s such, it could serve a s a philosophical b asis for the revolution that would turn m odern civilization, sick from and o f its schism s, into a truly integrated culture to be described in m etaph ors taken from the rom antic conception o f nature: a living w hole of which the individuals were organ s rath er than atom s. A s each part w as sustained and enriched by the w h ole, so each part functioned to sustain the whole. But here a problem arises. If specu lative philosophy, having its sight on that final whole of G od, n atu re, and self-con sciousn ess, is philosophy as it has finally come into its own truth, then w hat about all those philosophical efforts that can n ot be said even by the m ost tolerant h istorian to anticipate sp ecu lative philosophy at least germ inally? T h at is, w hat about all non-speculative ph ilosoph y? A nd w hat about the interrelations, if any, betw een speculative and non-

xvii Speculative Philosophy speculative ph ilosoph y? These questions are am ong the questions which H egel him self takes up in his Introduction to the E ssays. The E ssays have a nam e for non-speculative ph ilosoph y: reflective philosophy. The term h as here only an indirect connection with the various uses K an t assign ed to 'reflection' and 'reflective' in The Critique of Pure R eason and The Critique o f Judgm ent. Basically, Hegel uses It as Schelling had done in his System of T ran scendental' idealism (1800), where reflection w as w hat the second o f the three " e p o c h s" in the "h isto ry o f self-co n sciou sn ess" led to, reflection g o ­ ing hand in hand with an alysis, both being opposed to the "productive intuition" and "sy n th e sis" that characterize the first epoch. A nd K an t's philosophy w as taken to be the typical culm ination o f the epoch o f reflection. (The third epoch w as that o f "th e absolute act of w ill.") But as no concept rem ained quite the sam e when H egel took it up in his own thought, we can understand w hat Hegel m eant by 'reflective ph ilosoph y' w ithout d iscussin g Schelling's view. T he distinction between reflective and speculative philosophy is not m eant to be a distinction between different schools o f philosophy. T o H egel, English em piricism from Locke on as well as continental rationalism (with the exception o f Spinoza) were reflective philoso­ phies. The whole philosophy o f the Enlightenm ent w as reflective. A nd so w as m ost o f K an t's transcendental idealism . Reflective phi­ losophy is philosophy that h as not come to the true conception o f phi­ losophy, philosophy that is not really ph ilosoph y— inauthentic phi­ losophy over again st authentic philosophy which is, and cannot bu t be speculative. In term s o f the K antian faculties, reflective philoso­ phy is philosophy o f the intellect (der V erst an d ), speculative philoso­ phy is philosophy o f R eason (die V ernunft), bu t of a R eason which h as been allow ed to trespass on territory K an t believed to be inacces­ sible to finite man. It is typical of reflective philosophy, though it does not exhaust its nature, that it relies on argum ents, p roo fs, and the whole ap p aratu s o f logic, that it in sists on clear-cut dichotom ies in term s o f abstract un iversais, dichotom ies such as those o f the infinite and the finite, subject and object, universal and particular, freedom and necessity, causality and teleology, etc., etc.; that it tries to solve intellectual puzzles rather than give the true conceptual vision of the whole; that it sticks to the natural sciences as the source of the.only reliable know ledge of nature, thus com m itting itself, in the first place, to a concept of experience reduced to sense perception and to a concept-e# sense perception reduced to som e causal chain, and in the second place, to a pervasive atom ism that reduces the whole to the

xvin W alter C erf sum of its parts, and to a m echanism that excludes teleology from a positive role in cognition. N o reflective philosophy need have all of these characteristics although an y one o f them w ould be the indica­ tion of a philosophy that has not reached the one authentic concep­ tion of philosophy. Hence, any assau lt that reflective philosophy directs again st speculative philosophy can be taken care of sim ply by pointing out that it is a reflective assau lt. A nsw ering it by counterargum ents would turn the speculative philosopher into a reflective one. W hat is w rong with the attack is that it is reflective; it is m ade in a style of doing philoso­ phy that is not truly philosophical. W hatever the argum ent m ay be which a reflective philosopher u se s again st speculative philosophy, his very arguing show s that he is not really a philosopher. C ontem pt is the only answ er to all reflective assaults. N o dialogue is possible. W e shall soon observe that this is only one side of H egel's attitude tow ard reflective philosophy. B u t before we come to the other side we m ay w ant to illustrate this conception of the relation between reflective and speculative ph ilosoph y by w ay of a contem porary p aral­ lel. I m ean the relation betw een existentialism and analytic philoso­ phy. There can be no doubt at all th at our own contem porary analytic philosophy, in its narrow est as well as in its w idest m eaning (which excludes only the existen tialists, the W hiteheadians, and the Thom ists), would be judged by H egel to be a very typical reflective phi­ losophy. There m ust be considerable doubt, how ever, whether or not H egel would acknow ledge existentialism to be speculative philosophy. From the view point o f the Philosophy of Identity, existentialism spoiled its chance o f being authentic philosophy by concentrating not just on m an but on m an as condem ned to finitude. A nd from the view point o f existentialism H egel spoiled his chance of being the first m odern existentialist when he perm itted the urge that drove him into philosophy to find satisfaction in the m ore or less traditional ap p a­ ratus o f the Philosophy of Identity. Yet there are several aspects of existentialism in which the H egel of the E ssays could recognize him ­ self. Besides the already m entioned m otivational factor (one does not do philosophy to solve intellectual puzzles, though a positive version w ould have to have recourse to som e colorless form ula such as searching for m eaning in a w orld become m eaningless, which fits nei­ ther Hegel nor existentialism ), H egel w ould recognize his contem pt for the philosophy o f the intellect in existentialism 's contem pt for a civilization in which the em pirical sciences and technology have be-

Speculative Philosophy come predom inant and where philosophy h as very largely becom e the handm aiden o f science. He w ould recognize, as we already did, his distinction between reflective and speculative philosophy in the d is­ tinction so dear to existentialists, the distin ctionJbetw een w hat is A authentic and w hat is inauthentic, betw een eigêftlicfï^àn d uü $£éh tlich. A nd speculation itself, intellectual intuition as vision of the whole, h as its analogue or rather, its subjective caricature in the cog­ nitive function existentialists ascribe to m oods, the m ood o f boredom , for exam ple, being said to reveal the W hole o f Being or Being as a W hole. In any case, whether or not existentialism is w hat speculative philosophy w ould have come to be in cur own day, it is quite certain that the reaction existentialism has show n tow ards even the m ost devastatin g attacks launched again st it by analytic philosophers is very much the sam e as the reaction of speculative philosophy tow ards reflective attacks. These attacks are attacks that need not be answ ered except by classifyin g them as analytic, that is, as basically unphilosophic, as philosophically inauthentic. From the side of existentialism no dialogue is possible between it and analytic philosophy, ju st as from the side o f speculative philosophy no dialogue is possible be­ tween it and reflective philosophy. (From the side of analytic philoso­ phy as from the side of reflective philosophy in general, the situation is o f course quite different as they are com m itted to the idea of ra­ tional discourse. It seem s to them incom prehensible that there are philosophies which in principle refuse to argue or, if they condescend to argue, know that they are low ering them selves to a pseudophilosophical level.) We had m entioned that the contem pt for reflective philosophy will turn out to be only one side of H egel's attitude tow ard reflective phi­ losophy. T o the reader o f the E ssay s it m ay appear to be the m ost prom inent part, as they abound with ferocious sarcasm s directed at reflective philosophy in general and at this or that reflective philoso­ pher in particular. Yet there is som ething authentically inauthentic, so to speak, about the very dichotom y o f reflective and speculative philosophy. For like all the other dichotom ies m entioned before, the dichotom y o f reflective and speculative philosophy is itself typical of the style o f reflective philosophy, and not at all typical o f speculative philosophy, in which the reflective dichotom ies are overcom e in a vision o f the organic whole that builds up its richness of harm ony out o f the tensions betw een its constituents. T o be sure, unlike the reflective dichotom ies separatin g the infinite from the finite, subject from object, freedom from necessity, etc., the dichotom y separatin g

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W alter C erf reflective from speculative philosophy is not a dichotom y in phi­ losophy, but a dichotom y about philosophy, a second-level dichoto­ my. But this should m ake no difference at all; for m eta-philosophy is itself an essential part of philosophy and the m eta-philosophical di­ chotom y is philosophical— although H egel should have called it a reflective philosophical dichotom y, a dichotom y which sets specula­ tive philosophy the task of overcom ing it as it is to overcom e the first-level dichotom ies that reflective philosophy prides itself of. Here we reach the positive side o f H egel's attitude tow ard reflec­ tive philosophy. It is historical or at least, it is historical in a way. O nly after reflective philosophy has gone through all its paces and realized its m ajor possibilities can philosophy come into its own as speculative philosophy. The analytic gifts o f the intellect m ust have bloom ed and so m ade all the dichotom ies o f the time explicit before the bud (ever present?) of speculation can open up in its full glory. In particular, reflective philosophy m ust have reached the stage where it sees itself split into unsolvable antinom ies and is forced into scep­ ticism concerning the very problem s that form its traditional core. It is at this historical point when philosophy despairs of m etaphysics — as it does in K an t's Dialectic of Pure R easo n — and forbids pure R eason to have any but a m ethodological ("re g u lativ e") role in cogni­ tion, that philosophy can and m ust come into its own as speculation. In H egel's style of speculative philosophy this necessity is at once historical and conceptual— w ithout much aw areness of this reflective distinction. R ather it is taken for granted that the logical dependence of the concept of speculative ph ilosoph y— the overcom ing of the di­ chotom ies— on the concept of reflective philosophy is eo ipso a tem ­ poral sequence or, to express it in a som ew hat different w ay, as if the teleological unfolding o f philosophy is identical with the causal chain o f historical events. (It needs no stressin g that this sort of identification as it occurs in the E ssa y s, is at the very heart of the later H egel's elaborate and subtle historical dialectic.) (In the E ssay s H egel's view of the history o f philosophy is rather am bivalent. A t times he does seem to view the history of philosophy as leading "n ece ssa rily " in its last stages from reflective philosophy to speculative philosophy. A t other tim es he seem s to think that any philosophy which deserves the name is germ inally speculative, but kept from know ing itself as such by the cultural situation in which it m akes its appearance. Yet there is Spinoza, the great inspirator of the Philosophy of Identity. It seem s difficult for either o f these view s

xxi Speculative Philosophy to account for Sp in oza's system appearing at the time when it did appear.) There are two im ages that the E ssays occasionally use for the re­ lation between reflective and speculative philosophy, and they show how am biguous H egel's concept of this relation is. In one im age, w hat philosophy is about is com pared with a grove. To speculative philosophy the grove is where the god dw ells. T o reflective ph iloso­ phy, the grove is a num ber o f trees. In the other im age, philosophy is com pared with a temple. Speculative philosophy dw ells in it, but reflective philosophy rem ains in the forecourt. T he first im age ap p ears to m ake the difference between reflective and speculative philosophy so radical as to exclude all relation, let alone dialogue, between them. Yet in his earlier theological w ritings H egel also uses the im age o f the hallow ed grove for the youthful or­ ganic and holistic culture o f H ellas, in which nature and the divine were not yet split one from the other nor the individual from his comm unity. If we rem em ber this, then we m ay also interpret the hal­ lowed grove im age with respect to speculative philosophy in a dialec­ tical w ay : reflective philosophy had to separate the sacred grove into its com ponent trees so that in speculative philosophy the divine, the natural, and the rational could achieve consciousness of their unity. Exactly the opposite holds for the other im age, that of the temple and its forecourt. O bviously, if there is a forecourt one cannot enter the temple of speculative philosophy w ithout p assin g through the forecourt of reflective philosophy. O n the surface, then, the second im age seem s to be that of a n ecessary connection between reflective and speculative philosophy. But why does there have to be a fore­ court at all? A nd in fact, H egel stresses that there is no approach to speculative philosophy but a salto m ortale, a corps perdu, by a jum p that m ust be lethal to reflective philosophy if it is to be resurrected as speculation. Besides the rather hedged-in adm ission that reflective philosophy had to run its full course before the true conception of authentic phi­ losoph y could arise, the E ssays contain a second positive ap praisal of reflective philosophy. For it would seem that H egel concedes that the very lan guage o f speculative philosophy m ust for p urposes of com­ munication be to a large extent the lan guage o f reflective philosophy and even the lan guage o f ordinary discourse. There are certain indi­ cations that the writer o f the E ssays had already given considerable thought to the problem o f how to com m unicate speculative philoso-

XXlî

W alter C erf phy. He is convinced that it should not be done more geom etrico, not even in the very attenuated form in which it occurs in Fichte's Science of Know ledge and Sch illin g 's publications up to 1801. This logical ap p aratu s is hopelessly reflective. N or w ould H egel's own in­ clinations and logical gifts be appropriate to it. But then, how can speculation, extra-ordinary and extra-reflective as it is, be com m uni­ cated at all? H ow can ordinary language and reflective philosophical discourse be m ade to do an extra-ordinary and non-reflective jo b? There is quite a sim ilarity here between the speculative philosopher and K ierkegaard. K ierkegaard focused in on this sort of problem very early and his w hole literary style is a deliberate answ er to it, an an­ sw er full of astonish ing deviousness. Even the m ost prejudiced H e­ gelian will have to adm it, I think, that in this respect K ierkegaard w as much the greater craftsm an of the two. H egel found the full m easure of his style only in the Phenom enology (1807) when he w as 37 years old, and it consisted m ainly in various singular w ays of adaptin g the gram m ar and term s o f ordinary and reflective discourses to the presentation of an ever ongoing m ovem ent of concepts fed by dialectical tensions. K ierkegaard w as an artful spider w eaving intri­ cate nets to catch his readers, H egel a bu sy bird bravely bending and stretching the available m aterial to build a fine nest for his dia­ lectical eggs, and the reader be dam ned. Som e o f this bending and stretching can already be observed in the E ssay s. H egel's style in the E ssay s w as unlike that o f anybody else then w riting in G erm an phi­ losophy. T his is not necessarily a praise, least o f all in H egel's own judgm ent, which condem ns the idiosyncratic in philosophy. I am som ew hat inclined to agree with those critics who say that the main stylistic rule o f the E ssay s is th is: the more com plex the gram m atical construction o f a sentence and the less clear its m eaning, the more speculative it will be. In any case, the uniqueness o f his style in the E ssays seem s due less to any clear insight into how speculative phi­ losophy should and could be com m unicated than to a rather tentative gropin g in m any divergent directions of adaptin g the linguistic m e­ dium to speculative purposes. The reflective dichotom y, for exam ple, o f subject and object is overcom e linguistically with Schelling's aid by w ay of the aw kw ard form ulas at the heart of the Philosophy of Identity: "th e subjective Su bject-O b ject" and "th e objective SubjectO b je ct." The latter is dealt with in the Philosophy of N ature, the form er in the Transcendental Philosophy. The sam e procedure m ight have been used for the reflective dichotom y o f the Infinite and the Finite, but neither Schelling nor H egel does so, though they use "th e

xxiii Speculative Philosophy finitely Infinite77 and "th e infinitely F in ite /7 neither o f which would indicate w hat it should: the overcom ing of the dichotom y in the "id en tity7' of the Infinite and the Finite. T o speak of G od in epistem ological term s as Subject-O bject m ust have seem ed less iconoclastic and objectionable than to speak o f Him as the Finite-Infinite. One shudders to think o f Schelling and H egel extending the sym bolization of the identity o f subject and object to other dichotom ies such as those o f freedom and necessity or causality and teleology. Parenthetically we m ay note here that Hegel is rather flexible in relating these two basic dichotom ies o f subject and object and o f the infinite and the finite to one another. Som etim es it is the subject that is infinite and the object finite, som etim es the other w ay around, a flexibility that only a philosophy contem ptuous of reflective philoso­ phy could allow itself. In any event one h as to keep in mind the whole glorious scheme of the Philosophy of Identity to give to the 'objective and subjective Subject-O bject7 the flesh and blood it seem s to lack in the Essays. One m ust keep in m ind, m oreover, that these abstract identity fo r­ m ulas were alive with the existential agony felt by H egel and his contem poraries and that the holistic p assion at the living core of the Philosophy of Identity w as fed by the alienation of the individual from nature, com m unity (das V olk), and God. Speculative philosophy, in sum , defends itself again st the attacks of reflective philosophy by labelling the attacks reflective, and not by arguing with them— because it w ould then abandon itself as specu­ lation and surrender to reflection. O n the other hand, reflective phi­ losophers, cupidi rerum novarum , see in the speculators an interest­ ing new sort o f m onkey they w ould like to get better acquainted with. In fact, if the m onkey could convince them that his system is not ju st another cage but w hat he claim s it to be, the ultim ate whole as known in the only sort of know ledge that deserves the nam e, the reflectors m ight in the end w ant to share the cage with him. But in­ stead o f trying to convince them in the style they expect from a philosopher, the m onkey develops his salto m ortale rhetoric which is as convincing as telling a healthy m an that he m ust go through cancer o f the brain in order to enjoy true health. So w hat can specu­ lative philosophy actually do to convince reflective philosophy (as well as comm on sense and the general public) that it is w hat it claim s to be? Perhaps this is one of the problem s, taken in its m ost catholic scope, that the Phenom enology, as the prolegom ena to H egel's sy s­

xxiv W alter C erf tem , w as later intended to answ er. In the E ssay s the answ er is an inaudible sigh of regret joined with an affirm ation o f hope. The sigh o f regret: if only TH E speculative system existed, not in fragm ents and sketches as in Schelling, but as an organic whole detailed in its totality! The affirm ation o f hope: once this system exists, the spirit o f the time will reach out tow ard it, its time will have come, es wird sein Glueck m achen.5 For civilization is longing to be cured o f the di­ chotom ies that rend it and that reflective philosophy had the task of bringing into the open. A nd the spirit did reach out tow ard it. H ow ever, it w as not in the Philosophy of Identity that the spirit recognized itself, not in Schelling and not in the H egel of the E ssa y s. It recognized itself in the Hegel of the Phenom enology, the Logic and the Philosophy of H is­ tory. In them, speculative philosophy, though greatly changed, fu l­ filled its prom ises, and died (except in England, where religion found a strong ally in it, and in Italy, where liberalism w as the ally and where national pride could claim Vico to be St. John the B aptist to H egel, the savior). A fter all is said and done it m ust yet be adm itted that the E ssa y s, notw ithstanding H egel's unw illingness to let speculative philosophy descend to the level of reflective philosophy, give not only a specu­ lative judgm ent on reflective philosophy, but also a reflective ap ­ proach of sorts to speculative philosophy. Contem ptuous of the fore­ court o f the tem ple, the E ssa y s m anage ju st the sam e to spend much time and effort in it— ju st as M ichelangelo did in la bella rusticana, the little Q uattrocento church on the hills of Florence w hose sim ple static harm onies he w as in need of as a foil for the complex dynam ic tensions of his own revolutionary style.

IV- I N T E L L E C T U A L

INTUITION

W e m ight begin in a cavalier, fashion by saying that intellectual intu­ ition furnishes the evidences on which the Philosophy of Identity is built. In sayin g this we are, how ever, already victim s of reflective philosophy. For the concept of "b e in g based upon . . ." involves som e logical relation pertaining to induction or deduction, as if intellectual intuition either furnished the evidences that could verify or falsify the truth claim s of statem ents, or were som e set of self-evident axi­ om s at the b asis of a bod y of theorem s. In the form er case the Phi-

XX V

Speculative Philosophy losphy of Identity w ould be an em pirical science with an exceedingly strange sort of evidence as its experiential ground. In the latter case it would be like geom etry as traditionally conceived, and hence su b ­ ject to the threat of the K antian question whether the apriority of the axiom s is analytic or synthetic; and if synthetic a priori, the p o s­ sibility o f their objective reference w ould have to be m ade intelligible. But this whole ap p aratu s rem ains of course in the forecourt o f the temple o f philosophy and is, or should be, foreign to speculative philosophy— which dwells in the tem ple itself. W e have already suggested that intellectual intuition becam e, in Schelling and H egel, the vision of the whole, a vision in which G od, nature, and self-consciousness (or reason) come into their truth. Sp i­ noza's scientia sub specie aeternitatis becom es scientia sub specie totalitatis atque harm onise. (In the follow ing generations this vision of the whole will be degraded to W eltanschauung, leading to the relativization not only of m oral and aesthetic stan dards but also of the basic theoretical categories, em erging as sociology of sorts in France, and in G erm any as D ilthey's typology of W eltanschaungen.) K ant, however, had surely m eant by intellectual intuition som ething quite different from this vision o f the whole. A nd he had clearly and deci­ sively disallow ed intellectual intuition to have any positive role in hum an cognition. H ow w as it then that intellectual intuition turned into this holistic vision and organized itself into som ething that claimed to be TH E system o f know ledge under the name of the Phi­ losophy o f Identity? I shall let Schelling and H egel speak for them selves, letting them talk univoce w ithout draw ing a line between w hat Schelling said and w hat H egel said. N or shall I draw a line between w hat they did say and w hat they m ight have said. It m ust of course not be assum ed that the w ay they understand K an t is m y own way. W hat the speculators said and m ight have said to K an t is this: "Y o u adm it that the concept of an intuitive intellect or intellectual intuition harbors no logical contradictions and that therefore there could be such a thing as intellectual intuition; but you also assert that as a m atter o f fact hum an beings do not p ossess it. For the basic w ay in which anything can be know able to us as an object of expe­ rience is by its being given to us, and the only w ay in which it can be given to us is by its becom ing a datum to our sen ses: it m ust cause a sensation in us. H aving sen sations, how ever, is very different from h aving know ledge. So you bridge the gap between having sen­ sations and having know ledge by an im pressive an alysis of the ap ­

xxvi W alter C erf paratus which our sensibility and the reason (der V erstand) con­ tribute on their own account to the objectivity o f possible objects of experience. We say 'our sensibility7 and 'the reason 7 because you do play with the idea of non-hum an subjects w hose sensibility m ight have form s different from those hum an sensibility has. And you do not play with the idea of rational beings w hose form s of judgm ent and therewith categories m ight be different from those of man. This is part of your Stoic background, about which more later. Sensibility contributes (the form s of) space and tim e; reason contributes twelve basic concepts in accordance with the twelve form s of judgm ent and, dependent on the categories and their schem atization, your twelve 'principles of the pure understanding.7 In consequence, w hat you allow us to have know ledge o f in our experience are not the things as they are in them selves but only as they affect us, that is, as they appear to us. Y ou revel in the dichotom y o f things in them selves— which are unknow able to u s— and their appearances— which are all we are ever perm itted to know. Even w hat you call our synthetic a priori know ledge such as m athem atics does not reach beyond the possible objects of experience. " I f we exam ine the nature o f your prejudice again st intellectual intuition more closely we find it to be rooted in dubious psychology, theological dogm a, and the procedures of the natural sciences. To begin with the last, you state that the know ledge claim s of the n a­ tural sciences are well founded to the extent that their judgm ents, from statem ents o f observation to the m ost general theories, can be tested em pirically, that is, by perception; and perception, according to the causal theory of perception which you unquestionably accept, has as its basic stratum visual, acoustic, and sim ilar sensations. So the trium phant course of the natural sciences since G alileo and N ew ­ ton over again st the debacle of the m etaphysical know ledge claims of the rationalists leads you to assert that we m ust claim no knowlege of any object, ourselves included, that cannot be related in certain prescribed w ays to som ething that is given to us either in externally or in internally perceptual experience. (The prescribed w ays in which any object we claim to know m ust be related to w hat is sen suously given to us are spatial, tem poral and those form ulated in your prin­ ciples o f the pure understanding.) "T h e lesson which the natural sciences taugh t you goes beautifully hand in hand with your theological bias. This is your conviction of the inescapable finitude of rational man. Y ou find the index o f this finitude in the fact that objects can be know n to us if and only if

XXVll

Speculative Philosophy they (a) affect our sensibility and (b) conform to the spontaneously im posed conditions of our intellect. O ur sensibility is m erely p assive and our spontaneity is lim ited to the mere form s of objectivity. O ver again st this doubly finite relation of the hum an subject to the objects of his cognitive experiences you conceive o f a kind of know ledge which is spontaneity all through. There would be no receptivity in it at all and spontaneity w ould not be lim ited to the m ere form s. T his is w hat you call intellectual intuition. It is divine creativity seen in the perspective of your epistem ological and psychological presuppo­ sitions. "Y o u r psychological presupposition s have already come to the fore. M an has the capacity to receive sen sations, and you call this receptivity sensibility. T his is one psychological stem from which know ledge grow s. The other is the faculty of freely form ing concepts, combining them in judgm ents, and com bining judgm ents in syllo­ gism s. T his is reason. W hat sort o f psychology is this? If it were rational psych ology a la W olff and Baum garten, you yourself w ould have destroyed it in the Paralogism section o f your D ialectic of Pure Reason. If it were em pirical psychology you w ould seem to have founded, at least in part, your explanation of the possibility o f em ­ pirical know ledge on em pirical know ledge and this is hardly a con­ vincing foundation. "B e sid es, there is the basic contradiction that you got yourself into. Jacobi sum m ed it up when he said that w ithout the thing-in-itself one cannot get into The Critique o f Pure R eason and with the thingin-itself one cannot stay in it. W hat is it that causes the sensations in u s? T h is cause o f our sensations cannot be found in the objects o f our experiences, whether we m ean by the objects of our experi­ ences (ordinary objects like trees and houses or scientific objects like gravity and atom s.6 The objects o f our experiences cannot be the causes o f our sensations, for according to your own theory the p o ssi­ bility o f any object is rooted in the form s o f our sensibility and the form s o f the intellect having shaped the sen suous m aterial. So the X that causes the sensation m ust be the thing-in-itself unknow ably hidden behind the veil o f appearances. But in m aking the thing-initself the cause o f our sensations you have done w hat is verboten by your own Critique. Y ou have applied one of the categories, the cate­ gory o f causality, to the thing-in-itself. It is inconceivable in term s o f your theory that the thing-in-itself causes sensations. O ne could more easily receive a letter from outer space, even one w ritten in English.

XX Vlîl

W alter C erf "N o w w hat w ould you say if we show you that you yo u rself un­ know ingly m ake intellectual intuition the ultim ate basis of all know l­ edge claim s that you consider soundly grounded? We are o f course referring to your transcendental apperception, the T th in k / of which you say that it is the highest point to which m ust be fastened the applicability o f the categories to time (and space), therewith the possibility of experiencing objects and therewith the possibility of objects of experience. For according to your first Critique the unity o f nature as the totality of all possible objects of experience depends in the last an alysis on the unity o f the I in its synthetizing categorial acts o f thinking. But precisely in m aking the thinking I the highest point you give it the characteristic that is definitory of intellectual intuition. T o think oneself as thinking— pure self-con sciou sn ess— is to give oneself existence as pure I. Your transcendental appercep­ tion lives up to your own concept o f intellectual intuition. You have overcom e your dichotom y o f receptivity— in which objects are given — and spon tan eity— in which they are thought. The pure Ego gives itself to itself in the pure act o f thinking itself as thinking. This is how it exists. N aturally, 'existence' does not have the m eaning it ordinarily has. It does not have anything to do with being localizable in time and space, which is the reason why the I m ust not be said to create itself. Fichte prefers to speak of the Ego 'positin g' itself. W e use 'con stru ctin g/ others 'constituting.' "Y o u r transcendental apperception, how ever, does not only over­ come your dichotom y of receptivity and spontaneity. It also is the beginning of a synth esis of your two m ost radical and basic oppo­ sites, that of the subject and object and that of the infinite and the finite. " A s to the dichotom y of subject and object, it is seen at once that the T think' o f the pure apperception— the I that thinks itself as thinking— is at the sam e time both subject and object, or as we pre­ fer to say, the identity of subject and object. N ous noei heauton. T his, though, is A ristotle. The G reek roots of your philosophy are Stoic rather than Platonic or A ristotelian. So were those of R ousseau, w hom you so adm ired. The light that gave the Enlightenm ent its name w as the lumen naturale, the Stoic sp ark o f reason, the representative p art o f divine reason in all rational bein gs m aking them all free, equal, and brothers, as the French R evolution concluded. "T h e m etaphysical rationalism o f Stoicism also form s the hidden backgroun d o f your transcendental apperception. For the 'I' o f your 'I think' is not at all that o f any I-saying individual, who is no less

xxix Speculative Philosophy appearance than the objects he experiences. O ne m ight rather say that the I of the pure apperception is that of the Leibnizian m onad which, as the I-in-itself, is hidden behind the subject as it appears to itself. This m onadological background o f the pure apperception would seem to be undeniable. Yet it m ust not ever be forgotten that the m onadic subject-in-itself is given, in the spirit o f the age, the features o f the Stoic sp ark o f reason, the sam e divine reason in each rational individual. So there is occasion for a secret tug-of-w ar be­ tween the Leibnizian and the Stoic background. In any event, at the bottom o f your Critique there is the Stoic philosophy o f identity. It is a very limited one in com parison with ours. It excludes all of na­ ture. For though divine reason is said by Stoic m etaphysic to rule over nature, the law s o f nature being decrees issued by it, Stoicism does not allow divine reason to be present inside nature as the un­ conscious urge driving it tow ard the em ergence of self-consciousness. Thus your Stoic identity is limited to the divine reason ruling the universe and its representative sp ark s residing in hum an individuals, and through that very residence standing in constant danger of being infringed and becom ing polluted. T o this extent, then, and only to this extent, your transcendental apperception is also the overcom ing of the finite-infinite dichotom y. W ithout this Stoic identity between infinite and finite reason, each m onadic subject w ould have its own world and you would have to appeal to the hypothesis of a preestablished harm ony to explain the illusion of a world shared by all. You w ould not be able to explain that our experience, instead o f b e­ ing a flux of private sensations, gives us know ledge o f a common world. O n the other hand, your m onadological backgroun d m ight have perm itted you a m ore subtle w ay o f accounting for the pre­ personal individuation of the spark s of reason — of the indexing func­ tion o f the I o f the transcendental apperception— than Stoicism itself would have been able to do. In either case, though, for either m onad or spark o f reason the use o f lan guage, in any o f the custom ary senses o f 'la n g u ag e / is a disquieting problem , though not within the Philosophy o f Identity as it know s G o d 's becom ing man. "H ere we m ust return fo r a m om ent to w hat we have said about your overcom ing of the subject-object dichotom y. For the T think' of your transcendental apperception is not ju st the E go's thinking itself as thinking— and thus in this very narrow sense the identity of subject and object. Y our 'I think' is an incom plete expression. You yourself stress that w hat the I thinks are the categories and through them the twelve principles o f the pure understanding to which the

XX X

W alter C erf objectivity of the objects of our experience is due. T think the cate­ gories' is, in term s o f our Philosophy o f Identity, a form ula for the identity of that part o f the subject which you call V erstan d and the form o f objectivity. In claiming that the tw elve principles are the con­ ditions furnished by reason which allow our experience to be of objects you m ay also claim , as we w ould express it, the identity of the rational self with the form o f objectivity. "In sum , then, your transcendental apperception is indeed intellec­ tual intuition unilaterally defined from the perspective of the dichoto­ my of receptivity and spontaneity as the overcom ing of this dichoto­ my. A t the sam e time, however, and again w ithout your recognizing the fact, the transcendental apperception is the very limited over­ com ing of the dichotom ies of the subject and object and of the infinite and the finite that your philosophy allow s. A n d intellectual intuition does all this right at the m ost crucial point o f your phi­ losop h y, where you deny the possibility o f intellectual intuition to the finite bein gs m en are. From all this we conclude th at your concept of intellectual intuition is much too narrow . Intellectual intuition m ust be conceived as the construction o f the identity underlying all the dichotom ies you reflectors have been proud of establish in g, and p articularly the subject-object and infinite-finite dichotom ies. It is this enlarged concept of intellectual intuition which w e call specula­ tion an d which thus becom es the holistic vision o f the com plex iden­ tity o f subject and object and of the infinite and the finite o r— in term s th at join these basic dichotom ies— of G od, nature and selfconsciousness. "T ran scen d en tal apperception as intellectual intuition, how ever, is not the only m otive in your Critical Idealism that leads directly into the speculation o f our Philosophy of Identity. W e h ave alw ays been fascin ated b y an aside of yours that y o u let slip in an unguarded m om ent. T his is your rem ark that perh aps the two stem s o f our cog­ nitive facu lties, sensibility and reason, h av e the sam e root.7 Y ou m ust have h ad in m ind som ething like an unconscious intellectual intuition, an identity o f receptivity and spontaneity prior to their reflective separation . W e think we are justified in seeing this as an anticipation of the unconscious G od revealing H im self in nature. For one inspired m om ent you came close to our philosophy o f nature. "W e also like to connect this aside o f yours w ith your equally inspired conception o f the role of productive im agination in your T ran scen den tal D eduction of the C ategories. The role productive im agination is given in your Deduction is that o f synthetizing the

xxxi Speculative Philosophy pure m anifold o f time in accordance with the rules as which the cate­ gories function in the objectification of experience. Pure im agination, as the great synthetizer, is the m ediator between time and the cate­ gories. It does not seem to us far-fetched to see in the role you ascribe to im agination an anticipation o f the speculative construction o f the identity of these opposites. Productive im agination, instead of merely putting two different pieces in an external unity, is their inner unity, their 'com m on root7 raised from its unconscious pre-reflective status to post-reflective aw areness. "T h e role you ascribe to productive im agination in your Deduction anticipates our speculative philosophy, or is at least a step in the right direction, also with respect to the finite-infinite dichotom y. For in overcom ing through productive im agination your own rigorous confrontation of receptivity and spontaneity, you are also undoing, however cautiously and lim itedly, your stubborn insistence on the finitude o f man. A nd at the sam e time you are advancing beyond the Stoic philosophy of identity with its restriction to the sp ark s o f rea­ son as the only divine element in man. T o be sure, you still exclude the sense data from the E go's productivity. It w as Fichte to whom vye owe this giant step. But in m aking productive im agination the great synthetizer you have given to the pure Ego, at least within the cognitive sphere, a spontaneity that goes far beyond the mere think­ ing o f the categories. The Ego is now coming close to being a 'finitely infinite/ B y the sam e token you have transcended the lim itations of your Stoic background. T o the Stoic reason which is pure thought you have added productive im agination to do the w ork which reason cannot do, the w ork o f synthetizing the pure m anifold of time. Though there is no labor involved in this sort of w ork, it is at least doing som ething while the pure m anifold o f time, on the left of pro­ ductive im agination, and the pure thinking o f the categories, on its right, are in one sense and another not doing anything at all. You have gone beyond the contem plative god of Stoicism ; yet you have not come closer to the active G od of Christianity. "In your theoretical philosophy G od functions as a merely m eth­ odological rule in the ongoing bu sin ess o f exploring the w orld: do not ever stop exploring. In your practical philosophy G od is a p o stu ­ late, though a necessary one, to guarantee justice in distributing b le ss­ ings according to deserts. Your Stoicism turns Judaic in the m oral sphere. You totally separate, reason and the universal m oral law grounded in it from the beautiful sphere o f hum an passion s. M ore­ over you are unable to explain how the universal m oral law can

XXXll

W alter C erf actually function as such in hum an life and you adm it that even if it does no one can ever be sure that it is doing so. This is w hat the Father, the Son and the H oly Spirit have come to in your philosophy. Y our hidden m etaphysical Stoicism is H ellas7 revenge on Christianity. "W e regret to have to say this. O ur Philosophy o f Identity h as as much of the Christian G od as any m etaphysic can possibly have that claim s to be know ledge. Y ou m ust not suspect us of being friv ­ olous when we see the total relationship of G od, nature and selfconsciousness in an alogy with the Father, the Son and the H oly Sp irit.8 "B u t quite ap art from this som ew hat esoteric analogy taken from the tradition of Christian th eology— not for nothing did we spend years in the S tift in T übin gen — speculation achieves its overcom ing o f all the basic reflective dichotom ies in the organistically conceived vista o f TH E W H O LE as presented in the Philosophy of Identity. Its Philosophy of N ature deals with the objective Subject-O bject, w hose unconscious self-revelatory dynam ics replaces your dichotom y o f the thing-in-itself and its appearances. The Transcendental Philosophy deals with the subjective Subject-O bject and solves the problem s, unsolvable within your Critical Idealism , of the relation of the pure apperception to G od on the one hand, and to the (logico-historical) developm ent o f rationality in m an on the other. The G od who reveals H im self in nature is not, as such, the G od who comes to know H im ­ self as having revealed him self in nature. T h at G od He becom es only in the evolution o f hum an rationality. M an 's re-construction o f G od's creativity in nature is thus itself a chapter— the last on e?— o f G od's creation of H im self. " I t surely cannot be said again st our system with its superb b al­ ance of idealism and realism that there is still a vestige o f an ideal­ istic im balance in it because the Philosophy o f N ature w as not written by nature itself but had to w ait for the birth and developm ent of rationality in man. One could ju st as well talk about an im balance in favor of realism in that the whole ascending chain of G o d 's un­ conscious revelations in nature w as needed to bring forth that ration­ ality in m an which becom es the instrum ent of G od's know ledge of H im self. " T o use an analogy which is not at all congenial to us but m ay becom e fashionable som eday, your Critique sets new rules for the gam e of m e t a p h y s i c s . Y ours is a gam e som ew hat like tennis. The ball m ust alw ays p a ss above the net o f em pirical statem ents. The gam e begin s with a rally in which the ball m ust hit the ground in the nar­

xxxiii Speculative Philosophy row part o f the area that you call the synthetic a priori, nam ely, that part o f the synthetic a priori that gives 'the conditions o f the p o ssi­ bility o f objects of experien ce/ This is the rally of m eta-m etaphysics. Once this rally is over and the properly m etaphysical part o f the gam e begins, the ball m ust hit the ground in the area of analytic judgm ents and logical inferences and, strangely enough, also in an area adjacent to the synthetic a priori but having certain empirical ingredients— as in your M etaphysische A n fan gsgru n de der N atu rw issen schaft (1786) and Die M etaph ysik der Sitten (1797). W e say, strangely en o u g h / for after you had draw n a line of absolute oppo­ sition between the em pirical and the a priori you yet proceed as if there were a gradual transition from one to the other. T his m ay very well serve as another exam ple of your overcom ing your own dichoto­ m ies; bu t it is not o f the sam e interest to us as the exam ples of the transcendental apperception and productive im agination. "O u r gam e is quite different: it is rather like doing a jigsaw puz­ zle. D irected perhaps b y w hat we retain from the picture when we first saw it before it w as taken apart, we reconstruct it b y finding the proper place for each p art within the w hole, the only rule being that we have to follow faithfully the outline o f each part so that they fit together as their m aker m eant them to. There is only one solution to the jigsaw puzzle, and it is ours. "From the view point o f our system as a whole your Critique of Judgm ent with its discussion of the role of teleology in cognition is alm ost as im portant to us as your first Critique. For the process as which we see the whole cannot but be teleological, and so we had to undo your typically reflective position with respect to teleology in your Critique o f Judgm ent. H ow ever, as we aim in this speech of ours to show the germ s of true speculation in your philosophy, we have no reason to go into your treatm ent of teleology where you stubbornly insist on the finitude o f hum an cognition. (Just the sam e, we w ish to advise anyone who w ants to understand our Philosophy of Identity from the inside out to study carefully the Critique of the Teleological Ju dgm ent— Part II of the Critique o f Ju dgm ent— and p ar­ ticularly §§ 74-78.) H ow ever, there is one fam ous rem ark o f yours that we w ish to comment on. You are convinced that there never will be a N ew ton able to explain as little as the origin o f a blade of g rass according to laws of nature that were not arranged by design (A bsich t) 9. In other Words, you believe the biological realm to be ultim ately im pervious to that atom istic-m echanistic approach that is celebrating triumph

xxxiv W alter C erf after trium ph in p h ysics and chemistry. A nd yet at the sam e time you seem to resign yourself to the fact that biology as science h as no choice but to use the m ethods o f physics and chem istry as far as they can go, and beyond that point there is no know ledge that is sci­ entific. This is absurd. T o us biology in its largest sense is truly theogony and instead o f reducing it as much as possible to physics and chem istry we extend to the subjects of physics and chem istry the holistic and dynam ic vision of theogonic biology. " M a y we now talk to you about Fichte, your erstwhile disciple and our erstwhile m entor and friend. K now ing how he annoyed you with his interpretation of your first Critique, we shall talk about him only for a m om ent, though we have much to say about him in the Essays. "W e have already m entioned the im portance o f his translating your T think' into 'The Ego posits h im se lf/ T his translation m ade it clear to us that your transcendental apperception is intellectual intui­ tion. Prom pted by us, Fichte accepted this. The ultim ate b asis of your Critique and his Science of K now ledge is intellectual intuition. H is second im portant m erit w as his radical elim ination of the thing-initself, although others had seen its paradoxical role in your idealism before him. He elim inated it, in the first place, through the Ego's second T athan dlun g: the Ego posits the non-Ego. H ow ever, this w ould not take him any further than your own grounding o f the form of objectivity in the subject. The step that leads him radically beyond your 'form al' idealism is his show ing that the sensations them selves, far from being caused by the thing-in-itself, as well as their spatial and tem poral relations, are doings, though unconscious ones, of the Ego. The historical m erit of this doctrine is that it is so paradoxical. Thinking our w ay through the paradox greatly assisted us in bringing to birth the true system of philosophy. The paradox as presented from the side o f the object of know ledge, that is, from the side of nature, consists in the fact that Fichte's doctrine totally de-naturalizes nature so that nature becom es even less than it is in your philosophy. In the Critique nature is mere appearance, but it is the appearance o f som ething that is, the thing-in-itself, even though it is unknow able to us and not even definable as to the sense in which it can be said to be. The paradox from the side o f the subject is that the Ego h as lost your index of its finitude, for it is all spon ­ taneity. Y et it is not allow ed to be G od nor is The Science of Know l­ edge allowed to be a text about G o d 's acquiring know ledge of H im self. Fichte's third Tathandlung posits the definite finalization of the Ego: the E go's aspiration s to becom e one with G od will be fulfilled only

XX X V

Speculative Philosophy in the infinitely distant future, that is to say, they will never be fu l­ filled. "O v e r and again st the Fichtean idealism , com pletely one-sided and perhaps rightly denounced as atheistic, we plead with you to see the profound balance and harm ony, based on the speculative view ing of the relations am ong G od, nature and self-con sciousness, o f our Phi­ losophy o f Identity, in which nature is as truly existent in G od as God is subsisten t in self-co n scio u sn ess/7 K an t had received his guests in his bedroom , seated in a chair by a closed window. W hen Schelling and H egel finished with their plea K ant appeared to be asleep. The year is 1803 and he is sick and a lit­ tle senile. He will die the follow ing year, two years after the publica­ tion o f the second of H egel's E ssa y s. (Post hoc, but not propter hoc— although if K an t had read the E ssa y s, they m ight have shortened his life.) The silence continues. H egel turns rather brusquely tow ard the door. He finds the stale air in the room oppressive. (K ant did not allow w indow s to be opened as he believed that bed bu gs, which had been torturing him for years, fly in through the w indow .10) Schelling bow s elegantly in the direction of K ant. It is then that K ant gets up from his chair with great effort, holding him self by the table next to his chair and, slow ly returning the bow , m utters, " I honor hum anity in y o u /711 Schelling, quite touched, answ ers with a charm ing smile, "S ir, we honor divinity in y o u /7 He rushes to help the faltering K ant into his chair. But the old m an does not w ant help. A nd Schelling, bow ing once more, follow s Hegel into the hall, leaving the great re­ flector to his bugs. W alter C erf

1. Cf. below, pp. XXIV ff. 2. Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur als Einleitung in das Studium dieser W issenschaft (1797). Von der JVeltseele (1798). Erster Entwurf eines Systems der Naturphilosophie (1799). Einleitung zu dem Entwurf eines Sys­ tems der Naturphilosophie (1799). 3. System des Transcendentalen Idealismus (1800).

4. First published by H. Nohl in 1907 and in large part translated by T. M. Knox and R. Kroner in 1948 (see Bibliographical Index). 5. See below, p. 82. Also F & K, p. 55. 6. These two sorts of objects, the ordinary and the scientific, were at that time not yet so different from one another as to cause much of a prob­ lem concerning their relation.

xxxvi W alter C erf 7. Critique of Pure Reason, A15, B29. 8. See H. S. Harris' Introduction, p. 22. 9. Critique of Judgment, § 75. 10. Hermann Schwarz, Immanuel

Kant, Ein Lebensbild (Halle a.S., 1907), p. 269. 11. Ibid., p. 378. In the spirit of this imaginary scene I have taken some liberties with the passages in Prof. Schwarz' book.

Note on the Text and on Conventions t h e

t e x t

:

Two editions of the text were used in m aking this translation: that of G eorg L asson (Philosophische Bibliothek, Leipzig: F. M einer, 1928; reprinted, H am burg, 1962), and that of H artm ut Buchner and O tto Pöggeler (Gesam m elte W erke, Band 4, H am bu rg: M einer, 1968). The latter w as taken as basic, and the pagination of this authoritative critical edition is indicated in square brackets in the translation.

THE

TREATMENT

OF

HEGEL'S

QUOTATIONS

W hen H egel quotes from other authors, he rarely uses quotation m arks. W e have added quotation m arks w herever we were able to trace the quotation (a task which h as generally been m ade easy by the editors o f the two G erm an texts that we have used). In the rela­ tively rare cases where H egel him self used quotation m arks we indi­ cate this in the footnotes. But whether they are m arked by him or by us, H egel's quotations from other authors are apt, like those o f m ost other (G erm an?) au­ thors of the period, to fall short o f perfect scholarly precision. He rarely m arks his om issions. W e have m arked his unacknow ledged elisions by inserting " [. . .]". A lso, H egel's em phases are alm ost al­ w ays different from those of the original text quoted. Here, we have not tried to be precise ourselves. Instead of noting every change in em phasis we rest content with a general w arning to the reader that the em phases in quotations are usually H egel's, and not those of the au ­ thor quoted. O ther m ajor deviations are indicated in our footnotes. O ccasionally we have also furnished a translation o f the original text from which H egel's quotations and sum m aries are taken.

xxxviii N ote on the Text and on Conventions A bbreviations and R eferences: The follow ing abbreviations are em ployed regularly: F. & K .—Faith and Knowledge, tran slated b y W alter C erf an d H . S. H arris, A lb an y : State U n iv ersity of N ew York P ress, 1977. N .K .A .= H egel, G esam m elte W erke, H am bu rg: M einer, 1968 ff. A k a d .—K an ts Gesam m elte Sch riften , herausgegeben von der K ö ­ niglich Preussischen A kadem ie der W issenschaften, Berlin. O ther references in the notes are usually confined to the author (edi­ tor, translator) and short title where needed. The Bibliographic Index supplies the full details of the w ork cited. Concerning the use o f the d agger (*), see the T ran slato rs' Preface.

Introduction to the Difference Essay

1. F I C H T E ,

SCHELLING,

AND

HEGEL

The essay on the D ifference between Fichte's and Schelling's System of Philosophy w as H egel's first acknow ledged publication.1 He wrote it between the middle of M ay (probably) and the m iddle of July (cer­ tainly) in the year 1801. It appeared at the end of Septem ber, ju st a month after his thirty-first birthday.2 For H egel it represented the first step tow ard a professional academ ic career which he had long desired. A t the daw n of the new century, 1 Jan uary 1801, H egel w as thirty. He had not achieved anything very rem arkable in the world, and no one could have foreseen his later eminence.3 He came from a fam ily which had spaw ned teachers, preachers and minor civil servants in the Duchy of W ürttem berg for several generations. His father w as a rela­ tively unim portant financial official in the Stuttgart adm inistration. The youthful W ilhelm show ed a scholarly bent from the first. A t the Stuttgart G ym nasium he w as alw ays at the top of his class, and out of school he read w idely and voraciously, alw ays with pen in hand, m ak­ ing copious excerpts and notes. The fam ily expected that he w ould m ake his career in the churches or schools of his hom eland, and this became a legal obligation when he entered the Theological Sem inary at Tübingen as a stipendiary of D uke K arl Eugen of W ürttem berg in 1788. N ew s of the R evolution in Paris stirred the even tenor of his schol­ arly w ay before he achieved his M A in the Faculty of Philosophy in 1790. He rebelled again st the prospect of three years of form al study in theology, and tried, un successfully, to persuade his father to let him transfer to law. A theologian he had to b e; but a career in the Church he w as still determined to avoid. W hen he graduated in 1793 he ap­ plied to the C onsistory at Stuttgart for perm ission to take a teaching post abroad. W ith their consent he becam e house-tutor to the children of the von Steiger fam ily in Berne. There he remained for more than three years, m editating on classical antiquity and on the origin and history o f Christianity. These m editations continued after he m oved to a sim ilar position with a merchant fam ily in Frankfurt at the begin­ ning o f 1797. But at Frankfurt he w as once more in com pany with the

2 Difference poet H ölderlin— who had been in his class at T übingen— and with a group of young m en for whom the study o f the new idealist philoso­ phy of Fichte w as part of an active preparation for a G erm an R evolu­ tion. H egel him self had predicted in his letters from Sw itzerland that the proper "com p letion " o f the K antian philosophy w ould lead to a revolution in G erm an life, and all of his intellectual labours in these years are best understood as contributions to this "co m p letio n " of Kant in preparation for the revolution. From Sw itzerland he w atched the boy-w onder, Schelling— five years younger, yet only two years behind him in the Sem inary— take the first steps o f w hat w as clearly destined to be a brilliant academ ic ca­ reer. Schelling's first published philosophy essay appeared in 1794 when he w as in his last year at T übingen, and still under tw enty. In that e ssa y — "O n the Possibility o f a Form o f Philosophy in G e n e ral"4 — and in several subsequent ones, Schelling stood forth as a talented and enthusiastic disciple o f Fichte. But gradually he m oved into an independent position, largely because of his excited interest in the speculative philosophy of nature. Fichte rem ained decidedly cool tow ard this aspect of his young cham pion's w ork, but it soon attracted the favorable notice of Goethe. In A u gu st 1798 Schelling w as ap­ pointed as an extraordinary professo r of Philosophy at Jen a, which could at that period properly be called the intellectual capital of G erm any.5 This w as only a few m onths after the death of H egel's fath er— an event which gave H egel both a sm all legacy, and the freedom to m ake plans for its spending which his father m ight well have frow ned at. N ot that H egel did anything very precipitate. For more than eighteen m onths he continued quietly w orking at his religious and political e s­ say s. W hen he finally wrote to Schelling in N ovem ber 1800 that he w as now ready to em bark on an academ ic career, and askin g advice about where he should spend the next few m onths before applying for a license to teach at Jena, H egel w as probably hoping for the response that he m ust certainly have received— an invitation to come straight to Jena, and prepare him self on the spot. Even after he arrived in Jen a, and settled in com fortably, next door to Schelling in the Klip stein G arden, H egel continued to w ork for som e time on his political studies rather than on anything directly rel­ evant to his career as a philosophy lecturer.6 It m ay very likely have been Schelling who urged him to set his revolutionary labors aside and concentrate on som ething m ore strictly philosophical. Perhaps he even suggested the topic o f the D ifference essay. W e can be sure, at

3 Introduction least, that H egel d iscu ssed the project at length with Schelling, when he em barked upon it. For H egel appeared on the scene at Jen a, and w as accepted there, as a disciple and coadjutor of Schelling. In the Difference essay itself, it is plain that he accepted this role. But he had been follow ing his own w ay ever since he w as eighteen, and although he continually took over new concepts and vocabulary from friends whom he thought of as more advanced in the study of philosophy than him self, he consistently sought to apply the new concepts to his own problem s and u se s.7 T ow ard Fichte, H egel had alw ays been rather cool. In his Frankfurt years he w as m uch influenced by H ölderlin, w hose purely philosophi­ cal fragm en ts show that he w as m oving tow ard a type of "Iden tityph ilosop h y" as early as 1795. Like Schelling, H ölderlin derived the basic conceptual ap p aratu s for his new position from Fichte. Holderlin's friend Sinclair— from w hose notes we get m ost of our know ledge of H ölderlin's position at this period— w as later characterized by H e­ gel h im self as a "stu b b o rn Fich tean ."8 But the loyalty of H ölderlin and his friends to Fichte w as o f the sam e kind as Fichte's loyalty to Kant. It w as the sense of an intellectual debt that w as to be paid precisely by transform ing the ideas one had received. This sort of loyal affiliation tends to be em b arrassin g, and hence irritating, to the intellectual father figure who is the object o f it. Ju st as K an t had been driven to denounce publicly Fichte's claim to be his true and genuine intellectual heir,9 so Fichte w ould finally have been obliged to denounce Schelling in the sam e w ay. But in this case Schel­ ling's new "d isc ip le " H egel proclaim ed the ap o stasy first. The im m e­ diate effect o f H egel's Difference essay w as to m ake a public breach between Fichte and Schelling, a breach which both parties h ad so far m anaged to avoid, and which Schelling still strove to avoid for a time even after H egel's essay ap p eared.10

2.

HEGEL

AND

THE

PHILOSOPHY

OF

IDENTITY

We cannot be very sure or precise about H egel's own philosophical position im m ediately before he arrived in Jen a and m ade him self the cham pion o f w hat he calls "th e Schellingian S y ste m ." He did have a position; and we can be fairly certain that it w as spelled out at som e length in an essay that he finished in Septem ber 1800. But only two

4 Difference sheets (about one twentieth o f the whole) rem ain to us fro m that e s­ say ; and these two sheets— generally referred to as the S y stem frag m ent— are not easy to interpret.11 But three conclusions do seem to be fairly clearly w arranted: First, that Hegel held that it w as the task of philosophical reflection to overcom e or resolve antinom ies; secondly, that philosophy cannot bring this task to com pletion, but m u st in the end p a ss over into a higher form of consciousness called religion ; and thirdly, that a religious consciousness that does not rise to th is higher level, but rem ains within the bounds of reflection, will be "p o sitiv e ," that is, will involve alienation and authority. In the final p aragrap h s o f his m anuscript H egel used Fichte's theory o f the Ego as an exam ple to dem onstrate this point.12 It is probably fair to say that H egel becam e a disciple o f Schelling at Jen a because Schelling's philosophy of Identity provided him with a bridge across the gu lf that he had discovered between theoretical re­ flection with its K antian antinom ies, and the "b eau tifu lly h um ane" religion in which the infinite and the finite are perfectly reconciled. Because the philosophy o f Identity is founded in "in tellectu al intui­ tio n ," the gu lf between finite reflection and the infinite th at is the goal experience in religion does not arise. The principal difficulty that the new philosophy faced lay in the explication of the intuitive fo u n da­ tion to which it laid claim. H ow can it be the case th at w e enjoy a kind of aw areness which seem ed to K an t to be quite evidently out of our range altogether? Schelling took the first step tow ard the new ph ilosoph y while he w as still an orthodox disciple of Fichte. It w as probably he w ho con­ vinced Fichte that the self-positin g o f the Ego (in the Science o f Know l­ edge of 1794) w as an intellectual intuition as defined by K a n t in § 77 o f the Critique o f Ju dgm ent. But this self-intuition of the Ego w as only a kind o f leap across the gu lf between finite and infinite that troubled Hegel. It leaves finite experience behind altogether. The real breakthrough came when Schelling went on to claim in the "E x p o si­ tion o f M y S y ste m " (1801) that the Ego o f Fichte w as intuitively identical with the "G o d or N atu re " of Spinoza. A s we can see from his references to Spin oza in the Science of K now ledge, Fichte regarded Spin oza as the paradigm o f "d o g m atic p h ilo so p h y ."13 A consistent dogm atism m ust arrive at the m orally un­ bearable position of fatalism because it m ust posit un iversal causal determ inism . In Fichte's eyes Spinoza w as the one dogm atic philoso­ pher who could not be theoretically overthrow n because he recognized and accepted this conclusion. The achievem ent of the C ritical Philoso­

5 Introduction phy, as system atized and com pleted by Fichte him self, w as to exhibit the viability of an alternative philosophy of m oral freedom . But the decision between the alternatives w as essentially a m oral choice, not a logical conclusion. T o Fichte's young disciples who m oved on to a "ph ilosoph y of Iden tity," this absolute option between dogm atic ra­ tionalism and m oral idealism appeared as the final form of precritical dogm atism in Fichte him self. The antinom y between Spin oza's doc­ trine of necessity and Fichte's doctrine o f freedom m ust som ehow be resolved in a higher synthesis. H ölderlin seem s to have been the first to move in this direction; and much of H egel's speculation at Frank­ furt w as carried on in the context o f this problem . Before he arrived in Jen a Hegel seem s to have held that there w as no theoretical solu­ tion, but that the problem is resolved practically in religious experi­ ence. Schelling's "S y ste m o f A bsolute Iden tity" provided a theoretical solution by claim ing to exhibit a perfect parallel between the philoso­ phy of nature as the non-conscious production of objective reality by Reason, and transcendental philosophy as the conscious self-construc­ tion of R eason as the absolute subject. W hat is "intellectually in­ tuited" (that is, revealed to itself in the very process o f its genesis) is neither Sp in oza's Substan ce nor Fichte's Ego (Subject) but an infinite life which is at once Substan ce and Su bject; and the intuition does not Involve a leap out of all finite categories, because in the philosophical System the categories of finite experience are them selves exhibited as a chain o f successive "p o w e r s" of the A bsolute Identity. If we look at this program m e from the point of view of Hegel when he finished the m anuscript from which the above m entioned "S y ste m ­ fragm en t" is all that now rem ains, we can readily see that w hat w ould have attracted him about it w as the project of graspin g objective nature and subjective experience as an articulated whole. The articula­ tion m ust not be endless, and there m ust be some m eans of dem on­ strating that it is complete. O therw ise he would be no better off than he w as already. T his explains his deep concern about the m ethod of the new philosophy. Spin oza's geometric m ethod did not please him any more than Fichte's m ethod of postulation. He accepted Schelling's contention that a philosophy of the A bsolute Identity w as possible. But som e of the general reflections w ith which the D ifference essay begins tell ju st as heavily again st Schelling as they do again st Fichte or Spinoza. We should notice, for exam ple, that in H egel's view nothing could *nake a more m isleading im pression than to begin with a definition as Spinoza does (105).14 T his rem ark is interesting because Schelling had

6 Difference declared that Spin oza w as the m odel for the exposition of his "b re a k ­ th ro u g h /'15 H egel goes on to give, in som e detail, the reason s why a philosophical system ought not to be deduced from a fundam ental principle, and to attack the w hole ap p aratu s of the Critical Philosophy as we find it in Fichte. H is attitude tow ard both of these great prede­ cessors, Spinoza and Fichte, who are reconciled in the new dispen sa­ tion, is here basically appreciative, but the eventual scathing attack upon Schelling's Identity T heory as an em pty form alism (in the Pre­ face to the Phenom enology) is already im plicit in his com m ents on philosophical m ethod in the D ifference essay. Indeed, the criticism of Schelling is so nearly explicit that one w on­ ders how any of H egel's readers, let alone Schelling him self, could have regarded this unknow n "D o cto r of Secular W isd o m "16 as a mere disciple. The explanation seem s to be that his contem porary audience sim ply did not understand w hat H egel w as say in g; and they did not at that point have any reason for thinking that w hat they did not un­ derstand w as im portant.17 O n ly Schelling h im self w as really in a posi­ tion to know better, for only he could talk to Hegel about w hat he had already thought and written. C lose study of Schelling's w ritings in this period does show that he learned som e things from H egel.18 But he w as too volatile, too m uch the type of the rom antic genius, to ap­ preciate H egel's patient struggle with the problem s of philosophical method. Schelling w as continually subject to new inspirations, and whenever he w as seized by one he w as apt to begin all over again , so that all of his attem pts at a system atic exposition of his Philosophy of Identity remained incomplete. He wrote rapidly and published work still in p rogress. A s the more phlegm atic and m ethodical H egel re­ m arked som e years later, "Sch ellin g conducted his own education in p u b lic."19 The quicksilver character of Schelling's speculative thought is one o f the m ajor stum bling blocks in the path to an understanding o f the Difference essay. In his preface H egel sp eak s o f the system s of Fichte and Schelling as already "ly in g before the p u b lic," but in fact Schel­ lin g's system w as not properly displayed for public view at this time. The fundam ental statem ent of his position to which contem porary readers w ould m ost naturally turn— the "E xposition of M y System of P h ilosoph y" of 1801— dealt only with general principles and with the philosophical construction of inorganic nature. In order to get a syn­ optic view of Schelling's position, we have to supplem ent this initial statem ent from various later e ssay s and lectures published or delivered during the next five or six y ears; and when we put the various state­

7 Introduction m ents together we find that even at a quite basic level there is a great deal o f w avering in the system atic outline.20 A m ong Schelling's contem porary critics Hegel h im self w as one of the m ost perceptive. W hen he came to deal with Schelling in his first course on the history of philosophy he sum m ed up the problem as fo llow s: It is not feasible here to go into details respecting w hat is called the philosophy of Schelling. . . . For it is not yet a scientific whole organized in all its branches, since it rather consists in certain general elem ents which do not fluctuate with the rest of his opinions. Schelling's philosophy m ust still be regarded as in process of evolution, and it h as not yet ripened into fruit.21 T his w as how Hegel saw the m atter in 1805. But it w as not how he affected to see it in 1801. The title of the Difference essay clearly im ­ plies that Schelling does have a sy stem ; and the essay itself provides some indications of w hat it will look like when it does finally "lie be­ fore the p u b lic" as a whole. But the fact that the com parison of Schel­ ling and Fichte is not preceded by an exposition of Schelling's system is a tacit adm ission that Schelling h as still to do w hat Fichte h as al­ ready don e:— provide the raw m aterial for a critical an alysis com par­ able with that which H egel perform s upon Fichte's m ajor w orks.

3.

THE

ADVANCE

FROM

CRITICAL

TO

SPECULATIVE

PHILOSOPHY

O f course, H egel's slightly curious procedure of usin g the im perfect as a yardstick for the perfect— analyzing Fichte's System in order to reveal its shortcom ings and inadequacies, and then com paring it with his own projection o f Schelling's system — is largely jusified by the fact that Schelling's system grew out of Fichte's in the first place. In H egel's own term s, the two system s w hose difference is to be exhib­ ited arise from the comm on root o f a single philosophy which they both express. We can b est begin our own an alysis of H egel's essay, therefore, with a brief characterization of the philosophy that Fichte and Schelling are supposed to have in common, even though their sy s­ tems are different. T his common ground is the "auth entic idealism " which is the spirit as distinct from the letter of the K antian ph iloso­ phy,22 K an t him self rem ained bound to his own "le tte r" and scarcely

8

Difference rose into the higher realm of truly speculative philosophy at all— so that "ev en the K antian philosophy had proved unable to aw aken R ea­ son to the lost concept of genuine sp ecu lation " (118). But Fichte's w ork, like Schelling's is "th e m ost thorough and profound specula­ tio n " (118; cf. 173). W hat, then, does Fichte's achievement as a speculative philosopher consist in? H egel's answ er, which is given quite explicitly in the D if­ ference essay and confirm ed in the Lectures on the H istory o f Philoso­ p h y, is that Fichte turned K an t's deduction of the categories into a genuine science of know ledge. "In the principle of the deduction of the categories K an t's ph ilosoph y is authentic idealism . . . . Fichte ex­ tracted this principle in a purer, stricter fo rm " (79). W hat H egel refers to as "th e principle of the deduction of the cate­ g o rie s" is w hat K ant calls "th e transcendental unity of apperception ." K an t him self say s that "th e principle of apperception is the highest principle in the whole sphere of hum an kn ow ledge."23 Fichte "extract­ ed this principle in a purer, stricter fo rm " as the "E g o ." T he self-posit­ ing Ego in Fichte's w ords is "th e prim ordial, absolutely unconditioned first principle of all hum an kn ow led ge" and his initial description of it is "th a t A ct [Tathandlung] which does not and cannot ap pear among the empirical states of our consciousness, but rather lies at the basis of all consciousness an d alone m akes it p o ssib le ."24 Fichte sought to show how the categories could be derived from this b asic principle without the problem atic K an tian thing-in-itself playing any role in the deduction. O nly in this w ay could a proper deduction of the categories be g iven ; and only then w ould the theory of know ledge b e established on a truly "scien tific" b asis. T h u s, as Hegel said in his lectures, Fichte removed the "unthinking in con sisten cy" of K a n t.25 But it is precisely w hen we follow this line of interpretation (which I believe to be essentially ju st to Fichte's own aim s, and which becam e canonical in any case, through ceaseless repe­ tition by H egel and h is follow ers in his later years) th at the funda­ m ental claim advanced in the D ifference essay on behalf o f Schelling's system becom es m ost problem atic. For if Fichte laid the foundations of a genuinely speculative philosophy by providing an organic account of the derivation of the categories from the self-positin g o f the Ego, how can Schelling's breakth rough to the philosophy of Identity, or his doctrine o f a parallel betw een transcendental philosophy and the phil­ osophy of nature be an advance from this position? All o f this looks like a gratuitous return to pre-Critical dogm atism . W hy is it necessary at all?

9 Introduction In order to understand why H egel believed that Schelling's system w as an advance over Fichte's we m ust now ask w hat it w as that Fichte got w rong. If we exam ine carefully w hat Fichte say s about Spinoza, we shall soon find the clue. "W e s h a ll/' say s Fichte," "encounter his [i.e., Spinoza's] highest unity again in the Science of K now ledge; though not as som ething that exists, but as som ething that we ought to, and yet cannot ach ieve."27 T his acceptance of a mere Sollen is the burden of H egel's life-long com plaint again st Fichte. But why should an endless endeavour not be the ultim ate truth of our condition? W hy m ust Fichte's science o f know ledge be counted a failure because this is w hat we know ? T his is the crux. W hen we com pare Fichte's Science of K now ledge with Schelling's System o f Transcendental Idealism , we can see at once, upon the m ost superficial survey, that although they have a common aim with respect to the deduction of the categories, there is a fundam ental difference between them with respect to K an t's doctrine of our cognitive facul­ ties. Schelling's problem is not ju st to trace the logical evolution of the categories from the transcendental unity of apperception but to trace the evolution o f the faculties of conception, of judgm ent, of m oral choice, and finally of artistic creation, from the original spontaneity of the productive im agination. Fichte finds that the Critique o f Pure R ea­ son needs to be done over again ; but Schelling sets out to do the whole •Critical Philosophy over again. The relation of the three C ri­ tiques, which rem ained quite unproblem atic for Fichte, h as become problem atic for Schelling. In order to understand why this h as happened we m ust consider som e of the fundam ental doctrines of the "C ritiq u e of Teleological Ju d gm en t." K ant lays it down (in section 76 of the Critique of Ju d g ­ ment) th at "R e a so n is a faculty o f principles, and the unconditioned is the ultim ate goal at which it a im s."28 But it cannot achieve this ulti­ mate goal because in all of its existential assertions it is dependent on the cooperation of intuition and concept in the understanding. W ith­ out its intuitive content, the mere concept is ju st som ething possible (as long as it is self-consistent). The intuitive content that gives it ex­ istential im port, com es to us through the sen ses; the understanding cannot supply this content for itself. If it could, then the object of its concept w ould be actualized in the very process o f conceiving it. An intuitive intellect of this sort is conceptually possible— it contains no contradiction in itself. But our own understanding cannot operate like this, for it is totally dependent on sensibility to furnish it with content. H ow ever, this rational concept of an intuitive intellect, which m ust

10 Difference forever remain for us a mere possibility w ithout any application in experience is not, in K an t's view, ju st one am ong the infinity of think­ able possibilities that we can never experience. It is a necessary idea, it plays an essential role in our theory of know ledge. In fact, it is the ultim ate ground of the very possibility of system atizing our experi­ ence in such a way that we can properly speak of knowledge at all. For w ithout this ground we cannot form the conception of nature a s an organic w hole; and we cannot reconcile our own moral experience with the constitutive principles of our understanding without regard­ ing nature in a teleological perspective. K ant sum s up the situation thus: N ow the principle of the m echanism of nature and that of its causality according to ends, when applied to one and the sam e product of nature, m ust cohere in a single higher principle and flow from it as their common source, for if this were not so they could not both enter consistently into the sam e survey of n a­ ture. . . . N ow the principle common to the m echanical derivation, on the one hand, and the teleological, on the other, is the su p er­ sensible, which we m ust introduce as the basis of nature as phenomenon. But of this we are unable from a theoretical point of view to form the slightest positive determ inate conception. How, therefore, in the light of the supersensible as principle, n a­ ture in its particular laws constitutes a system for us, and one capable of being cognized as possible both on the principle of production from physical causes and on that of final causes, is a m atter which does not admit of any explanation.29 W hat becom es of the science o f know ledge if this conclusion is al­ lowed to stand as K ant states it? Fichte's boasted science becom es the absolute know ledge of our own inescapable ignorance, the know ledge that we cannot absolutely know anything. K an t rem arked in an ap h ­ orism which w as quoted by hosts of com peting interpreters that he had "fo u n d it necessary to deny know ledge in order to m ake room for fa ith ."30 Fichte w as am ong the m ost enthusiastic— and the m ost selfassured— of all the thinkers who accepted this dictum. But in follow ­ ing K ant here he abandoned his project of a science of know ledge and so ceased to be a speculative philosopher altogether.31 For if the ulti­ m ate conclusion of the supposed science is the recognition that all of our know ledge is grounded in faith, then we cannot claim to have a science of know ledge, we cannot properly claim to know w hat it is to know anything. W hen we find ourselves faced with this result we are

11 Introduction therefore bound to reexamine the "ab so lu tely unconditioned first prin­ ciple" from which we began. This "ab so lu tely unconditioned first principle" w as seZf-knowledge, the C ogito of D escartes, the "I th in k " of K ant. But in Fichte's science of know ledge this principle is not a dogm atic conclusion from think­ ing being to substantial being as in D escartes; nor yet is it a necessary " fo r m ," critically cleansed of all ontic comm itm ent, such as we see in K an t's Ich denke. Fichte’s " E g o " is a prim ordial A ct, a Tathandlung, a self-establish in g, the self-positing of Reason. N ow if in fact we can know ourselves as the self-positin g o f R eason, and if this is the only way that we can know ourselves to be rational at all, then K ant w as m istaken in thinking that our understanding does not operate intui­ tively, for on the contrary, Reason is always intuitive , it " g iv e s " its own o b je c t T hat is, Reason is alw ays "p o sitin g " itself, it is alw ays self-actualizing ; and this self-actualization, this intellectual intuition is what is at the foundation o f all possible experience. Fichte w as thus the founder of speculative philosophy— the intellectual vision of all things in the U niversal Logos— on a critical base. But the program m e of his science o f know ledge will not be properly concluded until we do know ourselves to be identical vyith the putative bu t aecessary "co m ­ m on so u rce" o f natural mechanism* and organic teleology ,S o when Fichte say s that "w e shall encounter the highest unity . . . as som e­ thing that we ought to, and yet cannot achieve" he is adm itting ,tha4 he has not succeeded in w hat he set out to do. In fact, his initial state­ m ent of the problem already indicates the inadequacy of his enter­ prise; for he declares that the T athandlung we are seeking is one that we m ust necessarily think (he italicizes denken him self) " a s the basis of all co n sciou sn ess." A bout 1797, Fichte h im self began to speak of "intellectual intui­ tion " (intellektuelle A nschauung) as "th e only firm standpoint for all p h ilosop h y ."32 H is need to do this w as a direct consequence of con­ tinued m editation on w hat w as im plicitly involved in the characteriza­ tion of the Ego as the T athandlung of self-positing. Probably he w as influenced by his younger friend Schelling— still, in his eyes, a faith ­ ful disciple. It m ust be em phasized, how ever, that Fichte did not ac­ cept the consequence that Spin oza's "u n ity of the mind with the whole of n atu re" either had to be, or even could be, dem onstrated. Since this "h igh est u n ity " remained for Fichte an unachievable ideal, it is obvious that Fichte did not hold that we m ust achieve it in order to prove to ourselves that we are indeed rational beings, or in order to know scientifically what our know ledge is. In fact, he held

12 Difference that our rational nature is known to us intuitively in the m oral law. T o those who jeered at h is appeal to "intellectual intuition" he re­ torted, " I should like to know how they view the consciousness of the m oral law ; or how they w ould undertake to construct the concepts of right, virtue, and so forth, which they yet undoubtedly p o s s e s s."33 But the grounding o f our know ledge of w hat ought to be in an in­ tellectual intuition, while ail o f our know ledge of w hat is continues to be grounded in em pirical intuition, merely legitim ates the breach in hum an nature which Hegel had been struggling for years to overcome. Long before he joined Schelling at Jena, H egel had become convinced that the whole K an tian conception of m orality as a sort of internal legislation im posed by R eason on our "lo w e r" nature w as not rational freedom at all, but the m ost insidious form of slavery. In form ulating the Hellenic ideal o f his earliest essay s he already envisaged the ra­ tional life as a com m unal and public expression of a spontaneous har­ m ony of all aspects o f hum an nature, not a private and personal stren­ uous assertion of the law o f reason again st the pulling and pushing of natural desires and instinctive drives.34 In any case, we do not know the K antian law o f R eason. Pure practical R eason does not, and cannot, tell us w hat to do in any actual situation. H egel rem arked in his Frank­ furt m anuscripts on the difficulties created for K an t by "conflicts of d u ty ." In Faith and K now ledge, he gives free rein to his irony again st Fichte on this topic. Fichte's Science of R ights and System of Ethics were in his eyes the reductio ad absurdum of all the ethical theories that begin from the established opposition of hum an reason and h u­ m an life. "T h e sole interest of R ea so n ," say s H egel, " is to suspend such rigid a n tith e se s." (90) T h e Gegensatz of " r e a s o n " a n d "th e p a s s io n s " — to speak of it in the w ay that is probably m ost fam iliar in English, though H egel does not refer to it thus— is the obvious one which we m ust overcom e before we can claim to have an intuitive know ledge of ourselves as rational organism s. The self-intuition o f R eason is the intellectual intuition on which genuine speculation is founded; it m ust not find itself faced by an incom prehensible opposite, an independent reality or thing-in-itself. W hat H egel calls V ernunft is not a distinct faculty which we discover, and which we then show by analysis and com parison to be the defining characteristic of the class of anim ate organism s called m an. V ernunft is not som ething discovered and clas­ sified in that w ay at all. T o speak of the antithesis between reason and the passio n s w ould be aw kw ard for H egel, because it w ould involve the abandonm ent o f the speculative standpoint at the very beginning,

13 Introduction and the complete assim ilation of intellectual intuition— the self-consti­ tutive activity— into the empirical or sense intuition through which we discover som ething other than ourselves. It w as K an t's great achieve­ ment that he show ed us how much o f the process of discovering ob­ jects of experience m ust be credited to our own activity as rational subjects. But w hat he failed to recognize, according to H egel, w as that the critical activity by which we distinguish between activity and p a s­ sivity, form and m atter, concept and sensation, both requires and ex­ emplifies a non-sensuous intuition. O nly our sense-know ledge is ac­ counted for by K an t's account of intuition. The know ledge of our own rational activity that the Critique of Pure R eason puts before us re­ mains yet unaccounted for as know ledge in the Critique. The recognition that the Critical Philosophy is itself know ledge w as the crucial step that Fichte took in proclaim ing his science o f know l­ edge. It w as natural enough that he should express this discovery in terms of a new kind of intuition. T o speak of it thus w as the sim plest, m ost m inim al, adjustm ent of the K antian perspective. The estab lish ­ ment of the science o f know ledge w as ju st a m atter of adding to K ant's account of experience, the one thing required to legitim ate the scientific statu s claimed for the critical account of experience itself. We have m erely to notice that when we are engaged in the critique of our own rational capacities we do have an indubitable aw areness of pur ow n rational activity; that this aw areness is an essential element in the activity because it is ju st w hat m akes it self-critical; and that this activity of pure reason is a self-constitutive activity (as our cri­ tique itself show s). T hus we are led to recognize in our critical phil­ osophy that we have an intellectual intuition of ourselves, because the activity that is the content o f this intuition is the one that consti­ tutes the form al structure of our ordinary empirical consciousness. The activity that is the form or concept in the synthesis (which is our philosophic consciousness) is our own com prehending of this truth about ourselves. But if we preserve the original K an tian an alysis of experience in this Fichtean w ay, and are content sim ply to supplem ent it as Fichte did, then our conception of our own nature will have two sides which m ust remain essentially sundered and opposed. For we now claim to have one kind o f intuitive know ledge of ourselves as rational, and another kind of intuitive know ledge o f ourselves as ani­ mal. If we could sim ply say that we have intellectual intuition of ourselves, and empirical intuition o f the outside w orld, we m ight perhaps be satisfied with our science of know ledge, for the opposition between " s e lf " and "o th e r," the "in sid e " and the "o u tsid e ," is one of

14 D ifference the m ost obvious facts of our experien ce, and a radical difference in our m odes o f intuition w ould be a p e rsu a siv e account of it. B u t as our own "in n e r w orld " is cognitively a co m p o site of both types o f intui­ tion, the relationship between sensible a n d intellectual intuition be­ com es a problem . T his is where S ch ellin g enters. O ur self-aw aren ess is in the fu llest sense organic. It is so m eth in g that grows. The p h ilo so ­ pher's view of it as founded in an in tu itio n of a special kind is only the culm inating phase of its perfect m a tu rity . Ordinary con sciousn ess seem s, o n the contrary, to have its e m p irical origin in sen sation, the m anifold which is som ehow synthesized in sensible intuition. H ow is it then, th at the intellectual intuition o f the philosopher, the critic of pure reason , derives, or at any rate, e m e rg e s from sense-intuition? This w as Schelling's problem in the S y s te m of Transcendental Ideal­ ism. This problem of the transition in o u r self-know ledge leads on to a more general problem in the critical th e o ry o f our knowledge o f nature as a w hole. For if we are aware of o u rse lv e s as organism s o f a very special kin d, as conscious or rational o rg a n ism s, how can we r e st con­ tent w ith K an t's general theory of o rg a n ism , and his account o f or­ ganic teleology as a purely regulative id e a l for our empirical kn ow l­ edge? O nce we have grasp ed the co n stitu tiv e role of R eason in our own experience, and have successfully traced its evolution fro m the prim itive spontaneity of sensory im agin atio n to the conscious auton­ om y o f m oral freedom , we are in a p o sitio n to assert that organic finality h a s more than a regulative fu n c tio n , that it is intuitively real­ ized, or exem plified in our experience. B u t further, when we seek to define our own Endzw eck, the con stitu tive purpose of the ratio n al or­ ganism , w e are driven by the organic co n cep tion of human experience that we have finally arrived at to fa ce S p in o za's problem o f m an's place in nature, in Spin oza's terms. W e m u st seek "th e union of the mind w ith the whole of nature," b e c a u se our empirically determ inate goals, the finite purposes of our " a n i m a l " nature, can only becom e fully rational in that absolute p ersp ective. O nly by overcom ing the opposition between intellectual and e m p irical intuition generally, can we m ediate the contrast between our in tellectu al and empirical aw are­ n ess o f ou r own nature. Hence K ant's C ritiq u e of Judgm ent, e sp e cial­ ly the "C ritiq u e o f Teleological Ju d g m e n t," became the poin t of de­ parture fo r a new era of genuinely sp e c u la tiv e philosophy. In this perspective, it is easy to see w h y H egel's attitude to Fichte w as so am bivalent. O n the one hand, F ich te had laid the fo un dation s for a new speculative philosophy upon critica l foundations. B u t on the

15 Introduction other, he had tried to complete his task by system atizing the very a s­ pect of K an t's theory that w as m ost objectionable, the sundering of hum an nature into reason and the sen ses, o f hum an experience into the phenom enal and the noum enal, and o f R eason itself into "p u re reason " and "p ractical reaso n ," or "r e a so n " and " fa ith ." Schelling's system , with its two philosophic sciences of transcendental idealism and natural philosophy m ight be, as yet, m ore a program than a real­ ity, but it w as at least an effort in the right direction and along the right lines. Hegel him self w as never satisfied with Schelling's (or his own) execution of the program of the Identity Philosophy. He w as, from the beginning, unhappy about Schelling's form ulation of the the­ ory of intuition. Eventually— at the cost of his break with Schelling— he arrived at a solution of that problem with which he w as fairly con­ tent. He went on w restling with the form ulation of his philosophy of nature for m ost of his life. But at no time did he lose faith in the sy s­ tematic ideal articulated in the original program . O n a cursory view, at least, Schelling's view of philosophical m eth­ od in this period appears w avering and erratic. He w as ob sessed about, perhaps indeed p ossessed by, the m om ent of vision at the end of the road. N evertheless it w as not the consciousness of the goal, but a cru­ cial startin g point for the true m ethod of philosophy that H egel owed to Schelling. The abiding significance o f the Difference essay em erges when we recognize that it is the first chapter o f a "d isco u rse on m eth­ o d " which Hegel carried on for the rest of his life. H is view s certainly evolved a great deal, and his w ay of articulating and expressing those views developed even more. But from this essay onw ards he m oved steadily forw ard, w hereas previously he had known w hat his goal w as, but had never been sure how to reach it. In this sense there is some justification— how ever slight— for the embittered conviction of the aged Schelling that H egel's later fam e and reputation all derived from w hat he, Schelling, had taught him.

4.

AN

ANALYSIS

(i)

THE

OF

^GENERAL

THE

ARGUMENT:

REFLECTIONS."

Let us try, now, to follow the argum ent of this first chapter of H egel's lifelong "d iscou rse on m eth od ." The occasion for it, as H egel tells us in his preface, is R einhold's m isunderstanding of the new speculative philosophy, and specifically his failure to grasp what is new and orig­

16 Difference inal in the work of Schelling. Schelling, Fichte, K a n t, Reinhold,35 and Bardili36 form in H egel's m ind a descending sequence of the possible degrees of consciousness with respect to speculation. Schelling know s w hat speculative philosophy is, and sees how it h as to be done in the light of K an t's critical attack; Fichte knows w hat it m ust do, but not how to do it; K ant know s w hat it m ust do, and th in k s he has proved that the task is im possible; Reinhold and Bardili d o not even know w hat the real task of speculation is, and only aim to produce an im ita­ tion of it ("p o p u la r" or "fo rm u la " philosophy) w h ich is more to the taste of the general public. The course of H egel's argum en t rises from this popular level to the true pitch of speculative thought and then falls again to the bathos of "everyth in g is w hat it is, and not another th in g." H egel's project is to show w hat is original in Sch ellin g's view , and how his view is superior to Fichte's.37 K ant— w ho h ardly gets into the essay by name at all, but w hose continual im plicit presence gives con­ siderable significance to every explicit m ention o f him — m ade a new beginning of speculative philosophy possible, th ough he did not real­ ize w hat he had done. Fichte saw how the new begin ning could be used. The "deduction of the categories" m ust be replaced by a more organic derivation of the categories from the unity of apperception, and one which does not depend upon the problem atic "thing-in-its e lf"; and the unity of apperception along with everyth ing derived or deduced from it m ust be view ed not as form al structures but as activ­ ities. K an t's failure to understand w hat he had done is all sum m ed up, for H egel, in his treatm ent o f the categories of "m o d a lity ." The other nine categories are genuine m om ents in the self-con stitutive activity o f hum an experience, but when we em ploy the categories of m odality we presuppose "th e non-identity of subject and o b je c t." W e can see w hy Hegel say s this if we look at § 76 and § 77 o f the Critique of Judgm ent. Here K an t claim s that: H um an understanding cannot avoid the n ecessity of draw ing a distinction between the possibility and the actu ality of things. The reason for this lies in our own selves and the nature of our cognitive faculties. For were it not that two entirely hetero­ geneous factors, understanding for conceptions and sensuous intuition for the corresponding O bjects, are required for the exer­ cise of these faculties, there w ould be no such distinction be­ tween the possible and the actual. This m eans that if our under­

17 Introduction standing were intuitive it would have no objects but such as are actual. Conceptions, which are m erely directed to the possibility of an object; and sen suous intuitions, which give u s som ething and yet do not thereby let us cognize it as an object, w ould both cease to exist . . . the distinction of possible from actual things is one that is merely valid subjectively for hum an understanding. . . . For reason never w ithdraw s its challenge to us to adopt som ething or other existing with unconditioned necessity— a root origin— in which there is no longer to be any difference between possibility and actuality, and our understanding h as absolutely no conception to answ er to this Idea. . . .38 N ow since speculation is founded in intellectual intuition the truly speculative intellect operates on w hat K an t calls the "stan d ard of the intuitive or archetypal un d erstan d in g."39 But K ant did not realize that this w as p ossib le; and specifically he did not realize that he w as him ­ self operating on this standard, the standard of R eason itself, in carry­ ing out the critique of R eason. Speculation is R eason's own answ er to the challenge that it "n ev er w ith d raw s." Hence speculation m ust be­ gin from "unconditioned n ecessity ," not from the distinction of "th e actu al" and "th e p o ssib le ." This "unconditioned n ecessity " is w hat Fichte discovered in his principle of "p u re th in kin g." But Hegel be­ lieves that Fichte w as not faithful to the principle he has discovered because he left the whole realm of natural phenom ena, given in em­ pirical intuition, quite unconnected with " pure th in kin g" and its nec­ essary structures. In point of fact, as I have already suggested, Fichte had no thought o f doing w hat Schelling set out to do, because he w as quite satisfied with the architectonic structure of the Critical Philoso­ phy. He did not have the standard of the intuitive intellect before his eyes in quite the sam e w ay that Schelling did; and he certainly did not have the driving urge to reform the w hole relation betw een pure and practical reason which H egel had gained from his long struggle with K antian ethics. The "infinite p ro g re ss" in m orality which Fichte accepted as the destiny of hum anity, w as for H egel an endless tread­ mill of internalized slavery ; it placed m an in the situation of Sisyphu s or T an talus, it deprived him even of the rational possibility of a real self-fulfilm ent that could be know n and enjoyed. W hen we read H egel's preface again st this background, we can see why the critique of Fichte h as to be preceded b y a series of general reflections about the nature and task of speculative philosophy. If the learned world is to understand the relation between Fichte and Schel-

18 Difference ling properly they m ust first be m ade to see how different the real task o f philosophy is from the im age of it that is presented in the pop­ ular philosophy of a m an like Reinhold. It is prototypical of H egel's whole career as a professional philosopher that he should begin his first published essay with a discussion o f the history of philosophy. The apparent confusion of tongues in the history of speculative phil­ osophy w as K an t's great argum ent in favor of his dialectical concep­ tion of pure reason. By reassertin g the presence of a philosophia perennis, H egel aim ed to show that the dialectic of philosophical ideas is subordinate to, and instrum ental for, the focal concern of rational speculation, which never varies. But at the sam e time he w anted to distinguish his notion of the philosophia perennis from the commonsense view of the philosophical tradition as a series of prior attem pts to solve perennial problem s which can be used by beginners as exer­ cises or practice studies. The low est possible view of the history of philosophy is the m erely historical approach, the approach which ignores the perennial char­ acter of philosophy altogether. M en 's opinions about the w orld and about their place in it are one p ossible subject for a historian, and certainly not the least interesting one. But it is precisely the task of the philosopher in his relation to the public to m ake clear why this history is interesting. A historian of philosophy ought to have som e general conception of his subject, in term s of which he can answ er this question. Reinhold satisfies this condition; so he is not quite at the bottom o f the ladder. But his im age of previous philosophy as m aterial for exercises is the perfect expression of an alienated con­ sciousness, for it com pletely m isrepresents the truth that in doing philosophy one is form ing oneself, "fo u n d in g and groun ding" one's own being. Reinhold em phasizes the eigentümlich aspect of philo­ sophical positions. T his is an im plicit acknow ledgm ent of the selffounding character of ph ilosoph y; but since the only self that R ein­ hold can recognize is the private consciousness o f the individual, he m isunderstands w hat Fichte and Schelling g rasp ed : that philosophy is the consciousness o f the absolute self. He thinks of this insight as being their peculiar idiosyn crasy (178). But the recognition of the absolute self is ju st w hat philosophy is needed fo r; and it is also what is needed if there is to be philosophy. Reinhold's view of philosophy as a progressive developm ent in which personal idiosyncrasies m an ifest them selves is itself idiosyn­ cratic. Equally idiosyncratic is the opposite view of Fichte, that phil­ osophy really has no history, and cannot exhibit any personal idiosyn­

19 Introduction crasies. Fichte is certain that his science of know ledge is the one true ph ilosoph y; and Hegel agrees that it is an expression of truly specula­ tive thought. But Fichte's inability to understand either the perennial or the personal character o f philosophy leads him to su ggest that S p i­ noza could not have believed his own philosophy, and that the G reeks did not even know w hat philos^tphy w as (87). In Reinhold's conception there is no absolute know ledge at all; in Fichte's there is nothing else bu t absolute know ledge. The true conception o f philosophy in its h is­ tory is a synthesis of these opposites. O n the one hand, one cannot enter upon the study of philosophy as a personal concern: one m ust set aside personal concerns entirely. But, on the other hand, in this absolute sacrifice of self, one becom es the m outhpiece of one's own time. The speculative philosopher sp eaks with the voice of universal Reason. But when he sp eak s from the past, his philosophical auditors in the new time will be those who can recognize "th e organic shape that R eason has built fo r itself out of the m aterial of a particular a g e " (88). Philosophy arises only when it is needed. The need for it is felt precisely when w hat philosophy itself needs is not present. Philosophy is the overcom ing of Entzw eiung, of dichotom y in consciousness. In the history of philosophy the fundam ental dichotomy is between God (the absolute self) and the w orld (the totality of objective reality). A s long as the presence of God(everyw here in the cultural worlcf)is direct­ ly apprehended and felt, philosophy does not arise at all. But when we begin to understand the w orld, and to m anipulate it for our own ends, nature ceases to be "d iv in e " and we have the sense of alienation from the pow er that creates and sustain s it, and us within it. In our own culture the intellect has as its goal the graspin g of the order o f nature in its eternal, unchanging aspect, the form ulation of its law s. Yet the more this intellectual endeavour appears to succeed, the more the sense of alienation increases. The reason for this is that our intellec­ tual com prehension of nature as law excludes the spontaneity and freedom which belonged to the pre-philosophical aw areness of the natural world as the expression of the divine life. But the intellect is, of course, alw ays aware that all of the finite phenomena which are correlated in its system of law s require an infinite or absolute ground. So "w h en life as R eason steps aw ay into the distance, the totality of lim itations is at the sam e time nullified, and connected with the A b so ­ lute in this nullification, and hence conceived and posited as mere ap ­ pearan ce" (90). T his is exactly the result that K ant arrived at. The whole of our experience, which m ust be form ulated by us in the cate­

20 Difference gories of the understanding, is phenomenal, and hence it presupposes a noum enal foundation, the Ding-an-sich, o f which it is the appear­ ance. The phenom ena are nothing in th em selves. T o call them phe­ nom ena is thus to nullify them, to deny th a t they have independent being. But it is also to concede that they arise fro m som ething else, they are appearances of som ething that does h ave being in its own account. A nd if we took aw ay all possibility of finite appearance, the problem ­ atic thing-in-itself would be nothing-in-itself likewise. Hence "T h e split between the A bsolute [the noumenal reality] and the totality of lim itations [the phenomenal world] v a n ish e s." A world which has lost its soul in this w ay , how ever, will not for some time recognize w hat has happened to it. It will m ake do with a dualistic philosophy— an intellectual copy o f the absolute positing of true speculation. The A bsolute is intellectually fixed as a noumenal reality— to use the K antian terminology— a n d absolute opposition is accepted in lieu of absolute identity. T his is not surprising, because, as we shall see, absolute identity involves a b so lu te opposition, and or­ dinary consciousness is full o f oppositions— though it only rem ains healthy because o f a secure feeling for "th e m igh t of un ion ." The need of philosophy arises, contingently, when the aesthetic and religious life of the time can no longer su stain the sense of living unity. "F a r aw ay and long a g o " in classical Greece there w as an im ­ m ediate sense of the harmony of life. T his w as an aesthetic sense of the divine life— a paradise in which the ap p le of intellectual discord w as still to be eaten. A fter the fall, the d isco rd s were eventually h ar­ m onized again in a long "ag e of faith " in w hich the "m igh t of un ion " w as sustained by the dominance of religion. The R eform ation m arked the beginning o f the culture in which the n eed o f philosophy becam e for the first time fully explicit. D escartes' du alism of thinking and ex­ tended substance w as the philosophical exp ression of this need, and Hegel took the French Revolution to be the practical expression o f it in social life.40 W hat H egel say s about art as the expression of the A bsolute here is in full accord with Schelling's conception o f aesthetic consciousness a s the highest m ode of experience. But th e em phasis on religion is m ore distinctly his own. A s we can see from Faith and Know ledge the underlying concern in his analysis of the d isrupted cultural conscious­ n ess o f his time w as not just to make plain the need of philosophy but to prepare his audience for the proclam ation o f a new gospel. The proclam ation will be m ade hy the Identity Philosophy itself, but it

21 Introduction will be em bodied in a new religion, a new political and social culture, in short a new w ay of life.41 A dualism of the C artesian type m akes a peaceful division of cul­ tural life betw een faith and intellect relatively easy. But in the realm o f the intellect the dualism w as fearlessly attacked by Spinoza. O n the speculative level no one understood w hat he w as doin g; bu t within the context of the dichotom y the intellectual purport of his w ork w as easy to appreciate and the reaction w as violent. A s Lessin g rem arked in his conversations with Jacobi, Spinoza w as a "d ea d d o g " in Euro­ pean philosophy for a hundred years. The dom inant influence through­ out this period w as his exact contem porary John Locke, through whose conception of the philosopher as an underlaborer clearing aw ay specu­ lative rubbish one can fairly say that "th e realm of the intellect rose to such pow er that it could regard itself as secure from R easo n " (92). Thus m odern culture entered the time of enligh ten m ent42 W hen the need for a speculative overcom ing o f the basic dkh oia= mies o f existence is felt in a culture in which all the dichotom ies have been sharply form ulated by the intellect, it naturally takes the intel­ lectual form o f a quest for the ultim ate foundation of experience, the principle from which everything can be deduced or derived. T he phil­ osophical justification for the focal position that is allotted to Reinhold in the D ifference e ssa y — in spite o f the low opinion o f his philo­ soph ical achievement and his ultim ate historical significance which Hegel so trenchantly exp resses— is that no less an authority than fich te had ascribed to him "th e im m ortal m erit of h aving m ade philo­ sophical R eason aware . . . that the w hole o f philosophy m ust be led back to one unique basic p rin cip le";43 and in his continuing quest for this G ru n dsatz Reinhold had at length fastened upon the form al logi­ cal principle of Identity. T his is the em ptiest possible form al expres­ sion for the lost "m igh t o f u n io n "; and it is only one side of the intel­ lectual presupposition of speculative philosophy. The other is the intellect itself— the consciousness that h as "step p e d out of the total­ ity " and become an observing intellect which fixes the real in the context o f an abstract range o f possibilities. T his polar conception of the real and the ideal is the basic error o f the intellect. The real "m igh t o f union " now lies hid in the "n ig h t" o f pre-reflective consciousness— And of the "d a r k a g e s." H egel does not choose, here, to consider the struggle betw een faith and reason, however. T h at study, which he pursues at length in the Phenom enology, begins in Faith and Know ledge. Here he looks rather

22 D ifference at th e religious expression of the trium ph of the intellect, the dogm a of C reation . The first article of the Creed in that earlier age of faith w as th at "in the begin n in g" G od created the w orld "o u t of nothing T he first created thing w as light which shone in the prim eval dark­ n ess. It is in this religious form that the speculative significance of reflection can best be appreciated. For the restoration of true specula­ tion in a w orld that has now been completely enlightened by the intel­ lect, will only be possible through a properly reflective understanding of th e earlier religious tradition of which speculative philosophy is the true heir. H e g el's doctrine of the Creation owes as much to the first chapter o f Jo h n as to the first chapter of G enesis or to the Nicene Creed. The ligh t that shines in the prim eval darkn ess is the light of R eason— the L o go s that w as "b ego tten not m a d e "; and it seem s that the nothing out o f which G od the Father m ade the world is to be identified with the creative m ight of the Father him self. We should note that there are tw o sides to the speculative interpretation of all this religious lan­ g u age. O n the side of the philosophy of nature, " lig h t" refers both to the p h ysical principle of light (and heat) and to the principle o f life; and " n ig h t" m eans not only d arkn ess but that which, being im pervi­ ou s to light, is show n up by it, the heavy m atter which is alw ays in­ w ard ly dark till the higher light o f life itself shines within it. O n the side of transcendental philosophy " lig h t" stands for the reflective con sciousn ess which discovers all the creative activity (of the Father?) th at h as already gone on in the "n ig h t" of unconscious n ature; and "th e n o th in g " m eans the m ighty force o f thought, the ab y ss out of which everyth ing comes and into which it is hurled. G od him self, when not identified with this a b y ss, which is both his creative pow er and his negative side, is identical with the life and order of the creative activ­ ity. T h u s the night or the abyss is G od the Father, while R eason in n ature is G od the Son, the L o go s; and speculative R eason returning fro m the creation and reconciling it with its ground in the divine pow ­ er w ill be God the H oly Spirit, "proceedin g from the Father and the S o n " or "p o sitin g being in non-being, as becoming [the Father], di­ chotom y in the A bsolute as its appearance [the Lo go s], the finite in the infinite as life [the S p irit]" (9 3 -4 ). The trinitarian dogm a of the C h ristian faith is a proper religious expression o f speculative truth; w hile on the other hand, the Judaic creation story (in G enesis) ex­ p resses the truth from the "stan d p o in t of dichotom y." If we approach the problem of philosophy in a reflective w ay— that is, a s observers of a dichotomy in our own consciousness and our cul­ ture which needs to be overcome or healed— then we are bound to

23 Introduction give both an an alysis of the need and a prescription for the cure. But before we can think of doing this we are reflectively bound to examine first, in the sam e spirit of calm observation, the question o f w hat ca­ pacity we have to deal with these philosophical problem s at all. T hus, after D escartes expressed the divided condition of m odern culture in clear intellectual term s, as a dualism of thinking and extended su b ­ stance, we find that Spin oza's answ er to the challenge thus posed by R eason to R eason w as not properly heeded. The voice that w as heard rather, w as that of Locke, who asked w hether we are in a position to say anything at all about the ultim ate substan ce of th in gs; and Locke's E ssay w as the beginning of a whole tradition which H egel calls (in Faith and Know ledge) "th e reflective philosophy of subjectivity." It appears that, as far as the speculative purpose of philosophy is concerned, this reflective philosophy m ust remain eternally defeated, since it is self-defeating. The self-defeating character o f reflection in philosophy is w hat R einhold's endless m ultiplication o f m ethodologi­ cal prolegom ena and pream bles illustrates. But it is only for Reinhold and his like that defeat is inevitable, not for the principle of reflection itself. Reflection can really become "th e instrum ent of ph ilosoph y." It can become R eason. T his is the speculative significance o f K an t's "C opernican R evolu tion ." In the Critique of Pure R eason reflection becam e the m eans for the reestablishm ent of speculative philosophy through a genuine conquest o f the C artesian dualism . In order to see how and w hy this is so, we m ust exam ine the structure of philosophical reflection. W hatever ap ­ pears in reflective consciousness does so as an object of consciousness, as som ething other than, and opposed to, the thinking subject to whom it appears. But, at the sam e time— as we already find Locke say ­ ing— nothing can appear to the m ind except its own products, its "id e a s." T h u s when we reflect critically— as K an t did— upon the pro­ cess by which the m ind produces all o f its Lockean "fu rn itu re " we recognize that w hat initially appears to us as the p assiv e reflection of a world o f finite objects that present them selves, is actually an activity in which the m ind presents to itself the results of its ow n synthesizing activity. T h u s, w hat we do consciously in philosophical reflection, that is, m ake our own m ental activity into an object for observation, is ju st w hat we are doing unconsciously in ordinary consciousness. T hus philosophical reflection discovers that all consciousness is re­ flection. O ur own activity is everyw here reflected back to us. It is only the structure of reflection itself— the process o f dividing subject from object and opposing them — that disguises this from us. In the critical perspective, we can see that reflection is essentially antinom ies. For

24 D ifference con sciousn ess m ust have an object, and the object m u st appear as other than the receptive activity of the intellect, w hich m erely ob­ serv es it. But when reflection is turned upon itself, w hen we become consciously reflective, we observe that w hat reflection is, is not w hat it ap p ears to be (the having or observing of an object) b u t rather ju st the opposite (the positing or constitution of an object). A t the sam e tim e, we m ust reflectively affirm that reflection is w hat it ap pears to be. It is the having o f an object, and for this reason, we are only able to produce the critique of reflective reason by observing the process of conscious experience as the appearance of a thing-in-itself. Until reflection "m ak es itself its own object" and so "b e co m e s R ea­ s o n " by "n u llify in g itse lf" in this discovery of its o w n antinomic character, the task that faces it is a h opeless one. it is fo rev er involved in an infinite regress (theoretically) or an infinite progress (practically). T h e goal of philosophy is to com prehend the unity o f all that is. In the w orld of the intellect the obvious hopelessness of ever achieving " a whole o f the intellect's own k in d " is the "force o f the negative A b so lu te ,"44 ju st as Spin oza's Ethics is the presentation o f "th e force th at posits the opposed objective and subjective to tality " (95). But the reflective intellect rem ains stubbornly realistic, insisting on the inde­ pendent being o f the w orld that presents itself in co n sciou sn ess, and ignoring the fact that nothing in finite consciousness ever really is. Every conscious datum refers beyond itself in one w ay or another; an d the ultim ate ground— Locke's Substance or K an t's thing-in-itself — m ust be "g iv e n up for lo st" because it is "n o th in g " (i.e., nothing determ inate). K an t's Copernican revolution involved a recognition o f the anti­ nom ic character o f reflection. But K ant did not overcome the antinom y properly. Instead, he turned the opposite aspects of the antinom y into the phenomenal world o f intellectual necessity and the noumenal w orld of rational freedom . The phenomenal world o f K an t is the sphere where intellect rem ains suprem e, and "does not becom e R ea­ s o n " (96). But through its self-critical labours the intellect now know s th at it is dealing only with phenom ena which are nothing-in-them selves, because they are only the appearance of what tru ly is. T he w ay forw ard from here lies in the recognition of the process o f appearing a s a necessary m om ent of w hat truly is. We have to com prehend ex­ perience as the presentation o f the A bsolute to itself, the self-know l­ edge of the A bsolute. Hence when Reinhold complains th at the basic fa u lt of all p ast philosophy is "th e habit . . . of regarding thinking as som ething m erely subjective" (97), he would at least b e right about

25 Introduction all reflective philosophy, if he understood properly w hat non-subjective thinking w as. But in fact he rem ains m erely a philosopher of subjective reflection him self. Ju st w hat Reinhold m eant by his appeal to the learned world to conceive of thinking as an objective activity I have not discovered. But Schelling and Hegel had already taken up the challenge in the form in which K ant posed it. The noumenal world of freedom m ust be united with the phenomenal realm of necessity by som ething more pow erful than an act of w hat K ant, in the introduction to the Critique o f Judgm ent (cf. also §§ 69, 75) called "reflectin g " judgm ent. K ant had declared that all teleological concepts were m erely regulative (i.e., subjectively valid for the guidance of our reflections) not constitutive (i.e., objectively valid for the constitution of objects). This is the situ­ ation of R eason "o p eratin g as intellect" (97). Schelling and H egel in­ sisted that, on the contrary, all speculative thinking w as both teleolo­ gical and objective. Thus nothing could count as objective thinking for them if the thought had to be "a p p lie d " to the m atter. The thinking m ust constitute the object, and it m ust use the stan dard of its own Self-constitution in doing so.45 W hen the whole range of our finite ex­ perience is consistently organized in this w ay we shall have the A b so ­ lute before us as "a n objective totality, a whole of kn ow ledge" (98). Instead of an endless chain we shall have a complete cycle of exist­ ence. Every proper part of this totality will be an organic system with the sam e cyclic structure as the totality. T his comm unity of structure is the "connection with the A b so lu te" that gives the part its standing. N othing counts as real know ledge, or as an acceptable explanation, unless it places the explanandum in the context of an organic totality of this kind. H aving thus dealt, both negatively and positively, with the intellect as an instrum ent of philosophy, Hegel now turns to the question of "the right relation between "h e a lth y " intellect and speculative Reason. He h as ju st laid dow n that speculative philosophy is the only real knowledge, and he has show n why isolated reflective cognitions are not knowledge. W hen reflection becom es philosophical and exam ines itself critically " its positing appears to R easo n to be non-positing, its products to be n eg atio n s" (9 5 -6 ). But before Locke disturbed the naive realism of ordinary consciousness, and K ant im prisoned u s in a world of appearances of which we are the unconscious stage-m anagers, we Were all sure that we have quite a lot of real know ledge; and as soon as we leave the philosophy class-room we start living in a real w orld, praying to a real G od and so on. The self-nullifying certainty of criti­

26 Difference cal reason which tells us that we have no w ay o f knowing this real world is forgotten. W hat is the relation of philosophic know ledge to this ordinary know ledge? W hat is the proper relation between philos­ ophy and common sense? Can we reflectively develop a philosophy of common sense? H egel's answ er to this last question is negative. Com mon sense is essentially unphilosophical, and as soon as it develops philosophical pretensions it becomes unhealthy. The man of sound sense has m any principles to guide him in his life. In choosing and applying the one that is appropriate to his situation he is guided b y his feeling for life as a whole. When a critical philosopher com es along— Socrates is the m ost notable exam ple— he finds it easy enough to throw common sense into confusion by m aking it reflect upon itself. The proper de­ fense against the Socratic elenchus was to refuse to argue. So far as it remains healthy, common sense is bound to regard philosophy with suspicion. In order to p ass from the intuitive know ledge of feeling to the speculative know ledge of Reason, it is necessary to pass through the fire of philosophical reflection. But when he is asked to cast his naive reflection into the abyss of speculative reflection, the man of sense can only assum e that he is in the presence of the evil one. Hence it comes about that intensely religious sp irits— Socrates, Spin ­ oza, Fichte— are held to be impious men or ath eists. The reflective form of com m on-sense— the way in which we naively deal with such dichotomies as actu al/p ossib le, real/ideal, and appear­ an ce/tru th — is the form of faith. H ealthy com m on sense has its feet on the ground, yet it w alks in the sight of God. "T h e earth is the Lord's, and all that therein is " indicates a relation of reflection to the A bsolute, for it preserves the "form of su n d erin g "; yet "reflection is certainly R easo n " because finite experience is here taken up into the infinite. But in this common sense faith it is the aspect of opposition— "all flesh is as g r a s s " etc.— that is typically present to consciousness. So when speculation in sists on the redemption of the finite world here and now— not at the Last Trum p— it appears as the Antichrist. Pre-critical speculation— any monistic form of w hat K an t called dogm atic m etaphysics— is bound to be offensive to common sense be­ cause of its apparent one-sidedness. T hus Berkeley's idealism appears to Dr. Johnson very easy to refute. But when in the m aterialism of La M ettrie and D 'H olbach the opposite is raised to the A bsolute, the sense of absurdity turns to one of moral horror. T he speculative read­ er, one who can recognize "flesh of his flesh ," will not be deceived by any merely apparent one-sidedness. He will ask rather whether the

27 Introduction philosopher has really fallen victim to his time. T hus Hegel is pre­ pared to defend D 'H olbach (171); and his prim ary critical concern is to show ju st where Fichte's speculation "su ccu m b s to the fate of its time// (101). T hus common sense is norm ally enraged at speculation on two counts. First, it does not understand the very project of suspending the dichotom y— and so far as it com prehends the results it m ust find them im pious, because the salvation of the finite here and now is o f­ fensive to faith. Secondly, what it does perceive is the one-sidedness of speculation— the apparent suppression of one of the poles of the dichotomy. This m ay or m ay not appear im pious— depending on what is outw ardly su p p ressed — but it is bound to appear absurd. A specula­ tive theory that is completely successful— in H egel's view — yet m an­ ages to offend common sense in every possible way is Spin oza's fatal­ ism (to give it the name that show s what is outw ardly suppressed). D 'H olbach 's m aterialism plays rather the cultural role that Hegel ascribes to a system that "strik e s down with one stroke the whole m ass of finitudes that adheres to the opposite principle" (102). Com mon sense, being rooted in "fe e lin g ," is an aspect of our social nature. The society which because of its natural climatic environment has produced D escartes, N ew ton and the Enlightenm ent, m ay take some time to accept and come to a proper appreciation of the philoso­ phical revolution which the advent of the Identity Philosophy repre­ sents. Hegel seem s to think that common sense itself m ust be brought to complete confusion and despair before the new philosophy can triumph. Yet speculation has the principle of the reality of know ledge in common with common sense. A fter all the intellectual oppositions have been nullified in philosophical reflection, the m ountains will once more be known as m ountains and the rivers as rivers— not as phe­ nomenal appearances of a hidden power. The "n ig h t" of the enlight­ ened intellect will be transform ed into the "n o o n d a y " of R eason ; and the noonday nf the noonday of real life. W hat distin guishes the know ledge of speculation from that of comsense is its systematic character. So far, we have advanced with critical reflection to the Kantian conception of a philosophical system : 'the unity of the m anifold m odes of know ledge under one id ea."46 And we have alluded to Reinhold's discovery of the principle of iden­ tity as the Grundsatz under which all m odes of know ledge are to be subsum ed. But from our study of why common sense cannot under­ stand speculation we have discovered that the speculative overcom ing o f a dichotom y m ust at the sam e time preserve the dichotom y. It is no

28 Difference surprise to find, therefore, that H egel's next step is to show how the principle of Identity must comprehend its own "ap p lication " when it enters into the "th in kin g that is the absolute activity of R easo n " (96) By so doing it becom es not a proposition, but an antinom y— a pair of contradictory propositions which describe the opposite aspects of con­ scious reflection. In this connection Hegel needs to show us that the definition of substance from which Spinoza began was already a speculative antin­ omy of the same sort. He m ust do this because Schelling had chosen to expound the new philosophy of Identity on the model of Spinoza's geometric method. It is clear, too, that he m eans to dem onstrate the superiority of Spin oza's procedure— how ever dogm atic and uncritical it m ay look— as compared with the essentially subjective procedure of analysing the foundations of consciousness that both Reinhold and Fichte practiced 47 But in spite of this polem ical concern, the concession that "n o phil­ osophical beginning could look w orse than S p in o za's" (105)— backed up as it is by the whole critique of the Grundsatz approach to system ­ atic philosophy— contains a d evastatin g implicit critique of Schelling's method. N or should we forget the historical lesson of Spin oza's hun­ dred years as a "d ead d o g ." H egel speaks in the Preface of the great millenium of R eason when "fro m begining to end it is philosophy it­ self whose voice will be h eard " (83). W hen that day daw ns no doubt all readers of philosophy will understand the foundations of specula­ tive system s properly. W hat we are now bound to ask, however, is w hat need will philosophy satisfy when the great day arrives? Spec­ ulation is the essential self-mirroring of the A bsolute, the recognition of finite experience as the self-othering which is unavoidably neces­ sary if the A bsolute is to exist as self-knowledge. But how can this absolute knowledge come to birth except through the experience of reflective dichotom ies? The philosophical millenium of the Preface will be the day when the A bsolute can be "sh o t out of a p isto l."4S Hegel has already shown us w hy that day will never dawn. Schelling/t; procedure is that of one who expects it with tom orrow 's sunrise. It w as Fichte, not Schelling, who set the pattern for H egel's interpretation of the formal principle of identity in such a w ay as to make a Gegensatz out of it. In the first Science of Knowledge (1794), Fichte treated " A = A " as an abstraction from the self-positing of the Ego.' But his procedure was subjective only. Hegel proceeds objectively/ that is, he treats the formal principle itself as the absolute activity of Reason. The object here is, as Hegel say s, knowledge, for we know

29 introduction that the absolute activity of Reason m ust be a self-knowing. Seen in this perspective " A = A " becom es the form ula of the sem antic theory of truth. The first A stands for the truth in the mind of the subject, and the second A for the corresponding state of things in the w orld— Reinhold's "m a tte r," to which the pure concept of reflective thought is to be "a p p lie d ." As soon as we look at the proposition m this way we see that it is indeed a Gegensatz. For what "A = A " asserts is the Parmenidean identity of thought and being. But since the thought is evidently different from what is thought about, we cannot assert " A — A " w ithout at the sam e time asserting "A =^~ A ." " A " in the mind does not equal " A " in the world. So in order to make any effec­ tive use of the subjective principle of identity (which has perfect for­ mal validity as a hypothesis of pure thought in isolation-—" I f any­ thing is A, then it is A ") we m ust say "A = B ," the object of my thought is this real being. W hen we think truly we cannot just think hypothetically. Yet there is no more absolute and necessary difference than the difference between thought and being.'50 In the world of finite experience, to which the formal logic of iden­ tity is supposed by its proponents to apply, the antinomy appears as the endlessness of the search for an ultim ate ground. We want to think truly of "w h at is " and we are faced with the fact that nothing in our experience is self-sub sisten t: everything is the effect of some cause arid becomes the cause of some further effect. N othing is cause itself, nothing abides, nothing remains equal to itself. Speaking more generally, nothing contains its own explanation within itself, nothing is its own logos. In order to be what it is ("everyth in g is what it is and not another thing") everything requires that some other thing should equally be: and in order for the second thing to be, the first thing m ust cease to be (or be not yet). The causal relation is just the sim plest illustration of this. For it showrs us how the being of every­ thing finite requires its own nonbeing, and the being of som ething else in its place, for the sake of its own finitude (which is just what gives it its identity as distinct from other things). One can of course cling fast to the principle of identity, and move straight from the transitoriness of all finite existence to a sort of Parmenidean m ysticism . Thus one accepts the nullification of all finite experience in the antinomy, and the intellect does not "gro w into R ea­ son ," but is left unperturbed in ordinary life, because it is sim ply an­ nihilated in the religious consciousness of the A bsolute. A s soon as one thinks of God, heaven and earth pass aw ay; but from Sunday to Sunday one can live beneath the one and upon the other quite com ­

30 Difference fortably nevertheless. This is the position of Jacobi. Reinhold is more naive. He clings to the principle of identity without recognizing its antinomic character. He postulates the "m a tte r" to which thinking, with its principle of identity, is "ap p lied." Hegel calls this " a very in­ adequate synthesis." But inadequate as it is, it still involves the antin­ omy, for w hen the principle " A = A " is applied to so m e matter (i.e., to something other than thought itself) it is also asserted in the form " A = B." T h e "absolute stuff" which is the matter to which thought is applied h a s to "fit in" to the conceptual patterns in which thought strives to construct the self-identity of what truly is. In Hegel's view this doctrine of "fitting in" is the only original contribution of Bardili to the great programme for the "reduction of philosophy to logic." Reinhold h ad greeted Bardili's Outline of Primary Logic ( 1800 ) with great enthusiasm, declaring himself a follower of this new way. But Fichte was the first to say, and Hegel agreed, that Bardili's theory was only Reinhold's philosophy "warmed over" ( 188 ). W hat is needed, if we are to transcend the standpoint of reflection and achieve a truly speculative grasp of the principle of identity is ^transcendental intuition/'01 We have already seen that this claim re­ fers to K an t's statement of what is required in order for u s to com pre­ hend the unity of m echanical and teleological explanation in the ulti­ m ate ground which R eason requires u s to postulate. But now Hegel is ready to show us why K ant must be wrong in holding that what is required cannot be supplied by any m eans at our disp osal. If Kant were right, then all cognition would come to grief, even the limited cognition that Kant believes we do have. All the relative identities (of concept and empirical intuition) must be connected with the Absolute if they are to have real cognitive status. But when they are connected they become antinomies. T hus, without transcendental intuition, phil­ osophic knowledge can only lead us to the negative conclusion of Par­ m enides: "B ein g is, N ot-Being is n ot." We can show, through the su b­ ordinate principle of causality or of sufficient reason, that the being of everything is related to (depends on) the being of som ething else; hence that its being as finite requires its own nonbeing; and since the chain of related grounds is an infinite regress theoretically, or an in­ finite p rogress practically, the whole that truly is becom es a contradic­ tion and is really nothing. "P ure kn ow in g," without intuition can have only an unknow able Ding-an-sich as its object. Intuition m ust there­ fore have a transcendental status if there is to b e positive k n o w l e d g e at all. We m u st be able to unite the absoluteness of pure being (or the activity of pure thinking) with the transitoriness of intuited existence

31 Introduction (in the synthesis of finite thought). We can do this in the case of our own self-know ledge: the unity is the intuited act of "se lf-p o sitin g ." But that self-positing is at the sam e time, and necessarily, the positing o f a natural order in which we exist as m ortal, finite, elem ents.02 So what is intuited even in self-intuition is "a n activity of both intelli­ gence and n atu re" (110). The conceptual m om ent, the aspect of thought, is the m om ent of freedom ; the intuitive m om ent, the aspect of nature, is the m om ent of necessity. We should notice that the self as concept, as a free activity of thinking, know s itself directly in philosophical reflection; but as a natural being it has to be "deduced as a link in the chain of n ecessity ." T hat the self is an activity of both intelligence and nature is only intuited properly when the task of speculation is complete. But, at the sam e time, if we try to philosophize without the intuition of the whole, we shall be obliged to wander, as the G oddess tells Parm enides that all other m ortals do, "ign orantly, with divided minds and scattered th o u g h ts."03 Thus from the point of view of reflection, this intuition of the whole is the one thing that can and m ust be postulated as a condition o f the possibility of philosophical know ledge. There can be no justifi­ cation for postulating Ideas, no excuse for the celebrated postulates of God, and im m ortality; and no need to postulate freedom , if thinking itself is freedom . But how does the intuition of the whole differ as a postulate from G od? W hen we raise this question we come back again to the influence of Spinoza on the philosophy of Identity. K ant p ostu ­ lates G od as a m oral Providence, a rational guarantee of the summum bonum.54 He agrees that the archetypal intelligence is the only ground in which m echanism and finality can be satisfactorily united: but our theoretical need to appeal to final causes does not ju stify the postulate of God because "th eism w ould first have to succeed in proving to the satisfaction of the determ inant judgm ent that the unity of end in m at­ ter is an im possible result of the mere m echanism of nature. O ther­ wise it is not entitled definitely to locate its ground beyond and above n a t u r ^ '55 "P o std a tin g G o d " m eans, for K ant, positing som ething 'iioer die N atur h in au s." This is the postulate that Hegel declares ille­ gitim ate.56 From the (Kantian) standpoint of philosophical reflection We can best express what Hegel is prepared to permit as the postulate that "th e unity of end in m atter" is not "a n im possible result of the mere m echanism of n atu re." He claim s that for the sake of reflective cognition we are required to postulate that the finality of nature coin­ cides with its m echanism , i.e., we m ust abandon the sim ple Kantian identification of nature with causal necessity. The A bsolute is Fichte's

32 Difference God as A bsolute Su bject, and Spin oza's God as A bsolute Substan ce— or it is God as infinite n ecessarily com prehending N ature as finite. Having thus far p a in fu lly constructed a ladder from reflection to speculation, by way of K a n t's concept of Reason as dialectical— and particularly by a bold generalization of K an t's notion of antinom y— Hegel now begins to ta lk out of the other side of his m outh, and preach the gospel accordin g to Schelling. Once we have climbed H e­ gel's ladder we must th row it away. For from the speculative point of view it is a m istake to regard transcendental intuition as a postulate at all: "th is whole m an n er of postulating has its sole ground in the fact that the on e-sid ed n ess of reflection is accepted as a starting poin t" (112). When we rise to th e standpoint of self-conscious R eason, we begin— as Spinoza d id — from G od as the essence that necessarily exists. This is really the end of our journey however. We can only speak of philosophy begin n in g here because the construction of the A bsolute is not com pleted until we return to the poir.t where we be­ gan "p o stu latin g " the A b so lu te .57 The last of H egel's prelim in ary questions is: must philosophy be system atic? We have a lre ad y noted that a m ystical scepticism , which knows only the tran sito rin ess of finite things is perfectly possible; and that in the absence of transcendental intuition this is the only form in which a genuinely sp ecu lativ e im pulse can express itself (compare fu r­ ther 155-6). W hat H egel now goes on to argue is that transcendental intuition can be im p erfect in various w ays and degrees so that the speculative impulse of th e philosopher does not get completely artic­ ulated into his system . Fichte with his continual em phasis on "striv ­ in g" is very much in H e g e l's mind here (though the model of philoso­ phy as a "constant flight from lim itations" [113] is probably Jacobi). Fichte m anaged to p rod u ce a properly system atic theory of the self, but his theory of the w o rld w as all "p o stu latio n ." The proper method, as sketched by H egel, is to begin with the m ost im m ediate realities (objectively: "m a tte r "; subjectively: "fe e lin g ") and show how they are necessarily related to other realities that are less immediate. Thu? the totality is con stru cted in an organic order that corresponds to its natural genesis in experience. The System of Ethical Life which Hegel produced at the end of 1 8 0 2 58 is an exam ple of this progressive devel­ opment. Being an e ssa y in practical philosophy, it is subjective a n d begins with feeling.50 The history of sp ecu lative philosophy is "th e history of the one eternal R eason " (114). B u t philosophies will have different c o n t i n g e n t starting points according to the need of the culture in which they arise.

33 Introduction Thus the topic of system atization rounds out H egel's general reflec­ tions by bringing us back to the problem of the use and abuse of the history of philosophy from which we began. System s which appear to be m ost radically opposed to each other m ay equally be products of genuine speculation, that is, they may both be constructions that are validly founded in the transcendental intuition of the absolute whole that know s itself in the "h istory of the one, eternal R easo n " (114). Thus both Fichte's idealism and D 'H olbach 's m aterialism are expres­ sions of genuine speculation; and both of them also fall into dogm a­ tism in so far as they are system atically im perfect. Hegel concedes that philosophical m aterialism typically involves a cruder kind of dogm atic failure (115). This is presum ably because the primitive object of trans­ cendental intuition is the thinking self.60 The m ark of dogm atism is the substitution of the category of cause and effect for that of substantial relation in philosophical reflection about the relation of the A bsolute to its appearance in the knowing consciousness of Reason. K ant regarded D escartes, Spinoza, and Leib­ niz as the paradigm s of dogm atic m etaphysics. In general, Hegel does not allow that Spinoza w as guilty of dogm atism at all. Indeed, he can­ not allow this without im plicitly conceding that Schelling's philosoph­ ical procedure is m isguided. All the sam e, the route to speculation that he has him self m apped out passes through the fire of K an t's Dialectic and for this reason his own conception of dogm atism comprehends K ant's view in a suspended form. T hus, what he refers to as "pure dogm atism " or as a "d ogm atism of ph ilosoph y" seem s to be charac­ teristic of D escartes. For in D escartes we are presented with two sub­ stances which interact. "C o n sisten t realism and idealism " are repre­ sented in the K antian perspective by Spinoza and Berkeley. But since Hegel says that in the consistent form s of realism and idealism "th e causal relation is essentially susp en d ed " we probably ought to think rather of Spinoza and Fichte as the speculative proponents of these extremes. Certainly Fichte is the main exam ple in H egel's mind when he goes on to discuss the way in which transcendental philosophy (i-e., speculative idealism ) p asses over into dogm atism . So we can be sure that he has Fichte's distinction between "re a lism ," "id e alism ," d o g m atism /7 and "critical ph ilosoph y" in his mind. Fichte usually identifies "re a lism " with "d o g m atism " and "id e alism " with "criti­ cism ," though he adm its that dogmatic idealism is possible.61 Genuinely speculative philosophy alw ays takes the substance/accident relation as basic. But ju st as causality is thought of as reciprocal m pure dogm atism , so the substan ce/acciden t relation is show n to be

34 Difference reciprocal in pure speculation. T hus in the philosophy of nature selfpositing is the abstract schema of the real w orld, and in transcendental philosophy nature is only the abstract schem a of self-conscious R ea­ son (110). Fichte starts out am ong the speculative lam bs, but since he does not attem pt to construct nature on the model of the self, but rather regards it as an endless practical problem to reconstruct it in accordance with the moral law (causality through freedom ), he ends up am ong the dogm atic goats. For his moral idealism requires " a rela­ tion of the A bsolute to appearance other than that of nullification/' But in Fichte only the nullification ever a p p e a r s; the identity of the Ego and its world remains a subjective intuition. The exposition of Fichte, to which Hegel now proceeds, is designed to establish this thesis in detail, but we should never forget that Hegel is only spelling out the cost of a conclusion which Fichte him self pro­ claim s as necessary from the outset. There is no question of H egel's accusing Fichte of failing to do som ething that Fichte had originally proposed to do.

5.

ANALYSIS

(ii)

:

FICHTE

A bout the fairly lengthy exposition of Fichte which m akes up the cen­ tral section of the essay we can here afford to be much briefer. The argum ent is more straightforw ard, and Hegel him self has provided an­ other version of m ost of it in his discussion of Fichte in the History of Philosophy.62 W e shall here confine ourselves to the briefest outline possible, along with the identification and discussion of a few cruces. The general line of H egel's criticism of Fichte has already been in­ dicated. Fichte's science of know ledge is a genuinely speculative the­ ory of the self which show s us how the self produces the world, but not how the world is the real world of the self. It is natural therefore that Hegel should concentrate on Fichte's deduction of nature in its various aspects. We should notice at once, however, that he ignores w hat w as at that m om ent Fichte's m ost recent (and accessible) state­ ment of his views in the Vocation of Man (1800). The reason for this, which is not explicitly stated in the essay, w as m ade plain the follow ­ ing year, in Faith and Knowledge, and we have already referred to it. Fichte's decline from speculative philosophy to dogm atism becomes complete in that work. It is therefore excluded from the Difference

35 Introduction essay as unw orthy of treatment. Hegel is here concerned only with Fichte's system as an expression of genuine speculation.63 In his lecture course on the History of Philosophy, H egel lays it down that am ong Fichte's w orks only the Science of Knowledge is genuinely speculative. Fichte's Science of Rights and his System of Ethics "con tain nothing speculative, but dem and the presence of the speculative elem en t."64 T his contention follow s quite naturally from the argum ent of the Difference essay taken together with Faith and Knowledge. The completion of his critical survey of Fichte in Faith and Knowledge caused H egel to be rather more trenchant from the outset in the lecture course, than he is in the Difference essay. In the lectures he com plains straight aw ay that "th e form in which Fichte's philosophy is presented has . . . the real draw back of bringing the em­ pirical ego ever before one's eyes, which is a b su rd ."65 But it seem s to me that the Vocation of M an and the "n on -sp ecu lative" parts of Fichte's system have im properly influenced this verdict, and that H e­ gel's initial stance in the Difference essay w as sounder. Here he begins by contrasting pure thinking with ordinary con­ sciousness and saying that the task of Fichte's speculative philosophy is to explain this antithesis, that is, to show the positive relation of or­ dinary finite consciousness to the pure act of self-positing. The nega­ tive aspect of the relation is already given by a simple consideration of what it m eans to be finite. T his is what we have in the religious con­ sciousness that "a ll flesh is as g r a ss." The desired positive relation would be an explanation of this transitory existence. The opposition between the infinite and the finite self m ust be suspended or over­ come, in other w ords there m ust be no recourse to the K antian thingin-itself as the ultimate origin of sensuous data. The opposition m ust be suspended because the world of empirical consciousness is what we are prim arily aware of. Philosophical consciousness comes later, and reflects on, looks back upon, ordinary consciousness. If this pure con­ sciousness is indeed the real origin of empirical consciousness we m ust be able to deduce empirical consciousness from pure consciousness. O therw ise we shall not have shown that pure consciousness is pure, that is, a priori. It is only by this deduction, by show ing how every aspect of empirical consciousness is adequately grounded in pure con­ sciousness, that we can transform the em pty concept of pure con­ sciousness into an intuition. Empirical consciousness, i.e., the world as we experience it, m ust be shown to be a self-actualization of the pure self-positing Ego.

36 Difference Fichte fails to solve this problem. P ]^ _ c^ n scip u sn e ss does not " b e ­ come objective to itse lf/7 does not become an intuition. First he d is­ guises the antinom y of consciousness by separatin g it into two seem ­ ingly independent propositions: "th e Ego p o sits itse lf" and "th e Ego posits a non-Ego opposed to it s e lf/' Then h is reconciliation "th e Ego posits within itself a divisible Ego and a divisible non-Ego" is never shown to be identical with the origin al absolute positing. The original self-positing ought not to have been divided into a sequence of distinct acts like this. This is how the reflective intellect is bound to proceed; but once Fichte has taken the activity of the Ego to pieces like this he is never able to put it together again . The Ego and the non-Ego fall ap art ju st as, in Kant, transcendental apperception and the thing-in-itself fall apart. The self-positing and the oppositing remain quite independent and opposed, so that the self within which the two activities are su pposedly united remains un­ known and transcendent like the traditional G od of theism. The third principle ought to be the only one. We have to comprehend the way in which the activity which Kant called "p roductive im agination" es­ tablishes both self and world in one fell sw oop. W hat Fichte estab ­ lishes instead is a finite self enveloped in a m ystery which it struggles endlessly and hopelessly to dissolve. The easy interpretation of Fichte's theory, the one that a formalist like Reinhold naturally seizes on, is the dogm atic idealist one. But Fichte is too honest and too clearheaded to solve his problem by the fiat of dogm atic idealism ; so his idealism remains sim ply problem atic.06 Em pirical consciousness is explained equally well either in terms of the self-p o sitin g or in terms of the oppositing: "it offers no more and no less w arrant for pure conscious­ ness than for the thing-in-itself" (127). In the theoretical activity of the Ego the m ystery appears in the form of the incomprehensible "im p a c t" which the Ego m eets. This is just K an t's Ding-an-sich; and tran sferrin g it, by hypothesis, into the Ego itself does not make it any m ore com prehensible than it w as be­ fore. Here we are face to face with the absolute oppositing that is not resolved in the synthesis. Nature is deduced from this prim ordial de­ fectiveness of the Ego— from the fact that it m eets an impact. " A s Fichte put it, the advance to em pirical consciousness is m ade because pure consciousness is not a complete co n sciou sn ess" (129-30). I have not been able to find any passage in which Fichte does put it quite like this. But he does say that intellectual intuition "never occurs in isola­ tion, as a complete act of co n scio u sn ess."67 And in the Science of Knowledge itself, he asserts several times that pure self-positing can­

37 Introduction not constitute what we mean by consciousness at all. Here is what he says, for exam ple, in the section on which the rest of H egel's outline appears at this point to be based : " A self that posits itself as selfpositing, or a subject, is im possible without an object brought forth in the m anner d escribed ."68 The expression that I cannot trace probably occurs in some exposition of 1797 or later— or perhaps H egel's mem ­ ory is slightly at fault here. Because of his adm ission of the impact Fichte's system falls short of being a system of perfect freedom. The im pact is obviously a bound­ ary for productive im agination in theoretical cognition; but Fichte seeks to m aintain his idealism by proving that it m ust arise from the practical activity of the Ego. On that side, however, it turns out to be a necessary presupposition for the existence of freedom as an endless striving. The conquest of the non-Ego, the establishm ent of equiva­ lence between the first principle "E go = E g o " and the third "E go = (Ego + non -E go)" is a m oral requirement. But the existence of the self as an agent presupposes that this requirem ent cannot finally be met. So in the end "E go = E go" turns into "E g o ought to be equal to E go." Pure consciousness has flown up into the noumenal realm of the moral law; empirical consciousness remains sundered between what ought to be and what is. And, in Fichte's view, it is only what ought to be that is intellectually intuited. W hat is real, on the contrary, is alw ays the lived antithesis between this intellectually intuited ideal, and the em­ pirically intuited situation. Human rational existence is sim ply moral striving. The A bsolute is thus a " b a d " infinity of m oral progress in perpetuity. All the concrete applications of Fichte's philosophy to hum an life are reflective rather than speculative because they rest on this founda­ tion. Hegel now comes to his main topic, which is the conception of nature in Fichte's system . The m ost im m ediate form of nature in ra­ tional consciousness is a "d riv e " (Trieb); while the finite m an ifesta­ tion of rational freedom is a "concept of p u rp o se." Synthesized as a mode of consciousness these two elem ents make up a feeling. We should note that Hegel accepts this synthesis him self, just as he ac­ cepts the theoretical synthesis of self-positing and oppositing. For "fe e lin g " is one of the prim itive notions that he m entions as app ro­ priate starting points for speculative developm ent (113). But he does not agree with the analytical, com positive method by which Fichte arrives at it. The whole context into which Fichte's synthesis is in­ serted is w rong, for "feelin g is finite only from the point of view of reflection" (136). In the System of Ethical Life Hegel him self begins

38 Difference with the intuition of a " fe e lin g "— but he allow s the context of rela­ tions that are involved in it to develop from it.09 According to the principle of self-positing, freedom and drive should coincide. T hey are ju st different w ays of looking at the sam e basic drive (Urtrieb). But since drive or impulse is thought o f as completely determinate it can only be identified with freedom b y coming under the control of the practical concept which decides whether or not it is to be gratified or suppressed. This is the m oral tyranny that Hegel had already condem ned in K ant. The unity is merely form al, and the form conceals an inner disruption. W hat m akes things still w orse is that so far as the disruption is overcom e, the union involves the corruption of pure freedom . It is alw ays some impulse of nature that is gratified in an action; the final purpose of absolute rational freedom is endlessly postponed. The best that we can do is m ake progress tow ards it. The w eakness of this view is that N ature is regarded as m echanical­ ly determ ined and lifeless. Schelling and Hegel m ust have spent hours poring over the "C ritique o f Teleological Ju d gm e n t"; but it seem s safe to say that Fichte did not. The simple antithesis of m echanical neces­ sity and freedom w as sufficient for him, and for that reason he de­ clines into a reflective philosopher as soon as he reaches the problem s of practical philosophy. For it is just this antithesis o f freedom and necessity that is the final shipwreck of reflection; this is the abyss from which speculation begins. Reflective thought is aw are of itself as a free, spontaneous activity, since it operates in the infinite realm of possibilities; yet the ideal that it strives after is to comprehend the ac­ tual world as a system of perfect determinism. This is the im passe that Fichte avoids by the device of absolute postponem ent. But if the establishm ent of nature, of the non-Ego, really is an a s­ pect of the free self-positin g of the Ego, this simple antithesis of free­ dom and m echanism is an illusion of the intellect. N ature as a whole m ust be conceived as a self-determ ining system , an organic living whole, Sp in oza's natura naturans. Fichte acknow ledges this in his S y s ­ tem of Ethics but he m aintains the rigid opposition between nature and freedom nonetheless.70 The organic view of nature does not confer any standing on it in the face of the law of Reason. W e can see this with particular clarity in the Science of Rights. The whole deduction proceeds as if nature were sim ply dead m atter, varying only in its de­ gree of plasticity to the im posed rational purpose. K ant preserved a certain independence for the organic aspect of nature by insisting that we are obliged to conceive of the purpose of a "n atu ral en d" (i.e., an organism ) as if it were determined by and for another intelligence

39 Introduction (though we are not thereby entitled to postulate the existence of that other intelligence). Fichte "d o e s not need this d etou r" (143). But it is highly questionable whether he is really better off than K ant in He-, gel's eyes.71 In Fichte's theory "n ature is determined im m ediately by and for in­ telligence" (143). So we do not have to concern ourselves with the pur pose for which it w as designed by an intelligence other than ours. But we still have to take a "d etou r through the dominion of the concept" (144). The "ration al b e in g /' or finite intelligence, is a com posite of soul and body, the combination of pure rational freedom with a limited set of physical possibilities. There is the freedom that man is, and the freedom that a man has. N ature is the sphere of the freedom that we have, and because we all have it, we necessarily im pinge on one an­ other. So for the sake of rational freedom , the spontaneous capacity of the individual to act for its own ends m ust be surrendered. O nly the freedom of obedience to the law of R eason m atters. The individual m ust be absolutely at the disposal of that law. His freedom is to be m easured as the degree of his plasticity, his indeterm inateness, the range of possibilities that stands at the disposal of R eason in his per­ son. T hus if my spontaneous im pulses are interfered with and curbed for the sake of the com m unity, this is not really an infringement of my freedom but the realization of it. Fichte could not speak, as R ous­ seau did, of "b ein g forced to be fre e," but this is exactly how the moral com pulsion exercised by Fichte's rational will appears to Hegel. The moral freedom of Fichte is quite different from voluntary comm it­ ment to a social purpose that one understands and identifies with. Self-com mitm ent and identification of this sort is the "fre e limitation of one's freedom " that is characteristic of natural organic community. N atural needs only become com pulsive in the w ay that Fichte's moral requirements are, when they rise to the pitch of what Hegel calls Not in his Frankfurt m anuscripts. Thus Fichte's im age of hum an society can be called a N otstaat.72 Everything in society m ust be regulated by Reason (embodied in an external authority). The ordinary societies which are less am bitious on behalf of R eason are actually more con­ cordant with Reason. Thus Fichte's theory of law involves a universal external tyranny of Reason. His theory of ethics involves an even more effective internal­ ized tyranny. The external tyranny seem s more objectionable, but it can be evaded; w hereas the rational m an will not even wish to evade his own conscience. Furthermore, because of the empirical component in any drive, ethical volitions are bound to conflict; so there are "co n ­

40 Difference flicts of d u ty "— for any ethical volition will be defensible at the bar of Reason, that is, it can be presented as a duty. Kant recognized the necessity for casuistry in order to resolve moral difficulties of this sort. But because Fichte aims to be system atic, his doctrine of moral duty needs to be as completely determinate as his theory of legal right. The "indifference p oin t" which Fichte cannot reach is an aesthetic ideal. N ow Fichte, too, has read K an t's Critique of Judgment and Schiller's Aesthetic Letters. So he can write eloquent pages about the aesthetic harm ony of hum an nature, and he appreciates the instru­ mental role which Schiller assign s to aesthetic education. Even the role of beauty as a regulative ideal (which is also in Schiller) is one that Fichte can verbally appropriate. Hegel approves of what Fichte wrote on this topic, but finds it to be inconsistent with his basic position. He claims that Fichte's Ethics is condem ned out of his own mouth when the criteria of beauty, harm ony and spontaneity are applied to it. This judgm ent is unfair. For Fichte's position clearly is that we m ust "relate to the moral law like a sla v e " only if we can do no better. The only valid com plaint is that Fichte never explains how we can do better. "S triv in g " is all that he explains; and although striving can be noble, it can certainly also be ugly. Thus in spite of its genuinely speculative im pulse, Fichte's system is ultimately an exercise of mere intellect. This w as evident at the be­ ginning from the w ay in which Fichte analytically separated the " a c ts " of the Ego. And in the end the aspects of identity and difference (of pure and empirical consciousness) go apart into a causal relationship. Causality is the model case of a relative identity; and Fichte's practical philosophy, where all the problem s of the theoretical philosophy are supposed to be resolved, turns out to be just a m atter of the causal efficacy of Reason, or of the dominance of the concept over im pulse.

6. A N A L Y S I S

(ill):

SCHELLING

Schelling's system, by contrast, is completely speculative; it is an or­ ganic expression of his basic philosophical insight. Pure consciousness (insight) and empirical consciousness (system ) coincide. He shows us both how the self becomes a w orld— the "su bjective Subject-O b ject," and how the world becomes a self— the "objective Subject-O b ject." The "p oin t of indifference" from which this double task starts is the transcendental intuition of the self positing itself as other in order to

41 Introduction achieve self-consciousness. Earlier Hegel spoke of tjiis moment posi­ tively as the "infinite focus which irradiates the radii (i.e., finite cog­ nitions) at the sam e time that it is form ed by tl^em" (111). This lan­ guage comes from the tradition of A ugustinian theology. It w as used by the theologians to describe G od's relation to the created world. In the context of the Identity theory it only becomes m eaningful when speculation has arrived at its goal. Hegel generally prefers to describe the indifference point as a vanishing-point. It is the moment where finite consciousness annihilates itself by recognizing its own antinomic character. T hus transcendental intuition is the intuition of nothing­ ness. O nly a religious enthusiast could be satisfied with "th is intuition of colorless lig h t" (156) which is merely the birth-pang of speculative philosophy, the point of "ab so lu te contraction." Philosophy m ust justify finite experience, it m ust "giv e the separa­ tion into subject and object its d ue" (156). Finite experience is appear­ ance (both of the being of a "th in g-in -itself" on the objective side, and of the activity of human im agination and intellect on the subjective side). But neither the being nor the activity can exist without m ani­ festing them selves. Both for the subject and for the object it is essen ­ tial that they should appear. T hus an intuition of the ultimate identity o/ subject and object is not enough: "th e A bsolute itself is the iden­ tity of [noumenal] identity [of subject and object] and [phenomenal] non-identity" (156). A bsolute knowledge is the identity of being and appearance, or the com prehending of the finite as a m irror (speculum) of the infinite. U nless we admit "th e claims of separation" we cannot reach the absolute identity at all. Both subject and object are equally finite and equally contingent in ordinary experience. The contingency is overcome when the finite phenomena are comprehended under laws. But to put the legislation of freedom on the noumenal side and that of nature on the phenomenal side is not good enough, if all that there is on the noumenal side for reflection and knowledge is "n o th in g ." M or­ al freedom will only become comprehensible when the program m e of the Identity philosophy is carried out, or when N ature, the realm of the finite phenomena of ordinary cognition is exhibited as self-deter­ mining. The antinomy of necessary and free causality, which was so fundam ental in K an t's view that one m ust be ascribed to phenomenal nature exclusively and the other to the noumenal self exclusively, m ust be shown up as an ideal opposition,’ a m atter of intellectual per­ spective: while the difference between conscious and unconscious ac­ tivity, which is reduced to an ideal difference, a m atter of perspective, in Fichte's idealism , m ust be given its proper status as a real opposi­

42 Difference tion. For it is the conscious/unconscious opposition (not the neces­ sary /free opposition) that genuinely characterizes the realm s o f nature and culture into which experience is really divided. The indifference point from which speculative philosophy sta rts is the self that intuits its own spontaneity. This is the philosophical common ground shared by the two system s. For reasons of neutrality (as between natural and transcendental philosophy) H egel refers to it as the "poin t of contraction." It will be helpful here, therefore to con­ sider generally the relation of the poles of contraction and expansion to the two form s of the indifference point that are spoken of in the Identity Philosophy. The indifference point as unity is the rationally self-conscious individual. W hen philosophic reflection turns in upon itself and seeks the pure activity which is the point of origin of all consciousness it discovers the pole of contraction— Fichte's self-p o sit­ ing Ego or the spark of divine life which is the basis of our existence as rational individuals. This m om ent of pure consciousness, so called, whether it be pure thinking or pur^' intuition, is not consciousness in any ordinary sense at all. It is the fount of feeling and thought— or of " lif e " and of "lig h t" in the language of the first chapter of Jo h n — and the starting point of transcendental philosophy. It is also the goal of natural philosophy which m oves from the infinite extent of n ature at the opposite extrem e of expansion to the absolute source of life in the self-conscious living organism . The "indifference point a s totality" is only really reached when both sciences are com pleted. In the same way, the indifference point of the m agnet (upon which the w hole an­ alogy is founded) is only really known for what it is, when the field of force between the two poles of which it is the center are plotted and shown in relation to it. The natural philosopher's journey from the boundaries of physical existence to its center m ust be com ple­ mented and fulfilled by the transcendental philosopher's journey from the origin of consciousness to the conscious union of the mind with the whole of nature. This is the expansion of the self from unity to totality. But we cannot unpack all the riches of the spirit practically, unless we know theoretically what is packed up in its nature. T h u s he journey from the im m ensity of space to the external center— the hu­ man organ ism — is just as necessary to philosophical com prehension as the journey from the internal center— the human m ind, and specifical­ ly the productive im agination which is its point of origin— to God. Fichte rightly believed that he could find the secret of existence in the depths of the self. But it w as still a secret when he found it. A ll of his constructive account of human life rests on an intellectual (i.e., m e­

43 Introduction chanical) concept of nature. If we really want to form ulate the pur­ pose of hum an life in the world, we m ust comprehend adequately our own place in the order of living nature. We can go this far with the identity theory without any great strain. For, am bitious though it m ay be, it surely m akes sense to set up the organic comprehension of the world as the goal of philosophi­ cal endeavor; and it m akes sense to insist that the task m ust be con­ ceived in an organic or teleological fram e, since the enterprise of com­ prehension itself, as a goal set by a conscious, goal-seeking organism , is to be comprehended within that frame. But why do the proponents of this program m e insist a priori, that every part of the organic total­ ity m ust itself be organic? We surely cannot assert a priori that "every speck of dust is an organ ization ?" (157). This is probably the gravest crux in the identity theory. W hat ap ­ pears to be a quite dogm atic assum ption that everything is organic, contrasts very sharply with the careful and critical concern of Kant to do justice to the organic world along with the inorganic. And it is un­ deniable that the identity theorists were over-confident. N othing can save them from the reproach of over-sim plification and wild generali­ zation. They were even conscious of it them selves. Both Schelling and Hegel continually reform ulated their philosophy of N ature, struggling to find the right application of the concept of organism to it and in it. Hegel later accused Schelling of using a few general analogies every­ where and calling the result "sc ien c e." But even to a sym pathetic H e­ gelian critic like Croce, it w as not clear what gave Hegel the right to condemn Schelling. For— to Croce at least— H egel's own m ature phil­ osophy of N ature appeared to be liable to the sam e criticism .73 We shall have to re-examine later the question whether H egel's critique of Schelling really w as a m atter of pot calling kettle black. For the present, the fact that neither Hegel nor Schelling w as philo­ sophically troubled by difficulties which were alm ost as obvious to them as they are to us, su ggests that we m ay not have understood properly what the philosophical enterprise was. The Identity Theory in its prim itive form is quite evidently a latter-day version of the tra­ ditional conception of the "gre at chain of b ein g." But it is indeed a latter-day version— or in other words it is meant to have a critical in­ terpretation. Interpreted critically the proposition that "ev ery speck of dust is an organization" is a thesis about what can count as a satisfac­ tory explanation of any phenomenon. The claim is that the model of theoretical explanation is an organic system. The "sp e ck of d u st" is plainly a m etaphor for the "sm allest p a r t." The m icroscope had, of

44 Difference course, revealed that there were living sp eck s; and Leibniz had gener­ alized and extrapolated from that discovery with a boldness that still inspires awe. But that is not the crucial point: indeed it will only m is­ lead us, if it causes us to think that the Identity theory is a direct return to Leibniz. The claim of the Identity theorists is rather that explanation in terms of causal chains does not satisfactorily explain anything. A proper explanation m ust place the explanandum in a pat­ tern that is self-subsisten t an d self-sufficient; and a philosophical sy s­ tem m ust be an all-inclusive pattern of this sam e type. Ju st how phe­ nom ena can be arranged in organic patterns is a m atter for empirical investigation. In this respect the original form ulation w as certainly at fault, being both too dogm atic in the old style, and too little attentive to the actual state of em pirical science. The thesis about what can count as a satisfactory explanation, is w hat is locked up in the claim that the object itself is a Subject-O bject. All know ledge, it is claim ed, m ust be m odelled on, m ust have the structure of, our self-know ledge. Fichte's right to be considered an im ­ portant speculative philosopher rests on the fact that he w as the one who had analysed that structure. But he fell short of the goal because he analysed only self-know ledge. He could not provide any ground for the know ledge of objects which would give the objective (or nat­ ural) sciences an independent, self-subsisten t status. The natural world was for him sim ply the stage for moral activity, the place where the Ego ought to be equal to itself, but cannot be, because it needs the tension of the ought in order to go on existing at all. T hat nature has no independent statu s, no subsistence on its own account, is what the claim that there is only an ideal opposition of subject and object in Fichte m eans. Hegel showed earlier that Fichte is in trouble about the opposition of the first two acts of the Ego, its self-positing and the p ositin g of the opposite. If they are ju st ideal factors, and only the third synthetic proposition is real knowledge, then Fichte's system becom es a form of dogm atic theism since only God can know things as they are: the absolute self-positing is quite outside of our finite experience. But if the absolute positing and oppositing are real, then they are not properly united in the synthesis of our finite experience; and then Fichte's system which rests on the selfpositing and suppresses the positing of the object by fiat, is a dog­ matic idealism . W hether we adopt the theistic or the idealistic interpretation, N a ­ ture has in Fichte the statu s of an absolute object; it never achieves the status of som ething which posits itself like a subject. Even if God

45 Introduction know s it as it is in itself , it exists for us only as a moment in the synthesis of conscious reflection. But then the synthesis becomes merely form al, that is, the thing-in-itself remains independent of it, and so does the real subject. These reflective form s— the thing-in-it­ self and the I think— are just w hat have to be nullified in the antin­ omy of self-conscious reflection. Then speculative thought can proceed to construct the Subject-O bject in m etaphysical intuition. This "c o n ­ struction " of N ature as a Subject-O bject is a m atter of interpreting our experience of nature in the categoreal pattern provided by the trans­ cendental theory of the self. W e can only claim to have philosophically comprehended our own position in N ature, when all of our empirical know ledge has been organized conceptually with the emergence of the self as its telos. This is "th e work of R eason which posits the op po­ sites identity and non-identity, as identical, not ju st in the form of cognition, but in the form of being as w ell." It is only if N ature is a mirror of the Self in this way that there can be true self-know ledge. Fichte speaks in one place of the difference between G od 's point of view and ours, that is, he speaks as if the theistic interpretation of his system were correct. But he im m ediately m akes clear that we cannot even think w hat G od's consciousness would be like, because pure self-positing of the Ego cannot constitute consciousness for u s.74 T hus the only consistent w ay to avoid the dem ands of the Philosophy of Identity is K an t's critical conception of all know ledge as phenomenal. This is the "legislation of reflection" (159); and no m atter how much Fichte m ay insist on the life and ac­ tivity of the Ego he cannot escape K an t's net. From the K antian viewpoint only limited things can be known. So Hegel describes the a priori synthesis of cognition itself in terms of the categories of quantity and quality: The identity, insofar as it synthesizes the opposites [i.e., intui­ tion and concept], is itself ju st a quantum [a particular cognition] and the difference [between subject and object generally] is qualitative [i.e., it is a real difference between separate beings, the Ding-an-sich and the noumenal Self behind the " I think"] in the manner of the categories where the first, for exam ple reality [com pare the Ding-an-sich] is posited in the third [lim itation— compare the form al synthesis of intuition and concept] and so is the second [negation— compare the noumenal self] but only quantitatively [com pare the use of quantum earlier]. (159-60) Speculation, on the other hand, requires a real synthesis of these

46 Difference

real opposites (whose reality remains entirely problematic in the doc­ trine o f formal synthesis). There must be an actual not a form al identity of being and nothing/ reality and negation, and it m ust be known to appear in our limited experience. This knowledge is the "identity of identity and non-identity." There are, therefore, two absolute sciences or types of science: transcendental philosophy and natural philosophy, or the science of intelligence and the science of life. The structure of consciousness be­ comes both the activity and the content of absolute knowledge when both the pure subject and the pure object are taken as opposed aspects of the original self-manifesting Subject-Object. The reality of the op­ position appears here as a reversal of categoreal values. From the point of view of transcendental philosophy the objective aspects of experi­ ence are empirical or accidental facts; but from the point of view of natural philosophy the subjective aspects are epiphenomenal or acci­ dental forms. The independence of the two standpoints is something that we are quite naturally, and commonsensically, aware of. But common sense i£ never comfortable with the strict opposition. Descartes postulated two substances and then struggled to find the point of union between them. Others, who are less clearheaded, just take criteria and problems that belong to one perspective and import them into the other. Thus we can ask, "What are the physical causes of truth?" and we then arrive at a "transcendental hypothesis" like the "membrane theory" of J. C. Lossius.75 Or we can ask "What is the rational purpose of the cork tree?" and make Wolff's eternally amusing discovery that it was intended by nature for the plugging of wine bottles.76 The typical philosophical mistake is to fall into an aggressive dog­ matism that denies the validity either of the transcendental or of the natural point of view. Dualism gets along comfortably enough by ig­ noring the fundamental requirement that the dualism must be ex­ plained. Aggressive dogmatism takes the task more seriously. Hegel now presents the idealism of Kant and Fichte as the final sophistica­ tion o f dogmatism. He has to include Kant along with Fichte here, because Kant was a notable philosopher of Nature, whereas Fichte contributed nothing in this area. We should be glad of this a c c id e n t because it is only at this point that his own debt to Kant's Critique of Judgm ent (of which I have already made so much) comes right to the surface in the essay. First he sums up the doctrine of a "natural end" in the "Critique of Teleological Judgment." Here we have only to notice the translation

47 Introduction

rules. Kant's insistence that the category of natural end has a regula­ tive not a constitutive function for our understanding becomes "This human perspective is not supposed to affirm anything concerning the reality of nature" (163). Kant would have been surprised to learn that he had left the reality of nature in doubt. But he was philosophically obliged to leave the reality of the Ding-an-sich in doubt; and so, ac­ cording to Hegel, "nature remains something merely thought." To be real, nature must exist "for itself," it must have its own essence and purpose, and not just be the result or product of our constructive ef­ forts with our categories. Kant rises to the idea of a "natural end," and even to the idea of a "sensuous intellect" (again he would be sur­ prised, and when he recognized his inteUectus archetypus or "intuitiye understanding" under this strange name he would not be very pleased). But Kant does not comprehend the necessary reality of either of them. So he is, like Newton, ultimately a sceptic about human sci­ ence. His M etaphysical Foundations of Natural Science is an exposi­ tion of Newtonian metaphysics—and Kant himself said that we must not hope for the Newton of a blade of grass.77 But, alas for Kant, not even Newtonian mechanics can be consist­ ently derived in accordance with the dictates of Newtonian epistemology. The attractive and repulsive forces that have to be united in the concept of matter already constitute an organic whole. Kant may pro­ test, like Newton, that we have "no insight into the possibility of basic forces" but he knows what he means by a force, and he knows that matter, according to his concept of it, is composed out of opposite forces. Kant's matter thus prefigures the Fichtean Ego, and not even the most elementary phenomena of dynamics fall within the constitu­ tive purview of the understanding. Whether this contention of Hegel's is justified or not, would require a lengthy inquiry, and one that is be­ yond my competence. But at least, we can see clearly at this pr int why Schelling and Hegel thought they must assert that "every speck of dust is an organization." On the basis of this universal mechanism of Newton and Kant, Fichte erected a moral teleology that is indistinguishable in principle from that of Wolff. Since his starting point is supplied by his own existence as a finite rational being, Fichte, like Wolff before him, is doomed to fall prey to the immense variety of nature and the still greater variety of its practical possibilities for use. "The only way in which this dispersion could be avoided at all, would be for the deduc­ tion to draw its various points into a circle" (165). But before one can draw a circle one must fix the center.

48 Difference

Here at last Hegel arrives at the stage of positive statement. The true method of philosophy should be modelled on the pattern ofjorganic growth. Both transcendental and natural philosophy should trace the evolution (of self-consciousness and of nature) from germ to ripeness, or from unity to totality. There will thus be a parallel like that which Spinoza asserted between the "order of ideas" and the "order of things." The ideas and things that are ordered will them­ selves be organic patterns; so no matter how finite they are, they will be "internally unlimited/' The most ephemeral of organizations can be viewed sub specie aeternitatis. The important claim of the identity theory, as against Spinoza or any mechanistic theory, is that it is not just the whole but every naturally produced organic cycle or pattern that can be comprehended in its eternal aspect. If every moment of experience, philosophically interpreted, were not in this way a mirror of the Absolute— like one of the monads of Leibniz—if only the in­ finite whole were eternal, then Kant would be right, and Reason would be dialectical in a self-destructive sense. But if Kant were right, Jacobi would be right in his turn: all the finite science that Kant wanted to defend would be no more than the organization of our ignorance. In fact, however, finite cognition becomes knowledge by being "organ­ ized"— and the Identity Philosophy shows us how this miracle can come about in spite of our human limitations. Each of the two philosophical sciences reaches its limit where the other begins. The pole of expansion belongs peculiarly to natural phil­ osophy, and the pole of contraction to transcendental philosophy. N at­ ural philosophy falls short of the contraction of all extended organiza­ tion into the temporal point of self-consciousness. Self-consciousness is engulfed in the immensity of physical space. Natural philosophy moves from the immensity of space to the unity of the most complex and highly developed physical organism—man, the "outer center." Transcendental philosophy moves from the most primitive sensational consciousness (the "inner center") to the religious experience of the most civilized community. It would seem that the two sciences cannot directly touch one another because the medium of the one is physical reality while that of the other is conscious ideality. But natural phil­ osophy is theoretical, i.e., it is concerned with the conceptualization of physical reality; and transcendental philosophy is practical, i.e., it is concerned with the realization of consciousness. So an ultimate sus­ pension of the opposition between them is not inconceivable, and as we shall soon see, Hegel has some important things to say about it. Another note is needed here, however, about the "indifference

49 Introduction

points" in natural philosophy. We indicated earlier that natural phil­ osophy goes from the pole of expansion to that of contraction and we characterized the indifference points only as they appear in transcen­ dental philosophy. But the Spinozistic doctrine of a parallel between the two orders requires Hegel to say, and he does say, that both sci­ ences move from unity to totality. What then is the unity from which natural philosophy begins? What is the indifference point that some­ how unifies the bad infinite of space? It appears that the answer is "a Spatial point regarded as a center of force." For we know that "the identity that is least dichotomous" is "at the objective pole, matter" (113); and we can infer something of the theory of matter from He­ gel's critical comments about Kant's mechanics (163-5). Every point of space is a center from which force radiates out over the whole uni­ verse and also a center on which the force of the universe is focussed. Viewed in this way the physical point is an intuition of the primitive Structure of the Ego according to Fichte. This center of cohesion is the minimal form of physical organization. The maximum or totality of physical organization is represented by the living body which is, in Spinoza's terminology, "the object of the idea that constitutes the hu­ man m ind/'78 Each of the sciences is a system of freedom and of necessity. Thus freedom and necessity are not real opposites—as Kant thought when he assigned each to its own world—but ideal moments or aspects of the one absolute reality. Freedom is the inner aspect of the organic whole, whether we view it in nature or in spirit; and necessity is its external aspect even if it is a link in an intelligible, not a physical, Chain. This assimilation of physical to logical necessity which Hegel inherited from Spinoza, has been one of the great curses of his philos­ ophy, perhaps the greatest impediment to understanding that derives &om its origins in the Identity theory of Schelling.79 The naturaliza­ tion of freedom, on the other hand, must be accounted one of the great advances of post-Kantian speculation.80 But even if natural development is spontaneous, and the evolution of self-consciousness is conditioned, still the development of freedom is impossible in nature, and the natural conditioning of consciousness is not a matter of "physical causes of truth/' Nature is the realm where necessity is predominant; and nothing spiritual is physically necessitated in a mechanical way. Hence the philosophy of Nature is the theoretical part of philosophy (where we contemplate necessity) and transcendental philosophy is the practical part (where we enjoy the consciousness of our own productive activity). But since this oppo­

50 Difference

sition is only an ideal one, and each of the two sciences is a conscious expression of the whole, each of them must strive away from its own ideal pole (necessity or freedom) towards the opposite one. Thus with­ in the theoretical philosophy of nature there is a tension between the theoretical "construction" of inorganic nature and the practical "re­ construction" of the organism. Biology is in a difficult position as an empirical science, not because, as Kant thought, our minds are not properly equipped for it, but because its subject matter is the anticipa­ tion in nature of what only consciousness is properly fitted to achieve. Similarly within the practical philosophy of consciousness there is a theoretical part which deals with the "construction" of consciousness itself as the capacity for theoretical cognition, as well as a fully prac­ tical part which deals with the transformation of the natural world through the realization of consciousness. All of nature-philosophy is really constructive, that is to say it involves the projection (in meta­ physical intuition) of the structure of consciousness at the unconscious level. Construction is thus the instantiation of the(absolute concept in intuitior), the externalization of the divine Logos. But within the con­ struction of the eternal order of nature, we can distinguish two phases, a spatial one and a temporal one, and the temporal phase is a recon­ struction of the spatial order at a higher level. What I have called the spatial phase already involves time, for the organic motion of inor­ ganic nature in space—the solar system —is the foundation of the temporal order, it gives us our standing measures for time. But this original construction is an image of life without change in the ele­ ments— the stars continue for ever in their courses. The reconstructive phase of natural philosophy is the internalization of the organic cycle within the cycling elements; the elements must now grow and decay, and hence they must produce their own successors. The years succeed one another, even though "heaven and earth do not pass away"; and with the passing of the years, the generations succeed one another, though life itself does not pass away. Thus, even within the unchang­ ing natural order, "the Logos is begotten, not made." But all of this happens , and it happens all the time. Consciousness does not make it so, and consciousness is not necessary to it. Con­ sciousness itself, on the other hand, is the true reconstruction of the Absolute, the resumption into unity of the totality spread out in space and time, the synthesis of absolute intuition and absolute concept. The first phase of this reconstruction is self -discovery. From this point of view it resembles the constructive phase in the observation of nature; b u t at th is lev e l th e a c tiv ity of c o n s c io u s n e s s is essential. We only

51 Introduction

come to be what we really are, when we know what we really are. The conscious observer of nature is the "center" of an external world which he organizes in his empirical knowledge. But as he does trans­ cendental philosophy he discovers himself to be the internal center, to be the focus of the life that animates the world. This is the true "be­ getting of the Logos," the discovery of our identity with the eternal Reason. It is a discovery which is throughout a self-m aking ; and when the self-making is recognized as fundamental we pass from the theory of the self, to practical philosophy in the higher or stricter sense. This is the theory of the conscious community ; that is, practical philosophy is economic and social thought, political and legal theory rather than ethics and moral philosophy as they have been traditionally under­ stood in what Hegel calls subjective reflection. When the goal of transcendental philosophy is reached, when man knows himself as the Logos, the culminating phase of the Identity phil­ osophy opens. This is the suspension of the real opposition between the two philosophical sciences in the consciousness of the absolute in­ difference of knowing and being, discovering and making, construction and reconstruction. Philosophy as pure speculation is concerned with this suspension of the opposition between the two philosophic sciences (of nature and the self). The account that Hegel gives of the absolute point of indifference is an indication of the general content of this phase, at least. It should certainly be recognized as a third distinct phase of systematic philosophy. For otherwise we should have to re­ gard the philosophy of art as part of natural philosophy (which does not seem to be possible). Art, which Schelling had declared to be the "organon of philosophy,"81 is said by Hegel to be the grasping of the point of absolute indifference from the side of nature; speculation grasps the indifference point from the other side, the side of transcen­ dental activity. But art is creative activity, and speculation is the con­ templation of what is; so there is a perfect balance of subjective activity and objective being in both of them. As moments in the con­ sciousness of absolute being (the culminating phase of science or abso­ lute knowledge) they are both aspects of religion, which is the com­ munal experience of the Absolute. Hegel does not explicitly say that the theory of the absolute indif­ ference point is a distinct phase of systematic philosophy, and not part of transcendental philosophy in the strict sense. But I think that this is the view that he actually holds, and that his failure to be explicit only reflects the difficulty of discussing a system which for the most part remains still to be expounded, and one whose exposition more

52 Difference

properly belongs to someone else. He has to project an image of what Schelling's system will look like when Schelling has completed it. But he could not expound the system fully in the Difference essay, because in this period Schelling's activity was concentrated exclusively on the side of natural philosophy. Transcendental philosophy was to be Heg e ls sphere. All the lecture courses that he was to give before Schel­ ling left Jena, were conceived either as transcendental philosophy or as a critical propaedeutic to philosophy (like the general reflections with which the Difference essay opens). Since both Schelling and Hegel were by temperament and by express declaration systematic philoso­ phers it was very comfortable to have a systematic conception which enabled them to divide the field while still continuing, each of them, to expound the Absolute Identity completely. It is not surprising therefore, that in his account of Schelling's sys­ tem in the Difference essay Hegel concentrates on the theory of or­ ganic nature. This is, in any case, what the comparison with Fichte requires, when that comparison is seen as an integration of Fichte's inadequacies, in line with the general project of showing that Schel­ ling's system is not only different but also superior. And this was just where Schelling's own "Exposition of My System" broke off, so that as Hegel said in his preface even Schelling himself had never made the difference clear (79). Hegel's condensed exposition does not clarify the problem very much, however. For help in understanding it we had best turn to the summaries of his system that Schelling himself produced during the next year or two. Schematically the main "levels" (Potenzen) of his Philosophy of Nature in this period were as follows:82 First Potenz: (of Nature or finitude, as opposed to God or infinity) Reflection , or reception of the infinite in the finite: 1. World-structure (in the whole) 2. Body, material forms (in singulars) 3. Spatialization Second Potenz : Subsumption ,83 or the reception of the finite into the infinite: 1. Light (the universal principle) 2. Dynamic series of bodies (in three Potenzen): a) Magnetism— one dimensional or linear b) Electricity— two dimensional or square c) Chemical process— three dimensional or cubic

53 Introduction

3. Divine Light and Gravity Universal Mechanism and Necessity Third Potenz: Reason , or the absolute equality of finite and infinite Organism (identity of form and matter): 1. Bildungstrieb (reproductive power, analogous to magnetism and cohesion) 2. Irritability (analogous to electricty or relative cohesion) 3. Sensibility (analogous to chemical process) Indifference Point : The organism is "Objective Reason" or "Truth" as

the real side of "Absolute Indifference." It corresponds to "imagina­ tion" or "Beauty" as the ideal side.84 I shall not try to expound this scheme but a few words about the basic concept of Potenz are needed. This is a term which Schelling al­ ways continued to use from about 1797 onwards— when his friend Eschenmayer was the first to use it in print.85 It was borrowed from the theory of powers in mathematics (x, x2, x3, etc.), and together with plus and minus signs (for "positive" and "negative" or " A " and "nonA ") it provided Schelling with all the formal equipment he needed for a conceptual algebra of the Identity theory. Hegel does not use this algebra in the Difference essay, though he began to employ it in Faith and Knowledge. But he does employ the term Potenz. It is the general name for an organic pattern of the kind which the Identity theory re­ quires as the unit of existence or of explanation. According to Schel­ ling's "Exposition": "The Absolute Identity only exists under the form of all Potenzen.” 86 His fullest and least technical account of the concept—which I can scarcely hope to improve on—is in the introduc­ tion to his lectures on the Philosophy of Art (first delivered October 1802): There is only One philosophy and One science of philosophy; what are called distinct philosophical sciences, are either quite perverse or these sciences are just expositions of the One and un­ divided whole of philosophy in distinct Potenzen or under dis­ tinct ideal determinations. . . . this expression . . . is connected with the general doctrine of philosophy about the essential and inward identitity of all things and of everything which we distinguish at all. There is truly and in itself only One essential being, One absolute real, and this being an absolute is indivisible, so that it cannot pass

54 Difference over into distinct beings through division or separation; since the one being is indivisible, diversity of things is only possible at all, in so far as it is posited as the undivided whole under distinct determ inations. These determ inations I call Potenzen. They change nothing w hatsoever in the essential being, which rem ains alw ays and necessarily the sam e, which is w hy they are called ideal determ inations. For exam ple, w hat we cognize in history or in art, is essentially the sam e as w hat also exists in n ature; in each of them the whole absoluten ess is innate, but this absolute­ n ess stands at distinct levels [Potenzen ] in nature, history, and art. If one could take the Potenz aw ay, so as to see the pure essence naked so to speak, O ne being w ould truly be in all of them. But Philosophy in its com plete appearance, em erges only in the totality of all Potenzen. For it ought to be a true im age [Bild] o f the U niverse— and this equals the Absolute set forth in the total­ ity of all ideal determinations. G od and the Universe are one, or they are only different aspects of One and the same bein g; G od is the universe regarded from the side of identity; he is AU since he is the only real being, and hence there is nothing outside of him, while the Universe is G od grasped from the side o f totality. But in the absolute idea which is the principle of philosophy, both identity and totality are once again one. N ow the complete appearance o f philosophy, as I say, em erges only in the totality o f all Potenzen. In the A bsolute as such, and therefore also in the principle of philosophy there is no Potenz precisely because it com prehends all Potenzen , and conversely ju st in virtue o f the fact that there is no Potenz in it, all Potenzen are contained in it. I call this principle the absolute point of identity of philosophy precisely for this reason, that it is not equal to any particular Potenz , and yet it com prehends all of them. N ow this indifference point, ju st because it is the point of in­ difference, and it is strictly unique, indiscernible and indivisible, necessarily exists again in every particular unity (another name for a Potenz ); and this is not possible unless in each of these particular unities all unities, hence all Potenzen , return once again. T h u s there is in philosophy overall nothing but the A b so ­ lute, or we m eet with nothing in philosophy but the A bsolute— alw ays ju st strictly the O ne, and ju st this unique One in particular fo rm s.87

55 Introduction

The illustration that Hegel offers us is mainly a development of the analogy between the third Potenz of Nature and the second. The basic concept is the theological one of the "divine light" (of John 1) which shone (outwardly) in the primeval darkness at the moment of Crea­ tion, but which was also (inwardly) "the life of men" (and of lower organisms). On the other side of the antinomy, the darkness is not only the uncreated j(or infinite) nothing out of which the finite world was made but > k o the inward darkness of the created (i.e., finite) solid bodies which are impervious to the light of their central sun. Just how the power of light is supposed to split and integrate the gen­ eral force of gravity into the differentiated "specific gravity" of the "cohesive series" we need not enquire. There was never anything to be said in support of this hypothesis except that the Sun is, after all, the general centre of gravity for our cosmos (the solar system ). This stage corresponds to the production of objective intuitions by the imaginative intelligence. We can agree, at least, that the work of the productive imagination is equally mysterious. The self-positing of Reason is unconscious, and the self-positing of nature (as light and gravity) is a simple compresence of the different forces. The infinite source is the Sun, but all the sundered aspects of the finite dynamic series are united in the reflective, (and finite) form of the crystal. This is the theoretical parallel of our thinking activity. The practical parallel is between man's conscious remaking both of his physical environment and of himself in his culture, and the inter­ nalization of the divine light as the life of an organism. The organ­ ism has as its focus a kind of "organic crystal" (in higher animals, the brain) which is a higher Potenz of contraction because it has an inner side; the animal feels, it is aware of itself (though not yet as a self, for that is the extreme of contraction which Nature points to but cannot reach). But this higher contraction is accompanied by sexual differentiation.88 Sexual attraction, which is specific to animals is elec­ tric (rather than cohesive or magnetic) in character because it involves the linking of two sundered poles. Thus it is transmitted by voice which is the first seed of that utter­ ing of the inner consciousness which distinguishes (and constitutes) spiritual being. The inwardness of natural organisms is not self-uttered, however, except at this limit, and in this absolutely limited way. In general, it has to be reconstructed, by the introjection of the organic patterns that lie open to view in the inorganic world. Thus, in the two axes of a planetary ellipse, nature already presents us with the poles

56 Difference

of a magnet without a joining bar.89 This "line of cohesion" is some­ how internalized in the organization of the animate body (Hegel does not say how). The internalized electricity of sex is easy enough to rec­ ognize90 and needs no further comment. Voice is analogous to the electric current that passes between the poles of a Voltaic pile in the "chemical process."91 H ere we m ust reconsider the problem of the place of analogy in the philosophy of nature. H egel never quite gave up using inorganic anal­ ogies based on m agnetism and electricity in his philosophy of the or­ ganism . But he did later see the error of this w holesale introjection of inorganic patterns into the interpretation of organic phenomena. This is the "capricious exercise of the im agination and the m ost comm on­ place w ay of reasoning by superficial an alo g y ," the "crude em piricism " that he later condem ned.92 H is own approach even in these earliest d ays w as more dependent on the projection outw ards and dow nw ards of patterns discovered in self-conscious life. W e have an exam ple of this in the rem ark that even an anim al cry "p o sits itself as cognizing and to be recogn ized" (168). The "stru g g le for recognition" is a H e­ gelian m otif (not found at all in Schelling) which m akes its first ap ­ pearance here. It p lays a prom inent role in the System of Ethical Life.

The two philosophic sciences are really opposed because each is an integrated unity of being and cognition. But in natural philosophy, the moment of objectivity, of external being is predominant (the algebraic + formula for it is A = B ); whereas in transcendental philosophy the moment of subjectivity, of cognition is dominant. It has being because + its self-knowing is also a self-making (and the formula for it is A = B). Cognition and being, the dialectical elements for which A and B stand, are only ideal opposites, not real ones. And because of their real oppo­ sition, their independence, the two sciences cannot simply exist side by side in parallel (that is their "ideal" relation). They must be or­ dered in relation to one another as existences; and their order is already apparent. Transcendental philosophy is higher than natural philosophy which leads up to it. Each is complete and closed in itself, but only in a relative way, that is, a way that points to its completion in the other. They each culminate in the same point of indifference but they express it from opposed aspects (objective and subjective). They form a line (which Schelling called the "constructed line") through the point of indifference. Schelling drew it thus:

57 Introduction H-

Ideal Pole A = B

H-

(0) A~ A

A = B Real Pole

Zero is the negative expression for the point of indifference or the Absolute Identity. "A = A" is the positive expression. Schelling pre­ fers the positive expression, but Hegel adopts the negative one (as a formula for nullification ). We have already seen (pp. 21-4 above) how Hegel's preference arises from his conception of the birth of speculation from the antinomic character of reflection. Schelling's choice arises from his Spinozist conviction that speculative philosophy can be expounded directly from the absolute standpoint of God. He­ gel's eventual condemnation of Schelling's Absolute as "the dark night in which all cows are black" is already implicit in his use of zero; and Schelling's sense of outrage at this verdict is easy to under­ stand since he did not take an antinomic view of "A = A ." The constructed line is the formula which expresses the opposition of the two sciences in parallel or as mutually balancing one another. But the "midpoint is doubled" in each of them because each is a line in itself. They must join one another not just at the center but at the extremes. This is the "self construction of identity into totality" which is best represented as the circle produced by the spinning of the whole line upon its center point through 180° so that the ends change places and the line itself is inverted: /

^

Tr anscendental\ Philosophy \

(Ideal Pole)/ A — B__________ A — B j (Real Pole) ■”

(3JOJ p a ^ ) I a = V

\

0

^

9 = y l(a io j p?api)

Natural J Philosophy jr

I hope it will be clear why I have preferred to use Hegel's zero for the indifference point as "identity." The center of the circle is the neg­ ative Absolute, the nothing out of which the world is created, and the abyss in which all finitude is engulfed. The starting point of the "in­ finite movement" is indicated above the line and the finishing point below. With a clockwise motion this enables us to place transcenden­

58 Difference

tal philosophy "above/' which is where it belongs. The circle that is produced by the motion is the "indifference point as totality/' which is what is properly expressed by the formula A = A. The "relative to­ talities" are the closed half-circles.93 The point of transition which is now represented by the constructed line (as the diameter that divides the realm of nature from that of in­ telligence) is man himself as the crowning achievement of natural creation, and the maker of the cognitive circle. For human conscious­ ness is the incarnation of the Logos, the "lightning stroke of the ideal upon the real" (170). This is the dividing line between unconscious production and conscious self-production. Hegel's final remarks about the polarity of intellectual intuition it­ self cannot be interpreted on the circumference of the circle at a ll; for they concern the relation of Art, Speculation, and Religion, to the ab­ solute indifference point in the center. As we have suggested, this final phase of philosophy should be thought of as distinct from the two philosophical sciences. Art is the resumption of human life in the Absolute, and Speculation is the resumption of human thought in the Absolute. To express this on our diagram we should probably return to the radial line and think of a movement toward the center from each end. But Hegel's doctrine that Art is natural and Speculation transcendental is not at all the same as Schelling's; and the identifica­ tion of both of them as forms of "divine Service," so that they are aspects of Religion which is the "resumption of the whole into one," is also Hegel's own (though of course Schelling identified the totality with God). Art and Speculation are uniquely individualized creative activities (in which feeling and conception are respectively dominant). But Religion is a communal activity. Because he begins from the con­ trast of aesthetic and religious intuition, Hegel speaks at first as if re­ ligion was simply emotional, not conceptual. But since he regards Speculation as a form of divine service it is evident that Religion is really the ultimate point of union, and hence that it is not vitiated by any one-sidedness of this kind.94 Speculation becomes divine service when it transcends its own one­ sided intellectual character. This certainly implies that one cannot be a philosopher without having a kind of aesthetic awareness. But this sober criticism of reflective thought is far removed from Schelling's enthusiastic pronouncement that "A rt is the organon of Philosophy." It is clear that for Hegel, Speculation is higher than Art, and also that, at this stage in the development of his thought, Religion is higher than either of them.

59 Introduction

I have thus far sought to interpret what Hegel says about Schel­ ling's System in the light of Schelling's own contemporary statements about it. But already I have ventured to propose a circular diagram which goes beyond anything in Schelling. I will try finally to sketch the outline of the System that seems to be implicit in the text of the Difference essay as I have interpreted it. This outline is by no means independent of the tabular presentation of Schelling's view that I have already given, but it departs from it in a few places, and in many re­ spects it falls short because I have only included points for which there is evidence in Hegel's own texts in this period. Hence, this out­ line should be thought of as no more than a fragment of the whole, and as no more than a probable conjecture at best: I. The theoretical Science of Nature (the unconscious self-production of the Absolute observed or contemplated by Reason) A. Theoretical Part: Inorganic Nature (1) Magnetism: the level of connected poles—theory of universal and specific gravity, and of cohesion (2) Electricity: level of separated poles (3) Chemical process: self-resolution of the poles into neu­ trality Point of Union for the inorganic: Crystallization (a self-deter­ mined form) B. Practical Part: Organic Nature (the active reconstruction of the inorganic process from an inner center) (1) Living magnetism (organic cohesion) (2) Living electricity (sexual attraction and reproduction) (3) Living chemical process (voice—communication) Point of Union for the organic: the brain (this is the highest product of organic cohesion) II. The practical Science of Intelligence (the conscious self-reproduc­ tion of the Absolute by and as Reason) A. Theoretical Part: Knowledge (here Reason produces itself as the outer center, the observer) (1) Sense intuition and imagination (2) Reflection and intellect (3) Reason

60 Difference

Point of Union: Transcendental intuition (the "outer" center becomes "inner") B. Practical Part: Ethical Life (here Reason as the "inner center" produces its own world) (1) Individual and family (spiritual cohesion) (2) Conflict and War (opposition) (3) Ethical life (substantial existence) Point of Union: Religion (this leads to III below) III. Theory of the Indifference of Nature and Intelligence (1) Theory of art (2) Speculative theology (3) Religion Sections IA and IB in this scheme are based on the example that Hegel gives in the Difference essay (168-9). As the reader will see by examining the tabular summary of Schelling's theory given above, this example corresponds fairly closely to the second moment of Schelling's Second Potenz, and it can be viewed as an expansion of the second moment of Schelling's Third Potenz (which is what the parallelism obviously requires). This gives us some measure of how much is omitted in the present schema. The structure of the Science of Intelligence can scarcely be inferred from the text of the Difference essay at all, but the correspondence between the structure of Schel­ ling's System of Transcendental Idealism and Hegel's constructive analysis of Kant in Faith and Knowledge makes me fairly confident in claiming that the critical remarks about reflective philosophy in the Difference essay presuppose a speculative structure of the type sug­ gested. I have filled in the practical part by inserting the skeleton of the subsequent System of Ethical Life. This is much more conjectural. But it is supported on one side by the parallel with Schelling's Third Potenz and on the other side by the natural transition that it provides to the theory of the absolute indifference point which is outlined in he Difference essay. Hegel's own discussion of Schelling's system ends by returning to the comparison with Fichte. If speculative Reason does not transcend its own limits, but simply comprehends the Absolute formally as an absolute activity, instead of comprehending the antinomic identity of this Absolute with its appearance—the "identity of identity and nonidenity"—then an opposition between the noumenal and the phe­

61 Introduction

nomenal world is set up, and the only integration that is possible is through the dominance of the noumenal reality as moral law. The boundary between the two worlds (of Reason and sense) is an incom­ prehensible one; this is what follows directly from the fact that spec­ ulative Reason remains pure and does not "suspend itself." Because transcendental philosophy is an independent science of the Absolute, this "great refusal" is possible. One cannot hope to stir Fichte out of his "entire Science of Knowledge" therefore, because it is formally complete; it is unsatisfactory because it is only formal, but that limit­ ation is formally necessary. The only way that Fichte could be moved would be through a re-examination of his conception of intellectual intuition. The primary activity of thought as reflection is the abstrac­ tion of the pure form from the manifold of empirical consciousness. So if we take this reflective activity as the intuited object of our phil­ osophical reflection—which is what Fichte does—we are beginning with something that is conditioned. We need to take the further step of abstraction, to remove the subjectivity and grasp the identity of being (the condition of reflection) and thinking (the activity that re­ flects). We may well feel that in this "negation of negation" we do indeed have ''the dark night in which all cows are black." But al­ though he said this later himself about Schelling's theory of the ab­ solute indifference point, Hegel continued to tell his students that the beginning of philosophy was the comprehension of "the nothing." He only objected when this beginning was set us as the final goal. The intuition when it is thus absolutely comprehended, has two sides: it is both subject and object, both thinking and being, both Ego and na­ ture. The adequate development of the side of self-consciousness re­ quires the development pari passu of the philosophical comprehension of nature. Fichte tried to ignore this requirement. We know and understand ouselves, exactly as well, and to the de­ gree, and in the respects, that we know our world. This is the funda­ mental thesis of the Identity Philosophy, and it stands unshaken in Hegel's mind throughout his later development. Whatever follies we may find in the Philosophy of Nature that Schelling or Hegel formu­ lated, the only question that we can properly raise is whether it ex­ presses a "thinking comprehension" of the world of that time, and of its experience of Nature as systematized in its science. Hegel subse­ quently asked this question about Schelling's philosophy of nature and answered in the negative. Everyone agrees with him. But no one, as far as I know, has properly studied whether the same verdict really holds about Hegel's Philosophy of Nature; the general assumption

62

Difference

has been that it does. Perhaps it does indeed; there are reasons for thinking that it may. Hegel's intense aversion for Newtonian m eta­ physics may have distorted his understanding of Newtonian physics, for example; and he certainly espoused several lost causes in chemis­ try, in optics, and in physiology. But even at the worst, even if his effort was not notably more successful than Schelling's, it would be rank dogmatism to conclude without further study that his project was mistaken because the execution failed. A systematic philosophy of human knowledge and human experience must involve some ac­ count of man's place in nature; and the more "formal" it is in this respect, even if the formalism can be intellectually justified and de­ fended (which seems more questionable in our non-Euclidean, postNewtonian, evolutionary culture than it did in the scientifically secure century that followed Kant's death), the less valuable it will be for our human purposes. Certainly no modern attempt to construct the Identity Principle into a system could be the unaided work of one mind. But then Hegel did not really claim that that was possible even in the heyday of romanticism. The Philosophy that speaks through his mouth is no respecter of persons—his own included.

7. T H E

CODA:

REINHOLD.

At this point our analysis ceases, for Hegel's argument is now com­ plete. The essay ends with a discussion of Reinhold (and Bardili). But for the most part this is easy enough to follow. We have already ap­ pealed to it for aid several times in our study of the "general reflec­ tions" at the beginning. Hardly anything in it requires further explan­ ation until the very end when it returns to the topic of "the need of philosophy." Hegel did not dignify this section with a heading; and the chief question to be asked about it is why he wrote it at all. "It still re­ mains," he says blandly, "fo r us to say something about Reinhold's view of Fichte's and Schelling's philosophy and about his own philos­ ophy" (174). But why does it remain? The topic which Hegel itali­ cized is germane to the project of the essay because Reinhold's mis­ understanding of Schelling's system is the external occasion, the historical stimulus for the writing of it. This fact is recorded on the title page of the essay itself; a discussion of Reinhold's criticism of Schelling in the first fascicle of his Contributions had been promised

63 Introduction

to the reader and must be supplied. But Hegel dispatches this topic in a few pages, and then devotes three times as much space to a discus­ sion of "Reinhold's own philosophy." This is not merely gratuitous; it is almost directly contrary to his explicit declaration at the outset that his essay will not be concerned with Reinhold's "revolution of bringing philosophy back to logic" (79). Why then does Hegel discuss it after all? Walter Kaufmann, ignor­ ing the Preface and everything on the title page except the reference to Reinhold's Contributions , says that the essay is "an extended re­ view of a work by Reinhold."95 If ever there was a case of the tail being made to wag the dog this is one. Kaufmann's comment is not even an accurate characterization of the tailpiece, for the works "re­ viewed" here are not the ones mentioned on the title page at all, but rather Reinhold's old Versuch and Bardili's new Grundriss der Ersten Logik. Nevertheless, Kaufmann's view contains, in a distorted way, the clue that we need. For while Hegel was writing this essay, Schelling was excitedly pursuing the project of a Critical Journal of Phil­ osophy which would survey the whole range of the contemporary philosophical literature and sift out what was worthy of note from the point of view of the new speculative idealism. When his other hoped-for collaborators failed him, he turned to Hegel for help.96 The critical appraisal of the "logical reduction of philosophy" with which Hegel's- essay ends is a foretaste of what he could and would do to the popular philosophy of the time in his contributions to the new JournaL

The discussion is witty; it shows us a lighter, though not a gentler, side of Hegel. But the outcome is entirely negative, and the polemical tone and stance is ultimately rather repellent. As with the many pages of the Critical Journal that was devoted to the strenuous campaign against "non-philosophy," it is wisest to read these final pages of the Difference essay for their amusement value and then to forget them. What we have here is, for the most part, the spectacle of the Young Turks of Academe railing against the old fogies who have all the best jobs. A very different view has, of course, been defended, and it is easy to see why. Whatever we may think about Bardili, Reinhold is not a contemptible figure in the history of philosophy. He is not unworthy of attention; and in the Critical Journal, Hegel generally gives serious attention to those who deserve it, however hostile and negative he may be. But the results of serious critical attention on Hegel's part are never simply negative, as any careful student of Faith and Knowl­

64 Difference edge or of Hegel's review of G. E. Schulze's Critique of Theoretical Philosophy 97 can testify. Now Reinhold certainly was not a philoso­

pher of the stature of Kant or Fichte; perhaps he should not even be ranked with Jacobi. But surely he was the equal of Schulze? And if we look again with this in mind, do we not see that just as the critical evaluation of scepticism was important for the Phenomenology , so the "reduction of philosophy to Logic" is the watchword of Hegel's mature system? Several scholars—the French translator Mery among them98—have tried to argue this way on behalf of Reinhold, and more especially on behalf of Bardili. But I think they are mistaken, or at least they are mistaken in so far as they seem to hold that the stimulus and example of Reinhold and Bardili were important. What is true is that the focal importance which was ascribed to the principle of Identity in their programme makes Hegel's critical exercise into a useful foil for the exposition of the speculative philosophy of Identity. This connection and contrast was his excuse for concluding his comparison of Fichte and Schelling, who had constructed different systems on a common philosophical base, with a critique of two thinkers who did not have that philosophical base at all.99 The reduction of philosophy to logic, in the sense in which Hegel took it up, was the project of Kant in the three Critiques. Hegel did not intend to address the general topic of the relation of logic to phil­ osophy in the Difference essay. That is why he says in the "Preface" that he does not propose to deal with this latest revolution in Rein­ hold's thought. Careful examination of the "K ant" section of Faith and Knowledge will show that Hegel's Logic grew out of the "critical philosophy," which Bardili regarded as a mental sickness that needed his logical "medicine." In the Difference essay there is still no sign of a speculative conception of Logic as such. I hope that my analysis of the argument has shown that "speculative logic" is almost ready to be born. But there is external evidence to show that the birth has not yet happened. Hegel began teaching "logic and metaphysics" shortly after he penned these closing pages on Reinhold and Bardili. He taught this subject regularly for several terms, and he began at once to write a textbook for it. We have some bits of evidence to show that in all of his early lecture courses his conception of logic remained critical, rather than speculative. He did not have the project of a speculative logic that would stand in the same relation to the logic of Reinhold and Bardili as his speculative principle of Identity stands to their for­ mal principle in the Difference essay. Rather he held that the study of

65 Introduction

logic must prepare the way for philosophy by confronting all forms of finite thought with the Absolute, and casting them "into the abyss of their own perfection/7 to borrow a phrase from the Difference es­ say (140). This critical conception of logic is expressed in the intro­ ductory lecture for a winter course—a lecture that was probably given in September/October 1802.100 Hegel had then completed, and was about to publish, a complete survey of the "forms of finite thought" in Faith and Knowledge. All the manuscripts from the earliest courses on logic are lost, but I think Faith and Knowledge is the conscious precipitate of everything valuable produced by this crit­ ical Conception of logic, made at the moment when Hegel was almost ready to advance to the speculative conception of the subject—a con­ ception which was publicly announced in the Summer of 1803, and first formulated around the previous Christmas. If this hypothesis is right, then Jacobi was a far more immediate stimulus than Reinhold or Bardili for the thought-revolution that was involved. For it was Jacobi who emphasized the self-destructive character of philosophical reflection. But, finally, was it not Reinhold who proclaimed the need for an objective conception of thinking? Indeed it was, and Hegel waxes very ironic about what Reinhold produced in answer to his own chal­ lenge. It is clear from the Difference essay that Hegel and Schelling did not -need Reinhold to deliver any such challenge. Again, they had already found their challenge in Kant's declaration that teleological concepts could only be employed regulatively in our thinking. Reinhold's demand did not even have the irritant power of the one made by the egregious W. T. Krug who asked whether the Identity Philoso­ phers could "deduce his pen."101 It was obviously quite useless to re­ spond to that challenge as far as Krug himself was concerned, for the way in which he framed it showed that he was quite incapable of un­ derstanding any response that was possible within the Identity Sys­ tem. Among the things that he demanded a deduction for, there were some (e.g., the Moon) for which the deduction had already been giv­ en. But Krug struck a nerve; for the sake of the "identity of identity and non-identity" Hegel went on struggling to decide what ought to be said about "Krug's pen," and in consequence, a complete nonentity has crept for ever into a place among the necessary footnotes of the history of philosophy. Reinhold did not have that luck; but he did not, and does not, need it. Hegel had never been much interested in him.102 In the Difference essay he brings him tumbling in upon the stage, along with his latest

i

66 Difference

mentor Bardili, like the clowns bowing and taking the curtain calls for that daring young man on the flying trapeze, Schelling. This is certainly not fair treatment. But the unfairness itself is part of the life of Reason. For there are philosophical enterprises other than the one in which the Identity philosophers were engaged; and philosophers engaged in different enterprises are bound to appear ridiculous to one another when they seem to be talking about the same questions. If it really is the case (whatever that means) that the history of Philosophy is "the story of the one eternal Reason" (114), it is certainly also the case that that story will never be told with perfect balance and adequacy in one book, or from a single point of view. We can admit this without doubting that Hegel's conception of the history of phil­ osophy is an immense advance over Reinhold's. And we can assert that in turn, without denying that Hegel is unjust to Reinhold. The fact is that he is consistently unjust to the whole tradition of philosophy that stems from Locke. But not more unjust, certainly, than the heirs of that tradition have been to him. An understanding of how philosophical prejudice arises from the "need" of the time is one of the things that Hegel sought to bring about. His own is not the least important case where his insight needs to be applied. H . S . HARRIS

NOTES

1. He h ad previously pub lish ed (at Fran kfurt in 1798) an anonym ous tran slation with introduction and n otes of the Confidential Letters of J. J. C art, a political pam ph let ag ain st the ad m inistration of the V au d by the C an ton of Berne. A facsim ile reprint w as recently issu ed by V andenhoek and R upprecht (G ottingen , 1970). 2. Sch ellin g told Fichte that it h ad ap peared "in the la st few d a y s" on 3 O ctober 1801 (N icolin, report 42). H egel's birthday w as on 26 A u gust. 3. The whole career outlined in the follow in g p aragrap h s is fully d iscu sse d an d docum ented in H arris, Tow ard the Sunlight.

4. This w as first published in 1794. There is an E nglish tran slation by Fritz M arti in M etaphilosoph y VI, 1, 1975. 5. It w as Schiller, not G oethe, who pressed for Sch ellin g's appointm ent in the first instance. G oethe w as unim ­ p ressed by Sch ellin g's first e ssay on the philosophy of n atu re: he feared that Schelling w as only Fichte in d is­ gu ise, and w ould prove to be even more of a political radical than Fichte. But he changed h is m ind after his first long conversation with Sch elling; and his reception of Sch ellin g's next essay o f the philosophy of n ature (On the W orld-Soul, 1798) w as enthusiastic. (See Fuhrm ans, I, 131—5). 6. The first continuous d raft of the e ssay which later editors have called

67 Introduction "T h e C onstitution of G e rm an y " w as written in this period. (An English tran slation — the first h alf of which is based on the unfinished second d raft— is in K nox and Pelczynski, pp. 143— 242). 7. A s we shall see later, there is som e evidence that even in the D iffer­ ence e ssay H egel h as m odified w hat he calls "S c h e llin g 's Sy ste m " to accord with his own beliefs. See pp. 51-2 above. 8. Letter 167 (to Sin clair [O ctober 1810]), H offm eister, I, 332. (For Hölderlin's position at this sta g e see Hannelore H egel, Isaa k von Sin clair). 9. See K an t's "O p e n L e tter" of 7 A u gu st 1799, A kad. XII, 3 7 0 -1 ; the crucial p a ssa g e is tran slated in Zweig, pp. 253—4. 10. A n anonym ous review er (actu al­ ly K arl A u gu st Böttinger) who sur­ veyed the M ich aelm as publication lists in the A llgem eine Zeitung of Stu ttgart (H egel's hom e city) at the begin nin g of N ovem ber, inform ed his readers that "S ch e llin g h as now fetch ed a stout w arrior to Jen a from his fath erlan d W ürttem berg, through w hom he gives notice to the aston ish ed public, that even Fichte stan ds far below his own view point." Som eone p a sse d on a garb led version of this report to Fichte, an d Fichte w as n atu rally upset. The only sign ed statem ent in the whole of the C ritical Journ al (edited by Sch ellin g and H egel together) w as a footnote near the end of the first issu e in which H egel flatly called the author of this report " a lia r " (N .K .A . IV, 190 n.). A fter receiving Sch ellin g's exp lan a­ tions Fichte affected to be perfectly at ease ab ou t the whole m atter (see L et­ ter 483, Schulz II, 345). But if he read the e ssay he can h ardly have been h appy ab ou t it. P robably he did no more than glance at it. A t any rate it w as no lie to say that H egel clearly

declares that Sch ellin g's view point stan d s far above Fichte's. Schelling w ould probably have preferred not to see the declaration m ade quite so plainly. But since it w as not true that H egel w as m erely Sch ellin g's m outh­ piece, the m ost that Schelling could do w as to deny responsib ility for w hat H egel had w ritten. He did this very explicitly when he w rote to Fichte shortly after the e ssay ap peared ( 3 O ctober 1801; see N icolin, report 42, or Schulz, II, 340). 11. N ohl, pp. 356-61; tran slated by R. K roner under the title "F rag m en t of a S y ste m " in Knox and K roner, pp. 309—19. 12. See Knox and Kroner, p. 318. The quotation which K roner detects but cannot identify in this p a ssa g e is from Fichte's "A p p e a l to the P ublic” of 1799 (W erke V, 237); the sam e echo occurs twice in Faith and Know ledge, pp. 174, 177. 13. Science of K now ledge (tran slated by P. H eath and J. L ach s), pp. 117119, 146, 226, 101, 81. It will be h elpful to exam ine the p a ssa g e s in this order. W e should notice the shift in the m ean ing of "d o g m a tism ," for w hich Fichte w as prim arily responsible. K an t called any m etaph ysics dogm atic if it failed to inquire into the foun dation of its truth claim s. In Fichte dogm atism is the only altern ative to idealism — and hence virtually a synonym for realism . The Identity Ph ilosoph y w as in part an attem pt to overcom e this dogm atic opposition . H egel regards Fichte's supp osed ly critical idealism as dogm atic in its m oral opp osition to all realism . A ll of these later pejorative uses of 'dogm atic' sprin g from K an t's. But w hat is qualified as dogm atic de­ pends on w hat is accepted as being fully critical by the auth or concerned. (For further discu ssion , illu stration s and references see notes 60 and 61 be­ low.)

68 Difference 14. T h e parenthetic num bers in the text refer to the relevant p age of the tran slatio n below. 15. Schelling h im self say s " A s fa r a s the exposition is concerned I have tak en Spin oza as my m o d el." (W erke IV, 113.) 16. D oktor der W eltw eisheit w as a quite common form fo r "D o cto r of P h ilo so p h y " em ployed by sch olars w ho w ere av erse to Latin term s an d Latinate borrow ing. But H egel probably ad o p ted it because he w as not, in poin t o f fac t, a "D o c to r" at all. He w as a M a g iste r of Tübingen. A t T ü bin gen this dign ity w as considered equal to the doctorate of other institutions, b ut it w as not w idely recognized as such. If H egel had called h im self Philosop h iae doctor the question "fro m w hat in stitu tio n ?" w ould have arisen . The G erm an perip h rasis en abled H egel to av o id this problem , and in order to m ake this ad van tage v isible we have tran slate d the vern acular ph rase liter­ ally. 17. T h ere is even som e evidence w hich su gg e sts that there were people w ho genuinely believed at the time th at H egel w as faking. H einrich L au b e in h is M oderne C h arakteristik en (p u b ­ lish ed in 1838) gives the follow in g re­ port ab out H egel at Jen a thirty-five y e ars b efo re: "H e p aid for his H a b ili­ tation com ically enough w ith b ad L ouis d'or that Fichte h ad given him , his ph ilosoph y w as alw ay s coun terfeit coin, but he w as bold as b ra ss to d e fy the Faculty with a leg-pull. H egel w as a re al good fellow , full of good fu n " (N icolin , report 116). O n e of Schelling's b est students, I. P. T roxler, rem arked in a letter o f 1854 that Laube h ad "sk etch e d the Je n a period very w ell" (N icolin, report 50). So although L au b e's story can h ard ly have gone the rounds in quite this form when the D ifference e ssay first ap peared, the view that L aube

s u g g e sts m ay well be a genuine echo o f that time. O f course, H egel did not really " p a y " for his H abilitation w ith th e D ifference e ssay : he had to p ro­ du ce a L atin dissertation On the O rb its o f the Planets for that (as well as som e h on est m oney!). But at the m o­ m en t when he applied for his license to lecture b oth he and everyone else certain ly regarded the Difference e ssay a s the principal b asis for his claim to an academ ic career. 18. See especially Klaus D tising, "S p e k u la tio n und R eflexion," H e g elStu d ien 5 (1969): 95-128. 19. H aldan e and Sim son, III, 513. T h is com m ent probably goes b ack to 1805. 20. A u se fu l survey of the different "s y s te m o u tlin e s" that Schelling gave in his v ariou s w orks betw een 1801 and 1806 will be found in Xavier T illiette, I, 417—21. T h e b est conspectus I can arriv e at fo r 1801-2 is given an d d is­ c u sse d on pp. 52-3 above. 21. H ald an e and Sim son, III, 515. I d o not know whether Tilliette w as con scio u sly influenced by this com ­ m ent. But, if not, his own title (Schel­ lin g : une philosophie en devenir) is an independent confirm ation of its accu­ racy. 22. B ecau se of the distinction b e ­ tw een " s p ir it " and "le tte r" even this ph ilosoph y common to Fichte and Sch ellin g did not "lie before the p u b ­ lic " of 1801 so very plainly. H egel c a s ­ tig a te s R einhold for seem ing not to know that "th ere has been a p h ilo so ­ p h y other than pure transcendental id ealism b efore the public for y e a rs" (174). By " a philosophy other than pu re tran scen dental idealism " he p ro b ­ ab ly m ean s "th e speculative ph ilo so ­ ph y o f both Fichte and Sch ellin g." Fichte's Science o f Know ledge w as pub lish ed in 1794 and Schelling's S y s ­ tem o f T ranscendental idealism in 1800.

69 Introduction 23. C ritique of Pure R easo n , B135. 24. W erke I, 91 (H eath and L ach s, p. 93). 25. H ald an e and Sim son , III, 481. 26. W erke I, 10 0 -2 ; H eath and Lachs, pp. 100-2. 27. ibid., p. 102 (H eath and Lachs, p. 102). 28. A kad. V, 401 (M eredith, Teleological Judgm ent, p. 55). 29. A kad. V, 412 (M eredith, Teleological Ju d gm en t, p. 70-1). The em ph a­ sis in the first sentence of the q u o ta­ tion is mine. 30. C ritique of Pure R eason , B, xxx. 31. H egel deals w ith Fichte a s a the­ orist of " f a it h " in Faith an d K now l­ edge. In the D ifference e ssay he is treated strictly as a theorist o f know l­ edge. T h is is the key to an un der­ stan din g of the enorm ous con trast in the w ay Fichte is treated in the two e ssay s. 32. "S e c o n d Introduction to the Sci­ ence o f K n ow ledge," W erke I, 466 (H eath and Lachs, p. 41). K an t u ses the expression "in tellektuelle A n ­ sc h a u u n g " only in the second edition o f the C ritique of Pure R e a so n ; and the very first tim e he does so he flatly contradicts the interpretation Fichte later ad opted (B35n). In the C ritique of Ju dgm en t he sp eak s rath er of an "in tu itive Verstand"-, an d ju st once, in the sam e connection, o f "ein e andere als sinnliche A n sch au u n g " (A kad. V, 418; all the relevant p a ssa g e s can be found un der "in tu itio n " in the indices of K em p Sm ith and M eredith ). The p o ssib ility o f "in tu ition s different from o u rs" is m entioned three or fou r tim es in the first edition o f the Critique of Pure R easo n , as is the im possib ility of "rep resen tin g to ourselves the p o ssi­ bility of an un derstan din g w hich should know itself, not discursively through categories, but in tuitively in a n on -sen sible in tu itio n " (A 256/B 311-2).

The "in tu itive u n d erstan d in g" is also d iscu ssed in the second version o f the T ran scen den tal D eduction. It w as un ­ fortun ate that K an t's su ccesso rs gen ­ erally adopted the expression which K ant u sed only in the Critique of Pure R eason, since it w as the doctrine of the Critique o f Ju dgm en t that im ­ p ressed them. The expression " t r a n s ­ cendental in tu itio n" which H egel som e­ tim es u ses is in som e w ays preferab le (see n. 51 and pp. 109—11). But H egel's one reference to the "in tu itive un der* sta n d in g " in the D ifference e ssay is very paradoxically ph rased , for he sp e ak s o f a "se n su o u s u n d erstan d in g" (163), an expression which neither K ant nor an y on e else ever used. 33. W erke I, 467 (H eath and L ach s, pp. 41-2). "C o n stru c t" is one o f S c h il­ lin g's trad em ark s. I w as deligh ted to find my h ypoth esis that it w as Schelling who led Fichte to begin thinking in this w ay, supported— and to my m ind conclusively confirm ed— by W. C. Zim m erli, pp. 177 ff. 34. The m ost forceful statem en t of H egel's earlier critique of K an t (b ased on a detailed study o f the M etap h y sics o f Ethics— for which his notes no lon ger survive) is in "T h e Spirit of C h ristian ity and its F a te " (K nox and K roner, pp. 209-15, 244). 35. R einhold w as a "fa sh io n a b le " auth or am on g the brigh t students at T ü bin gen when H egel w as there, but H egel never found him very in terest­ in g: his w ork w as " o f m ore relevance ju st for theoretical reason [rather] than of greater ap plicab ility to con­ cepts that are gen erally u se fu l." (Letter 8, to Schelling, Ja n u ary 1795, Briefe I, 16.) He did adm it at that time that R einhold w as an im portant ph iloso­ pher. In his first letter to Schelling he rem arked that it w ould take the a p ­ pointm ent o f "som eon e like Reinhold or Fich te" to m ake a real difference in the academ ic situation at Tubin gen

70 Difference (Letter 6, C h ristm as Eve 1794, Briefe I, 12). 36. The reader should note that C. G. B ardili (1761-1808) w as one o f H egel's first teachers at the Tü bin gen sem i­ nary. He w as a Repentent (a "grad u ate a ssista n t") during H egel's first two y ears at T übingen (1788-90); and H egel took Bardili's course on "th e use of profan e auth ors in th eo lo g y " in 1789. At that time Bardili w as more in­ terested in poetry and literatu re than in logic (see Tow ard the Sun ligh t, pp. 81, 84-5). 37. In the curriculum vitae that he w rote in 1804 H egel gave the title as "D ifferen ce of the Sy stem s of Fichte and Schelling and the inadequ acy of the form er" (H offm eister, Briefe IV, 92). 38. A kad. V, 401-2 (M eredith, Teleological Judgm ent, pp. 56-7). 39. A kad. V, 407 (M eredith, p. 64). 40. T h is is an interpretation of the enigm atic paragrap h on p. 92 below, which depends heavily on w hat Hegel say s about the C artesian philosophy in the "In tro d u ctio n " to the C ritical Jour­ nal (N .K .A . IV, 126—7) and partly on the first section of Faith and Know l­ edge (pp. 57-9). 41. For the evidence in support of this claim see Tow ard the Sunlight chapter V, and the sum m ary of H egel's Jen a lectures on "eth ical life " given by R osenkranz (H egels Leben, pp. 13341). W ithin the D ifference e ssay itself, a p artial confirm ation of the position here adopted is provided by the ac­ count which H egel gives of the "a b so ­ lute indifference p o in t" (169—72). 42. I do not think there can be any doubt that this period o f "intellectual security ag ain st R e a so n " m ust be iden­ tified with the Enlightenm ent. Hence I take my reference to Locke to be ju s­ tified. M y reference to Spin oza is, of course, only a con jecture; and the con­ jecture depends on the assum ption

th at w hen H egel w rites die V ersuche . . . können eher v erstan den w erden he m e an s . . . eher verstan den w erden [als begriffen], "m o re easily understood in tellectually [than com prehended ph il­ o so p h ic ally ]." 43. T h is rem ark occurs in his review (1794) of the attack on R einhold's "E lem en tary P h ilo so p h y " by A enesidem us (G. E. Schulze). See Fichte, W erke I, 20. O f course Fichte w as not sa tis ­ fied with R einh old's "u ltim ate fac t of c o n sc io u sn e ss" (ibid., p. 8) or w ith the "p rin cip le of id e n tity /' But his own procedure in the first Science o f K now l­ edge (likew ise 1794) show s the in flu ­ ence of Reinhold. 44. In Faith and K now ledge (83) H e g el say s that K an t's " m ath em atical an tino m ies deal w ith the ap plication of R e aso n as mere n egativity to som e­ thin g reflection h as fixed ." T h ese are the antinom ies o f tem poral b egin n in g / p erpetu ity and sp a tial atom /in fin ite d iv isibility . C om p are also Critique of Pure R eason , B536-7. 45. It is not clear, and it does not becom e clear later (at le ast to m e), ju st w hat— if an ything— the "se lf-c o n ­ stitu tio n " o f the different "p o te n c ie s" of n ature in speculative thought m eans over and above the ad option of this stan d ard . Perhaps that is all it does m ean. In that case this m ust be w hat H egel m eans w hen he say s that "o n ly the connection w ith the A b solute per­ sists, and it is the sole reality of the co g n itio n " (97). 46. Critique o f Pure R e aso n , A 832/ B860. I believe it is h elpfu l to place the discu ssio n in this K an tian context b e cau se H egel in tends to show that the principle of Identity is dialectical, as a K antiafl "Id e a of Pure R e a so n " sh o u ld be. 47. Sp in o za's definition of sub stan ce w as a truly speculative antinom y b e ­ c au se that which is "c a u se of itse lf" m u st at the sam e time be effect of it­

71 Introduction self. But his procedure w as m islead ­ ing, b ecau se an antinom y of this sort is not a b asic proposition from which consequences can be draw n by sim ple linear inference. H egel h im self used Spin oza's principium in a properly speculative w ay when he enounced his celebrated dictum that "th e A b solute is not m erely sub stan ce, it is also su b ­ je ct" in the Preface to the Phenom en­ ology (H offm eister, p. 19; Baillie, p. 80). But in the end he did not choose to begin ph ilosoph y either with Spin ­ oza's "su b sta n c e " or with "th e p rin ­ ciple of id e n tity "; in stead he turned "th e p o sitin g of being in nonbeing as b ecom in g" aroun d into "th e positin g of non-being in b ein g ." "Id e n tity " b e­ com es (virtually) the b egin n in g of the "lo g ic of essen ce " and S p in o za's con­ cept of Su b stan ce is (again virtually) its culm ination. 48. In the Phenom enology H egel ac­ cuses Fichte of trying to do th is: see H offm eister, p. 26 (Baillie, p. 89). 49. Science o f K now ledge, W erke I, 91-102 (H eath and L ach s, pp. 93-102). T his p a ssa g e is well an aly sed from the H egelian point o f view by S. R osen in his G. W. F. H egel (pp. 95—104). Schelling is so far from H egel's an ti­ nomic interpretation of the form al principle of Identity in his own "E x ­ p o sitio n " that he w rites: "16. Between the A that is p osited as sub ject in the proposition 'A = A,' and that which is posited as predicate, no G egen satz is in principle p o ssib le " (W erke IV, 17). A s his explan ation there show s, Sch el­ ling does not w ant to use the form ula to express the identity o f essence and existence. H e does not w ant u s to con­ ceive the A b solu te from the side of this reflective dichotom y at all. A s H egel w ould put it, Schelling w an ts us to "reflect on con n ectedn ess" only: every Potenz exp resses the A b solute Identity— an d so on. 50. When H egel u ses "d iffere n ce " as

a technical term in his speculative vo ­ cab ulary in this period he generally m eans to refer to the "d iffere n ce " b e ­ tween essence and existence on which K an t relied in his C ritique of the O n ­ tological A rgum ent. But this is also the Platonic difference betw een the O ne (concept) an d the M an y (particu­ lars). 51. There can be no doubt that this is w hat H egel also calls intellectual intuition elsew here. By calling it tran s­ cendental H egel op p oses it to sen su ous or em pirical intuition. T h us he does claim , ag ain st K an t, that we have "a n intuition different from our sensu ous in tu itio n" (C ritique o f Judgm ent § 80, A kad. V, 418, M eredith, Teleological Ju dgm en t, p. 77) but he is not com ­ m itted to the position that this tran s­ cendental intuition satisfies exactly the requirem ents laid dow n by K an t for in tellectual intuition (com pare note 32 above an d pp. 109-14 below. 52. To show this is the task o f the Identity Philosophy as a whole. T h us "tran scen d en tal in tu itio n " is a "p o s tu ­ la te " by m eans o f w hich the totality of experience is to be "co n stru cte d ." Ju st as the m ath em atician constructs m ath em atics— especially geom etry— in the a priori "fo rm of outer in tu itio n /' so the m etaph ysician con structs nature and the self in the a priori form of inner intuition— which is Fichte's orig­ inal self-positin g. The construction, when com pleted, valid ates the initial "p o stu la te ." T his is because the con­ struction is not com plete until it re­ turns to its startin g point. 53. D iels-K ran z, Fragm ente der Vorso kratiker, 18 B6. 54. Critique o f Practical R easo n , Part I, Book II, Section 2, Sub section V. (A kad. V, 124-32). 55. Critique of Judgm en t, Section 73 (A kad. V, 395; M eredith, T eleological Judgm en t, p. 47). 56. C om pare his com m ent that

72 Difference "Fich te does not need this d e to u r" (143). 57. A lth ough I accuse Hegel o f sh ift­ in g from his own dialectical p o sitio n to Sch ellin g's vision ary one h ere, it should be noted that in one im p ortan t respect he is bein g faith ful to h is ow n critical ideal. T h at ideal does req u ire the elim ination o f all p ostulation : "th is w hole m anner of p o stu latin g " does indeed "h av e its whole gro u n d in the acceptance of a one-sided sta rtin g p o in t." But the leap that Hegel m akes here in order to escape from the "o n e ­ sid edn ess o f reflection " is exactly w hat he will eventually w rite the P h en om ­ enology to avoid. T h e reflective con ­ scio u sn ess m ust be shown how to e s­ cape from its own one-sidedness, not proph esied to from the other sid e of the ab y ss. 58. First publish ed by Lasson in 1913; now reprinted separately (H am ­ b u rg : M einer, 1967). 59. In the System o f Ethical L ife the role o f the n egative is constructive: it stim ulates grow th. In the Phenom enol­ ogy we find ourselves on a "h ig h w a y of d e sp a ir" (H offm eister, p. 67; B aillie, p. 135), since every constructive ste p involves destruction , every sign ifican t advance involves the recognition of failure. The m ethod of the Encyclo­ paed ia is ag ain positive. Thus th e p ro­ g ressiv e dialectic described in the D if­ ference essay (113-4) for the first tim e, rem ains for H egel the dialectic o f speculative ph ilosoph y as such. T h e dialectic o f failure (in the Phenom enol­ ogy) is the dialectic of phenom enal experience. 60. Reinhold applied the w ord G eistesverirrun g both to D 'H olb ach 's System e de la N atu re and to S c h e l­ lin g's Sy stem of Transcendental Id eal­ ism (177). It m ight seem that if he w as w rong about one o f them he h a d to be right about the other. But H e g el turns aside for a moment in h is de­

fen se o f Sch elling, to show that Reinh old w as ju st as badly m istaken about D 'H oIbach . The System e de la N ature b e gin s from "m a tte r"; but both spec­ u lative idealism and speculative m a­ terialism begin from "th e ab solute id e n tity " o f m ind and nature. M atter an d feelin g are literally poles ap art as ap p e aran ce s o f the A b solu te; an d a sy stem (D 'H olb ach 's for instance) will be defective if it suspen ds the opp o­ sition tran scenden tally or an sich. This is the typical defect of a dogm atic ph ilosoph y. Fichte's system su spen ds the opp osition of mind and n ature in a sim ilar w ay, so that, in spite o f his p ro te statio n s, Fichte's idealism is al­ m ost as dogm atic as D 'H olb ach 's m aterialism . 61. See fo r instance the "F ir st In tro­ duction to the Science of K n ow ledge," Section s 3-6 (W erke I, 425-40; H eathL ach s, pp. 8-20). Fichte there opp oses d o g m atism to idealism . But in the Scien ce o f Know ledge itself he had d istin gu ish ed dogm atic from critical idealism . See for instance, W erke I, 156, 172-3 (H eath and Lach s, pp. 1478, 160) an d com pare D ifference pp. 1 26-9 below . W hen Fichte draw s this distin ction he also form ulates the on­ tological con trast in term s of idealism an d realism . 62. H ald an e and Sim son, III, 479505. 63. H egel's decision to chop Fichte in two, which is not clearly explained in either e ssay , gave rise to som e crit­ ical m isun derstan din gs of Faith and K n o w le d ge ; but we need not concern ou rselv es w ith that here (see the intro­ duction to that w ork, pp. 5-6). Even the H istory of Philosophy lectures w hich did m ake the distinction b e­ tw een the tw o Fichtes clear (H aldane an d Sim son , III, 480—1, 505-6) did not poin t out the relation of H egel's two critical e s s a y s; fo r in his lectures H egel discu ssed the W ay to the B lessed

73 Introduction Life as a specim en of the "p o p u la r " Fichte. H e ag ain ignored the V ocation o f M an altogether at that stage. 64. H aldan e and Sim son , III, 504. 65. Ibid., Ill, 481—2. 66. See the references given in note 61 above. 67. "S e co n d Introduction," W erke I, 463; H eath and Lach s, p. 38. 68. W erke I, 218 (H eath and Lachs, p. 195). The "w av erin g of im ag in atio n " is d iscu sse d ibid., pp. 216-7 (H eath and L ach s, p. 194); and H egel's assertio n that "p u re and em pirical con sciousness condition one another m u tu ally " seem s to be b ase d on Fichte's account o f the reciprocal determ ination of "th e activ­ ity " (of the Ego) and "th e in te rp lay " (with the non-Ego)— ibid., p. 212 (H eath and Lach s, p. 190). 69. See L asson (1967), pp. 9-24. 70. Sy stem der Sittenlehre, W erke IV, 114—5 (K roeger, Ethics, p. 119). 71. In the V ocation of M an Fichte develops a "p o stu la tio n a l" version of the older external teleology ; N ature is proph etically presum ed to keep pace w ith the m oral advan ce o f m an (com pare fa ith and K now ledge, pp. 177-79). T h is certainly represents a degeneration rather than an im prove­ ment upon K an t's position. 72. In the G erm an C onstitution e ssay H egel calls Fichte's ration al com ­ m unity "th e m ach in e-state." (K nox and P elczynski, pp. 159, 163—4 ); as early as 1796 (in the "Sy stem -P rogram m e o f G erm an Id e alism ") he had in sisted that this conception o f the state, which he first foun d in M o ses M en delssoh n, m ust be tran scen ded: see Tow ard the Sun ligh t, pp. 510, 250-2; also H egel's essay on N atu ra l Law (Knox and A cton, pp. 85-7, 124-6). 73. H egel, Philosophy o f N ature, Introduction (M iller, p. 1 ); C roce, p. 164. 74. "F o r the deity, that is, fo r a con scio usn ess in which everything

w ould be posited by the m ere fact o f the Ego h avin g been p osited (though for us the concept of such a con scio usn ess is unthinkable) our Science of K now ledge w ould have no content . . . but even for G od the Science w ould have form al correct­ n e s s" (W erke I, 253; H eath and Lachs, p. 224). 75. The title of L o ssiu s' book, Physische U rsache der W ahrheit, seem s to me a pow erful argum ent in fav o r of the view that H egel h as him in m ind here (161-2). 76. Credit for this discovery should actually go to F. L. von S to lb e rg; and it w as G oethe who let the w orld in on the joke (see Petry, I, 293-4). But Beck gives som e exam ples from W olff's d is­ cussion of the p urpose o f the sun and the earth that w ould h ave am used H egel even m ore (Early G erm an Philosophy, pp. 273-4). 77. C ritique of Ju dgm en t, Section 75 (A kad. V. 400; M eredith, T eleological Ju dgm en t, p. 54). 78. Ethics, part II, prop. 13. 79. O ne of the m ost im portant achievem ents of H egel's Logic is his account o f the different typ es of n ecessity . But that cam e later (and it is doub tfu l w hether it h as ever been un derstood properly). The m ono­ chrom e character of the Identity theory (which H egel h im self attacked w ithin a few y ears) w as m uch easier to g ra sp — an d to draw m istaken conclusions from . 80. A rb itrarin ess, an d its n atu ral counterpart chance, are quite different from the natu ral spon tan eity, or con­ scious acting in an d for the whole, w hich are w hat H egel m eans by "fre e d o m ." A ll the sam e, the d ero ga­ tory w ay in which he sp e ak s o f them is un fortun ate, b ecau se although their place in the schem e o f things is su b or­ dinate, they do have a n ecessary place/ and H egel w as fully aw are of this, as

74 Difference the System of Ethical Life dem on­ strates. But there is nothing arb itrary or casu al about the organic structure in which arb itrarin ess and chance p la y their n ecessary role. O ne could not, for instance, produce an e xplan a­ tion of the w orld order that w ould sa tisfy H egel upon the prin ciples of the ancient atom ists. For to asse rt that everything is b asically a m atter of chance is to a sse rt precisely that there is no satisfacto ry explan ation of thin gs. This is the h ypoth esis that ph ilosoph ical speculation is essen tially im p o ssib le — a hypoth esis which m akes no sense for m an as the n atural con sciousness of R easo n ; H egel is confident therefore that it w ill never be accepted as final. W hether the h ypoth esis really does m ake no sense, or whether H egel's confidence w as m isplaced, is a much m ore open question for us, b ecause our view of n ature and of our place in it h as been tran sform ed since his time. But we m u st, in any case, acknow ledge the im portance of his ph ilosoph ical ju stifi­ cation of chance. B ecau se of it his system can retain its validity (as Sp in oza's, for exam ple, cannot) even for som eone w hose ph ilosoph y of n ature is fun dam entally evolutionary. 81. System o f T ranscen dental Ideal­ ism , W erke III, 627. 82. M y schem e is b ase d m ainly on the Fernere D arstellu n gen of 1802 (W erke IV, 213-23); a few details come from the second edition of the Ideen (1803). 83. Sch elling's distinction of the levels of "re fle c tio n " and "su b su m p ­ tio n " should be seen as a m etam orph o­ sis o f K an t's distin ction betw een "d e te rm in in g " and "re fle c tin g " ju d g ­ m ent— first m ade in the Introduction to the C ritique o f Judgm en t, section IV, A k ad . V, 179-80 (M eredith, A esthetic Judgm ent, p. 18-9). 84. I have added this note about the

final term s of the "re a l se rie s" and the "id e a l se rie s" in order to underline the fact that H e g e l's placing o f "A r t" and "S p e cu la tio n " (or "b e a u ty " and "tru th ") in relation to the "p o in t of d ifferen ce" is the opp osite o f Schel­ lin g's own. T here is no schem e of Sch ellin g's in this period, in which A rt is placed at the ap e x of the real series. (See Tilliette, Sch ellin g I, 417-21 for a convenient con spectu s of all of Schel­ lin g's efforts to arra n ge the "re a l se­ rie s" and the p a ra lle l "id e a l se rie s." N ote how often the latter series is com pletely ign ored.) 85. In a w ork called P ropositions from N ature— M etap h y sics. See Schel­ lin g's dialogue "O n the A b solute Iden­ tity S y ste m " in the C ritical Journ al (H egel, N X .A . IV , 162 n.). 86. Schelling, W erke IV , 31. 87. Schelling, W erke V, 365-7. 88. H egel re g ard e d sex-differentiation as specific to the anim al kingdom and as m erely acciden tal an d sym bolic in its vegetab le form s. T h is can be gath ered already from his Frankfurt e ssay s (see K n ox and K ron er, p. 261) and is confirm ed in the Sy stem of Ethical Life (L asso n [1967], p. 15). But in the present context (168) H egel sp eak s of the se x u al differentiation of plan ts, w ithout qualification . So pre­ sum ably Sch ellin g w as inclined to em ­ ph asize the con tinuity of organic form s, and H egel h as here accepted this em ph asis. B ut sexual attraction, at least, is a form o f anim al irritability, w hich Sch ellin g gives as the second Potenz in the Ideen of 1803. See the table in the text. 89. T h is w as one of the m ain topics of H egel's Latin d issertatio n On the O rbits o f the P lan ets (1801), which w as already d rafte d (in G erm an) when he w rote the D ifferen ce essay . 90. It becom es even easier when we realize that w here electricity is referred to, it is static electricity that is meant.

75 Introduction The charge is released when the two differently charged bodies com e suffi­ ciently close to each other. W hat we gen erally call electricity b elon gs to w hat H egel calls the chem ical process b ecau se it is gen erated in that process. 91. Subsequen tly H egel's theory of the chem ical process cam e to em brace m ore o f w hat we recognize as chem ­ istry. But it alw ay s included an d b egan from galvan ism . To the very end of his life H egel stoutly resisted the a s ­ sim ilation of the different types of electrical phenom ena under one cate­ gory. 92. P h ilosoph y of N atu re, trans. A. V. M iller, p. 1. 93. The "con stru cted lin e" is Sch el­ lin g's (see W erke IV, 137). But this circle is my own. 94. T h e rem arks about religious in­ tuition here show the influence of Sch leierm acher's On R eligion, to which H egel m akes a lau datory reference in his p reface (83). By the tim e he w rote Faith and K now ledge his en th usiasm had cooled som ew hat. H e still rated Sch leierm acher's achievem ent highly, but in sisted that it w as on e-sid ed ; it w as the height of sub jectivity only. 95. H egel (A nchor), p. 47. 96. A few further d etails w ill be found in the introduction to Faith and K n ow ledge, (See pp. 1-3.) 97. "V e rh altn iss des Scepticism us zur P h ilo so p h ic," N .K .A . IV, 197—238. (There is a French tran slation by B. Fauquet.) It deserves to be noted that ju st as H egel's critique of R einhold and Bardili is only a foil for his ap pre­

ciation of the speculative ph ilosoph y of Identity, so the critique o f Sch ulze's form al scepticism is only a foil for his ap preciation of the truly speculative scepticism of the A n cients— and e sp e­ cially for his ap preciation o f P lato 's Parm enides. 98. M ery, p. 189, note U. He cites G lockner as the great cham pion of this view. H is careless sy n tax also creates the im pression that R osen kran z b e­ lon gs to his party —-but R osen kran z w as actually one of its m ost trenchant critics. See H egel's Lehen, pp. 150-1. 99. It is much m ore correct to say as Z im m erli does (pp. 8-9) that the d is­ cussion of R einhold w as regard ed by H egel as part of the "C o m p ariso n of Sch ellin g's Principle with Fich te's," than to regard the w hole e ssay as a re­ view o f R einhold (as K au fm an n su g ­ ge sts). But Z im m erli ign ores the con­ flict betw een H egel's program m e as announced in the "P re fa c e " and the discu ssio n of R einh old's ph ilosoph y in the closin g p ages. T here is thus more excuse for L asso n 's fo u rfo ld division o f the e ssay than Zim m erli allow s. 100. See R osen kran z, pp. 190—2. The only p o ssib le tim es for this course w ere W inter 1801 (H egel's first term) or W inter 1802 (his third). A ll the in­ ternal and external indications support the later date, but none of them is very decisive. 101. See H egel's review in N .K .A . IV, 178-9. A lso the note in the Philo­ soph y of N atu re (E ncyclopedia, section 250; M iller, p. 23). 102. See note 35 above.

The Difference Between Fichte's and Schelling's System of Philosophy in connection with the first fascide of Reinhold's Contributions to a more convenient survey of the state of philosophy at the beginning of the nineteenth century

published in Jena, 1801.

Preface

In those few public utterances in which a feeling for the difference between Fichte's and Schelling's system s of philosophy can be recog­ nized, the aim seem s to be more to hide their distinctness or to get round it than to gain a clear aw areness of it. N either the system s as they lie before the public for direct inspection, nor am ong other things, Schelling's answ er to Eschenm ayer's idealistic objections again st the philosophy of nature have brought the distinctness of the two system s out into open d iscu ssion .1 O n the contrary, Reinhold, for exam ple, is so far from an inkling of it that he takes the complete identity of both system s for granted.2 So his view of Schelling's system is distorted in this w ay too [as well as in other w ays]. The occasion for the follow ­ ing treatise is this confusion of R einhold's, rather than his revolution of bringing philosophy back to logic— a revolution that he has not merely threatened us with, but has proclaim ed as already accom ­ plished.3 The Kantian philosophy needed to have its spirit distinguished from its letter, and to have its purely speculative principle lifted out of the rem ainder that belonged to, or could be used for, the argu ­ ments of reflection. In the principle of the deduction of the categories K an t's philosophy is authentic idealism ; and it is this principle that Fichte extracted in a purer, stricter form and called the spirit of K an t­ ian philosophy.4 The things in them selves— which are nothing but an

1. K. A. Eschenmayer, "Sp on tan eität = Weltseele oder das höchste Prinzip der N aturphilosophie," and F. W. J. Schelling, "A n h a n g zu dem A u fsa tz des Herrn Eschenmayer," in Zeitschrift für ~spekulative Physik II, 1-68 and 109-46; see Schelling, Werke (1856-63) IV, 79-103. 2. See K. L. Reinhold, Beyträge I (H amburg , 1801), especially pp. 85-89 and 135-54. 3. Reinhold believed the revolution w as accom plished in the w ork of C. G. Bardili, Grundriss der Ersten Logik (Stu ttgart, 1800). The full title of this w ork w as. "O utlin e of Primary Logic purified from the errors of previous Logics gen ­ erally, and of the K an tian logic in p articu lar; not a Critique but a medicina men­ tis, to be em ployed m ainly for G erm any s C ritical P h ilosoph y ." 4. Com pare Fichte: "T h a t our proposition [— The Ego originally and absolutely posits its own being— ] is the absolutely basic principle of all knowledge was

80 Difference objective expression of the em p ty form of opposition— had been hypostasized anew by Kant, and p osited as absolute o b jectiv ity like the things of the dogm atic ph ilosoph ers. O n the one h a n d , he m ade the categories into static, dead pigeon h oles of the in tellect; and on the other h an d he m ade them into th e suprem e principles capable of nul­ lifying the language that e xp resses the Absolute it s e lf — e.g., " s u b ­ stance" in Spinoza. T hus he allow ed argumentation to g o on replacing philosophy, as before, only m ore pretentiously th an ever under the name of critical philosophy. But all this springs at b e s t from the form of the K antian deduction of the categories, not from its principle or spirit. Indeed, if we had no part o f K an t's philosophy but the deduc­ tion, the transform ation of his p h ilosoph y [from sp ecu lation into re­ flection] w ould [6] be alm ost incom prehensible. The principle o f spec­ ulation is the identity of subject an d object, and this principle is m ost definitely articulated in the deduction of the form s o f the intellect (Verstand). It w as R eason (Vernunft) itself that b a p tiz e d this theory of the intellect. H ow ever, K an t turns this iden tity itself, which is R easo n , into an object of philosophical reflection, and thus this iden tity vanishes from its home ground. W hereas intellect had previously been handled by Reason, it is now, by contrast, R easo n that is handled b y the intellect. This m ak es clear w hat a subord in ate stage the identity o f subject and object w as grasped at. The iden tity of subject and o b je c t is lim ited to twelve acts of pure thought— o r rather to nine o n ly , for m odality really determ ines nothing ob jectively; the nonidentity of subject and object essentially pertains to ih 5 O utside what is ob jectively deter­ mined b y the categories there rem ained an enorm ous em pirical realm

pointed out by K an t in his deduction o f the categories; but h e n ever laid it down specifically as the b asic p rin ciple." ( Foundation of the S c ie n c e of K now ledge [1794], W erke [1845] I, 99; H eath an d L ach s, p. 100.) For th e claim that this principle is the "sp irit of K antian p h ilo so p h y " see Fichte, W e rk e I, 186 n., 479 (Heath an d Lachs, pp. 171 n v 52). T h is last p a ssa g e , in the " S e c o n d Introduction to the Science of K n ow ledge" (1797), occurs in the c o n te x t of a discu ssion (Werke I, 468-91; H eath and L ach s, pp. 42—62) that is v e ry im portant for the un derstanding of what "in tellectu al in tu itio n " m eans to S c h e llin g and H egel. 5. For K an t's table of categories se e Critique of Pure R e a s o n B 106. T h e triad of m odality is: 1. P o ssib ility /Im p o ssib ility ; 2. E xisten ce/N on -existen ce; 3. N eces­ sity/C ontin gen cy. A s to the p ecu liarity of m odality com pare A 74 (B 100) and A 219 (B 266).

81 Preface

of sensibility and perception, an absolute a posteriori realm. For this realm the only a priori principle discovered is a merely subjective maxim of the faculty of reflecting judgiyienL6 That is to say, npniden^ tity is raised to an absolute principle. Nothing else was to be ex­ pected, once the identity, i.e, the rational, had been removed from the Idea, which is the^produ€t-©f4^eas^7-and the Idea had been posited in absolute opposition to being. Reason as a practical faculty had been presented as it must be conceived by finite thought, i.e., by the intel­ lect: not as absolute identity, but in infinite opposition, as a faculty of the pure unity [typical] of the intellect. Hence there arises this con­ trast: there are no absolute objective determinations for the intellect [i.e., in critical philosophy], but they are present for Reason [i.e., in speculative philosophy]. The principle of Fichte's system is the pure thinking that thinks it­ self, the identity of subject and object, in the form Ego = Ego.7 If one holds solely and directly to this principle and to the transcendental principle at the basis of Kant's deduction of the categories, one has the authentic principle of speculation boldly expressed. However, as soon as [Fichte's] speculation steps outside of the concept that it es­ tablishes of itself and evolves into a system, it abandons (itself and its principle \and does not come back to it again. It surrenders Reason to the intellect and passes over into the chain of finite [acts and objects] of consciousness from which it never reconstructs itself again as iden­ tity and true infinity. Transcendental intuition, the very principle [of speculation], thereby assumes the awkward posture of something that is in opposition to the manifold deduced from it. The Absolute of the system shows itself as apprehended only in the form in which it ap­ pears to philosophical reflection. This determinacy which is given to the Absolute by reflection is not removed—so finitude and opposition are not removed. The principle, the Subject-Object, turns out to be a subjective [7] ^ubject-Object. What is deduced from it thereby gets the form of a conditioning of pure consciousness, of the Ego = Ego; and pure consciousness itself takes on the form of something condi­ tioned by an objective infinity, namely the temporal progression ad infinitum. Transcendental intuition loses itself in this infinite progres­ sion and the Ego fails to constitute itself as absolute self-intuition. 6. For the m axim of reflectin g judgm ent see Critique of Judgment, Introduction section IV, and sections 75-76 (Akad. V, 179-80, 397-404). 7. See especially the first section of the Science of Know ledge (Fichte, Werke 1/ 95-100; H eath and L ach s, pp. 97-101).

62

Difference

Hence, Ego = Ego is transformed into the principle 'Ego ought to be equal to Ego/ Reason is placed in absolute opposition, i.e., it is de­ graded to the level of intellect, and it is this degraded Reason that be­ comes the principle of the shapes that the Absolute must give itself, and of the Sciences of these shapes.8 These are the two sides of Fichte's system. On the one hand it has established the pure concept of Reason and of speculation and so made philosophy possible. On the other hand, it has equated Reason with pure consciousness and raised Reason as apprehended in a finite shape to the status of principle. That these two sides should be dis­ tinguished must be shown to be an inner necessity of the problem itself (die Sache selbst ), even though the external occasion for making the distinctions is a need of the time and is now provided by a bit of contemporary flotsam in time's stream, namely Reinhold's Contribu­ tions to a Survey of the State of Philosophy at the Beginning of the New Century. In these Contributions the aspect of authentic specula­ tion and hence of philosophy in Fichte's system is overlooked;9 and so is the aspect of Schelling's system that distinguishes it from Fichte's —the distinction being that in the philosophy of nature Schelling sets the objective Subject-Object beside the subjective Subject-Object and presents both as united in something higher than the subject. As to the need of the times, Fichte's philosophy has caused so much of a stir and has made an epoch to the extent that even those who de­ clare themselves against it and strain themselves to get speculative systems of their own on the road, still cling to its principle, though in a more turbid and impure way, and are incapable of resisting it. The most obvious symptoms of an epoch-making system are the misun­ derstandings and the awkward conduct of its adversaries. However, when one can say of a system that fortune has smiled on it, it is be­ cause some widespread philosophical need, itself unable to give birth to philosophy—for otherwise it would have achieved fulfilment through the creation of a system—turns to it with an instinct-like propensity. The acceptance of the system seems to be passive but this is only because what it articulates is already present in the time's in­ ner core and everyone will soon be proclaiming it in his sphere of science or life. 8. Ihrer W issenschaften: ihrer m ay refer either to the "s h a p e s " or to "th is de­ g rad e d R eason ." 9. H eg el plays on R einhold's use of Übersicht. In his "C on trib u tion s to an O v e r v ie w " R einhold m an ages to overlook the m ost im portant points.

83 Preface

In this sense one cannot say of Fichte's system that fortune has smiled on it.10 While this is partly due to the unphilosophical [8] ten­ dencies of the age, there is something else that should also be taken into account. The greater the influence that intellect and utility suc­ ceed in acquiring, and the wider the currency of limited aims, the more powerful will the urge of the better spirit be, particularly in the more openminded world of youth. A phenomenon such as the Speeches on Religion 11 may not immediately concern the speculative need. Yet they and their reception—and even more so the dignity that is beginning to be accorded, more or less clearly or obscurely, to poetry and art in general in all their true scope—indicate the need for a philosophy that will recompense nature for the mishandling that it suffered in Kant and Fichte's systems, and set Reason itself in har­ mony with nature, not by having Reason renounce itself or become an insipid imitator of nature, but by Reason recasting itself into na­ ture out of its own inner strength. This essay begins with general reflections about the need, presup­ position, basic principles, etc. of philosophy. It is a fault in them that they are general reflections, but they are occasioned by the fact that pre­ supposition, [9] principles, and such like forms still adorn the entrance to philosophy with their cobwebs. So, up to a point it is still necessary to deal with them until the day comes when from beginning to end it is philosophy itself whose voice will be heard. Some of the more in­ teresting of these topics will be more extensively treated elsewhere.12 Jena, July 1801. 10. Com pare Fichte, "U e b e r den Begriff der W issen sch aftsleh re" (1794), W erke 1, 34-36. 11. [Friedrich Schleiermacher], On R eligion : Speeches to its Cultured D esp isers (Berlin, 1799). 12. This promise sugg ests that Hegel w as already looking forw ard to his work as a contributor to the C ritical Journ al. The most obvious and important publica­ tion in which it was fulfilled is Faith and K n ow ledge (trans. Cerf and Harris [Al­ bany: State University of New York Press, 1976]).

Various Forms Occurring in Contemporary Philosophy HISTORICAL

VIEW

OF

PHILOSOPHICAL

SYSTEMS

An age which has so many philosopical systems lying behind it in its past must apparently arrive at the same indifference which life ac­ quires after it has tried all forms. The urge toward totality continues to express itself, but only as an urge toward completeness of informa­ tion. Individuality becomes fossilized and no longer ventures out into life. Through the variety of what he has, the individual tries to pro­ cure the illusion of being what he is not. He refuses the living partici­ pation demanded by science,1 transforming it into mere information, keeping it at a distance and in purely objective shape. Deaf to all de­ mands that he should raise himself to universality, he maintains him­ self imperturbably in his self-willed particularity. If indifference of this sort escalates into curiosity, it may believe nothing to be more vital than giving a name to a newly developed philosophy, expressing dominion over it by finding a name for it, just as Adam showed his dominance over the animals by giving names to them.2 In this way philosophy is transposed to the plane of information. Information is concerned with alien objects. In the philosophical knowledge that is only erudition, the inward totality does not bestir itself, and neutral­ ity retains its perfect freedom [from commitment]. No philosophical system can escape the possibility of this sort of reception; every philosophical system can be treated historically. As every living form belongs at the same time to the realm of appear­ ance, so too does philosophy. As appearance, philosophy surrenders 1. W issen sch aft. It is ch aracteristic of Sch elling and H egel (largely as a result of Fichte's W issen sch aftsleh re) that they do not m erely regard speculative ph ilos­ ophy as a "S c ie n c e ," but as the only "S c ie n c e " w orthy of the name. H ence "S c i­ en ce" and "p h ilo so p h y " becom e synonym ous. 2. In his first "P h ilosoph y of S p irit" (W inter 1803) H egel m akes the follow ing rem ark about th is: "T h e first act by which A d am constituted his dom inion over the an im als is that he gave them n am es, i.e., he nullified them as beings and m ade them into essen tially ideal things (fur sich Id eellen )" (N .K .A ., VI, 288). Sim ilarly then, the h istorian turns the living spirit of a ph ilosoph y into a definite ''id e a " in his own mind.

56

Difference

to the power capable of transforming it into dead opinion and into something that belonged to the past from the very beginning. Th^ liv­ ing spirit that dwells in a philosophy demands to be born of a kindred spirit if it is to unveil itself. It brushes past the historical concern which is moved by some interest, to [collect] information about opin­ ions. For this concern it is an alien phenomenon and does not reveal its own inwardness. It matters little to the spirit that it is forced to augment the extant collection of mummies and the general heap of contingent oddities; for the spirit itself slipped away between the fin­ gers of the curious collector of information. The collector stands firm in his [10] neutral attitude towards truth; he preserves his indepen­ dence whether he accepts opinions, rejects them, or abstains from de­ cision. He can give philosophical systems only one relation to himself: they are opinions—and such incidental things as opinions can do him no harm. He has not learned that there is truth to be had.3 The history of philosophy [seems to] acquire a more useful aspect, however, when the impulse to enlarge science takes hold of it, for according to Reinhold, the history of philosophy should serve as a means "to penetrate more profoundly than ever into the spirit of phil­ osophy, and to develop the idiosyncratic views of one's predecessors about the grounding of the reality of human cognition further in new views of one's own."4 Only if this sort of information concerning pre­ vious attempts to solve the problem of philosophy were available could the attempt actually succeed in the end— if mankind is fated to succeed in it at all. As can be seen, the project of such an investigation presupposes an image of philosophy as a kind of handicraft, something that can be improved by newly invented turns of skill. Each new invention pre­ supposes acquaintance with the turns already in use and with the purposes they serve; but after all the improvements made so far, the principal task remains. Reinhold evidently seems to think of this task as the finding of a universally valid and ultimate turn of skill such that the work completes itself automatically for anyone who can get ac­ quainted with it. If the aim were such an invention, and if science were a lifeless product of alien ingenuity, science would indeed have 3. In his Lectures on the History of Philosophy (first given in 1 8 0 5 ) Hegel crit­ icized Dietrich Tiedmann as a collector of this kind See Haldane and Simson, I, 1 1 2 - 3 ; or Gray, pp. 3 1 4 - 5 4 Beytrage I, 5 - 6 .

57

Contemporary Philosophy

the perfectibility of which mechanical arts are capable. The preceding philosophical systems would at all times be nothing but practice studies for the big brains. But if the Absolute, like Reason which is its appearance, is eternally one and the same— as indeed it is— then every Reason that is directed toward itself and comes to recognize itself, produces a true philosophy and solves for itself the problem which, like its solution, is at all times the same. In philosophy, Reason comes to know itself and deals only with itself so that its whole work and activity are grounded in itself, and with respect to the inner essence of philosophy there are neither predecessors nor successors. Nor is it any more correct to speak of personal views entertained in philosophy than of its steady improvement. How could the rational be a personal idiosyncrasy? Whatever is thus peculiar in a philosophy must ipso facto belong to the form of the system and not to the es­ sence of the philosophy. If something idiosyncratic actually consti­ tuted the essence of a philosophy, it would not be a philosophy, though even where the system itself [11] declared its essence to be something idiosyncratic it could nevertheless have sprung from au­ thentic speculation which suffered shipwreck when it tried to express itself in the form of science. One who is caught up in his own idio­ syncrasy can see in others only their idiosyncrasies. If one allows per­ sonal views to have a place in essential philosophy, and if Reinhold regards what he has recently turned to as a philosophy peculiar to himself, then it is indeed possible generally to regard all preceding ways of presenting and solving the problem of philosophy as merely personal idiosyncrasies and mental exercises. But the exercises are still supposed to prepare the way for the attempt that finally succeeds — for though we see that the shores of those philosophical Islands of the Blest that we yearn for are only littered with the hulks of wrecked ships, and there is no vessel safe at anchor in their bays, yet we must not let go of the teleological perspective. Fichte dared to assert that Spinoza could not possibly have believed in his philosophy, that he could not possibly have had a full inner liv­ ing conviction; and he said of the ancients that it is even doubtful that they had a clear conception of the task of philosophy.5 This, too, must be explained in terms of the idiosyncratic form in which his philosophy expressed itself. 5. See the "Se c o n d Introduction to the Science of Kn ow ledge” (Fichte, Werke I, 5 1 3 ; Heath and Lachs, pp. 8 1 —2 ).

Difference

In Fichte, the peculiar form of his own system, the vigor that char­ acterizes6 it as a whole produces utterances of this sort. The peculiar­ ity of Reinhold's philosophy, on the other hand, consists in its found­ ing and grounding concern with different philosophical views, making a great to-do about the historical investigation of their idiosyncrasies. His love of, and faith in, truth have risen to an elevation so pure and so sickening that in order to found and ground the step into the tem­ ple properly, Reinhold has built a spacious vestibule in which philoso­ phy keeps itself so busy with analysis, with methodology and with storytelling, that it saves itself from taking the step altogether; and in the end, as a consolation for his incapacity to do philosophy, Reinhold persuades himself that the bold steps others have taken had been nothing but preparatory exercises or mental confusions. The essence of philosophy, on the contrary, is a bottomless abyss for personal idiosyncrasy. In order to reach philosophy it is necessary to throw oneself into it a corps perdu —meaning by 'body' here, the sum of one's idiosyncrasies. For Reason, finding consciousness caught in particularities, only becomes philosophical speculation by raising itself to itself, putting its trust only in itself and the Absolute which at that moment becomes its object. In this process Reason stakes noth­ ing but finitudes of consciousness. In order to overcome these finitudes and construct the Absolute in consciousness, Reason lifts itself into speculation, and in [12] the groundlessness of the limitations and personal pecularities it grasps its own grounding within itself. Specu­ lation is the activity of the one universal Reason directed upon itself. Reason, therefore, does not view the philosophical systems of differ­ ent epochs and different heads merely as different modes [of doing philosophy] and purely idiosyncratic views. Once it has liberated its own view from contingencies and limitations, Reason necessarily finds itself throughout all the particular forms— or else a mere manifold of the concepts and opinions of the intellect; and such a manifold is no philosophy. The true peculiarity of a philosophy lies in the interesting individuality which is the organic shape that Reason has built for it­ self out of the material of a particular age. The particular speculative Reason [of a later time] finds in it spirit of its spirit, flesh of its flesh, it intuits itself in it as one and the same and yet as another living 6. Sthenische Beschaffenheit. the term is borrow ed from the physiological the­ ory of Dr. John Brown (1735-88), w hich influenced Schelling and Hegel greatly in this early period. Reinhold is, b y contrast, an "a sth en ic" philosopher, but Hegel leaves it to us to supply this B row n ian com plem ent.

89 C ontem porary Philosophy being. Every philosophy is complete in itself, and like an authentic w ork of art, carries the totality within itself. Ju st as the w orks of A pelles or Sophocles w ould not have appeared to R aphael and S h ak e s­ peare— had they known them — as mere preparatory studies, but as a kindred force of the spirit, so R eason cannot regard its form er shapes as merely useful preludes to itself. V irgil, to be sure, regarded Hom er to be such a prelude to him self and his refined era, and for this reason V irgil's w ork rem ains a mere postlude.

THE

NEED

OF

PHILOSOPHY7

If we look more closely at the particular,